How
The Future of Nations Can Be No
Less
Interesting Than That of Individuals
Jorge Luis Borges
A Norwegian fiord or fjord (photo).
A fiord is a long, narrow
inlet with steep sides or cliffs, in
a valley carved by glacial activity.
A 2012 Editorial Note:
What is the theosophical importance
of lands situated relatively near the North Pole?
Such regions have the geological memory of distant points
in the timeline of our planet’s life. The North Pole represents Atma, the seventh
and highest principle of human consciousness in theosophy. Nations living near the
North polar region deserve special attention.
They may have a natural, involuntary relation to some higher levels of
planetary consciousness which are also present in every part of the Earth. In some mysterious, indirect ways, these
countries seem to help open a path to the common future of all nations.
In her work “The Secret Doctrine”, Helena P. Blavatsky
explains:
“….It is the north pole, the country of ‘Meru’, which
is the seventh division, as it answers to the Seventh principle (or fourth
metaphysically), of the occult calculation, for it represents the region of
Atma, of pure soul, and Spirituality. Hence Pushkara is shown as the seventh
zone, or dwipa, which encompasses the Kshira Ocean
Just as the other main regions of the planet, Scandinavia has accompanied present humanity for ages. In his text below, Jorge Luis Borges suggests - giving us a few practical examples - that
Scandinavian countries live things before they are lived by humanity at
large. In a conversation in Buenos Aires
It is not difficult to see that present day
Scandinavian culture is marked by social justice and humanitarian activities
often having a planetary dimension. Life
in the Nordic countries seems to anticipate in more than one aspect the future
humanity whose guiding principle will be universal brotherhood.
The long past of Scandinavian region is equally
inspiring, and H.P. Blavatsky explained in the late 1880s:
“Rudbeck, a Swedish scientist, tried to prove about
two centuries ago that Sweden Sweden and Norway
had formed part and parcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the
European side, just as Eastern and Western Siberia
and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the Asiatic.” [2]
Writing about the “Land of the Eternal Sun”, H. P. B.
said:
“…The main point for us lies not in the agreement or
disagreement of the Naturalists as to the duration of geological periods, but
rather in their perfect accord on one point, for a wonder, and this a very
important one. They all agree that during ‘The Miocene Age’ - whether one or
ten million years ago - Greenland and even
Spitzbergen, the remnants of our Second or Hyperborean Continent, ‘had almost
a tropical climate.’ Now the pre-Homeric Greeks had preserved a
vivid tradition of this ‘Land of the Eternal Sun’, whither their Apollo
journeyed yearly. ‘During the Miocene
Age, Greenland (in N. Lat. 70 degrees) developed an abundance of trees, such as
the Yew, the Redwood, the Sequoia, allied to the Californian species, Beeches,
Planes, Willows, Oaks, Poplars and Walnuts, as well as a Magnolia and a Zamia’,
says Science; in short Greenland had Southern plants unknown to Northern
regions.” [3]
Such a North-South climate connection will be
significant for those interested in the changes of location that take place
from time to time regarding the polar regions of our Earth, and which are
unavoidably related to stronger climate changes.
As to the literary connection between ancient Scandinavia and the ancient Greeks, it is commented upon by
H.P.B. in her work “Isis Unveiled”, and she says:
“Homer’s Odyssey
surpasses in fantastic nonsense all the tales of the Arabian Nights combined; and notwithstanding that, many of his myths
are now proved to be something else besides the creation of the old poet’s
fancy. The Laestrygonians, who devoured the companions of Ulysses, are traced
to the huge cannibal [4] race, said
in primitive days to inhabit the caves of Norway North Cape , where, during the whole summer, there is
perpetual daylight. The Norwegian fiords are perfectly described by Homer in
his Odyssey, x. 110; and the gigantic
stature of the Laestrygonians is demonstrated by human bones of unusual size
found in caves situated near this region, and which the geologists suppose to
have belonged to a race extinct long before the Aryan immigration. Charybdis,
as we have seen, has been recognized in the maëlstrom; and the Wandering Rocks [5] in the enormous icebergs of the
Arctic seas. [6]
On the blessed “Hyperborean” land, H.P.B. comments:
“(….) And now this natural question rises. If the
Greeks knew, in the days of Homer, of a Hyperborean land, i.e., a
blessed land beyond the reach of Boreas, the god of winter and of the
hurricane, an ideal region which the later Greeks and their classics have
vainly tried to locate by searching for it beyond Scythia, a country where
nights were short and days long, and beyond that land a country where the sun
never set and the palm grew freely - if they knew of all this, who then told
them of it? In their day, and for ages previously, Greenland
must certainly have been already covered with perpetual snows, with
never-thawing ice, just as it is now. Everything tends to show that the land of
the short nights and the long days was Norway or Scandinavia, beyond which
was the blessed land of eternal light and summer; and to know of this, their
tradition must have descended to the Greeks from some people more ancient than
themselves, who were acquainted with those climatic details of which the Greeks
themselves could know nothing. Even in our day, science suspects beyond the
Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which
never freezes and a continent which is ever green. The archaic teachings, and
likewise the Puranas - for one who understands the allegories of the latter -
contain the same statements. Suffice, then, to us the strong probability that a
people, now unknown to history, lived during the Miocene period of modern science,
at a time when Greenland was an almost
tropical land.” [7]
“The
Scandinavian Destiny”, the thought-provoking text by Borges, is reproduced from “Selected Non-Fictions”, J.L.B.,
edited by Eliot Weinberger, Penguin Books, UK
In order to better understand both H.P.B. and Borges
and the numerous implications of many a sentence written by them, readers often
say that they must be read more slowly and with a deeper attention than
conventional authors.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
NOTES:
[1] “The Secret Doctrine”. Helena Blavatsky, Theosophy Co., Los Angeles
[2] “The Secret Doctrine”, Volume II, p. 402. As to Siberia, Russia and
Scandinavia, in the following text Jorge Luis Borges refers to the fact
that Russia
[3] “The Secret Doctrine”, Vol. II, pp. 11.
[4] Note by H. P. Blavatsky: “Why
not to the sacrifices of men in ancient worship?”
[5]
Note by H. P. Blavatsky: “Odyssey, XII, 71.”
[6] “Isis Unveiled”, H. P. Blavatsky, Theosophy Co., Los Angeles
[7] “The Secret Doctrine”, Vol. II, pp. 11-12. Information on the distant
future of present humanity can also be obtained in Scandinavian
traditions. See “The Secret Doctrine”,
by H.P.B., Vol. II, p. 100. On Scandinavia , see also “The Secret Doctrine”, Vol. II, p.
7; p. 97; pp. 345-347; and pp. 423-424. These,
however, are but a few references made by HPB on Scandinavia .
There are others.
The Scandinavian Destiny
Jorge Luis Borges
That
the destiny of nations can be no less interesting and poignant than that of
individuals is a thing Homer did not know, but Virgil did, and the Hebrews felt
it intensely. Another problem (the Platonic problem) is that of investigating
whether nations exist in a verbal or a real way, whether they are collective
words or eternal entities; the fact is that we can imagine them, and Troy´s
misfortune can touch us more than Priam’s. Lines such as this one from the Purgatorio:
Vieni a veder la tua
Roma chepiagne
[Come see your Rome
are proof of the poignancy of the
generic, and Manuel Machado has successfully lamented, in an unquestionably
beautiful poem, the melancholy destiny of the Arab lineages “que todo lo tuvieron y todo lo perdieron”
[who had everything and lost everything]. Here, we might briefly recall the
differential traits of this destiny: the revelation of Divine Unity that almost
fourteen centuries ago brought together the shepherds in a desert and plunged
them into a battle that has not ceased and whose limits were Aquitaine and the
Ganges; the cult of Aristotle, which the Arabs taught Europe, perhaps without
entirely understanding it, as if they were repeating or transcribing a coded
message…. All that aside, it is the common vicissitude of peoples to have and
to lose. To be on the verge of having everything and to lose everything is the
tragic destiny of Germany
Jordanes, towards the middle of the
sixth century, said of Scandinavia that this island (the Latin cartographers
and historians took it for an island) was like the workshop or seedpod of
nations; Scandinavia ’s sudden eruptions at the
most heterogenous points of the globe would seem to confirm this viewpoint,
from which De Quincey inherited the phrase officinia
gentium. In the ninth century, the Vikings invaded London ,
demanded from Paris a tribute of seven thousand
pounds of silver, and pillaged the ports of Lisbon ,
Bordeaux , and Seville Etruria ,
put its defenders to the knife, and burned down the city, in the belief that he
had seized Rome Ireland kingdom
of Russia , whose capital city, before
it was called Novgorod , was called Holmgard.[1] Toward
the year 1000, the Scandinavians, under Leif Eriksson, reached the coast of America America and Europe looked upon each other in all innocence. A century
later, disease and the inferior people had done away with the colonists. The
annals of Iceland say: “In
1121, Erik, Bishop of Greenland, departed in search of Vinland .”
We know nothing of his fate; both the bishop and Vinland (America
Viking epitaphs are scattered across
the face of the earth on runic stones. One of them reads:
“Tola erected this stone in memory
of his son Harald, brother of Ingvar. They departed in search of gold, and went
far and sated the eagle in the East. They died in the South, in Arabia ”.
Another says:
“May God have pity on the souls of
Orm and Gunnlaug, but their bodies lie in London
This one was found on an island in
the Black Sea :
“Grani built this barrow in memory
of Karl, his friend.”
And this one was engraved on a
marble lion found in Piraeus , which was moved to
Venice
“Warriors carved the runic letters….
Men of Sweden
Conversely, Greek and Arab coins and
gold chains and old jewels brought from the Orient are often discovered in Norway
Snorri Sturluson, at the beginning
of the thirteenth century, wrote a series of biographies of the Kings of the
North; the geographic nomenclature of this work, which covers four centuries of
history, is another testimony to the breadth of the Scandinavian sphere; its
pages speak of Jorvik (York); of Biarmaland, which is Archangel or the Urals;
of Nörvesuud (Gibraltar); of Serkland (Land of the Saracens), which borders the
Islamic kingdoms; of Blaaland (Blue Land, Land of Blacks), which is Africa; of
Saxland or Saxony, which is Germany, of Helluland (Land of Smooth Stones),
which is Labrador; of Markland (Land of Forests), which is Newfoundland; and of
Miklagard (Large Population), which is Constantinople, where, until the fall of
the East, the Byzantine Emperor’s guardsmen were Swedes and Anglo-Saxons.
Despite the vastness of this list, the work is not the epic of a Scandinavian
empire. Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro conquered lands for their king: the
Vikings’ prolonged expeditions were individual. “They lacked political
ambitions,” as Douglas Jerrold explains. After a century, the Normans (men of
the North) who, under Rolf, settled in the province of Normandy
Medieval art is inherently
allegorical; thus, in the Vita nuova,
an autobiographical narrative, the chronology of events is subordinated to the
number 9, and Dante speculated that Beatrice herself was a nine, “that is, a
miracle, whose root is the Trinity.” That happened around 1292; a hundred years
earlier, the Icelanders had written the first sagas [2], which are realism in its most perfect form, as this sober
passage from Grettir’s Saga proves:
“Days before St. John’s eve,
Thorbjörn rode his horse to Bjarg. He had a helmet on his head, a sword in his
belt, and a lance in his hand, with a very wide blade. At daybreak it rained.
Among Atli’s serfs, some were reaping hay; others had gone fishing to the
North, to Hornstrandir. Atli was in his house, with few other people. Thorbjörn
arrived around midday. Alone, he rode to the door. It was closed and there was
no one outside. Thorbjörn knocked and hid behind the house so as not to be seen
from the door. The servants heard the knock and a woman went to open the door. Thorbjörn
saw her but did not let himself be seen, because he had another purpose. The
woman returned to the chamber. Atli asked who was outside. She said she had
seen no one and as they were speaking of it, Thorbjörn pounded forcefully.”
“Then Atli said: ‘Someone is looking
for me and bringing a message that must be very urgent’. He opened the door and looked out: there was
no one. By now it was raining very hard, so Atli did not go out; with a hand on
the doorframe, he looked all around. At that moment, Thorbjörn jumped out and
with both hands thrust the lance into the middle of his body.”
“As he took the blow, Atli said: ‘The
blades they use now are so wide’. Then he fell face down on the threshold. The
women came out and found him dead. From his horse, Thorbjörn shouted that he
was the killer and returned home.”
The classical rigor of this prose
coexist (the fact is remarkable) with a baroque poetry; the poets did not say
“raven” but “red swan” or “bloody swan”; they did not say “corpse” but “meat”
or “corn” of “the bloody swan”. “Sword’s water” or “death’s dew” were their
words for blood; “pirate’s moon” for a shield….
The realism of the Spanish
picaresque suffers from a sermonizing tone and a certain prudishness regarding
sexual matters, though not with respect to excrement; French realism oscillates
between erotic stimulation and what Paul Groussac termed “garbage dump
photography”; the realism of the United States
These facts suffice, in my
understanding, to define the strange and futile destiny of the Scandinavian
people. In universal history, the wars and books of Scandinavia
are as if they had never existed; everything remains isolated and without a
trace, as if it had come to pass in a dream or in the crystal balls where
clairvoyants gaze. In the twelfth century, the Icelanders discovered the novel -
the art of Flaubert, the Norman - and this
discovery is as secret and sterile, [4]
for the economy of the world, as their discovery of America
[1953] [Translation, Esther Allen]
NOTES:
[1] On Scandinavia, Siberia and Russia
[2] (Note by Borges:) The
Dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spain
(1947) reads: “Saga (from the German sage,
legend) f. Each one of the poetic legends contained mainly in the two
collections of early heroic and mythological traditions of ancient Scandinavia , called the Eddas.” This entry is an almost
inextricable amalgamation of errors. Saga
is derived from the Icelandic verb segja
(to say), not from sage, a word which
did not mean “legend” in medieval German; the sagas are prose narratives, not
poetical legends; they are not contained in “los dos Eddas” [the two Eddas] (and whose gender is feminine). The
most ancient songs of the Edda date from the ninth century; the most ancient
sagas, from the twelfth.
[3]
The Eddas and the sagas are often discussed in theosophy. H. P. B.
made references to them in various places in the works “Isis Unveiled”
and “The Secret Doctrine”. See also “The Collected Writings of H. P. Blavatsky”,
TPH, volume XV, p. 161, “Edda”. (C. C. A.)
[4] “Sterile”. With the appearance
of a criticism, Borges closes his article without obviously expressing his admiration
for Scandinavian nations. This is a writing technique used to bring to a text a
sense of “perceived balance”. From a
theosophical viewpoint, however, such a “sterile” action and influence over
human history is occultly more fruitful, precisely because in a outward
dimension it does avoid “denser levels of karma”. The Vikings linked many
points of the globe together, but they did not make formal colonies or provoke
long bloody colonial wars. There is no need to say that Borges admired them for
this. (C. C. A.)
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