Chapter 18 eternal life

Solomon said: There is nothing new in the whole world.Just as Plato stated that all knowledge is memory; Solomon also has a famous saying: all novelty is but oblivion. Francis Bacon: The Essays, 58 In early June 1929, Joseph Kataphiles, an antique dealer in the port of Izmir, Turkey, showed Princess Lucinge the six-volume quarto (1715-1720) translated by Pope in London.The princess bought it; when she received the book, she had a few words with him.He was said to be a gaunt man, with a gray beard, gray eyes, and a peculiarly indistinct facial features.He spoke several languages ​​fluently; French would quickly switch to English, then to the elusive Thessaloniki Spanish and Macau Portuguese. In October, the princess heard from a passenger of the steamer Zeus that Kataphilus died on the way back to Izmir and was buried on the island of Ios.The manuscript was found in the last volume.

The original manuscript was written in English, with many Latin words in it.It is reproduced as follows without any changes in the text. one As far as I can remember, my troubles began in Thebes, the city of a hundred gates, under Dioclesiano, the emperor.I have fought in the recent Egyptian wars, without merit, and I was consul of a legion stationed in Berenice by the Red Sea: fever and witchcraft have laid down many a man who would go to war.The Mauritanians were defeated; the rebellious cities were razed and laid forever in ruins; Alexandria, conquered, begged Caesar for mercy, but in vain; The face of God of War has never been seen.This lack grieves me, and perhaps is what drives me to plunge into the dreadful vastness of the desert in search of the secret city of the Immortals.

As I have just said, my troubles began in a garden in Thebes.I struggled so much that night that I didn't sleep all night.I got up before dawn, my slaves were still awake, the moon was as yellow as the endless desert.A weary and bloodied rider approached from the east.When he was a few steps away from me, he got off his horse.His voice was weak and thirsty, and he asked me in Latin what the name of the river in front of the city wall was.I replied that it was the Egyptian river formed by the rainwater.He said sadly, I am looking for another river, the river that lifts people from the secret of death.Dark red blood dripped from his chest.He told me that his hometown is on a mountain on the other side of the Ganges. People in the mountains say that as long as you go west to the end of the world, you can find the river whose water can make people live forever.He also said that on the shore was the city of the Immortals, with bastions, amphitheatres, and temples.He died before dawn, but I made up my mind immediately to find the city and the river.Certain Mauritanian captives, when interrogated by the executioner, confirmed the rider's account; some recalled the land of bliss at the end of the world, where people lived forever;When I was in Rome, I discussed with philosophers that prolonging people's lives only prolongs their suffering and increases the number of their deaths.I don't remember whether I believed the legend of the City of the Immortals at the time: all I wanted was to find it.Flavio, the governor of Gedulia, sent two hundred soldiers with me to search, and I recruited some mercenaries. They said they were the way to get to know each other, but they were the first to desert and escape.

What happened next distorts memory, and our first few days of travel look back like an incoherent mess.We set off from the city of Arsinoe into the scorching desert.We passed through the lands of snake-eating, languageless troglodytes, of group marriages, of lion-hunting Garamantas, and of Oqiras, who worshiped nothing but hell.We trekked across the black sand desert, where daytime temperatures were unbearably high and we could only walk at night when it was slightly cooler.From afar, I saw the Atlas Mountains; on the slopes flourished the euphorbia plant that clears away heat and poison, and on the top of the mountain lived the fierce, wild and lustful satyrs.We all thought it impossible to have a famous city in those monster-infested wild places.We keep going because it would be a great shame to back off.Some bold men slept by moonlight, and fell ill with fever;Soldiers began to flee; soon there were mutinies.I have no hesitation in taking harsh measures to suppress it.I acted impartially, but a white captain warned me that mutinous soldiers were plotting to kill me in order to avenge a crucified comrade.I escaped from the camp with a few trusted soldiers.In the dark night in the desert with undulating dunes, we got separated.A back arrow wounded me.I went without water for several days, and the hot sun, thirst, and the fear of thirst made the days unbearable.Drowsy, I let go of the rein and let my horse choose its own course.At dawn, a mirage appeared in the distance, a patch of pyramids and towers.I saw with unbearable clarity a small labyrinth: in the center was a jug of clear water; my eyes saw so well that my hand almost touched it, but the paths were so intricate that I knew I was dead before I got there.

two When I finally broke free from that nightmare, I found myself bound and lying in an oval stone grave, not much larger than an ordinary grave, dug out shallowly on the rugged hillside.The walls of the tomb are moist and smooth, not like man-made axes, but polished by time.I felt my chest throbbing painfully, my mouth parched and tongue burning.I raised my head and called out weakly.At the foot of the mountain there is a brook with turbid water, the flowing water is blocked by rocks and gravel, and it is slow and silent. On the other side of the bank (under the reflection of the setting sun or the rising sun), the city of the immortal can be seen impressively.I saw ramparts, arches, gables, and squares: the foundations of the city were a mesa of rock.There are a hundred tombs of different shapes on the hillsides and valleys, similar to the place where I lie.There were shallow pits in the sand; from these shallow pits and graves emerged naked, gray-skinned, unkempt men.It looked familiar to me: they belonged to the savage race of cavemen that abounded along the coast of the Arabian Gulf and in the caves of Ethiopia; I knew they could not speak and ate snakes for a living.

I was so thirsty that I couldn't care less.I figured I was about thirty feet from the sand; with my hands bound behind my back, I closed my eyes, arched, and rolled down the hill.I buried my bloodied face in the muddy water and drank like an animal.Before losing consciousness again, falling into nightmares and delirium, I uttered a word in Greek inexplicably: The rich Trojans of Seleia drank the black water of Essippo... I don't know how many days and nights have passed.I was so sore that I couldn't go back to the cave to hide, and I lay naked on the deserted sand, letting the moon and the sun play with my unfortunate fate.Those stupid and savage cavemen left me to fend for myself.I begged them to kill me, but they ignored it.One day, I broke the rope that bound my hands by rubbing against a sharp stone.Another day, I finally got up, and I, Marco Flaminio Ruffo, consul of one of the Roman legions, managed to beg or steal a portion of unpalatable snake meat.

I longed to see the immortal, to touch the otherworldly city, and to sleep almost all night.The cavemen seemed to read my mind and did not sleep: at first I thought they were watching me; then I found that they were infected by my restlessness, just as dogs infect each other.I chose to leave that savage village in the evening when there are the most people. At that time, almost all the people came out of the caves and pits, and turned a blind eye to the west.I prayed aloud, not to ask God to bless me, but to frighten that tribe with the spoken language.I waded across the creek choked by the sandbar and headed for the city.Two or three people followed me ignorantly.Like the rest of the race, they were small in stature; odious but not terrible.I rounded several uneven depressions that looked like quarries; the city dazzled me with its splendor, and I felt that it was not far away.At midnight, I stepped on the black shadow reflected on the yellow sand by the majestic city wall.A sense of divine awe stopped me in my tracks.Novelty and the desert are abhorrent to man, and I am relieved that a troglodyte has followed me all along.I close my eyes and wait for dawn.

It has been said before that the city is built on a rocky terrace.The mesa is like a cliff, as difficult to climb as the city wall.My efforts were in vain: the black foundations had no foothold, the unbroken walls found no door.The heat of the day obliged me to take refuge in a cave; at the bottom of which was a dry well with steps leading into unfathomable darkness.I descended the steps; through a series of dirty and unkempt lanes, I came to a large round room so dark that it was almost impossible to see.There are nine doors in this basement; eight lead into a deceiving labyrinth leading back to the original room; the ninth (via another labyrinth) leads to a second circular room, identical to the first.I don't know how many rooms there are in total; the more anxious I am, the more I can't find the right way, and there are more and more rooms.There was a hostile silence all around; in the deep labyrinths of stone there was only the sound of unknown subterranean winds;Gradually I got used to this creepy subterranean world; it seemed impossible to me that there could be anything but a circular basement with nine doors and a long basement branching off in two.I don't know how long I walked underground; only that I once confused the savage's village with my own in retrospect.

At the end of the alley, an unexpected wall blocked my way, and a distant light fell on my head.I raised my dizzy eyes and saw a circle of purple-blue sky at a very high place.There are metal rungs on the wall.In spite of my exhaustion I climbed it, stopping now and then to weep happily.I saw capitals and transepts, triangular gables and vaults, magnificent sculptures of granite and marble.Thus I ascended from the realms of the labyrinthine tangles and drowsiness to the radiant city of the Immortals. I came down from the ground to a place like a small square; more precisely, a courtyard.The courtyard is surrounded by continuous buildings, but the components of the buildings are of different shapes and heights, and there are various vaults and columns.What struck me most about this incredible building was its antiquity.I think it predates humans, predates the formation of the earth.This evidently ancient pattern (albeit a little horrible to look at) is, in my opinion, worthy of the workmanship of an immortal artisan.I groped my way through this tangled palace, at first cautiously, then indifferently, and finally to the utmost exasperation. (I found out afterwards that the length and height of the steps were variable, and I realized why it was so tiring to walk.) This palace was built by God, I thought so at first.I inspected the uninhabited places, and corrected myself: the god who built the palace was dead.I noticed the strangeness of the palace, and said: The god who built the palace must be a madman.I know very well that when I say this, I have an incomprehensible, almost guilt-ridden feeling of blame, more rational terror than emotional fear.In addition to being extremely archaic, it comes across as endless, intolerable, and complex to an absurd degree.I've been in the labyrinth, but this unmistakable city of the Immortals terrifies me, turns me off.The labyrinth is built to confuse people; its symmetrical architecture is subordinated to this purpose.The palace buildings that I have not yet inspected in full have no purpose.There are dead-end corridors, impossibly high windows, ornate portals leading to small cells or Kratie, incredible staircases with steps and handrails facing down and upside down.Other steps, mounted in the air on the imposing walls, broke off after two or three rounds at the misty summit of the vault, leading nowhere.I don't know if I'm exaggerating these examples; only that they've been a frequent occurrence in my nightmares over the years;This city is terrible, I thought, for its existence and preservation, despite its location in the secret desert, pollutes the past and the future, and in a sense endangers other planets.No one in the world will be brave and happy as long as it lasts for a day.I don't want to describe it; a jumble of words, a tiger's or a bull's body, teeth and organs and heads horribly gathered together, interrelated and mutually exclusive, may be a similar image of the city.

I can't remember how I went back, how I passed one gray, damp underground building after another.All I know is that I've been terrified, lest I walk out of the last maze and find myself surrounded by that loathsome city of the Eternals.I can't remember anything else.Perhaps this irretrievable forgetfulness was self-inflicted; perhaps the scene of my escape was so unpleasant that, if I happened to recall it some day, I would swear to forget it. THREE Attentive readers, after reading the story of my arduous journey, may remember the man who followed me like a dog to the troglodyte tribe in the shadow of the city wall.I found him at the mouth of the cave when I came out of the last cellar.He lay down on the sand, clumsily drew a line of symbols, and then erased them, as if the letters he had seen in a dream were mixed together when he was about to understand them.At first, I thought it was a savage writing; then I thought how could a person who couldn't even speak have writing.Besides, no two of the symbols are alike, which eliminates, or greatly reduces, the possibility of symbolism.The man drew, scrutinized, and revised.Then, as if tired of the game, he erased the symbols with his palm and forearm.He looked at me without showing that he knew me.But, to my great relief (or my loneliness was so great and terrible), I thought that the primitive troglodyte who was watching me from the floor at the mouth of the cave was waiting for me.The sun scorched the earth; the gravel under our feet was still hot as we waited for the stars to appear and set off on our way back to the village.The caveman walked ahead of me; I had an idea that night: teach him to recognize, or repeat a few words.I think that dogs and horses can recognize the sound of words, and the singing robins of the Twelve Emperors of Rome can learn the tongue repeatedly.No matter how low human understanding is, it can always surpass irrational animals.

The humble and pitiful appearance of the caveman reminded me of Argo, the old dog in the Odyssey, so I named him Argo and tried to teach him.I fail over and over again.Will, rigor, and stubbornness do not work.He didn't move, his eyes were dull, and he didn't seem to understand the voice I taught him repeatedly.He was only a few steps away from me, but it seemed like a long way away.He lay flat on the sand like a fallen sphinx statuette, allowing the sky to move above him from dawn to dusk.I judged that it was impossible for him not to understand my intention.Recalling the common belief among Ethiopians that monkeys deliberately remain silent in order not to be forced to work, they attribute Argo's silence to suspicion and fear.This thought gave rise to other, still more outlandish thoughts.I think that Argo and I live in a different universe; our concepts are the same, but Argo combines them in other ways to form other objects; There were only a series of fleeting impressions that dazzled him.I thought of a world without memory and without time; I considered the possibility of a language without nouns, a language with impersonal verbs and qualitative adjectives without inflection.Days and years passed thus, but something near happiness happened one morning.It's raining, slow and heavy rain. Nights in the desert can be cold sometimes, but that night was as hot as fire.I dreamed that a river in Thessaly (in whose waters I caught a goldfish) came to my rescue; I heard it torrent over the red sand and black stones; Awake.I went naked to meet the rain.The night was dying; beneath the yellow clouds, the troglodyte race was as happy as I was, ecstatically facing the downpour.They were like Goleben monks in a state of madness.Argo stared at the sky, and moaned; his face was splashed with water; I later learned that it was not only rain, but tears.Argo, I call him, Argo. At that time, he slowly revealed a surprised expression, as if he had found something lost and forgotten for a long time, and said vaguely: Argo, Ulysses' dog.Then, still without looking at me, he said: The dog thrown in the dung heap. We accept reality easily, perhaps because we intuitively feel that nothing is real.I asked him what else he knew about the Odyssey.Perhaps Greek was more difficult for him; I have to repeat the question. He said: Very little.Less than the worst traveling singer.Eleven hundred years have passed since I first wrote the Odyssey. Four That day, everything became clear.The caveman is the immortal; the sandy stream is the river the rider seeks.As for the city whose fame spread to the Ganges, the Immortals had destroyed it nine centuries ago.They used the broken bricks and tiles of the ruins to build the absurd city I inspected in the original place: like a parody or the opposite of the old city, and also a temple dedicated to those irrational gods who manipulate the world, about those We know nothing about God, except that they have nothing in common with humans.That building is the last symbol of the Eternal's condescension; it marks a stage in which the Eternal considers all efforts futile and decides to live in contemplation and pure research.They built the city, left it behind, and went to live in caves.They brood over it, and pay little attention to the existence of the material world. Like talking to a child, Homer narrated these things to me.He also told me of his last years and of his last voyage, which, like Ulysses's, was to find those who had never seen the sea, eaten meat seasoned with salt, and did not know oars what kind of person.For a century he lived in the City of the Immortals.After the city was destroyed, he suggested building another.We are not surprised by this; everyone knows that after he sang about the Trojan War, he sang about the Frog and Mice.He is like a god who first created the universe and then created chaos. Immortality is of little importance; all creatures except man can live forever, because they do not know what death is; the consciousness of immortality is divine, terrible, and unfathomable.I've noticed that despite all the religions, there are very few such beliefs.The ancient Israelites, Christians, and Muslims all believed in eternal life, but their reverence for the first century proves that they only believed in the first century, and spent all the rest of the endless years in praise and blame of the first century.I think the theory of reincarnation in some religions in Hindustan is more reasonable; the wheel has no beginning and no end, each life is the result of the previous life, and the cause of the next life cannot be determined. The republic of the immortals passes through Centuries of nurturing have produced perfect tolerance, even contempt.It knows that in an infinite period of time, all kinds of things will happen to all people.Because of past or future good deeds, all people will receive all due good rewards, and due to past or future bad deeds, all people will also receive all due evil rewards.Just like gambling, odd and even numbers tend to balance, and wisdom and foolishness, virtuousness and dishonesty also cancel each other out and correct each other. The simple song of the Cid may be an adjective in the idyll or a line of Heraclitus. offset.Ephemeral thoughts, inspired by an invisible picture, can inaugurate a hidden form or end in it.I know that there are people who do a great deal of evil for the benefit of the century to come, or have had the benefit of the century past. . . not important.There is no moral or spiritual value to speak of.Homer composed the Odyssey; with infinite periods, infinite circumstances and variations, it is impossible not to compose the Odyssey.No one can be anyone, but one immortal can be all.Like Cornario Agrippa, I am God, I am a hero, I am a philosopher, I am a devil, I am the world, or, to put it simply and plainly, I am nothing. The Immortals are generally influenced by a worldview in which karma is not at all fun.First, this worldview robs them of compassion.I mentioned the abandoned quarry on the other side of the creek; a man rolled from a height to the bottom with a parched mouth and tongue, unable to live or die; it took seventy years for them to drop a single rope.Nor do they care about their fate.To them, the body is like a tame domestic animal, and it is enough to reward it with a few hours of sleep, a little water, and a piece of meat every month.Of course, others do not want to reduce us to ascetics.There is no more complex enjoyment than thinking, and we enjoy it so much.Sometimes some exotic stimulus brings us back to the material world.For example, the old, basic joys that the rain evokes that morning.Those moments are rare; the Eternal can reach absolute peace; I don't remember ever seeing an Eternal standing; a bird nestled in his bosom. According to the theory that all things compensate each other, there is a corollary that is of little theoretical value, but which in the early or late 10th century drove us to spread all over the world.The inference is contained in the sentence: There is a river that gives people immortality; a certain region should have a river that removes it.The number of rivers is not infinite; the eternal traveler who travels the world will one day drink from all the rivers.We decided to find the river. Death (or its metaphors) makes people wise and sad.They are stunned by their dew-like state; every move they make may be their last; every face fades away like in a dream.Among ordinary people, everything has the meaning of irreparable, irreversible.Among the Immortals, on the contrary, every action (and every thought) is an echo of an action and thought which has already occurred in the remote past, or an exact premonition of an action and thought which will be repeated over and over again in the future. .After the reflection of countless mirrors, the reflection of things will not disappear.Nothing can happen just once, regrettably fleetingly.There is nothing elegiac and solemn about the immortal.Homer and I parted at the gates of Tangier; I don't think we said goodbye to each other. Fives I travel through new kingdoms and empires. I was at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in the autumn of 1066, I can't remember if I was with Harold or with that unfortunate Harald Hardrada, Harold died that year, huh Ladd occupies six feet or a little more of English land.In the 7th century of the Islamic calendar, I transcribed the seven voyages of the sailor Sinbad and the story of the Bronze City on the outskirts of Braque.In the courtyard of a prison in Samarkanda, I used to play chess for fun.In Bikaner and Bohemia I practiced astrology. In 1638 I went to Kolotswal and then to Leipzig. In Arbor in 1714 I ordered Pope's translation in six volumes, and couldn't put it down. In 1729 I was discussing the origin of that epic with a professor of rhetoric, probably named Giabattista; I found his arguments irrefutable. On October 4, 1921, the steamer Patna, bound for Bombay, on which I was traveling, anchored at a port on the Red Sea.I disembarked; and remembered my morning, ages ago, too, by the Red Sea; when I was consul in Rome, and fever, witchcraft, and idleness consumed the soldiers. I saw a clear river in the country; out of habit, I tasted the water.A thorny tree cut the back of my hand as I climbed the steep bank.The pain was unbelievable.I quietly watched a drop of blood slowly ooze from the wound, feeling unbelievably happy.I'm human again, I repeat, I'm like everyone else again.That night, I slept until dawn the next day. ... A year later, I re-examined the bottoms.I found the content to be true, but the first few chapters, and some passages in the other chapters, were a bit false.This may be due to the excessive use of detail, which I learned from poets, to color everything with false colors. Facts have many details, but memory does not have them. . . . I still think I've discovered a hidden reason.Even if people think it's hard to believe, I'll write it. The story I have told seems untrue because the story of two different people is mixed up in it.In the first chapter, the rider wants to know the name of the river outside the walls of Thebes; Flaminio Ruffo earlier added the adjective "hundred pillars" to that city, saying that the name of the river is Egypt; It doesn’t seem to come from Rufo, but it should come from the mouth of Homer. Homer clearly mentioned Thebes, the city of a hundred pillars, in the Odyssey. called the River of Egypt.In the second chapter, when the Romans drank from the river of eternal life, they said a sentence in Greek; this sentence is from Homer, and it is found at the end of the famous list of ships.Later, in that bewildering palace, Rufo speaks of "blame that borders on guilt"; these are also the words of Homer, who engineered that terrible scene.These anomalies unsettle me, others fall into the realm of aesthetics and make it possible for me to reveal the truth.The last chapter can be seen; it says I took part in the Battle of Stamford Bridge, I transcribed Sinbad the Sailor's Voyage at Braque, and I ordered Pope's English translation at Aberdeen.Also: "I practice astrology in Bikaner and Bohemia." These confessions are true; the important thing is to highlight them.The first sentence seems to be very suitable for a soldier's identity, but then it shows that the storyteller is not only concerned with fighting wars, but also with people's fate.What follows is even more peculiar.A hidden and fundamental reason compelled me to write it down; I did so because I knew it was poignant.It is not sad that it came from the Roman Flaminio Ruffo.From the mouth of Homer the situation is different; it is rare that Homer transcribes the adventures of another Ulysses, Sinbad, in the thirteenth century, and sees, after many centuries, in a northern kingdom in a different form Wrote him in enlightened script.As for the passage in Bikanir's name, it was evidently invented by a man of letters (like the author of the ship's list) eager for rhetoric. Towards the end, the image in memory has disappeared; only the words remain.Not surprisingly, the long hours confuse the words I once heard with those that symbolize the fate of the man who has been with me for so many centuries.I was Homer; before long I'll be like Ulysses, nobody; soon I'll be all: for I shall die. 1950 Postscript: Among the comments that arose after the previous article was published, the strangest, but not the most modest, was an article titled "Baise Clothes" (Manchester, 1948) with a biblical allusion, by Nahum Cordo Dr. Wellow's tenacious pen.The article has more than a hundred pages.References to excerpts from poetry in Greece and Lower Latin countries, to Ben Jonson who borrowed fragments from Seneca to evaluate contemporary writers, to Alexander Rose's "Gospel of Virgil", George More and Eliot It is particularly false, and finally mentions the "story narrated by the antique dealer Joseph Cartaphilus".He points out that the first chapter contains the words of Pliny (Natural History, Chapter V, Section VIII); ); the third chapter contains words from Descartes’ letter to Ambassador Pierre Chanou; the fourth chapter contains Bernard Shaw (the fifth act of "Return to Medusella").From these insertions, or plagiarisms, he deduces that the entire article is forged. In my opinion, the conclusion is unacceptable.Cataphilus writes: Towards the end, the image in memory has disappeared; only the words remain.Sentences, superseded and fragmented sentences, other people's sentences, are the poor handouts of time and centuries. To Cecilia Ingeneros