The Organs of Sense

by Adam Ehrlich Sachs

  And he picked up his quill and wrote something down.

  * * *

  HE HAD, NATURALLY, no intention of ever returning to that turret, much less stepping foot inside it.

  Nothing, he felt, could make him do that, not even a commandment from the mouth of the Emperor.

  Yet the following day would find him on his knees before its door begging for entrance.

  Leibniz: And what could compel you to do such a thing?

  “The stars compelled me,” the astronomer said, peering into his telescope. “Listen.”

  That night, the third night of his stellar observations, a few minutes before the Sun absorbed in its rays every other entity in the heavens, the astronomer, his ears plugged with wax to block the sound of the maddening Benedictine bells, his eye fixed to his nineteen-inch, fourfold-magnifying silver telescope, surpassed the 1,164 stars enumerated in Bayer’s Uranometria.

  And he thought euphorically: I have now seen more stars than Johann Bayer, who saw more than Tycho, who saw more than Piccolomini, who saw more than Ptolemy and the Greeks.

  He thought: At this moment I have seen more than anyone.

  Then, however, he thought: At this moment I have seen more than anyone.

  In the next moment someone else would see more than him.

  What Piccolomini was to the Greeks, and Tycho to Piccolomini, and Bayer to Tycho, and he to Bayer, someone else would be to him. To come after someone, to come before someone: ridiculous! the astronomer said. “The pointlessness,” he said, “of seeing more than Bayer. The emptiness of seeing more than Bayer.” How important seeing more than Bayer had once been, and how little it now amounted to!

  Short of seeing all the stars, an absurdity, there was no point in seeing any of them.

  He would die, the stars would stay put, and someone else would see more of them.

  He would be buried in that series of scientific surnames, beside Bayer, two down from Tycho, three away from Piccolomini.

  Will everything, he wondered, amount to as little as this?

  He tore out the wax from his ears, it had done nothing to stop the ringing of the bells, and he ran to the Benedictine monastery, and he kicked the stone wall with his feet, and he beat the wall bloody with his fists, and with his tongue he vilified those who lived within it, whose perpetual bell-ringing was inimical to the thinking of thoughts. The ringing of a bell enters the thinking head, proceeds straightaway to the thought-thinking part of the head, locates there the incipient thought, and destroys it: “Your bells have destroyed my thoughts!” Ringing bells and thinking heads cannot coexist (he cried) and since their monastery was filled with huge numbers of ringing bells, he could only conclude that it did not contain a single thinking head. By now a handful of white-haired monks had materialized on top of the stone wall where side by side they peered down at him with curiosity and compassion, that spiritual compassion which is commingled with bemusement over our investment in the things of this world. This needless to say only enraged the astronomer further, and he told the Benedictine monks what he would do to them, and what they ought to do to each other, and what they, the Benedictine monks, could do to their mothers, each monk to his own mother and each to each other’s mothers, and finally what all of the Benedictine monks could do to a single Benedictine monk’s mother. One by one the wizened old men shook their heads in sorrow and vanished from atop the wall. Only the last of them spoke: “Think, my child,” he murmured as he, too, departed from the parapet, “of eternity.”

  Leibniz: At that moment, way down at the foot of the wall, the astronomer thought: “Why, actually, is it absurd to think of seeing all the stars?”

  Leibniz writes: What had struck him as a matter of logic plunged now into the realm of the empirical.

  He would need no doubt a long tube, maybe a very long tube, and possibly even an absurdly long tube, but between an absurdly long tube and an impossibly long tube there was, “contra Descartes, who would have seen two equally dubious tubes,” Leibniz comments, all the difference in the world, the astronomer thought as he stood at the foot of the wall of the monastery.

  And there was all the difference in the world between a star catalogue that was prodigious and one that was complete.

  The astronomer had the sense that a complete star catalogue, an exhaustive star catalogue, the star catalogue God Himself were He to survey His creation would compose, a record in writing of everything above—“In this very ledger!” he said, holding above his head the ledger in which he’d been writing all morning—would, aside from expiating completely his own guilt, mean something momentous for man’s place in the cosmos.

  What it would mean, momentous how, not to mention, he added, whom he thought he meant by man: all of this he did not yet know.

  Now the Sun had risen. From the monastery the astronomer went straight to the Castle Workshop and demanded of his craftsmen a tube no less than three feet in length, forged of solid gold, and with the power to magnify things ninefold. But for the first time his metallurgists said: We cannot do that. So the astronomer said: Fine, then, make it of silver, as before, the tactile qualities of the tubes while significant are still secondary to the optical. But his metallurgists said: We cannot make it of silver either. And the astronomer shouted: Then of bronze, or brass, or iron, or lead, just so long as it magnifies objects nine times! And the metallurgists said: Not of bronze nor of brass, nor of iron nor lead. And the master lens-grinder from Nuremberg stepped forward and said: The Emperor has ordered us to make no more tubes for you. And his Augsburger apprentice said: I fear that you have not calculated the true cost of your celestial observations. If you have a place to go, go there, sir, I beg you, forget the stars, leave Prague.

  He returned posthaste to the Imperial Observatory but found it padlocked. His own house he found padlocked, too. A note nailed to the door and stamped in red wax with the two-headed Habsburg eagle requested his presence in the North Wing “to discuss your future here, and the future of your tubes.”

  The astronomer peered into his telescope, picked up his quill, and wrote something down.

  What if he had not gone? What if—“and nothing would have been easier!”—he had taken the stairs that wound down Hradčany Hill, crossed the Old Stone Bridge, left Prague, left Bohemia, left the Holy Roman Empire, left Europe? What if he had not gone? What if he had not gone! Again and again he demanded What if he had not gone? until it dawned on Leibniz that the old man was actually waiting for an answer, and Leibniz proposed: “You would still have your eyes?” And the old man smiled. “I would still,” he said, “have my eyes.”

  * * *

  THE ASTRONOMER TOLD LEIBNIZ: In one hand the Emperor held the horn of a unicorn and in the other he held a stone bowl into which the blood of Christ had once flowed. The Emperor whispered into the ear of the Court Chamberlain, and the Court Chamberlain said: “Your horoscopes spoke of the Emperor’s imminent demise.” And before the astronomer, in confusion and consternation, could object vociferously that this was not so, that he had spoken nothing of death, that he had foreseen for the Emperor only health and life, the Court Chamberlain said: “And in foreseeing that you have demonstrated your acumen in deciphering the stars.” Under his breath the Emperor murmured: “I know that I am dead and damned.”

  And he gazed in contemplation at the horn in his hand.

  The Court Chamberlain leaned toward the astronomer and whispered: “He is now in his fiftieth year, the very year that claimed his father.”

  The Emperor looked up from the horn, whispered into the ear of the Court Chamberlain, and the Chamberlain said: “He will die, as you have foreseen, either as his father did, of a weakness of the walls of the chambers of his heart”—and the Emperor whispered in his ear—“or (exactly as you wrote) as did Henri III, the last of the House of Valois, stabbed in the abdomen by a Catholic fanatic attired in the vestments of his Royal Confessor.” He added: “As you wrote.” Under his breath the Emperor murmured: “In the gut! In the
gut! As you wrote.”

  And he gazed in contemplation at the bowl.

  The Court Chamberlain leaned toward the astronomer and whispered: “He perused your horoscopes with admiration. The most brilliant prognostications he has ever seen! he said. And this is a man whose nativity was cast by Nostradamus himself.”

  Leibniz: The astronomer thought: Have my words been altered before they reached the Emperor’s eyes? Or has he in his lunacy seen in them prophecies that weren’t there?

  The Emperor gazed in contemplation at the horn.

  “And so,” said the Court Chamberlain, “even before the New Star appeared, His Majesty was preoccupied by the question of succession. And now that the New Star has appeared he is possessed by it.” The Emperor murmured: “The New Star is Heinrich, Heinrich the New Star.” The Court Chamberlain: “As his last act, His Majesty wishes to ensure that the crown, upon his death, goes to his son. That it goes to Prince Heinrich.” The Emperor murmured: “They are flimflamming me in Frankfurt!” The Court Chamberlain sighed: “Yes, it is true, the Emperor’s three perfidious brothers are as we speak conducting a meeting in Frankfurt, ostensibly on the Protestant threat but in actuality on the subject of succession. The Electors have gone to Frankfurt, too…” The Emperor contemplated the bowl. The bowl, he murmured, is a microcosm of creation, every aspect of creation corresponds to an element of the bowl and every element of the bowl to an aspect of creation. “Same with the horn,” he said, turning his head toward the horn. He added: “I know that I am dead and damned.” “Neither His Majesty’s three little brothers nor the seven Electors of the Holy Roman Empire hold Heinrich in high esteem, I am sorry to say, and that was the case long before the transient lunacy that led him to commit his unfortunate act,” the Chamberlain said. “They still, for instance, call him a bastard, even though the Emperor legitimized him by edict a long time ago.” “The Edict of Legitimation,” said the Emperor. He put down the horn and the bowl and pounded his fists on the arms of his throne: “All of my children were legitimized by the Edict of Legitimation that I signed long ago in the spa town of Karlsbad!” “Though of course, as a gesture of moderation, you do not enforce it as it pertains to your daughters,” said the Chamberlain, and the Emperor said: “To placate the forces of conservatism I do not enforce the edict as it pertains to my daughters of course.” He picked up again the horn and the bowl and gazed in contemplation at the bowl. The Chamberlain said: “And in fact one of your daughters does not even agree with the edict in the first place! How many times has Margaretha tried to sign an edict revoking the Edict of Legitimation?” The Emperor murmured: “She does not have the authority to do that.” “Of course she doesn’t have the authority to do that,” said the Chamberlain, “but does that stop her from going to Karlsbad and writing up her malicious Revocations of the Edict of Legitimation and forcing her ladies-in-waiting to sign it?” “I do not recognize her Karlsbad Revocations. They carry no legal weight.” “It is not a matter of legality or the law, My Lord, it is a matter of mockery.” The Emperor scrutinized the horn. “Why,” he muttered, “is she so keen to revoke an edict that in any case I do not enforce as it pertains to her?” “As I say, it is a matter of mockery, My Lord. She is mocking your authority. A dreadful thing for any daughter to do to her father even were he not the King of the Romans.” Still gazing in contemplation at the horn, the Emperor muttered: “I failed with Margaretha, I don’t know why. She was such a pretty child, she looked just like her mother. When she was little she’d always take my hand and lead me over to the glass jars of pickled monstrosities you see yonder, she loved those jars more than I did even, loved and was afraid of them. There was one jar containing three unborn babies joined at the skulls that she could stare at for hours, but only if I stayed and stared with her, holding her hand—which I was happy to do, very! She would always ask, Daddy, does the baby like being in that jar? Always: Daddy, daddy, does the baby like being in that jar? I remember that. And I would explain, Greta, dear, the baby is dead, it is beyond the liking of things. She thought it was one baby with three faces, not three babies with basically one very big seriously deformed head, I remember that. She asked me once if the baby had eyes, so I had my anatomist sew them open for her, all six, after that she was even more spellbound by it and even more afraid of it. We spent days in here together! Until she was three, four, five she never left my wunderkammer or let me leave it. Then one day she lost all interest in it…” He gazed at the bowl. “She was so pretty, I thought she would marry and be happy. I’ve never understood Margaretha, that one’s an enigma to me,” he murmured, gazing at the horn.

  “With respect, My Lord, she is mad, there is nothing to understand, and no enigma either,” the Chamberlain said. “And it is precisely because she is mad that Matthias has seized upon her as the solution to his Heinrich problem. That’s what he’s plotting in Frankfurt as we speak, My Lord. In defiance of you.” The Emperor suddenly flung the horn, and then the bowl; they clattered across the floor. “Fiend!” he cried. “Scoundrel!” And then: “Bring me the bowl! Bring me the horn!” Attendants returned the items to his hands and the Emperor contemplated them in turn. The Chamberlain turned to the astronomer: “You see, His Majesty’s most treacherous and power-hungry brother has the most to lose if a man of Heinrich’s fortitude and intellectual autonomy were to take the throne. Archduke Matthias knows full well that the Emperor’s son is positively uninfluenceable, his cranium a keep.” “A keep for a cranium—a kind of cranial keep,” the Emperor murmured, adding: “An uninfluenceable son. Against Matthias’s ideas pertaining to the Protestants?” “Just so, My Lord, very astute,” said the Chamberlain. “Archduke Matthias wants an emperor into whose vulnerable head he can insert his own ideas regarding the Protestants, he cannot be emperor himself but he can put his poisonously anti-Protestant ideas into an emperor’s head, if that head is sufficiently porous. But is Heinrich’s head porous, My Lord? Is it vulnerable?” The Emperor raised both horn and bowl and cried: “No!” “No, Heinrich’s head is exceedingly well fortified, you raised him right, My Lord, an impregnable head, walls thirty feet thick, forty feet, fifty feet! A fortified head that another man’s sentences cannot hope to penetrate, much less inhabit. And Matthias knows that.” The Emperor: “Yes, I raised Heinrich to be an independent thinker, basically I was continually fortifying his head against the world, for Matthias that’s a catastrophe, he knows that Heinrich’s head’s walls are thirty to fifty feet thick and can’t be penetrated or inhabited by his anti-Protestant sentences, Matthias knows that!” The Court Chamberlain: “But Matthias also knows that Margaretha’s head is as vulnerable as Heinrich’s head is impregnable, our sources in Frankfurt tell us that to Albert and Ernst and the seven Electors Matthias makes much of her hardheadedness, of her supposed hardheadedness that is, but our sources in Styria tell us that at home he speaks of nothing but her invented headaches, the phantom itch in her bones, the outrageous size to which she inflates in her mind the nodes in her neck, he speaks of nothing in short but the signs of her lunacy, of the traffic streaming from inside her head to outside it, and presumably also—what interests Matthias more—from outside to inside. In private he meditates on his niece’s useful softheadedness, but in public he expounds on her supposed hardheadedness, not to mention of course her convenient status as your eldest child, and hence what he insists is her fitness in these troubled times for the office of Holy Roman Empress. In doing so Matthias not only flouts the Golden Bull promulgated in 1356 at the Diet of Metz in which Charles IV unambiguously restricted the elective dignity of Holy Roman Emperor to men but also directly defies Your Majesty’s own express wishes.” The horn and the bowl clattered across the floor. The Emperor cried: “Bring me the horn! Bring me the bowl!” He contemplated them in turn and then murmured: “I know that I am dead and damned, and demons move my muscles.”

  The astronomer put an eye socket to his telescope. He told Leibniz: “That instant kinship I had felt with the Emperor upon first gazin
g at his face, and which I thought far more profound than any kinship I had ever felt with my own father, had now, retrospectively, to be called into question, I thought.” He picked up his quill. “We begin to see the virtues of our birth fathers only after the fathers we thought would replace them have disappointed us in turn. By then of course it is too late, our birth fathers are dead, the little playlets of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation we stage with them in our heads are performed entirely for our own gratification.” And he wrote down a long string of numbers.

  The Emperor, gesturing to one eye: “For two months the Devil himself has tugged at my left eyelid. A two-month eyelid twitch, inflicted by the Devil himself, at my brother Matthias’s bidding.”

  The Chamberlain turned to the astronomer and said: “Now what, you may be asking, has all this palace intrigue to do with you?”

  And the astronomer had replied: “Indeed, I was wondering.”

  “You who are no diplomat but are rather a hunter of the secrets of nature. One of those very valiant truth-seekers who intends to put nature on the rack till she reveals to you in her screams what she has so cunningly concealed from your eyes, right? Whose head belongs not in parlor rooms but among the stars, right? You, the Imperial Astronomer—what has all of this to do with you?”

  “What indeed,” said the astronomer, he told Leibniz. “And with my tubes.”

  The Court Chamberlain said: “That is the question you are asking yourself. The question we are asking ourselves is: Why has our new mathematics tutor not so much as stepped foot in Prince Heinrich’s turret? Despite our explicit directive that the mathematical edification of the Prince ranked among the most important of his duties? Why instead has this purported mathematics tutor spent hour upon hour in the privacy of the Small Dining Room conferring in hushed tones with the very lady whom Archduke Matthias conspires to install on the throne? If an agent of Matthias’s had infiltrated our Castle armed with a gadget stolen from the pages of a Neapolitan sage”—and he flung at the astronomer’s feet a copy of Giambattista della Porta’s Magia naturalis, which, with a smack, landed open to a diagram of a tube—“and under the pretense of creating a star catalogue had sought to inform the Princess of her uncle’s plot, would that agent have acted any differently than you did, any differently at all? That’s the question we are asking ourselves.”