Investigations of the Future

by Brian Stableford

  I do not want to go into the theory of miracles in general.

  I only want to say that the examination of Joshua’s, recounted according to tradition, as the words of the Bible itself indicate well enough, could give rise to a philosophical thesis on objective and phenomenal time, and subjective an intellectual time.

  Here something happened to a multitude that ordinarily happens to a single person, albeit in very rarely circumstances. In fact, it is the very rare event of an action being accomplished simultaneously with the thought. Then the movement of the external world seems to stop.

  The judges of Galileo, and Galileo himself, would have been most embarrassed by it.

  Thus the miracle of Joshua also gives rise to an examination of the power of an individual acting on other individuals and on things.

  Joshua is a powerful will forcing other wills to condense successive actions into a single action, an instantaneous action.

  The inspiration that makes him command the sun to stop is authority pushed to its highest energy; it transforms an army into an exterminating whirlwind.

  The laws of God are eternal. The laws of nature established by God are immutable.

  Miracles are neither a suspension of those laws or an exception to them.

  If a miracle is a Providential coup d’état, it is a coup d’état that results from those same laws, as dictatorship is contained in the ancient Roman constitution.

  The theosophical miracle of Joshua is not an isolated fact in the history of the human mind.

  Indian books offer us several examples of that condensation of events into a very limited time, which gives to certain times the prerogatives of eternity.

  A terrible battle between the Kurus and the Pandus was to decide the fate of all India. The two armies confronted one another. Already arrows were flying through the air to begin the battle.

  At that moment, Krishna, who is the Divinity in a human form, and Arjun, his cherished disciple, both mounted on chariots, emerged from the ranks of the armies, one on each side, and met in the space that remained free before the hand-to-hand engagement.

  Such is the famous episode in the Mahabharata.

  That episode, known by the name of Bhaghavad Gita, is, I believe, the most complete of the ancient doctrine of the Hindus on religion and morality. Krishna instructs his disciple in that which it is most important for him to know: the nature of the soul, human destiny, the duties that he must fulfill toward his fellows, and toward the Divinity; in sum, the route that he must follow to achieve eternal happiness.

  It is evident that, in the mind of the poet, that astonishing dialogue is a contemplation without any appreciable duration of time, for an entire ay would scarcely have been sufficient, in solitude and with total liberty of mind for such a conversation to have taken place between the two interlocutors—which is to say, between God and the valiant archer.

  Notes

  1 tr. in a Black Coat Press edition as The Novel of the Future, ISBN 978-1-934543-44-3.

  2 available from Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-101-9.

  3 tr. in a Black Coat Press edition as An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars, ISBN 978-1-934543-45-0.

  4 included in the Black Coat Press edition of The Germans on Venus, ISBN 978-1-934543-56-6

  5 available in a Black Coat press edition, ISBN 978-1-61227-070-8.

  6 Jean-Aymar Piganiol de La Force (1673-1753), Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix (1698-1776) and Jacques-Antoine Dulaure (1755-1835) all wrote classic works on the history of Paris.

  7 The reference is to John Martin (1789-1854) who became famous for vast paintings of Biblical and mythological scenes unparalleled in their mystic grandeur, such as the The Fall of Babylon (1818). Gautier spells the name Martinn, by virtue of a minor stylistic quirk that also affects a handful of other names cited in the story. Although it is arguable that I ought to have retained the quirk by reproducing the names as the author gives them, I have usually substituted the more familiar spellings in order to facilitate the reader’s understanding.

  8 Belus is one of many possible renderings of the name of the Babylonian god Bel or Baal, to whom classical and scriptural references are numerous, but Gautier is undoubtedly thinking of a legend said by secondary sources to have been recorded in a book by Artabanus, in which Belus was a member of a race of Titans who escaped their destruction by the gods and built a tower in which to reside in the city that became Babylon.

  9 Gautier also refers to a place called Lylac in a book about travels in Spain, where he couples it with the tower of Babel, but I cannot find any such reference outside his work; I suspect that it is his own humorous invention; several species of the shrub lilac (Syringa) have common names including the word “pride” (e.g. Pride of Moscow), thus licensing his symbolic association.

  10 I have altered all three of these names to correspond with the usual names of the kings of Assyria and Babylon to whom they obviously refer, although the fact that Gautier renders the third as Balthazar, more usually attached to one of the Biblical Magi, my be an intentional double meaning.

  11 The term syrinx, of which syringes is the plural, refers in this context to a kind of Egyptian tomb hollowed out of rock.

  12 Chronos is a common misrendering of Cronus, the name of the leader of the Titans who rebelled against his father Uranus but was eventually overthrown by his own son Zeus. Classical descriptions typically show him carrying the scythe or sickle that he used to castrate Uranus—an image transferred to that of “Father Time” by virtue of the phonetic misunderstanding that linked his name with chronos, [time]. Xixuthros is a Hellenization of the name of the Sumerian king Zuisudra, who was said to have ruled immediately before the Deluge and to have survived it, much as Noah did in Hebrew mythology.

  13 Paris developed an acute shortage of graveyard space in the 18th century, which eventually led to the remains they contained being dug up and removed to ossuaries in the catacombs in order to make way for new graves. Famous people sometimes obtained a “concession of perpetuity” for their tombs, but prestige is fleeting in a society continually overturned by revolutions, so many such concessions were subsequently overturned.

  14 The literal meaning of plateresco is “in the style of a silversmith”; the style flourished in Spain in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, providing an intermediary between Gothic and Renaissance styles, leavened with Moorish influences.

  15 Giovanni Battista Rubini (1794-1854), the most famous Italian tenor of his era.

  16 Sèvres was once the center of porcelain production in the vicinity of Paris, but the techniques in use there were overtaken in the late 18th century by those of André-Marie Leboeuf, whose superior product, manufactured in the Rue Thiroux, was favored by Marie-Antoinette and became known, in consequence, as porcelaine à la reine.

  17 The waters of the River Pactolus, like King Midas, were reputed to be able to turn objects to gold.

  18 This name might be an eccentric or mistaken rendering of Pisistratus, the name of a rebel against the Athenian aristocracy who subsequently seized power; while ruling the city he instituted a festival associated with the first attempt to produce a definitive version of the Homeric epics.

  19 The descendants of the mathematician and member of the Convention Lazare Carnot (1753-1823) included four more noted scientists and politicians, including Sadi Carnot, elected President of the Republic in 1887. (Houssaye was not to know that he would be assassinated in 1894.)

  20 Baron Haussmann was appointed Prefect of the Seine in 1853 because his predecessor was reluctant to bear the vast expense of the planned reconstruction of Paris sanctioned by Napoléon III, whose chief architect and author Haussmann became; he still held that position when Fournel published this story, and probably read it; we can only speculate as to the extent and tenor of his amusement.

  21 François Barrême (1638-1703) gave his name to a “ready reckoner” intended to assist accountants, lawyers and the like, also used in France in the teaching
of arithmetic. Gaspard Monge (1746-1818) published a standard textbook on geometry. Legendre was the publisher and notional author of the guide-book produced for the cab-drivers of Paris in the era in which Fournel write his story.

  22 The Mazas was one of the prisons of Paris, reckoned ultra-modern in 1865, having been opened in 1841.

  23 The useful [in combination with] the agreeable.

  24 The enceinte constructed in the reign Philippe II (1165-1223) in 1190 or thereabouts—the first of five (not counting two minor expansions), the last one being constructed by Louis XVIII in 1818.

  25 La Machine de Marly was a masterpiece of 17th century engineering built to supply all the water features in the palace of Versailles, involving fourteen giant water-wheels and 221 pumps. It required a permanent staff of sixty to maintain it, but kept breaking down, thus eventually becoming something of a joke. It was not actually situated in the commune of Marly.

  26 Amphion, the son of Antiope, allegedly by Zeus, became legendary for organizing the fortifications of Thebes by playing his lyre, thus compelling huge blocks of stone to organize themselves magically—a key scene in Euripides’ Antiope, which presumably presented difficulties in staging.

  27 Fournel presumably has Eugène Delacroix’s fresco Heliodorus Driven from the Temple (completed in 1861) in mind; it can still be seen—a trifle dimly—on the wall of Saint-Sulpice.

  28 Noumea was, and still is, the capital of the French territory of New Caledonia in the south-west Pacific. Between 1860 and 1897, New Caledonia was a penal colony, to which many of the Communards of 1870 were transported; Franklin could not know when he wrote the story that most of its political prisoners would be allowed to return to France in 1879, when they were granted amnesty. Nor could he know that there would be a native rebellion on the island in 1878, which commenced a long guerrilla war.

  29 The notional author inserts a reference: “Kortambert, Fragments, Dartieu edition, liv. I, ch. 7, p.5.—Conf. Meissas et Michelot, IV, 9, 11; Expilly, IX, 5, 3, and Malte-Vran, VI, 4, 7.” Franklin probably had Eugène Cortambert’s Leçons de géographie [Lessons in Geography] (1846) in mind when improvising this reference. The confirmatory references are presumably to Achille Meissas and Auguste Michelot’s Nouvelle géographie méthodique [New Methodical Geography] (1827), Jean-Joseph Expilly’s Manuel de Géographie [Handbook of Geography] (1757) and Conrad Malte-Brun’s Géographie universelle [World Geography] (1870).

  30 The notional author adds another reference: “Du Laure, Fragments, I, 3, 26; Joanne, Extracts, VI, 9, 12.—Conf. Varbertet et Magin, IX, 2, 16; Mentelle, III, 7, 21; Max du Camp, II, 27, 9.” The primary references must be to Jacques-Antoine Dulaure’s Histoire physique, civil et morale de Paris [The Physical, Social and Moral History of Paris] (1839) and to the regularly updated guide to Paris compiled by Adolphe Laurent Joanne and Paul Joanne, which was current when Franklin wrote the story. The confirmatory references are presumably to Charles Barberet and Alfred Magin’s Précis de géographie historique universelle [A Historical Summary of World Geography] (1841), Edmé Mentelle’s Choix de lecturers géographiques et historiques [Selected Lectures on Geography and History] (1783) and Maxime du Camp’s Paris: ses organs, sees functions et sa vie [Paris: its anatomy, its functioning and its life] (1870).

  31 All the Latin names in this passage and subsequent ones are jokes, mostly easily penetrable; Anguilla is a genus of eels and Astacus a genus off crayfish but Goujo is an improvisation based on “goujons” [of fried fish].

  32 The notional author inserts a footnote: “These words are missing from the original and have been thus restored by Monsieur Walken. One recalls the long debate that he sustained with Monsieur Laignes, who preferred “portico of victory.” On this issue, consult: Lettre de M. Walken à M. Laignes, au subjet d’une épigramme attribué à Victorugo et inserée dans le troisième volume de l’Anthologie française, Noumea, 3860, octavo.” At the end of the verse he adds a second footnote giving the reference: “Anthologie française, t. iii, ch. Ix, p.281.” The quotation is from Victor Hugo’s “À l’Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile” in Odes et ballades (1837).

  33 The notional author includes a reference: “Recueil général des historiens français t. VIII, p. 117.”

  34 The notional author notes: “Joanne (Extraits, V, IV, 109) informs us that the name of this general was given to one of the bridges of Paris.”

  35 The notional author gives the reference: “Fragments de l’histoire dite du 2 decembre, in the Recueil general des historiens françaises, t. IX, p. 314.” The mangled reference is to Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac’s Histoire du directoire (1851-55).

  36 The notional author adds a reference: “Fragments, I, 19, 37.”

  37 The statue presumably depicts the myth of Lacöon; Napoléon I had looted the original of the most famous Classical statue representing the story but it had been returned to the Vatican after his fall; numerous copies and castings can still be found in Paris and elsewhere.

  38 The original of this statue is similarly antique; again, numerous copies exist, including one by Fognini designed for the gardens at Versailles.

  39 The notion author gives the reference: “Recueil general des historiens français, IV, 9, 11; V, 7. 8; VII, 12, 3.” Jules Michelet devoted an entire volume of his mammoth Histoire de France (vol. 7, 1835) to Jeanne d’Arc, effectively formulating the now-familiar mythical version of her exploits. Adolphe Thiers produced an Histoire de la revolution française (1824-27) in his early days, before becoming President of the Third Republic in 1871. The fervent radical socialist Louis Blanc, long a thorn in Thiers’ side was one of the leading participants of the Revolution of 1848.

  40 The notional author’s reference: “Recueil général des historiens français. XII, 17, 12.” The reference is presumably to H.-Marie Martin’s L’Empire et la Révolution (1861)

  41 The notional author’s reference: “Fragments de l’histoire de Henri II.” The reference is to J.-C.-L. Simonde de Sismondi’s Histoire des français (1821-44)

  42 The notional author’s reference and note: “A. de Musset, Anthologie française, II, 4, 9. These lines demonstrate the gross error into which those scholars have fallen who claim that the French poets always alternated masculine and feminine rhymes.” The original, which uses an ABBA rhyme-scheme, contains three adjectives accompanying feminine nouns and one a masculine noun (ironically, sein [breast]). The poem cited is “Sur trois marches de marbre rose.”

  43 The garbled reference is presumably to Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875).

  44 The notional author’s footnote: “Voy. Les Pharaons, les Sésostris et les Poléons, rapprochements historiques. p.209.” i.e., See The Pharaohs: Historical parallels between the Sesostrises and the Poleons.

  45 One hesitates to disagree with such a brilliant deduction, but is it possible that the three letters were actually SVP and the half-erased name Vincent de Paul?

  46 Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Ecclesiastes [1: 1, 11 & 14]

  47 The first line of the poem “Lux” from Les Châtiments (1853), an anticipatory hymn to the universal republic, written shortly after the coup d’état that ushered in the Second Empire and sent Hugo into exile.

  48 Although the future communards have restored the months of the Revolutionary calendar they obviously have not followed its example in abolishing the week and replacing it with periods of ten days.

  49 The quotation, with slight variations, goes back to Classical times, where it was employed by Euripides and Cicero; it popularity seems to have been renewed in France by Voltaire. Spronck was a député himself, and might have heard the citation from the radical benches on more than one occasion; his specific reference is probably to Louis Blanc.

  50 Given that the story is
essentially a parable, it might seem churlish to wonder whatever happened to the Americas, but still…

  51 Alfred de Musset, in “La Coupe et les lèvres.” The line became a favorite cynical euphemism.

  52 This euphemistic phrase had become very widely used by the end of the 19th century, and its origin had probably been forgotten as an irrelevance. The earliest printed version I can identify is in Frank Puaux’s Histoire de la Reformation Française (1868).

  53 Benoît de Maillet.

  54 The term “shark” springs to mind, but Jullien is presumably referring to the fact that maquereau [mackerel] is also used in French to refer to a pimp or brothel-keeper. It is also significant that what might be called a “come hither look” in English is described in French as “making carp’s eyes” at someone.

  55 A quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid: its literal meaning is “the [true] goddess revealed by her gait.”

  56 Most of the leading participants in the Paris Commune had no choice about leaving the country, being transported to New Caledonia.

  57 “Quickly, safely and pleasantly” (with respect to medical cures).

  58 The clergyman in question, allegedly the parish priest of St.-Romaine-des-Îles, figured in a massive advertising campaign, offering a testimonial to the effect that Du Barry’s Food (a quack medicine) had saved him from twenty years of dyspepsia and various other ailments. At the turn of the century there were very few effective medicines, and only two groups stand out as having any real virtue beyond the placebo effect: opiates and laxatives. The coincidence was to some degree fortunate, as taking opiates on a regular basis tends to cause dire constipation.

  59 The pun does not translate: in French, cabinet can mean both a consulting-room and a toilet.

  60 Another phrase in common ironic usage, probably originating from an earnest but facile comment in Baron Reiffenberg’s Archives philosophiques (1826).

  61 Again, the pun does not translate, canard [duck] being a slang term for (among other things) a disreputable newspaper.