by Caleb Carr
obsese Gibbon writes, “Of this term the only immediately recognizable variation is, of course, obsessio, being an actual Latin term for a ‘siege.’ The adaptation of that term, however, to the meaning implied here—that is, the connection to a person who suffers from what the latest psychological writings of our own day would describe as (in words that reflect a Greek as well as a Latin etymology) an hysterical mania—is fascinating, and surely something we do not expect to find in a barbarian Germanic kingdom. And yet this is hardly the sole point at which we find discussions of either the primary (that is, the empirical) or the secondary (the theoretical) implications of such ideas, which have received a title for the collected activities they have inspired—psychology—some eight or nine hundred years after the period under consideration in this tale of Broken.” Gibbon does not indulge his frequent penchant for overstatement, here: like the earlier reference to Galen’s attempt to discover the medical meaning of dreams, this citation suggests a complexity of thought in Broken’s intellectual community—particularly before the death of the God-King Izairn—that was unique, and, obviously, far ahead of its time. —C.C.
“Plumpskeles” Gibbon writes, “This is, according to my translator, a man of broad experience, simply a more colorful word for ‘latrines.’ ” We can only suppose that Gibbon knew the effect that the apparently literal translation of the word would have on the somewhat staid Burke: for Plumpskeles is another transitional word between Old High and modern German, the latter possessing Plumpsklos, or, quite literally, “shitholes,” as in holes cut for toilets, which for some reason were/are apparently referred to in pairs; hence the plural used by Isadora, as we have seen four latrine holes in the yard behind Berthe’s house. —C.C.
“Kriksex” Gibbon writes, “Here is a name that must have been utterly idiosyncratic, even within the Broken dialect. Although it exhibits pieces and aspects of elements common to both various forms of German as well as Gothic, we can make no sense of it, given the present scholarship—a fact which I note only because it seems, somehow, fitting.” As, indeed, it does, given the character’s nature and role; and modern scholarship hasn’t helped us very much more, if at all more, than did that of Gibbon’s era. —C.C.
“Gerfrehd” The name of this sentek of the regular army evidently was judged unworthy of Gibbon’s time to explain, perhaps because it is one of those compound Germanic names that often seem oxymoronic: it is almost certainly the Broken dialectal version of Gerfried, often translated as “spear of peace.” But it becomes more comprehensible when we consider that its original meaning is probably more general, a “guardian of peace.” (And given our general ignorance of the Broken dialect, we may never know what this version means, precisely—but if it were “guardian of peace,” it would be a uniquely suitable name for a man whose role seems ultimately to have become the patrolling of what would prove the key section of the city walls.) —C.C.
PART THREE
M. Rousseau Burke speaks of one of the most famous philosophers of the time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for whom he had little but contempt. Burke thought Rousseau’s theories on Romanticism and introspection to be nothing more than vanity and self-promotion, and his theories on society to be dangerously destabilizing. But Burke’s vindictiveness toward Rousseau, whom he never met, was extreme and admittedly ad hominem, much of the time, although, to be fair, Rousseau drew sharp attacks from far more liberal corners than Burke’s: the fledgling feminist movement, for instance, led by such pioneers as Mary Wollstonecraft, could not forgive Rousseau’s relegation of women to a completely domestic role in his description of the ideal society. —C.C.
the time at which he composed the thing Burke did not necessarily believe that the confusion over the time at which the narrator composed his tale, which Gibbon considered a literary device of some kind, was necessarily anything of the like: he was bothered by the fact that, while it might have been an important personage looking back, it might also have been one looking forward, not, as Gibbon says, with prophetic pretensions, but with the gift of prophecy—and he makes it clear that his candidate for who this latter person would most likely have been was Oxmontrot, whom Burke would have found (unlike, say, the soldiers of Broken) genuinely mad. All this accounts not only for Gibbon’s aforementioned “temporal ambiguity,” but for the sense of responsibility that the narrator feels early on: for the future rulers of the state were his descendants, and the city’s important ministers, such as Lord Baster-kin, their choices. —C.C.
Competing Religions, … strict and sometimes Cruel Fathers, and … perverse hedonism Burke strikes with intent, here, for these were three of the most tender subjects in Gibbon’s life, the first and second having to do with his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism and back again, the last due to his father’s threat to disinherit him. But formal, popular religion in general held no interest for him, and his attraction to “perverse hedonism” was caused in part by this fact, and in part by the solitary life inflicted on him by his hydrocele testis, or badly enlarged testicle, which became so embarrassing that he endured three cruelly ineffective surgeries to try to correct it, eventually being killed by the last surgeon’s infecting him with peritonitis: it is not difficult to see, in all of this (just as Burke says) the origins of Gibbon’s reasons for being so compulsively attracted to the “legend” of Broken. —C.C.
squirrels, and tree kittens The word “squirrel” descends from the Greek and Roman through an identifiable sequence of Romance languages, as well as through early Germanic and Norse terms, and was likely used as a familiar and convenient term by the Manuscript’s translator, the modern German term being Eichkzche, or “tree kitten” (really “oak kitten,” so named because of the well-known proclivity of squirrels for acorns). The remaining question becomes why did the translator use the phrase “squirrels and tree kittens” [my emphasis]? Was there a distinction that the Bane drew, perhaps between two different species of squirrel? Or did another creature exist at the time, one that has since disappeared, a loss far more tragic than that of a dead word? Such are the types of questions raised by the disappearance of words and languages: questions that can, unfortunately, never be answered. —C.C.
tufts of feathers It is one of the enduring mysteries of zoology that we still do not know why some species of owl have this feature. It seems definite that it is a defensive ruse of some kind, as the tufts become heightened and more pronounced at moments of challenge and danger; but whether they are intended to make the owl appear more “mammalian” to other predators, or whether they are intended as camouflage, designed to allow the owl to blend into tree trunks and limbs more effectively, is an ongoing debate. —C.C.
Muspelheim A seemingly offhand phrase that in fact references an important element of Ancient German and Norse mythology. In the Dark Ages and before, many ores, such as iron, were often taken from sites where they could be easily harvested, such as bogs, marshes, and moss fields, and then worked in the kind of deep hill (or pfell) that served in many parts of the world as primitive smithies. So deep an impression did this practice make on the Germanic and Scandinavian tribes that it became enshrined in their mutual mythologies, and in one of the earliest Old High German epics, “Muspilli” (a title that may or may not be etymologically related, but is certainly thematically connected, to the fiery pagan realm of Muspelheim, or Muspell); and, even though the poem attempts to Christianize many elements of the legend—perhaps becoming another of the nexus points between Christianity and the pagan world of the Germanic-Norse gods—a vivid portrait is painted of this cataclysmic inferno, which in pagan lore was the first of the nine worlds that existed under the world ash Yggdrasill. Out of the sparks of Muspell the stars were formed, and out of it, too, at the time of the Armageddon-like Ragnarok, the three sons of Muspell would ride, their way led by the fiery giant, Surt, who (according to which source one consults) is accompanied by a wolf who will swallow the sun. The Sons of Muspell shatter the great rainbow bridge to Asgard and ma
ke all earthly creatures and creations fragile or doom them altogether. The Bane, believing in the old faith, apparently also gave credence to some version of this tale; and their fear at what Caliphestros was creating seemed to clash with their excitement at the power they knew his work would give them, creating a state of general tension that was rooted in their childhoods. This anxious state of affairs apparently motivated Keera to find out all she could about the old man’s motivations, and could not have been helped by the constant presence of Stasi near the openings of the various mines: was she, rather than a wolf, the giant animal that would swallow the sun? —C.C.
near-miraculous grade of steel What is given here is a very shortened account of the transformation of coal into coke, a fuel which, upon incineration, produces greatly increased temperatures in furnaces. Caliphestros would have learned his criteria for determining which coal would best suit for “coking,” once again, during his travels to the East on the Silk Path, as the process was used by the Chinese at least as early as the ninth century: but it may well have been another technological innovation that, while somewhat automatically credited to the Chinese empire, actually came out of domains in and near India even earlier. Certainly, Caliphestros’s knowledge of it would suggest so. —C.C.
the most fiery of the Nine Homeworlds Another reference to Muspelheim, the most and by some accounts the only fiery underworld beneath the world ash tree, Yggdrasill, and the place from which the cataclysmic fires that both began the universe and would initiate its end, or Ragnarok, were generally expected to originate. —C.C.
other elements might be The Bane smiths were not (entirely) exercising their imaginations, as trace amounts of other ores and elements did indeed make their way into the steel, affecting both the strength and the color of each batch. These could have included ingredients as varied as nickel, zinc, hematite, and, later, vanadium (another argument for the later composition of the Manuscript, as vanadium was used, informally, at the end of the periods under discussion, although only formally recognized in the West much later). When heated and worked, these ingredients could produce remarkable bands of color ranging from grey to red to brown to yellow, appearances that increased the reputation of the metal as some sort of “super” or “unnatural” steel. —C.C.
the realms of the East This statement cannot help but bring to mind that supreme example of laminated, layered steel: Japanese samurai swords. Such swords were also, because of their combination of strength and sharpness, considered to have otherworldly powers: Westerners who encountered them said that they were nothing short of miraculous. It was said that there was one sword made that contained four million laminations (folding and refolding): and these are not thick blades. Whether or not this is true, the fact is that these swords could inflict devastating damage on all Western weapons, even rifle and small gun barrels. —C.C.
“the dance of mating” This is not poetic excess: among many species of bear, apparently including the Broken brown, the motions and noises that the male makes on encountering the female’s deliberately distributed scent is known as a “dance.” Keera’s reference to the area covered by that female scent as being too limited is also correct, as such females will spread their scent in as wide a range as possible to attract a mate. The only real question, soon to be hinted at, if not answered, is why this second fact should have been the case. —C.C.
primeval In this case, we find an anachronistic term that helps us confirm the time of the translation of the Manuscript, rather than contradict it: contrary, once again, to common belief, “primeval” was a late-Enlightenment—early-Romantic notion, not a medieval one—a supposed rediscovery of how ancient forests were viewed in the Dark and early Middle Ages that had little to do with facts, and was only popularized because of the rise of industrialized society and man’s ability to control and indeed destroy such places, and therefore feel safe from their threats. Like the tired notion of the “noble savage,” whose nobility was attained only when he had been for the most part subdued, the primeval forest did not account for the absolute terror with which most people at the time of such legends as that of Broken viewed the wilderness: as, to repeat the earlier discussion of Davon Wood (note for p. 6), a source of terror and death, not Romance and a reconnection to an earlier and more fundamental way of life that would prove somehow cleansing to the spirit. —C.C.
“knucklebones” Tacitus wrote of the German tribes’ passion for gaming—particularly, again, knucklebones (usually made of ordinary sheep and goat knuckles) and dice, during games of which young men would routinely bet their own freedom, if bereft of funds, and submit dutifully to enslavement if the result went against them. Indeed, said Tacitus, in The Germania and elsewhere, “What is marvelous [is that] playing at dice is one of their most serious employments, and even sober, they are gamesters.” As to losing their freedom, “Such is their perseverance in an evil course: they themselves call it honor.” Thus, gambling of all kinds was indeed a powerful part of the culture of the people of Broken, and of most of the tribes around them. —C.C.
Linnet Crupp A name of which Gibbon would not have taken any note, but which, today, stands out for its similarity to that of the Krupp “dynasty,” Germany’s greatest steel and armaments manufacturers, who first came to prominence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and who were in fact based in the city of Essen, which was and is indeed “an ancient city to the west of” Broken. Was this Crupp a self-imposed exile from that clan, and has the spelling merely been changed by the Broken dialect, or were the two unrelated? The fact that both were concerned with the artillery of their respective periods is intriguing, but not conclusive, as the Krupp fortune relied on iron as much as armaments production. —C.C.
onset of a rain The connection between chronic pain syndromes (such as those suffered by people who have sustained wounds or broken bones) and the approach of rain has long since been established as more than an old wives’ tale, or a collection of purely anecdotal experiences. The precise mechanism of the relationship is not yet understood in its details, but is believed to lie in the fact that drops in barometric pressure affect the balance of cerebrospinal fluid, changes which in turn immediately reach any abnormalities in the peripheral nervous system. Again, this was an area in which Galen the Greek and those who followed him could have done much good, had they not been driven into hiding, and their reliance on autopsies forbidden, by the major monotheistic faiths. —C.C.
Bal-deric Gibbon writes, “An intriguing name, another of those that must have come down from one of two directions, yet we cannot say which direction is the more likely: it could be a variation on the Norse Balder, the name of Odin’s most handsome and virtuous son, whose death, in that same set of myths, brings about the onset of Ragnarok; but it may also be the Broken version of the Germanic Derek, itself a variation of the Ostrogothic Theodoric.” The addition of an extra syllable in both cases remains unexplained; but the combination of the two may be a further signal of the Broken dialect’s serving as a melting pot of regional languages. —C.C.
steel wheels and wires Anecdotal accounts of prosthetic limbs have endured since ancient times, although it is not until the late-medieval—early-modern period that scientists began collecting actual examples—perhaps because, before then, they were not considered religiously acceptable and were, like most other scientific advances, destroyed; or, the earlier accounts may in fact be mythological. Certainly, this would not be the only area, as we have seen, in which individual scientists and inventors from Broken anticipated what most would consider a future development. —C.C.
Weltherr Gibbon writes, “There is at least no great mystery associated with this name: Weltherr must have been the Broken cognate of the ancient Germanic Waldhar, which has come down to us in the fairly common form of Walther (or our own Walter), whose constituent parts translate roughly to ‘master of the army’: evidently, this fellow’s parents had something more ambitious in mind when they named him than the composi
tion of military maps, despite the verity, proved century after century, that the army possessed of the better maps—both of locations and topography—enjoys a distinct advantage.”
3:{xi:} For this final chapter of the Manuscript, we find yet another of the, for Gibbon as for, perhaps, many modern readers, maddeningly inconsistent styles of organization. Gibbon’s passion for uniform organization is well known: but it does willfully ignore the varied styles of most legends, sagas, eddas, etc., of the period, which often do not represent anything more than the manner in which these tales were told and retold (often by different authors, although not, it seems, in this case) down through the ages; and while the Broken Manuscript may be confusing, in this sense, it is entirely historically consistent. —C.C.
that same misty halo … until the end of time Gibbon notes that, in his day, “this is indeed the case, much of the time, on the mountain called Brocken, although whether the ‘ring’ first formed during this march that saw an alliance between the Talons and the Bane is impossible, of course, to say.” We could as easily make the same remark today; however, in more contemporary times (even during Gibbon’s, although he does not mention it) this mist would add to the sinister reputation of the mountain, rather than connoting some divine blessing, as the narrator seems to imply. —C.C.
allied This is another of those words that might sound anachronistic to many ears, because of its heavy association with the Second World War; but in fact, it comes to us from early medieval times, from Middle English, and its component parts stretch back farther than that. And certainly, the notion of allies and “allied forces” was known to the most ancient world, one of the first and most famous such having been the thousand Greek ships that sailed on fabled Troy. —C.C.