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Those days in the library, it were the flights of birds that attracted my eyes. At my desk in the Bodleian was Olof Rudbeck’s Atlantica, that unfathomable work with its hundreds of wondrous illustrations which I was studying those days.
Birds hovered all across the Egyptian artifact that Rudbeck had reproduced in 1689. It was the so-called Mensa Isiaca, an artwork he included in the second volume.
Many times I had marvelled at the intricate figures of the full-page woodcut. These days in early autumn, I began exploring the story Rudbeck told how all this came into being.
Photo: Evening mood over the Sheepwash Channel.
The light smell of coal lingered over the canals along the Thames. Summer was finally coming to an end. Around sunset, the boaters would heat up the iron stoves.
In cabins behind wooden doors painted with flowers and castles of distant lands lived those who had chosen an itinerant life on the water.
These days in September were still the early ones of my arriving at Oxford. When I cycled to town in the mornings, a few narrow boats chugged up the Thames. Captains clad in down vests rose their hand from the tiller to greet, squinting at the rays of low sun.
In the evenings, the way to my new home led along the canals where many of the boats now moored. On the other side of the tow path I cycled, long walls shielded the water side houses towards the river.
Some of these evenings, a faint sound joined that of the gravel crunching under my tires. It were the throaty calls of greylag geese that echoed from the bricks walls.
More than once, I then stopped my bike on the bridge that arched towards to my new home. Raising my gaze at its apex, I spotted the wedge-shaped flights that glided towards the horizon. It had been about a week now that I arrived from the direction to which they now headed.
For a moment I stopped my breath, following the geese in the sky. It was in this moment of perfect calm above the gently flowing waters of the Thames that the sound of their wing tips grazing the air reached down.
Those days in the library, it were the flights of birds that attracted my eyes. At my desk in the Bodleian was Olof Rudbeck’s Atlantica, that unfathomable work with its hundreds of wondrous illustrations which I was studying those days.
Birds hovered all across the Egyptian artifact that Rudbeck had reproduced in 1689. It was the so-called Mensa Isiaca, an artwork he included in the second volume.
Many times I had marvelled at the intricate figures of the full-page woodcut. These days in early autumn, I began exploring the story Rudbeck told how all this came into being.
Woodcut of the Mensa Isiaca in the second volume of Rudbeck’s Atlantica (1689).
See RfA-ID 287.
Olof Rudbeck, Atlantica, vol II
A sound unheard-of must have lured Olof Rudbeck to the window one morning in April. On the desk from which he rose lay the printer’s copy for what would become the second volume of his Atlantica. A semicircle of books may have arched around his manuscript, showing an object that had cast a spell on scholars for centuries.
Summer is coming, Rudbeck may have smiled, watching the birds draw their nervous pattern into the crisp morning air.
Alternative Reihenfolge: Typo-Größenvariation wirkt am Abschnittsbeginn sinnvoller. (Vermeidet zu großen Typomix)
Back at his desk, Rudbeck’s view wandered once again over the arch of engravings that spreading around his manuscript.
One of them was an engraving by an Italian humanist a few decades before. The ancient bronze tablet had appeared in Rome in the first decades of the sixteenth century, in the vicinity of where the temple of Isis once had stood. In 1527, Rome was sacked.
Legend has it that around that it was at this time that the tablet ended up in the hands of a blacksmith. The craftsman sold the artifact, worked with complex inlays in silver and enamel, to a humanist cardinal enamoured with all things antique. Passing through the hands of collectors and potentates across Europe and centuries, the so-called Mensa Isiaca eventually ended up in Turin. There, at the Egyptian Museum, it is still preserved today,
Beschreibungstext:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
The tablet Rudbeck studied that morning had been published by Lorenzo Pignoria (1571–1631). In his edition, the Italian priest published engravings that unfolded the tablet in three rows.
Together with his engravings, Pignoria offered tentative interpretations of the complex imageries. In the seventeenth-century, Egyptian art – and the hieroglyphs in particular – were still an area of wild speculation. It was only around 1800 that the Rosetta Stone was discovered, and that Champollion published his groundbreaking studies of the hieroglyphs.
In the times before (and after this time), dozens of scholars had taken esoteric takes on Egyptian art. And so, the Mensa Isiaca commonly featured prominently among the evidence.
For his own interpretation, Pignoria drew on texts and objects associated with the goddess of Isis. For him, the Egyptian deity and her cult around the entire Mediterranean were the key to the tablet’s meaning and function.
Engraving depicting the centre section of the so-called Mensa Isiaca, published as part of the posthumous edition of Lorenzo Pignoria’s Mensa Isiaca, Amsterdam 1669. Courtesy of Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen [p. 50 in the digital version, click here for high resolution].
For Rudbeck, the mysterious tablet and the animals populating it told a whole different story. For the second volume of his Atlantica, he had his own illustration of the Mensa Isiaca printed. It was a rough woodcut, prepared after Pignoria’s engraving, that was already a new interpretation. In his illustration, Rudbeck presented the tablet as a calendar of the Nordic Year, the specific months printed right below the scenes. The animals and figures populating the tablet, so Rudbeck explained in great detail, stood for the cycle of seasons up north – the region that, according to his Atlantica, had brought forth all myth and astronomy.
Already millennia ago, Rudbeck argued pagans had venerated the earth and the sun; practices that echoed in ancient myths of Isis (the earth) and Osiris (the sun) that in his view originated up north and also manifested in iconographies visible on Sámi drums. Those who know the cycle of nature up north, the animate beings he identified on the tablet were evident timestamps. And so, the migrating birds he had just observed that morning in April became evidence to solve a quest that had puzzled scholars for centuries: Just today as he was writing the manuscript, on the 24th of April, so Rudbeck wrote in the second volume of his Atlantica, the swallows had returned to Uppsala. Already three days before, he continues, he had spotted the cranes (grus) crowding the fields around the city, together with the greylag geese (anser sylvestris) that stopped over on their journey north. For him, observing the nature of the north had solved a riddle behind a millennia-old artifact.
The god Osiris, in whose headgear
Rudbeck saw the head of a stork (ciconia)
or a crane (grus).
In the corner under Osiris's throne (clearer to see in Pignoria's engraving), Rudbeck spotted a toad, indicating the spawning of quail in April.
The god Horus, son of Isis and Osiris. Rudbeck points to three eyes in the headgear (only visible in the better resolution of Pignoria's engraving). For him they stand for the sun, moon, and earth. By their cycles, he explains, we measure the year, whose Swedish name år Rudbeck sees in the name Horus.
The goddess Isis. In her headgear (a bird visible only in Pignoria's engraving) Rudbeck discovers a turkey presenting itself for mating. For him, this symbolises the earth and and the animals which both at this time of the year are all are ready to receive the seeds.
The swallow (hirundo) that returns to the north in the second half of April, and whose arrival to Uppsala in 1689 Rudbeck described in the second volume of the Atlantica.
Apis standing on an ice floe, with two human figures offering the god water to drink.
Above the scene of Apis on a floe of river ice, the bird phoenix is spreading his wings. For Rudbeck, this myth symbolised the sun rising from below the horizon again after nordic winter.
Two figures of Isis. The flowers on their headgear mark the first blossoms of spring up north that are still weakened by the nightly cold
Etymologically connected with Swedish is ('ice'), the goddess Isis and her tumescent breasts mark the rivers that are about to swell as ice turns to water in spring.
The goddess Isis (described as T in Rudbeck's text, this letter apparent in Pignoria's engraving seems to have been omitted in the woodcut). On her headgear, the sun rises between two dark moons, standing for the sun being reborn from winter darkness. Rudbeck relates the winged dress of Isis to the bird Phoenix (another symbol for the same phenomenon). The colourful feathers of this bird as described by the myth here announce the blossoms of spring.
A sickle in the hand of Isis indicates the earth that lies stripped of all vegetation at this time of the year.
A snake symbolising the year (cf. the iconographic tradition of the Ouroboros). The windings around its central axis amount to a total of twelve. This way, they indicate the sun's course through months of the year. The same imagery, Rudbeck claims, can be found on Sámi drums (drum L).
The alternating pattern on the two outer columns indicate the 25 weeks that the sun ascends over the horizon and descends respectively throughout the year.
Isis at the beginning of May, indicated by her headgear showing an eight-petalled rose (a detail visible only in Pignoria's engraving).
As in the headgear of Isis in Z, Rudbeck sees a turkey ready for mating in this figure, indicating May as month of procreation.
Rudbeck sees the headgear of Osiris composed of three spikes of corn, bundled by the wings of a phoenix (a detail visible only in Pignoria's engraving). Together, these elements symbolise the sun growing stronger. This imagery opposes the headgear of Osiris back in April (X), where a dark disc marked the sun that was still struggling at that time of the year.
The god Osiris. The lion below the throne (a detail clearer in Pignoria) indicates the sun's growing heat and its approaching the sign of Leo.
The falcon commonly associated with Osiris. The soaring flight of this bird of prey marks the strive of the sun towards the highest point above the horizon at midsummer.
Two figures of Isis (EE) marking June. Their headgears point to the corn and grass that now flourish. On the column between them, Rudbeck discovers a lion's head spitting flames (clearer in Pignoria). This marks the heat of the summer sun and its sign in the zodiac.
The god Apis in June. In this month of nightless days, the god shines in brighter light compared to its shadowy representation in March (R). As rainfalls are scarcer in June, his human companions now offer the god drinks of water. As Rudbeck claims, this scene features in greater detail on Sámi drums (see the middle part of drum E).
The inner chamber of Isis. Two phoenix birds (clearer in Pignoria) spread their wings above, indicating the weeks of light that await around midsummer.
An ape-like figure that Rudbeck left uncommented.
Anmerkung:
Hotspot Image ist Ausschnitt aus dem hochauflösenden Kupferstich oben Mensa Isiaca.
Hotspot-Image: Oben und Unten beschneiden.
@Bernhard: Bild in größtmöglicher Auflösung besorgen, bitte.
@Lutz: habe ganze seite aus reproduktion des alten drucks, liegt im Ordner website/stories/the nomadic alternative/frozen_atlantis_nomadic_alternative_mensa_isiaca_Atlantica_1689_full.jpg
Anmerkung:
Hotspot Image: Now – start exploring!
Anmerkung:
Notizbuch-Style (da es sich um B.’s Aufzeichnungen handelt?
an Lutz: wir können den Verweis im linken Textabschnitt auf die früheren Reisen in Patagonian auflösen mit nem schönen TLDR Link, hierfür graphische Lösung (postit o.ä.?) der link ist der hier:
https://toolong-didntread.de/2021/09/16/the-shells.html
My days in the library ended in the flat to which I returned a little upstream the Thames. Two flatmates, a room with a small desk, a shelf above, a bed, my backpack stowed below.
This was the fifth home within two years.
And so far, I was moving lightly.
Some of these mornings in early autumn that I left to foraging anew in the Special Reading Room, I strayed off the mysteries of the Atlantica, following the lure of more recent sirens.
It had been two years since I returned from the southernmost tip of the American continent. On some of my days in the Bodleian Library, I let myself follow the notes taken on these travels and from my readings of Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia.
After Chatwin’s death in 1989, the Bodleian Library received the papers of the British travel writer. They include his notes and photographs, and the famous notebooks that the author kept on journeys all across the globe.
Chatwin’s notes on the far south of the American continent contain the raw material he turned into the chapters of his first book, In Patagonia. When the book appeared in 1977, it raised the author to international fame.
Yet the wide success of his debut work eclipsed a previous project. By the time In Patagonia appeared, Chatwin had struggled with another book for a decade. According to the legend, its draft that had ended in the publisher’s waste paper basket.
The manuscript arrived on my desk in a grey cardboard box. 200 loose pages, written on an electric typewriter. They contained the seed of Chatwin’s later writings – his rambling contemplations on the true nature of human beings.
Anmerkung:
Background Info zur Box
The Nomadic Alternative marks a red thread connecting Chatwin’s 1968 catalogue contribution with his last book The Songlines (1987). Its vehement plea for a life in motion makes the draft a manifesto for the itinerant life the author himself has led – that of an avid traveller, collector, and teller of stories.
And still, the draft was the result of extensive research.Many of Chatwin’s studies touched on the nature of migratory animals, taking took him to the libraries of London. On one of these occasion, he tells in the manuscript, he came across a begging tramp after a long reading session in Bloomsbury. For Chatwin, the backpacker was – like the vagrant, the gaucho, or the truck driver – one of the few existences in the periphery of life organised around cities, a form of being in whom faint echoes of humankind’s earlier state survived. Sympathetic to the traveller, Chatwin bought the man lunch. What draws you out to a life like this, he inquired from the bum?It was life that favoured independent studies and travels over academic structures. Chatwin never finished the studies he began at Edinburgh in the 1960s. His The Nomadic Alternative is a work of pointed journalistic style, a rambling manuscript
to which he himself referred to as „[c]avalier raids on specialised disciplines I have not even begun to master“.
„It’s like the tides was pulling you along the highway. I’m like the Arctic Tern, guv’nor.
That’s a bird. A beautiful white bird what flies from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again.“
Welchen Übergang nehmen wir hier?
Gibt es noch cooles Bildmaterial?
It must have been a night in late April or early May when falling asleep become more difficult. I was wondering about the time when I had last woken up in the same place for so long.
It was one of the same nights that my flatmate Arun and I met in the small hallway, long after dark.
“I’ve also heard it,” he said. “What is it?”
Through my door to the garden, we followed the sound outside. Somewhere from the no-mans-land towards the river a screeching noise resounded, doubled as if in call and response.
With all libraries at Oxford closed, those days I was mostly feasting on the notes I had gathered and the books I had shelved above my desk. It was during these weeks that I picked up the thread of The Nomadic Alternative.
Three years after Chatwin’s 1968 essay, I read in his biography on Chatwin, the draft for a book-version of still was far from completion. The text needed shortening and the material substantial re-organising. And the bleak English summers were not conducive to the task. In August 1971, Bruce and Elizabeth rented a two-roomed house in St Michel l’Observatoire. In the peace of a secluded village in Southern France they hoped to finally tame the stroppy manuscript.
Chatwin’s landlord in the hilly east of the Luberon was a migrating bird himself. Armed with microphones, Jean Claude Roché periodically left for journeys all across the globe to record the calls of birds in forests and along the shores. Under his own label L’oiseau musicien – “The musician bird” – the ornithologist published vinyls of bird songs. After his journeys, Roché returned to his residence in the south of France. The place was equipped a state-of-the-art audio studio. And when Chatwin arrived in 1971, he asked his British guest for a favour. That summer, Chatwin spoke 406 bird names that Roché intended to use for the multi-lingual introductions to his ‚bird concerts‘. What about the Arctic Tern, I started to wonder?
Fifteen minutes and Euros later, a record was on its way from Lyon to Oxford. In an online discography, I had discovered the polar bird listed on one of Roché’s recordings.
The vinyl was still on the way when I elaborated on the latest find on a Zoom-call with a colleague from the Bodleian Library.
“By the way – there is an ornithologist from Uppsala who regularly comes to the library,” Alex mentioned as I was already about to finish the call. I raised an eyebrow.
“I think he may even have worked on terns,” she added.
“He comes to Oxford to study birds,” I asked?
“No. Gothic novels.”
“Gothic novels?”
“Yes,” Alex confirmed. “A personal interest.”
A few days later, a man with a white head of hair appeared on my screen. A cheerful smile greeted me with in American accent. Behind, the wooden walls of a Swedish country house.
“So you’re into terns, Alex said,” David opened the conversation after a first hello?
He had studied biology decades ago, he later explained. These days, consulting jobs for a health company paid most of the bills. Yet the passion for birds has never left.
“I’m still out in the field a lot,” David continued. The summers he still returned to the States, to study birds on the Great Plains. Except this year.
“This was the first summer I couldn’t go,” David pointed out.
“My new passion have been Long-eared Owls,” he continued. “I’ve found about 20 nests around my house this spring – all due to an outbreak of voles around Uppsala.”
“Tiny rodents that live in the open fields,” he added to what must have been a look of ignorance.
“The preferred lunch of owls.”
Long eared owl. Photograph by David Wiggins.
“Normally these owls are very secretive and difficult to study,” David explained. “But this summer I’ve had lots of time to get to know them. The places where they prefer to hide, how they communicate.”
“Owls travel in huge swarms,” he explained. “Nobody can predict where they appear next. Unlike Arctic terns, they are quite erratic, you know.”
“So what’s your story with terns,“ I returned to the original reason of my call after a while? „Alex said you go back a long way.“
“Yes indeed,” David replied! “I had a professor in Toronto who did work on a colony on an island in Lake Eerie. Did my MA up there.”
“Any chance to spot Arctic terns near Uppsala,” I inquired?
“Oh they are all around the Baltic coast,“ David replied! „They rest on the skerries as they travel in spring and fall. There are some great bird watching spots on the coast, a one or two-hour drive away.“
The same day David sent an email following up on our video conversation. The attachment included a few images from recent owl watching trips.
Marvelling at David’s excellent photographs, the eerie sound from the nights came to my mind again. It felt a bit of a long shot – but perhaps he had an idea?
To my mail I attached the sound file I had recorded. An hour later, David’s response came in.
“I suspect those are the begging calls of fledglings Tawny Owls (Strix aluco),” he wrote.
“They can be quite insistent when hungry.”
the electric rhythms of the brain respond vibrantly to changes of surrounding, particularly when the subject is absorbed in the workings of natural phenomena. But the monotony of prolonged settlement weaves patterns in the brain that engender fatigue, boredom and a sense of impotent failure. In confinement we remain in a state of passive anxiety, afflicted by untimely charges of adrenalin, fighting off obesity by the will to eat less. But do we share with migrating animals an interior travel guide of instructions for the road?
Bruce Chatwin, The Nomadic Alternative (Ms.), p. 24.
Anmerkung:
Erstes Originalzitat Chatwin: Papier und Typewriter passt gut.
Ci-Chatwin Zitat: Schwarz/Weiß/Rot
Zitatgröße erhöhen
Designidee: Abgerissenes Papier als Zitat.
It must have been the weeks around midsummer when the nightly calls slowly disappeared. It was the same time that the visits of the muntjacs became more rare, and the badger was no longer sighted.
The sound of narrow boats chugging up the river became more frequent again. Across the Thames, the hum from the motorway picked up. At night, the door to the garden now stayed closed. In bed, the sense of restlessness was becoming palpable. Yet now, it had a vector.
Narrow boat on the Thames.
There is a period preceding migration in birds in which ornithologists observe a growing unsettledness – a time called Zugunruhe (‚migratory restlessness‘). During this time, the birds start to orient themselves towards the south for a longer and longer period each day. And they do so even when caged in a room without a view of the outside.
“Do ring me up the next time you’re in Sweden,” David had ended our video call. The conversation had rekindled a feeling that had faded out over the past months.
The vibrancy that chance encounters can strike. The vehemence with which unexpected leads can come beckoning. And the bliss that ensues when one answers their call.
warum roter BG?
Making a sandwich … veggie or chicken?
The ping of the incoming text message rang out as a clear note among the muffled noise that reached the apartment from the four-lane road below.
A few weeks after the video-call with David, I had returned to Sweden. In an Uppsala apartment, I was getting ready for David to pick me up.
Little later, the headlights of a Nissan Micra emerged from the morning fog. “Let’s hope it lifts once were up at Fågelsundet,” David said as I buckled up.
There were hardly any cars on the road leading up to the coast. Soon after the city limits, fields widened along the motorway. Four buzzards, perched on fence poles, held watch over the empty strip of concrete.
“So when does your story with birds begin?“ I asked David.
“Well, my older brother kept a pet owl“, he replied. “He had found it in the forest one day and nurtured it back to health. There was something eerie about it. I thought that was pretty cool.”
“Was that the same time you discovered your passion for Gothic novels?”
“Oh, that’s a later story,” David smiled. “That was during my studies. There was that bookshop close to university, you know. They had these piles of old books that I loved to browse. One day, I came across a copy of Carmilla.”
“Carmilla?”
“Yeah. A vampire-story from the pre-Draculan period. It was a book that took quite off in Victorian time, you know, woman biting woman and so on. It had some daring illustrations …”
“So Gothic novels are the reason why you return to the Bodleian?”
“Exactly. They have a superb collection.”
Illustration from Carmilla. From wikimedia.org.
After about an hour, we left the motorway behind, continuing towards the Baltic coast. The morning fog lifted as the sun of early August grew stronger.
Occasionally, the steeple of a Protestant church rose over the tree line, announcing the few villages left on the way. Most who live on the Hallnäs Peninsula take to solitude.
Wide stretches of uncultivated land sometimes opened between the forests and fields of ripe grain, a few dead trees sticking out. “Prime owl territory”, David commented as we rolled by one of the clear cut sites. “Perfect hunting ground.” “So for how long do owls stay in the same area,” I wanted to know? “We actually know pretty little about how they move,” David continued. “Actually wanted to do some more research on this.” “Arctic terns migrate – they go back and forth between extreme points close to the poles. But owls are nomadic – they wander.
They travel in huge swarms. And nobody can predict where they appear next.” “You know,” David added pointing back with his thumb, “there is a lot of debate with farmers if lands like this should be kept fallow.”
“Many owls are red-listed in Sweden. This place is full of voles. This is definetely where they would move.”
The sky above the trees opened up as we approached Fågelsundet, the ‘Sound of Birds’. Pennants in blue and yellow drooped from the flag poles in front of the summer houses that make the village.
Only a few cars still parked in the drive ways. For most of the Swedes, it was already off-season. Not far from the houses, ribs of granite reach towards the sea. Grabbing binoculars from the rear seat, we moved out.
On the horizon, the fog still resisted the August sun, a dark grey line interrupted by a few skerries. Standing on the smooth stone, David began sweeping the horizon, binoculars to his eyes. After a short while, his head moved slower. He had locked on to some black spots that skimmed the water in the distance.
“Three mergansers,” he said while I still adjusted my focus. An occasional breeze rustling the dry panicles of spires around us. Apart from the three water birds, there was hardly any movement on the water. “It is so calm, the birds are all out on the outer islands,” David explained. “They spent most of their time on the sea. They usually come in when the storms start.”
Holding watch at Fågelsundet.
Leaving our spot behind, we moved to a place some kilometers further east, closer to the outer islands. From the smooth granite cliffs with their rosy veins, a view widened over the Baltic Sea.
“Many of the birds migrate all night,” David explained as we held watch over a bird-less sky. “They come in from Finland in the early mornings and rest on the islands off the coast.”
Out on the sea, in the distance, a black-and-white beacon marked the utmost island in the archipelago.
“Must be spectacular when they arrive ut there in the morning,” he added. “We should go out there with kayaks once,” I suggested.
“Yeah. But I get pretty sea-sick, you know. Didn’t quite like the boat passages when we went on the tern colony in Lake Eerie …”
View from Rödhäll towards the Baltic Sea.
With no birds in sight, we sat down at a picnic table further up the cliffs. David reached over the sandwich he had prepared.
A few pine twigs growing from cracks wavered in the wind that brushed over the granite. Below, waves were gently washing over the smooth slabs.
It was already close to noon, and the late summer sun had heated up the exposed cliff. Prepared for a swim, I slid down and took a dive. A little later, David followed.
He had already towelled himself off again when I saw David moving quickly towards the picnic table. His eyes fixed on a point somewhere down the cliff, he reached for his camera.
Following his line of sight, I finally spotted the bird.
Unexpected visitor. Photograph by David Wiggins.
White wings with grey feathertips. A white forehead with a black cap topping the back of the head.
Slowly, David on land and I in the water approached the bird. Its head followed our calm movements, uttering an occasional call.
“It’s a tern,” David said as we were in talking distance. Though whispering, I could sense the excitement in his voice.
The bird didn’t show any signs of being scared. At least, it didn’t move away as we drew closer.
“He must have come in after a full night of flying,” David went on.
“Sometimes these birds are so tired that they literally drop out of the sky.”
In slow motion, I moved out of the water, crouching over the smooth slabs. For a while, the tern still monitored its surroundings, moving its black-and-white head in stroboscopic movements.
Then, when there were only a few meters left between us, it tucked its beak under a wing out of a sudden.
The tern was shutting down for a power nap.
Tern taking a nap. Photograph by David Wiggins.
I looked in David’s direction, perplexed.
“They sometimes do that”, he smiled. “He’s completely worn out. He’s resting now.”
Examining the resting bird, I recalled the photographs that I had seen of Artic terns, with their signature black cap and red beak.
This one seemed different though. An orange beak, a white forehead.
“It’s definitely a juvenile,” David pointed out. “Could be a Common tern, too. Pretty hard to distinguish at that early stage, even for an expert.”
“He’ll fly out again soon to fish,” he added. “Then he’ll continue his journey.”
As I watched the resting bird, I thought of Chatwin’s lines, of the way he looked up to migrating animals that “orient themselves and move of their own volition to predetermined appointments with life or death“.
Do we share with them an interior travel guide of instructions for the road, Chatwin had asked?
As I still pondered on the thought, the bird already pulled his beak from the feather blanket. A wing stretch followed, always on the same spot. The bird still was not impressed by our presence.
Remaining behind, we watched the tern take leave, out towards the sea, homing in on its parabola from pole to pole. There lay an unquestioned sense of direction, and with it a certainty of purpose in its departure, something that did not fail to leave us in awe, earthbound.
Nothing else has always been our innate state of being, Chatwin had advocated, at a time before we began suppressing the drive to wander and passed on dead stories.
It was a state to which humankind had to find a way back, he argued.
We have to do it for our own sake and survival.
Ingrained in the human consciousness is the association of the free flight of birds with the innocence and personal freedom of the first state. In our dreams we are airborne.
Bruce Chatwin, The Nomadic Alternative (Ms.), p. 23.
Tern preparing for departure. Photograph by David Wiggins.
Anmerkung:
“ = Control + Option
” = Shift + Option
Image of Cover
My copy of Oiseaux Scandinaves et Lapons – “Birds from Scandinavia and Lapland” – arrived a week after the first video-call with David. In the upper-right corner there was a bird tweeting into a gramophone horn – the logo of Jean Claude Rochés’ label ‘The musician bird’. “Side 1 presents three different concerts,” the back of the album announced. “In the first, recorded in May, we are travelling in a boat among the innumerable islands near the Baltic coast: there are huge gatherings of Long-tailed Ducks ready to fly north, and their cries mingle with those of Skuas, Terns and Gulls.” Some weeks later, a colleague at Oxford left her record player at my disposal. With a sense of excitement, I lowered the needle. Chatwin had not spoken any introductory parts on this specific record. And without a sense of disappointment, I soon found myself in a living room filled with the calls of long-tailed ducks, their cries mingling with all the other birds that had gathered in the archipelago.
Arctic Tern on Iceland (2022). Photograph by David Wiggins.
When David and I met in Uppsala a few weeks later, I played him a recording of their concert that I had made day on my cell-phone back in Oxford. The track had almost reached its end when his eyes lighted up.
“There it is”, he said. “The typical chatter of terns.”
“That’s them,” he asserted with a gentle smile, tipping his finger on the table.
“That’s them,” he repeated one more time, calmer, as if recalling memories of a dear old friend.
Object history
an interpretation of the piece that can be considered one of the earliest work of Egyptology.
Pignoria resisted speculating on the hieroglyphic symbols on the tablet. His focus lay on its figures instead.
Pignoria was one of the earliest in a long row of antiquarians enchanted by the mysterious aura.
piece that can be considered one of the earliest work of Egyptology.
Long before the Rosetta Stone and Champollion’s deciphering of the hieroglyphs, nobody knew.
‚Bembine Table‘ or ‚Table of Isis‘ (Mensa Isiaca) has inspired the minds of foremost humanists to soaring flights.
It appeared together with hundreds of other illustrations, also including runic staffs or the carvings on Sámi drums.
and picked up (and quickly dropped) studies of archaeology at Edinburgh.
In 197#, Chatwin sent the 200 pages to the publisher’s house of Jonathan Cape. They were the result of a process he had started a decade earlier.
which Chatwin and his wife Elizabeth would tame to manuscript length in the coming years.
Pignoria resisted speculating on the hieroglyphic symbols on the tablet.
an interpretation of the piece that can be considered one of the earliest work of Egyptology.
In the second half of Some of them were symbolical, such as the legendary Phoenix he saw held by Osiris (D) and elsewhere on the tablet; a myth of a bird going up in flames and being born again that Rudbeck traced back to the sun disappearing under the horizon in Arctic winter.
Bronze tablet of the so-called Mensa Isiaca (75,5 x 125,5 x 5,5 cm). Courtesy of the Museo Egiziano di Torino (CC BY 2.0 IT).
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@KAjA/LUTZ: IN ELEKTRISCHER SCHREIBMASCHINEN SCHRIFT
Ingrained in the human consciousness is the association of the free flight of birds with the innocence and personal freedom of the first state. In our dreams we are airborne.
Footnotes:
To the upper left a porcelain figurine of a wanderer that also featured in Werner Herzog’s recent movie on his friend Chatwin.
part of the papers that Elizabeth Chatwin bequeathed to the Bodleian Libraries. In 1989, her husband had died of AIDS.
Chatwin had entered the trade without a formal academic education. Only his mid-twenties, he picked up studies of archaeology in 1966. The student entered the lecture halls at Edinburgh as a man who had travelled Afghanistan and the Sahara desert.
Much of academia proved a lifeless bore for Chatwin, dominated by the cerebral type of men that lacked earthiness so as he lacked <em>sitzfleisch</em>. After a few semesters, he quit.
The grey paperboard box at Oxford brought together what Chatwin called „cavalier raids on specialised disciplines I have not even begun to master“. In the years to come, he worked his piece for the catalogue to a book draft.
<h2>Materialhalde NOMADIC ALTERNATIVE</h2>
p: 23 „Ingrained in the human consciousness is the association of the free flight of birds with the innocence and personal freedom of the first state. In our dreams we are airborne.“ … The Voguls of Northern Siberia called the Milky Way the Tunk Pox (underlined) or „Path of the Ducks to the South“.“
p. 24 Q: organic basis of mobility?
„Furthermore the electric rhythms of the brain respond vibrantly to changes of surrounding, particularly when the subject is absorbed in the workings of natural phenomena. But the monotony of prolonged settlement weaves patterns in the brain that engender fatigue, boredom and a sense of impotent failure. In confinement we remain in a state of passive anxiety, afflicted by untimely charges of adrenalin, fighting off obesity by the will to eat less. But do we share with migrating animals an interior travel guide of instructions for the road?“
Beispiele dass fast alle Tiere „orient themselves and move of their own volition to predetermined appointments with life of death. Plants slumber in supine drowsiness.“
Beispiele aus dem Tierrreich [Wale, Lachse etc; Sprache: enorm plastisch]
manche Tiewre tun dies automatisch, andere nach Instruktion durch Eltern
25f „Visual memory enables migrant animals to read a landscape – its shape, texture and plant cover.“
+ internal chronometer
+ internal instruments for navigation
und Tiere müssen / wollen das alles nützen, sonst werden sie wahnsinnig; need to perform biological function => so question: „What effect does settlement have on us?“
was haben wir? Chronometer; biologische Uhr, orientiert sich am Himmel
And yet on reflection we discover in man a unique faculty of finding his place in the world – his language.“
Sprache: einzigartig
„No other animal can cross-reference the lessons of the past with the conditions of the present and the hopes of the future.“
29 The gift of tongues rests on a young exploring child. It demands to know the name of its discoveries and the reason for their existence. („What is it called? Why? Why? Why?“) The child devours information, but the brain patterns this information into an ordered logical sequence of associations.“ … grammar, Chomsky …“We merely clothe this inherited structure with the raw material of our experience. By naming all the objects we encounter, we take our bearings on the world and in doing so, solve the problem of our identiy – all at a very early age.“
vgl human mind with art of navigation at sea
Leuchtturm; Navigator kann auf Karte (Arbeit der anderen zurückgreifen)
lange Metapher zu MEssungen, Sterne, Karten, mit dem Punkt:
once he knows this fixed point, he can anticapte the future by referring to the past
„And whatsoever thing Adam named, that was the name thereof …“
Man as born classifier and lexicographer
frightening place because it is unknown
brain siphons off all it cannot assimilate and classify into ordered categories
„The human mind is a metaphor maker.“
nature as encyclopaedia to build up a wealth of associations; using the concrete example as a vehicle to express an abstract idea
objects of experience: nach binären Begriffen; Nahrung / Gift etc
dort wo sameness in disparate things liegt, we feel a momentary shock of recognition that may delight or appal, but cannot leave us unmoved [das kommt zu MANIFESTO: ART OF NOTICING]
32 Leonardo: verschwommene Formen für Metaphernschatz
„Man invents the Universe in his mind and then joyfully recognizes his own creation as a place for him to live. Such is the primal act of human creativity.“
wo Ordnung da ist, dort fühlt er Ruhe; contentment; „if the universe does not change, he does not have to change with it“
„But if he suffers derangement or exp[ul]sion, if the ‚ideal‘ universe in the mind is marred, he is forced to extend his spectrum of knowledge in ever-widening circles, recreating his shattered world to avert mental disintigration. Each of his creations, inventions or advances in knowledge is an anchor dropped in a wild sea to prevent a further dirft onto the rocks of insanity.“
metaphor-making-mechanism
32 primitiveness mistaken as lack of abstract terms to express ideas
33 vitalisierende Kraft des Bildens von „unstereotyped metaphor“; alles andere stirbt ab
coherent sequential messages which surface in the human consciousness as myths. „Myths are human instincts verbalized“
answers to child’s question: where am I; daher creation myths
35 Creation and allied myths relieved men of their obvious anxieties of orientation
For the avid traveller that the author was, <fn label=“the draft was a vessel receiving fragments and observations“>It was in his <em>Songlines</em> that Chatwin much later found a form to use the material he had collected decades earlier in his unpublished <em>The Nomadic Alternative</em>.</fn> for his theory of everything. Much of it were the ravings and idealisations of a young writer unspoilt by arid learning.
For reading, feedback, support, and being a part of this story I have to thank Alex Franklin, David Wiggins, Carolina Reis, Kristine Homoki.
All translations and photographs are my own unless noticed otherwise.
You can find identification aids, audio tracks, and further information on the Arctic and the Common Tern on the homepage of the <a href=“https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/arctic-tern/“>Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)</a>.
On the sound library of <a href=“https://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Sterna-paradisaea“>Xeno-Canto</a>, bird watchers from all across the globe upload their recordings of bird calls. HOCHHOLEN
Fussnote 1
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HALDE
ATL 2 dedicated the final chapter to the mysterious artefact.
Mensa Isiaca:
https://collezioni.museoegizio.it/it-IT/material/Cat_7155
Übersicht: https://www.prphbooks.com/blog/pignoria
(note that Rudbeck here uses stilus vetus, the old style of the calendar)
Fussnote 17
A sound unheard-of lured Olof Rudbeck to the window that morning. in April.
Eyebrows raised with curiosity, Rudbeck followed the nervous cheep-cheep to the window. And there they were. In zig-zag flights, swallows were diving below the roofs of Uppsala, scouting the city’s garbles for this year’s nests.
In 1527, the city was sacked. Legend has it that around that time, the mysterious object ended up in the hands of a blacksmith. The craftsman eventually sold the artifact, worked with complex inlays in silver and enamel, to a humanist cardinal enamoured with all things antique.
Passing through the hands of collectors and potentates across Europe and centuries, the so-called Mensa Isiaca ended up in Turin.
There, at the Egyptian Museum, it is still preserved today,
Dr. Bernhard Schirg
Photo by: Bernhard Schirg
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Under the title „The Nomadic Alternative“, Chatwin passionately argued that humankind had gone astray the moment we settled down.
Our true destiny, he argued, is not too different from that of the migratory animals. Wistfully, we follow their flights in the sky and witness their journeys in the sea with awe. For we too, he claimed, are supposed to wander the face of the earth.
Humans are the one animal that tells story. It was like a biological capacity ingrained in our brains, essential to our survival from early on and launching us on a life-long quest to make meaning out of the changing surroundings we wander. And from the moment stopped using it, things went downhill.
Bild ist natürlich ur ein Beispiel. Wir können in diesen Containern alle Medien einfügen.
The inception of the manuscript dates back to late 1967. At that time, the organisers of an exhibition on the Animal Art asked Chatwin for a contribution for the catalogue.
At that time, the young man in his early twenties already looked back at a stellar career at Sotheby’s. Referred to as the Golden Boy, he had proven a magic hand at creating irresistible auras around artifacts, wrapping objects for sale in stories and myths.
The contribution Chatwin delivered was an attempt at a cultural history on nomadism, an essay rambling between the zoomorphic ornaments on the weapons, belt buckets, or jewellery of the warrior-herdsmen roaming the Asian steppes, making them speak of a life that was more true to human nature. For Chatwin, all this still spoke of a culture to which urban art and civilisation had meant a deterioration.
Ever since the 1968 contribution, Chatwin continued to work these key thoughts into book-length. The full draft of The Nomadic Alternative harbours many of the idealising views Chatwin nurtured ever since early journeys to the deserts of North Africa or pre-war Afghanistan. For him, the cause behind all of our modern malaises were clear.
We were meant to settle down.
Anmerkung:
Background Info zum Tern.
Nicht-linear einbauen?!
Across a lifetime of twenty years, ornithologists have reckoned, the Arctic Tern journeys 1.5 million miles. Going back and forth between the polar north and south year after year, it ranks as the bird with the longest migration route in the animal kingdom.
Anmerkung:
Story continues…
There was something about the king of migratory birds that immediately resonated with Chatwin.
The same year he handed in the essay for the art catalogue, a painting from an Indian manuscript page came up for sale at Sotheby’s. Chatwin acquired the 7cm by 16cm miniature that showed the bird with its signature black head and red bill.
Ever since, the painting held a special place at the farm house he and his wife Elizabeth owned in Gloucestershire. Despite the self-fashioning that Bruce undertook in his writings and social life, there were in fact constant points in his life as modern nomad.
Caged in a frame on the walls of the shared home(s), the bird would accompany Chatwin throughout his life, an emblem for that one quest lending meaning to our human existence – wandering and finding the stories that still lie out there.
