Poquette's Bibliomonde II

There and beyond is a seventh continent—seven peoples, seven masters, seven seas. And its business is trade and superstition.

Every culture, our culture, indefinitely makes maps of the space of knowledge and of the imaginary available everywhere, maps available and ruled by cycles of cycles. To inhabit a space, to inhabit concrete space, either the space of knowledge or the space of culture, means having a place: a personal or colletive place, defined by these multiple circles.

—Michel Serres, Jouvences sur Jules Verne (1974), 149, quoted in Christian Jacob, The Sovereign Map (2006)

There are few who would pick up a book of fifteenth-century philosophy from anything other than a sense of duty. But the letters of Marsilio Ficino of Florence are an exception. They are philosophical, inspired by Plato, but they also have an instant appeal because they connect with what we all know, but mostly ignore: the knowledge of our own soul. In so many of these letters Ficino urges us either directly or indirectly to cultivate our soul, a message that in our own times has been taken up with great eloquence and power by Thomas Moore (Care of the Soul).

. . . a state of mind and soul that arose in fifteenth-century Italy, spread through Europe along certain clearly defined fault lines, and persisted for about two hundred years, during which, although no one believed in the gods, many people acted as though they existed. Those privileged to create their own surroundings chose to have the gods painted on their furniture and walls, made statues of them, read and declaimed about them, and impersonated them in pageants and plays. A naive visitor to a Renaissance palace or villa might well conclude that its owners were votaries of Apollo, Venus, Hercules, and a host of attendants in human and semihuman forms. Yet if he stepped into the chapel, a very different set of images would meet his eye, and he might wonder what exactly was going on.

What I do suggest is that some people during this period "dreamed" of being pagans. In their waking life they accepted the absurdities acknowledged as the essence and credenda of Christianity, all the while nurturing a longing for the world of antiquity and a secret affinity for the divinities of that world. No one confessed, no one described this urge, for it was never dragged beneath the searchlight of consciousness or the scrutiny of the Inquisition. It would have been suicidal, were it even possible, for anyone in Christian Europe to articulate it. But that was all the more reason for it to manifest in the favorite language of the unconscious, and of dreams: that of images.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I fortold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
—Prospero, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

Good health to you always, heavenly and divine friend. Of my other friends, some were presented by chance and the rest were of my own choosing; but the heavens joined Bernardo Bembo to me from the beginning, and then divine providence confirmed this in a wonderful way. I say "heavens" because we were born in the same year, on the same day, under the same star.

To Cardinal Riario, her most beloved, son, Truth gives many greetings and promises true salvation. . . . Most people think that I [Truth] abide in the high palaces of princes. On the contrary, I am more often compelled to seek out cottages and to dwell in humble homes. . . . I am driven back from the thick roofs and walls of rich houses; and if these doors are ever opened, a tumult of countless falsehoods immediately streams out to meet me. Not thinking to stay among enemies, I instantly take flight. I leave that house that is full of gold and lies but impoverished and empty of truth. Today, however, I come to you willingly, fortunate cardinal, to dwell with you always, if you but wish it. I have come in haste at the very outset of your appointment before your hearth is beset by my enemies, the pernicious lies of flatterers and slanderers. . . .

You should attribute your high rank of office to your ancestry and not to your own merits which, to speak truly, could not have achieved so much in your few tender years. You should not attribute it to fate and fortune either, for sacred mysteries and holy orders do not arise from the caprice of fortune but from the eternal wisdom of God.

Whoever uses arms against your sheep undoubtedly harms you before anyone else. For there is no shepherd without a flock, and he who disowns or loses any part of the flock at once ceases to be shepherd of the whole.

From time to time, while passing from the outer door to the inner door of the entryway, a certain strange, very strange state came over him, as if everything that was beyond the door was not what it was, but something else. Beyond the door there was nothing. If the door were to be flung open it would be flung open onto the measureless immensity of the cosmos, and the only thing left was to . . . plunge into it headfirst and fly past stars and planetary spheres, in an atmosphere of two hundred and seventy-three degrees below zero.