Read Online Endless Things by John Crowley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Crowley
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Pierce. “Want some?” he asked.
"Oh no,” Pierce said. “Oh no. None for me, thanks. None for me."
* * * *
That wasn't all that befell Pierce there in the Sunshine State that week. It was then that he discovered something he had once promised he could find but had never actually believed existed, a thing he had told Julie Rosengarten would be disclosed in the last pages of his book, a thing—maybe the only thing—that had survived from a former age when things were not as they are now but worked in a different way, something that really still worked that way, the way things once did. He found it in the place where he should have known it was, but had not before been able to see into; down a different passage, in the deep dark, and yet not far away at all. That's all been told; the story's still there to be discovered in at least a few libraries and in those blessed stores that keep unwanted books until their time at last comes around, if it does, or at least until they catch someone's eye or stir someone's heart, unless their paper yellows and crumbles into illegibility first: the whole story of how Pierce found the thing that he had sought for, right in his own backyard. Not that it mattered then, really, materially, since Pierce was never going to write that book nor any other like it; and this he confessed to Barr in the Olympic Club at JFK.
"That's too bad,” Barr said. “Too bad. Because of course there's been some remarkable new thinking on the subject lately. Egypt and Greek wisdom. You must have been following. Major controversy."
Pierce nodded cautiously. He hadn't been following.
"I'm guessing,” Barr said, “that you got your grounding in this matter largely from Frances Yates. Dame Frances Yates."
Pierce was vaguely shocked, hearing the name said aloud, a cloudlet of actuality emitted on the stale false air. A sort of category error. No one should speak that name but him, in his heart.
"Wonderful woman. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition . It's where we all got it, isn't it? You're going to London? You should look her up. She's at the Warburg Institute, you know."
"Yes."
"Wonderful woman. Major influence. Give her my regards when you see her. She could be wrong, though."
"Wrong in what way?"
"Well, centrally, her thesis—it's hardly hers alone—is that the Renaissance made this colossal mistake in the dating of the pseudo-Egyptian manuscripts that they attributed to a single author, this semidivine Hermes Trismegistus; that what they had were in fact Hellenistic writings that had been given a false provenance by their author, or authors, as was so common in that time. So the wonderful mystical Egyptian world they depicted was in fact post-Plato, even post-Christian. A dream."
"Yes."
"That's the consensus view. All the scholars. But what if they're wrong? They were the latest word when you were at school, but that was some time ago.” Twinkle. “I think a case can be made—well, it is being made—that those writings, the so-called Hermetic Corpus, go back well before Christianity."
"Really?"
"Half a millennium before. Not all of them, of course, maybe not even all of any one, but large parts of them. It may be that some of them date to a time when the temples of Egypt were still standing, the priesthood still functioning."
"But everybody says. Not just Yates. Everybody agrees."
"Well, of course there's good philological evidence that the writings as we have them are late Greek. But that doesn't mean they don't contain older materials. Much older.” He drank. “Anyway, everybody doesn't agree. Flinders Petrie didn't agree."
That impossible name, a name for an archæologist in a comic book, breaker of stones, studier of fragments, Flinders Petrie. Pierce had got Petrie's books from the State Library in Kentucky, back when he had himself first set out for those realms. In childhood: that long ago. The sand-colored photographs, sand-colored man in pith helmet and wrinkled
"Oh no,” Pierce said. “Oh no. None for me, thanks. None for me."
* * * *
That wasn't all that befell Pierce there in the Sunshine State that week. It was then that he discovered something he had once promised he could find but had never actually believed existed, a thing he had told Julie Rosengarten would be disclosed in the last pages of his book, a thing—maybe the only thing—that had survived from a former age when things were not as they are now but worked in a different way, something that really still worked that way, the way things once did. He found it in the place where he should have known it was, but had not before been able to see into; down a different passage, in the deep dark, and yet not far away at all. That's all been told; the story's still there to be discovered in at least a few libraries and in those blessed stores that keep unwanted books until their time at last comes around, if it does, or at least until they catch someone's eye or stir someone's heart, unless their paper yellows and crumbles into illegibility first: the whole story of how Pierce found the thing that he had sought for, right in his own backyard. Not that it mattered then, really, materially, since Pierce was never going to write that book nor any other like it; and this he confessed to Barr in the Olympic Club at JFK.
"That's too bad,” Barr said. “Too bad. Because of course there's been some remarkable new thinking on the subject lately. Egypt and Greek wisdom. You must have been following. Major controversy."
Pierce nodded cautiously. He hadn't been following.
"I'm guessing,” Barr said, “that you got your grounding in this matter largely from Frances Yates. Dame Frances Yates."
Pierce was vaguely shocked, hearing the name said aloud, a cloudlet of actuality emitted on the stale false air. A sort of category error. No one should speak that name but him, in his heart.
"Wonderful woman. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition . It's where we all got it, isn't it? You're going to London? You should look her up. She's at the Warburg Institute, you know."
"Yes."
"Wonderful woman. Major influence. Give her my regards when you see her. She could be wrong, though."
"Wrong in what way?"
"Well, centrally, her thesis—it's hardly hers alone—is that the Renaissance made this colossal mistake in the dating of the pseudo-Egyptian manuscripts that they attributed to a single author, this semidivine Hermes Trismegistus; that what they had were in fact Hellenistic writings that had been given a false provenance by their author, or authors, as was so common in that time. So the wonderful mystical Egyptian world they depicted was in fact post-Plato, even post-Christian. A dream."
"Yes."
"That's the consensus view. All the scholars. But what if they're wrong? They were the latest word when you were at school, but that was some time ago.” Twinkle. “I think a case can be made—well, it is being made—that those writings, the so-called Hermetic Corpus, go back well before Christianity."
"Really?"
"Half a millennium before. Not all of them, of course, maybe not even all of any one, but large parts of them. It may be that some of them date to a time when the temples of Egypt were still standing, the priesthood still functioning."
"But everybody says. Not just Yates. Everybody agrees."
"Well, of course there's good philological evidence that the writings as we have them are late Greek. But that doesn't mean they don't contain older materials. Much older.” He drank. “Anyway, everybody doesn't agree. Flinders Petrie didn't agree."
That impossible name, a name for an archæologist in a comic book, breaker of stones, studier of fragments, Flinders Petrie. Pierce had got Petrie's books from the State Library in Kentucky, back when he had himself first set out for those realms. In childhood: that long ago. The sand-colored photographs, sand-colored man in pith helmet and wrinkled
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