The New Moon, page 28
I had almost finished the ornaments on the pedestal of the column.
After a month, the fountains, baths and wash-houses were terminated, as well as the windmills, the reservoirs and the canal. I went to inform the King, and told him that the waters would arrive in Mirabilis the following day.
The King experienced such emotion that he could not articulate any words to express his satisfaction. He hugged me in his arms and invited me to come to the morning meal the next day, so that we could go together afterwards to admire my new marvels. Those were his words.
Early the next day, all the inhabitants of Mirabilis were up and about; they know that the water was due to arrive in the city that day; they joy was inexpressible.
I went to the morning meal with the King and afterwards, I climbed into his great litter, where he made me sit next to him. The Queen followed in another litter accompanied by her first maid of honor. The entire Royal Guard and all the dignitaries of the kingdom were on horseback, escorting the two royal litters. The cortege was brilliant. Joy appeared to be animating all the faces. The people were enthused. Cries of “Long live the King!” “Long live the Queen!” and “Long live the Director General!” burst forth from all directions.
All the fountains that I had had constructed functioned very well; the baths and the public wash-houses were filled with water. In sum, everything succeeded in accordance with my desire.
When we returned to the palace the King stopped the litter in front of the column, which was now clear of all the mobile scaffolding and cloth that had masked the ornaments. He admired them, and shook my hand as a sign of satisfaction. Then he told me that, in order to conclude such a fine day, he was giving a feast for the important people of his Court, and he invited me to take part in it.
I thanked him for the signal honor that he had deigned to give me, and went to the royal feast. I was welcomed there with distinction. All my works were concluded. I had abandoned, for the moment, the project of going to visit the three isles of the Delta; I would do that later.
Deciding to return to my family, I took my leave of the King, who dissolved in tears in bidding me farewell.
Notes
1 Included in Amilec, Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-033-3.
2 Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-367-9.
3 Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-444-7.
4 Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-370-9.
5 In 1720 the privateer George Shelvocke set a new record in reaching a south latitude slightly in excess of sixty degrees, but that information was not publicized in Europe until two years later, so it would not have been known to the author of the present story; it was not until 1774 that James Cook first reached seventy degrees, so the imaginary territories features in the story are located in a region that was entirely unknown at the time, and remained so for more than half a century..
6 In 1721 the term “méteor” [meteor] signified a bright atmospheric phenomenon, not a spacefaring lump of rock.
7 In literal terms, a marotte is a kind of bauble carried by a jester, and a toque is a little hat, but both terms are used metaphorically, the first to mean a whim or a mania, and the second to refer to madness, especially crazy infatuation. The second term is subsequently used as a root for one of the text’s key neologisms—perhaps the finest of them.
8 “Whatever the jaundiced look at becomes yellow.”
9 Like most of the improvised names in the story, this one comes from the Greek, and might by translated as “Changing” or perhaps “Fickle.”
10 Author’s note: “The humans of the Moon are so feebly provided in the matter of the soul that it seems that Poequilon, by such a wish, might have tempted the power of the Genius, or demanded the property of another, which would not have been in accord with the conditions prescribed by Selenos.”
11 Author’s note: “Pignora certa petis, do Pignora certa timendo. Ovid.” [You seek certain proof; I’m giving you certain proof in fear.]
12 Author’s note: “A vengeance of that nature is not commonplace in Verticephalia, especially in this sort of case, but Poequilon was then affected by the vapors of the austral lands, for it is as well to observe that the Earth influences the Moon, by vertical or oblique ascension, as the Moon does the Earth by gravitation; there are many people who do not want to believe that, but I give fair warning that I do not stand for any argument.”
13 I have translated argent faux literally, as “false silver,” rather than the more usual “false coin” (argent also meaning “money” in French) in order to retain a link with quicksilver, mercury poisoning being the standard treatment for syphilis at the time, under the inspiration of Paracelsus.
14 Author’s note: “Natibus raphano oppletis.” The quotation is from Lucian; the middle term refers to the root vegetable, the first to the buttocks and the third to ordure.
15 Author’s note: “This expression is a Terranism.”
16 Author’s note: “An imprecation in the Braocan dialect.” It is an adaptation of the French expletive Cadedieu.
17 The French adjective from which this improvised noun is derived has the expectable literal meaning of “edifying” but is almost invariably used ironically, as it is here.
18 Author’s note: “Anagnoste: the person who does the reading.” The term derives from the Latin, where it refers specifically to a Roman slave whose job it was to read to his master.
19 The translation cannot reproduce the wordplay connecting songe [dream] with mensonge [lie]
20 Author’s note: “O quantum est in rebus inane!” The quote is from one of the satires of Persius; it translates roughly as “How much there is that is trivial!”
21 Author’s note: “Which is to say, the City of Horn.”
22 Danaë, the mother of the hero Perseus, impregnated by Zeus/Jupiter in the form of a shower of gold.
23 A Spanish proverb usually rendered a buen entededor pocas palabras: “a good listener [requires] few words,” or, more figuratively, “a good listener picks up implications.”
24 Author’s note: “Soldiers.”
25 “He is the father whom marriage indicates to be so”: a principle of Roman law enshrined in many legal codes, including the French one.
26 Author’s note: “Dare pondus idonea fumo.” Another quotation from Persius; literally “to give weight to smoke,” metaphorically to give too much importance to trifles.
27 Author’s note: “We are very glad on the Earth’s behalf that not all of our actresses are of that stripe.
To you whose most beautiful work is love,
Beautiful P***, I pay tribute here,
To your virtue even more than your talent.
If you have been able to capture public support.
Charm hearts, and ravish the senses.
You also know the secret of being good.”
28 i.e. “Jovian Bull”—the guise in which Jupiter ravished Europa
29 The quotation is from Voltaire’s Candide, where it is similarly given in Italian, supposedly for decency’s sake: “Oh, the tragedy of having no balls!”
30 Approximately “where Troy had once stood,” vaguely echoing Virgil’s Aeneid.
31 “Every country has its own customs.”
32 Author’s note: “Ogni medaglia, ha il suo Riverso.” Every medallion has its reverse side; the Italian proverb in question, usually used in a similar fashion to the English “there are two sides to every question,” was famously quoted by Montaigne with reference to questions of sexual hierarchy, although he was referring to the supposed practices of Amazons. In the same analogical fashion that Stivalo is Rome, Antopholia is the city of Florence; homosexuality was widely thought to be rife there during the Renaissance.
33 Author’s note: “They are also hampered by a kind of shackle known as the equestrian zone.”
34 Approximately “High-browed Dim-witted Killer, of the Killers.”
35 I have translated “homme de cheval” brutally, as intended; if the author had wanted to say cavalier (or caballero) he would have done so.
36 Author’s note: “Horseman.”
37 Although Fecracy is derived straightforwardly from Fe-cracy—i.e. the rule of the faith, all the more appropriate given the importance in both Spain (Periphania) and Pitho (Portugal) of the Auto-da-Fé—Le Bret would also have been conscious of the echo that the name contains of the root Fec (as in Feces).
38 The French terre, for which Le Bret naturally substitutes lune [moon] can mean “ground” and (as in the next chapter) “land,” as well as “earth.”
39 This incident, reminiscent of a much more elaborate one in Simon de Tyssot’s account of Voyages et aventures de Jaques Massé (c1715; tr. in The Strange Voyages of Jacques Massé and Pierre Mésange, q.v.) is presumably inspired by the same source, an account given by Gabriel Dellon’s Histoire de l’Inquisition de Goa (1649; tr. as An Account of the Inquisition of Goa), which was cited in numerous later texts. Zinzibri is, therefore, the Portuguese colony of Goa.
40 i.e., the analogue of Holland.
41 The analogue of Switzerland.
42 Georges May identifies Syndiokratia with Greece, but that seems unlikely as it was still under Ottoman rule when La Nouvelle lune was written. It is conceivable that it refers to the Republic of Corsica established by Pasquale Paoli, which was toppled by the French conquest if the island in 1768, forcing Pasquale into exile.
43 The quotation is from the last line of one of Aesop’s fables, known in English as “The Old Lion”; it translates roughly as “give death a double sting.”
44 Frederick II, also known as Frederick the Great, king of Prussia,
45 The King of Poland was also the Grand Duke of Lithuania by virtue of the Confederation of the two nations (one Catholic and the other Orthodox). Le Bret could not know that the commonwealth was to break up in 1772.
46 The Russians
47 If the “Caesarist Empire” is an analogue of Sweden (as Georges May asserts), the much regretted Caesar would Gustavus Adolphus, but the earlier reference in this chapter was to the “Caesarist Isles,” and it was separated by a semi-colon from the realm of Queen Herogyne, undoubtedly Christina of Sweden, whose official title throughout her reign was “king.” If the Caesarist isles are, in fact, an analogue Denmark, then the regretted Caesar must be Christian IV
48 Presumably Isaac Newton.
49 The author uses the term Cible here, but French also has another word for sieve, tamis, whereas their term for the River Thames is Tamise.
50 Le Bret is presumably bearing in mind, ironically, the fact that the Molière’s real name was Poquelin.
51 i.e., the time of Jeanne d’Arc—the early 15th century—as implied by the earlier remark that more than three hundred years have elapsed since Poequilon left his homeland.
52 Author’s note: “Te tenet, absentes alios suspirat amores. Tibul. I” The quotation is from one of the elegies of Tibullus. In the context of the original, it translates roughly as “Holding you in her arms, she sighs after other absent loves.”
53 “Money smells good no matter what its odor.” The quote is attributed to the Roman Emperor Vespasian, after his son criticized the tax he had placed of public latrines; it is often paraphrased in the dictum “money has no odor.”
54 Calembredaine means “nonsense,” usually applied in the context of talking; the word is etymologically related to calembour [pun], with which the text is so richly larded that there is only space to footnote a few of those that do not translate.
55 Author’s note: “Whence it comes about, by onomatopoeia, that a wine jug is known as a carafon, or car il a fond. The il was subsequently omitted by lexicographers, and people said, by corrupting the primitive and primordial root, carafon; it is a trope by which a word is minimized—cf Demessis, Traité des tropes plus ou moins usité dans la langue française, p. 143.”
56 This sentence is a series of puns on the word grain, which can mean “bead” as well as “storm,” and, of course “grain.”
57 Louis-Bertrand Guyton de Morveau (1737-1816) was a notable French chemist who played a significant role in the 1789 Revolution.
58 The reference is to the British industrialist William Cockerill (1759-1832), who emigrated to France and built textile mills in Verviers and Liège.
59 Author’s note: “Iconoclastic observations on the various methods employed in the manufacture of pebble-oil and the manner of making use of that metallurgical substance in the cure if cutaneous infections of the pibus, Brussels 1832, octavo.”
60 Author’s note: “Paludanus—‘of the marsh,’ or ‘of the fish-pond,’ in English—an Epiote by birth, was the chief of the Numidian tribes that irrupted into the Marais-Pontins to found Marseille. When the excavations were carried out of the places where the foundations of the city to be were laid down, he cried, in order to encourage his workers: “Quel fosse, ein!” [What a ditch, eh!] In commemoration of that remark, his tribe took the name of Phoceans, by which it is still known today.”
61 According to François-Xavier Feller’s Dictionnaire historique (1818), Jacques Gronovins (1645-1716) published a dissertation in 1684 proving that the story of Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, was completely fictitious.
62 The Benedictine monk Bernard de Montfaucon (1655-1741) was one of the founders of modern archaeology and the great pioneer of paleography, the study of ancient handwriting.
63 Author’s note: “‘It is doubtless to the continuous motion of the waves that the disappearance of the line, along its entire length, must be attributed.’ On the Influence of Tides on Sea Level by Charles, Prince de Ligne, Duc de Lorraine et de Bar. Nivelles: Chez Letrait, 1816.)
64 Constantine Palaeologos was the last Byzantine Emperor. Porphyrogennetos was an honorific title given to a son born after his father had become emperor.
65 The African explorer François Levaillant (1753-1824)
66 John Herschel (1792-1871) arrived in Cape Town to study the stars of the southern hemisphere in January 1834
67 The Grand et Petit Namaquois and the Caffrerie are African tribes referenced in Levaillant’s 1797 account of his travels in southern Africa.
68 The basis of this pun, continuing the general theme, is that Sonde [Sunda, in geography] also means “sound,” “probe” or, most relevantly, “catheter.”
69 Tetraptera, here construed as if it meant “four winged” by analogy with the insect order of hymenoptera, is only used in biology in the Latin names of plants.
70 Author’s note: “De ritibus missis à Carolind.” The crucial phrase means “spoken rites”
71 i.e. Fiji.
72 Author’s note: “From Kan, in Latin campus, field, and the English bone: Field of Bones.”
73 As the narrator evidently has not noticed that the text of the Epitaph is simply his own French translation written backwards, I have left it in the original, while translating his translation into English, although that does spoil the symmetry somewhat.
74 Grandeur des oeuvres de dieu, ou L’Ouvrage des six jours. The Bibliothèque Nationale catalogue gives its initial publication date as 1867, three years after the first publication of the present text; Barbou might have published the works out of sequence, but the phrasing of the sentence suggests that there was an earlier first edition.
75 In the interplanetary fantasies cited in the introduction, those by Tiphaigne de La Roche and Madame Robert both feature genii with names beginning with Za—as do several other fantasies of that period, so Rousseau is following an established tradition, albeit a trifle belatedly.
76 “Vénusté” means charm, in the sense of sex-appeal, in French.
77 The word scatole usually signifies a product of putrefaction that has the odor of feces. Its employment here is a trifle enigmatic, as is the protagonist naming himself as Pcer. It is possible that both are the result of typesetting errors, but if so, it is not obvious what the intended formulations might have been.
78 1802 was the year when William Herschel suggested the name “asteroid” for the minor planets, following his observations of Ceres and Pallas, but the figure of five hundred must refer to the additional items he added in that year to his catalogue of “nebulae” and other stellar objects, far outside the solar system.
79 The minor planets Iris and Flora—the seventh and eighth to be named—were discovered by J. R. Hind in 1847; Hind also discovered Victoria in 1850 and Irene in 1851. Metis was discovered by Andrew Graham in 1848, Hygieia, Parthenope and Eunomia by Annibale de Gasparis in 1849, 1850 and 1851 respectively. All the bodies in question orbit between Mars and Jupiter, and none goes anywhere near Mercury, as is alleged when this list is repeated a little further on.
80 Thus indicating a date of composition of 1859.
81 The lyric poet Simonides (c556-468 B.C.) did spend some time at the court of King Hieron of Syracuse. This anecdote, originally related by Xenophon, appears—among many other places—in Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique, where Rousseau might well have found it.
82 i.e. “duckbills”—the Platypus.
83 It is not obvious how dawn can appear on the imaginary worlds, given the configuration previously indicated, but there appears to be a cycle of day and night on all of them.
84 Fanny Elssler (1810-1884) was an Austrian ballerina who first came to France in 1834. She danced La Sylphide in 1838, apparently in an attempt to outdo her great rival Marie Taglioni, for whom the role had been created, but she failed.
85 Literally, cockroaches.
86 Indicating a date of composition of 1860, if the author is employing James Ussher’s calculation of the creation having occurred in 4004 B.C.
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION
105 Adolphe Ahaiza. Cybele
102 Alphonse Allais. The Adventures of Captain Cap
02 Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm
