A Review Part IV: The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

A Review

The Prague Cemetery

By

Umberto Eco

Review by

R.E. Prindle

Eco, Umberto: The Prague Cemetery, 2010, Houghton, Mifflin

Part IV

Prior to Prague the only thing of Eco’s I’d ever read was Foucault’s Pendulum which while interesting was not a great novel. Since reading Prague I have read the Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana and Baudolino. These are fairly interesting novels while giving some idea of Eco’s themes and variations. Thus one sees that religious frauds, hoaxes or forgeries depending on how you view them, are a fixation of Eco’s. He likes the rustle of paper. In the above two novels he treats of their manufacture with some sophistication that he seems to have lost in his treatment of the Protocols which novel is neither full nor penetrating. Therefore I can only conjecture that despite Jewish hysterics and condemnations Eco was pleased to reinforce the Jewish versions of the situations he treats as we are being led to believe by current news reports that anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide. I don’t see it that way but then I don’t fear it. Then again as Eco is a philo-Semite the novel may be a bit of a fraud itself. Why shouldn’t Umberto join in?

What I do see is the continuing Jewish attempt to subvert Western Science accelerating. For instance the Paideia organization of Sweden’s move to fill Europe with what its founder, Barbara Spectre calls ‘Jewish knowledge.’ She neglected to tell us just what the Jewish knowledge as opposed to ‘European knowledge’, Science in another word, might be.

Before getting into Eco’s vision of the late nineteenth century which centers around Semitic superstition and Aryan Science it might pay to review the emergence of Science from the Enlightenment to the Protocols concentrating on the nineteenth century.

The nineteenth century witnessed the unfolding of the Aryan mind, certainly the most astonishing event in the intellectual history of mankind. First it may be instructive to differentiate between technology and Science. I haven’t always been clear on the difference and I know most of the people I know aren’t. Confusion of the two is common.

The Africans, of course, have always lacked even the most rudimentary technology. They couldn’t even pile one stone atop another. The Chinese are often mentioned as being scientifically advanced two thousand years ago but sterile since. As evidence of ‘science’ the discovery of gunpowder and paper are triumphantly paraded before our eyes. Those are two technological advantages that were probably obtained by happenstance and not by scientific investigation. In the first place gunpowder is easy to discover and so limited in application that the stuff is meaningless and virtually useless without further technological advances requiring some thought. Even then, a cannon is a sort of scattergun lacking the advance of a rifled bore which is where science comes in.

In the Bible it mentions that at Hebrew sacrifices in order to prove the presence of the god the priest waved his hands over the burning sacrifice and mouthed some magical incantations making the flames flare signaling the god’s acceptance of the sacrifice. Obviously the priest had thrown a handful of gunpowder or something just like it into the flames. Of course, the Chinese wrapped the paper they discovered around the gunpowder and made firecrackers. Whoopee! I’m sure that gunpowder was discovered many times and in many places soon being forgotten as an amusing useless toy.

As for paper the Egyptians had papyrus which depends on having the papyrus reed but they found its perfect technological application. As I understand it Chinese paper was made from the long bamboo fibers which being processed for whatever purpose the wet fibers were piled up and perhaps being idly pounded with a rock it was realized that the flat sheet of fibers could be used to wrap gunpowder. That’s sarcastic, son. I’m sure the felt making process was discovered the same way. But there is no science there, merely a technological application of refuse.

Not having bamboo or cotton, the paper making process awaited the proper materials. There is no cause for revering Chinese intelligence because of their use of paper and gunpowder. Their technology was sufficiently advanced.

However the Chinese never were able to discover that water is a chemical compound being two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. The Chinese didn’t even know about hydrogen and oxygen. That is Science not technology. African or Chinese mental potential has been unfolded or realized for some time. The same holds true for the Semitic mind- Jewish and Arab. The Aryan mind was the last to begin to realize its potential which, like it or not, is of a higher order.

This realization began in earnest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Prior to that all the human species were more or less at the same intellectual level of advancement. Thus moving from its earlier attained base, in the nineteenth century the Aryan mind just blossomed far surpassing previous levels in intellectual evolution. All the physical and psychological sciences advanced at a very rapid pace until today in the twenty-first century Nature has been revealed in its entirety or near entirety. Once that is achieved I don’t know how learning can go beyond Nature. We would truly have to make a leap into the supernatural.

Thus the capacity for Science is part and parcel of the Aryan mind not shared by other human species. If others have since made contributions the contribution was made to Aryan Science once the other had come into contact with it. The above is an inescapable fact.

My problem with The Prague Cemetery is that Eco doesn’t actually acknowledge the different levels at which the Semitic mind of the Jews and the Aryan mind are functioning. He doesn’t seem to understand or at least express the fact that the two minds are differently constituted. Even Barbara Spectre of Padeia understands that the two different types of knowledge exist- Jewish magical knowledge and Aryan Scientific knowledge. She knows the difference and she wants by legal fiat to make the two equal.

OK. So when did this difference become apparent. Freud notes three signal discoveries which he says shook man’s confidence. Most likely he means Jewish self-confidence as the discoveries invalidated magical thinking of any kind. The first was Kepler’s proclamation that the earth was not the center of the universe which was realized in the sixteenth century, the second was Darwin’s mid-nineteenth proclamation of Evolution which demonstrated that mankind was not unique and the third was Mesmer’s revelation of the unconscious. In truth, science sent religion sent reeling.

The incompatibility of Jewish knowledge only became apparent with the end of the Middle Ages beginning with the Enlightenment. Prior to that all religious thinking was on one level. Jews and Catholics may have disputed religious issues but they were both using the same knowledge and approach.

But then the Aryan scientific knowledge not only shot ahead of Jewish and Christian religious knowledge but invalidated everything they believed. This was a very serious dislocation of the intellect. Further, the Semitic mind found it impossible to compete on the scientific level while it took them until about the year nineteen hundred to even get the drift. Thus with Jewish Emancipation c. 1789 into the Aryan scientific reality anti-Semitism was born although it wouldn’t be known as that until after 1875 when the German Wilhelm Marr coined the term.

As scientific knowledge developed in Western Europe the Jews of the West- England, France and Germany- acclimated themselves to the scientific learning while imitating Westerners in clothes and manners.

In the compacted Pale of Settlement in which the bulk of Jewry was located the traditional Jewish culture resisted scientific ideas that were slow to penetrate while being stoutly resisted by the Rabbis who realized that Science was antithetical to ‘Jewish knowledge’, that is to say, the Talmud.

Beginning in 1871 and the coming of the steamship mass migration from the Pale to the United States was organized. Emigration was developed then organized to the point where the complete transfer of the Jewish population from the Pale to the US (New Orleans and Galveston as ports of entry) was to begin in 1914. Obviously the plan was aborted by the Great War and was unable to be resumed post-war due to American resistance.

Now, the complexion of the Jewish intellect was changed beginning in 1896 when Theodor Herzl created the concept of Zionism. While the Jews of the Pale were slow to accept Science they were quick to embrace Zionism, thus from 1900 to 1914 the concept of Zionism was introduced to the United States, or as the Jews called it, The New Promised Land.

The conflict between post scientific Aryans and Jews thus began in earnest in the eighteen-sixties when Adolphe Cremieux took a hand in founding the Alliance Israelite Universelle while increasing in virulence into the seventies, eighties and nineties and the decade and a half before the Great War. Emigration from Europe to the US lessened the pressure within Europe but increased it from the outside- the US.

Even though resisted in the US by ‘nativists’ the Jewish cause was forwarded by Liberals. This was a curious situation which has baffled my understanding for some time but I may now have a probable explanation. There are past analogies with these events and attitudes. In speaking of the intellect of Spain during its long history Henry Thomas Buckle, the English historian, betrays the Liberal dichotomy in assessing national character. He displays the need of the Liberal character to exalt the other while condemning it’s own.

He describes the invasion of Spain and its near conquest by the Moors from the eighth to fifteenth centuries without negative comment. He then describes the near millennial warfare to reclaim Spain by the Spaniards. There is a hint of distaste as Buckle describes the reconquest. Then in 1492 after nearly a thousand years of incessant warfare the Spaniards reconquered the last Moslem stronghold.

Having conquered, the Spaniards had to control the conquered peoples that included both Moslems and Jews. Now, when the Moslems invaded the country, the Jews, as per their custom had opened the gates of the cities for the Moslems. Not only does this not offend Buckle but he doesn’t mention it. You may compare that with the current situation in which the Jews have prepared the triumph of China over the West. They are currently attempting to establish a foothold for themselves in China which will probably involve a transfer of population.

Now, because you have defeated an enemy’s army in the field doesn’t mean you have defeated the enemy. Over a millennium one assumes that the populations of Jews and Moslems had increased immensely. There might have been many millions of each. While the Jews characterize the Moslem Era in Spain as a golden age of The Land Of The Three Religions, the poetry may be misleading. There must have been a very uneasy relationship between the three as the Christians within Moslem lines must have worked against Moslem interests to further the steadily increasing Reconquista while Jews tried to play both sides. Therefore the Spaniards would have been fools to trust the good intentions of the defeated Moslems and Jews. One only has to consider the conquered Poles reaction to the Russian occupation to understand the threat.

The Spaniards therefore offered the two religions the choice between becoming Christians, that is say, loyal Spaniards, or expulsion. The numbers here get a little hazy but Buckle says that only 150,000 Moslems elected to leave while anywhere between 60K and 600K Jews chose to emigrate. That means there must have been millions who chose to change their collars. Of course these were put under close surveillance and Spain entered the hell of the Inquisition and undying infamy.

Having finally won back their kingdom, if you choose to see it that way or, having conquered their enemies in the historical free play of might, Buckle chooses to portray the expulsion and forced conversion as a huge injustice on the part of the Aryans thus acknowledging this curious sentimental division of his own people into two groups; on the one hand the Pure Liberals, and on the other the Impure Beasts. This is a very curious belief in the virtue of the other- Jews and Moslems in this case- and the vice of his own people which he and Liberals place below the other embracing the latter and condemning the former. As I say this is a curious state of mind coloring all subsequent Euroamerican history from the Liberal sanctification of the African in Africa and their counterparts in the US. This attitude is so extreme that having condemned the Aryans of the Rhodesias and South Africa to abandon control they now sit placidly, one might say cheering, as the Aryans are massacred by the Africans.

Now, while Buckle and the Liberals essentially reject the Reconquest by the Spaniards as either worthy or necessary, in the exact same situation of what the Mexicans call a reconquista of Aztlan modern Liberals support the Mexican Reconquest which has puzzled most of us. In that sense Newt Gingrich who passes as an Aryan Conservative is actually an anti-Aryan Liberal and cannot be thought of otherwise.

While the Mexicans have a historical ‘right’ to invade whomever they please, they wish to base their invasion, Reconquest as they call it, on a moral or legal right as did the Spaniards in their reconquest.

In fact they have no legal or moral right. As with the Moslems invading and conquering Spain, the Spaniards invaded and conquered the Aztec nation which was very small occupying but a small portion of Southern Mexico. The Spaniards then occupied what became Northern Mexico, Texas, the Southwest and California and that but very sparsely. Texas and the Southwest plus Northern Mexico were more or less parts of Comancheria and Apacheria. So the Spaniards of Mexico were essentially occupying lands under the control of the Comanche and Apache peoples as well as lesser tribes.

Having established a very sparse presence in the territories, other settlers from the East and North drifted into these territories. As they became more numerous they became dissatisfied with Mexican authorities just as the Mexican had become dissatisfied with that of the Spaniards. As the Mexicans had a natural or historical right to revolt against the Spaniards so the dissidents of the territories had a right to revolt against the Mexicans which they in their turn did. Thus the revolutionaries of Texas threw off the Mexican yoke proclaiming themselves the sovereign and independent country of Texas but at no time were they associated with the United States although at a later date they did choose to associate themselves with the US as was their sovereign right.

As you can see one revolution is as valid as another. It only requires the will to separate.

In California also the Bear flag was raised in which Californian rebels threw off he Mexican yoke with much less difficulty than the Texans as the Mexican presence was very thin and a military presence nearly non-existent. That was the Bear Flag Revolution. If the Mexican Revolution from Spain was valid then so were the Texan and Californian Revolutions from Mexico. The Mexicans have no legal or moral claim to the four Southwest States although if they wish to exercise their historical ‘right’- i.e. the Hunnish invasion of Europe- it is up to the US which has legally acquired title to the States from their lawful citizens, to stop them.

However the Liberals of the exact same mindset of Buckle take the side of the Mexicans against both themselves and the hated internal enemy, the Conservatives or Aryan other. The latter is now labeled a terrorist group by the Liberal government.

A very curious situation in which any legal or moral arguments are disregarded in favor of inner wishful thinking.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and trace the American Liberal mental state back to the Norman Conquest of England. After the conquest the Normans disenfranchised the Anglo-Saxons and made slaves of them. The more remote eastern counties of Angles resented this the most and never forgave the Normans which resulted in the Anglian revolt against Charles I as a Norman representative.

The New England colonists among whom this Liberal feeling arose came from East Anglia and thus rather than the Northeast American States being termed New England they should be titled New Anglia.

Their hatred of the Norman settlers of the South then led to the Civil War. After that war the Liberals sought to humiliate their old enemies qua Normans by subjecting them to the semi-savage authority of the Negroes.

Thus, while Liberals care nothing for Negroes they embrace them on the principle of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the same as Buckle and the Moors, Jews or anyone else who hates Aryans. The Liberals turn over the ‘Normans’ or Aryans to these ‘minorities’ to use as they wish, even passing hate laws to disenfranchise the Aryans and empower the ‘minorities.’ That’s called the transformation of society. That’s as close as I can come to this curious Liberal attitude at the moment. If not the truth it must be very close to it. Buckle himself must have been of Anglo-Saxon descent.

To return to Eco: While it is true that Herman Goedsche wrote his Jewish graveyard scene set in Prague during the sixties this would have been a very peripheral event making little or no impression at the time. The fictional story became prominent only in retrospect after 1905. Thus, while I don’t wish to criticize Eco I think he should have maintained perspective making Goedsche ancillary to the Franco-Prussian war which certainly dwarfed any scene in anyone’s novel let alone a fictional meeting of Jewish conspirators in an ancient cemetery with far less cachet than the Pere Lachaise.

It might have been better to concentrate on Drumont and the French reaction to the Jewish cultural conflict that led to the Dreyfus Affair to demonstrate how and why the Aryans became alarmed by the Jewish culture war against them. It is no coincidence that the German concept of Kultur become prominent at that time. Eco could have presented a much more balanced version of the Dreyfus Affair rather than merely echoing the hysterical Jewish version. Also, of course, there was no need to mention Freud except as a future development of Anglo-European psychology and psychiatry.

That said, Eco succeeded in creating a fine ambience in which to set his excellent creation, Simone Simonini. I found him lifelike and I was genuinely interested in his career. The Jekyll-Hyde personality split was nicely handled although more attention might have been paid to the adventures of each half and how they interacted creating difficulties for the other. There was no need to create mystification in the reader’s mind as I’m sure we all got it from page one.

For those who have read Sue and Dumas, Eco’s indebtedness to both was clear. Eco was able to capture the ambience and horror of Sue quite well. The bodies under Simonini’s house was lifted almost intact from Sue’s Mysteries of Paris.

By the way, I erred in saying Les Mysteres Du Peuple hasn’t been translated into English. The prominent Jewish-American socialist, Daniel De Leon translated the story in the years after 1900. However as the novel was published in twenty-one fascicles of 200-300 pages under the names of the lead characters of each fascicle it took awhile to make the association. Most of the fascicles have been published by print on demand publishers.

With the rich resource of two characters in one, of which one is as virtuous as Jekyll and the other verging toward the amorality of Hyde, Eco could have exploited the conflict of morality between the two halves having the Priest working to foil, the efforts of Simonini, perhaps even exposing him as a police agent to the revolutionaries and as a double agent to the authorities.

I guess, what I’m saying is that while I found the story engrossing I was annoyed because the potentialities were not more fully exploited. I mean, why mention the criminal turned police inspector, Vidocq, if you aren’t going to develop him somewhat. Vidocq was a terrifically interesting person. A great memoir written by him too. As I said, it wouldn’t have hurt to have followed Dumas’ example and had a team researching and organizing while Eco wrote it up.

Since I’ve felt constrained to read Eco’s novel corpus I may add to this at a later date.

Part III: A Review, The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

A Review

The Prague Cemetery

By

Umberto Eco

Part III

Review by

R.E. Prindle

Umberto Eco

Eco, Umberto: The Prague Cemetery, 2010, Houghton Mifflin

1.

The French Revolution was perhaps the most horrific event in the history of the world. More pernicious still in the shadow it casts into our times. Our societies were born in blood; we became instantly conditioned in the most incredible, inconceivable way to crime and political murder; worse by far than the so-called holocaust, itself an echo of the Revolution. No one was safe, psychopaths and morons controlled the fates of the sane and intelligent. Truly the inmates were in control of the asylum just as Edgar Allan Poe represented in his story The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Feather. There are no words to adequately describe the crimes of ‘93.

The most amazing thing is that amid the chaos the Enlightenment proceeded apace. The period remained one of incredible scientific advances. Beneath the horrors of the Revolution and the Napoleonic years the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment produced astonishing literature and writers many of which will figure in the late nineteenth century history during the Romantic revival.

Interestingly one of the early manifestations of the modern Liberal mentality appeared in Henry Thomas Buckle’s History Of Civilization In England of 1860. In discussing the career of Edmund Burke, after a eulogy on Burke’s subtle command of English politics in which the most fulsome praise was heaped on the writer, came the time for Burke’s evaluation of the French Revolution and the Great Year of ‘93.

Burke correctly perceived that the Revolution was a religious transit from one ideology to another and that the Revolution was the opening salvo of a new religious war, Socialism being the new religion, or Liberalism in another form. Burke deplored the violence and criminality in the strongest terms. Up to that point in history, Buckle (a very famous historian of his time) who had been writing a very measured and subtle history of the intellectual development of Western Europe and England vituperatively denounced Burke as becoming unbalanced and indeed, insane. This was over a mere difference of opinion. The denunciation was not unlike that of today’s Obama and his denunciation of the Republicans. Yes, he has characterized them as insane.

One then asks what was Buckle’s relationship to Communism? How well did he reflect Liberal opinion? Burke’s reaction occurred in ‘93 and ‘94.

2.

Beneath The Limn

The nineteenth century was one of great psychological advances. As such they were unsettling creating great psychic stresses. Eco gives his character Simone Simonini a split dual personality. He also mentions Anton Mesmer and Jean-Martin Charcot. While many if not most people believe Sigmund Freud discovered or invented the Unconscious the concept was well developed in the nineteenth century before Freud. Freud merely consolidated earlier investigations and gave his own peculiar Jewish national twist to the concept.

The beginning of the recognition of an unconscious was articulated by the much misunderstood, but surely great man, Dr. Anton Mesmer in the pre-Revolution days of the eighteenth century. Mesmer’s shortcoming was that he was more of a mystic than a scientist. The French academy called him to account on scientific grounds and he either couldn’t or wouldn’t comply, hence being discredited as a charlatan. He was an honest man discovering a new scientist; more a pioneer than a charlatan.

Nevertheless as Mesmerism or as later renamed, Hypnotism, was a real phenomenon so even though discountenanced by official academics, research continued until it became clear that hypnotism was a condition of the mind or unconscious and not a quality of the operator or hypnotist as Mesmer mistakenly believed.

A few words on the nature of hypnotism and suggestion. Suggestion is the active component and the mind the passive of hypnotism. Essentially the mind is a slate on which the suggestion is imprinted.

What is a suggestion? Everything is a suggestion but suggestions of different qualities. For instance one wakes to a sunny day and the suggestion is one of anticipated pleasure, an overcast day one of a deflated spirit. The mind at birth is a blank slate with nothing on it so that education begins and education itself is suggestion but positive beneficent suggestion although education can be perverted for special ends. You might say the post-hypnotic consequences of education which teaches the mind to analyze other suggestions permanently survives the input. It is imprinted.

And then there is indoctrination in which a specific point of view is forced upon you to condition your mind in a permanent post-hypnotic state whether the information is good or bad. The current indoctrination in racism is a case in point. To confirm the suggestion of indoctrination one uses conditioning to confirm the imprinting. Thus one is bombarded constantly with racist images.

You may not think of the above as examples of hypnotism but they are. One may or can refuse a suggestion and indeed many people are uneducable because they resist the process of learning either because they won’t or can’t learn. The above are examples of open hypnotism or suggestion. There are involuntary acceptances of suggestion resulting in fixation that cause neuroses or psychoses, what the great French psychologist, Pierre Janet, called the idee fixe. In other words a permanent post-hypnotic suggestion.

One means to achieve a fixation then is through terror. In a state of terror the mind is stripped of all defenses so that the suggestion is implanted with no resistance. An example comes to mind from the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs the creator of the Tarzan series. One day as an eight year old on the way to school he was confronted by a much larger twelve year old who began badgering him. The young Burroughs in a state of terror took to his heels. Among other things his flight fixed in his mind that he was a coward. That affected his life thereafter. The theme appears in each and all of his scores of books. So Burroughs through involuntary interpretation received a fixation, a suggestion, an idee fixe in Janet’s terms.

Freud presents many examples of various ways in which fixations occur. The point is that they are all hypnotic suggestions containing post-hypnotic commands. Once accepted they have to be discovered but once recognized the affects disappear. But every affect arises from a fixated suggestion. One was hypnotized.

What Freud did was to discover the true nature of suggestion and hypnotism so that it was not necessary to put a person in a trance to access his unconscious. In the process Freud learned how to hypnotize an entire audience and then with movies and recorded songs a whole population. But that was in the future.

For a good history of the nineteenth century pre-Freudian discovery of the unconscious the best introduction is Henri F. Ellenberger: The Discovery Of The Unconscious.

3.

Books And Bookmen

Ilan Stevens begins his remarkably obtuse review of The Prague Cemetery as follows: http://forward.com/articles/146732/?p=all :

Quote:

There’s no hiding it. Umberto Eco is a lousy novelist. Try as one may, it is difficult to make sense of his new novel, “The Prague Cemetery”. As is often the case with him, the plot is built on a mystery of sorts, on this occasion the quest to discover the true author of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, an anti-Semitic pamphlet that remains one of the world’s biggest hoaxes and whose true author remains unknown. Oddly, Eco is less interested in solving the puzzle than in incensing his readers. The protagonist’s anti-Semitic rampages running through hundreds of pages, appears to be a parody. But the joke is impossible to decode. Worse, it isn’t funny!

Unquote.

Ilan should realize that he is not speaking for the entire reading public but only for himself. Eco is as funny as Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl, or, perhaps Ilan has never listened to St. Lenny’s diatribes himself. I would recommend the one about the Vegas comic at the Palladium Theatre of London.

In the first case Eco is plowing his furrow down a row that has already been disced, perhaps several times and in the second the Protocols take a subordinate place in the story. Perhaps Ilan is letting his Judaic heritage distort his sense of reality. Freud had a few things to say about group psychology. I recommend them to Ilan. In the third place without a fair background knowledge of the sources the novel might indeed be difficult if not impossible to follow. It requires some knowledge of nineteenth century books and bookmen.

Eco is a European, relatively unaffected by American attitudes and I suspect Jewish history, although with someone of Eco’s erudition, that far exceeds Ilan’s, one must step cautiously, especially knowing what Eco does in his furrows.

The flowering of European and English literature began about mid-eighteenth century when the number of books published increased dramatically. After Napoleon organized the Revolution along rational lines beginning in 1799 one might say the modern era of literature began. Most significantly for our story was the emergence of the great Walter Scott in England. Scott originated the historical novel and as such became the template of the great French authors Balzac, Dumas and Sue. Dumas, the son of one of Napoleon’s generals was born in 1802; Sue, the son of Napoleon’s surgeon general was born in 1804. Both thus were old enough to have personal memories of the Napoleonic period and certainly of his defeat on the field of Waterloo. The events of the Revolution, tales of ‘93, must have been the stories of their childhood and early years. They were aware through most of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment.

At the same time they were present at the revolutionary shocks of 1830 and 1848 while taking part in political events of the time. Indeed, in Eco’s story he shows Dumas as a gun runner in Garibaldi’s attempted establishment of a unified Italy.

Garibaldi’s activities which had nothing to do with Jews or Protocols takes up a substantial part of Eco’s story. I found it one of the more intriguing parts of the novel. Certainly Eco’s portrayal of Simonini’s activities as a spy were well drawn establishing him as ‘flesh and blood’ character. While I thought Prague could have been better developed Simonini was perfection.

Rather than the book running on for hundreds of pages as Ilan thinks, I thought it much too short. Further, four hundred pages in the largish typeface is not a long book. I had rather seen Eco emulate his heroes Dumas and Sue and turn out a whopper of one or two thousand pages. If I have any complaint it is that Eco didn’t really pull out the stopper and throw himself into it. He does give us a trifle on the Commune of Paris ‘71 but that alone could have taken two or three hundred pages. Arnold Bennett in his Old Wife’s Tale gives a little more. I mean, the nineteenth century is great stuff especially for a historical imagination like Eco’s; there’s plenty of material for romancing.

Since Eco put some effort into developing a psychological profile for his hero, Simonini, he might have dealt with the development of psychology from Mesmer to 1897 his cutting off point. He could have invented, well, there was no need to invent, he could have included some of the stage magicians and hypnotists sort of after the fashion of the movie, Children Of Paradise. Too long a novel? Oh, no Eco shouldn’t have reined himself in. Probably too afraid of the Jews and their anti-Semitism. There was no reason to include Freud who at that time was unknown.

Eco did mention Mesmer and could certainly have cast an uncle of Simonini as a stage hypnotist then allowing him to develop a history of hypnotism down to Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpetriere in the sixties, seventies and eighties. It was Charcot who legitimized hypnotism.

Eco could also have taken time to give mini biographies of the actual historical figures most of whom are today known only by name if that. After all today is well over two hundred years after the Revolution of 1789. That is an immense stretch of well documented history impossible for someone not dedicated to studying the period to know. If education is in trouble it is merely because the period and its contribution to knowledge has not been organized in a comprehensible manner. Nor given the current political and religious situation is it likely to be. History itself is both anti-Semitic and racist, you know.

Amazingly enough the amateurs of the internet are making a better attempt to organize the period than the academic ‘pros’. The various Wold Newton Universe’s on the internet which mesh into Eco’s approach have done a great deal to evolve a time line progression. Since Eco is a European writer the work of Jean-Marc and Randy (wife) Lofficier with their site of the French Wold Newton Universe have made a great advance in organizing French literature into a continuation not too different in intent than the Arthurian epic.

They began much as Eco does here with the Carbonari based on the novels of Paul Feval who chronicles the rise of organized crime in France which is another theme Eco could have included in an expanded novel. Rocambole, Arsene Lupin and Fantomas, (characters larger than the creators) form part of the French WNU and Eco’s memories as he recorded them in his Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana, but that opportunity was missed.

I’m also not sure why Eco passed over Madame Blavatsky, Theosophy and the whole Spiritist Movement that turns toward the idea of the Protocols since their religious view was quite in opposition to Judaism.

Another line of investigation although not quite so obvious as others was the rise of the Vampire novel which I believe is directly related to Jewish emancipation.

Prior to the Revolution and Jewish Emancipation the Jews had been tightly controlled being confined to the Pale of Settlement running the breadth of Europe between Eastern Poland and Western Russia. With emancipation Jews could function freely without restriction as citizens of their respective hosts. How Jewish activities are characterized depends on your nationality. Jews of course depict themselves as both ardent Jews and loyal citizens of the host country while each country universally depicts them as self-interested traitors. But to say so left an individual open to censure as an anti-Semite. That is the same charge that Ilan in his review brings against Eco. To disagree with the Jews is to be an anti-Semite. Thus in order to express one’s true opinion one must resort to subterfuge. One has to speak of one thing to refer to another. One of the major criticism of the Jews over the centuries in all societies is that Jews are parasites. Of course, the Vampire is the ultimate parasite. Thus in creating stories of Vampires, the bloodsuckers are meant to represent Jews.

George Du Maurier

This is made nowhere more explicit than in George Du Maurier’s 1894 novel, Trilby. Eco has his character in Prague named Dr. Du Maurier who is obviously based on the novelist George. As it seems appropriate I will digress here to consider Du Maurier’s novel, Trilby. Du Maurier still has a significant following as my three reviews of his novels have found a good readership, especially the first, Peter Ibbetson.

Trilby is a complex and very interesting novel. Du Maurier was a prominent neo-Romanticist and Bohemian. A base of his story is an earlier 1822 novelette by the French Romanticist Charles Nodier from whose title, Trilby, Du Maurier took his own.

Nodier’s story concerned a Scots girl named Jeannie and an elf or fairy named Trilby. We are led to believe that Trilby actually exists but was apparent only to Jeannie so that the churchmen or rationalists believing her deluded insist that she renounce her elfin friend; therein lies the tragedy.

In Du Maurier’s story he reverses the sexes making Trilby a young woman while giving Jeannie’s identity to a young artist named Little Billee who, himself, is based on a Thackeray poem of the same name. Du Maurier is more obsessed with memory than even Umberto Eco. Du Maurier convinced of the reality of an after life devised it so that he could take his little bags of memory with him for, what is the purpose of memories if they are to be lost at death, he said?

The novel Trilby is, of course, famous for Du Maurier’s creation of the hypnotist, Svengali, very close to a mythical figure himself and bearing some resemblance to a vampire. One still hears references to Svengali constantly. Svengali was what was then known as a Beteljew, sort of a bum or hobo, in Hebrew a Schnorrer. He is not appreciated by Billee and his friends but he was always a forced presence in their entourage. According to the prejudice of Jews then and now he was a good musician. Thus in hanging around the digs of Little Billee and his Bohemian artist friends he meets Trilby who is a grisette. A grisette in Parisian is what we would call ‘a good lovin’ woman.’ Trilby posed nude for the artists but she was never of easy virtue being quite an exception in Bohemian artists’ circles. The point is made that she cannot sing, unable to carry a tune or hit a note with a tennis racquet . However Svengali notices that she has a one in a million oral cavity, hence she should be able to sing much better than Jenny Lind, a sensation at the time.

As the story falls out the English artists break up as age takes it toll while after a series of adventures Trilby having no other place to go shows up on Svengali’s doorstep who seizes his chance. He removes to Eastern Europe where being an expert hypnotist he entrances Trilby, much as a vampire, and keeps her in a perpetual trance as he wants so much to use that spectacular oral cavity and make Trilby sing as no other. To do that he has to project his musical sensibilities into her and sing through her himself. Thus she is only able to sing while hypnotized and with Svengali directly in front of her making eye contact.

After a while the two master the act and Svengali begins to build her career in which he is successful. As she is perpetually hypnotized Trilby has no memory of those years. One imagines Du Maurier might consider the loss of memories the most tragic of all and indeed without memory one is nothing.

Back in Paris on holiday after a period of years the now mature Billee and his two friends are astonished to discover that their Trilby is the singing sensation that they have been hearing about while Svengali to their eyes has an ambiguous relationship with her. He claims that he is her husband but this is, of course, bushwa as he has another wife. While driving by in their carriage Svengali spots the three on the sidewalk. His hatred and rage at the three welling up he orders Trilby to cut them dead which she does.

Unable to get tickets to the sold out performances the three go back to London. Trilby is scheduled for a London tour. Billee and his friends have a box seat. About half way through the performance Svengali looks up and notices them. His hatred is so strong he breaks eye contact with Trilby who at once stops singing and while glaring at the three his blood pressure rising Svengali has an apoplectic fit and dies. Trilby is unable to continue the show on her own. However Svengali having kept her hypnotized for years vampire like has sapped her vital energy and Trilby withers and dies.

Thus as though a vampire Svengali has drained his victim of life’s blood exploiting her for his own profit. Du Maurier makes it quite clear that the story is an allegory of the Jews and Europeans. Thus unable to criticize the Jews directly unless he be labeled an anti-Semite Du Maurier makes a species of Vampire of them. In the process probably a much better novel than he might have otherwise. The novel really is a masterpiece.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, was issued at this time. While the nineteenth century began to explore the Aryan racial subconscious in tentative manner pursuing vampires, werewolves, Frankensteins, perpetual wanderers of one type or another, split personalities. it was not until later in the century after a few decades of serious study that some clear results were achieved. The most notable example in which a clear separation of the conscious and unconscious was achieved was in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. There may be an unconscious referral on Eco’s part as he may have combined Du Maurier and Dr. Jekyll in his imagination. During the same years the Society For Psychical Research was formed of which the significant researches of F.W.H. Myers in the unconscious were important contributions. The work of the Frenchman Pierre Janet, student of Charcot’s is not to be despised either. Freud’s twentieth century vehement denial of any use of Janet’s ideas is proof positive of his influence.

In the realm of dreams also significant work had been done by Aryans before Freud synthesized their work in his study of 1899-1900, The Interpretation Of Dreams. While verging toward mysticism Du Maurier’s notion of Dreaming True and Stevenson’s notion of Directed Dreaming are significant variations on Freud’s theory. Not that I mean to totally disparage Freud’s contribution but he essentially serves in the Jewish role of the middleman between the producer and the consumer.

So, as a slight criticism of Eco, as Freud was still of the future as Prague ends, he might have better constructed Simonini from existing psychological elements. There was no need to create ‘Froide’. Nor was it necessary to interject the Protocols and Dreyfus into the story so prominently.

It appears that Eco used the body of books or sources that all of us familiar with this line of research have used. If fact so many people have been plowing this furrow that nearly every book suppressed by the Jewish Index of Forbidden Books has found its way into print with the exception of Drumont of the Libre Parole and Goedsche himself. One can with some confidence then speak in this area.

Eco slights his Jewish studies. He makes an offhand comment about the Father Thomas murder in Syria but without prior knowledge of that crime if the uninformed reader noticed the reference he must have been puzzled. While the author of the Protocols has never been determined, internal evidence indicates the work was probably cobbled together c. 1885. It may have been based on Maurice Joly’s Dialogues Between Machiavelli and Montesquiou In Hell or the Dialogues may have been written after the Protocols became infamous to provide a source, thus we may have a hoax based on a hoax.

Of course, over the decades the story keeps changing, but in one version Napoleon III confiscated all the copies at the printers but one copy got away. The book showed up much later after the Russian Revolution when a fleeing White officer miraculously sold the only existing copy to a Jewish second hand book dealer in Constantinople. Ever see the movie, Wag The Dog? You should. Not only did this astute book dealer buy a wreck of a book without a cover or title page but while idly reading through it he recognized it as the source of the Protocols, as the proverbial light went off in head he knew he had a copy of the Dialogues in his sweaty little hands. Quickly notifying the Alliance Israelite Universelle he sent the copy along and- eh voila!- the problem with the source was solved, proven. But the question is, who was this Maurice Joly and what did he know of Machiavelli and Monstesquiou? Who the hell was Montesquiou? That Joly was Jewish goes without saying but to my mind there is a question as to whether he wrote the Dialogues. I mean, you know, we’re dealing with mis-, and disinformation and re-directed matters here. Try reading Edgar Wallace’s Four Just Men to learn some real head fakes.

Eco doesn’t go into the Jewish history very deeply although all accounts of the origin of the Protocols I’ve read have been written by Jewish hands and therefore are thoroughly questionable. He does make a passing reference to someone he call Cremiu. This may or may not be a reference to a very important Jewish figure named Adolphe Cremieux. His career spanned the years before and after the 1830 revolution which coincided with the French acquisition of Algeria of that year. Cremieux drafted and penned the law making Jewish residents of Algeria French citizens thus catapulting them over their Moslem masters corrupting the French conquest.

Cremieux was politically prominent in the sixties taking part in the formation of the Alliance Israelite Universelle which was created as an international organization to coordinate Jewish European activities, thus was formed a Jewish national government. At the turn of the century it would be sent to the US becoming the American Jewish Committee as the US was deemed more cordial and pertinent to Jewish affairs. Indeed, it was from New York that President Jacob Schiff engineered the 1905 defeat of Russia by Japan for which the Japanese duly honored him.

But in the 1860s when European Jewish affairs were being organized Cremieux was undoubtedly behind the writing of the Dialogues which were very likely written by committee and merely issued under Joly’s name. The Dialogues Between Machiavelli and Montesquiou is a sophisticated piece of writing. I suppose most people have heard of Machiavelli and probably many of those have read his book; however I doubt if many have ever heard of Montesquiou and fewer by far have read him. His Spirit Of The Laws is one of those key texts recently made available. In Conspiracy circles it has been thought of as evil but it is nothing of the kind. It is a very valuable intellectual contribution which ought to be studied by Conservatives as it has been by Communists.

As the title implies Montesquiou historically examines what laws were meant to effect- their spirit. Thus as with today’s ‘anti-hate’ laws, what is their spirit? What is their intended effect? On the surface the laws are absurd as they imply that the protected parties are above ‘hate’ while the unprotected parties are directing their innate unreasoning hatred toward them. The ‘anti-hate’ laws are American so one must ask who they are meant to protect and who they are meant to punish. The protected parties are what Americans call ‘minorities’; what the Canadians laughably call ‘visible minorities’ which by the way would exclude Jews and homosexuals who are invisible. The promoters of these laws are obviously Jewish.

The laws then create franchised and disenfranchised classes. That is exactly the way the protected classes understand the laws. They have been legally granted ‘minority skin’ privileges.

So, now as the Jews understand the spirit of the laws in these days it is not unreasonable to believe that they understood their spirit in those days. They had and have a very specialized understanding.

Just as today the AJC/ADL have a college turning out books of the same nature as the Dialogues, see the books of fictional author ‘John Roy Carlson’, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Cremieux and the Alliance Israelite did the same in those days. The racial mind always works according to certain static principles. Thus, I have no doubt myself, that the college turned out the book merely duping the Jew Maurice Joly to put his name on it. In any event we are told that Louis Napoleon had the whole press run confiscated at the printers; however the handwritten original may have escaped that surfaced around 1885 when the Protocols were written. The text would have to have been supplied by the Alliance in that instance. From my reading of both documents there is only the most tenuous connection between them while the ideas contained in the Protocols could have been written and probably were without any reference to the Dialogues at all. I see no logical connection between the two.

Now, if the Protocols were a forgery drawn up by the Russian Ohkrana who could not possibly have had a copy of the Dialogues in 1885 and they wouldn’t have needed it in any event why would they wait to 1905 to broadcast the news? Why not before the 1905 revolution in an attempt to stave it off? So, you see, things just really don’t add up; the bottom line is just a bit fuzzy.

While the Jews attack Eco on the improbable grounds that his novel is going to stir up ancient hatreds, at the same time they leap at Eco’s suggestion that the German writer of the period, Herman Goedsche’s scene in the Jewish Cemetery is based on Cagliostro’s confrontation with the Freemasons in the pages of Dumas’ novel Joseph Balsamo. Balsamo was Cagliostro’s real name while the latter is his magician’s name.

There is no need for a relationship between the two while at the same time both are fictional situations. I’ve never understood why the Jews chose to make an issue of this scene. Biarritz, Goedsche’s novel was just that, a story. For a story to be read it has to be as close to reality as possible while exaggerating it for effect. While it is improbable that any such meeting would take place in the Prague Jewish graveyard it is certainly probable that such a meeting took place at AIU headquarters in Paris. How else will you coordinate efforts and Jewish efforts were coordinated.

Just ask yourself, what is the purpose of an undeniable organization named the Alliance Israelite Universelle? Doesn’t the name say it all? And then in 1900 when the Pale Of Settlement is being emptied out as the Jews are being transferred to the US with every intent of transferring all the Jews to the US which was only aborted by the outbreak of The Great War, why was the Alliance transferred from France to the US to become the American Jewish Committee? I mean, you know, I don’t mind being called an anti-Semite but I certain do object to being called stupid.

In fact, the Jews were one of the nations of Europe, functioning fully as a nation although without a homeland, ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ they were called and what else would they be called given their situation? Think about this stuff, don’t allow your thinking to be directed by Jews. When the going gets tough the Jews pack up and get moving. That’s what rootless means. The Germans, the French et al., they have roots, when the going gets tough they have nowhere to go, they have to tough it out.

Thus the mere existence of institutions presupposes organization and goals. Goedsche was just a writer, he doesn’t have to be taken anymore seriously than that. Does he have a good story or not? In fact, his novel is one of the works on the Jewish Index still waiting translation. I’m ready to buy.

Eco could have gone into more detail on the Protocols. They excite only the Jews. They only claim to prove the obvious. Check out the goals of today’s Jewish Paideia Society of Sweden organized by the US Jew Barbara Spectre which is pursuing the same end. Good name, Spectre.

That leaves the old chestnut, the Dreyfus Affair to be examined. Why Eco threw this into a book called The Prague Cemetery is beyond me but there it is.

Dreyfus was certainly guilty of spying, not necessarily for the Germans as he was charged, but spying. Leaping ahead a hundred years and shifting to the New Promised Land, the US, let us consider the case of the notorious Israeli spy, Jonathon Pollard whose thefts were so serious that he is still withering away in prison. While his fellow Jews haven’t been able to force a new trial, they’re now asking for parole if not pardon. After all they say Pollard wasn’t spying for an enemy but for the US’ best friend, Israel, with which we should have been sharing our information like a good friend anyway.



Now, move Pollard back a hundred years, shift him to France and change his name to Dreyfus. Eh, voila! Dreyfus was sending his purloined info to the Alliance Israelite Universelle headquarters. How else can the Jews by so well informed?

As Eco informs us, the real German spy was named Esterhazy. What he neglects to tell us is the Esterhazy was a Hungarian Jew. So, if there was a spy dealing with the Germans, he was Jewish, as well as another Jewish spy providing his fellow Jews with information.

Now, it is said that Dreyfus was framed and wasn’t guilty. The big bad nasty Aryans convicted him falsely out of mere pique and he was later proven innocent. Over the years from his conviction to his second trial key evidence disappeared while key witnesses had died and money had changed hands. Therefore Dreyfus was released for lack of evidence not proven innocent besides which the Jews had gotten themselves into a hissy fit while alarming France and dividing the country along Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard lines. What other political choice did the authorities have?

Consider nearly every other European conviction of Jews along similar lines most notably the murder of children or the so-called ‘blood libel.’ According to the Jews each incident, and these occurred over centuries, was trumped up for bigoted reasons. Thus, the culprit is first convicted on what appears to be good evidence to a court of law. A few years go by, evidence disappears, witnesses die, money changes hands and then the case is reopened and the verdict is reversed.

Then it is said that the charge of child murder by Jews is absurd, there is nothing in the Jewish culture to indicate that they were even capable of such crimes. But, consider the Last Supper. All Jews agree that Jesus was Jewish although there are some Aryan diehards who insist he wasn’t and want to claim the creep. Nevertheless at the Last Supper the Jewish Jesus holds up the wafer and says this is my body; he holds up his wine and says this is my blood. Not only do we have the blood libel but we have cannibalism in a Jewish setting completely among Jews. According to the doctrine of transubstantiation a modern communicant is literally eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood. Now, if one mixes wine with the wafer one has the deed for which the Jews were accused. A child among both Semites and Aryans is an unpolluted innocent, of course.

The Bible has very strong injunctions enjoining Jews to abjure eating or drinking blood because according to their belief that is where life or the soul resides. So, on the one hand the Jewish ceremony of eating the child’s blood in the wafer mocks the Catholic ritual while eating the life of Christians by proxy of a pure innocent child. I don’t say the Jews actually did this, although they were convicted of the crime, however to say the charges are absurd on the face of it contradicts both facts and reason. I could provide more examples but one is as good as a hundred.

As in Jonathon Pollard’s case, as they can’t get the conviction overturned or set aside then humanity demands that he be released.

In Prague Eco exonerates the Jews on the count of the Protocols and also the Dreyfus Affair. According to Ilan this is not enough, he is still activating ancient hatreds. Whose ancient hatreds Ilan doesn’t say. One always suspects the charge is that of crying Wolf. There is no reason to not suspect ulterior motives. At the very least Eco is playing into their hands.

As I said before, these two historical events are so old hat that no one except interested parties are concerned or even know of the incidents; at this late date there is no one who remembers them personally, they have passed into the historical or racial memories.

So Eco’s work is merely an exercise in historical memory combined with the Jewish racial memory. We should always try to unravel the mysteries of the folks so that having an accurate historical memory from both sides we can demand in unison- Never Again! Not likely to happen but a good thought.

I had meant to conclude the review with this part but as it got more involved than I thought I will have to add a Part IV.

　

　

Part II: A Review: The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

A Review

The Prague Cemetery

by

Umberto Eco

Review by:

R.E. Prindle

Part II

Umberto Eco

Tracing The Racial Memory

For what is history but the attempt to remember or reconstruct the racial past and therefore one’s own pre-history. For as the ancients said: The unexamined life is not worth living. Where better to begin than with the origins of life.

The key fact of existence on earth is that the planet is a huge dynamo generating an electro-magnetic field. In other words the core of the planet is moving at a different rate of speed than the outer layers. There could be no life without this fact. The movement of the core also generates a combination of the elements hydrogen and oxygen we humans call water which is extruded to the surface creating the oceans.

Isaac Asimov describes the human body as big sack of water where H2O comprises very nearly the whole body. So, in contradiction to the ignorant Semitic model ‘dirt’ has no part in the composition of the body.

It is said that the early atmosphere was 100% hydrogen. Thus the extrusion of water and its evaporation must have freed oxygen atoms. As air is 21% oxygen, that fixes the origin of life at the time when oxygen displaced hydrogen in the atmosphere to the extent of 21% at which level it remains today. That also means that if the percentage varied by very much life as now constituted could not survive.

The World Island

All matter can be deconstructed into its constituent chemical atoms, primarily four gases. While hydrogen and oxygen are the bases of life forms, a dozen or so other trace elements are used in the amounts that were in the sea when life began. All were therefore dissolved in water. It therefore follows by a chain of those atoms proto-life was formed. As life is activated by electricity it follows that electricity was imparted from the electro-magnetic field, the sun or possibly activated by an electrical charge from lightning in conjunction with the electro-magnetic field.

The World Island In Motion

Thus life, a single cell, was formed in the ocean waters which as everyone knows is salty. Hence human are salty. From then in some mysterious process not yet discovered the single cell evolved into all the myriad forms of life that have been and are. At some point ocean forms evolved into land forms which became increasingly complex until one has the human form the most evolved and complex of all. Just because the process can’t be described in full as yet doesn’t mean that Evolution isn’t a reality.

The World Island, Pangaea, is said to have to have begun breaking up 250 million years ago. The planet is said to be about four billion years old so in all probability the land mass was not the same for that entire time period. Pangaea was an intermediate period. As the planet is essentially a top spinning freely in space all the rules of physics pertaining to tops apply.

Northern Hemisphere Today

If you have a water filled top with solid bits in it when you spin the top the solid bits will be drawn to the upper hemisphere. This is what happened to the land mass of the earth. The rotational stresses were such that the surface cracked into large plates that began drifting North. Hence today the land mass forms a circle around the North Pole. Above Russia and Siberia long transverse islands have pulled away from the main mass to gravitate further toward the Pole.

Africa occupies the central position of Pangaea so that as the continents moved they were essentially split off from Africa. Asia moved up and curved around the Pole. The Atlantic Rift separated North and South America moving them to the North and West. India split off moving East and North to collide with Asia forcing the great transverse mountain range of the Himalayas up. And of course Indonesia and Australia trailed out across the ocean to their current stations. Antarctica was drawn South to form that Pole.

As the parcels separated whatever life there was must have traveled on their respective parcels. Thus, even though it may be said the life began in Africa the various life forms must have evolved separately on their land masses.

There have been several mass extinctions not least of all that which occurred at the end of the last ice age when, for instance, many life forms including horses, mastodons, saber tooth tigers and possibly humans disappeared from the Americas. Huge death rate. The remains of least tens of thousands of mammoths were killed and in Siberia and the American North frozen quickly enough and permanently enough to preserve their flesh which was still edible, although gamey, when the bodies were unearthed in recent times.

As this disaster occurred as recently as probably ten thousand years ago it must have left a memory trace in the traditions of humans

We are told that Homo Sapiens came into existence about 150- 200 thousand years ago in Africa. This may possibly or probably be true but it cannot be stated positively. What can be known is that the earliest remains of Homo Sapiens have been found in Africa. At any rate at the beginning of the Age Of Leo dawned, Ages are how the ancients kept track of immense reaches of time, every part of the Earth bore some human population. These populations were in different evolutionary states. The least evolved human species was in Africa. The East of Asia was populated by Mongols who are evidently a sterile branch of the human species. Europe had a population but not a large one of Neanderthals and various human races while the population flooded out of the previously exposed Mediterranean Basin gathered around the shores of the sea, most notably at the effluence of the Nile.

Now, the ancestors of the Folk of which Eugene Sue speaks were centered somewhere in Central Asia probably around the Aral Sea. This was the great hive from which the Aryans were to spread across the World.

There are many, many legends of these distant times such as Atlantis, the land of Mu and Shambala., the last of which was located in Central Asia. These legends must have some basis in fact; the imagination of man is incapable of creating anything out of whole cloth; whatever man believes must have been suggested to it by actual circumstances.

While little is known of the actual origins of the Aryans that can be ascertained as fact is that beginning around the year 2000 BC the Aryans began to move out of their hive lands. We know that they moved West into the Middle East and South into India. There is no reason not to believe that bands or hordes didn’t also move East into China.

The first migrations into India and the West did so with a fully developed religious system or world view, a Weltanschauung. This means that the system and view were well developed in the Hivelands before the Aryans began their migrations. Thus the similarities between the Hindu religion and the Homeric religion were probably deviations from the old time Hive religion adapted to their specific new conditions.

It is possible that there was cross fertilization between India and Greece but since the entire North from Greece to Northern Europe to Iran/Persia and India were invaded and dominated by the Aryans I think it is just as likely that the core beliefs were common to all the Aryans shifting forms to adapt to religions established in the occupied areas.

Thus while I can offer no proof, I think it probable that Shambala did exist and that it was the Aryan home citadel. In legend Shambala was on an island in the middle of a lake in what is now the Gobi Desert. At the end of the ice age both the Caspian and Aral seas were much more extensive than they are while the Gobi may have been wet also. It seems more probable that a temple city may have been on an island of either of those two more expansive seas. Still the legend is the legend. Increasing desiccation would in any event have forced population dislocations in Central Asia. In any event about the year --2000 the Aryans began to move. However they were located, whether strung out from the Himalayas to the Caspian or whatever, one branch crossed the Hindu Kush down into India. Wherever the Aryans went they wrote these huge long Weltanschauungs, at least after writing reached them which they don’t seem to have had on their own.

Because the Indian books were written in Sanskrit and because Sanskrit was determined to be the most ancient Aryan language words common to the Aryan languages were said to be derived from Sanskrit. This needn’t be the case. I think it more likely that since all Aryans derive from the same stock the language was their common inheritance from the Hivelands. Thus while there may have been contacts between Greek and Indian the similarity more likely reflects the common religious heritage of both peoples. Thus, the Indian Aryans wrote their huge corpus while at about the same time the Greeks were composing their own version of the national epic in Greece and Troy.

Over the centuries the various hordes descended into Persia and Anatolia while when the Scyths appeared in Southern Russia they were then nomadic rather than settlers. Assuming that the Aryans of the Shambala period were sedentary it follows then that climatic conditions forced the Folk into a different economic niche. That the Scyths were of the same Aryan stock as the Greeks is evident from their metal working.

After the Scyths we have the Celtic migrations many of whom ended up at the End of the World in Ireland. Along the way they caused havoc in Anatolia where they were known as the Galatians, harassed the Greeks, gave the Romans the willies from their settlements on the Po and finally became the Gauls of what would become France then came the German tribes who would establish themselves in Northern Europe.

When the Aryans migrated into more populous areas they lost their identity. Probably mere hordes, those who reached China were completely absorbed just as later Jewish migrants to China being few in relation the Chinese were also absorbed. Depending on the size of the Indian contingent they were able to shape the mores of the India with its huge Black population but were absorbed racially. The caste system came into existence as a result of the Aryan’s desperate attempt to maintain racial purity.

Even in the Middle East the Aryan influence has been diluted and all but extinguished. The Aryans of Iran are now adherents to the alien Semitic religion of the Arabs.

Over several centuries the Aryan tribes were able to conquer the Romans but in the process destroyed the Roman Civilization bringing about the long social reorganization of society known as the Dark or Middle Ages. It is here in the German or Frankish conquest of France that Eugene Sue must begin his novel of The Mysteries Of The Folk.

It’s a pity the novel has never been translated into English because Sue must cover the whole of European history including the period of the Crusades. The Indian and Greek epics had long been written when the now European Aryans began the third great national epic, the story of Chivalry of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. This is one huge story. The Vulgate-Lancelot alone runs to several thousand pages with numerous very long branches.

Now, the roots of the Arthurian epic still date back to the Homeric epic while receiving input from myths and legends from the Aryan Hivelands. There is then continuity from the very beginning, so to speak.

The Arthurian epic is a curious European recreation of the Indian books and the Homeric cycle with a Semitic add layer of course. In addition to curious crises at the intra changeover of the Piscean Age. We are not talking of the personal astrology of the newspapers here. Astrology was once a serious part of astronomy. We are talking of the great Astrological religious system that began development eons ago. If you wish to believe Sumerian mythology or sources it has vague memories of tens of thousands of years previously. I have no reason to question the veracity of these Sumerian sages. An age, of course, is one twelfth segment of the Great Year of 25 thousand something years. Thus after the cycle of twelve ages Pisces will once again return. The symbol of Pisces is of two connected fish swimming in opposite directions, perhaps indicating Dionysian androgyny. Thus halfway through the age the archetype of the age changed from the male domination of Jesus to the female archetype of Mary in Southern Europe and Diana in Northern Europe. This actually happened.

In the South Mariolatry emerged while in the North Diana replaced Merlin in Pagan circles. According to the legend Vivian (Diana, Artemis) The Lady Of The Lake, charmed Merlin into revealing all his magic to her. Once she obtained it she threw a hex on Merlin entombing him either under a rock or in a tree. Thus Diana replaced Merlin as the pagan archetype of the Piscean Age. Artemis in Greek, Diana in Latin and Vivian with the Norse, the Virgin Huntress, Mistress Of the Animals and The Lady Of The Lake who abhorred the company of men, became Northern Europe’s ruling archetype or Anima while the Virgin Mother became that of the South.

Having eliminated Merlin, Vivian then kidnapped Lancelot as a boy (because she was the Virgin Huntress and couldn’t bear her own son) taking him to her enchanted palace beneath the lake where as the Alpha female she taught him to be a preeminent knight or the Alpha male in Arthur’s court. Arthur was a creature of Merlin but lost the use of the latter’s magic when he was entombed. Thus Arthur was unprotected against Vivian’s purloined magic.

As Lancelot was Vivian’s or Diana’s creature there had to be conflict between the two halves of the Piscean Age. That was naturally caused by a woman, Arthur’s flirtatious wife, Guinevere. As a result the golden age of the Round Table came to an end.

The Arthurians were acquainted with some Homeric traditions that I have not found in the mythological sources. Thus the Arthurian cycle was a continuation in the mold of the Homeric cycle. Vivian or Artemis in Greek, was traced back to the Greek Peloponnese or Lacedaemon. Lacedaemon means the Demon or Lady Of The Lake. So Diana, in Roman Myth or The Lady as she appears in Dumas’ Three Musketeers. But, I can’t find any extant record of the myth.

Arthur and his characteristics can be traced back into the Caspian and Aral Hivelands of the Aryans so that the three traditions come together in the Arthurian cycle of Europe. The cycle also combines Gallic legends of Britain bringing in that great Aryan race.

This is the rich stew then that Eugene Sue had to work with in his mysteries of the Folk. My ancestors and yours. The Arthurian cycle was active from c. 1060 to 1300. Malory is a late compilation. When the Crusades ended and the Templars were suppressed the period ended. Thus the second half of the millennium began.

We will skip the intervening history until the great European upheaval of the Enlightenment and French Revolution.

2.

The Jews In Europe

As Eco’s story is centered around the Jews concerning the Protocols of Zion and the Dreyfus case it will be necessary to say a few words concerning their history to set the stage.

I hope I have demonstrated the persistence of the racial memory in my brief tracing of the movements of the Aryans. Their motif is the scientific explanation of nature which they have pursued with varying success in all their movement from the Hivelands to India and Great Britain and from there to North America and Australia and New Zealand. The scientific goal has never been lost sight of.

There is no other people on Earth with a stronger racial memory and an inflexible but criminal will than the Jews while at the same time, like the Aryans, they have recorded their goals in print. They too persist doggedly in the attempt to realize their plan.

Briefly the place and time the tribe came into existence can be pinpointed if their writings are accurate. That place was Ur of the Chaldees and the time was the transition from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries c. 2000 BC. Their pedigree goes back no further than that. They are an artificial Semitic creation; they have no roots in antiquity.

Challenging the authority of the Chaldean astronomers the Jews were expelled from Ur for their impertinence. Thus they were born of disappointed expectations; their future was cast; they were doomed to disappointed expectations.

However they knew how to push their luck to the limit; call it chutzpah.

Skipping over two thousand years of conflict we find the Jews established throughout the Roman Empire challenging the Romans for supremacy. Defiant of Roman authority even in the capitol Rome, the Jews taxed their fellows sending the gold to Jerusalem which they established as their capitol contra Rome. Hence the famous Rome-Jerusalem dichotomy. While their prophet Jesus counseled them to cede temporal authority to Rome- render unto to Caesar that which is his and unto God his own- open rebellion began which was crushed, the people killed or dispersed, Jerusalem leveled with Jews being forbidden to set foot in the city again. An early version of the final solution.

Briefly, we next find the Jews in Spain. Here the Roman Catholic Church has established itself and for superstitious reasons granted the Jews an invaluable monopoly, that of loaning money at interest. A one of a kind gift. Wheedling their way into another monopoly, that of being royal tax farmers, they did indeed farm their Spanish cattle, not unlike the Greek and Italian situation today. This was an intolerable situation that took a long time to culminate but in 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain. This was a crushing blow for them.

Due to the Spanish expulsion and various other expulsions Jews migrated into the sparsely inhabited area of Eastern Poland which then included Byelorussia and the Ukraine, later to be called the Pale Of The Settlement.

Then, the worst catastrophe ever hit the tribe. The Northern Europeans began to assert their birthright of free inquiry while at the same time rejecting the Judaeo-Christian incubus. It was called the Enlightenment. Aryan scientific thought asserted itself against the Semitic stultification throwing the Semitic religions- Christianity, Judaism and Moslemism- into an atavistic status of a prior and lower intellectual state.

The Enlightenment would quickly result in the French Revolution which was to change the course of both Jewish and Aryan history. With the Revolution came the emancipation of the Jews. They were placed on an ‘equal’ footing with the Europeans. Emancipation was more quickly achieved in France while in Central Europe it moved in stages reaching fulfillment after the 1848 revolution.

It was then that Europeans became aware that equality was a one way street; it was not what the Jews were after. In the reaction about 1875 the German Wilhelm Mars invented the term anti-Semitism and the stage was set for the Protocols of Zion and the Dreyfus Affair.

In the wake of the Revolution Eco’s heroes Eugene Sue and Alexander Dumas were born whose novels filled Eco’s imagination and memories with their fantastic works.

We’ll move in that direction in Part III.

　

A Review: The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

A Review

 

The Prague Cemetery

by

 

Umberto Eco

 

Review by R.E. Prindle

 

Eco, Umberto: The Prague Cemetery, A Novel, 2010, Houghton Mifflin, NYC

Umberto Eco

 

Part I: Prologue

 

Little Bags Of Memory

 

In this novel Eco attacks the dark subconscious mind of nineteenth century Europe. It was the moment when Europeans discovered the difference between their conscious and subconscious minds. As a historical novel Eco mines his fifty thousand volume private library to construct his story. His sources range from Dumas and Eugene Sue at one end to George Du Maurier and J.K. Huysmans at the other. At this point in history, other than Dumas I presume the other authors are virtually unread if not unknown. Fortunately I have read most of Eco’s sources with my more modest five thousand volume library.

 

Eco seems to have a very fond spot in his heart for George Du Maurier and I found his treatment of the author most interesting.. Du Maurier was a long time contributor to the English humor magazine, Punch in both text and artworks through the heart of the nineteenth century. The illustrations Eco uses in his novel are very reminiscent in style to those of Du Maurier. Indeed, Du Maurier is very seductive both artistically and literarily. When he was turned down for the editorship of Punch he was crushed, turning away to write and illustrate his subtly fantastic three novels Peter Ibbetson, Trilby and The Martian, the last finished just before his death in 1896.



George Du Maurier

Like Eco Du Maurier lugged a lifetime of memories, literary and personal through his novels. I’m still working my way through his sources, or favorites at least. Du Maurier was a Bohemian artist in Paris at about the same time as Henri Murger who wrote his fabulous description of Bohemian life, The Bohemians Of The Latin Quarter that was turned into Puccini’s opera, La Boheme. DuMaurier found Murger’s description of Bohemian life repellent to his own sensibilities so he romanticized the nearly same story into the lovely fairy tale of his own version, Trilby. Trilby was a sensation of its time and remains a classic.

 

Eco has read and thoughtfully considered Du Maurier and while Du Maurier tended to romanticize painful or repellant memories into order to create a fairy tale existence for himself all that sunshine seems to cover a bitter undergrowth. Eco who astutely perceives this was led to parody him in Eco’s own fabulous first chapter of Prague that is a hilarious stand up comedy routine worthy of the mordant, sick humor of Lenny Bruce. Eco then makes his character Dr. Du Maurier the chief of an insane asylum parodying Du Maurier’s Peter Ibbetson while reversing the roles of Ibbetson and the Duchess of Towers in the character of Diana Vaughan. Very nice bit of inside humor on the part of Eco.

 

While I make it a rule to not recommend books, a rule I often violate, if you’re reading this I presume you’re simpatico. I heartily recommend any of these sources of Eco if you haven’t already read them.

 

Obviously Du Maurier’s novels holds a special place in Eco’s heart and a well merited place both in his and mine. However, Eco gives precedence to two of the greatest French novelists of the nineteenth century, Alexander Dumas and Eugene Sue. As it happens I revere both authors as much as Eco. Dumas’ most famous titles are still widely read while Sue’s much less so or, perhaps, not at all.

Eugene Sue

Eco mentions Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and The Count Of Monte Cristo and the French Revolution novels centered around the magician Cagliostro or by his other name, Joseph Balsamo. I first read The Three Musketeers as a youth while I have reread it again along with first time readings of Monte Cristo and the Cagliostro series within the last ten years.

 

What Eco is doing in the Prague Cemetery is writing his version of a Dumas novel. While a good novel Prague falls far short of Dumas. What Eco lacked that Dumas had was a collaborator of the quality of Auguste Maquet who researched and worked up the material in outline so that Dumas could concentrate on composing the dramatic touches of the story. This allowed Dumas a much wider scope and deeper detail that brought out the fabulous myth of Three Musketeers or the huge scope and depth of Monte Cristo and the Revolution novels.

 

I’ve read reviews of Prague where Cagliostro is apparently thought of as a Dumas creation. Oh no, Dumas could write historical novels to place alongside his role model, the great Walter Scott, or as a model here for Eco. While novels, Dumas’ Revolution stories are accurate as history. Cagliostro was a real person. Such a collaborator as Maquet might have given Eco room to expand his horizon and widen the scope of his novel to include for instance the rise of psychology and the discovery of the European unconscious while introducing some of the stage hypnotists and magicians such Robert Houdin, the model for the subsequent Houdini who used his name.

 

Eco’s novel is OK but he could have made it much better. The Simonini dual personality touch is a surface probe of the unconscious that had real potential perhaps bringing in the Society for Psychic Research but I think the execution of Simonini was weak and not properly developed. Still the character was a nice stab at Dumas and more especially the unbelievably fantastic Eugene Sue. What a madman. One could think him insane but I choose to believe he was touched by the divine afflatus. Sue, if mad, had the madness of the gods. If Dumas was more than human, Sue far exceeded Dumas. I have never read anything that comes near Sue’s The Wandering Jew or The Mysteries Of Paris, especially the latter which probes the outer limits of sanity.

 

The unfortunately named Wandering Jew will drive off most American readers who have been conditioned to avoid anything concerning Jews lest they be considered anti-Semitic. Although as Eco points out the hidden hand of the Jesuit priest Rodin that haunts the novel from beginning to end is one of the most terrifying apparitions in all literature and Sue was the master of terrifying images.

 

Both he and Dumas were obsessed shall we say by the historical memory. Eco himself is obsessed by memory as am I. I have that in common with these writers. I have explored my personal memories in several novels I have posted on the internet and most of my essays here on I, Dynamo are concerned with ordering the historical memory. Eco sought to recapture the memories of his youth in his previous novel The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana. Both Eco’s and my own efforts are much after the fashion of George Du Maurier. I would recommend Du Maurier highly except that it takes some dedication to understand the luxuriant beauty of his work; his three novels have to be read several times to acquire his intense longing to never lose his memories, taking them with into the Great Beyond. But, if you are of a like mind and feel up to it, have at it.

 

So, Dumas proposed to novelize the whole of French history, the racial memory, and had a magnificent go at it. The guy is really spectacular. Eco mentions also the last novel of Eugene Sue, The Mysteres Du Peuple which is has yet to be translated; as Eco says he labored through the French. Apparently Sue took the task he set for himself quite seriously as Eco says the story is quite complex and I imagine very long. Mysteries Of Paris itself is three volumes or about fifteen hundred pages.

 

The title translates as I see it, The Mysteries Of The Folk. As Eco says Sue begins his story with the Frankish invasions of the fourth to sixth centuries, then tells his story along two family lines one Frankish, one Gallic. This would be a prodigious feat of historical and racial memory, an explosion of Sue’s past educational imprinting in both society and school. This would be especially important to him as both he and Dumas were of the first post-Revolution generation of which they very likely heard many first hand reminiscences growing up while reading reams of memoirs. As the Revolution was primarily racial in character, Gauls versus Franks, this would give added poignancy to Sue’s search to retrieve the history of the two races.

 

So, what Eco seems to be doing in the Prague Cemetery is carrying the personal, racial and historical European memory forward from the work of Dumas and Sue. How well I think he did it will be in the concluding part of the review. First we have to take a huge memory detour in order to bring the historical and racial memories from the beginning back up to Dumas, Sue, and Eco and late nineteenth century history. When I say huge detour, let us begin our magical memory tour at the beginning, Pangaea.

The Incredible Dumas

 Note. I erred in saying Les Mysteres Du Peuple is untranslated.  Danieal De Leon translated the work at the turn of the twentieth century.

 

Part II will follow.