June 22


Amber pages


This date poses a question that I haven't asked before - or maybe I have, but not quite in this way. The trigger is:


Today in 1342 (Shire Reckoning), Bilbo Baggins returned to his home at Bag End.


I would have no issue with, say, "21st September 1937, publication of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien" - a book that has acquired considerable status in the world of teenage literature, and therefore merits the commemoration. But this elevates the events of the novel to the status of history.

But then, what about:
April 1st 1375 BCE, Moses leaves Egypt for Mount Sinai

January 6th 1, Jesus Christ born in Bethlehem

July 4th 1666, first recorded game of Quidditch in China

December 16th 1793, birth of Elizabeth Bennet

January 3rd 1842, Martin Chuzzlewit sets off for America

(you can work out for yourselves how I calculated the day, month, year, but there is a logic to each one)


The list could go on for... well, for as long as literature and the human imagination can think up fictions, and then ascribe entirely fictional dates to them as well (I believe that all five on my list are fictions, and their dates likewise - feel free to email me if you think I'm wrong)...






No fiction in either the event or the date of this though: 
France fell to Germany in WWII, today in 1940. France falling to Germany had sadly become a national habit, ever since the rout of Napoleon switched the boots from the feet...


And precisely one year later, the event that would start the commencement of the beginning of the end: Germany invaded Russia, today in 1941.




Charon, one of Pluto's moons, discovered, today in 1978, by a man who was genuinely named J. Christy - J for James on this occasion - and his partner Robert Harrington (there is a Lulie Harrington in John Dos Passos' novel "Chosen Country", and a Melchisedek Harrington in George Merdith's "Evan Harrington" - I wonder if they are related). But now that Pluto has been demoted from its status as a planet, is it still permitted to have moons, or does Charon have to row his boat across the Styx to somewhere else now (and do I have to look for imaginary characters in short-stories, rather than full-length novels?)?

And anyway: why would you name anything after Charon! Charon is the Prime Minister of Hell isn't he, the one who guides the dead into the hands of the devil Phalange, across the rivers Sabra and Shatilla. No? Have I got my history and my politics and my mythology mixed up?

So I looked him up, just in case, and it turns out that I do have my Sharon (see Sept 16) mixed up with my Charon, who may actually be Kharon, or Acheron (and even, in some accounts which may be fictional, Sauron, though in the realms of the dead there is also Vol De Mort), and what I appear to have done, foolishly, so foolishly, is to slip into the error of anti-Semitism (anti-Zionism as a cover for anti-Semitism, same thing really). 

But then I noticed, on theoi.com, which is a highly reputable and respectable web-encyclopedia, that:


"Kharon was depicted in ancient Greek art as an ugly, bearded man with a crooked nose, wearing a conical hat and tunic..."


And that is definitely a description of Sharon, the cartoon character from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (see August 26), the traditional image of the European Jew. Do you see how deeply embedded it is? Fact posing as fiction, fiction posing as fact. The mythology of science.

illustration courtesy of http://www.danceshistoricalmiscellany.com/jewish-life-in-medieval-england/


*

and one more for today's date, though you will need to go to the Ancien Régime page of "Woman-Blindness" for the full account: today in 1659, at the insistence of his mother and his chief minister, who were serving as his regents until he was old enough to rule alone, the love of Louis XIV's young life, Marie Mancini, who he had renamed Princess Colonna, was banished into exile, and forced to become a famous writer rather than a queen.
Posted by

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)