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| One of several Towers of Babel by Emily Allchurch |
"The library is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveller were to cross it in any direction, after centuries he would see that the same volumes were repeated in the same disorder (which, thus repeated, would be an order: the Order)."
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library At Babel”
Early comments on this blog include several asking why so many dates appear to be "random" and "arbitrary" - "why this one's birth but that one's death?" is the most common. And indeed, sometimes, appearance is as appearance seems; blogs get posted in an entirely random and arbitrary manner, because that is when I happened to research it; or on a whim; or because it took my fancy (God apparently works in the same haphazard manner, and also calls it Order); in several cases because I had no date for the item (Beruriah coming soon on January 12 for example, and Nursery Rhymes ditto on March 15), but also dates with nothing at all on them... and so I resolved both problems by employing each other as each other's solution.
But behind the randomness there is also a serious purpose: a wish to break away from the illusion of linear time and create a structure for the book that more accurately represents the helictical nature of time. Helictical, not spiral, certainly not cyclical. That is another of our illusions about time. Cyclical infers that the identical events recur, whereas in reality they are only similar events, containing elements of the previous one, but still uniquely individual, like genomes. But it seems to me that our ability to learn from history depends, to a considerable degree, on our ability to transcend both of these illusions, to see history as part of time, and time as part of history, eternally simultaneous, in constant flux and reflux, and with each cause leading to each effect, but also altered, at least in our perception, by that effect, and by the next cause, the next effect.
So, on today's page, because my diary for December 5th 2003 has an annotated page of possible choices for the day's entry, but almost nothing that I even want to place in amber mode, let alone consider for a journey into the green; so why not take the opportunity to have this conversation - which is, after all, about the method and the substance of this book.
Choices for the Book of Days should eventually, over a period of many years, have the same effect as bowling averages or cost-of-living indexes, the provision of a mean statistical outcome. On any given day that I scour the almanacs, I am looking for something or somebody that interests me sufficiently to pass a half an hour finding out a little more about them. What I choose becomes a predictable pattern, and thereby holds up a mirror to identity. What I do not choose is also a usable statistic, and for the same reason. In between there are people/events that I might well have chosen, and rejected only because they were too similar, or too elaborate, or... so perhaps even these indices are still only provisional, hypothetical, speculative. (Perhaps Douglas Adams’ 42 is not actually an answer in itself, but only the rounding up - or down - of the mean of several possible answers!)
So, taking today, but stopping at 1920 because there is no more room on the page:-
1301
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Pope Boniface VIII’s decree Ausculta fili
|
not interesting
|
1349
|
500 Jews are massacred at Nuremberg in Black Death riots
|
not again!
|
1448
|
Bishop Jona of Moscow chosen as Metropolitan of Kiev
|
how exciting!
|
1456
|
Earthquake strikes Naples; about 35,000 die
|
cf Voltaire’s Candide
|
1492
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Columbus discovers El Hispaniola, Haiti
|
cf Grahame Green: The Comedians [1]
|
1496
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Jews are expelled from Portugal by order of King Manuel I
|
again again! [2]
|
1590
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Niccolo Sfondrati chosen Pope Gregory
XIV
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worth a look; no, looked, not interesting
|
1602
|
Giulio Caccini’s “Eurydice” premieres in Florence
|
never heard of it
|
1757
|
Battle at Leuthen: Prussian army beats Austrians
|
no
|
1766
|
London auctioneers Christie’s holds their 1st sale
|
could be fun to use Chatwin for this
|
1776
|
Phi Beta Kappa. 1st American scholastic fraternity
(William & Mary College) is founded
|
not the college but the Greek & the Oxbridge connections
|
1792
|
George Washington re-elected US President, John Adams
Vice-President
|
no
|
1798
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Government troops occupy Hasselt
|
Where is Hasselt?
|
1804
|
Thomas Jefferson re-elected US President, George Clinton
Vice-President
|
no (any relation of Bill?)
|
1813
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Lubeck surrenders to allied armies
|
I've heard of Lubeck
|
1830
|
Hector Berlioz’ “Symphonique
fantastique” premieres in Paris
|
worth an entry (but I already have Berlioz on Dec 11)
|
1831
|
Former President John Quincy Adams takes his seat as member of
House of Representatives
|
no
|
1832
|
Andrew Jackson re-elected President of US, Martin Van Buren
Vice-President
|
no
|
1837
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Hector Berlioz’ “Requiem” premieres
| no, because of 1830 |
1837
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Uprising under William Lyon Mackenzie in Canada
|
Yes, but only because of my move to Toronto; and then no, because he's already in "Leo Bloom"
|
1846
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C.F.Schoenbein obtains patent for cellulose nitrate explosive
|
Who? What? Why?
|
1848
|
President Polk triggers Gold Rush of ’49, confirms California gold
discovery
|
A good idea for a short story - by Jack London, not me
|
1854
|
Aaron Allen of Boston patents folding theater chair
|
worth a cartoon? [3]
|
1859
|
Dion Boucicault’s “Octaroon” premieres in New York NY
|
Are you kidding?
|
1861
|
Gatling gun patented
|
another cartoon?
|
1862
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Battle of Coffeeville MS
|
just because of the name, yes
|
1868
|
1st American bicycle college opens (New York)
|
just because it’s so weird, yes [4]
|
1876
|
Daniel Stillson (Massachusetts) patents 1st practical
pipe wrench
|
no, because of the 2 above
|
1876
|
Fire at Brooklyn Theatre kills 295, trampled or burned to death
|
possible cf with Shakespeare's Globe?
|
1879
|
1st automatic telephone switching system patented
|
no
|
1881
|
47th Congress (1881-83) convenes
|
come off it
|
1887
|
Stanley’s expedition reaches plateau at Lake Albert, Congo
|
"Doctor Noah I presume"
|
1890
|
Berlioz’ opera “Les Troyens” premieres
in Karlsruhe
|
no - is this coincidence or satire?
|
1892
|
Anti-semite Hermann Ahlwardt elected to Germany’s Reichstag
|
ought to be but not
|
1893
|
1st electric car (built in Toronto) could go 15 miles
between charges
|
yes, but see 1837
|
1894
|
Georges Feydeaus’ “L’hôtel du libre échange” premieres in Paris
|
worth a momentary thought, then reject it
|
1896
|
Henrik Ibsen’s “Kejsor og Galileer” premieres in Leipzig
|
ibid
|
1905
|
Henry Campbell-Bannerman (Liberal) becomes PM of England
|
no [5]
|
1906
|
British Government - Balfour resigns
|
no [6]
|
1908
|
1st football uniform numerals used (University of
Pittsburgh)
|
potential for some serious fun; but no
|
1914
|
6th CFL Grey Cup: Toronto Argonauts defeats University
of Toronto. 14-2
|
no [7]
|
1918
|
Oil refinery on Curaçao opens
|
no
|
1920
|
Pro football playoff game Akron v Buffalo 0-0 tie, title undecided
|
no [8]
|
[1] and my tale "The View From Hispaniola" in "The Captive Bride"
[2] and see Roderigo Lopes
[3] worth noting that I have no note on the page as to where I found
this particular list, but I didn’t generally use American-generated ones,
because frankly there weren’t many; and yet this list is quite ludicrously
US-centric; did nothing at all happen, in the whole of history, between Baghdad
and Kabul going eastwards, between the Yukon and Yokinawa, going west? “A
Journey In Time’ suffers from precisely this flaw.
[4] and a follow-up satire on today’s US colleges - PhDs in quarterbacking and the number of top golfers who went to - Atlanta was it? High-school students who I knew, who got scholarships to wear sexy bikinis while playing beach volleyball, or lycra suits for rowing. Or the "experiential" work for another student-I-knew's film course, in which his essay on Truffaut and Film Noir was late because he had to film the training sessions before the college superbowl. I like the idea that Americans need to go to college in order to learn how to ride a bike. With or without training wheels? (On the other hand, see 1908)
[5] shouldn’t that be “PM of Great Britain”? Or of “the United Kingdom”
even? Bizarre enough to see what the historians choose to remember, what to
ignore, what to wilfully and deliberately leave out; but then there is history
as propaganda. “PM of England and its Welsh, Scottish, Irish and other
colonies”? I must go back and see what dates of significance are missing from
this catalogue, and footnote them.
[6] and then there is the simple laziness or ineptitude of the
chronicler, the historian, the journalist. Has he simply cut and pasted data
from other sources, not bothering to check, cross-check, edit, correct? How
else does "England" in the last become "British" in this? And if so, is that
how Wikipedia works - a bot, a computer robot, trawling cyberspace like an
Atlantic fisherman, bringing back the intended cod, but mixed up with so much
bream and sea-weed, halibut and crab, the entire enterprise is rendered
worthless? And sadly, yes, that is precisely how Wikipedia works, and why I
will not use it.
[7] that should read "why would anyone have given a damn, even at the
time?" And, December 5th 1914 - wasn’t that there a minor skirmish
of some sort going on in Europe at the time?
[8] Fool, Prashker - you missed out on an opportunity to write the
greatest satirical novel in human history. A sequel to the David Kalischer
novel entitled "A Journey In Non-Time", in which a severely dislectic historian
writes an account, spelled as best he can, and grammatically and syntactically
error-riddled, of all the most insignificant non-events of history, the ones
that somebody actually bothered to record, like this one. (And wouldn’t that
last entry be even better if it could have recorded that nobody turned up to
watch the game).
But there are one or two items that can be parked behind the STOP sign, waiting till the road is tarred and the traffic lights plugged in
Christina Rossetti, born today in 1830
Fritz Lang, film director, born today in 1890
Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart, composer, died (yes, this one definitely on his death-date), today in 1791: in poverty, possibly driven to it by Salieri...
And today in 1955, the bus boycott began in Montgomery, Alabama (see December 1). Did it really take so very little time, from Rosa's refusal to a black people's boycott? Amazing.
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