On beaches in Sweden and Italy, I have occasionally seen bathers tattooed with the Latin words Carpe Diem. In most souvenir shops here in Italy you may purchase the phrase as a refrigerator magnet, or engraved on small marble slabs. When our beautiful friend Ann-Kristin lay dying of cancer, which devastated her day by day, she kept the words on the wall of her sick room. What moved us deeply was how Ann-Kristin to her last breath tried to take advantage of every day. Seldom have I met such a strong person.

Just back in our Roman home I have in vain searched for an adequate translation of the Roman poet Horace's poem to the unknown Leuconoe, found in his first book of Odes, published 23 BC. The intent below is a clumsy version based on the Latin, without rhythm and poetic metre. My Latin teacher, Bengt Hemberg, who was captain in the cavalry reserve, was as old as I am now when he tried to teach me Latin. Then I considered him to be a very old and extremely knowledgeable man. Hemberg thought my attempts to translate Horace were "inept and even pathetic", he was certainly right:

Do not ask me, Leuconoe, neither you nor I,

and certainly not any Babylonian horoscope,

know the destiny chosen for us by the gods.

Better to accept whatever we encounter,

whether more winters are awaiting, or if this one will be our last,

which Jupiter now brings forth from the Tyrrhenian Sea,

weary from its constant struggle with rocky shores.

Let us quietly strain our wine, let it mature and drink it.

Life is short and vanishes as we speak.

Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero,

seize the day, do not put much faith in tomorrow.

A few days may contain a wealth of impressions and contribute to a change of your mind and ideas. By writing down what happened during the last days is for me a way a of taking care of a gift and express my gratitude. In Italy, and probably in any other place on earth, every day might contain unexpected gifts. Like when Rose  as a birthday present gave me two days with her and our youngest daughter in a hotel by the beaches in Anzio, an hour drive from Rome.

At time of sun and rest after stress and worries, in a place where on the 22^nd of January 1944 five cruisers, twentyfour destroyers, four huge cargo ships (Liberty ships) and 180 landing crafts brought  40,000 Englishmen, Scots, Canadians and Americans ashore, as well as more than 5000 vehicles. The landing was a success. The Germans were completely taken by surprise and only thirteen men from the allied forces were killed. However, everything got far worse. To begin with, the allied forces were unable to break through the German-Italian defence lines. The Germans retreated first after 136 days of hard fighting, then 7000 young men from the Allied forces had been killed in action and 5000 from the German and Italian fascist troops. 36,000 of the allied soldiers had been wounded, many with life-long injuries, several had “disappeared” and since their remains could not be identified they were not included among the killed. 30,500 of their opponents had suffered the same fate, being wounded or “vanished”. Time on earth had been short for the deceased, the majority of them were eighteen years old when they died. 

Lloyd Clark, who wrote a book about the battle concluded:

The Battle of Anzio had been nightmarish. In its pure awfulness it stands comparison with any other battle of the Italian Campaign, or the Second World War for that matter. […] It was a battle fought with the ferocity of an encounter that neither side could afford to lose.

When I several years ago, together with one of my brothers-in-law visited one of the war cemeteries in Anzio, one where 1056 white stones marked a grave, he pointed out that the 40 ovens in Auschwitz handled 4,400 cadavers per day. Human behaviour is incomprehensible. Why all this wanton killing? What do numbers really say? I have seen war cemeteries in Normandy, Vietnam and Verdun, there are none in Auschwitz, only a “pond of ashes”.

Those are my thoughts right now, in Anzio it was rest and joy for having a family, a feeling that was prolonged through my daughter Esmeralda´s gift - a trip to her boyfriend's family in a village called Piminoro, in the interior of Aspromonte, Calabria's legendary mountain range. A timeless landscape I remember after I many years ago had read Corrado Alvaro´s novel Revolt in Aspromonte:

For centuries, the village had lain hidden in the valley, oblivious of the passage of time. All around, each a few kilometres away, were the other villages, perched on the steep slopes. They merged with the rock where they lay, they had the same structure, the same colour, as the butterfly becomes one with the flower on which it sways.

Corrado Alvaro´s harsh, inhospitable landscape is evident on the side of the Aspromonte where steep, scorched slopes lean towards the Ionian Sea, indicating:

a life that you have to be a part of, to understand - to love it you have had to be born there, shrouded as it is by rocks and thorns.

Piminoro lays on the mountain range´s lush side, the western slope that embedded in greenery, through which streams with fresh, drinkable water are purling. Vincenzo´s big family received me with open arms and a variety of food home grown in garden plots in and around their village; wine and olive oil that had matured on their slopes and pressed by friends and neighbours; sausage, cheese and ham stored, seasoned and cooked in their kitchen.

Every evening I and Esmeralda were treated to a feast, and on the second day we shared a sumptuous meal with parents, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, grandparents and their grandchildren, by a long table set in a meadow between the beech trees high above their village, close to a babbling brook and garden plots.

The houses in Piminoro are not like the dilapidated shacks with mud walls which I later saw in several of the poor, semi-abandoned villages on the other side of the mountains. They were sturdy houses made of stone and concrete, unfortunately most of them unpainted, with modern bathrooms and large kitchens. From the terraces you look out over hillsides and vast fields opening up to the distant Tyrrhenian Sea. Over us fluttered swallows and it smelled of rosemary, basil and mint. Everything was clean and swept, the villagers friendly and generous.

Calabria is ancient country, like everything else in Italy characterized by human presence. On the Ionian side of the massif there are villages where some older residents still talk Griko, Greek. Specifically 2000 people living in nine villages. Calabria had, despite periods when it was conquered by Romans, Arabs and Normans, since 800 BC been recognized as part of Magna Grecia, the Greater Greece, but with an increasingly influential papal state and a Spanish-Italian central power based in Naples, Greek disappeared as the dominant language from most places in Calabria, with the exception of some small isolated villages high up in the mountains.

We visited the town of Bova, which rises on both sides of a tall, oddly shaped rock. The paved, clean swept alleys are similar to those you may find in towns of the Greek islands. Streets and alley names are written in both Latin and Greek alphabet. From the base of the  cross that crowns the cliff high above the village we could look out over the distant, sapphire blue Ionian Sea.

Southern Calabria is mostly mountains and sea. They are always present and below the joviality and generosity of its people and varied landscapes I occasionally imagined a somewhat frightening presence. In the hills above Piminoro there is by a crossroad a high, wooden crucifix with a black painted Christ. It is erected to mark the place where the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, after ransom had been paid for kidnapped victims, who had not been dissolved in acid or drowned, were returned to their loved ones. Not far from the crucifix are the ruins of a house where Esmeralda´s boyfriend's grandfather was born by the beginning of the last century.

To my surprise, people talked openly and generally condemningly about the 'Ndrangheta, although this does not mean that the criminal organization has discontinued its lucrative racketeering, corruption of politicians, trading hard drugs and illegal garbage disposal, but it seems that 'Ndrangheta influence differs from village to village, and it appeared to be non-existent among Piminoro´s open, generous and exceptionally friendly inhabitants.

The idea of ​​Calabria's landscapes had been poisoned came to me when we were on the first day bathed in the crystal clear water in front of the beach at the town of Scilla. A place I have dreamed of ever since Grandpa read the Odyssey for me.

Circe - enchantress, and daughter of the sun god, who after having turned Odysseus' crew into pigs, became so enchanted by their leader that she once again turned them into men and even came to appreciate them. After returning to Circe´s island from a perilous journey through the Underworld the goddess came down to the Greek ships to greet their crew and warn about the perils awaiting them:

She hurried toward us, decked in rich regalia, handmaids following close with trays of bread and meats galore and glinting ruddy wine.

The men gathered around the beautiful but treacherous, goddess and while they enjoyed the wine and food they listened by their fires to Circe´s tales about monsters and hazards along the Mediterranean coasts. After having escaped the singing, but man-eating sirens, they would have to sail underneath an enormous crag that “thrusts into the vaulting sky its jagged peak, hooded round with a dark cloud that never leaves”. In its interior, within a "fog-bound cavern, facing west toward Erebus, realm of death and darkness" lived the terrible Scylla, before Odysseus and his men were confronted with her they could hear the monster´s pitiful whimpering:

… yelping horror, yelping, no louder than any suckling pup, but she´s a grisly monster, I assure you. No one could look on her with any joy, not even a god who meets her face-to-face … She has twelve legs, all writhing, dangling down and six long swaying necks, a hideous head on each, each head barbed with a triple row of fangs, thickset, packed tight – and armed to the hilt with black death. Holed up in the cavern´s bowels from her waist down, she shoots out her heads, out of that terrifying pit, angling right from her nest, wildly sweeping the reefs for dolphins, dogfish or any bigger quarry she can drag [out of the sea].

Not only marine animals were devoured by Scylla. No ship could pass within her reach without her snatching up “a man from the dark-prowed craft and whisk him off.” When Odysseus´ men rowed his vessel through the dark and disturbed water beneath Scylla´s cave, she snatched six of his “toughest, strongest” companions

Glancing backward over the decks, searching for my crew  I could see their hands and feet already hoisted, flailing, high, higher, over my head, look – wailing down at me, comrades riven in agony shrieking out my name for one last time!

The high cliff of Scilla is no longer as smooth and inaccessible as Homer depicted it, now it is crowned by a castle built, torn down and reconstructed since time immemorial. The Roman-Greek writer Strabo (64-24 BC) mentions in one of his seventeen books about Mediterranean settlements that Scilla even before 500 BC was the haunt of pirates, since then the cliff´s constantly changing rulers - sometimes Greeks, sometimes Romans, Byzantine soldiers, Normans, Spaniards, or Barbary corsairs. Residents were known to be untrustworthy and rebellious, in 73 BC they chose to support of Spartacus's fight against the Romans.

Perhaps the legend of Scylla finds its origin in a cave, now hidden by a gallery built for motor traffic, from which a crescent of sand, with depth and size perfect for the anchorage of ancient ships, could be mastered. It was probably from this beach that pirates' vessels with great speed shot out like Scylla´s rapacious heads, snatching wealth and slaves from passing merchant ships.

As in real life, myths and legends have a life of their own. They tell about people, gods, animals and monsters whose origin, age and appearance vary depending on the narrator's skill, origin and purpose. They all agree that Scylla once was human, but the notion about of ​​how and why she was turned into a monster differ.

The most dramatic and poignant description of Scylla´s tragic fate was provided by Ovid (43 BC - 18 AD). In his Metamorphoses this adroit poet tells us that Scylla once was a beautiful maiden tormented by the woeers who assailed her with persistent entreaties for intimacy and weddings. To avoid all these eager males Scylla sought refuge in an isolated bay, where discrete water nymphs became her friends, foremost among them Galatea, an unfortunate naiad who told Scylla how an  obsessed admirer had ruined her life. The brutal, one-eyed giant Polyphemus, maddened by jealousy had thrown a rock at Galatea´s lover, Acis, and then cut him to pieces.

However, the admirer who caused Scylla´s terrifying fate was no brutal, one-eyed, hairy giant, but a handsome, cheerful fisherman named Glaucus, though at the time he fell in love with Scylla Glaucus was no longer a human being, but a triton with fish tail. Ovid lets Glaucus tell us how it all happened:

I was once mortal, but even then I was destined for life in the depths of the sea and passed my days in the joys of the ocean, drawing the nets which were drawing the fish or busily plying my rod as I sat on the rocks.

Even as a young human Glaucus was coveted by the beautiful sea nymphs and he felt more attracted to the sea than land. After a day of fishing he once ended up at a beach where lush, soft grass grew right down to the edge of the water. Glaucus placed his abundant catch directly on the grass, fascinated by the contrast of the fish´s glittering colours against the emerald freshness of the grass he suddenly noticed how the fish began to quiver and jump, finally, they had all made it back into the sea:

I was dumbfounded and long perplexed as I searched for a cause: “Had a god produced this effect, or was it some juice in the grass? No grass in the world has a power like this!" I said to myself, as I causally plucked a couple of blades and started to chew them. I´d barely swallowed the unfamiliar juices down, when I suddenly felt a powerful flutter inside my heart and with an overwhelming to belong to the sea.

Glaucus dived into the water and found that he could tumble around in the depths without having to catch air, he had never been so free and happy:

The sea-gods received me and judged me worthy of joining their number. Ocean and Tethys were asked to purge me of all my mortal features, and quickly they both took charge of my ritual cleansing. After they´d chanted a spell nine times for my purification, I next was told to immerse myself in a hundred streams. At once the rivers discharged their waters from every direction and swirled in a deluge over my head.

Glaucus fainted, when he returned to his senses, his body had been transformed; his hair had turned green, his skin become blue, his chest and arms even more muscular than before, while the lower part of his body had been transformed into the tail and fins of a heavy, silvery fish.

The miraculously transformed fisherman was overjoyed. Glaucus had found his true nature and tumbled around in the element he always had wanted to be a part of, until fate one day hit him with a devastating force.

Picture a little pool, with its margin curved like a bow, where Scylla delighted to rest. It was there she would find a retreat from the fury of the seas and the sky when the noonday sunbeams were burning most fiercely and the shadows were shortest.

Like a seal Glaucus rose his head out of the water and became irretrievably imprisoned by the young woman's dazzling beauty. Quickly he swam toward land and pleadingly called out to Scylla, maybe as in the scene below, though the baroque artist has here turned Ovid´s handsome young man into a pleading, ridiculous old man.

Horrified Scylla stared at Glaucus´ blue-green body, his glittering, smoot fish tail and his green hair that covered his back and shoulders. Glaucus was for sure a handsome creature, but was he a god or a monster? The sea creature tried in vain to calm Scylla:

“Fair maiden” he said “I am not some monster or dangerous beast. My sway in the ocean is no less mighty than what Próteus or Triton wields ...”

Scylla, who had listened to Galatea´s sad story about how a love crazed monster had ruined her life, asked Glaucus to leave her alone and ran further inland. Scylla's dismissive attitude shocked Glaucus. How could a mere mortal maiden put off a handsome creature like him? A an attractive , strong man who was coveted by every sea nymph.

Angry and heartbroken Glaucus swam across the seas towards Circe´s island. When he arrived at her palace he pleaded: "No one knows the power of herbs and grasses better than I, for my transformation was due to their magic," that was the reason to why he had turned to Circe, among all deities she was the one who was most knowledgeable about witchcraft and magic potions. He asked the goddess if she could produce a concoction making Scylla desiring him. Glaucus did not know that after Helios, the Sun, had revealed Mars´ and Venus´ love affair for all to see, the love goddess had put a curse on Helios´ offspring – Circe would be doomed to fall in love with every handsome man she met – this was the reason to why she turned the males she encountered into animals. However, Glaucus was no longer an ordinary man and Circe had thus no power over him:

Look into my eyes, I may be a goddess, a daughter born to the gleaming Sun; the power of my spells and my herbs may be great, but I pray that I may be yours.

As a matter of fact, the drugs and spells of Circe could not affect a god like Glaucos. He had to be attracted to Circe out of his own free will and Circe wad forced to persuade him to love her through words alone: “Reject the one who rejects you, respond to her who pursues you.”  However, Circe´s boundless passion frightened Glaucus and he assured her:

While Scylla is living, my love for her will not alter, till foliage grows in the ocean and seaweed sprouts on the peaks of the mountains!

Circe became bitterly disappointed and decided to let her frustration smite Scylla, whose human beauty had been preferred to that of a goddess like her. The daughter of the Sun mixed together herbs and poisonous juices into a hideous brew. Dressed in a "sea-blue cloak" she walked dry-shod across "the seething waves of a stormy sea", until she arrived at Scylla´s secluded beach, placed herself on the water surface and emptied her poison bowl, fouling the water

with monster-producing poison, by sprinkling the juice from baleful roots as she darkly muttered her magic spell thrice nine times over in mazy, mysterious language.

When the merciless heat of noon scorched the earth, Scylla came and waded into the sea, though when the water reached her waist she was startled by a sudden, agonizing pain in her legs and found herself surrounded by menacing, yapping beasts.

At first she did not realize that the hell hounds actually were a part of her, but violently threw herself back and forth, only to find that when she in inexpressible fear tried to protect herself against the squealing monsters they followed her around where ever she went, howling and stabbing after her while she seemed to drag them behind herself. She brought her hands down to her waist, trying to feel her legs, but all she encountered was the ferocious pack of hell hounds with their drooling jaws.

The hounds had become an outgrowth of herself and resentfully she was forced to accept her sad fate, in vain she tried to kill herself. It was impossible, she had become immortal and to calm the monster dogs she had to feed them with the seals, dolphins and even humans. In the beginning it tormented her, but over time she became cold and in the end fury over her undeserved fate made her just as ferocious and voracious as the animal part of her.

Scylla is described in a variety of ways, sometimes she is provided with the six heads as described by Homer, but just as often as Ovid´s beautiful maiden with her lower body disfigured by a monstrous horde of ferocious wolf dogs, which callously tear their prey to pieces. As represented by the fragmentary sculpture salvaged from the sea by our favourite bathing beach in Sperlonga. From a distance the marble group exhibited in Sperlonga´s museum resembles a scrap sculpture, but if you approach it you will soon discern how desperate men desperately wriggle while hell dogs devour them and the handsome Scylla rises above them.

Myths are believed to be immortal and they thus reflect our current existence. Maybe Scylla´s tragic fate might be compared to the ruthless 'Ndrangetha, which true to its insatiable, murderous greed is dumping lethal chemical - and nuclear waste along the Italian coasts and thus threaten our entire, fragile ecological system, or entire human existence. Like the beautiful, innocent Scylla and cCalabrese are forced to live connected with these ruthless, Mafia monsters, despised and feared by almost everyone.

However, the Calabrian sea conceals more than misery. Still you may like Glaucos swim around in crystal clear waters, there are for example the beach at Capo Bruzzano, where we swam among rock formations that easily can be taken for fossilized monsters and gods. Not far away from Capo Bruzzono were in 1972 two more than man-high, intact bronze sculptures of Greek athletic soldiers salvaged from the sea.

They are now placed in splendid isolation in a whitewashed hall in the museum of Reggio, where we saw them the day before we went swimming by the beaches of the Ionian Sea. The fact that they are standing side by side, in the same position, reinforces the impression they give. One of them has a youthful, muscular body, flowing and curly hair and beard, and an athlete's diadem on his forehead, while the other has an equally athletic body, but by him the strong musculature is more lax and his posture more dejected than by his younger companion. Instead of a diadem he wears a helmet and the defiant attitude of the younger man is by the older man replaced by what seems to be tired resignation, reinforced by the fact that he is missing an eye.

A comprehensive, "scientifically conducted and analysed" survey concerning the impressions of museum visitors found that an overwhelming part of the ladies found that the younger man was "sexually attractive", while most of the men "identified themselves" with the elderly soldier.

In several places in Calabria I imagined I had found a mysterious link between nature and human life. On winding roads, which periodically were littered with fallen stones and an occasional large boulder, Vincenzo drove us into the heart of the Aspromonte. On the slopes above the deserted village of Roghudi he showed us several rock formations rising above the arid landscape and its thorny bushes. Among others, a "dragon head", creating associations to both aliens from outer space and Cycladic idols, they directed their gaze towards villages that laid abandoned by either mass emigration or due to impending natural disasters.

On zigzagging, increasingly unsafe mountain roads we ended up in Roghudi, clinging to a ledge between two riverbeds, which were now almost drained from water, but during winter and spring they may turn into raging torrents threatening to tear away everything in their way. Something that several times endangered the pastoral village of Roghudi. After a violent inundation in 1973 the inhabitants decided to urgently abandon their homes and most of them now live in a newly built village several miles from there.

When we were there no one could be seen in the deserted streets. We looked into rooms where beds, tables and household items remained, soft drinks and beer bottles from the 1970s remained among the vestiges of mattresses and clothing eaten by mice and other animals. Doors and shutters slammed abandoned in the gentle breeze, while hundreds of swallows buzzed in the air above us.

Just before we entered Roghudi we had paused by a walled, solitary cemetery with rusty gates, dilapidated chapels, cracked burial niches and graves overgrown with thistles and other weed. A small village of death, which in its simplicity reminded us of Locri, which remains – temple fragments, votive- and grave offerings, statues and painted urns – we had seen in the museum in Reggio.

Locri, by the Ionian coast, was in Greek antiquity an important pilgrimage site with several temples and underground caves to which pilgrims flocked to bathe in healing, life-giving waters. Ruler of the temples were the underworld gods who were governed by Persephone (daughter of Demeter, goddess of fertility) and Hades (keeper of earth´s treasures). Certainly lugubrious deities both of them, though like earth itself, they were also a promoters and protectors of life. It was they who gave us all the food produced from earth's life giving soil - bread, wine, fruit and olives. Many plaques, which had been hung from trees or close to the idols, show them sitting side by side - Persephone always in front of her husband and in their hands they carry fruit, ears of corn, as well as roosters, an age-old symbol of resurrection and fertility.

I was impressed by the art that had been salvaged in Locri. A wide variety of votive offerings and plaques indicating a fervent worship of earth as life-giver, but also fear and puzzlement emerging from a confrontation with darkness and death. There was apparently a feeling of how the dark depths of the underworld brought forth light and life.

People have often gone down into caves to drink from and bathe in wellsprings, believed to be sources of the life giving force of the world below. An underworld which also was the home of death and darkness. Confronting oneself with such “holy” places could for many mean a life changing experience, a religiosity close to the one the German theologian Rudolf Otto called mysterium tremendum et fascinans, a terrifying and fascinating mystery.

Several sculpture groups found in Locri paid homage to the twins Castor and Polydeuces, both mortal and divine sons of Zeus, emerging from the sea, while their horses were lifted out of the waves by marine divinities. Sometimes the twins seemed to defy the elements by floating weightlessly in front of the horses.

Calabria - a mixture of life and death. A constant, almost timeless intersection of nature and human presence. Sometimes nature seems to have the upper hand, sometimes the people. In some places there is a grim sterility, while others present an abundance of greenery, fruits, vegetables, wine, olives, bread, cheese and meat, served with generosity, joy, dance and music. But there is also an insidious poison sipping in, of envy, petty gossip, apathy and mafia; pollution and invisible violence. Scylla´s tragic attachment to her yapping hounds, the magnificent bronzes arisen from the sea by Riace, the joyous, frantic tarantella with its life-affirming rhythm, poetry with roots deep in the Greek soil, joy of food, beverage and human community, the menacing presence of the ´Ndrangheta.

In Calabria, present and past are intertwined, in all their grandeur, all their misery. A place where carpe diem, seize the day, become a pressing obligation due to ever present dangers and joys. I realized during the few days I spent there that they strangely enough were sufficient for providing me with memories for a lifetime. Thanks Esmeralda, Vincenzo and everyone else who give meaning and warmth to the days of my life.

Alvaro, Corrado (1990) Revolt in Aspromonte. New York: New Directions. Clark, Lloyd (2007) The Friction of War: Italy and the Battle for Rome 1944. London: Headline Publishing Group. Homer (2006) The Odyssey translated by Robert Fagles. London: Penguin Classics. Horatius Flaccus, Quintus (1967) The Odes of Horace, with original texts and translation by James Michie. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Ovid Naso, Publius (2004) Metamorphoses a New Verse Translation by David Raeburn. London: Penguin Classics. Osborne, Robin (1998) Archaic and Classical Greek Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Otto, Rudolf (1958) The Idea of the Holy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

På stränder i Sverige och Italien har jag sett flera badgäster som tatuerat de latinska orden Carpe Diem på armar, ben eller bringor. I de flesta souvenirbutiker här i Italien finns frasen att köpa som kylskåpsmagnet eller inristad på små marmorplattor. Då vår vackra väninna Ann-Kristin låg döende i en cancer, som för varje dag allt värre förhärjade henne, hade hon orden på väggen i sitt sjukrum. Vad som grep oss var hur Ann-Kristin in i det sista försökte ta vara på varje dag, innan hon mötte en skoningslös och väntad död. Jag har sällan mött en så stark människa. 

Jag är tillbaka till vårt hem i Rom och sökte här förgäves efter en vacker och adekvat svensk översättning av den romerske poeten Horatius dikt till den okända Leuconoe, den elfte i hans första bok med Oden, som publicerade 23 f.Kr. Försöket här nedan är en klumpig version baserad på latin och engelska, utan rytm och versmått. Min latinlärare, Bengt Hemberg, som varit ryttmästare i kavalleriet, var då han förgäves försökte lära mig latin ungefär lika gammal som jag är nu. Jag tyckte då att han var en mycket gammal och oerhört kunnig man. Hemberg tyckte att mina försök att översätta Horatius var ”ytterst beklämmande” och han hade säkerligen rätt:   

Fråga mig inte Leuconoe, varken du eller jag och

ej heller några babyloniska horoskop, känner det slut gudarna valt åt oss.

Hur mycket bättre är det då inte att bejaka vad som än möter oss,

oavsett om fler vintrar väntar, eller om denna kommer att bli vår sista,

den som Jupiter nu lyfter ur det Tyrrenska havet,

alltmedan det tröttas i sin kamp mot strändernas klippor.

Klokare är att lugnt sila vinet, låta det mogna och dricka det.

Livet är kort, det försvinner medan vi talar.

Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero,

Fånga dagen, tro ej på morgondagen.

Ett fåtal dagar kan ge mycket till skänks. Att skriva ner några minnen och tankar från de senaste dagarna blir för mig ett sätt att förvalta en gåva. I Italien, och antagligen på varje annan plats, kan varje dag gömma oväntade skänker. Som när jag nyligen fyllde år och av Rose som present fick två dagar på ett hotell vid stränderna i Anzio, en timmes färd från Rom.

Sol och vila, efter en tid av stress och oro, på en plats där den 22:e januari 1944 fem kryssare, tjugofyra jagare, fyra väldiga transportfartyg (Liberty ships) och etthundraåttio landstigningsfartyg ilandsatte 40 000 unga engelsmän, skottar, kanadensare och amerikaner, samt fler än 5 000 fordon. Landstigningen var en succé, tyskarna blev överrumplade och enbart tretton man från de allierade trupperna stupade, men det blev snart betydligt värre. Den allierade framryckningen hejdades, efter 136 dagar lyckades de allierade bryta sig igenom de tyska linjerna, men hade då förlorat 7 000 man, av de tyska trupperna och deras fascistanslutna italienska allierade dödades 5 000 man. 36 000 av de ilandsatta soldaterna hade sårats, många med livslånga men, flera hade försvunnit spårlöst, deras rester hade inte kunnat identifieras och de räknades därför inte in bland de dödade. 30 500 av de allierades motståndare hade sårats eller försvunnit. De dödades jordeliv blev kort, de flesta var arton år då de dog. 

Lloyd Clark, som skildrat de fruktansvärda striderna, konstaterade:

Slaget vid Anzio hade varit mardrömslikt. I sin i all sin ohygglighet kan det jämföras med de mest fruktansvärda slagen under hela det italienska fälttåget, ja med de värsta sammandrabbningarna under hela Andra världskriget [...] Det var en strid utkämpad med all den grymhet som utvecklas när ingendera sidan har råd att förlora.

Då jag för flera år sedan tillsammans med min svåger besökte en av krigskyrkogårdarna i Anzio, där 1 056 vita stenar markerar lika många gravar, påpekade han att de fyrtiosex ugnarna i Auschwitz kunde hantera 4 400 kadaver per dag. Mänskligt beteende är obegripligt. Varför allt detta dödande? Vad säger siffror? Jag har sett krigskyrkogårdar i Normandie, Vietnam och Verdun, det finns inga i Auschwitz, endast en "askdamm" där askan från ugnarna dumpades.

Det där tänker jag nu, men i Anzio var det enbart vila och glädje över att jag har en familj och så var det också när jag fick min dotter Esmeraldas present, en resa till hennes pojkväns familj i en by vid namn Piminoro i det inre av Aspromonte, Kalabriens sägenomspunna bergmassiv. Ett tidlöst landskap jag minns efter att för många år sedan ha läst Corrado Alvaros Herdarna på Aspromonte:

I århundraden hade byn legat gömd i dalen, glömsk av tidens flykt. Runt omkring, på några mils avstånd, låg de andra byarna, uppe på de branta topparna. De smälte samman med berget där de låg, de hade samma struktur, samma färg, som fjärilen blir ett med blomman på vilken den gungar.

Corrado Alvaros hårda, ogästvänliga land visade sig ligga på Aspromontes andra sida, de branta, sönderbrända sluttningarna mot det Joniska havet, som skvallrade om:

Ett liv som man måste leva sig in i för att kunna förstå – man måste vara född häruppe för att kunna älska det, fullt som det är, liksom den kringliggande nejden, av stenar och törnen.

Piminoro däremot ligger på bergmassivets västra sluttning, inbäddad i grön och lummig grönska, genom vilken en mängd bäckar med friskt, drickbart vatten porlar fram. Vincenzos stora familj tog emot mig med öppen famn och en mängd mat som odlats på trädgårdstäppor i och omkring deras by; vin och olivolja som mognat på deras slänter och pressats av vänner och grannar; korv, ost och skinka som lagrats, härdats, kryddats och kokats i deras kök.

Varje kväll bjöds på en festmåltid och på den andra dagen åt vi tillsammans – föräldrar, systrar, bröder, far- och morbröder, mostrar och fastrar, mor-och farmödrar med sina barnbarn – vid ett långbord dukat på en äng mellan bokar högt ovanför byn, med en porlande bäck och trädgårdsland.

Husen i Piminoro är inte som de fallfärdiga ruckel med lerväggar som jag senare såg i flera av de fattiga, halvt övergivna byarna på bergens andra sida. Där finns rejäla hus av sten och betong, dessvärre mestadels omålade, med moderna badrum och stora kök. Från terrasserna ser du ut över sluttningar och vidsträckta fält som öppnar sig mot det fjärran havet. Över oss svirrade svalor och det doftade av rosmarin, basilika och mynta. Allt är rent och fejat, byborna vänliga och generösa.

Det är ett urgammalt land präglat av människors närvaro. På andra sidan bergsmassivet finns byar där en del äldre invånare fortfarande talar griko, grekiska. Närmare bestämt 2 000 människor bosatta i nio byar. Kalabrien hade, trots perioder då det varit erövrat av romare, araber och normanner, sedan 800 f.Kr. varit känt som en del av Magna Graecia, det Större Grekland, men i och med en alltmer inflytelserik påvestat och en spansk-italiensk centralmakt med säte i Neapel försvann grekiskan från de flesta platserna i Kalabrien, med undantag för de små isolerade byarna högt upp i bergen.

Vi besökte staden Bova, som reser sig på ömse sidor om en hög, märkligt formad klippa och vars stensatta, rensopade gränder påminner om dem du finner på de grekiska öarna. Gatornas och grändernas namn är skrivna med både latinskt och grekiskt alfabet. Från foten av det vita korset som kröner klippan ovanför byn kunde vi se ut över det blånande Joniska havet.

Södra Kalabrien är till största delen berg och hav. De är alltid närvarande och det finns under gemyt och generositet en skrämmande närvaro. I bergen ovanför Piminoro reser sig vid en korsning ett högt, träkrucifix med en svartmålad Kristus. Det restes för att utmärka platsen där 'Ndranghetan, den kalabresiska maffian, efter det att lösensummor utbetalats för kidnappningsoffer, som inte upplösts i syra eller dränkts i havet, återlämnades till sina nära och kära. Inte långt från krucifixet ligger ruinen efter huset där Esmeraldas pojkväns farfar föddes vid förra seklets början.

Till min förvåning talades det öppet och i allmänhet fördömande om ´Ndranghetan, något som dock inte betyder att den slutat med sin inkomstbringande beskyddarverksamhet, korruption av politiker, handel med tung narkotika och illegal sophantering, men det tycks som om ´Ndranghetans inflytande skiljer sig från by till by och det tycktes vara obefintligt bland Piminoros öppna, generösa och ovanligt vänliga invånare.

Tanken på att Kalabriens landskap hade förgiftats kom till mig då vi under den första dagen badade i det kristallklara vattnet framför stranden vid staden Scilla. En plats jag drömt om alltsedan Morfar läste Odysséen för mig.

Kirke – förtrollerskan och solgudens dotter, som efter att ha förvandlat Odysseus besättning till svin, blivit så tjusad av deras anförare att hon åter gjorde dem till män och till och med kom att uppskatta dem, speciellt efter det att de vågat seglagenom Underjorden. Efter deras återkomst till hennes stränder begav sig Kirke ner till grekernas skepp:

Skyndande kom hon, sedan hon smyckat sig skönt, med ett följe av tärnor som buro glödande, mörkrött vin jämte bröd och en myckenhet sovel.

Männen samlades kring den vackra, men svekfulla, gudinnan och medan de njöt av vin och mat lyssnade de vid sina eldar till hur hon berättade om allt det hemska som väntade dem. Efter att ha undkommit de skönsjungande, men människoätande sirenerna, skulle de tvingas segla inunder en ”överhängande klippa slagen med rytande vågor”. I dess inre, i en ”dunkelblånande håla, vänd mot mörkret” bodde den fasansfulla Skylla, innan hon visade sig skulle de höra hennes ömkansvärda ylande:

Skallet så ynkligt och skärande är som en kvidande hundvalps; själv så vidunderligt hemsk ser hon ut, att ej någon den synen möter med glädje minsann, ej ens de salige gudar. Sex par fötter inalles hon har, vanskapliga alla, sex långräckande halsar jämväl och envar med ett hiskligt huvud försedd, i vars gap tre rader av tänder det glimmar, starka och sittande tätt och av svarta förgörelsen fulla, Hälften av kroppen hon håller försänkt uti djupet av hålan, men sina huvuden sträcker hon fram ur den rysliga avgrund; ivrigt hon vädrar och snokar alltjämt kring sin klippa och fiskar både delfiner och sälar.

Olika havsdjur är dock inte Skyllas enda föda. Ingen skeppare kan oskadd passera hennes klippa utan att hon ”snappar med varje sitt gap en man som rov från varje mörkblåstammigt skepp”, som kommit tillräckligt nära.

På så sätt förlorade Odysseus senare, då hans skepp seglade förbi monstrets kula, sex av sina män. Skylla snappade snabbt åt sig dem och då käftarnas sylvassa tänder slöt sig kring dem vrålade männen ”i dödlig ångest” Odysseus namn. Odysseus berättade hur Skyllas halsar svängde som metspön över skeppet, innan hon blixtsnabbt ryckte till sig de vilt sprattlande männen:

Som när en fiskare står med sitt långa och sviktande metspö ute på udden och slänger i sjön sin rev med dess krokar. Uppe i klyftans gap hon dem åt, och förfärligt de skreko, medan de armarna sträckte mot mig i sin gruvliga dödskamp. Detta det rysansvärdaste är, som jag någonsin skådat, fast jag så mycket bestått, medan havets vägar jag utrönt.

Skyllas höga klippa är inte längre så slät och obestiglig som Homeros skildrade den. Nu kröns den av en borg som byggts, rivits ner och rekonstrueras sedan urminnes tider. Den romersk-grekiske författaren Strabon (64 – 24 f.Kr.) nämner i en av sina sjutton böcker om Medelhavets städer att Scilla redan innan 500 f.Kr. var ett tillhåll för pirater, sedan dess har klippan ständigt bytt härskare – ömsom greker, ömsom romare, byzantinska soldater, normanner och barbareskpirater. Invånarna visade tydligen en tendens att vara opålitliga och upproriska, 73 f.Kr. valde de exempelvis att på Spartacus sida bekämpa romarna.

Kanske legenden om Skylla finner sitt ursprung i att det under klippan finns en grotta, nu dold av ett galleri som byggts för biltrafiken, från vilken en halvmåneformad strand, vars djup och storlek var perfekt för den tidens fartyg, kunde behärskas. Antagligen var det från denna strand som piraternas fartyg med stor hastighet sköt fram och likt Skyllas rovgiriga huvuden snappade åt sig rikedomar och slavar från förbipasserande handelsfartyg.

Som i verkligheten har myter och legender ett eget liv. De berättar om människor, gudar, djur och monster vars ursprung, ålder och utseende skiftar beroende på berättarens skicklighet, ursprung och syfte. Att Skylla en gång var en människa är de alla överens om, men uppfattningarna om hur hon förvandlades till ett monster och vem som gjorde det skiftar.

Mest dramatiskt och gripande skildras Skyllas tragiska öde av Ovidius (43 f.Kr. – 18 e.Kr.) som i sina Metamorfoser berättar att Skylla en gång var en ovanligt vacker ung dam som plågades av alla de män som ansatte henne med böner om samvaro och bröllop. För att undvika dessa brunstiga hannar sökte Skylla, i en isolerad havsvik, de diskreta havsnymfernas sällskap och blev där god vän med nymfen Galatea, en olycklig najad som berättade hur en förälskad tillbedjare förstört hennes liv. Den brutale, enögde jätten Polyfemus hade galen av svartsjuka slängt ett klippblock på Galateas älskare, Acis, och därefter slitit honom i stycken.

Den tillbedjare som blev orsaken till Skyllas förskräckliga öde var dock ingen brutal, enögd och hårig jätte, utan en gladlynt fiskare vid namn Glaukos, fast vid tiden då han blev förälskad i Skylla var Glaukos inte längre en mänsklig varelse, utan en blågrön triton med fisksvans. Ovidius låter Glaukus berätta hur det gick till:

Jag var en gång dödlig, men även då var jag förutbestämd till ett liv i havens djup. Jag ägnade mina dagar åt oceanens glädjeämnen, drog nät fyllda med fisk eller satt på klipporna och metade.

Redan då var Glaukos åtrådd av vackra havsnymfer och han kände sig mer lockad av hav än land. Efter en dags rodd och fiskafänge lade han en gång till vid en strand där frodigt, mjukt gräs växte ända fram till havsranden. Glaukos lade upp sin rikliga fångst på gräset och betraktade fascinerad fiskarnas glittrande färger mot den smaragdgröna friskheten, då märkte han hur fiskarna började spritta och hoppa.Slutligen hade de alla sökt sig tillbaka ut i havet:

Jag var stum av förundran, konsternerad sökte jag en förklaring. Var det en gud som väckt dem till liv, eller kanske en substans i gräset? ”Ingen ört i världen kan ha en sådan kraft”, viskade jag för mig själv, medan jag plockade upp ett par strån och tuggade på dem. Jag hade knappt svalt de obekanta safterna förrän jag kände hur hjärtat skalv och jag greps av en obetvinglig längtan efter att få kasta mig ut i havet.

Glaukos dök ner i vattnet och fann att han kunde tumla kring i djupet utan att behöva andas, aldrig hade han känt sig så fri och lycklig:

Havsgudarna mötte mig, de hade mig funnit mig värdig att vistas bland dem. Oceanus och Tethys ombads rena mig från all dödlighet. Nio gånger sjöng de en trollformel över mig. Jag fann mig nersänkt i hundratals strömfåror, från varje riktning forsade floder över mig, jag virvlade runt i en störtsjö.

Glaukos svimmade, då han åter kommit till sans var hans kropp förvandlad, håret hade blivit grönt, hyn blå, bringan och armarna mer muskulösa än tidigare, medan nederdelen av kroppen hade blivit till stjärten och fenorna hos en kraftig, silverglänsande fisk.

Den mirakulöst förvandlade fiskaren var överlycklig, Glaukos hade funnit sin rätta natur och tumlade runt i det element han alltid önskat sig vara en del av, tills olyckan en dag slog honom med förödande kraft.

Föreställ dig en havsvik, vars ständer välver sig likt en båge, där fann Skylla sin vila. Det var här hon kunde finna en viloplats bortom havets raseri, eller från himlen som under middagshettan bränner hårdast genom solens strålar och då skuggorna är som kortast.

Likt en säl sticker Glaukos huvudet ur vattnet och fängslas då räddningslöst av den unga kvinnans bländande skönhet. Snabbt simmade han in mot land och ropar till Skylla, kanske som i scenen nedan, fast barockkonstnären har framställt Ovidius stilige yngling som en vädjande, löjeväckande gamling.

Förskräckt stirrade Skylla på Glaukos blågröna kropp, det gröna håret som täckte hans rygg och axlar, den kraftiga, havskimrande och smidiga fiskstjärten. Glaukos var visserligen stilig, men var han en gud eller ett monster? Havsvarelsen försökte förgäves lugna Skylla:

Vackra jungfru, jag är varken ett havsmonster eller en farlig best, jag är en gud. Mitt rike finns i oceanen och jag är inte mindre mäktig än Proteus eller Triton.

Skylla, som lyssnat till Galateas sorgliga berättelse om hur ett förälskat monster hade förstört hennes liv, bad Glaukos försvinna och sprang sedan längre in mot land. Skyllas avvisande inställning tog Glaukos hårt. Hur kunde en vanlig dödlig avspisa en så stilig varelse som han? En stilig kraftkarl som åtråddes av varje vacker havsnymf.

Ilsken och förtvivlad begav sig Glaukos över haven till Kirkes ö, framkommen vädjade han till henne: ”Ingen kan bättre än jag erkänna kraften hos örter och gräs, det var deras magi som förändrade mig”, genom insikten om deras kraft har han vänt sig till Kirke, trollkunnigast av alla gudomligheter. Han ber gudinnan framställa en dekokt som får Skylla att åtrå honom. Glaukos visste dock inte att efter det att Solen avslöjat Mars och Venus kärleksaffärer så uttalade kärleksgudinnan en förbannelse över Solens avkomma – Kirke dömdes att bli förälskad i varje stilig man hon mötte – det var därför hon förvandlade allt mankön som kom i hennes väg till djur. Glaukos var dock inte längre en vanlig man och Kirke hade därför ingen makt över honom:

Se mig in i mina ögon. Jag är visserligen en gudadotter, avlad av den bländande Solen. Styrkan hos mina trollformler och örter påverkar människor och djur, men du är inte mänsklig och jag är därför tvingad att be dig att få bli din. Förneka henne som nu ratar dig, besvara istället min åtrå.

Kirkes gränslösa passion skrämmde Glaukos och han försäkrade henne att:

.. så länge Skylla lever kommer min kärlek till henne inte att förminskas, än mindre än att trädens bladverk täcker oceanernas bottnar eller alger springer fram på bergens höjder.

Kirke blev bittert besviken och beslöt att låta sin frustration drabba den vackra Skylla. Hon blandade samman örter och giftiga safter till en ohygglig brygd. Klädd i en ”havsblå mantel” vandrade hon torrskodd över ”ett stormigt havs svällande vågor”, bort till Skyllas badvik, ställde sig på vattenytan, höjde giftskålen och lät dess innehåll sprida sig i vattnet.

… besudlande det med sina monsterframkallande gifter. Hon spred syrorna från förpestande rötter alltmedan hon förbittrat tre gånger nio gånger, på ett invecklat, mystiskt språk, mumlade sina magiska formler.

När middagshettan lägrat sig över nejden kom Skylla och steg till midjan ut i vattnet då hon förskräckt genomfors av hemska plågor och fann sig omgiven av hotfulla, gläfsande bestar.

Till en början begrep hon inte att de utgjorde en del av henne, utan slängde sig våldsamt åt sidan, enbart för att finna att när hon i skräck försökte skydda sig mot dem följde de henne överallt, ylande och vilt huggande tycktes hon släpa dem efter sig. Hon förde sina händer mot midjan, försökte finna sina ben och fötter, men allt hon fann var en vildsint flock av helveteshundar med uppspärrade, dreglande käftar. 

Odjuren hade blivit en del av henne och förbittrad var hon tvingad att acceptera sitt sorgliga öde och för att lugna monsterna som blivit en del av henne tvingades hon föda dem med sälar, delfiner och människor.

Skylla framställs på en mängd olika sätt, ibland med de sex huvudena som beskrivits av Homeros, men lika ofta som Ovidius vackra kvinna med en nedre kropp vanställd genom en monsterhord av vildsinta varghundar som sliter sina offer i stycken. Som den fragmentariska skulptur som bärgats ur havet vid vår favoritbadplats i Sperlonga. I ett museum finns där den stora marmorgruppen utställd. På avstånd påminner den om en skrotskulptur, men närmar du dig ser du snart hur förtvivlade män vrider sig medan helveteshundarna sliter i dem. Alltmedan den stiliga Skylla höjer sig över dem.

Myter sägs vara odödliga och spegla vår tillvaro. Kanske kan Skyllas öde då liknas vid den hänsynslösa ´Ndrangethan som genom sin omättliga, mordiska girighet tar betalt för att dumpa kemiskt - och kärnkraftsavfall längs Italiens kuster och därmed hotar hela vårt ömtåliga, ekologiska system? Likt den vackra, oskyldiga Skylla tvingas kalabrierna att leva med dessa hänsynslösa maffiamonster och liksom dem blir även de både föraktade och fruktade av övriga italienare.

Men det kalabresiska havet gömmer inte enbart gift och elände. Fortfarande kan du bada i kristallklart vatten, som vid stranden vid Capo Bruzzano, där vi simmade bland klippformationer som med lätthet kan tolkas som förstelnade monster och gudar. 

Inte långt därifrån bärgades 1972 ur havet två manshöga bronsskulpturer föreställande grekiska atleter. De är nu uppställda i ensamt majestät i en vitmenad sal i muséet i Reggio, där vi såg dem dagen innan vi badade vid stränderna av det Joniska havet. Det faktum att de står sida vid sida, i samma ställning, förstärker det intryck de ger. Den ena av dem har en ungdomlig, muskulös kropp, svallande hår och skägg och en atlets diadem kring pannan, medan den andre har en likaledes atletisk kropp, men den kraftiga muskulaturen tycks hos honom vara något slappare och kroppshållningen mer uppgiven än hos hans yngre följeslagare. Istället för ett diadem bär han en hjälm och den trotsiga attityden hos den yngres skarpskurna ansikte är hos den äldre mannen ersatt av något som tycks vara trött resignation, förstärkt av det faktum att han saknar ett öga.

En omfattande, ”vetenskapligt utförd och analyserad” förfrågan om uppfattningen hos museibesökarna fann att en överväldigande del av damerna fann att den yngre mannen var ”sexuellt attraktiv”, medan de flesta av männen ”identifierade sig” med den äldre.

Jag tyckte att jag på flera ställen i Kalabrien fann en mystisk koppling mellan natur och mänskligt liv. Ibland var det svårt att avgöra vad som efterbildade vad. På slingrande vägar, som med jämna mellanrum var belamrade med nedfallna stenar och emellanåt stora stenblock, körde oss Vincenzo in i hjärtat av Aspromonte. På sluttningarna ovanför den övergivna byn Roghudi visade han oss flera väldiga klippformationer som reste sig ur det torra landskapet och dess taggiga buskar. Bland andra ett ”drakhuvud”, med tycke av både utomjording och kykladisk gudomlighet riktade det sin blick bort mot byar som övergivits antingen genom massutvandring mot Amerika eller Australien, eller på grund av hotande naturkatastrofer.

På de slingrande, alltmer oroande bergvägarna tog vi oss ner till Roghudi som klamrar sig fast vid ett klipputsprång mellan två flodfåror, som nu var i det närmaste torrlagda, men som under vinter och vår kan förvandlas till rasande störtfloder som hotar att riva med sig allt i deras väg. Något som flera gånger hotade herdebyn Roghudis existens. Under en våldsam översvämning 1973 beslöt sig hela byns befolkning att skyndsamt lämna sina hem och de flesta bor nu i en nyuppförd by flera mil därifrån.

Det övergivna Roghudi finns kvar. När vi var där fanns varken människor eller får på de övergivna gatorna. Vi blickade in i rum där sängar, bord och husgeråd fanns kvar, läskedrycks- och ölflaskor från 1970-talet låg kvar bland resterna av madrasser uppätna av möss och andra djur. Dörrar och fönsterluckor slog övergivet i den milda brisen, alltmedan hundratals svalor svirrade i luften över oss.

Strax innan vi kom till Roghudi hade vi stannat vid en muromgärdad, likaledes övergiven kyrkogård, med rostiga grindar, förfallna kapell, gravnischer och ogräsövervuxna gravar. En liten dödens by, som i all sin enkelhet minde om Lokri, var rester vi tidigare sett på muséet i Reggio.

I Lokri, nere vid den joniska kusten inte långt från Roghudi, fanns under den grekiska antiken ett stort tempelområde med flera underjordiska grottor till vilka pilgrimer vallfärdade för att bada i helande, livgivande vattnen. Härskare över templen var underjordens gudar som regerades av Persefone (dotter till Demeter, fruktbarhetens gudinna) och Hades (förvaltare av underjordens skatter). Förvisso lugubra gudomligheter, men liksom jorden var de också livets främjare och beskyddare. Det var de som skänkte oss jordens föda – bröd, vin, frukter och oliver. Många framställningar visar dem sittande sida vid sida – Persefone alltid framför sin make och i händerna bär de frukter, veteax eller tuppar, en typisk fruktbarhetssymbol.

Jag imponerades av konsten som bärgats i Lokri, bland annat en mängd votivgåvor och plaketter som visade på dyrkan av jorden som livgivare, men också skräck och undran inför det mörker och den död som också finns förborgad där. Där fanns tydligen en känsla av att ur mörker kommer ljuset, ur djupen springer livet fram. Människor har ofta gått ner i grottor för att dricka ur och bada i källsprång , som tros vara källor till Underjordens livgivande kraft. En Underjord som också var hem för död och mörker. Att konfronteras med sådana "heliga" platser kunde för många innebära en livsförändrande upplevelse, en religiositet nära den som av den tyske teologen Rudolf Otto kallades för ett mysterium tremendum et fascinans, en skrämmande och fascinerande gåta.

Flera skulpturgrupper funna i Lokri hyllade tvillingparet Kastor och Polydeukes, den ene dödlig och den andre odödlig son till Zeus, och framställde hur de sittande på sina hästar lyftes upp ur havet av olika havsgudomligheter, ibland tycktes de trotsa elementen och svävade viktlöst framför hästarna.

Kalabrien - en blandning av liv och död. En ständig, i det närmaste tidlös korsning av natur och mänsklig närvaro. Ibland tycks naturen ha överhanden, ibland människorna. På vissa ställen råder en dyster sterilitet, på andra ett överflöd av grönska, frukter, grönsaker, vin, oliver, bröd, ost och kött, serverat med generositet, glädje, dans och musik. Men där finns också det smygande giftet från avundsjuka, småskuret skvaller, uppgivenhet och maffia; miljöförstöring och osynligt våld. Skylla fången av sina gläfsande hundar, bronserna som stigit upp ut havet vid Riace, tarantellan med sin sugande, livsbejakande rytm, poesin med rötter djupt ner i den grekiska myllan, glädjen över mat, dryck och mänsklig gemenskap, ´Ndranghetans hotfulla närvaro.

I Kalabrien lever nuet och det förgångna, sida vid sida, i all sin storhet, i allt sitt elände. En plats där det verkligen gäller att carpe diem, gipa dagen, något jag insåg under de få dagar jag vistades där. Dagar som räckte för att ge mig minnen för livet. Tack Esmeralda, Vincenzo och alla ni andra som ger mening och värme åt mitt liv.

Alvaro, Corrado (1957) Herdarna på Aspromonte. Stockholm: Natur och kultur. Clark, Lloyd (2007) The Friction of War: Italy and the Battle for Rome 1944. London: Headline Publishing Group. Homeros (2014) Lagerlöfs Homeros Odysséen. Stockholm: Atlantis. Horatius Flaccus, Quintus (1967) The Odes of Horace, with original texts and translation by James Michie. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Ovidius Naso, Publius (2004) Metamorphoses. London: Penguin Classics. Osborne, Robin (1998) Archaic and Classical Greek Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Otto, Rudolf (1958) The Idea of the Holy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smedberg, Marco (2006) Från Sicilien till Rom. Kriget i Italien 1941-44. Stockholm: Norstedts

Lindevägen 26, Enskede. I have always found it hard to remember numbers, but after more than forty-five years I am still able to recall the address of my grandparents' home, which they named Tallebo, Home of the Pine Trees. Now the place must be completely different from the memory palace I have preserved in my mind.

Facing the street was a red-painted fence overgrown by Virginia creeper, and with a white gate, vaulted by an arch, thick with leaves. A recently raked path ran along the gable and, of course, the sun was always shining and the air filled with the fragrance of flowers, leaves and earth. Scents linger in the memory, but unlike sight and sound they cannot be reproduced by our mind.

To the right rouse a mighty lime-tree with rich foliage and below it a lawn ran along the path, in its middle was a flowerbed with multi-coloured snap-dragons, gladioli, hyacinths, lupines and peonies. To the left rose the creeper covered, whitewashed façade, which in my childhood appeared to be very high. Around the corner a short flight of stairs led to a pair of double doors, which opened onto a porch with large windows and a rich variety of potted plants.

On the wall next to the door hung my uncle Gunnar´s copy of Charles XII´s funeral procession and a small reproduction of Christan Krogh's painting of a sea captain, who during rough seas, with a bushy beard and a heavy oilskin coat is leaning over a chart in a whitewashed cabin. My grandfather was fascinated by the sea after his father, Severin Caspersson, had been a skipper in the coastal town of Varberg. He had owned several big sailing ships, though never at the same time. I believe that at least two of his ships were wrecked and sank. As a child, I erroneously assumed that the picture depicted him. If I remember correctly my grandfather told me that his father sailed on the Baltic countries and with tar and timber supports for the mines around Newcastle, from where I guess they brought back coke.

In the flower-scented anteroom Grandpa showed me how you could gently pull the leaves of the lemon balm between your fingers to have the fresh scent of lemon linger on them. His mother, Hannah, who my mother remembered as a very strict and religious lady of small stature, had called the lemon balm Heart´s Delight, since the plant was said to have a tonic effect on the heart and was used as a remedy for melancholy.

- Melancholia?

- It is when you are so sad and gloomy that it poisons your entire body. Everything becomes dark and black around you.

Grandpa, who had been a teacher, explained many things to me. He often demonstrated what he was talking about. That was perhaps why so much of what he said remained in my memory. In that way Grandpa reminds me of my father. He was also a great storyteller who willingly and often told me about and showed me strange things.

There were, of course, the peculiar snap-dragons in Grandpa's garden, if you pulled the lower lip from their petals they opened up like a lion´s jaws and bared their intensely yellow interior. Or the monkshood´s blue flower, the top of which looks like a hood, or round helmet, and most children know the secret it is hiding and that it is revealed if you gently pull away the hood and the stamens appear as two horses, which with their delicate stems pull behind them the cupped petals, like the fairy carriage of Cinderella. Grandpa could, filled as his mind was with ancient tales, disclose that the entire monkshood plant was crammed with deadly poison. When drops of froth fell from the hell dog Cerberus and entered the ground below him, they were transformed into monkshood flowers from which the sorceress Medea extracted the poison she used when she in vain tried to kill her stepson Theseus. Grandpa opened up a monkshood flower and explained:

- See how the horses run forward, just as the winged dragons that Medea hitched in front of her carriage, before she fled through the air after her attempted assassination of Theseus. While she flew from Athens to the Aryans´ pastures deep inside Persia, she brought with her Medes, her son, who finally became king and his minions were named Medes after him.

It was often like that with the information Grandpa bestowed upon me. When he told me a story it could turn out to be like a Russian doll, containing ever more stories within itself, leading to more questions. So could for example the opening of the monkshood´s flower bring Grandpa to Medea's horrifying tale about the poisoning of enemies and kin, dismemberment of her brothers, and finally the senseless murder of her own children, only because her husband had abandoned her. Grandpa's opening of a small flower also brought us to flying dragons and distant countries like Persia, where Scheherazade had learned her thousand tales. Stories I later found and could expand by leafing through Grandpa's many, thrilling books. A fantasy world that also transformed his garden, which rose along the "Mountain" behind his house, into an Eldorado where each flower hid a story.

For sure Grandpa had told similar stories to my uncle Gunnar, who behind the attic had a small room where he entered and created dream worlds of his own. Up there wooden boxes contained thousands of small, meticulously painted cardboard figures that could be made standing by olding flaps at their feet. Uncle Gunnar had made the whole army of Charles XII; footmen, horsemen, cannons and hawser wagons. He had also recreated the Arabian Nights with its sultans, harem ladies, evil wizards, princes, elephants, camels and palaces. I and my cousin Erik Gustaf could spend hours up there on the dusty, murky wind, playing with the figurines his father had drawn, painted and cut out as a child. I wonder where all this ended up, it is probable that all those men, horses, animals and places only remain in my, my sister´s and my cousins' memories.

From the anteroom I entered a spacious hall, with a staircase, which in an exciting angle swung up to the second floor. I was fascinated by how the steps on one side narrowed as they turned to the second floor, which they met between two dark brown painted balustrades that I used to climb on while looking down towards the first floor, imagining I was climbing a high mountain. The stairs, where the edge of each step was protected by a shiny brass strip, could easily turn into mountains, ship masts or castle stairs where pirates, musketeers or knights were fencing as Errol Flynn and similar heroes did in the matinee movies.

To a wall next to the stairs a phone was placed on a shelf, under which hang a cardboard with important phone numbers. Despite my bad numeric memory I can still recall the phone number, because at that time you responded with numbers instead of name - 49 07 05. There was a chair under the phone, but we preferred to sit on the stairs while talking in the phone. I also sat on the stairs when I was alone during a dark evening when my cousins, my father and mother, and grandparents had gone to see Windjammer, a movie about a Norwegian sailing ship. I was five years old and it was the first time I had been alone. Apparently, I had slept so deep that they had left me without daring to wake me. I have always found it easy to sleep and seldom wake up during night. Nevertheless, this time I woke up, in the big, empty house and could not understand where all the people had gone. I sat on the stairs waiting for them while the moonlight fell in through the window that was placed on the wall by the staircase.

At that time my grandmother was still alive, a beautiful, fair-haired lady who was very similar to my mother, but I unfortunately do not have so many memories of her, apart from her friendly smile and her last painful hospitalization after a stroke. She died when I was six years old, but Grandpa used to tell me that he felt her presence in the house. When I was alone visiting Grandpa, I used to sleep beside him in Grandma's large bed. Once he told me:

- I was sleeping here when I in the middle of the night suddenly woke up and saw light entering under the door, which then slowly opened and Irene came into the room. She came up to the side of my bed, leaned over me and kissed me on the forehead.

That tale scared me and combined with my cousin's stories about Uncle Gunnar seeing angels it did not leave me for a long time, making me reluctant to be alone on the second floor in the evenings.  

In the lower stairwell was a cabinet hidden behind a heavy curtain, inside were shoe racks, hats and overcoats. The place was called the Overshoe Shelf since it was on such a rack my mother and her brothers had to sit and be ashamed if they had done some mischief. That cabinet used to be the last refuge when we children played hide and seek, and were unable to find no good hiding place in time. The stairwell hall appeared as both threatening and festive. During my mother's childhood it had in time for the Christmas morning been turned into a fairy grotto. When my mother and her brothers came down from their bedrooms on the second floor, they found that Grandma and Grandpa during the night had hung tapestries with Christmas motifs on the walls and lit candles, when they came into the salon they found the Christmas tree dressed and adorned. It appears as if in those days there were always huge drifts of snow outside the large windows. My mother and father also used the night before Christmas Eve to decorate our apartment, while we children were still asleep, something that made us understand that the Christmas season was quite different from everyday life, that it was a time when magic and warmth to entered our lives and changed everything. Such memories have made it difficult for me to accept that the commercial Christmas starts already in November and that Christmas trees are brought into the house long before Christmas Eve - it destroys the magic.

On the building's ground floor were sliding doors, something I have only seen there and in castles. I guess my handy grandfather had made and installed them all by himself. When you from the hallway entered the living you could to the right see a large crescent-shaped and grey, fireplace. Around the opening for the hearth Grandpa had painted a wide loop with patterns in white and red. On the mantelpiece stood a massive, seven-branched candlestick of wood, along with several wooden figurines, all made by Grandpa. No, not all of them, some figures like an Indian chieftain and a hussar had been carved and painted by my father, who also had made and a nice little clay sculpture of a budgerigar sitting on a stone. Above the fireplace was a bulky, wine-red armchair, also, like the fireplace, also made by Grandpa. On the wall next to the chair was a reproduction of Henner´s Fabiola, which in those days was common in many homes. I wondered who she was and still do not know it.

My grandparents' house was filled with surprising interior design details, usually crafted by Grandpa, and paintings done by Uncle Gunnar. The living room had a casket ceiling made of light wood and dark slats, also crafted by Grandpa, who used to sit in the red armchair and listen to the radio, which was placed behind another armchair and beside a green chaise longue over which hung a mighty oil painting made by Uncle Gunnar and depicting Grandpa within a heavy, grey frame.

My cousin Erik Gustaf once stated that Uncle Gunnar had told him that Grandpa and Grandma in the beginning had been concerned about the voices coming from the radio, these might endanger their minds since the human brain was not made to embrace speech from other people than those present in the room. It was also quite late in time that the TV-set appeared in the house. But the big heavy bookcase, next to an equally massive desk in front of the wide picture window, had always been there. Grandpa often sat by the desk and it happened that he suddenly rushed up from his chair and violently shook shock his fist at the magpies, which stole birds' eggs and scratched around among his beloved flower beds. Once he crushed the great table lamp with its magnificent, marbled shade. Since the garden was laid out on a hillside it seemed to pile up outside the window and your gaze was met by a sea of ​​flowers, which like a mighty ground swell, rose up in front of knotty pine crowns and a blue sky.

On the right side beside the desk was a burly piano with a remarkable piano bench, made from beautifully speckled light wood and equipped with small doors, behind which the notes were kept. Even that strange piece of furniture had been made by Grandpa. Grandma, her daughter and two sons were all good pianists. The children went to the same piano teacher in the centre of Stockholm. Mother hated to go there since she did not knew her homework perfectly and the piano teacher used to hit her hard on the fingers. Eventually Mother, just like Uncle Gunnar, became quite good at piano playing and could sensitively perform sonatas by Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, while Uncle Sven excelled by playing Alexander's Ragtime Band at a neck breaking speed. Beside the piano hung a painting that I was deeply fascinated by, it was a woodcut made by Uncle Gunnar and depicted the eagle Gorgo from the tale The Wonderful Adventures of Nils.

There were not so many flowers inside the house, except in the bright dining room where Grandpa had placed a large self-made table, with heavy seats fitted with carved monograms. In the dining room ticked a large wall clock from Grandpa's childhood home, a sound I've never been fond of because I associate it with death and old age. A service walkway with cupboards filled with crockery and glass led into the kitchen. At the bottom shelf of one of the cabinets Grandpa stored wine and schnapps. It was not often he drank, but it happened that he took a shot for the heart's sake. Next to the kitchen was a small dining room, formerly a maid's chamber. It was there we ate most of the time. I remember Grandpa´s large appetite, how he with special pleasure gobbled down what he called "trousers", i.e. spawn sacks from Codfish.

The kitchen was bright and spacious, there was a large pantry you could walk into. Between thick-painted wooden walls it smelled delightfully of coffee and vegetables. If you continue through the kitchen you reached a wooden door with a large key and if you opened it you ended up in a steep staircase, leading down into another one of the house´s enchanted spaces – Grandpa´s carpentry basement. Down there, in a windowless room, with grey cement walls, smelling of shavings and varnish Grandpa had his huge workbench where he made his remarkable creations, including a large farmhouse with several floors, with living space for the farmer´s family and a stable for cows and horses, there was also outbuildings and a trolley shed where the carts also were made by Grandpa. I was given this fantastic farm for one of my birthdays and I still keep it.

Down in his basement Grandpa also had a toilet with a wooden door, inside it I could sit and watch Grandpa while he planed, nailed and painted at his workbench. On the wooden door he had pasted newspaper clippings, including political cartoons of the witty draftsman EWK. Next to the toilet was a large wooden box with coke, which Grandpa used to fire the boiler in the laundry room next door, where there was also a wood clad boiler for hot water and large stone vats.

From Grandpa´s carpentry basement you reached the garden through a room with a potato bin and a wall with pantries for food that would not be used at once. On the walls hung bass strings that Grandpa used to tie up plants and flowers. The garden tools he kept in a garage down by the building's rear gates. Grandma and Grandpa had no car. A steep staircase led up to an arbour, covered with Virginia Creeper, to its right was the lush garden, while you to the left could follow a narrow path, with irregular laid stones between which houseleek and other stonecrop grew. On a roughly hewn pedestal Grandpa had placed a sundial.

Above the floral exuberance lay the naked rock where I could lie on my back, enjoying the sunshine, there were also white garden furniture under a sturdy birch-tree. From there you looked down at a sea of ​​flowers spreading out towards the house and its porch above the broad picture windows. From that porch I had, dressed in a soft, light blue pyjamas, with my parents and grandparents, in the autumn of 1957 seen how the Russian Sputnik as a bright, tiny spot slowly moved across the starry night sky. The satellite was not much bigger than a beach ball, but I'm convinced that I saw it as a tiny white dot moving across the sky. I was three years old and it is one of my first memories.

Grandfather was a master at combining flowers and plants in such a way that they formed a harmonized abundance of colours, a kind of alluring chaos that could keep your gaze transfixed for hours, especially as bees and other insects moved among plants. In Grandpa's home there was a combination of external and internal worlds; Uncle Gunnar´s toy soldiers, Grandpa´s carpentry, the garden, the books, but also an inner world created by my interchange with Grandpa, among all these books and flowers. I lay in his bed listening to him while he read aloud stories from the Bible or the Iliad, how he sang hymns, like the powerful:

Spread your mighty wings,

O Jesus, over me

and let me quietly rest

in weal and woe with you.

or quoted poems from memory, like those of the now quite outdated Swedish poets Topelius and Snoilsky. Such moments have remained with me. Especially how Grandpa recounted Snoilsky´s poem about how the mysterious Emanuel Swedenborg was asked by a little girl if he could show her one of those angels he was known to be familiar with. The old seer then took her through his garden, “along strawberry patches and under a canopy of honeysuckle”, until they arrived at his gazebo, which still can be seen at the outdoor museum of Skansen in Stockholm, where he picked up the little girl and through a window showed her the angel she wanted to meet. The small girl marvelled at the sight: "What can it be? She sees a child's face" but she laughs and lights up: "Oh, the window is just a mirror!"

I asked Grandpa who Swedenborg had been and he explained that he was a man who lived in Stockholm during the 18^th century, claiming to be able to visit heaven and hell, trips he described in book after book. Grandpa's story created a lifelong interest in Swedenborg, I have written about him and even visited the great Swedenborg connoisseur and pastor of the New Church that Swedenborg founded, Olle Hjern, but that is quite another story that I might come back to sometime in the future.

Here in Rome, I have occasionally visited the room in Palazzo Corsini where the remarkable Queen Christina of Sweden died in 1689, and where I have read her proud words inscribed on a marble slab: "I was born free, lived free and will die liberated". In that room I have remembered how Grandpa in a voice trembling with emotion quoted the final words of another Snoilsky poem. It tells how a poor Swedish student sits beneath the Palazzo Corsini, then called Villa Riario, singing a Swedish folksong, which the dying Kristina listens to through the open windows:

The red robed priests whisper

Touching a hand gone cold.

Followed by Swedish song, Kristina Alexandra

Crossed the bridge to unknown realms.

The Swedish rhyme is quite exquisite and sorry to say I have been, after trying hard, unable to transfer it into English.

Now - you may ask why I have chosen to re-visit my grandparents´ house. The explanation is partly to be found in two books by Frances Yates Giordano Bruno and the Hermitic Tradition and The Art of Memory where she describes a method used to enhance the memory, called the Loci Method, from the Roman word loci, which means "place". Searching for different memorizing methods was popular both in Antiquity and during the Renaissance, when books were expensive and rare, something that made memory training important for philosophers and writers.

The loci technique means that you imagine a building and its different rooms, which you furnish with objects that evoke associations to specific topics and memories. Then you may wander through your mental "memory palace" and pick out objects and sights that activate your memory and stimulate associations. What you then make use of is your eidetic memory (from the Greek εἶδος, eidos "to be seen"), i.e. your ability to activate visual recollections, an ability that apparently is highly developed in children, but weakens with age. Eidetic ability is obviously linked to primitive brain functions and appear to be developed in most mammals. The hippocampus is the brain's centre for eidetic processes and it is also where fantasies and dreams take shape.

With that in mind I walked through my grandparents' house, trying to evoke memories of my grandfather, revisiting the great importance he had for me. My reason for doing so is the fact that I a fortnight ago became grandfather myself, of an extraordinarily beautiful little girl named Liv and if I to her could become the great role model and inspiration that my grandfather was for me, then I would be a very happy man.

Yates, Frances A. (1999) Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. New York: Routledge. Yates, Frances A. (2001) The Art of Memory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lindevägen 26 i Enskede. Jag har svårt för att minnas siffror, men kommer efter mer än fyrtiofem år ihåg mina morföräldrars adress, där deras hem Tallebo låg och antagligen fortfarande ligger kvar. Men det måste nu vara fullkomligt olikt det minnespalats jag har bevarat inom mig.

Ut mot gatan fanns ett rödmålat staket övervuxet av vildvin, med en vit grind under en frodig lövbåge. En nykrattad gång löper längs husgaveln, givetvis skiner solen och dofter omger mig, det gör de alltid. Dofter lever i minnena, men de kan inte återskapas. Inte återges på samma sätt som en syn, eller ett ljud, de är undflyende och enbart då du åter drabbas av dem kan du förknippa dem med en plats, ett minne.

Till höger reste sig en kraftig lind med ett väldigt lövverk följd av en gräsmatta i vars mitt fanns en rabatt med en mängd olika blommor av vilka jag främst minns de mångfärgade lejongapens färgexplosioner. Till vänster reste sig den vildvinsbevuxna vitkalkade husfasaden, som i min barndom tedde sig mycket hög under sitt sadeltak. Bakom knuten ledde en trappa upp till de dubbla dörrarna som öppnade sig mot en farstu med stora fönster och en mängd krukväxter. På väggen bredvid dörren fanns Morbror Gunnars kopia av Karl den tolftes likfärd och en liten reproduktion av Christan Kroghs målning av en sjökapten, som under svår sjögång, med yvigt skägg och ett väldigt sjöställ lutar sig över ett sjökort i en vitmålad kajuta. Morfar var fascinerad av havet efter det att hans far Severin Caspersson varit skutskeppare i Varberg med flera fartyg, dock aldrig samtidigt, jag tror att två av dem förliste. Om jag inte minns fel berättade Morfar att de seglade på Baltikum och med tjära och gruvstöttor till Newcastle, varifrån jag antar att förde koks med sig tillbaka.

I det blomsterdoftande förrummet visade mig Morfar hur man mellan fingrarna försiktigt kunde dra bladen till en citronmeliss och hur den friska doften av citron då dröjde sig kvar på dem. Hans mor Hanna, som min mor mindes som en mycket sträng och småvuxen, schartauansk dam, hade kallat växten för Hjärtansfröjd den plantan sades ha stärkande effekt på hjärtat och hjälpte mot melankoli.

- Melankoli?

- Det är nu du är så ledsen och dyster att det förgiftar hela kroppen. Allt blir mörkt och svart omkring dig.

Morfar, som varit lärare, berättade och förklarade mycket för mig. Han visade ofta vad han berättade om. Det var kanske därför som så mycket av vad han sagt har stannat i minnet. På det viset påminde Morfar om min far. Han var också en stor berättare som gärna och ofta visade mig olika märkvärdigheter.

Där fanns givetvis de egendomliga lejongapen i Morfars trädgård, som då man drog i deras kronblad öppnade sig likt en rovdjurskäft och blottade sitt intensivt gula inre. Eller stormhattens blåa blomma, vars övre del ser ut om en hjälm och om som de flesta barn vet gömmer en hemlighet, ty om du försiktigt drar undan hjälmen visar sig ståndarna som två små hästar som med fina stänglar drar efter sig de kupade blombladen, likt sagovagnen i Askungen. Morfar kunde, fylld som han var med antika sagor, berätta att stormhatten innehöll dödligt gift. Då droppar av fradgan från helveteshunden Kerberus käftar föll till marken förvandlades de till stormhattar ur vilka häxan Medea utvann det gift med vilket hon tänkte döda sin styvson Teseus. Morfar öppnade en av stormhattens blommor och förklarade:

- Se hur hästarna springer fram, precis som de bevingade drakar som efter sig drog Medeas vagn genom luften då hon efter mordförsöket på Teseus, med sin son Medes, flydde från Aten till ariernas land i Persien, där sonen blev kung och folkets namn ändrades till meder.

Så var det ofta med Morfar, han berättade en historia som var likt en rysk docka, den innehöll andra berättelser som ledde till fler frågor. Genom en handling som öppnandet av stormhattens blomma förde Morfar mig till Medeas mörka historia om styckningen av sina bröder, giftmord på äkta män och släktingar och slutligen det sanslösa dråpet av sina egna barn, enbart för att hennes man övergivit henne. Morfars öppnande av den lilla blomman förde oss också till flygande drakar och fjärran länder, som Persien där Scheherazade lärt sig sina sagor. Berättelser jag sedan fann och kunde utöka genom bläddrandet i Morfars många böcker. En fantasivärld som förvandlade trädgården som höjde sig längs ”Berget” bakom huset till ett Eldorado där varje blomma gömde en berättelse, som Morfar kände till och kunde ge till mig.

Likadant hade Morfar säkert gjort med min Morbror Gunnar, som bakom husets vindskontor hade haft ett litet rum där han tecknat och skapat sina drömvärldar. I lådor och kartonger däruppe fanns tusentals små, minituöst målade pappfigurer som jag kunde ställa upp till hela arméer genom att vika ut flikar vid deras fötter. Morbror Gunnar hade gjort hela Karl den tolftes armé; fotfolk, ryttare, kanoner, trossvagnar. Han hade också återskapat Tusen och En Natt med dess sultaner, haremsdamer, onda trollkarlar, prinsar, elefanter, kameler och palats. Jag och min kusin Erik Gustaf kunde tillbringa timmar däruppe på den dammiga och dunkla vinden, medan vi lekte med figurerna som hans far ritat, målat och klippt ut som barn. Jag undrar var allt det där tog vägen, antagligen finns det enbart kvar i mina, min systers och mina kusiners minnen.

Från förrummet kom jag in i den rymliga hallen, med sin stora trappa, som i en spännande vinkel vred sig upp till andra våningen. Jag fascinerades av hur trappstegens ena sida smalnade medan de svängde upp till övervåningen, som de mötte mellan två mörkbrunmålade balustrader, som jag brukade klänga på. Den där trappan, där kanten på varje trappsteg skyddades av guldglänsande mässingsskenor, kunde med lätthet förvandlas till berg, skeppsmaster eller någon slottstrappa där pirater, musketörer eller riddare fäktades som Errol Flynn och hans likar gjorde på matinéfilmerna.

Bredvid trappan satt telefonen på en hylla och under hängde en pappskiva med viktiga telefonnummer. Mitt dåliga sifferminne till trots kommer jag fortfarande ihåg telefonnumret, eftersom man på den tiden svarade med numret istället för sitt namn – 49 07 05. Det fanns en stol under telefonen, men helst satt jag i trappan då jag talade med någon. I trappan satt jag också ensam en mörk kväll då mina kusiner, Far och Mor, och mina morföräldrar gett sig av för att se Windjammer, en film om ett norskt segelfartyg. Jag var fem år och det var första gången jag var ensam. Jag hade tydligen sovit så djupt att gänget gett sig av utan att de tordes väcka mig, jag har alltid haft lätt för att sova och vaknar sällan under natten. Den här gången vaknade jag dock i det stora, tomma huset och kunde inte begripa vart alla människor tagit vägen. Jag satte mig i trappan för att vänta på dem alltmedan månskenet föll in genom fönstret som fanns på väggen i trappan.

På den tiden levde min mormor, en vacker, ljushårig dam som påminde mycket om min mor men som jag dessvärre inte har så många minnen av, bortsett från hennes vänliga leende. Hon dog när jag var sex år, men Morfar brukade berätta att han kände hennes närvaro i huset. Då jag var ensam på besök hos Morfar brukade jag sova bredvid honom i Mormors stora säng. En gång berättade han:

- Jag låg och sov här då jag plötsligt vaknade av att det kom in ljus under dörren, som sedan sakta öppnades och Irene kom in i rummet. Hon kom fram till sängen, böjde sig över mig och kysste mig på pannan.

Det där skrämde upp mig ordentligt och tillsammans med min kusins berättelser om att Morbror Gunnar sett änglar gjorde att jag under lång tid inte tyckte om att på kvällarna vistas ensam på husets andra våning.

I nedre trapphallen fanns en mörk ”smatt” dold bakom ett tungt förhänge, där inne fanns skoställ, hattar och överrockar. Stället kallades galoschhyllan eftersom det var på en sådan Mor och hennes bröder fick sitta och skämmas om de hittat på något otyg. Den där smatten brukade vara den sista tillflykten då vi barn lekte gömme och inte i tid kunde finna något bra gömställe. Trapphallen framstod som både hotfull och festlig. Under min mors barndom förvandlades den på julaftons morgon till en sagogrotta. Då Mor och hennes bröder från sina sovrum kom nerför trappan fann de att Mormor och Morfar under natten hängt upp bonader med julmotiv och tänt levande ljus, då de sedan kom in i salongen fann de julgranen klädd och smyckad. På den tiden låg det tydligen alltid stora drivor med snö utanför de stora fönstren. Även Mor och Far brukade på natten innan julafton smycka vår lägenhet medan vi barn låg och sov, något som gjorde att vi begrep att juletiden var något helt annat än vardagen, det var då magi och värme trädde in i våra liv och förvandlade allting.

På husets nedre botten fanns skjutdörrar, något som jag antar att min händige morfar åstadkommit, genom dem kom du från hallen in i salongen där det fanns en stor halvmåneformad och grå, öppen spis, kring eldstadsöppningen hade Morfar målat en bred slinga i vitt och rött. På spiselkransen fanns en massiv, sjuarmad ljusstake av trä, tillsammans med flera träfigurer, allt gjort av Morfar. Nej, förresten, där fanns även en del figurer som min far täljt och målat, samt en fin liten målad lerskulptur av en undulat, som han också hade gjort. Framför den öppna spisen fanns en omfångsrik, vinröd fåtölj, även den, liksom spisen, gjord av Morfar. På väggen bredvid fåtöljen fanns en tavla med Henners Fabiola, som på den tiden var vanlig i många hem. Jag undrade vem hon var och vet det fortfarande inte. 

Mina morföräldrars hus var fyllt med förvånande heminredningsdetaljer, oftast hopsnickrade av Morfar, och tavlor målade av Morbror Gunnar. I salongen hade det kasetterade taket av ljust trä och mörka ribbor gjorts av Morfar, som i fåtöljen brukade sitta och lyssna till radion, som stod bakom en soffgrupp bredvid en lång, grön dyscha över vilken det hängde en mäktig oljemålning föreställande Morfar inom en tung, grå ram, målad av Morbror Gunnar, som gått på Akademin. Min kusin Erik Gustaf påstod en gång att Morbror Gunnar sagt att Morfar och Mormor hade oroat sig för att ljudet från radion skulle verka förvirrande på deras medvetande som ännu inte vant sig vid att ta till sig tal från andra än sådana som var närvarande i rummet. Det var ganska sent som TV:n dök upp i huset. Men den stora tunga bokhyllan, bredvid det likaledes massiva skrivbordet framför det breda perspektivfönstret, hade alltid funnits där. Morfar satt ofta vid skrivbordet och det hände då att han for upp och hötte våldsamt med näven mot skatorna, som enligt honom stal fågelägg och sprätte kring bland hans älskade rabatter. En gång slog han ner den stora strindbergslampan vars marmorerade kupa krossades. Eftersom trädgården var anlagd på en bergsluttning tycktes den torna upp sig utanför fönstret och blicken möttes av ett blomsterhav som likt en mäktig havsdyning reste sig upp mot knotiga tallkronor och en blå himmel.

Bredvid skrivbordet stod på höger sida ett bastant piano med en märklig pianobänk av ett vackert ljust trädslag, försett med små dörrar bakom vilka noterna förvarades. Även den möbeln var tillverkad av Morfar. Mormor, hennes dotter och två söner var alla goda pianister. Barnen gick till samma pianolärarinna inne i Stockholms centrum. Mor avskydde att gå dit eftersom hon inte kunde sina läxor och pianolärarinnan slog henne på händerna. Mor blev dock, liksom Morbror Gunnar, sedermera duktig på pianospel och de kunde på ett känsligt sätt framföra sonater av Beethoven, Schubert och Schumann, medan Morbror Sven excellerade med att spela Alexander´s Ragtime Band i väldig hastighet. Bredvid pianot hängde en tavla som jag var djupt fascinerad av, det var ett träsnitt av Morbror Gunnar som föreställde örnen Gorgo i Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige.

Det fanns inte så många blommor inne i huset, förutom i den ljusa matsalen där Morfar placerat ett stort egenhändigt tillverkat bord, med tunga stolar försedda med snidade monogram. Därinne tickade en stor väggklocka från Morfars barndomshem, ett ljud jag aldrig varit förtjust i emedan jag alltid förknippat det med död och ålderdom. En serveringsgång med skåp med porslin och glas ledde in till köket. Längst ner i ett av skåpen förvarade Morfar vin och snaps. Det var sällan han drack, men det hände att han tog sig en sup för hjärtats skull. Bredvid köket fanns en litet matrum som tidigare varit pigkammare. Det var där vi åt för det mesta. Vad jag minns så hade Morfar stor aptit och glufsade med speciellt välbehag i sig vad han kallade för ”byxor”, dvs torskens romsäckar.

Köket var ljust och rymligt och där fanns ett stort skafferi som man kunde gå in i, mellan de tjockt målade träväggarna doftade det därinne gott från kaffe och grönsaker. Fortsatte du genom köket kom du fram till en trädörr med en stor nyckel och öppnade du den så fann du en brant trappa som ledde ner till ännu en av husets förtrollade delar – Morfars snickerikällare. Där nere, i ett fönsterlöst rum med grå cementväggar som doftade gott av hyvelspån och fernissa, hade Morfar sin stora hyvelbänk där han tillverkade den ena märkvärdigheten efter den andra, bland annat en stor bondgård i flera våningar med uthus och vagnsbod, där kärrorna även gjorts av honom. Jag fick den unika gården i födelsedagspresent och har den fortfarande kvar.

Där nere hade han också en toalett med en trädörr och därinne kunde jag sitta och titta på Morfar medan han hyvlade, spikade och målade vid sin snickarbänk. På trädörren hade han klistrat upp en massa tidningsurklipp, bland annat politiska karikatyrer av EWK. Bredvid toaletten fanns en stor trälår med koks, som användes för att elda i pannan i tvättstugan intill, där det också fanns en väldig träklädd tank för varmvattnet och stora sköljkar av sten.

Från Morfars snickerikällare kom du ut i trädgården genom ett rum med en stor potatislår och en vägg med skafferi för mat som inte skulle användas med en gång, på väggarna hängde bastsnören som Morfar använde för att binda upp sina blommor. Trädgårdsredskapen förvarade han i ett garage nere vid husets bakre grindar. Mormor och Morfar hade ingen bil. En brant trappa ledde upp till en berså täckt med vildvin, till höger om den fanns den prunkande trädgården, medan det till vänster löpte en smal stig, med oregelbundet lagda stenar mellan vilka det växte taklök och andra fetbladsväxter, förbi ett solur på en grovhuggen piedestal.

Ovanför blomsteröverflödet låg berget naket med mossklädda hällar där jag kunde ligga på rygg och njuta av solskenet, bredvid stod vita trädgårdsmöbler under en kraftig björk. Från dem blickade du ner över blomsterhavet som bredde ut sig bort mot huset och dess veranda ovanför de breda perspektivfönstren. Från den verandan hade jag iklädd en mjuk, ljusblå pyjamas tillsammans med mina föräldrar och morföräldrar hösten 1957 sett hur ryssarnas Sputnik som en ljusfläck sakta rört sig över en stjärnklar natthimmel. Satelliten var ju inte mycket större än en badboll, men jag är övertygad om att jag såg den som en liten vit prick som sakta rörde sig över himlen. Jag var tre år och det är ett av mina första minnen.

Morfar var mästare i att kombinera sina blommor och växter på ett sådant sätt att de bildade en nyansrik matta av ett överflöd av färger, en slags kaotisk ordning som kunde hålla blicken fången timme efter timme, speciellt som bin och andra insekter rörde sig bland dem. I Morfars hem fanns en kombination av yttre och inre världar; Morbror Gunnars leksakssoldater, Morfars hemsnickerier, den stora trädgården och böckerna, men också en inre värld skapad genom min tillvaro tillsammans med Morfar. Jag låg i  hans säng och lyssnade till honom när han läste berättelser ur Bibeln eller Iliaden, hur han sjöng psalmer, som den mäktiga:

Bred dina vida vingar,
o Jesus, över mig
och låt mig stilla vila
i ve och väl hos dig.

Eller ur minnet läste upp dikter från Topelius och Snoilsky. Sådant har stannat i minnet. Speciellt hur Morfar återberättade Snoilskys dikt om hur Swedenborg visat en ängel för en liten flicka, som visste att andeskådaren kände sådana. Swedenborg förde henne genom sin trädgård längs en gång utmed jordgubbslanden, under ett tak av kaprifol, tills de kom fram till ett lusthus, som nu finns på Skansen, där han lyfte upp den lilla flickan och genom ett fönster visade henne den ängel hon bett om att få se. Den lilla bävar förundrad inför synen: ”Vad kan det vara? Hon ser ett barnansikte”, men så skrattar hon och lyser upp: ”Fönstret var en spegel bara!”  

Jag frågade Morfar vem Swedenborg var och han förklarade att det var en man som levt i Stockholm och sagt sig kunna besöka himmel och helvete, något som han sedan beskrev i bok efter bok. Morfars berättelse gjorde att jag hyst ett livslångt intresse för Swedenborg, har skrivit om honom och till och besökt den store swedenborgkännaren och pastorn i Swedenborgs kyrka, Olle Hjern, men det är en annan historia som jag kanske återkommer till någon gång i framtiden.

Här i Rom har jag emellanåt besökt rummet i Palazzo Corsini där Drottning Kristina dog 1689 och där läst hennes stolta ord på en marmorplatta ”Jag föddes fri, levde fri och ska dö frigjord”, då minns jag ofelbart hur Morfar med en stämma darrande av rörelse för mig läste upp slutorden i en annan av Snoilskys dikter. Den handlar om hur en fattig svensk student sitter nedanför Palazzo Corsini, som då hette Villa Riario, och sjunger en svensk visa, som den döende Kristina lyssnar till genom de öppna fönstren:          

De röde präster viska med varandra 
Och fatta forskande en kallnad hand. 
Vid svenska ljud Kristina Alexandra 
Förts över bron till obekanta land.

Nu frågar sig kanske mina läsare varför jag valt att så omständligt återbesöka mina morföräldrar hus.

Förklaringen står delvis att finna i två böcker av Frances Yates som fått stor betydelse för mig: Giordano Bruno and the Hermitic Tradition och The Art of Memory. I dem skildrar hon en metod som använts för att förstärka vårt minne, den kallas locimetoden, från det romerska ordet loci, som betyder ”plats”. Att söka efter olika memoreringsmetoder var populärt både under antiken och renässansen då böcker var dyrbara och sällsynta, något som gjorde att minnesträning ansågs vara av stor betydelse för filosofer och författare.

Tekniken går ut på att du tänker dig en byggnad och i tankarna fyller dess rum med föremål som väcker associationer till olika ämnen och minnen. Sedan kan du vandra genom ditt mentala ”minnespalats” och där plocka fram föremål som aktiverar ditt minne och dina associationer. Vad du då aktiverar är ditt eidetiska minne (från grekiskans εἶδος, eidos ”att vara sedd”), det vill säga din förmåga att minnas bilder, något som uppenbarligen är starkt utvecklat hos barn, men som försvagas med åren, om du inte tränar ditt minne minne genom att söka synintryck i det förflutna.

Din eidetiska förmåga är uppenbarligen kopplad till mycket ursprungliga hjärnfunktioner och tycks vara starkt utvecklad hos flertalet däggdjur. Det är hippocampus som utgör hjärnans centrum för eidetiska tankeprocesser och det är också där som fantasier och drömmar tar form.

Genom att i minnet vandra genom mina morföräldrars hus har jag försökt förstärka minnet av min morfar, återbesöka den stora betydelse han haft för mig och att jag gjort det beror på att jag för fjorton dagar sedan blev morfar till en liten flicka vid namn Liv och om jag för henne kunde bli den stora förebild och inspiratör som min morfar varit för mig, då vore jag mycket lycklig.

Snoilsky, Carl (1980) Svenska bilder. Stockholm: Niloé. Yates, Frances A. (1999) Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. New York: Routledge. Yates, Frances A. (2001) The Art of Memory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Books are quietly resting in my bookshelves, year after year. When I look at them I wonder where and why I bought them, one day I will read them. When I few a weeks ago, travelled to Prague I brought with me One, a novel by David Karp, without any other thought than "now it may be the right time for me to read it".

I usually write my name on the first page, and when I saw that my signature was not as unreadable as it has become, I realized that I bought the book while I was still in high school. Maybe I had been tempted by the text on the cover:

You know what I intend to do with the Burden? I am going pulverize his identity, reduce him from one to zero, into nothing.

David Karp? Even if several of his novels had been published by the prestigious Penguin, a publishing house that even included One  among its Modern Classics, Carp has now disappeared into the mists of the past. Between 1952 and 1964 he wrote eleven novels, only to leave this badly paid endeavour to devote himself to the writing of scripts for TV series and commercials. 

David Karp seems in many ways to have been the archetype of a "typical, successful American". He was born in poverty on Manhattan, where he made a living as dish washer, street vendor and as barker for theatres and restaurants, before he served as a radio operator in the Pacific war, after his return he took a course of literature at a college and finally worked as freelance writer for various TV channels. Carp married when he was 22 years, moved to Los Angeles and had two sons. In 1999, he died of lung cancer - too much smoking. That's basically all the information I could mine from the web.

Perhaps Karp perceived himself as one of the characters who appear in his books. His novel Leave Me Alone, written in 1956, has been compared to the TV series Mad Men and according to a blog writer it depicts

… the plight of the mildly talented, burdened with artistic sensibility and the painful, growing realisation of their own mediocrity.

This description also applies to Professor Burden in One, he is a literary scholar and teacher at a provincial college in a future state, which is reminiscent of the United States in the fifties. Professor Burden is living with his beautiful, loving wife and two moderately mischievous boys in a suburban house, surrounded by similar households with discreet, friendly residents. It is a calm, orderly existence and Burden seems to be quite satisfied with his life. However, by subtle means Carp succeeds in convincing his readers that all is not right in this somewhat too glaring idyll.

When Burden comes home from his rather tedious lecturing, he retires after supper into his cosy office, fills the bowl of his pipe, lights it and then devotes himself to his favourite pastime. Exactly at eight o'clock he starts writing his daily report to the Ministry for Review of Internal Conditions. Generally he has his report ready within an hour, which gives him enough time to calmly read it through and then bring it down to the mailbox, in good time before the last pick-up, at ten thirty.

Burden's report is a precise description of his daily impressions of his colleagues, their general behaviour and one or two occasional startling statements uttered by them. It has been more than ten years since Burden was summoned to the Ministry for Review of Internal Conditions and received his specific task. Like other informers, Burden was asked to conceal his activities even for his family and was also informed that he had been selected after a very careful examination of his character, trustworthiness and general capabilities.

Burden likes his task, he enjoys writing reports and assumes that his assessments of his environment contribute to sharpening his ability of observation and thus favours his skills in literary analysis. He has also learned to read other persons' lips, a great asset for his task as informer. Burden does not ponder on the fact that his statements might harm his colleagues, that he is in fact a cunning spy. So far, he has considered his reports to be some a kind of literary endeavour that develops his writing skills. When he reads what he has written the reports appear as first-rate short stories born out of his everyday experiences. While sitting by his typewriter, puffing contentedly on his pipe Burden imagines how a young, for him unknown, lady at the Ministry for Review of Internal Conditions appreciatively and approvingly enjoys his excellent reports.

Burden does not realize that every evening Government trucks gather tons of reports from all over the country, which eventually are dumped on the huge ramps at "the extreme boundary units" of the Ministry for Review of Internal Conditions. An enormous building complex where reports are labelled and archived. A report file is brought to light only when certain crimes or conspiracies are suspected, much like when recordings from surveillance cameras are examined only after a crime has been committed, or is suspected to take place. However, periodically are a specific amount of reports picked out for routine check-ups and one day Burden´s report is picked up and placed before one of thousands of secretaries at the Department for Special Tasks, who forwards it to a pipe-smoking, corpulent and obviously good-natured bureaucrat called Conger, who despite his apparent cosiness is a cynical and well-trained judge of people whose job it is to track down any sign of "heresy" of the person whose report file has ended up on his desk.

One describes a future society without the neverending wars, the slogans, video screens, electronic surveillance, regime loyal soldiers and torture chambers we have been acquainted from classical dystopias like 1984 or We. There are no amazing technical features in Karp's novel; not much seems to separate its environment from the US middle-class world of the fifties, there are still paper magazines around, regular mail service, villas with well-kept lawns, family peace, breakfast and dinners shared by all family members, offices with typewriters and water fountains. Every detail seems to be controlled and regulated, but is obviously a safe and peaceful existence, where conflicts, critical thinking, dissent and improper behaviour are avoided. You take vacations, go out into the countryside, read pulp literature and watch TV. Nevertheless, hidden from the sight of most people there is a huge state-controlled bureaucracy that keeps a careful watch over any deviation from what is considered to be the norms for each and every one.

The novel was written in 1952 and has of course been compared with Orwell´s 1984 and then assessed as a pale copy of that acclaimed novel. However, despite some similarities One is a different novel than 1984 and the benevolent, conformist, but alas so vapid society of Karp´s novel makes me think more about the American ideals of the1950s, than a totalitarian, Stalinist future state.

Karp's vast Ministry for Review of Internal Conditions appears to correspond to an American wishful thinking thinking about about  an institution able to track down any threat to national security. The terminology is reminiscent of the US Department of Homeland Security, a US federal agency established after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and headed by a minister of homeland security. During Karp's lifetime there was, just as nowadays, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which under the tight leadership of J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972) devoted time, energy and resources on investigating political activists, who were not suspected of any crime per se, but who were nevertheless registered in extensive archives describing their views and actions.

 In 1947, the president Harry Truman ordered the establishment of a Federal Employees Loyalty Program, and loyalty review boards were created throughout the nation to assess the degree of Americanism of federal employees and recommending immediate dismissal and/or punishment of Government employees who had been forced to admit spying for the Soviet Union's behalf, or suspected of other un-American activities. A general fear of Communist terror soon spread all through the American society and resulted in what has been called The Second Red Scare.

The First Red Scare shock the nation in the early twenties, as a response to trade union activities, the rise of the Soviet Union and anarchism. It led among other things to the deportation of radical "elements", stricter immigration laws, especially directed against Asians, Southern Europeans and refugees from Russia and Eastern Europe, increased racism and registration of individuals assumed to constitute a danger to society. It was the heyday of Ku Klux Klan, which at its peak in the mid-1920s, claimed to include about 15 percent of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men. 

The Second Red Scare was also a period marked by active political repression of Communists, terror campaigns by right-wing forces and generally baseless allegations of Soviet espionage in government circles, academia and industry. This period of opinion registration, stooling and general fear of everything foreign is said to have lasted between 1947 and 1957, but it does of course live on, especially now when Communists have been replaced by “Muslims” as a threat to "civilization" and social order.

Professor Burden in Karp's novel is proud of his reports and believes that an order to appear before the Department for Special Tasks means that he will be commended for his outstanding efforts, or perhaps even receive some kind of award. As a matter of fact, Conger the respected bureaucrat who receives the insignificant lecturer in his office deep inside the bowels of the Department's labyrinths, has not read a single word in any of Burden´s reports. He quietly asks his unsuspecting visitor:

- Do you have any idea of why you were called in?

Burden nervously lingers with the answer, but after a while Conger get him to admit:

- I nursed a pretty childish belief that I would ... be officially congratulated for my work.

Conger plays with Burden like a cat plays with a mouse. Burden seems to believe that he is a special person, better than other citizens - a gross sin in a nation where everyone should consider him/herself as an equal to anyone else, neither better, nor worse. A discussion unfolds and Conger becomes convinced that Burden is an independently thinking individualist - a heretic:

- You consider yourself as one of the Ministry's more prominent informers?

The confused Burden cannot answer. He does not know that his reports have never been read by anyone. Conger is lying shamelessly:

- As a matter of fact, your reports have been found to be a good step below average in terms of both evaluation and perception, lacking accuracy and workmanship.

The offended literature professor is incapable of hiding his outrage and thus reveals that he holds a high opinion about himself. On the suspicion of being a dangerous heretic Burden is retained within the Ministry and the novel depicts in detail the systematic brainwashing he is subjected to. No open torture, but a quiet, patient destruction of Burden's self-esteem, which is actually just as worrying and terrifying as the diabolical degradation processes depicted in so many other dystopian novels.

The torture is not executed by any blunt, insensitive thugs, but by highly intelligent individuals. Hand-picked outsiders familiar with heretical thought, like the clear-minded, extremely cynical and kindly Lark:

Neither a full-grown man, nor a boy. He was neither a scientist, nor a mystic. He was something vastly subtler, something very much wiser - woman, snake, magician, seer, a fool. The Ministry had its specialists, interrogators, medical technicians psychologists, politicians, administrators [...] However, there was only one single, one hundred percent inquisitor. Lark was the Ministry's brain and marrow - a fact that practically nobody was familiar with. He had neither the corresponding title, nor the salary, not even any crucial influence. However, he was in possession of a true inquisitor´s soul, his sharpness and intuitive grasp.

With the help of his subordinates Lark picks Burden's broken soul and mind, and then build him up again – to become a good corporate citizen, without family or past. By transforming him into submissive zombie, Lark saves Burden from liquidation.

Burden is an "insignificant" citizen, unlike Rubashov, a character who Arthur Koestler in his novel Darkness at Noon created as a blend of several well-known Communist leaders wiped out by Stalin, some of whom had been familiar with Koestler. The author was also inspired by the three weeks he spent in a cell in Seville in anticipation of being executed as a communist spy by Franco fascists. As a matter of fact Koestler was at the time a spy serving the Stalinist regime under the cover as a journalist for a right-wing newspaper.

In particular the fate of Nikolai Bukharin, once an appreciated General Secretary of Comintern´s executive committee, permeates the entire novel. Bukarin broke down during Stalin's Great Purge (1936-1938) and was after one of many show trials executed in 1938, the same year Koestler left the Communist Party and began his novel. Before Rubashov was executed, he had been quashed by bad conscience for his actions in allegiance to a party that finally forced him to make baseless confessions and destroyed him in the name of an ideology which integrity he had a hard time denying, even if he continuously was exposed to a ruthless mental and physical torture by servants to the same political system he believed in.

Professor Burden was treated milder and more subtle than the victims of Stalinism. He seems to be a willing participant in his own brainwashing, motivated by a sincere desire to become "normal". Following the process of his complicated and pitiful breakdown the reader wonders why the Government made such efforts to "reform" an “insignificant” citizen like Burden. We do not become familiar with the leadership of this totalitarian state power, which presence is much more discreet than 1984s Big Brother. David Karp´s State is not involved in any war, its propaganda is not conspicuous and the society it controls is characterized by peace and equality.

Could it perhaps be that Burden's case is just one of thousands of others? We don´t know. His persecutor – Lark, might possibly be just one of several other, similar inquisitors. Perhaps Karp´s State is as large and comprehensive as those in Borges´ mirror worlds? Perhaps is Burden's novel, not at all taking place in the future.

I am reading One while resting on a sofa bed in my oldest daughter's apartment in Prague. Occasionally, I lift my eyes from the book pages and through the beautiful, cubist-framed windows I look out on dark clouds looming outside.

Karp wrote his book in 1952, on the third of December that same year eleven men were between three o'clock and a quarter to six in the morning hanged in the courtyard of the Pankrác prison in Prague, all of them had been participants in the Communist nomenklatura. In the same courtyard where they were being executed, no less than 234 men had been hanged during a Communist coup d'état four years earlier. 

The bodies of the eleven executed Communists were directly transferred to a crematory and their ashes poured into a potato sack. Two policemen and a driver were ordered to scatter the ashes on a field outside of Prague, but it was very cold day and the roads were slippery. As soon as they arrived outside the city the three men went out of the car and scattered the ashes directly on the road. When they later reported their deed the driver laughed, quipping that he never before had had fourteen people in his car - himself, the two policemen and the eleven dead criminals in the potato sack. The newspapers published a list of those who had been executed, after the name of ten of them it was written "Jew of birth".

Some of those executed, but far from all, were to be blamed for the death of others. Between 1945 and 1948, 90 million citizens of Eastern European countries ended up under Communist rule. During negotiations taking place during World War II the allied forces had guaranteed the leaders of the Soviet Union that countries liberated by its Red Army, would be subjected to the Soviet demand that all regimes established within these conquered territories had to be friendly disposed to the Soviet Union and that occupying Red Army forces would have a free hand to act against fascist groups. Stalin gave himself the exclusive right to judge what ”Fascism” was and according to him it was basically a term for everything and everyone that stood in opposition to his own interpretation of "Communism".

Unlike the case in most other "liberated" Eastern Bloc countries several Czechoslovak citizens were relatively sympathetic to their domestic Communists and the Soviet Union, which had refused to sign the shameful Munich Agreement, which had cleared the way for Nazi Germany's carnage and terror in Czechoslovakia. In the free elections of May 1946, the Communists gained 38 per cent of the votes, while the Social Democrat's popular leader, Edvard Beneš, was elected president. Beneš wanted to tie Czechoslovakia, which was still one of Europe's leading industrial nations, closer to the West, but he had one weakness - he wanted at all costs expel the German speaking population from Sudetenland, which for centuries had been an integral part of Bohemia, Czechoslovakia's core area.

Beneš policy of ethnic cleansing was supported by the Communists and furthermore popular with the majority of the Czech population. It was a contributing factor to why the army and the police came to be dominated by Communists, as well as the Department of Agriculture came under Communist control. This Ministry was in charge of distributing the land left by the over 50 000 German-speaking Sudeten, who by army and police had been expelled from territories that for centuries had been populated by their ancestors.

Beneš´ Social Democrats negotiated a trade agreement with England and in 1947 they participated in the Paris meetings that would result in the US Marshall Aid, aiming at building up the economy in Europe´s war-torn countries. This initiative displeased the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovakian Social-democratic government was forced to abandon its cooperation with Western powers. Czechoslovakia´s principled and popular foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, son of the Republic´s founder, Tomáš Masaryk, was found dead below his office window, apparently thrown out by the Communist secret police. The murder occurred a month after the Communist Prime Minister Klement Gottwald headed a military coup ousting Edvard Beneš, who died of natural causes eight months later. This so-called Prague Coup was followed by the persecution and summary executions of opponents to the Communist regime. Those killed were branded as "fascists", although most of them had been fierce opponents of the Nazi empire, several had spent time in prisons and concentration camps.

Heda Margolius´ memoirs constitute an outstanding description of those tumultuous times. She was the widow of one of those who had been executed on December 3, 1952. Her book is written  in a highly legible, ironic, yet deeply moving style. Heda Margoulis depicts her suffering in the hells of Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz. How her entire family was wiped out and how she managed to escape during the death marches of emaciated Jews towards Germany, after the eastern concentration camps had been closed down. When she turned up in the still Nazi occupied Prague she was met by the cold shoulder of her terrified friends. After sleeping in the streets and trying to kill herself, she was finally rescued by a few faithful friends and reunited with the love of her life, Rudolf Margolius, who had survived the ghetto in Lodz, and the concetrations camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. Heda and Rudolf Margolius eventually joined the Communist Party, she was far more doubtful than her husband, though Heda states:

Our conditioning for the revolution had begun in the concentration camps. […] Communists who often behaved like being of a higher order. Their idealism and Party discipline gave them a strength and endurance that the rest of us could not match. They were like well-trained soldiers in a crowd of children.

Those who returned from the camps´ hell, where every day had meant a struggle to preserve life and dignity, needed something to resort to, something to believe in:

When the war finally ended, our joy soon changed into a sense of anti-climax and a yearning to fill the void that this intensity of expectation and exertion of will had left behind. A strong sense of solidarity had evolved in the concentration camps, the idea that one individual´s fate was in every way tied to the fate of the group, whether that meant the group of one´s fellow prisoners, the whole nation, or even all of humanity. For many people, the desire for material goods had largely disappeared.

Such feelings made victims of war and persecution sympathetic to the Communist message of solidarity and justice for all. They participated enthusiastically in marches with banners fluttering, singing Communist hymns, shouting slogans about solidarity and common sacrifice, while accepting shoddily paid work for the rebuilding of their shattered communities.

The lawyer Rudolf Margolius considered it as his duty to participate in the build-up of Czechoslovakia. He studied economics and eventually became, against his wife's will, Deputy Finance Minister and Chief Negotiator for the trade agreement with England. After her privations and social marginalization Heda Margolius suddenly found herself in the midst of the Czech-Communist nomenclature, a privileged sphere with chauffeur-driven limousines, magnificent feasts, usually in company with the vulgar wives of Communist politruks, while previously unknown people reverently began to strut around her, this after she a short time before had been ignored or even hunted down, or forced to live homeless and shunned.

Her new existence alarmed the idealistic and sophisticated Heda Marglolis and not the least the growing personality cult that grew up around the Communist coryphees. "Stalin's friend and confidant," the mushy and occasionally drunken Klement Gottwald witnessed how monuments were erected in his honour, celebrating his “heroism”, while he surrounded himself with a court of fawning minions.

Gottwald´s corpulent wife, a former domestic servant, who had to fight to get her daughter Martha recognized by an unwilling Gottwald, who finally for the sake of his political career had to accept to be married to the unsightly and poorly educated Martha. Their daughter married a certain Alexei Čepička who then was appointed Minister of Justice, engaging in a ruthless persecution of opponents of the regime.

After a few years Čepička (that means small cap), became an inept defence minister and began favouring a ridiculous, overblown cult of Gottwald, including the embalmment of his father-in-law´s body and have it exhibited for public worship in a lavish mausoleum. Čepička was finally deposed in 1958, accused of a variety of abuses. Čepička´s situation was not improved by his homosexual inclination and after a heart attack he was evicted to the doldrums.

In her book Heda Margolius describes a meeting with Klement Gottwald:

I was standing with a group of Rudolf´s colleagues in one of the smaller salons when Klement Gottwald himself stumbled in on the arm of the Speaker of National Assembly. The president of the Republic was sloshed, the Speaker was actually holding him up. Gottwald picked a path across the room straight toward me, lurched to a stop, and babbled – “What´s the matter? You ain´t drinking! Why ain´t you drinking?" The men around me signalled frantically for a waiter and one leaped forward with a tray. I took a glass of wine. So did the president. We both drank up. The president waved his empty glass in the air, stared at it for a moment, then he fixed his bloodshot eyes on me and started babbling again, just as before:  “What´s the matter? You ain´t drinking! Why ain´t you drinking?”

The apparently homely, pipe-smoking, but ruthless Gottwald had far worse problems than his alcoholism. Stalin tried to maintain his newly acquired, but fragmented and oppositionist, Communist empire. Russia was devastated; its industries in tatters, the huge mines in Donetsk under water, oil wells blown up and fields laid barren. Stalin felt that the only way towards reconstruction was an even stricter control of social life. Russia and its satellites must be shielded from the outside world, so that this could not interfere with a brutal, merciless reconstruction of the damaged, socio-economic system. People of the Communist Commonwealth would not get to experience that citizens in other nations were far better off as they had to put up with a much slower rise in their living standard. Neighbouring countries that the Soviet Union had forced into its sphere of influence had to accept being exploited to contribute to the Russian recovery. Their intellectuals; academics, researchers and writers, must surrender to the Soviet force and adapt themselves and their activities to the Soviet pen. The propaganda was constantly denouncing "alien and bourgeois tendencies".

Stalin feared Anglo-American influence and the resurgence of the Social Democracy, a mind-set that according to him had tainted the Communists who during the war had found themselves outside the Russian sphere - in the Spanish Civil War, in France, in England and the US, in Mexico and Scandinavia. This had been the case with several of the leading Czech Communists. There was also a danger that the strong Czech nationalism could be inspired by the Yugoslav nationalist independent stance towards the Soviet giant. A special danger represented the solidarity many Czech Communists demonstrated for the newly founded Israel. Furthermore, Stalin´s arch enemy, the exiled Trotsky, bragged about his Fourth International, which he claimed was a revolutionary and internationalist alternative to the Stalinist Comintern and with a strong presence in both the Soviet Union and its subdued, allied states.

Stalin's Soviet Union had initially supported the founding of the state of Israel and even encouraged Czechoslovak arms exports to the newly formed nation, a support that without which, according to Ben-Gurion, Israel´s frist prime minister, the Israelis would not have been able to offer resistance to the hostile Arab states. Soon, however, Stalin's paranoia overwhelmed him. In the light of Stalin's nationally oriented Communism, Jews came to be regarded as highly educated, multilingual and dangerous cosmopolitans who opposed his political regimentation, an idea that surely benefited from his rabid hatred against Lev Trotsky and his fear of the “Fourth International”. Stalin began to clean out people with Jewish from his inner circle and even the wife of his faithful squire Molotov was sent to the Gulag, without a word of protest from his side – she joined her husband again after the death of Stalin.

A final outburst of Stalin's paranoia was the so-called Doctors´ Plot, an assumed conspiracy that mainly was imposed upon medical doctors of Jewish ancestry, accused of trying to murder Communist leaders by poisoning. This new madness was initiated in 1951 and was worsened in 1954 when Mikhail Ryumin, Deputy Head of the Ministry of State Security, accused the Jewish economics professor Yakov Etinger of convincing Jewish doctors to poison Zhadnov (who had been chief negotiator with the dissident Yugoslavs, but according to Stalin far too indulgent) and his secretary, Alexander Shcherbakov.

Unfortunately, Etinger died during the torture he suffered. However, the carousel continued to whirl. In a first round 32 doctors were jailed, but the number quickly rose to several hundred, under merciless torture they began to accuse one another of absurd crimes. Stalin complained that interrogators failed to provide a clear picture of how the doctors had organized their Zionist conspiracies .

When Stalin's personal physician, Vladimir Vinogradov, in the early 1952 recommended that the work obsessed Stalin ought to take it easier and relax more the “Brilliant Genius of Humanity” became absolutely furious and had Professor Vinogradov immediately arrested as suspected member of a Jewish medical conspiracy. Lack of a competent physician and the compact horror that surrounded Stalin during his last days of life may have been one reason to why no one dared to enter the “Father of Nation´s” office in his dacha in Kuntsevo outside Moscow, where he in the aftermath of a stroke during the night of March 1, 1953, for more than 13 hou3 hours laid alone and helpless on the floor. He had apparently been conscious all that time, but lost the power of speech. A few days later, Stalin died.

Anti-Semitism rested heavily on the high-ranking Communists who were accused in Prague. Certainly Stalin wanted to scare the Czech Communist leadership into submission. Pointing to the relatively large number of Jews in the party leadership and their support for Israel was one of the more effective means for breaking down the prisoners. Stalin did not want the Yugoslav fiasco to be repeated. The single-minded Tito had managed to go his own way and liberate himself and his countrymen from the Stalinist iron grip.

For starters, the main accusation was that the accused had been participants in a conspiracy, inspired by Yugoslav nationalism and Zionism organized by the Anglo-American intelligence services, primarily through a double spy named Noël Field, who was responsible for an international organization called the Unitarian Service Committee. Field had been arrested in Czechoslovakia and soon became the main witness in several Hungarian show trials. Field was during his whole life a convinced communist. After his disappearance his wife travelled around in Eastern Europe in search of him, contacting people he had known, several whom were arrested after meeting her. Noël Field surfaced in Budapest and after "disclosing" several friends and acquaintances as spies, some of them were sentenced to death in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Field died as a free, Hungarian citizen in 1970.

Shortly after his arrest the Czech former deputy minister of foreign affairs, Artur London, was told by his interrogator Bohumil Smola:

We´ll get rid of you and your filthy race! You´re all the same! Not everything Hitler did was right, but he destroyed the Jews and he was right about that. Too many of you escaped the gas chamber. We´ll finish what he started. He stamped his foot: ´We´ll bury you and your filthy race ten yards deep.

It was Artur London's description of his years of torture inside the inferno of Czechoslovakia´s prisons that first made me aware of Communism´s despicable abuse of stifling power. While I was still in high school I and my friend Claes Toft were engaged in Hässleholm´s Cineaste Club, we even took over the presidency, but to my shame I must admit we were not up to the task and whole project fell apart. However, before the Club´s demise we managed to get some excellent films to Hässleholm. One that affected me was Costa-Gavras film The Confession from 1970. It is an accurate mise-en-scène of Artur London's book with the same name. I would like to see the movie again, but have not been able get hold of it. However, I have read the book that reveals Artur London´s astounding memory for details and dialogues. Step by step London leads us through bleak prisons and mindboggling physical and psychological torture, practiced with an incomprehensible brutality.

London had been a trustworthy Communist since the age of fourteen and had devoted his entire life to the Party. He had participated in clandestine resistance in France and Czechoslovakia and been a soldier in service of the Spanish republic during the Civil War. During the worst Stalinist terror he had studied and lived in Moscow, later he had been been imprisoned in France and ended up the concentration camp of Mauthausen. In spite of all this hardship he had not for a minute doubted that the Party was always right, like in the East German anthem:

Oh, The Party, the Party is always right

And comrade, may it ever be so;

For who fights for the right

He is always right

Against lies and exploitation.

Whoever insults life

Is stupid or bad.

Whoever defends humanity

Is always right.

Grown from the spirit of Lenin

Welded by Stalin

The party – the party – the party.

Like Joseph K. in Kafka's Process, Artur London cannot understand what he is accused of. Can his torturers really work for Communism? He was utterly shocked by what his tormentors told him:

This was the first time in my adult life that I was insulted because I was a Jew ad was held to be a criminal because of my race – and that by a man from State Security of a socialist country, a member of the Communist party. Was it possible that the mentality of the SS had arisen in our ranks? This was the mentality of the men who shot my brother, Jean in 1941, who deported my mother, my sister Juliette and her husband, and dozens of my family to Auschwitz and sent them to the gas chamber. I had concealed my race to the Nazis, should I do the same thing in my own socialist country?

After being shadowed by StB (State Security) for a couple of weeks Artur London's car was intercepted in Prague´s centre. He was arrested, blindfolded and brought from one prison after another. It was in the middle of winter. He was trapped in a cell, four by four square metres, and forced to walk around in circles. As soon as he stopped walking, guards rushed in and pounded his head against the wall. Everything was dripping with cold moisture, his clothes were soaked, and there was no window, icicles hanged from the roof. Lights were on day and night, the floor was slippery with mud. Occasionally the guards did not beat him if he rested, but instead poured a bucket of ice cold water over him.

When Artur London had become completely confused from hunger and fatigue he was brought to a dry cell. There he could rest for a while, but soon he was again forced to walk back and forth. From time to time he was tortured by being brought to another new cell where the space was slightly larger. However, through a kind of drain in the middle of the cell black, disgusting water came oozing up at fixed intervals. The floor was flooded and London had to slouch around in stinking mud. After a few weeks of this misery London was brought to a cell with a bed, blankets and a latrine. Now the interrogation sessions start, 18 to 20 hours without a break, with a spotlight directed towards his face and always standing. As London was transferred from his cell to the interrogation room, he wore motorcycle goggles with blackened glass. Chains had turned his hands into a swollen, painful mass of sour meat. His clothing did not warm his constantly frozen body. Thanks to the rough "slippers" and the eternal wandering his feet became disfigured. Blisters and swelling make them look as if he was suffering from elephantiasis. The skin between his toes cracked and the wounds were filled with pus.

Artur London spent 27 months in absolute isolation. He saw only guards and inquisitors. On several occasions he tried in vain to commit suicide by starving himself to death or by swallowing a large quantity of cigarettes he managed to steal from his interrogators. The last attempt resulted in serious illness, but his tormentors saw to that he was healed. They wanted at all costs Artur London to survive to testify at the trial.

The interrogations changed character. The brutal Bohumil Smolek was replaced by the more patient, calm but equally ferocious Vladimir Kohoutek, who during one of their introductory meetings asked Artur London to tell him his life story. This constituted a respite from the constant unilateral pressure to confess absurd and uncorroborated crimes. London began to narrate his life story. It took a long time and when London had finished Kohoutek ordered him: "Take the whole thing from the beginning!" And so it went on, every day, week after week – “twice, ten times, a hundred times”.

Kohoutek was well aware of the fact that every individual nurtures some guilt.  Remorse and shame constitute a part of our conscience. We all have both small and large debts and mistakes we ought to account for. After listening to London´s long and comprehensive accounts of how his life had unfolded Kohoutek knew exactly where to drill into London's subconscious. At the same time as Kohoutek reminded London about his crimes and mistakes he informed him about concessions, accusations and confessions made by his invisible fellow prisoners. Kohoutek told London that his wife had betrayed him, that she had a lover and no longer wanted to acknowledge London as a husband and father to their children. That she considered him to be a traitor to both his country and his family. All lies, and when London refused to believe Kohoutek´s insinuations he threatened to harm his children. To terrify London even more the prison guards exposed him to mock executions.

London´s tormentors found it increasingly difficult to construct a viable story out of his disconnected confessions. For the upcoming trial the Czech government needed a story that could connect the disparate stories of the accused, able to please the Russians who waited in the back stage. So far the interrogators had only traced some disconnected contacts with Israelis, Yugoslavs and American agents and one or two misgivings with the behaviour of the Party, but so far it had proved impossible to tie everything together into a credible plot against the Government, the Party and the Soviet Union.

The method they had been using so far was to force the accused to name acquaintances who could be suspected of being "Zionists", "spies" or "Trotskyites". If asked if they he knew such people the accused might reply yes and the following accusation would then be: “If you are familiar with such people it would mean that you are a Zionist/Trotskyist as well." Upon which the accused would declare "No, no, I'm a committed Communist". "Communists do not socialize with such rabble, but since you have mentioned such people it means that you have connections with them and accordingly is not a true communist." And so it went on, back and forth, day in and day out.

Other interrogators had from Evžen Löbl, one of the accused who had been deputy finance minister, managed to squeeze out an admission that he could not have been able to do anything without direct orders from Rudolf Slánský, a very influential politician of Jewish ancestry who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party, making him the second man in the party, behind President Gottwald.

Kohoutek used Löbl´s remark to press Artur London to admit that Slánský had organized the accused as part of his scheme to overthrow the Government on behalf of Western, capitalist forces. If London did not agree with this interpretation Kohoutek threatened to once again deliver him to Bohumil Smolek´s insensitive brutality and the moisture dripping cells: "By following my instructions you may save your life and escape from this hopeless situation. Otherwise, I will once more unleash the demons upon you." According to the interrogation report the bewildered London finally acknowledged that he belonged to a Trotskyite group, led by “another person”. After being beaten, starved and tortured London "once" mentioned Slánský´s name and that was enough for constructing a case against all of the accused.

Russian advisers, who moved behind the scenes, assumed that accusing Slánský for machinations against the Government would be an excellent opportunity for challenging President Gottwald´s absolute faithfulness to Stalin and the Soviet Union. If the Czechoslovak president was prepared to sacrifice his closest friend and ally it would be a gesture proving his unconditional loyalty to the Stalinist regime. Gottwald gave in and offered his friend and confidant as a scapegoat atoning for the mistakes and lack of loyalty the Czech government had demonstrated, according to Stalin and his henchmen.

Rudolf Slánský was not especially well liked among his co-defendants. Heda Margolius wrote:

My husband had always intensely disliked Slánský. He considered him a dogmatic extremist. A vain and ruthless man, pathologically hungry for power and recognition. He had always avoided Slánský as much as possible and I knew that had no official or personal connection with him.

Russian advisors and Czech politruks carefully read the printouts from the different interrogations, which were done simultaneously with all the accused. The interrogators and their superiors tried to unite the confessions into a concocted story indicating that the accused under the leadership of Rudolf Slánský had engaged in "Trotskyist-Titoist-Zionist activities in the service of American imperialism." When all accused had been tortured and brainwashed thoroughly they had within a couple of weeks to learn their pre-fabricated confessions by heart, to be able to repeat them flawlessly during the trial. Each of them was instructed to ask for the strictest possible punishment.

A nasty consequence of these show trials was the social isolation and misery that befell the families of the convicted. Their wives were evicted from their homes and lost their jobs, their children denied higher education and all family members were subjected to daily contempt and distrust. Heda Margoulis described how she was close to death during her husband's trial, but was nevertheless denied proper medical treatment and how, just like during the war, those who she believed to be her and her husband's friends avoided her. Just as back then, it was only the self-sacrificing support of a few individuals that kept her and her son alive.

The journalist Otto Katz had in his closing argument added some words that had not been submitted to him for the carefully prepared declarations, but since the trial had been broadcasted all over the Communist world, they had to be included in the official protocol, which was translated into seven languages ​​and distributed worldwide.

Katz had been a master spy, infiltrating communities of exiled opponents to the Nazi regime in Germany, France, Spain and especially Hollywood, where he had inspired several successful movies, including Casablanca where the character of the resistance fighter Victor Laszlo generally is believed to be based on Katz. Otto Katz had written and edited numerous books and articles in support and defence of anti-fascists around the world. He had once saved Arthur Koestler from being executed by Franco's fascists, in Mexico he had been involved in the assassination of Trotsky. Katz had probably ended up in the dock due to a contemptuous remark that the Russian Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov had made about him during the Paris Peace Conference in 1946: "Why is that globetrotter here?"

Otto Katz was a Jew and his extensive international network was certainly the reason to why he was sentenced to death. With bowed head had Katz during the trial declared:

I am a writer, supposedly an architect of the soul. What sort of architect have I been — I who have poisoned people's souls? Such an architect of the soul belongs to the gallows. The only service I can still render is to warn all who by origin or character are in danger of following the same path to hell. The sterner the punishment.

As Arthur Koestler read the statement, he was upset because he thought it reminded Rubashov´s final words in Darkness at Noon, which he once had given to Katz. Rubashov´s speech is an almost exact reproduction of Nikolai Bukharin's "confession" during the Moscow show trial in 1938:

Shrouded in shame, forced into the dust and ready to die, I'm going to show you a traitor´s sad trajectory that it may be a warning and deterrent to millions of our country.

Koestler understood Katz´ words as an appeal to all writers, movie stars, book publishers and other parlour Communists who once had swarmed around the handsome representative of the Popular Front and who now kept silent about the obvious murder carried out by the so called “Justice” of the Communists in Prague. Koestler wrote in his diary: "I felt sick, my stomach ached and I cried for my old friend."

Commenting upon the Prague citizens futile protests against the Russian invasion in 1968 the Czech exile historian Jaroslav Orpat wrote:

A remarkable novel exists, known all over the world except in our country, the novel Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, which accurately describes the mechanism of Soviet trials in the second half of the thirties, the logic of the interrogators, the judges, the prosecutors and the accused who themselves become collaborators of the investigation and prosecution. . . . The most tragic thing is that a decade later these events repeated themselves with the force of a natural law

Once more a meandering blog is arriving at its endpoint. I have been pondering about the human face of ruthless political persecution, based on obvious lies. The fate of the fictitious, insignificant professor Burden, or the very real Artur London, Rudolf Margolius and Otto Katz and all the effort that was put into brainwashing and breaking them down.

The extremely lengthy Slánský process finds it´s politically charged counterpart in the US process against Sacco and Vanzetti, between 1921 and 1927, which took place during the First Red Scare and the process against the Rosenbergs, 1950-1953, which took place during the Second Red Scare. Like the Slánský process these US trials resulted in the death penalty for the accused.

Artur London mentioned that the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti convinced him that Communism was the only ideology that could protect against such injustice, the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg likewise outraged many Communists throughout the world. This while the Stalinist regime were guilty of at least 6 million murders of non-combatants. Every single person of those millions could tell us about horrible.  What do numbers say? We need to be shaken up by what a victim tells us.

Kaplan, Karel (1990) Report on the Murder of the General Secretary. Athens, OH: Ohio State University Press. Karp, David (1972) One. Harmondsworth: Penguin Modern Classics. Koestler, Arthur (1984) Darkness at Noon. Harmondsworth: Penguin Modern Classics. Koestler, Arthur (2005), The Invisible Writing. New York: Vintage. London, Artur (1971) The Confession. New York: Ballantine Books. Margolius Kovály, Heda (2012) Under a Cruel Star: Life in Prague, 1941-1968. London: Granta. Miles, Jonathan (2010) The Nine Lives of Otto Katz: The Remarkable Story of a Communist super-spy. London: Bantam Books. Morgan, Ted (2004) Reds: McCarthyism in the Twentieth Century America. New York: Random House. Rayfield, Ronald (2003), Stalin and His Hangmen: An authoritative portrait of a Tyrant and Those Who served him. London: Penguin Books. Snyder, Timothy D. (2010) Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books.

The Party Is Always Right - Song of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqgvQ88KGLs

I mina bokhyllor står böcker stillatigande år ut och år in. När jag ser dem undrar jag när jag köpte dem, alltmedan jag tänker att en dag skall jag läsa dem. När jag för några veckor sedan reste till Prag tog jag, utan någon annan tanke än att ”nu kan det vara dags”, fram David Karps roman Mannen som tvivlade. Jag brukar skriva mitt namn på försättsbladet och när jag såg att namnteckningen inte var så oläslig som den blivit genom åren, förstod jag att boken köptes medan jag fortfarande gick i skolan. Kanske fascinerades jag av texten på omslaget:

Vet ni vad jag tänker göra med Burden? Jag tänker pulverisera hans identitet, reducera honom till en siffra, från ett till noll, till ingenting.

David Karp? Även om flera av hans böcker publicerades av Penguin Books tycks han numera i stort sett ha försvunnit in i det förflutnas dimmor. Mellan 1952 och 1964 skrev Karp elva romaner, sedan ägnade han sig åt att skriva manus för TV-serier.

Även om Karps romaner fick bra kritik är det numera märkligt tyst kring författaren, som på många sätt tycks ha varit arketypen för en ”typisk, framgångsrik amerikan” – född under fattiga förhållanden på Manhattan, där han drog sig fram som restaurangdiskare, gatuförsäljare och teaterinkastare innan han deltog som telegrafist i kriget i Stilla Havet och vid sin återkomst läste litteratur vid någon högskola och kunde slutligen börja som freelanceförfattare för olika Tv-bolag. Karp gifte sig när han var 22 år, flyttade sedermera till Los Angeles och fick två söner. 1999 dog han i lungcancer – för mycket rökning. Det är i stort all information som jag på nätet kunde vaska fram om David Karp.

Kanske uppfattade han sig som någon av de karaktärer som dyker upp i hans böcker. Romanen Leave Me Alone, ”Låt mig vara”, skriven 1956, har jämförts med TV-serien Mad Men och skildrar enligt en bloggskrivare

den svåra situationen för milt begåvade personer som belastas med konstnärlig känslighet och drabbats av en smärtsam, växande insikt om sin egen medelmåttighet.

Den beskrivningen passar in på Professor Burden i Mannen som tvivlade, verksam som litteraturvetare på ett landsortscollege i en framtida stat som dock påminner om femtiotalets USA. Professor Burden lever tillsammans med en vacker, kärleksfull hustru och två lagom okynniga pojkar i en villa, omgiven av snarlika hushåll med diskret, vänliga invånare. Det är en lugn, välordnad tillvaro och Burden tycks vara nöjd med sitt liv. Med små medel lyckas dock Karp smyga in att allt inte står rätt till i den alltför påfallande idyllen. 

När Burden kommer hem från sitt rutinerade föreläsande drar han sig efter kvällsmaten tillbaka, går in i sitt ombonade arbetsrum, stoppar och tänder sin pipa. Exakt klockan åtta börjar han skriva sin dagliga rapport till Departementet för granskning av interna förhållanden. I allmänhet kunde han avsluta rapporten inom en timme, vilket gav honom tid att lugnt läsa igenom den för att därefter ta den till brevlådan, i god tid för den sista tömningen, klockan tio.

Burdens rapport är en noggrann skildring av hans dagliga intryck av sina kollegor, deras allmänna beteende och ett och annat uppseendeväckande uttalande. Det var mer än tio år sedan han kallades till Departementet för granskning av interna förhållanden och fick sin speciella uppgift. Som andra rapportörer ombads han att hemlighålla sin verksamhet även för sin familj och blev också meddelad att han blivit vald efter en noggrann granskning av hans karaktär och eventuella pålitlighet.

Burden trivs med sin uppgift. Han tycker om att skriva och uppdraget att ingående betrakta och bedöma sin omgivning har skärpt hans iakttagelseförmåga och även gynnat hans verksamhet som litteraturbedömare. Han har också lärt sig att läsa andras läppar. Burden tycks inte alls reflektera över det faktum att hans rapporter kan skada kollegorna, att han i själva verket är en spion. Snarast betraktar han sina rapporter som en slags litterär syssla och de utvecklar sig till välskrivna noveller om hans vardagsupplevelser. När han sitter vid skrivmaskinen och förnöjt puffar på sin pipa funderar Burden kring den unga, men för honom okända dam, som läser hans alster på Departementet för Granskning av Interna Förhållanden.

Okänt för Burden samlas varje kväll lastbilslaster med tonvis av rapporter in och dumpas av på den väldiga ramp som tillhör ”den yttersta avgränsande enheten” till Departementet för Granskning av Interna Förhållanden. Ett väldigt byggnadskomplex där rapporterna etiketteras och arkiveras. En rapportdossier lyfts fram enbart då brott eller konspirationer misstänks, ungefär som när övervakningskamerors inspelningar granskas först efter det att ett brott begåtts eller misstänks. Dock görs med jämna mellanrum ett och annat stickprov något som gör att Burdens rapportsamling plockas ut och hamnar hos en av tusentals sekreterare på Avdelningen för Speciella Uppgifter, som sedan skickar den vidare till den piprökande, korpulente och uppenbart godmodige Conger, som trots det skenbara gemytet är en cynisk och vältränad människokännare vars uppgift det är att spåra ”kätteri” hos den person vars rapportdossier hamnat på hans bord.

I Mannen som tvivlade möter vi en framtid utan de eviga krig, slogans, videoskärmar, elektronisk övervakning, regimtrogna soldater och tortyrkammare vi känner från klassiska dystopier som 1984, Kallocain eller Vi. Det finns inga tekniska finesser i Karps roman; inte mycket tycks skilja miljön från femtiotalets amerikanska medelklassvärld; där finns papperstidningar, vanlig postgång, villor, familjefrid, lunchsamtal och kontor där man använder skrivmaskiner. Det är en detaljreglerad, men uppenbart trygg värld där man undviker konflikt, kritiskt tänkande och avvikande åsikter och beteende. Man tar semester, åker ut på landet, läser kiosklitteratur och tittar på TV. Men, dolt för de flesta, finns en väldig statskontrollerad byråkrati som håller uppsikt över alla avvikelser från vad som anses vara ett normalt, samhällbefrämjande tänkande.

Romanen skrevs 1952 och har givetvis jämförts med 1984 och då bedömts som en blek kopia av den hyllade romanen. Men, trots ett fåtal likheter är Mannen som tvivlade en helt annan bok än 1984 och det välvilliga, konformistiska, men ack så andefattiga samhället i Karps roman får mig mer att tänka på femtiotalets idealamerika än en totalitär, stalinistisk framtidsstat.

Karps väldiga Departement för Granskning av Interna Förhållanden tycks motsvara drömmen om en allomfattande undersökningsenhet som förmår spåra varje hot mot den egna nationens säkerhet. Terminologin påminner om United States Department of Homeland Security (USA:s Departement för Inrikes Säkerhet), ett amerikanskt federalt regeringsdepartement som instiftades efter terroristattacken den 11 september 2001 och som leds av en minister för inrikes säkerhet. På Karps tid fanns, liksom nu, den Federala Utredningsbyrån (FBI), som under J. Edgar Hoovers ledning (1924 – 1972) alltmer kom att ägna tid och energi åt att undersöka politiska aktivister, som inte misstänktes för några brott, utan registrerades i omfattande arkiv genom avvikande åsikter och handlingar.

1947 upprättade Harry Truman ett Federal Employees Loyalty Program, ”Lojalitetsprogram för federalt anställda”, inom vilket lojalitetsprövningsnämnder fastställde graden av "amerikanism" hos federalt anställda personer och rekommenderade omedelbar uppsägning och bestraffning av statsanställda som tvingats erkänna spioneri för Sovjetunionens räkning, eller misstänktes för "oamerikansk verksamhet". En allmän kommunistskräck bredde snart ut sig och resulterade i vad som har kallats The Second Red Scare, ”Den andra röda skräcken”.

Den första röda skräcken dök upp i början av tjugotalet, som en reaktion på fackföreningsverksamhet, den ryska revolutionen och anarkism. Den ledde bland annat till deportationer av radikala ”element”, skärpta immigrationslagar, speciellt riktade mot asiater, sydeuropéer och flyktingar från Ryssland och Östeuropa, ökad rasism (det var Ku Klux Klans storhetstid) och statlig registrering av personer som antogs utgöra en samhällsfara. 

Den andra röda skräcken var också en period präglad av aktivt politiskt förtryck av kommunister, skräckkampanjer från högerkrafter och såväl välgrundade som grundlösa påståenden om sovjetiskt spioneri inom regeringskretsar, den akademiska världen och näringslivet. Perioden av åsiktsregistrering, angiveri och allmän rädsla för allt främmande sägs ha varat mellan 1947 och 1957, men lever givetvis vidare, inte minst nu då kommunisterna ersatts med muslimer som ett hot mot ”civilisation” och samhällsordning.   

Professor Burden i Karps roman är stolt över sina rapporter och tror att en order om att inställa sig hos Departementet för Granskning av Interna Förhållanden betyder att han kommer att lovordas för sina insatser, eller kanske till och med få en utmärkelse. I själva verket har Conger, som tar emot den obetydlige lektorn på sitt kontor i det inre av departementets labyrinter, inte läst ett ord ur Burdens rapporter. Conger frågar stillsamt sin besökare:

- Har ni någon aning om anledningen till att ni kallats in?

Burden dröjer nervöst med svaret, men efter en stund får Conger honom att erkänna:-

- Jag hade en ganska barnslig tanke om att jag skulle … lyckönskas officiellt för mitt arbete.

Conger leker med Burden som katten leker med råttan. Burden tycks tro att han är en speciell person, förmer än andra medborgare – en grov synd i en nation där alla bör uppfatta sig som jämlika. En längre diskussion utspelar sig och Conger övertygas om att Buden är en självständigt tänkande individualist - en kättare:

- Och er personliga inbilskhet gör att ni har en känsla av att vara en av Departementets mera framstående rapportörer?

Den förvirrade Burden kan inte svara. Han vet inte att hans rapporter inte blivit lästa. Utan omsvep ljuger den leende Conger:

- Era rapporter har befunnits vara ett gott steg under medelnivån såväl beträffande bedömning och uppfattning, som i noggrannhet och utformande överhuvudtaget.

Litteraturprofessorn förmår inte dölja sin upprördhet och avslöjar därmed höga tankar om sig själv. Burden hålls kvar inom Departementet och romanen skildrar detaljerat den systematiska hjärntvätt han utsätts för. Ingen öppen tortyr, men ett stillsamt, tålmodigt nedbrytande av Burdens självkänsla, som egentligen är minst lika oroande och skräckinjagande som de diaboliska nedbrytningsprocesser som skildras i så många andra framtidskildringar.

Hjärntvätten utförs inte av några systemtrogna grobianer, utan av intelligenta personer. Outsiders väl förtrogna med kätterska tankegångar, som den klartänkte, cyniske och ytterst vänlige Lark:

Varken en fullvuxen man eller en yngling. Han var varken vetenskapsman eller mystiker. Han var något oerhört mycket subtilare, någonting oerhört mycket visare – kvinna, orm, magiker, siare, dåre. Departementet hade sina specialister, sina förhörsledare, sina medicinska tekniker, sina psykologer, sina politiker, sina administratörer […] Men, där fanns enbart en hundraprocentig inkvisitor. Lark var Departementets hjärna och märg – ett faktum som praktiskt taget ingen visste om. Han hade varken motsvarande titel eller lön, eller ens inflytande. Han var i besittning av den verklige inkvisitorns själ, av hans skarpsinne och av hans intuitiva fattningsförmåga.

Med hjälp av sina underlydande plockar Lark sönder Burdens själ och medvetande för att sedan bygga upp honom igen – till en god samhällsborgare, utan familj eller förflutet. Lark räddar Burden från likvidering, ett öde som för det goda samhällets bästa väntar ohjälpliga kättare.

Burden är en ”obetydlig” medborgare, till skillnad från Rubashov som Arthur Koestler i sin roman Natt klockan tolv på dagen låter innefatta flera välkända kommunistledare och några av Koestlers vänner, som utplånades och avrättades i samband med skenrättegångar och skådeprocesser i Moskva mellan 1935 och 1938. Främst inspirerades Koestler av de tre veckor han tillbringade i en cell i Sevilla i väntan på att av Francos fascister bli avrättad som kommunistspion, vilket han i själva verket också var. Nikolai Bucharins öde genomsyrar också hela romanen. Han var vid sitt gripande uppskattad ledare för Komintern, det sovjetiska kommunistpartiets internationella avdelning, men bröts ner under Stalins utrensningar och avrättades 1938 efter en av Stalins många ”skådeprocesser”. Samma år som Koestler lämnade kommunistpartiet och påbörjade sin roman.

Innan Rubashov avrättas har han tillintetgjorts av sitt dåliga samvete över vad han gjort i trohet mot ett parti som nu tvingar honom till grundlösa bekännelser och förgör honom i namn av en ideologi vars giltighet och berättigande han innerst inne har svårt att förneka, samtidigt som han handgripligt och mentalt utsätts för oavbruten tortyr.

Burden, behandlas mildare och mer subtilt och tycks genom sin uppriktiga strävan efter att bli ”normal” villigt medverkar i hjärntvätten. Läsaren frågar sig varför Staten gör så stora ansträngningar för att ”reformera” Burden. Vi blir dock inte förtrogna med denna Stat, vars närvaro är betydligt diskretare än 1984s Big Brother. Karps Stat är inte inbegripen i några krig, dess propaganda är inte iögonfallande, i dess samhälle råder fred och jämställdhet.

Kan det kanske vara så att Burdens fall enbart är ett av tusentals andra? Lark är möjligen enbart en av många andra inkvisitorer. Kanhända är Karps Stat lika stor och allomfattande som Borges spegelvärldar? Kanske handlar Burdens roman, som på engelska heter One, inte alls om någon framtid utan om en tillvaro där många människor, liksom nu, lever utan att vara medvetna om sitt värde, om sin ändlösa förmåga att fantisera och drömma. Just därför är det inte så underligt att Penguin inkluderade romanen i sin prestigefyllda klassikerserie, men det är likväl förvånande att den i flera avseenden unike David Karp förblivit i stort sett okänd, precis som sin huvudperson Burden.

Jag läste Mannen som tvivlade medan jag låg i bäddsoffan i min äldsta dotters nya lägenhet i Prag. Emellanåt lyfte jag blicken från boksidorna och såg då genom de vackra, kubistiskt inramade fönsterna, hur mörka moln tornade upp sig utanför.

Karp skrev sin bok 1952, den tredje december samma år hängdes på Pankrácfängelsets innergård, mellan klockan tre och kvart i sex på morgonen, elva män (på samma plats hade 234 män avrättats under den kommunistiska statskuppen fyra år tidigare). De avrättades kroppar fördes direkt till ett krematorium och askan hälldes sedan i en potatissäck. Två poliser och en chaufför beordrades att sprida askan över ett fält utanför Prag, men det var mycket kallt och vägarna var glashala. Så fort de kommit utanför staden gick de tre männen ur bilen och strödde ut askan direkt på vägen. När de senare avlade rapport skrattade chauffören och sa att han aldrig haft fjorton personer i sin bil – de tre levande och de elva döda i säcken. Tidningarna publicerade en lista över de avrättade, efter namnet på tio av de elva angavs ”av judisk börd”.

En del av de avrättade, men långt ifrån alla, var medskyldiga till andras död. Under åren mellan 1945 och 1948 hamnade 90 miljoner medborgare i Östeuropas länder under kommunistiskt välde. Under förhandlingar under Andra världskriget garanterade de allierade Sovjetunionen att i länder som befriats av Röda Armén hade ryssarna rätt att kräva upprättandet av regimer som var vänskapligt inställda till Sovjet och de skulle ha fria händer att ingripa mot fascistiska grupper. Stalin gav sig själv rätten att bedöma vad som var ”fascism” och enligt honom blev det i stort sett en benämning på allt och alla som stod i opposition till Stalins tolkning av ”kommunism”.

Till skillnad från fallet i de flesta andra ”befriade” öststater var flera tjeckoslovakiska medborgare relativt välvilligt inställda till sina inhemska kommunister och inte minst Sovjetunionen, som vägrat underteckna den skamliga Münchenöverenskommelsen som bredde vägen för Nazitysklands blodbad och terrorvälde i Tjeckoslovakien. Vid valen i maj 1946 fick kommunisterna 38 procent av rösterna, medan den socialdemokratiske och populäre Edvard Beneš valdes till president. Beneš ville knyta Tjeckoslovakien, som fortfarande var en av Europas ledande industrinationer, närmare till Väst, men han hade en svaghet – han ville till varje pris fördriva den tyska befolkningen från Sudetenland, som under århundraden varit en integrerad del av Böhmen, Tjeckoslovakiens kärnområde.

Denna politik hade starkt stöd hos kommunisterna och var även populär hos majoriteten av den tjeckiska befolkningen, Den var en bidragande orsak till att armé och polis kom att domineras av kommunister, liksom jordbruksdepartementet som fördelade det land som beslagtogs från de 50 000 tysktalande sudeter som nu med hjälp av armé och polis fördrevs från landområden som under hundratals år brukats av deras förfäder.

Beneš socialdemokrater förhandlade om handelsavtal med England och deltog 1947 i de parismöten som skulle leda till att USAs Marshallhjälp kunde användas för att bygga upp ekonomin i flera krigsdrabbade länder. Detta misshagade Sovjetunionen som tvingade Tjeckoslovakien att avstå från samarbete med västmakterna. Tjeckoslovakiens principfaste och populäre utrikesminister, Jan Masaryk, son till Republikens grundare Tomáš Masaryk, hittades död under sitt kontorsfönster, uppenbarligen utslängd av kommunisternas hemliga polis. Mordet ägde rum en månad efter det att den kommunistiske premiärministern Klement Gottwald ställt sig i spetsen för en militärkupp och avsatt Edvard Beneš, som dog av naturliga orsaker åtta månader efter kuppen. Den så kallade Pragkuppen ledde till förföljelser och summariska avrättningar av motståndare till kommunisterna. De dödade stämplades som ”fascister”, även om de flesta av dem varit våldsamma motståndare till naziväldet.

En grundbok för denna tumultartade tid är Heda Margolius memoarer. Hon var änka efter en av dem som avrättades den tredje december 1952. Hennes bok är skriven med en driven, lättläst, sparsmakad, ironisk, men samtidigt djupt gripande stil. Heda Margolius skildrar sina umbäranden i helvetena i ghettot i Lodz och Auschwitz. Hur hela hennes släkt utplånades. Hur hon lyckades fly under dödsmarscherna mot Tyskland och under brinnande krig tog sig till Prag där hon möts av kalla handen från skräckslagna vänner. Efter att utsvulten ha sovit på gatorna och försökt ta livet av sig räddas hon till livet av några trogna vänner och återförenas med sitt livs stora kärlek, Rudolf Margolius, som överlevt ghettot i Lodz, Auschwitz och Dachau.

Heda och Rudolf Margolius går med i kommunistpartiet, hon betydligt mer tveksamt än sin make, men som Heda skriver:

Vår välvilliga inställning till revolutionen sökte sitt ursprung i koncentrationslägren. [...] Kommunisterna uppförde sig där ofta som om de tillhörde en högre ordning av mänskligheten. Deras idealism och partidisciplinen gav dem en styrka och uthållighet som resten av oss inte kunde visa prov på. De var som vältränade soldater mitt i en skara hjälplösa barn.

De som återvänt från omänskliga förhållanden, där de varje dag kämpat för att bevara sina liv och mänskliga värdighet, behövde något att ty sig till, något att tro på:

När kriget äntligen tog slut, förvandlades vår glädje snart till en känsla av antiklimax, en längtan att fylla tomrummet som intensiteten av förväntan och viljeansträngning hade skapat inom oss. I koncentrationslägren hade en stark känsla av solidaritet utvecklats, tanken att individs öde var på alla sätt knutet till gruppen, till dina medfångar, hela nationen, eller till och med hela mänskligheten. För många människor hade en önskan om materiella varor i stort sett försvunnit.

Sådana känslor gjorde att många skadade och vilsna människor lockades av kommunismens budskap om solidaritet och rättvisa för alla. De drogs med i marscherna med fladdrande fanor och gemensamt, uppoffrande, uselt betalt arbete för återuppbyggandet av krossade samhällen.

Juristen Rudolf Margolius såg det som sin plikt att delta i Tjeckoslovakiens uppbyggnad, läste nationalekonomi och blev slutligen, mot sin hustrus vilja, vice finansminister och chefsförhandlare för handelsavtal med England. Efter sina hårda umbäranden fann sig Heda Margolius plötsligt inom den tjeckisk-kommunistiska nomenklaturans priviligierade sfär, med chaufförsdrivna limousiner, storartade fester, oftast i samröre med vulgära hustrur till kommunistpolitruker, samtidigt som tidigare okända personer vördnadsfullt började svassa kring henne, detta efter det att hon några år tidigare hade varit en jagad uteliggare på Prags gator.

Allt detta oroade den idealistiska och sofistikerade Heda Margolius och inte minst den växande personkulten kring kommunistkoryféerna. ”Stalins vän och förtrogne”, den plufsige och alkoholiserade Klement Gottwald fick heroiserande monument uppförda till sin ära och var ständigt omgiven av ett hov med fjäskande undersåtar.

Gottwalds korpulenta hustru, som tidigare varit hemhjälp och fått kämpa för att få dottern Martha erkänd av den ovillige Gottwald, som för sin karriärs skull efter tio år gick med på att gifta sig med den obildade Martha. Dottern gifte sig sedermera med en viss Alexej Čepička som utnämndes till justitieminister och ägnade sig åt en skoningslös förföljelse av regimmotståndare.

Efter några år blev Čepička (det betyder liten mössa) en oduglig försvarsminister och gynnade kulten kring Gottwald genom att låta balsamera svärfaderns kropp och likt Lenins lik ställa ut den till allmän dyrkan i ett överdådigt mausoleum. Čepička avsattes 1958, anklagad för en mängd övergrepp. Čepičkas situation förbättrades inte genom att han var homosexuell. Drabbad av en hjärtattack avpolletterades han till en undanskymd tillvaro.

Heda Margolius berättar om ett möte med Klement Gottwald:

Jag befann mig i en av de mindre salongerna tillsammans med en grupp av Rudolfs kollegor när Klement Gottwald kom insnubblande stödd på armen av Nationalförsamlingens förste talman. Republikens president var asfull och hölls i själva verket upprätt av talmannen. Gottwald fick syn på mig, stakade ut sin väg genom rummet, gjorde tvärstopp framför mig och sluddrade - "Vad är det här? Du dricker ju inte! Varför dricker du inte?” Männen omkring oss signalerade frenetiskt efter en servitör och när en sådan dök upp med en bricka grep jag ett glas vin. Och det gjorde även presidenten. Vi drack upp vinet. Presidenten viftade med sitt tomma glas och efter att ha stirrat på det vände han sina blodsprängda ögon mot mig och sluddrade precis som tidigare: "Vad är det här? Du dricker ju inte! Varför dricker du inte?"

Den tryggt piprökande Gottwald hade betydligt värre problem än sin alkoholism. Stalin försökte hålla ihop sitt nya, splittrade, oppositionsbesmittade kommunistimperium. Ryssland var ödelagt, industrierna i spillror, gruvorna i Donetsk stod under vatten. Stalin ansåg att enda vägen mot återuppbyggnad var en ännu strängare kontroll av samhällslivet. Ryssland och dess satelliter måste avskärmas från yttervärlden, så att denna inte störde rekonstruktionen av det skadade Systemet. Folket skulle inte få uppleva att medborgare i andra nationer hade det bättre medan de fick hålla till godo med en betydligt långsammare standardhöjning. Grannländerna som Sovjetunionen hade tvingat in i sin säkerhets- och intressesfär fick finna sig i att bli utnyttjade för den ryska återhämtningen. Deras intellektuella; akademiker, forskare och författare, måste anpassa sig, låta sig stängas in i den kommunistiska fållan. Propagandan fördömde ”folkfrämmande och borgerliga tendenser”.

Stalin fruktade det anglo-amerikanska inflytandet och den återuppväckta socialdemokratin, tänkesätt som enligt honom säkerligen smittat de kommunister som under kriget befunnit sig utanför den ryska sfären – i det spanska inbördeskriget, i Frankrike, England, USA, Mexiko eller Skandinavien. Detta hade varit fallet med flera av de tjeckiska kommunisterna. Där fanns också en fara för att den starka tjeckiska nationalismen kunde låta sig inspireras av jugoslavernas nationalistiskt självständiga hållning gentemot den sovjetiska jätten. En speciell fara utgjorde den solidaritet många tjeckiska kommunister visat det nygrundade Israel.

Stalins Sovjetunion hade till en början stött grundandet av Israel och till och med uppmuntrat Tjeckoslovakiens vapenexport till den nybildade nationen, utan vilken, enligt Ben-Gurion, Israel hade varit oförmöget att bjuda motstånd mot de fientligt sinnade arabstaterna. Snart tog dock Stalins paranoia överhanden. I Stalins nationellt inriktade kommunism kom judar att betraktas som högutbildade, flerspråkiga kosmopoliter som motsatte sig hans politiska likriktning, en uppfattning som säkert gynnats av hans rabiata hat mot sin ärkemotståndare Lev Trotskij. Stalin började rensa ut judar från sin närmaste krets, till och med hans trogne vapendragare Molotovs judiska hustru sändes till Gulag.

Ett sista utslag av Stalins paranoia var den så kallade läkarkomplotten, en påstådd konspiration som främst pådyvlades judiska läkare, som antogs försöka mörda kommunistledare genom att förgifta dem. Vansinnet inleddes 1951, men förvärrades oroväckande i början av 1953 då chefen för Ministeriet för Statssäkerhet, Mikhail Ryumin, rapporterade att den judiske ekonomiprofessorn Yakov Etinger, anklagad för “borgerlig nationalism”, hade fått judiska läkare att förgifta Zhadnov (som förhandlat med jugoslaverna, men enligt Stalin varit alltför eftergiven) och hans sekreterare, Aleksandr Shcherbakov.

Dessvärre dog Etinger under tortyren han utsattes för. Men, karusellen snurrade vidare. I en första omgång fängslades 32 läkare, men antalet steg snabbt till flera hundra, som under skoningslös tortyr började anklaga varandra för milt sagt absurda brott. Stalin klagade över att förhörsledarna inte lyckades åstadkomma en klar bild av hur läkarna förhöll sig till de sionistiska konspirationer som han ansåg sig vara utsatt för. 

Då Stalins livläkare, Vladimir Vinogradov, i början av 1952 påtalade att den arbetsbesatte Stalin borde ta det lite lugnare blev denne fullkomligt rasande och lät omgående arrestera professor Vinogradov som misstänkt medlem i den judiska läkarsammansvärjningen. Läkarbristen och skräcken som omgav Stalin under hans sista tid i livet kan ha varit en av förklaringarna till varför ingen vågade gå in i ledarens arbetsrum i dachan i Kuntsevo utanför Moskva, där han efter ett slaganfall under natten till den första mars 1953 i tretton timmar ensam hade blivit liggande på golvet. Han hade hela tiden varit vid medvetande, men förlorat talförmågan. Ett par dagar senare dog Stalin.

Antisemitismen vilade tung över de högt uppsatta kommunisterna som anklagades i Prag. Säkerligen ville Stalin skrämma den tjeckiska kommunistledningen till underkastelse. Att peka på de relativt många judarna i partledningen och deras stöd till Israel var ett av flera effektiva medel. Stalin ville inte att det jugoslaviska fiaskot skulle upprepas, då Tito lyckades gå sin egen väg och befria sig själv och sina landsmän ur det stalinistiska järngreppet.Till att börja med var huvudanklagelsen att de åtalade deltagit i en sammansvärjning, inspirerad av jugoslavisk nationalism, judisk sionism och organiserad av anglo-amerikanska underrättelsetjänster, främst genom dubbelspionen Noël Field, som ansvarat för den internationella organisationen Unitarian Service Committee. Field hade gripits i Tjeckoslovakien och sedan varit huvudvittne vid flera ungerska skådeprocesser. Field var hela sitt liv, till en början utan sin hustrus vetskap, en övertygad kommunist. Efter det att han ”försvunnit” for hans hustru kring i Östeuropa på jakt efter honom och alla de personer hon varit i kontakt med i Prag greps senare. Noël Field dök upp Budapest och de ”avslöjanden” han presenterade förde många av hans vänner, bekanta och flera andra in i döden. Field dog som fri, ungersk medborgare 1970. 

Kort efter sin arrestering fick den vice utrikesministern Artur London från sin brutale utfrågare Bohumil Smola höra:

Ni och er smutsiga ras – vi vet nog hur ni ska behandlas! Ni är allesammans likadana. Allt vad Hitler gjorde var inte lika lyckat, men att han gjorde sig av med judar var bra. Lite för många slank undan gaskamrarna, men vi tar hand om och avslutar det han inte hann med! Han stampar vilt i golvet: Tio meter under jorden ska ni, hela er stinkande ras!

Det var Artur Londons skildring av sin fleråriga tortyr i Tjeckoslovakiens fängelseinfernon som först gjorde mig medveten om kommunismens maktutövande. Medan jag fortfarande gick på gymnasiet engagerade jag och min vän Claes Toft oss i Hässleholms Filmklubb, vi tog till och med över ordförandeskapet, men till min skam måste jag erkänna att vi inte klarade av det och blev orsaken till att hela projektet klappade ihop. Dock lyckades vi få en del utmärkta filmer till Hässleholm. En som grep mig på djupet var Costa-Gavras film Bekännelsen från 1970. En noggrann rekonstruktion av Artur Londons bok med samma namn. Jag skulle gärna se om den filmen, men har inte kunnat få tag på den, däremot har jag läst boken.

Artur Londons detaljminne är förbluffande. Steg för steg för han oss genom kommunismens nattsvart hopplösa fängelsehelvete. Med dess nedbrytande fysiska och psykiska tortyr, utövad med en obegriplig brutalitet. London hade varit kommunist sedan fjorton års ålder och ägnat hela sitt liv åt Partiet, som motståndsman i Frankrike och Tjeckoslovakien, som soldat för den spanska republiken. Han hade suttit fängslad i Frankrike, klarat sig från koncentrationslägret i Mauthausen, studerat och bott i Moskva under den värsta terrorn, men aldrig tvivlat på att Partiet alltid har rätt, som i den östtyska kampsången:

Oh, Partiet, Partiet har alltid rätt

och kamrat, må det alltid vara så;

för den som kämpar för rättvisa

han har alltid rätt

gentemot lögn och exploatering.

Vem som än förolämpar livet

är dum eller ondsint.

Den som försvarar mänskligheten

har alltid rätt.

Vuxet ur Lenins ande,

härdat av Stalin:

Partiet – Partiet – Partiet.

Likt Josef K. i Kafkas Processen kan Artur London inte begripa vad han anklagats för. Kan hans torterare verkligen arbeta för kommunismen?:

Det finns samma anda hos dessa män som hos dem som 1941 sköt min bror Jan, deporterade min mor till Auschwitz och lät henne dö i en gaskammare tillsammans med min syster Julia och hennes man och ett tiotal andra av våra släktingar! Jag lyckades dölja mitt judiska påbrå för Hitlers lakejer. Borde jag ha gjort detsamma nu? I ett socialistiskt land!

Efter att under ett par veckor ha blivit skuggad genskjuts Artur Londons bil och han grips på öppen gata i Prag. Med förbundna ögon förs han från det ena fängelset efter det andra. Det är mitt i vintern. Han stängs in i en cell, 4 gånger 4 kvadratmeter, och tvingas att gå i cirklar. Så fort han stannar rusar vakter in och bankar hans huvud mot väggen. Allt dryper av kall fukt, kläderna blir genomsura, det finns inget fönster, istappar hänger från taket. Ljuset är tänt dag och natt, golvet är slipprigt av lervälling. Emellanåt slår vakterna honom inte om han stannar utan häller istället en hink iskallt vatten över honom.

När Artur London blivit fullständigt förvirrad av hunger och utmattning förs han till en torr cell. Där får han vila en tid, men sedan tvingas han åter vandra fram och tillbaka. Nu bestraffas han genom att emellanåt föras till en ny cell där utrymmet är något större. Men, genom ett slags avlopp i mitten väller då och då svart, äckligt vatten upp. Golvet översvämmas och han tvingas vandra kring i sörjan. Efter ytterligare några veckor förs London till en ny cell, med säng, filtar och latrin. Nu börjar han förhöras, 18 till 20 timmar utan uppehåll, med en strålkastare riktad mot ansiktet och alltid stående. Då han förs mellan cellen och förhörsrummet bär han motorcykelglasögon med svärtade glas. Bojorna har förvandlat händerna till svullna, smärtande köttmassor. Kläderna värmer inte. Tack vare de grova ”tofflorna” och det eviga vandrandet har fötterna blivit vanställda. Blåsor och svullnader får det att se ut som om han lider av elefantiasis. Huden mellan tårna spricker. Såren fylls med var.

Artur London tillbringade 27 månader i absolut isolering. Han såg enbart vakter och inkvisitorer. Vid flera tillfällen försöker han förgäves ta livet av sig, genom att svälta sig till döds eller svälja en stor mängd cigaretter som han lyckats stjäla från en förhörsledare. Det sista försöket resulterar i att han blir svårt sjuk, men hans plågoandar såg till att han botades. De ville till varje pris att Artur London skulle överleva för att vittna vid rättegången.

Förhören ändrar karaktär. Den brutale Bohumil Smolek byts ut mot den lugnare och tålmodigare, men lika grymme och oförsonlige Vladimir Kohoutek, som ber Artur London berätta sin livshistoria. En respit från de ständiga anklagelserna och London berättar gärna och länge. Under berättandets gång minns han alltmer från sitt omväxlande liv i Partiets tjänst. Då London berättat klart befaller Kohoutek: ”Ta om alltihop från början!” och så fortsätter det varje dag under ett par veckor. Två gånger, tio gånger, hundra.

Sedan börjar förhörsledaren gräva i minnena för att där finna Londons skuldkänslor. Kohoutek är väl medveten om att varje individ är fylld med skuldkänslor. De utgör en del av vårt samvete. Det finns både små och stora skulder, Kohoutek vet exakt vilka han skall välja för att kunna borra sig in i Londons undermedvetande. Samtidigt läser Kohoutek upp både sanna och falsa medgivanden, anklagelser och bekännelser från Londons osynliga medfångar. Kohoutek berättar för London att han fru svikit honom, att hon haft älskare och inte längre vill veta av honom. Allt är lögn. Förhörsledaren hotar att skada hans barn. Fångvaktarna utsätter honom för skenavrättningar.

Utan att själv begripa det försåg Artur sina plågoandar med en idé som de kommer att utnyttja för att få struktur och styrsel på den kommande rättegången. Hittills hade de enbart funnit lösryckta kontakter med israeler, jugoslaver och amerikanska agenter, samt en och annan förflugen anklagelse mot Partiet, men det hade visat sig omöjligt att knyta samman all information till en trovärdig sammansvärjning.

Metoden de hittills använt sig av var att nämna en grupp bekanta till den anklagade och sedan påstå att de var ”sionister”, ”spioner” eller ”trotskister” och sedan fråga om han kände dem. Givetvis svarade den anklagade ja och följdfrågan blev – då är också du sionist/trotskist, varför skulle du annars ha umgåtts med dem? ”Nej, jag är kommunist”. ”Kommunister umgås inte med sådant slödder, men du erkänner att du gör det. Alltså är du inte en sann kommunist.” Och så fortsatte det, fram och tillbaka, dag ut och dag in.

Andra förhörsledare hade ur Löbl, en annan anklagad som varit vice finansminister, lyckats pressa fram att han inte hade kunnat agera som han gjorde utan direkta order från Rudolf Slánský, jude även han och generalsekreterare i kommunistpartiet, något som gjorde Slánský till andreman i partiet, bakom president Gottwald.

Kohoutek tog fasta på Löbls oskyldiga anmärkning och pressade därefter Artur London genom att hota honom att återigen lämna ut honom till Bohumil Smoleks godtycke och de fuktdrypande cellerna: “Om du följer mina instruktioner kan du rädda ditt liv och komma ur den här hopplösa situationen. Annars kommer jag att släppa lös demonerna på dig igen.” Enligt förhörsprotokollen erkände den förvirrade London att han tillhörde en trotskistisk grupp, ledd av en annan person. Efter att ha blivit slagen, svulten och plågad nämnde London ”en gång” Slánskýs namn.

Ryska rådgivare som hela tiden rört sig i kulisserna fann att detta var ett utmärkt tillfälle för att testa president Gottwalds hundraprocentiga förtroende för den stalinistiska staten. Om den tjeckoslovakiske presidenten var beredd att utlämna sin närmaste man kunde man även i fortsättningen räkna med honom som en lojal stalinist som satte troheten mot kommunismen högre än sin fosterlandskärlek och vänfasthet. Gottwald gav med sig och offrade sin vän och förtrogne, vars roll som förföljare av oliktänkande var långt ifrån fläckfri.

Rudolf Slánský var inte speciellt omtyckt av sina medåtalade. Heda Margolius skriver:

Min make hyste en intensiv aversion gentemot Slansky. Han ansåg honom vara en dogmatisk extremist. En fåfäng och hänsynslös man, med en patologisk hunger efter makt och erkännande. Han hade alltid undvikit Slansky så mycket som möjligt och jag visste att han inte haft någon officiell eller personlig kontakt med honom.

Ryska rådgivare och tjeckiska politruker gick igenom de samlade bekännelserna och kokade ihop en historia om att de anklagade under ledning av Rudolf Slánský hade ägnat sig åt "trotskistiska-titoist-sionistiska aktiviteter i tjänst hos den amerikanska imperialismen”. Samtliga anklagade som nu torterats och hjärntvättats ordentligt, lärde sig sedan under ett par veckors tid sina vittnesmål utantill och samtliga uppförde dem mekaniskt och felfritt under rättegången, varefter de bad om den strängaste möjliga bestraffningen.

En otäck följd av skådeprocesserna var den sociala isolering och misär som drabbade de dömdas familjer. Deras hustrur vräktes från sina hem och miste sina arbeten, barnen förvägrades högre utbildning och samtliga familjemedlemmar utsattes dagligen för förakt och misstro. Heda Margolius skildrar hur hon vara nära att dö då hon under makens rättegång förvägrades ordentlig läkarvård och hur, precis som under kriget, de som hon trott vara hennes och makens vänner undvek henne. Precis som då var det enbart ett självuppoffrande stöd från ett litet fåtal individer som höll henne och hennes pojke vid liv.

Journalisten Otto Katz hade i sin slutplädering lagt till några ord som inte förelagts honom i de noggrant förberedda deklarationerna, men likväl kom med i rättegångsprotokollen, som översattes till sju språk och spreds över hela världen.

Katz hade varit en av Sovjets mästerspioner och infiltrerat exilförfattarmiljöer i Tyskland, Frankrike, Spanien och inte minst Hollywood, där han inspirerat flera filmsuccéer, bland dem Casablanca. Katz hade skrivit och redigerat en mängd böcker och artiklar till stöd och försvar för antifascister runt om i världen. Han hade en gång räddat Arthur Koestler från att bli avrättad av Francos fascister, men också i Mexiko varit inblandad i mordet på Trotskij. Katz hade antagligen hamnat på de anklagades bänk genom en föraktfull anmärkning som den ryske utrikesministern Molotov fällt om honom till Gottwald och Slánský under fredskonferensen i Paris 1946: ”Vad gör den där globetrottern här?”

Otto Katz var jude och hans omfattande internationella nätverk var säkert orsaken till att han dömdes till döden. Med böjt huvud hade Katz under rättegången deklarerat:

Jag är författare och därigenom en själens arkitekt. Vilken sorts arkitekt har jag varit? – Jag som har förgiftat människor själar? Jag hör hemma i galgen. Den enda kompensation för mina brott som återstår för mig är att tjäna som en varning för alla de som genom sitt ursprung eller sin karaktär löper risken av att slå in på samma väg som jag, vägen till helvetet.

Då Arthur Koestler läste uttalandet blev han illa berörd eftersom han tyckte att det påminde om Rubashovs slutord i Natt klockan tolv på dagen, som han en gång gett till Katz. Rubashovs tal är en nästan exakt återgivning av Nikolai Bucharins ”bekännelse” under skådeprocessen 1938:

Höljd av skam, tvingad i stoftet, färdig att dö, tänker jag visa för er en förrädares sorgliga bana, på det att den må vara till en varning och ett avskräckande exempel för vårt lands miljoner.

Koestler uppfattade Katz ord som en vädjan till alla de författare, filmstjärnor, bokförläggare och andra salongskommunister som en gång svärmat kring den stilige representanten för Folkfronten och som nu teg inför justitiemorden i Prag och kommunismens alltför uppenbara lögner. Lögner som även en man som Otto Katz trott på och offrat sig själv och andra för. Koestler skrev i sin dagbok: ”Jag kände mig sjuk, det värkte i magen och jag grät för min gamle vän.”

Under pragbornas lönlösa protester mot ryssarnas invasion 1968 skrev den tjeckiske exilhistorikern Jaroslav Orpat:

Det finns en märklig roman, känd över hela världen utom i vårt land, romanen ”Natt klockan tolv på dagen” av Arthur Koestler, som exakt beskriver mekanismen i de sovjetiska rättegångarna under andra hälften av trettiotalet, logiken hos förhörsledarna, åklagarna och de anklagade, vilka själva blev kollaboratörer åt undersöknings- och åklagarmyndigheterna […] Det är ett i hög grad tragiskt förhållande att dessa händelser ett decennium senare återupprepades med en naturlags obeveklighet.

Åter har en slingrande blogg nått sitt slut. Undrar över fascinationen inför det enskilda människoödet - den fiktive, obetydlige Burden, eller de högst verkliga Artur London, Rudolf Margolius och Otto Katz. All den omsorg som lades ner på att hjärntvätta och knäcka dem. Den ytterst långdragna Slánskýprocessen finner genom sin politiskt laddade betydelse motsvarigheter i processen i USA mot Sacco och Vanzetti mellan 1921 och 1927, som ägde rum under den Första Röda Skräcken och processen mot makarna Rosenberg 1950 till 1953, som ägde rum under den Andra Röda Skräcken, liksom Slánskýprocessen resulterade de rättegångarna i dödsstraff för de anklagade.

Artur London nämner att processen mot Sacco och Vanzetti övertygade honom om att kommunismen var den enda ideologi som kunde skydda mot sådana rättsövergrepp, likaså upprördes många kommunister genom avrättningen av Ethel och Julius Rosenberg. Detta medan stalinisterna gjorde sig skyldiga till minst 6 miljoner mord på icke stridande. Varje enskild person av dessa miljoner hade ett fruktansvärt livsöde bakom sig. Vad säger siffror?

Kaplan, Karel (1982) I centralkommiténs hemliga arkiv – sanningen om Slanskyprocessen. Stockholm: Ordfronts förlag. Karp, David (1967) Mannen som tvivlade. Stockholm: Rabén och Sjögren. Koestler, Arthur (1975) Natt klockan 12 på dagen. Stockholm: Askild & Kärnekull. Koestler, Artur (1988) Den osynliga skriften. Stockholm: Tidens Förlag. London, Artur (1970) Bekännelsen. I Prag-processens maskineri 1951-1952. Stockholm: Rabén och Sjögren. Margolius Kovály, Heda (2012) Under a Cruel Star: Life in Prague, 1941-1968. London: Granta. Miles, Jonathan (2010) The Nine Lives of Otto Katz: The Remarkable Story of a Communist Super-Spy. London: Bantam Books. Morgan, Ted (2004) Reds: McCarthyism in the Twentieth Century America. New York: Random House. Rayfield, Ronald (2003) Stalin and His Hangmen: An authoritative portrait of a tyrant and those who served him. London: Penguin Books. Snyder, Timothy D. (2010) Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books.

The Party Is Always Right - Song of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqgvQ88KGLs

With good reason it happens quite often that my generally chic and fashion conscious wife complains about the way I dress, as well as my general appearance. Just before we are going out together she tends to give me an apologetic glance and point out that I am dressed like a hobo and that my hair sprawls in all directions "like it does on that mad professor in Back to the Future."

She's right, I am actually enjoying being well-dressed, but sometimes I lack clean, ironed clothes, combined with the fact that during a number of years I have  not, out of sheer laziness, renewed my wardrobe; shirt collars and cuffs are worn, my costumes are dingy, pants are stained and my socks have holes. I am careless while shaving, not always sprinkling myself with fragrance and cut my hair far too sporadically. Actually, I am quite convinced that there must be some truth behind the expression that "clothes make the man." Even if I may be blind to my own shortcomings, I pay attention to how others dress, behave and smell. With wonder and horror I remember the old men's scent that struck me when I in my youth worked in mental institutions or visited elderly persons in their lightly cleaned and poorly ventilated apartments.

Looking at myself on photographs I cannot fully understand that the old, wizened, thin- and white-haired man, actually is me. Maybe my natural odour has now become similar to the one I abhorred among the old men in nursing homes. Do I have the same dishevelled and unhealthy look? Looking at myself is like when I hear my own voice. Do I really sound like that? I thought my deep baritone was quite appealing, but it isn´t and inside my withered shell I feel no older than thirty years. Maybe the irritating feelings about my looks are amplified by a lack of the concern about them that most Italians around me, young and old, expose by always being well groomed and smartly dressed.

Such notions were brought to life once again when I some time ago saw the movie  Saturday Night Fever. It was better than expected, it was almost forty years ago the last time I saw it. In the opening scenes we meet Tony Manero, the character played by a twenty-two years old John Travolta, n acto that is actually born the same year as I, spending his working days in a hardware store, or at home  in his parents´ meagre, but stuffy house, where he has his bedroom decorated with posters of Bruce Lee, Sylvester Stallone and a young Robert de Niro. On weekends Tony transforms into a dapper dandy with razor-sharp creases on his white, slimmed trousers, wearing a winning smile he confidently sports a spotless, dazzling white Three Piece Suit, partially exposing his hairy chest under a black silk shirt and several gold links. The undefeated king of the dance floor, a dream and eye-catcher for enchanted, young ladies. Tony Manero appears as a prototype for an Italian Bella Figura.

The words mean “beautiful figure”, though Italians attach a much richer meaning to the expression. In a dictionary I find the explanation "to make a good impression" a concept associated with both visual and inner qualities - how you look, and behave, how to win admirers and impress your surroundings. It may occasionally appear as if the effort to charm the people around you is appreciated almost as much as the actual result.

I guess that Italian culture is endowed with a significant element of hedonism; enjoyment of life and beauty, a search for aesthetic perfection - in music, art, design; how a suit is cut, flowers arranged, the shape of a car, colour combinations on a house facade, the composition of a culinary dish, the angles in a movie, or a photograph. I remember how a Jewish friend of mine, the writer Esther Hautzig, once told me: "We Jews have or scriptures and books, we are a people of stories, but the Italians are the great aesthetes, the supreme artists. They have the visual arts, we have the word." Similarly another friend, who had converted to Catholicism, noted: "I tell you, Jan, that compared to Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism is like Swedish knäckebröd, crispbread, compared with Danish pastry." I think they both were quite right, there is in Italy a baroque, full-bodied opulence, an enduring aesthetic commotion.

The youthful Karol Józef Wojtyła, alias Pope John Paul II, was in many ways an incarnation of La Bella Figura and thus immensely popular among many Italians. When he in 1978, fifty-eight years of age became the head of the Catholic Church Wojtyła was a handsome man, with a background not only as a spiritual guide, but also as an actor and able football player. He was in radiant good health; jogged in the Gardens of the Vatican City, hiked in the Italian Alps, lifted weights and swam. I appreciated his struggle against Communism, but was influenced by what some of my Latin American Jesuit friends told me between four eyes - that the Pope had a steel fist in a silk glove.

When I several years ago met him in La Paz, Father Xavier Alba shock his head and told me: "This Pole that now occupies the chair of Saint Peter, does not at all understand what so many of us Latin American priests are fighting for." Obviously, John Paul II was no friend of Latin American liberation theology. When Bishop Óscar Romero, who was mowed down by machine-gun fire while celebrating mass in a hospital chapel in San Salvador, had visited the pope in Rome and asked for the Church's support against Salvadoran death squads, he got a flat refusal. Nevertheless, the martyrdom of the bishop apparently affected the pope and he bestowed the title of Servant of God upon the dead Romero and a cause for canonization was opened for him. When the radical priest and poet Ernesto Cardenal knelt to kiss the Pope's hand in Nicaragua John Paul took it away, waving his finger at him and said: "You have to sort out your position with the Church." Recently I came across a picture of my Jesuit friend Xavier Albo, he wore a T-shirt that read I Love Papa Francesco. He finally got a Jesuit brother with the proper views on the papal throne.

John Paul II was a charming and powerful representative of a struggling Church. With his shortcomings he was "a Pope of his time", who after having lived through two assassination attempts, the last one he survived as by a miracle. Four gunshots hit him from close quarters; two in the abdomen, one in his right arm and another shattered his right little finger. One of the bullets buried deep in his abdomen could not be removed. John Paul II recovered and continued to travel around the world. He was ecumenically minded and as the first pope ever he even visited a mosque, he chose the magnificent mosque in Damascus. Large crowds hailed him wherever he appeared. I saw him several times. His aging was merciless, with severe breathing difficulties, while Parkinson's disease made it difficult for him to speak and severe arthritis gave him a painful, staggering gait. Nevertheless, almost to his last breath John Paul II continued to be seen in public, with obvious pain and slurred speech.

Toward the end of John Paul II's life I and Rose's found ourselves on St. Peter's Square when he to an outburst of general exaltation appeared in one window of the papal apartments to greet the crowd. He was bent and looked very weak, his garbled speech was reinforced by the loudspeakers, but I could not grasp a word of what he was saying. Then a nun turned to me with beatific smile, tears running down her cheeks. Deeply moved she said,: Que Bella Figura! Que Bella Figura! At that moment I understood the true meaning of the words. The immense respect that the nun felt before this pain broken, stammering old man who had dragged himself up before his flock of devoted admirers. Incredulously I repeated her words: Que Bella Figura? The nun grabbed me gently by the arm, leaned toward me and said: "Behold that man. How he with all that pain and obvious physical decline dares to show himself before us in all his human frailty. What stature!  What bravery! What faith! Que Bella Figura."

Another surprisi and completely different interpretation of the notion of Bella Figura was given to me by a friend of mine who spoke appreciatively about Berlusconi's face lifts, his oily, black coloured and implanted hair and his exaggerated facial makeup. My friend noted that he had not appreciated this clever, but villainous and manipulative politician, but it was a different matter with his winning smile, perfect costumes and outrageous statements. 

This guy really knows how to behave. He is furbo [smart] out to his fingertips. He knows what people want, he plays them like a piano. And this with his latest hair implant, is it not amazing that he dares to admit what he has done so openly? He proves that he is making his utmost to make a good impression. It is quite different from all other participants in the danse macabre of Italian politics. Il Cavaliere [“the cavalier”, an epithet that Berlusconi's supporters like to use about him] is for sure a Bella Figura.

All that made me  dive down into what I imagine are some aspects of the Italian concept of beauty. As so often before, I began with the word. The Italian bello apparently originates from the Latin bellus, which meant "sweet, handsome and charming," but the term was used only in connection with children and women. If used about a man the ancient Romans understood bellus to be an insult, an allusion to "unmanly" behaviour, related to the Greek expression  καλός, kalos, which was used to indicate that something was of good quality, but also being "sweet". There seems to have been a connection between affectation and bellus/kalos, though both words could also be used about natural splendour, and somewhat later about something that was “well made”, in the sense of a skilful imitation of nature, or even more refined - an "improvement" of nature, which could be done through bodily change, makeup, clothes and mannered behaviour.

Throughout all time periods and in all forms of societies, people have demonstrated an urge to change their looks and adorn their bodies, sometimes in an extravagant manner. Thousands of years back in time, we find among different peoples a variety of methods intended to enhance beauty. For instance, ancient Egypt's upper class women and men enjoyed a morning dip in flower-scented water. They scrubbed themselves with soap made of a mixture of soda and oil. Natron was used to polish the teeth and rinse the mouth. Egyptians also manufactured something they called “soap rock”, clay boiled to remove various minerals and then enriched with fragrant oils.

Wealthy women applied dyes all over their bodies trying to create a golden hue. Veins glimpsed on bosom and temples were considered a sign of beauty and could be painted with narrow, bluish streaks. Eyelids were painted with different hues manufactured from malachite, turquoise, terracotta and coal. Eyes were outlined by narrow streaks "to give them life," the ideal shape was that of a fish, a "lively" animal. A peculiar device among Egyptian beauty accessories was a perfumed "cone", which was placed on top of curly, black wigs, when this cone began to melt it spread fragrance over both wig and face.

Centuries passed in review, demonstrating a continuous interaction between naturalness and artificiality. The pursuit of pleasure, beauty and good living was by severe philosophers and theologians considered to be a treacherous trap that corrupted and ultimately would destroy mankind. To benefit both ourselves and our fellow men we should all ideally live in a measured and constructive manner. However, other thinkers taught that during our short life it was our duty to enjoy grace and beauty. Why waist our precious time on austerity and discipline? Especially if we were fortunate enough to be endowed with an ability to appreciate the joys of life? Each epoch has offered luxury, beauty and enjoyment to affluent classes, while others generally had a quite miserable life, though even the poor adorned themselves in different ways.

Many beauty enhancing practices have been cruel and incomprehensible. Like the Kayan people of Burma among whom some women obtain "giraffe-necks" by having girls from the age of five carry copper rings around their neck in such a way that it slowly expands until it is extended to an unnatural length. If those rings are removed the neck brakes. Or the painful Chinese practice of binding small girls' feet in such a way that their growth was hampered and became "lotus feet". Upper class ladies with such feet could neither walk nor work as other women, a sign of their high status. Several Chinese regimes tried unsuccessfully to ban the practice, while others favoured it and the despicable practice did not disappear completely until the beginning of the last century. Several people have in different parts of the world also engaged in "skull deformation" by applying various techniques to force children's skulls to grow in a specific way. This was a common practice among several groups of Native Americans, including among Mayan upper classes.

Such practices are undeniably cruel and grotesque. However, people trying to change their bodies and thus turn into belle figure is not at all uncommon in our times, where technological advances have enabled plastic surgery to be used to change appearance in such a way that it appeals to those who have undergone the procedures, or who consider them as means to counter the effects of natural aging. People may easily become addicted to such procedures and suffer them at regular intervals, not least Sweden's queen, who almost once a year put herself under the knife. Eventually such routines may become such a bad custom that their practitioners do not even notice how the operations are turning their faces into grotesque masques.

This makes me think of Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil from 1985, a film that, like Matrix, several years later made me consider life with new eyes. In Brazil, people are trapped in an artificial world and a scene etched in my memory is the one where the protagonist Sam Lowry's wealthy mother receives him in a private beauty salon where a strutting doctor is changing her appearance. Like a mixture of hairdressing and surgery he stretches out  Mrs. Lowry´s facial skin and then wraps it up with a transparent plastic sheet, while carrying on with soothing small talk assuring his client that the treatment will make her twenty years younger. At a party to celebrate Mrs. Lowry's new "youthful" appearance, a colleague tells the plastic surgeon that his methods are outdated and that Mrs. Lowry's face will soon be disfigured. Unfortunately, an equally rich and superficial lady like Mrs. Lowry, who has undergone surgery by the competitor, suffers a graduate disintegration while parts of her face are distorted, or fall off.

Gilliam now seems to be some kind of prophet, at least when it comes plastic surgery that was not yet in vogue when the film was made. Gilliam's manner of portraying a dysfunctional future has inspired many followers. His future world appears to be very English - men are wearing well-tailored suits, long coats and hats. It is a class society with wealthy people living away from crime infected slums, where poor people are crowded in run-down, inhuman, concrete colossi, while glamorous glitterati engage in shameless consumption. Impersonal power hides behind an oversized, bewildering bureaucracy, watched over by armed guards and armoured vehicles. Everywhere there are strange machines giving an archaic, overly complicated impression and constantly breaking down, or run uncontrollably amok. In accordance with the British chutzpa at its best, Brazil is an elaborate piece of art (albeit somewhat uneven), seasoned with irony and black humour. A mixture of German-Russian expressionism, cinema noir, Monty Python, Chaplin and Kafka. More than with a distant future, Brazil presents us with a contrived and distorted parallel world.

In art, appearance-altering interventions do often not only become an aesthetic means of expression, but also political and culture-critical manifestations. The French artist Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte, who nowadays calls herself ORLAN (always with capital letters) and resides in Los Angeles, began early on to experiment with different forms of body art - she tried different, distorted ways of moving around, manipulated photographs and films, applied various tricks that intended to unite the organic body with the machine, until she in the early 1990s began to call herself Saint ORLAN and engaged in what she called "carnal" art. Through various surgeries she declared that she was going to transform her body and face into a "work of art". Her goal was to obtain cheeks like Botticelli's Venus, a nose like Jean-Léon Gérôme´s painting of Psyche, lips like those of Francois Boucher's Europe, eyes like Diana´s on a painting from the Fontainbleau School and a forehead like Mona Lisa´s. It is doubtful whether the final outcome corresponded to her high expectations.

Unlike ORLAN, several Renaissance artists intended not to change nature but wanted instead find a key to its perfection. They rediscovered ancient Greek speculations about mathematics and beauty. They wanted to apply harmony and strict order to architecture, art and even representations of the human body. Everything was thought to be related and they searched for the perfect context of divine proportions. They measured, compared, calculated and constructed. Ingenious artists like Dürer and da Vinci compiled rules for perfectly proportioned human bodies and tried to relate them to different architectural contexts. A quest that in modern times were continued by, for example, the influential architect and artist Le Corbusier.

Several artists and philosophers believed that absolute beauty could be found anywhere in nature and felt that our libido was the compass we ought to follow in our search for perfection. If we found absolute beauty, we could perhaps find God as well. The Italian poet Agnolo Firenzola noted in 1578 in his Dialogo delle belleze delle donne, "On the Beauty of Women” that

… a beautiful woman is the most beautiful object one can admire, and beauty is the greatest gift God bestowed on His human creatures. And so, through her virtue we direct our souls to contemplation, and through contemplation to the desire for heavenly things. For this reason, the beautiful women have been sent among us as a sample and foretaste of heavenly things, and they have such power and virtue that wise men have declared them to be the first and best object worthy of being loved. They have even called her the seat of love, the nest and abode of love, of that love, I say, which is the origin and source of all human joys.

Of course, many women have aspired to equal a reflection of the divine. Some in order to attract men to favourable marriages, others were prostitutes looking for customers. If these women did not entirely match the ideals of perfection, there were various tricks they could resort to. Probably as a result of an assumed correlation between the white colour, purity, beauty and divinity, beauty ideals of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque tended to be coupled with whiteness, like smooth, lightly blushing womanly complexion and blond hair.

During their washing ceremonies it was common for wealthy or high-born, Italian ladies to scrub their skin in their quest to obtain a hide as white as possible and to that end they used finely grounded coral sand, resin from the dragon tree, white wine vinegar, various types of pulverised bone and apricot kernels, mixed with cinnamon and honey. They also powdered their bodies with substances, which could include anything from potassium carbonate to arsenic. They bleached their hair with a variety of chemical compounds and it was common for women to wear wide-brimmed hats that left their hair free while their white faces were protected from the sun. Vain ladies slept with their hands covered by gloves prepared with honey, mustard and bitter almonds, in the morning they washed with rainwater and anointed themselves with benzoin ointment.

Such beauty rituals were far from being limited to women, even wealthy and propertied men had an aptitude for various beauty regimens, and then, as now, it was common to assume that elegant costumes and cosmetics could hide their aging bodies´ decay.

Until the late 1700s wealthy, vain men powdered their faces, painted their lips and there existed strict rules for colouring the cheeks as unobtrusively as possible. Both men and women wore different kinds of wigs, dusted with fragrant substances. Many went to extremes. Behind the backs of the aging Cardinal Mazarin it was whispered how he laid on far too thick layers of makeup to hide his advancing age and the French Henry III was considered a ridiculous figure when he exposed himself "made-up like a prostitute" with white-powdered face, with shades elevated by saffron and rouge, while his hair was covered by a specific violet, scented powder.

It sounds extreme, but that people ridicule themselves by trying to apply makeup to cover up their age has probably been common in all ages. My wife remembers how shocked she became when she as a child saw the Dominican dictator Trujillo and discovered how much make-up he had applied to his face – red lips and rouged cheeks. It is also obvious to everyone that Berlusconi is a bit too generous with facial creams and other “rejuvenating” tricks.

Of course makeup and clothes emit sexual signals and a young, blossoming woman with discreet applied makeup may stimulate the desire of a philanderer. Giacomo Casanova wrote that although he hated excessive wear and cosmetics applied to hide fading beauty, he nevertheless avoided to to seduce an unembellished and badly dressed woman:

What I found extraordinary, and what pleased me greatly, was the excess of rouge, applied in the manner of the court ladies at Versailles. The charm of these painted cheeks lies in the negligence with which the color is applied. It is not intended to appear natural, but rather to please the eyes, which see in it the signs of an intoxication that promises abandon and the transports of love. 

During Casanova´s lifetime artificiality and "sophistication" became increasingly questioned by people who craved for a return to all that was natural. In England, gardens and parks were created in such a manner that they would give the appearance of being "real" nature, wealthy women freed themselves from their layers of clothing, corsets and complicated wigs, began breast-feeding their own children and took long walks in the countryside. Openness, simplicity and honesty were being praised and expected to be revealed in people's behaviour, stressed by simple clothes and an undisguised exposure of honest expressions.

Philosophers and scientists became interested in how emotions could be reflected through body language and facial expressions. Many felt that it was wrong to try to hide their feelings. It was better to give free rein to joy, anger and sadness. It was no longer contemptible for a man to cry. It was assumed that an essential part of an upright person's true nature was to openly reveal to others how s/he felt. The large amount of facial muscles were proof of this.

Between 1775 and 1778 the Swiss physician Johann Kaspar Lavater did, in collaboration with Goethe, write four volumes of his influential Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschen Liebe “Physiognomic Fragments to promote Knowledge about Human Nature and Human Love". Thus Lavater introduced what, according to him, was a scientific approach meaning that a through a systematic study of the posture, specifics of the body and more or less conscious facial expressions could reveal the character and inclinations of a human being. The mind shapes the body and vice versa, thus generous makeup, overly elegant clothes and affected behaviour were not only false, but reprehensible. Being endowed with a Bella Figura ceased to mean a person´s adherence to established ideals of beauty. Harmonizing your looks and behaviour with other people's desires and expectations was assumed to be an indication of being both false and insecure.

Such thoughts soon gained importance in art and fashion. Leading woman artists like Louise Vigée-Lebrun and Marie-Guillemine Benoist began to present themselves in intimate and loving relation with their children and put on négligés - elegant, thin airy dresses draped over the body. Men and women ceased wearing wigs and makeup, like in all times, however, there were also those who in protest clinged to the old fashion, and some even began to exaggerate artificiality.

Even the absence of makeup could go to extremes and within bohemian circles it became increasingly common to exaggerate emotions, and even shortcomings, weaknesses and diseases. The English philosopher and social critic Edmund Burke had in 1786 in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful discussed the concept of beauty and found that it was far from the ideal of Greek Pythagoreans, speculative Renaissance philosophers or French academy members. According to Burke, beauty was not only found among phenomena that could be calculated in accordance with a logical framework. Instead, it could be quite the opposite - what appear as beautiful could also be found in the wild; the uncontrolled, the incomprehensible and exotic. Yes, in some cases even the cruel and frightening can be considered beautiful.

Passion and admiration caused by the untamed, or what Burke preferred to denote as the “sublime” nature, appeared to be the most powerful, and emotions caused by unaffected nature were generally conditioned by some degree of horror, since horror comes from something we cannot control, or even understand or expect:

Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.

Now violent storms, steep mountains, deep oceans, and wildlife rushed into literary works and sophisticated soirées. No longer was enlightenment and harmony considered chic and beautiful, light craved its shadows. Movement, the unexpected and uncontrollable passion gave depth to existence and increased aesthetic enjoyment, gave relief from the tediousness of everyday life. Imagination, dreams, and unbound creation were dazzling and adorable. Without darkness no light, no night, no days without grief, fear and longing, joy demanded its opposite.

Aesthetic delight was not dependent on any mathematical rules and neither was love and passion. Life had its dark, unfathomable depths, where death, suffering and disease were looming, their threats and proximity might even enhance our pleasure, the unfathomable bliss of the moment. The bright white might be synonymous with the divine, but could just as well be a premonition of death. Like the hectic fever roses on a tuberculosis sufferer's deathly pale face. A combination of light and dark, white and black, life and death were suddenly in vogue.

Blonde hair was no longer an ideal of beauty and was replaced by the black. An open blue gaze gave away to unfathomable, deep-set eyes. Gone were the voluptuous ladies of the Baroque and Rococo, with their tender flesh exposed in lush gardens or among satin, silk and lace, inside intimate boudoirs. Now men and women controlled their weight by drinking vinegar and lemon juice, avoiding meat and fat. Several bohemians experimented with hallucinogenic drugs, turned days into nights while indulging themselves in dreams and imagination in "artificial paradises" of art and intoxication. Women read late into the night in search of the dark circles around the eyes, which were considered a sign of mysterious beauty.

Susan Sontag wrote in her masterful essay Illness as Metaphor that even the dreaded tuberculosis could be perceived as "sublime", with its heated feverishness in proximity of death. Tuberculosis was considered to bestow an "ethereal" appearance and the disease was also believed to stimulate creativity. Aesthetes seemed to ignore the sickening stench from infected lungs that wrecked the breath of ailing victims and instead described the course of the insusceptible sickness as a drama undulating between deathly paleness and fever rosy complexion, paired with hyperactivity that suddenly could be converted into deep lethargy. How the body faded away until it seemed to be almost transparent, while anxiety and fear of death´s relentlessness gradually were replaced by stoic calm and resignation. Sontag gives a number of famous examples of "romantic" depictions of TB patients last moments.

However, even the pale, doomed ideal of women could turn into its opposite. A bold artist could just as well become attracted by an ”Amazon", embodied by a liberated woman writer like George Sand, who by her friend Marie d'Agoult was described as

an excellent hunter and amazon, with whip in hand, spurs on the boots, rifle over her shoulder, a cigar between her lips, a glass of wine in the hand, the subject of gossip and scandals.

The men surrounding a woman like George Sand also appeared as enticing and exotic. Several of theme belonged to the group of free spirits who called themselves “bohemians”, people from Bohemia, a term commonly used to denote the Romani people.  By calling themselves Bohemians free-spirited artists wanted to demonstrate that they were independent filibusters far removed from oppressive bourgeois conformism. They dressed and acted their part to emphasize their singular personality. Some of them did not even pretend to be odd, they gave from the start an exotic and alluring impression. Archetypes were the death marked violin virtuoso Paganini, or the astoundingly talented pianist Ferencz Liszt, who in his Hungarian homeland early had been fascinated by the Romani people:

Few things fire our imagination more in early youth than the glaring enigma of the Bohemians, begging a miserable coin before every palace and cottage in exchange for a few words murmured in the ear, a few dance tunes which no wandering fiddler could ever imitate, a few songs for setting lovers aflame, but not invented by lovers. […] this charm to which everyone fell victim, but which could not explain it.

Dressed in black, with his long hair, his profile of a raptor and passionate piano playing, Liszt captivated his audience. His piano playing was said to be able to lift a many-headed audience to unprecedented levels of mystical, musical ecstasy, while Paganini's violin playing gave birth to a legend he had entered a pact with the Devil, a rumour that even caused problems surrounding his funeral – was he really a true Christian?

Admirers swarmed constantly around Liszt and violently fought over handkerchiefs and gloves he had left behind. His fans carried his portrait as brooches and cameos, for everyone to see who their idol was. Armed with scissors women crept upon their boundlessly admired piano virtuoso, to cut a lock of his hair. If a piano string snapped during one of Liszt´s concerts groups of excited women rampaged on the stage to rip it off to make a bracelet out of it. The lucky ladies who happened to attend any of Liszt´s café or salon visits brought with them small glass phials to preserve the coffee swigs he left behind. Women fainted during his concerts and had to be carried out, while police and guards were ordered to protect the musician. The poet Heinrich Heine dubbed this mass psychosis Lisztomania and it would not be repeated until a hundred years later by the even more passionate Beatlemania. A journalist wrote:

Liszt once threw away an old cigar stump in the street under the watchful eyes of an infatuated lady-in-waiting, who reverently picked the offensive weed out of the gutter, had it encased in a locket and surrounded with the monogram "F.L." in diamonds, and went about her courtly duties unaware of the sickly odour it gave forth.

That story made me recall a radio programme I listened to in 1998 in which the Swedish actor Thommy Berggren told the listeners that when he lived with his wife Monika Ahlberg in Hollywood his agent called him to inform that Frank Sinatra, Thommy´s idol, was sitting alone at the bar of Chasen's restaurant. Berggren and Monika rushed away to Chasen's, but Sinatra could not be found anywhere. Berggren ordered a drink from the Italian bartender and entered a conversation about Frankie.

- But he is here right now, exclaimed the bartender. He just went to the loo.

The Swede and his wife just had to sit by the bar and Sinatra would for sure be there in a minute or two and he would probably like to speak to the Swede, especially if he was in the company of such a beautiful lady. Berggren asked what Sinatra used to drink

- Always whiskey. Jack Daniels. There he is! whispered the bartender and nodded in the direction of the exit.

Berggren caught a glimpse of his idol on the way out, he wanted to run after him, but Monika grabbed her husband's arm:

- Calm down, please! and Frankie disappeared.

- Damn it! Berggren thought as the bartender pointed to the ashtray:

- That was a pity, so close for you. Look, there lies his cigarette.

Thommy Berggren stared at the ashtray by his side, where thin smoke was still rising from a Chesterfield cigarette. Monika saw her husband's loving gaze at the butt and wondered ironically;

- Should you not take a puff? before she headed to the toilet

When Monika had disappeared, Berggren quickly ordered a double Jack Daniels

Then I gently lifted Sinatra´s cigarette and took a long, deep inhale, washing it down with a giant swig of Jack Daniels, while I closed my eyes.

The appearance, looks and clothes women and men endowed with bella figura have always been admired and copied. It is said that Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther made many young men who had been unfortunate in love, to walk around in a blue dress coat and yellow vest. It has even been stated that like the fictional hero some of them committed suicide. Elvis, Hemingway and Marilyn Monroe have thousands of imitators and lookalikes, Jim Hendrix and Audrey Hepburn were trendsetting fashion idols. Examples are countless.

Of course, fashion designers have had a huge influence on what had to been done in order to appear as a bella figura. It is said that it was Coco Chanel who in the early twenties, by abolishing umbrellas and gloves, took away women's fear of sunshine. Soon it became a prevailing ideal for both women and men to be tanned and fit. Trends come and go. We are constantly changing, perhaps without even noticing it. Fanatical, or frightened, Japanese soldiers who after decades appeared again among their fellow citizens, after being isolated in islands of Indonesia and the South Pacific, did not understand much of what they met in their homeland - the people were longer, spoke differently, were strangely dressed and, above all, had completely changed their opinions and behaviour.

La Bella Figura may also be related to an elusive, powerful emotion that may arise if we are gripped by an aesthetic shock. Something so beautiful that we are completely overwhelmed, unable to speak and describe our feelings - it can be a beautiful woman that has taken hold of our mind, a magnificent landscape, a work of art, or a piece of music. There is even a name for this affliction – the Stendahl Syndrome, named after a passage in one of Stendahl´s books Rome, Naples and Florence: 1826, where the author explains what happened to him in the church of Santa Croce in Florence:

There lay Machiavelli's tomb, and next to Michelangelo, rested Galileo. What an astonishing collection of men! Looking on Volterrano's Sibylline frescoes, I experienced the most intense pleasure art has ever bestowed upon me. I was in a sort of ecstasy, absorbed by the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I had reached the point of celestial feeling ... As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart; the wellspring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground.

Could it have been something like that the nun felt there in St. Peter's Square, as she admired John Paul the Second´s Bella Figura?

Burke, Edmund (2013) A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Cincinatti: Simon & Brown. Casanova, Giacomo (2002) The Story of My Life. London: Penguin Classics. Firenzola, Agnolo (1992) On the Beauty of Women. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. O´Bryan, C. Jill (2005) Carnal Art: Orlan´s Refacing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Paquet, Dominique (1997) Miroir, mon beau miroir. Une histoire de la beauté. Paris: Gallimard. Rostand, Claude (1972) Liszt. London: Calder and Boyars. Stendahl (1987) Rome, Naples et Florence: 1826. Paris: Gallimard. Sontag, Susan (2009) Illness as Metaphor and Aids and Its Metaphors. London: Penguin Classics. Walker, Alan (1987) Franz Liszt, the Virtuoso Years (1811 – 1847). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Med goda skäl händer det allt som oftast att min eleganta och modemedvetna hustru klagar på mitt sätt att klä mig och på mitt utseende. Precis innan vi skall gå ut tillsammans ger hon mig ofta en beklagande blick och påpekar att jag är klädd som en luffare, att håret står åt alla håll ”som hos den där galne professorn i Tillbaka till framtiden”. 

Hon har rätt, jag trivs faktiskt med att vara välklädd, men tycker ibland att jag saknar rena, nystrukna kläder, eller att jag under en följd av år av ren slöhet inte har förnyat min garderob; skjortkragar och manschetter är nerslitna, kostymerna är sjaskiga, byxorna fläckiga och strumporna har hål. Jag slarvar med rakning, deodorant och herrparfym, klipper mig sällan och motionerar alltför sporadiskt. Uppriktigt sagt tror jag att det finns en viss sanning i uttryck som ”kläderna gör mannen”. Även om jag kan vara blind för mina egna tillkortakommande, uppmärksammar jag hur andra klär sig, uppför sig och doftar. Med undran och skräck tänker jag på gubbdoften som slog emot mig när jag i min ungdom arbetade på mentalsjukhus, eller besökte äldre personer i deras lindrigt städade och dåligt ventilerade lägenheter. Ser mig själv på fotografier och begriper inte att den där äldre, rynkige, tunn- och vithårige gubben faktiskt är jag.

Kanske luktar jag nu som gubbarna på ålderdomshemmen. Ser jag lika lufsig och osund ut? Det är som när jag hör min egen röst. Talar jag verkligen så? Samma sak med fotografierna. Ser jag verkligen så ut? Inom mitt yttre skal känner jag mig inte äldre än trettio år. Kanske förstärks mina känslor av bristande sund och stilig manlighet av det faktum att jag befinner mig i Italien.

Tankarna väcktes till liv då jag för någon dag sedan såg Saturday Night Fever med John Travolta och fann att den inte var så dålig som jag inbillat mig. I inledningen möter vi en ung Travolta som tillbringar sina vardagar i en järnaffär, eller hemma hos sina föräldrar i deras påvra och överlastade hem, där han har sitt pojkrum med affischer på Bruce Lee, Sylvester Stallone och en ung de Niro. På helgerna lever han dock upp och blir ett modelejon med rakbladsvassa veck på sina vita, slimmade byxor, vinnande leende, självsäker gång, fläckfri, three piece suit och det håriga bröstet delvis blottat under sidenskjortor och guldlänkar. Han är dansgolvets obesegrade konung, dröm och blickfång för tjusade, unga damer. John Travolta framstår som urbilden för en italiensk Bella Figura.

Orden betyder egentligen vacker figur men har i italienskan en betydligt rikare innebörd än så. Jag finner i ett lexikon att de närmast betyder ”att göra ett gott intryck” begreppet är alltså förenat med både synintryck och uppträdande – hur du ser ut, uppför dig, hur du vinnlägger dig om att imponera på din omgivning. Det kan ibland tyckas som om ansträngningen att tjusa människor omkring dig uppskattas i nästan lika hög grad som resultatet.

Jag antar att det inom italiensk kultur finns ett betydande inslag av hedonsim; livsnjutning och skönhetsdyrkan, ett sökande efter estetisk fulländning – i musiken, konsten, designen; hur en kostym är klippt och skuren, hur blommor arrangeras, formerna hos en bil, färgkombinationerna i en husfasad, uppläggningen av en maträtt, vinklarna i en film eller ett fotografi. Minns hur en judisk väninna, författarinnan Esther Hautzig, en gång sa till mig: ”Vi judar är skriftens, berättelsernas folk, men italienarna är de stora esteterna, konstnärerna, de har bilden i sin makt, vi har ordet.”  Likaså konstaterade en annan vän, som konverterat till katolicismen: ”Jag skall säga dig, Jan, att jämfört med svensk lutherdom är romersk katolicism som knäckebröd jämfört med wienerbröd.” Jag tror de hade rätt, det finns i Italien ett barockt, mustigt överflöd, ett estetiskt fantasteri.

Den ungdomlige Karol Józef Wojtyła var som påven Johannes Paulus II i mångt och mycket en sinnebild för La Bella Figura och omåttligt populär hos många italienare. När han 1978 vid femtioåtta års ålder blev den katolska kyrkans överhuvud var Wojtyła en stilig, kraftfull man, med en bakgrund inte enbart som grubblande präst och själasörjare, men också som skådespelare och fotbollsspelare. Han var vid strålande hälsa; joggade i Vatikanträdgårdarna, fotvandrade i de italienska alperna, lyfte tyngder och simmade. Jag uppskattade hans kamp mot kommunismen, men förstod också vad en del av mina latinamerikanska jesuitbekanta inom skål och vägg menade då de sa att han hade en stålnäve i en silkesvante.

Exempelvis så skakade Fader Xavier Albo betänksamt på huvudet och sa till mig när jag en gång hälsade på honom i La Paz ”att den där polacken på påvetronen förstår inte alls vad så många av vi latinamerikanska präster kämpar för”. Uppenbarligen var Johannes Paulus II ingen vän av latinamerikansk befrielseteologi. När Biskop Óscar Romero, som mejades ner av kulspruteeld framför högaltaret i sin katedral, besökte påven i Rom och bad om Kyrkans stöd mot de salvadoranska dödsskvadronerna fick han blankt nej och när den radikale prästen och poeten Ernesto Cardenal knäföll för att kyssa påvens hand i Nicaragua drog Johannes Paulus undan den, viftade med fingret och sa: ”Du måste reda ut din position med Kyrkan”. Nyligen såg jag en bild av min jesuitbekant Xavier Albo, han bar en T-shirt med texten: I Love Papa Francesco. Han gläder sig säkerligen över att äntligen ha fått en jesuitbroder med ordentliga åsikter på påvetronen.

Johannes Paulus II var dock en charmig och kraftfull representant för en kämpande Kyrka. Med sina tillkortakommande var han i mångt och mycket ”en påve i tiden”, som efter att ha genomlevt två mordförsök, det sista överlevde han som genom ett mirakel. Fyra pistolskott träffade honom från nära håll; två i buken, ett i hans högerarm och ett annat höger lillfinger. En av kulorna i buken gick inte att avlägsna. Johannes Paulus tillfrisknade och fortsatte resa kring i världen. Han var ekumeniskt sinnad och besökte som första påve en moské, han valde den magnifika moskén i Damaskus. Stora folkmassor hyllade honom vart han än visade sig. Själv såg jag honom flera gånger. Då var han åldrad, med grava andningssvårigheter, Parkinsons sjukdom gjorde det svårt för honom att tala. Svår ledgångsreumatism gav honom en plågsam, stapplande gång, men med uppenbar smärta och sluddrande tal fortsatte han in i det sista att uppträda offentligt.

Mot slutet av Johannes Paulus II:s levnad befann jag och Rose oss på Sankt Peters torg när han till allmänt jubel visade sig i påvevåningens fönster. Han var böjd och såg mycket svag ut, hans sluddrande tal förstärktes av högtalarna, men jag kunde inte uppfatta vad han sa. Då vände sig en nunna till mig, saligt leende och med tårar rinnande över kinderna sa hon djupt rörd: Que Bella Figura! Que Bella Figura! Jag förstod då ordens innebörd. Den oerhörda respekt som denna nunna kände inför den värkbrutne, stammande mannen som släpat sig fram inför sin flock av hängivna beundrare. Jag upprepade frågande orden: Que Bella Figura? Nunnan grep mig då försiktigt om överarmen, lutade sig fram mot mig och sa: ”Se vilken man. Hur han mitt all denna smärta vågar visar sig inför oss, i all sin mänskliga skröplighet. Vilken resning, vilken tro. Que Bella Figura!”

En annan förvånande, men fullständigt annorlunda, kommentar kring La Bella Figura fick jag några år senare av en ung italiensk vän som uppskattande talade om Silvio Berlusconis ansiktslyftningar, hans oljigt svartfärgade och inplanterade hår och överdrivna ansiktssmink. Min vän konstaterade att han inte alls uppskattade den smarte, men skurkaktigt manipulerande politikern, men det var en helt annan sak med hans vinnande leende, perfekta kostymer och sanslösa uttalanden. ”Den killen kan verkligen föra sig. Han är furbo [smart] ut i fingerspetsarna, vet precis vad folk vill ha, han spelar dem som ett piano. Och detta med hårimplantet. Fantastiskt att göra det så öppet! Han visar verkligen att han anstränger sig för att göra ett gott intryck. Det är annat än de andra döddansarna inom italiensk politik Il Cavaliere [kavaljeren, ett epitet som Berlusconis anhängare gärna använder om honom] är verkligen en Bella Figura.”

Allt det där har fick mig att göra en djupdykning ner i vad jag inbillar mig vara en del aspekter av det italienska skönhetsbegreppet. Som så ofta förr började jag med ordet. Det italienska bello kommer uppenbarligen från latinets bellus som betydde ”söt, stilig och charmig”, men uttrycket användes enbart om barn och kvinnor. Använde de antika romarna ordet bellus om en man ansågs det förolämpande, en anspelning på ett ”omanligt” sätt att uppföra sig och då besläktat med det grekiska καλός, kalos, som egentligen betydde bra, eller ”av god kvalitet” – men också en ”godsak”. Det tycks alltså ha funnits ett samband mellan tillgjordhet och ”skönhet”, men det hindrade inte att ordet bello också har kopplats samman med naturlig prakt. Det som är ”vackert” kan vara både okonstlat och konstruerat, i meningen en skicklig efterapning av naturen, eller än mer raffinerat - en skicklig ”förbättring” av det naturliga och då det gäller människan kan sådant åstadkommas genom kroppsliga förändringar, smink, kläder och ”manierat” uppträdande.

Genom alla tider och inom samtliga samhällsformer tycks människor ha haft ett behov att förändra och smycka sina kroppar, ibland på ett tämligen extremt sätt. Tusentals år tillbaka i tiden finner vi hos olika folk en mängd av skönhetsförhöjande metoder, Exempelvis tog sig det antika Egyptens överklasskvinnor och -män gärna sig ett på morgondopp i blomsterparfymerat vatten. Man skrubbade sig med tvålar gjorda av en blandning av natron och olja. Natron användes också för att putsa tänderna och skölja munnen. Man använde sig även av bergtvål, lera som kokats för att få bort olika mineralämnen. När natron och bergtvål sköljts bort lät man sig masseras med väldoftande oljor.

Kvinnor applicerade gärna färgämnen över hela kroppen, man försökte exempelvis åstadkomma en brungul, gyllene färgton. Svagt skymtande vener på bröst och tinningar ansågs vara skönhetstecken och kunde målas dit med smala, blåskimrande streck. Ögonlocken målades med olika preparat från grön malakit, ljusblå turkos, rödaktig terrakotta och svart kol. Kring ögonen ritade man sedan med kolstift smala streck ”för att ge dem liv”, de gavs formen av en fisk, ett ”livligt” djur.  En märklig detalj bland de egyptiska utsmyckningarna var en parfymerad ”kon” som placerades ovanpå de lockade perukerna, för att sedan smälta och sprida sin väldoft över peruk och ansikte.

Århundraden passerade revy med en ständig växelverkan mellan naturlighet och förkonstling. Strävan efter njutning, skönhet, utsmyckningar, exklusivt kosthåll och vällevnad betraktades av allvarstyngda filosofer och teologer som en förrädisk fälla som korrumperade och förstörde oss. Vi borde alla leva på ett måttfullt och konstruktivt sätt för att därigenom gynna både oss själva och våra medmänniskor. Andra menade att vi under våra korta liv borde avnjuta skönhet och behag. Speciellt om vi var så pass lyckligt lottade att vi kunde uppskatta livets glädjeämnen. Varje tid bjöd lyx, skönhet och njutning åt de besuttna klasserna, medan andra ofta hade det svårt och eländigt. Fast även den fattige kunde smycka sig på olika sätt.

Många ”skönhetsmedel” kan betraktas som obegripligt grymma och minst sagt underliga. Som de burmesiska kayankvinnornas ”giraffhalsar” som åstadkoms genom att flickebarn från fem års ålder bar kopparringar kring halsen på ett sådant sätt att den sakta utökades tills dess den hade förlängts på ett onaturligt sätt, om ringarna avlägsnades bröts nacken. Eller det smärtsamma kinesiska bruket att binda flickors fötter på ett sådant sätt att deras tillväxt hindrades och manipulerades så att “loutusfötter” bildades. De överklassdamer som fått sådana fötter kunde varken gå eller arbeta som andra kvinnor, ett tecken på deras höga status. Flera regimer försökte förgäves förbjuda bruket, medan andra gynnade det och den otäcka seden försvann inte helt förrän i början av förra seklet.  Flera folk har på olika håll i världen också ägnat sig åt ”skalldeformering” genom att med olika medel tvinga barns skallar att växa på ett speciellt sätt, detta var ett vanligt bruk bland flera grupper av Amerikas ursprungsbefolkning, bland annat bland Mayafolkets överklass.

Allt sådant är onekligen grymt och groteskt. Men, människors strävan efter att förändra sina kroppar och därmed förvandlas till belle figure är knappast ovanligt i vår samtid, där tekniska framsteg har möjliggjort att plastikkirurgi kan användas för att ändra utseendet på ett sådant sätt att det tilltalar de som genomgått sådana ingrepp, eller så betraktar de dem som ett medel för att motverka följderna av ett naturligt åldrande. Det händer att människor blir beroende av förändringskurerna och genomlider dem med jämna mellanrum, inte minst Sveriges drottning. Till slut kan det bli så illa att de inte märker att operationerna har förvandlat deras utseende så att det blivit i det närmaste groteskt.

Något som får mig att tänka på Terry Gilliams film Brazil från 1985. Minns hur den, liksom Matrix många år senare fick mig att betrakta tillvaron med nya ögon. I Brazil är människorna instängda i en artificiell värld och en scen som etsat sig fast i minnet är när huvudpersonen Sam Lowrys förmögna mor tar emot honom i en privat skönhetssalong där en svassande läkare håller på att förändra hennes utseende. Likt en blandning av hårfrisör och kirurg töjer han ut fru Lowrys ansiktshud och plastar in hennes ansikte alltmedan han genom sitt småprat försäkrar henne om att behandlingen kommer att göra henne tjugo år yngre. På ett party för att fira Mrs Lowrys nya, ”ungdomliga” utseende försäkrar en kollega till plastikkirurgen att hans metod är föråldrad och att Mrs Lowrys ansikte snart kommer att vanställas. Dessvärre ger olyckskorpens egna offer, en lika rik och ytlig tant som Mrs Lowry, syn för sägen, under filmens gång får vi bevittna hur hennes ansikte successivt faller sönder.

Gilliam framstår nu som en profet, i varje fall då det gäller plastikoperationer, som då filmen gjordes ännu inte var på modet. Gilliams sätt att gestalta en dysfunktionell framtid har fått många efterföljare. Hans framtidsvärld framstår som mycket engelsk - männen bär välskräddade kostymer, långa rockar och hattar. Det rör sig om ett utpräglat klassamhälle med torftiga, brottsinfekterade slumkvarter där fattiga människor trängs inom nergångna, omänskliga betongkolosser, medan en glamorös överklass ägnar sig åt skamlös konsumtion. En överdimensionerad centralmakt omsluter en blankettfrossande byråkrati, bevakad av beväpnade vakter och bepansrade fordon. Överallt finns underliga maskiner som ger ett ålderdomligt, alltför invecklat, intryck och som ständigt klappar ihop, eller löper amok. I enlighet med brittisk anda, när den är som bäst, är Brazil ett väl genomtänkt konstverk (om än något ojämnt), kryddat med ironisk, svart humor. En blandning av tysk-rysk expressionism, cinema noir, Monty Python, Chaplin och Kafka. Mer än en framtidsskildring framställer Brazil en konstgjord, snedvriden parallellvärld.

Inom konsten har utseendeförändrande ingrepp emellanåt blivit estetiska uttrycksmedel, eller till och med politiska och kulturkritiska manifestationer. Den franska konstnärinnan Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte, som numera kallar sig ORLAN (alltid med stora bokstäver) och är bosatt i Los Angeles, började tidigt experimentera med olika former av kroppskonst – hon prövade olika gångarter, manipulationer av fotografier och film, olika tricks som tycktes sträva efter att förena kropp och maskin, tills hon i början av 1990-talet började kalla sig Sankta ORLAN och uteslutande ägna sig åt vad hon kallade ”köttslig” konst. Genom olika kirurgiska ingrepp sa hon sig vilja förvandla sin kropp och sitt ansikte till ett ”konstverk”. Hennes mål var att få kinder som Botticellis Venus, en näsa som på Jean-Léon Géromes målning av Psyke, läppar som hos Francois Bouchers Europa, ögon som Diana på en målning från Fontainbleuskolan och en panna som Mona Lisa. Det är tveksamt om slutresultatet motsvarade hennes högt ställda förväntningar.

Till skillnad från ORLAN försökte flera renässanskonstnärer inte förändra naturen utan istället finna dess perfektion. De återupptäckte antika grekers spekulationer kring matematik och skönhet. Balans och ordning började tillämpas på arkitektur, konst och även framställningar av människokroppen. Allt tänktes höra samman och man sökte efter de perfekta sammanhangen – de gudomliga proportionerna/harmonierna. Man mätte, jämförde, räknade och konstruerade. Geniala konstnärer som Dürer och da Vinci ställde samman mönster för den perfekt proportionerade människokroppen och sökte även placera in den i olika arkitektoniska sammanhang. En strävan som fortsatt in i vår tid, exempelvis hos den tongivande arkitekten och konstnären Le Corbusier.

Flera konstnärer och filosofer trodde alltså att den absoluta skönheten fanns att finna någonstans i naturen och ansåg att vårt driftsliv var den kompass vi borde följa. Fann vi den absoluta skönheten kunde vi kanske även finna Gud. Den italienske poeten Agnolo Firenzola konstaterade 1578 i sin Dialogo delle belleze delle donne, ”Dialog om kvinnors skönhet” att

en vacker kvinna är den underbaraste skapelse som finns att beundra och skönhet är den största gåva Gud skänkt mänskligheten. Det är kvinnans förtjänst att vi kan rikta våra själar mot kontemplation och genom vår försjunkenhet i skönheten föds en längtan efter himmelska ting. Av denna anledning ger de vackra kvinnor som finns bland oss en försmak av den himmelska lycksaligheten och de har en sådan kraft och sådana dygder att visa män har förklarat dem vara de första och främsta skapelser som är värda att älskas. De har även kallat dem för kärlekens säte, kärlekens ursprung och boning. Jag vill påstå att kärlek till kvinnan är källan till all mänsklig glädje.

Givetvis strävade många kvinnor efter att motsvara denna återglans av det gudomliga. En del för att locka män till förmånliga giftermål, andra var prostituerade på jakt efter kunder. Om dessa kvinnor inte motsvarade idealet för den perfekta människan så fanns det olika knep att tillgripa. Antagligen som en följd av att man såg ett samband mellan den vita färgen och renhet, skönhet och gudomlighet, kopplades Medeltidens, Renässansens och Barockens skönhetsideal till sådant som var vitt eller ljust, som mjäll, lätt rodnande kvinnohy och blont hår.

Under sina tvagningsceremonier var det vanligt att förmögna, eller högättade, italienska damer skrubbade sig i en strävan att få huden så vit som möjligt och man använde sig då bland annat av finmald korallsand, harts från drakblodsträdet, vitvinsättika, olika former av benmjöl, malda aprikoskärnor och kanel.  Man pudrade också kroppen med olika substanser, som kunde innehålla allt ifrån kaliumkarbonat till arsenik. Man blekte håret med en mängd olika kemiska preparat och det var vanligt att kvinnor gick med bredbrättade hattar som lämnade håret fritt medan de skyddade ansiktet mot solen. På natten sov eleganta damer med handskar som preparerats med honung, senap och bittermandel och tvättade sig på morgonen med regnvatten och smorde sedan in sig med bensoinsalvor.

Sådana skönhetsriter var långt ifrån begränsade till kvinnor, även förmögna och besuttna män hade en fallenhet för olika skönhetskurer och då, liksom nu, var det vanligt att ta till eleganta klädedräkter och kosmetika för att dölja sina åldrande kroppars förfall.

Fram till 1700-talets slut pudrade förmögna, fåfänga män sina ansikten, målade läpparna röda och det fanns noggranna regler för hur kinderna så diskret som möjligt skulle färgläggas med rouge. Både män och kvinnor bar olika former av peruker, som pudrades med väldoftande substanser. Mångagick till överdrift. Bakom ryggen på den åldrande Kardinal Mazarin viskades det om hur han lade på alltför tjocka lager med smink för att dölja sin ålder och den franske Henrik III betraktades som löjlig figur då han på Paris gator visade sig ”sminkad som en prostituerad”, med kritpudrat ansikte, förhöjt med nyanser av saffran och rouge, alltmedan håret täckts av violett, parfymerat puder.

Det låter extremt, men att människor förlöjligar sig genom att försöka sminka bort sin ålder har antagligen varit vanligt i alla tider. Min fru minns hur chockad hon blev när hon i sin barndom kom nära den dominikanske diktatorn Trujillo och upptäckte hur grovt sminkad han var. Det är även uppenbart för var och en att Berlusconi är lite väl generös med sina ansiktskrämer.

Givetvis ger smink och kläder sexuella signaler och en ung, blomstrande kvinna med diskret anlagt smink kan förhöja åtrån hos en lebeman. Giacomo Casanova skrev att även om han avskydde överdriven klädsel och kosmetika anlagd för att dölja vissnande behag så lät han sig sällan tjusas av en osminkad, illa klädd kvinna:

Vad jag fann enastående och som tilltalade mig mycket, var det överdrivna bruket av rouge, applicerat på samma sätt som hos hovdamerna vid Versailles. Charmen med dessa målade kinder ligger i den vårdslöshet med vilken färgen har applicerats. Den är inte avsedd att vara naturlig, utan snarare söker den tillfredsställa ögonen, som vid åsynen skönjer tecknen på det rus som gör att vi förlorar oss själva, uppslukade av kärlek.

Casanova levde på gränsen mellan en tid då förkonstling och ”förfining” sattes högt och en ny epok då sådant föraktades och man istället vurmade för en återgång till allt som var naturligt. I England anlade man trädgårdar som skulle ge sken av att vara ”riktig” natur, förmögna kvinnor befriade sig från sina lager av kläder, korsetter och komplicerade peruker, ammade sina barn och gjorde utflykter på landsbygden. Öppenhet, enkelhet och ärlighet skulle visa sig i människors beteende och understrykas genom klädedräkt och oförställda ansiktsuttryck.

Man började intressera sig för hur känslor speglades genom kroppsspråk och minspel. Många ansåg att det var fel att försöka dölja sina känslor. Det var bättre att ge fritt utlopp för glädje, vrede och sorg. Det var inte längre föraktligt för en man att gråta, det var en del av människans sanna natur att visa hur hon kände. Den stora mängden ansiktsmuskler var ett bevis för detta.

Mellan 1775 och 1778 publicerade den schweiziske läkaren Johann Kaspar Lavater tillsammans med Goethe i fyra band sin inflytelserika Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe ”Fysiognomiska fragment för att förmedla kunskap om den mänskliga naturen och människokärlek” och introducerade därmed sin fysiognomik som enligt Lavater var ett vetenskapligt betraktelsesätt som möjliggjorde att människors karaktär kunde avslöjas genom ett systematiskt studium av deras hållning, kropps- och ansiktsuttryck, samt deras särpräglade uppträdande. Sinnet formade kroppen och tvärtom, därmed var smink, överdrivet eleganta kläder och förkonstlat uppträdande både falskt och förkastligt. Att vara försedd med en Bella Figura betydde därmed inte längre att man anpassat sitt beteende och sin kropp till ett fastställt skönhetsideal, utan att man vågade vara så naturlig som möjligt. Om du omformade dig själv efter andras önskemål var det ett tecken på att du var en både falsk och osäker människa.

Sådana tankegångar fick snart sitt genomslag inom konst och mode. Tongivande konstnärinnor som Louise Vigée-Lebrun och Marie-Guillemine Benoist började framställa sig i intimt och kärleksfullt samröre med sina barn och klädde sig i négligé elegant, tunna klänningar som luftigt draperades över kroppen. Män och kvinnor slutade använda peruker och smink, likt i alla tider fanns det dock de som i ren protest höll sig kvar i det gamla modet, eller började överdriva förkonstlingen.

Även frånvaron av smink kunde gå till överdrift och efterhand blev det i bohemkretsar allt vanligare att överdriva sitt känsloliv, sina svagheter och sina sjukdomar. Den engelske filosofen och samhällskritikern Edmund Burke hade 1786 i sin A Philosphical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful diskuterat vad vi anser vara vackert eller lockande och funnit att det långt ifrån var de ideal som grekiska pythagoréer, spekulerande renässansfilosoferna eller franska akademiledamöter hade förordat. Skönhet stod inte enbart att finna bland sådant som kunde beräknas i enlighet med ett logiskt regelverk. Istället kunde det vara tvärtom – det som lockar och även kan framstå som vackert kan finnas det vilda, det otuktade, det obegripliga och exotiska. Ja, till och med det grymma och skrämmande kan vara vackert.

Den lidelse som orsakas av det stora och sublima i NATUREN, då dessa orsaker verkar som mäktigast, är häpnad; och häpnad är det själstillstånd, i vilket alla själsrörelser är betingade av någon grad av skräck […] Häpnad säger jag, är effekten av det sublima i dess högsta potens; de lägre effekterna är beundran, vördnad och respekt.

Nu störtade stormar, bergsmassiv, hav och vilda djur in i de preciösa salongerna. Det var inte längre ljus och harmoni som ansågs vara vackert, utan även spelet mellan ljus och skugga, rörlighet, det oväntade, det hotande gav djup åt tillvaron och ökade den estetiska njutningen, gav relief åt vardagen. Fantasin, drömmarna, och det fria skapandet var vackert även det. Utan mörker inget ljus, utan natt, ingen dag, utan sorg och skräck, ingen glädje.

Konstupplevelsen var inte beroende av några matematiska regler och det var inte heller kärleken och passionen. Driftslivet hade sina mörka, outgrundliga sidor och så hade död, lidande och sjukdom, känslan av deras hot, deras närhet kunde kanske till och med förhöja den estetiska känslan. Det ljusa och vita slutade var synonymt med det gudomliga, det kunde lika gärna vara en föraning om döden. Som de hektiska feberrosorna på en tuberkulossjuk människas likbleka ansikte. Kombinationen av ljus och mörker, liv och död blev inom modet en kombination av svart och vitt.

Det ljusa håret var inte längre ett skönhetsideal, utan ersattes av det svarta. En öppen, blå blick vek undan för outgrundliga, djupt liggande ögon. Borta var barockens och rokokons yppiga damer med sitt mjälla hull i blomstrande trädgårdar. Nu kontrollerade män och kvinnor sin vikt, drack vinäger och citronsaft, medan de undvek kött och fett. Flera bohemer experimenterade med hallucinogena droger, gjorde dagen till natt och hängav sig åt drömmarnas och fantasins ”artificiella paradis”. Kvinnor läste till långt in på nätterna emedan mörka ringar kring ögon ansågs vara lockande.

Susan Sontag skriver i sin mästerliga essä Sjukdom som metafor att även den fruktansvärda tuberkulosen kunde uppfattas som ”sublim”, med sin hetsiga febrighet i dödens närhet. Tuberkulossjuka ansågs ha ett ”eteriskt” utseende och sjukdomen troddes stimulera skaparkraften. Skönandarna tycktes bortse från utandningsluftens vedervärdiga stank från infekterade lungor, utan beskrev istället sjukdomens förlopp som ett drama med skiftningar mellan likblekhet och mörk rodnad, parad med uppskruvad hyperaktivitet som plötsligt kunde omvandlas till djup letargi. Hur kroppen tynade bort tills den tycktes vara nästan genomskinlig, hur oro och skräck inför dödens obeveklighet efterhand ersattes av stoiskt lugn och resignation. Sontag ger en rad exempel på ”romantiska” skildringar av tuberkulospatienters sista stunder.

Men, även det bleka, dödsmärkta kvinnoidealet kunde slå över i sin motsats. Den frigjorde konstnären kunde likaväl lockas av ”amazonen”, förkroppsligad genom en frigjord kvinna som författarinnan Georg Sand, som av sin väninna Marie d´Agoult.beskrevs som

en utmärkt jägare och amazon, med piska i handen, sporrar på kängorna, bössa över axeln, en cigarr mellan läpparna, ett glas vin i handen, föremål för skvaller och skandaler.

Även männen kring en kvinna som Georg Sand framstod som lockande och exotiska. De kallade sig ofta för bohemer, folk från Böhmen, en vanlig benämning på romer. Med den beteckningen ville de visa att de var självständiga konstnärsnaturer, fria från borgerskapets förtryckande konformism. De klädde sig och uppträdde apart för att poängtera vilka sällsamma personligheter de ansåg sig vara.  En del av dem behövde inte ens förställa sig, de gav redan från början ett exotiskt och lockande intryck. Det kunde röra sig som den dödsmärkte violinvirtuosen Paganini eller den förbluffande skicklige pianisten Ferenc Liszt, som i sitt ungerska hemland tidigt hade fascinerats av romerna:

Få ting kunde i vår tidiga ungdom elda vår fantasi såsom böhmernas iögonfallande gåta, de som bad om några fattiga mynt framför varje palats eller koja i utbyte för några ord som de viskade i våra öron, ett par dansmelodier som ingen vandrande spelman någonsin förmådde efterlikna, några sånger som hettade upp älskare, utan att vara uttänkta av dem […] en förtrollning som trollband alla, men som ingen kunde förklara.

Svartklädd, med sitt långa hår, sin hökprofil, och passionerade pianospel fängslade Liszt sin publik. Hans pianospel sades kunna lyfta en månghövdad åhörarskara till oanade nivåer av mystisk, musikalisk extas, medan Paganinis fiolspel av många betraktades som om han haft en pakt med Djävulen, något som orsakade problem kring hans begravning – var han verkligen en sann kristen?

Beundrarinnor svärmade ständigt kring Liszt och slogs om hans kvarlämnade näsdukar och handskar. De bar hans porträtt som broscher och kaméer så att ingen skulle sväva i tvivel om vem som var deras idol. Beväpnade med saxar smög sig kvinnor på den gränslöst beundrade pianovirtuosen för att klippa en lock av hans hår. Om en pianosträng brast under något av Lizts framträdanden rusade grupper av upphetsade kvinnor upp på scenen för att slita den till sig för att göra sig ett armband av den. De lyckliga damer som varit närvarande vid något av hans kafé- eller salongbesök hade små glasflaskor med sig för att bevara de kaffe- och dryckesslurkar han lämnat efter sig. Kvinnor svimmade under konserterna och fick bäras ut, medan folk fick avsättas för att skydda musikern. Heinrich Heine döpte psykoserna till Lisztomania och de skulle inte upprepas förrän hundra år senare genom den ännu våldsammare Beatlesmanian. En författare berättar:

Liszt slängde en gång ifrån sig en cigarrstump på gatan, något som omedelbart uppmärksammades av en av de efterhängsna, beundrande damerna, som vördnadsfullt plockade upp det osmakliga rökverket ur rännstenen och hade det sedan infattat i ett skrin med initialerna ”F.L” ingraverat och besatta med diamanter. Hon gick ständigt omkring med det lilla skrinet, uppenbarligen omedveten om den stickande odör det avgav.

Den där historien kom mig att minnas ett sommarpratarprogram från 1998 i vilket Thommy Berggren berättade att när han bodde med sin hustru Monika Ahlberg i Hollywood ringde hans agent och berättade att Frank Sinatra satt ensam i baren på Chasen´s restaurang. Agenten visste att Thommy ville träffa sin idol och eftersom sångaren tycktes vara på ovanligt gott humör så kunde antagligen den svenske skådepelaren närma sig honom. Berggren och Monika for till Chasen´s, men kunde inte upptäcka Sinatra. Berggren kommer i samspråk med den italienske bartendern som säger att visst är Sinatra där, de behöver enbart sätta sig vid bardisken så dyker säkert Sinatra upp igen och kommer då antagligen att vilja tala med svensken, speciellt som denne är i sällskap med en så vacker dam. Berggren undrar vad Sinatra dricker

- Alltid whiskey. Jack Daniels. Där är han! viskar bartendern och nickar mot utgången.

Då Berggren ser att idolen är på väg ut vill han springa efter honom, men Monika griper sin make om armen:

-Lugna ner dig! och Frankie försvann.

-  Fan också! tänkte Berggren, då bartendern pekade mot askfatet:

- Titta där ligger hans cigarett. Thommy Berggren stirrar mot askfatet och där ryker fortfarande en lång Chesterfieldcigarett. Monika Ahlberg ser makens lystna blick och undrar ironiskt;

- Skall du inte ta ett bloss? innan hon ger sig av till toaletten

Då Monika försvunnit beställer Berggren in en dubbel Jack Daniels

”Sedan tog jag försiktigt upp Sinatras cigarett drog ett djupt, djupt halsbloss och sköljde ner med en jätteklunk Jack Daniels och slöt ögonen.”

Uppträdandet, kläderna och utseendet hos män och kvinnor med bella figura har genom tiderna beundrats och efterapats. Det berättas att Goethes Den Unge Werthers Lidande fick många olyckligt förälskade, unga män att gå omkring i blå frack och gul väst. En del sägs till och med likt sin hjälte ha tagit livet av sig, Elvis, Hemingway och Marilyn Monroe har fått tusentals imitatörer och dubbelgångare, Jim Hendrix och Audrey Hepburn var trendsättande modeidoler. Exemplen är otaliga.

Givetvis har modeskapare haft ett stort inflytande på vem som kan tänkas framstå som en bella figura. Det sägs att det var Coco Chanel som i början av tjugotalet, genom att avskaffa parasoller och handskar, tog bort kvinnors skräck för solsken. Snart blev det rådande kvinnoidealet solbrända, vältränade och frigjorda kamratflickor och så fortsätter det. Trender kommer och går. Vi förändras ständigt, kanske utan att vi märker det. Fanatiska, eller skrämda, japanska soldater som efter årtionden dök upp efter sin isolering på öar i Indonesien eller Söderhavet begrep inte mycket av vad de möttes av i sitt hemland – människorna var längre, talade annorlunda, var annorlunda klädda och framförallt fullständigt förändrade i åsikter och beteenden.

La Bella Figura består och vad som också finns kvar är den ogripbara, mäktiga känsla som kan uppkomma när vi grips av en omvälvande estetisk chock. Något så vackert att vi inte begriper oss på det och inte förmår beskriva våra känslor – det kan vara en vacker kvinna, ett mäktigt landskap, ett konstverk, ett musikstycke. Det är sällen det händer, men det är en fantastisk upplevelse. Ibland sådana tillstånd beskrivits som en sjukdom – Stendahlsyndromet, uppkallat efter en passus i en av Stendahls böcker Rom, Neapel och Florens: 1826. Författaren berättar där hur han har kommit in i kyrkan Santa Croce i Florens:

Där fanns Machiavellis grav och bredvid Michelangelo vilade Galileo. Vilken förbluffande samling män! Då jag blickade upp mot Volterranos fresker med sibyllor greps jag av den mest intensiva njutning som konsten någonsin har kunnat skänka mig. Jag hamnade i en slags extas, fullkomligt uppslukad av sublim skönhet … Jag hade nått en nivå av himmelsk lycksalighet … då jag kom ut genom Santa Croces portal greps jag av en våldsam hjärtklappning; det var som om livskänslan torkat upp inom mig och jag gick i ständig skräck för att falla till marken.

Kan det ha varit något liknande nunnan kände där på Sankte Pers torg då hon beundrade Johannes Paulus Bella Figura?

Burke, Edmund (1995) Filosofisk undersökning av ursprunget till våra begrepp om det sublima och det sköna: med en inledande essä om smaken. Stehag: Symposion.  Casanova, Ciacomo (2002) The Story of My Life. London: Penguin Classics. Firenzola, Agnolo (1992) On the Beauty of Women. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. O´Bryan, C. Jill (2005) Carnal Art: Orlan´s Refacing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Paquet, Dominique (1997) Miroir, mon beau miroir. Une histoire de la beauté. Paris: Gallimard. Rostand, Claude (1972) Liszt. London: Calder and Boyars. Stendahl (1987) Rome, Naples et Florence: 1826. Paris: Gallimard. Sontag, Susan (1978) Sjukdom som metafor.  Stockholm: Natur & Kultur. Walker, Alan (1987) Franz Liszt, The Virtuoso Years (1811 – 1847) Cornell University Press.

Sometime during the third century AD the North African Terentianus Maurus wrote four books about “letters, syllables and metrics”. Most of the content of these books are probably forgotten by now, aside from the quote habent sua fata libelli, "books have their destiny". Actually Maurus wrote Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli, "depending on the reader's ability books have their destiny". So - books obtain their meaning from those who read them. In his novel The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco interprets the saying somewhat differently - books share their destinies with their readers.

In a letter to his American publisher, Bennett Cerf, James Joyce wrote that as soon as his Ulysses had been printed and published it began to live a life of its own, though not with me - unfortunately I did not like Joyce's so intensely acclaimed novel, it did not speak to me and I stopped reading it after a couple of chapters.

August Strindberg, the literary touchstone for Swedish authors and readers, apparently also considered his books to be some kind of organisms with a life of their own, as in a poem he wrote in Paris, the city where Joyce wrote his Ulysses:

By the Avenue de Neuilly

There lies a slaughterhouse,

And when I go to the city,

I always go thereby.

The huge and open window

It shines with blood so red,

On white marble slabs

There steams new slaughtered flesh.

Today there hung on the glass door

A heart, I believe of veal,

Which, shrouded in goffered paper.

I thought did quake in the cold.

Then hasty my thoughts went

To the old North Bridge Bazaar,

Where shining rows of windows,

Are inspected by women and children.

There hangs in the bookstore window

A thin-clad little book.

It is a heart taken out

That dangles there on its hook.

Books can be stillborn, or end up in some kind of torpor, only occasionally waking up to life, when reader gets hold of them - as in a poem by the Finno-Swedish author Lars Huldén:

About eternity´s length is this tale.

Not far from here

there is a university library.

In a bookcase

stands this collection of poems.

Every hundred years

a librarian

blows away the dust collected upon it

and reads this poem

When the entire poem

has been worn down in this manner

a second of eternity

has passed away.

I think it is a little disappointing that Swedish libraries, after the introduction of computer-based accounting, no longer stamp in the back of books when they were borrowed. In the past I was fascinated when I found that someone else had read some obscure book I borrowed home with me. Who else in my little hometown of Hässleholm had read the book I was reading now? Books come and go in my life, as if they had a life of their own.

A dozen of years ago, I had ended up in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil and was, as it often befalls me, in an urgent need of reading material. Like an alcoholic craving for booze I entered into a bookstore and found a novel that immediately spoke to me: Borges e os orangotangos eternos Borges and the eternal orangutans. I do not know any Portuguese, but the book was thin, the title exciting and my hankering for any kind of novel was so strong that I bought the book while hoping that my Spanish would help me to get through it, especially since the bookseller declared that the writer, Luis Fernando Verissimo, was residing in Porto Alegre and considered to be one of the country's most popular writers.

During the evenings at the hotel I spelled my way through the short novel and became fascinated. Like so many of Borges´ books Verissimo´s novel dealt with books and their readers. It was about mazes, mysteries and inexplicable coincidences. About the world as a book and a puzzle, where one story opened up to others, like Chinese boxes, as if when you enter an elevator and find yourself in an illusory corridor created by mirrors, which on both  sides of you reflect each other in such a way that endless hallways with your own reflection open up around you.

To read Borges e os orangotangos eternos in a hotel room in southern Brazil was the perfect spot for an engrossing experience. The novel is namely set in a hotel in Buenos Aires and in front of a glowing, electric heater placed in the furnace of Jorge Luis Borges´ cosy library in the Palermo district of the same town.

The narrator is Vogelstein, an inveterate bachelor, son of a Jewish woman who was murdered in Auschwitz, after having been turned in by her lover and "protector", a man who probably was Vogelstein's father. Vogelstein, an inconsequential high school teacher and bookworm who had grown up with his old aunt in Porto Alegre, ventured to a conference in Buenos Aires. The meeting was called by a mysterious literary society, Israfel, dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe's pen craft and publishing a magazine for which Vogelstein had written an occasional article. When Vogelstein registered for the meeting in Buenos Aires he did so with the hope of meeting his idol Jorge Luis Borges.

As a young man Vogelstein had worked as editor for an obscure literary magazine and then changed the story of an for him completely unknown author called Jorge Luis Borges. Consequently the infuriated Argentine writer sent the young editor an ironically formulated and utterly scathing letter. Since then the terrified Vogelstein had read everything by Borges and also written novel after novel, all rejected, as well as numerous apologetic letters to the great Borges, all unanswered and ignored.

At the conference the star struck Vogelstein encountered Borges, who did not seem to remember neither the Brazilian´s clumsy paraphrase of his short story, nor his countless letters.

At a cocktail reception, the increasingly intoxicated Vogelstein witnessed how the brusque and unpleasant German literary critic Joachim Rotkopf made himself enemy to all present and insulted no less than the great Borges, who had been very obliging to the awkward Vogelstein and even invited him for tea in his home the next day.  As Vogelstein stayed at the same hotel as the bullying and severely inebriated Rotkopf, and no one else wanted to engage themselves with the bombastic German, the hapless Vogelstein was chosen out to escort him back to the hotel.

During the same night Rotkopf is brutally murdered, a murder which reflected "the locked room" mysteries that Borges and Vogelstein were familiar with. They were both great connoisseurs of Anglo-Saxon detective stories and in particularly Allan Poe's short story The Murders of Rue Morgue, where the offender turned out to be an orangutan. Incidentally, not the novel's only allusion to orangutans.

Night after night, Borges, Vogelstein and an Argentine police detective are congregating in Borges´ library to discuss various clues - three knives found in different ventilation shafts, conflicting testimonies, the fact that the victim's room was locked from the inside, three playing cards found on the bedside table, and above all the body's peculiar placement in front of a mirror, seemingly creating the shape of different letters - X, V, M, O. All this produce various speculations about mirrors, Kabbalah, alchemy, strange legends and ancient books. Allusions are frequently made to Borges´ and Edgar Allan Poe's books.

Borges and Vogelstein's excited speculations, which exhaust the patience of the crime inspector are nevertheless quite exiting for anyone who has happened to enter the fascinating worlds that Borges created. In his novel Verissimo merges the person Borges, with the myth “Borges”, entirely in accordance with Borges´ own opinions:

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited, all my ancestors.

The reader is constantly reminded that it is a book about books s/he is reading and that the solution to the mystery is to be find in other novels the text is alluding to. It is Borges who in a fictional postscript finally solves the riddle. Fictitious because Borges died long before Verissimo wrote his novel.The novel's motto is a paragraph from Borges short story Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in his Labyrinth:

Vexed a bit, Unwin stopped him. "Please - let's not multiply the mysteries. Mysteries ought to be simple. Remember Poe's purloined letter, remember Zangwill's locked room.” “Or complex” volleyed Dunraven: “Remember the Universe.”

The Englishman Israel Zangwill wrote in 1892 the first "locked room" story after Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders of Rue Morgue, i.e. a murder mystery within a locked room, without duplicate keys, secret passages, trap doors and similar tricks. The Big Bow Mystery by Zangwill actually contains more than one hint to the solution of the murder in Verissimo´s novel. Zangwill´s slightly ironic, narrative style might also have had an influence on Verissimo.

When I some days ago, true to what now has become a habit of mine, during one of my frequent visits to FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization here in Rome, looked through the piles of used books for sale on the UN Women's Guild´s table in the entrance hall I found to my great surprise Borges and the Eternal Orangtans! Verissimo´s book in English translation. Now I could enjoy the novel with far greater ease than the last time I came across it. Now I found details I had not discovered earlier. In particular I became interested in the allusions to reflections and mirrors and the fact that the novel on several occasions mentioned Borges´ fear of them.

It made me remember the old ghost story about the Bloody Mary, which also was a game we played as kids. In a darkened house with two floors you were supposed to walk backwards up a flight of stairs holding a mirror in your hand while you intensively looked into it. If you saw a different face than your own reflected in the mirror, it would be the person you would marry in the future.  However, it could just as well happen that a skull, a ghost girl, or a monstrous creature, appeared in the mirror and this meant then that you would die by the end of the upcoming week.

A nasty story that probably got stuck somewhere in my brain, otherwise it is difficult to explain how I much later, certainly when I was over fifteen years since the film was R rated, got a shock when I saw Polanski's Repulsion.

It is an effectively narrated story about a lost and worried French lady, Carol (Catherine Deneuve), who works as a manicurist while living with her older sister in a rundown apartment in London. Carol has a strangely alienated existence, though outwardly she appears as cool and calm. After a while we discover how disturbed she really is. Under the tranquil surface of Carol a lurking psychosis is boiling violently, only to explode with full strength when Carol´s sister is away on holiday in Italy.

First only small signs appear, they might or might not indicate that everything is not quite right with Carol. We are following the events from her point of view. Carol stares at cracks in the ground or on the walls, it could be perfectly normal for a person living alone, but when a skinned rabbit on the kitchen zinc begins to rot, we know that something nasty will happen. Actually, not much happens in the beginning of the movie, though with small, subtle means Polanski increases tension and fear. Climax comes during a second when Carol sees her reflection in a mirror, while we discover how a male figure quickly passes by. A seemingly insignificant scene, no bloody knife lifted to struck again, no exaggerated close-ups of a terrified woman, no scary music. Nevertheless, in uncontrolled fear I jumped up from my movie theatre seat.

Mirrors have an important role in Borges and the Eternal Orangutans and it even mentions John Dee's magical instruments that sometimes, not always, are on display in a glass case at the British Museum. These are a small gold plate with magic inscriptions, a small crystal ball, an Aztec obsidian mirror and three round discs made out of wax, the largest showing The Seal of Emeth.

Emeth´s seal was a kind of magical diagram/key composed of circles, pentagrams, hexagrams, letters and magical characters. It may be described as some kind of map indicating the composition of a  world of angels and spirits, used to interpret messages received by a skryer, whose task it was to look into a crystal ball, a bowl with water or a speculum, a mirror of shiny polished stone or metal and report what he saw.

Frequently, it was not a magician or astrologer who gazed into a crystal ball to perceive the future, or receive messages from the spirit world. For them it was of utmost importance to find a suitable skryer, not an easy task. Ideally a competent skryer ought to be a child, someone who was not limited by “plain truth” and logic, but equipped with “unrestrained” perception:

Skrying was a task best performed by a receptive sensitivity, by a malleable mind unburdened by the limitations of rationality. That is why Kelley with his juvenile tantrums and uncontrollable passions, seemed such so convincing candidate [for skrying].

When Edward Kelley on the 8^th of March 1582 showed up at Dr. John Dee´s (1527 - 1608) doorstep. The famous scientist´s life was thoroughly altered. Dr. Dee was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, theologian and occultist, respected confidant and adviser to the mighty Queen Elizabeth I of England. Among his close friends he counted highly influential ministers like Francis Walsingham and William Cecil. Dr. Dee had one of Europe's most extensive and well equipped private libraries and taught contemporary prominent sea captains an efficient navigation system that he had developed on the basis of Euclid's geometry. It was Dr. Dee who first coined the term The British Empire.

Dr. Dee’s greatest aspiration was to understand and improve the world we live in, which according to him was far from perfect, something that is easily understood given that the sixteenth century was just as brutal, violent, bloody and incomprehensible as the times we now live in - probably even worse.

According to Dr. Dee, mathematics was a divine language that could be used as a tool for creating a new, more harmonious world. Such perfection could be discerned behind intricate mathematical processes, indicating another, higher sphere of existence. A world inhabited by angels who had a specific language, which like mathematics could be learned and perfected. Though, how could we find out anything about the angelic language? Probably by using our intuition, seek out what is inexplicable within and outside man. Penetrate a spiritual realm, though only as onlookers and listeners.

Before he met Dr. Dee, Edward Kelley´s life is virtually unknown. He was of Irish descent and when he showed up at Dr. Dee´s doorstep he called himself Talbot. Maybe he was one of many scammers who at that time walked around the kingdom trying to make living out of people's superstitions. Kelley was an educated man. He knew Latin and probably also some Greek. Dr. Dee had tried in vain to engage in skrying himself and in his home he had a darkened room furnished with soft carpets, tables, charts, and instruction manuals concerning practical magic. In this chamber he spent several hours every evening while gazing into reflecting surfaces, trying to induce himself into a state of visionary trance. However, it had all been in vain until Edward Kelley turned up and in a deluge of visions told Dr. Dee what he saw in Dr. Dee's crystal balls and obsidian mirror. Kelley even stated that he could look into an angelic sphere and even hear the talk of angels. I cannot help smiling thinking about Kelley enthusing the gullible scientist, who in his magical chamber maybe felt like in the song by Eurythmics

No-one on earth could feel like this.

I´m thrown and overblown with bliss.

There must be an angel

Playing with my heart.

And when I think that I´m alone

It seems there´s more of us at home.

It´s a multitude of angels

And they´re playing with my heart.

Together Kelley and Dr. Dee reconstructed an angelic language they called Enochian since Dr. Dee new about the Jewish ancestor Enoch, mentioned in the genealogy lists in Genesis, as a man who turned into an angel and thus never died:

Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.(Genesis 5: 23-24).

Dr. Dee also knew that Enoch was central in rabbinic literature; in the Book of Enoch and the Kabbalah. That he was well known among the Muslims and a prominent figure in the Ethiopian church. In the Kabbalah, Enoch is even regarded as Metatron, God's mouthpiece, perhaps even God's own voice.

Dr. Dee´s world was comprehensive, not least due to his voluminous library and frequent contacts with sailors and sea captains. Probably had Dr. Dee obtained Tezcatlipoca´s obsidian mirror from one of them and it is possible that he also had heard about this strange divinity from one of the seafarers. Together with his brother Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca was the most powerful god in the fearsome Aztec pantheon and recipients of countless brutal human sacrifices.

Tezcatlipoca was associated with the night sky, night winds, the black earth, obsidian, hostility, temptation, dominion, jaguars, wizardry and war, though he was also the god of beauty and called "the friend of slaves”. His many epithets reflect his immense power, the fear he inspired, but also his dual nature as a god beyond good and evil - Titlacauan "We are his slaves," Ipalnemoani "Him we are living through," Necoc Yaotl "Enemy to both sides," Tloque Nahuaque "Lord of that which is near and far," Yohualli Ehacatl "Night wind" and Ilhuicahua Tlalticpaque "Master of Heaven and Earth".

Tezcatlipoca´s powers made him unpredictable and erratic. Accordingly, he was the God of Destiny and the inner meaning of his most common name was connected with that task – The Smoking Mirror. The only creature who knew how to use the obsidian mirror in all its aspects was Tezcatlipoca, who had sacrificed his right foot, it had been replaced by an obsidian mirror. The concept that a god had to sacrifice a part of his body to gain a thorough knowledge of the secrets of Universe makes Tezcatlipoca akin to the Norse god Odin, who had to sacrifice one of his eyes to gain his all-encompassing knowledge. Like Tezcatlipoca, Odin was the god of soothsayers.

Obsidian was sacred to the Aztecs, more valuable than gold and silver. It was a weapon – the sacrificial knives used to cut up the victims' torso to rip out their hearts were usually made of obsidian and so was the Aztec warriors´ main weapon, the maquahitl, a one metre long blade made of oak, with two sides studded with sharpened obsidian. A maquahitl could with one blow chop off the head by a horse.

John Dee's speculum was an obsidian mirror, which certainly had been used in Aztec divination. Like the Maya and the Toltecs before them, the Aztecs were extremely interested in changing seasons and the course of the stars across the sky. They had at their disposal complicated calendars and star charts to keep a careful track of the passage of time.

Many years ago I was in Ixcan in Guatemala and in the company of an engineer I sought out an aj'kin, aj means "master of” and kin “day”. The aj´kin is a kind of shaman who organizes ceremonies and keeps track of the time – the past, the present and the future. The engineer suggested that we should ask the aj'kin to "sing his family" and he then took up a long monotonous chant, which the engineer, who was an Ixil Indian, explained was a list of the ancestors of the aj´kin, from his father all the way back to a time long ago, before the Spaniards had appeared in Guatemala. The aj'kin also sang "time" and "rain" and I understood how alive and well ancient calendars and divination still was among Aztec and Maya descendants.

Tezcatlipoca was the lord of the smoking mirror and when Aztec priests looked into its polished surface, they saw not only their own reflection but also Tezcatlipoca in his manifestation as Titlahuacan "We are their men", which was the Aztec name for all their gods. The Aztecs believed that their gods were actually a reflection of the "living", i.e. the humans. We are all children of the gods, though the gods are also our creation. Everything is connected, we and the gods - the past, the present and the future.

When people were sacrificed to Tezcatlipoca they were dressed and painted like the god. He was both black and blue, or grey – since the sacrificing priests often dusted themselves with ash from burned victims. The priests who sacrificed victims dedicated to Tezcatlipoca wore masks representing the god. Such a mask is preserved in the British Museum, it is a mosaic encrusted human skull, cleaved in half so it can be worn in front of the face. It is lined with leather and has two ribbons that may be tied by the back of the neck.

When I came home last Tuesday, I was greeted by Erik, an always equally pleasant man, but that particular day he was in an unusually good mood. Erik, who is from the Philippines, helps us once a week with cleaning and ironing and he was now very pleased with the recent election results in his home country, where the controversial, but popular Rodrigo "Rody" Rua Duterte had won.

"You who read so much, Jan, must surely know who Nostradamus was" asked Erik. "Sure, I do," I said. "He had foreseen that Duterte would win," stated Erik happily. Nostradamus can be used for everything, now he had already in 1568 predicted the Philippine election results in 2016. I was thinking about the Aztec magicians who likewise were believed to be capable of telling the future by combining the past, the present and the future, a technique apparently used by Nostradamus as well. He often rewrote happenings in his own time in such a manner that they seemed to foretell the future as well.

After talking with Eric I looked up the prophecies of Nostradamus. They provide an astonishing reading. Almost every one of the 353 quatrains in his book looks and reads like a concentrated poem, prophetic and imaginative, open to various interpretations:

Alas, you will see a great nation bleed.

And the holy law & all the Christendom

Reduced to utter ruin by other creeds.

Each time a new gold, silver mine is found.

A smell of destruction, plagues and cannon smoke permeates everything. It is far from any sunny, optimistic texts that the solemn Nostradamus is offering us. It is not only current occurrences around him that inspire Nostradamus´ prophesies, also bygone times fuel his imagination. We get an invitation to visit him while he looks into the future:

Being seated at night in a secret study

Alone upon a stool of bronze at ease

Slim flame issuing forth from solitude

Fuels prophecies, not futile to believe.

A bronze stool was probably not to be found in Nostradamus´ home, it seems to have been borrowed from the Pythia of the ancient Delphi oracle and almost all of Nostradamus´ knowledge seems to be based on a wide variety of whims, bits and pieces of current news, all kinds of reading, ancient and contemporary history mixed up with thunderous visions and prophecies of a dark future. While the prophet rarely appears in person, there is a strange intimacy in his texts, a subdued passion and intensity. I read page after page and cannot avoid an impression that this is actually great and remarkable poetry. I have not the faintest idea if Nostradamus has something to say about the future, if he has something to say about what is awaiting us it reminds me of Cohen´s words: “I´ve seen the future, brother; it is murder”. Like the Aztecs´ world Nostradamus universe is bleak and menacing.

Incidentally Nostradamus used the same divination technique as Dr. Dee and the Aztecs. He stared down into a vat filled with reflecting water, until he entered a trance and was overpowered by strange visions. A method that seems to stimulate a subconscious mind flow, something the Surrealists were searching for several hundred years later and maybe there might be a connection?

The modernist poet Guillaume Apollinaire was impressed by Nostradamus while he read him in trenches overflowing with mud, blood and rotting carcasses. Apollinaire is one of modern art's great inspirers, with whom we find wellsprings for Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism. In the Centre Pompidou in Paris we find a portrait of Apollinaire by his Italian friend Giorgio Chirico, painted in the spring of 1914. In the foreground is a marble bust with dark glasses. It does not seem to be a portrait of Apollinaire, in any case it does not look like him. Chirico has said that it is Orpheus, though he cannot always be trusted. However, the bust might also be understood as a symbol of the poet's lack of respect for Classical art, or vice versa - how Apollinaire modernized and revitalized obsolete artistic manifestations. In the background, we immediately recognize Apollinaire's characteristic silhouette and by the temple we find in the pitch black shadow a yellow ring, reminiscent of a target. Two years later Apollinaire was hit by a bullet at exactly the same spot.

Was Chirico a prophet? Hard to tell. In the spring of 1914 Paris buzzed with rumours about an upcoming war, which finally broke out with full strength after a declaration of war against Germany on August the 3^rd. However, it was not until December of the same year that Apollinaire, who was not even a French citizen at the time, volunteered to the French artillery. Maybe Chirico had already in the spring of 1914 anticipated that his friend would enter the war and get shot. Gunshot wounds in the head was after all the most common injury during the upcoming trench warfare. But who could have imagined that it would become such a war? And why did Chirico call his portrait Portrait [prémonitoire] de Guillaume Apollinaire, Portrait (prophetically) of Guillaume Apollinaire.

It was the hell of war that brought Nostradamus to life again. Apollinaire discovered him through his own terrible experiences and knew that Nostradamus spoke of current times. Meanwhile, Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball made the same discovery – Nostradamus was a Poet – and they began to general acclaim read Nostradamus prophecies aloud in their Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. And by the way, speaking of Nostradamus as a poet, I might mention that the first edition of The Oracles of Nostradamus as a literary masterpiece, and not only sensational prophecies, was made by Random House in New York in 1942, in their series The Modern Library. Publisher was the same Bennett Serf whom I mentioned in the beginning of the essay as the publisher of Joyce's Ulysses. Perhaps Serf had discovered similarities between the style of the Renaissance visionary and Joyce's celebrated stream of consciousness?

Books have their destinies. My grandfather had an interesting library where I made strange discoveries. One time I found a booklet of fifty pages by a certain Georg Ljungström, with a title which in translation would be The world famous seer Nostradamus prophecies about the fate of the world from the year 1558 to the year 3797. It was the first time I had seen the name Nostradamus and I devoured the book right away and asked my grandfather if I could take it with me home, he laughed and said it was mine.

I then had the booklet lying for years until I sometime in the early eighties came to browse it. Nostradamus prophecies are scattered helter-skelter and you may pick what you want from his vast smorgasbord and adapt it to the time you happen to live in. So did George Ljungström, though I found some his comments to be slightly remarkable.

Ljungström´s book was written in 1922, three years after the Treaty of Versailles and his comments to some of Nostradamus quatrains were interpreted in connection with Versailles. I think they were 5:18, 2: 9, 3:76 and 2:24, though I am not sure since my booklet has disappeared.

The wretch laid so low he shall die of grief

His victrix shall then celebrate his fall

Fresh sets of laws, drawing up of decrees:

The seventh day both Prince and wall will fall.

Germany will see the birth of divers sects

Quite like the paganism of ancient times

Conquering hearts and content with small receipts

They shall return to paying the true tith.

The thin one shall rule for nine years in peace,

Then fall into an immense thirst for blood:

For this lawless one a great people dies,

To be slain by a rival far more good.

Beasts wild with hunger shall swim the rivers:

Most of the hordes shall move against Ister

He will have the great one dragged in iron cage

When the child of the German Rhine surveys

Georg Ljungström interprets these oddities as if the French during the peace negotiations had been far too harsh toward the vanquished Germans. They would not be able to pay the imposed war reparations and instead gather in political parties that would support a certain Hister. About a ten years after the Treaty of Versailles (Ljungström interprets "the thin one" as the American president Wodroow Wilson, who was still alive in 1922, but died in 1924), the Germans would rise again and seek revenge. Actually not so bad calculated, considering that Hitler came to power in 1933. I became even more fascinated by Ljungström´s interpretation of Nostradamus´ quatrain 6:80:

The realm of the Fez into Europe shall spread

Burning its cities, slashing with the sword:

Land and sea, the horde of the Asian men.

Blue turbans most, shall hunt the Cross to death.

Ljungström merged this prophecy with another quatrain, 10:72, which foretold that in 1999 Heaven would choose a ruler who would reinstate the king of Angoumois. The king of Angoumois has been interpreted as the king of Arabs or Mongols, but does in reality appear as being connected the Duke of Angouleme, a town in western France.

What I found both amusing and slightly disturbing in Ljungström's commentary was his remark that after the Young Turks have rebelled against Sultan Mehmed IV and the Ottoman Empire had been cut up by the victors, there was certainly nothing to fear from the Muslims - they would never be able to rise again.

No, no, what Nostradamus meant with “Muslims” was probably, according to Ljungström, those Bolsheviks who recently had gained power in Russia. They were the ones who would threaten Europe in 1999. This remark made me believe that Nostradamus probably made more sense than Ljungström. By the end of the 20^th century it was actually the Muslims who were on the move again. And in the early 1980s, it was quite interesting to read that Nostradamus with the blue turbans meant the Persians, i.e. the people of Iran.

By the beginning of my essay, I mentioned Strindberg, who may be labelled as Sweden´s national author, who by the end of his life could be considered as slightly crazy, engrossed as he had become with strange, occult speculations. However, like other men who changed in their old age and stepped straight into the Spirit World, like John Dee and the Swedish seer Emanuel Swedenborg, a certain geniality may also be detected in the works Strindberg wrote even during this period of his life.

While writing this essay I discovered that Strindberg during his last years socialized quite frequently with the obscure Georg Ljungström, who was an engineer employed by the Swedish Company of Electricity, but also served as president for the Swedish Theosophical Society and had published several books not only about Nostradamus, but also wrote about the Astral World and the Black Magi who according to him lived under the South Pole and affected the entire world in a deplorable manner. Strindberg appreciated both Ljungström´s occult books and his extensive poetic production. For example, a poem that begins:

What we here on earth use to call the night

is but a cloud, rising from waters after days clear and bright,

From you, Underground, old and other

in your depth, dreams will gather.

When I told my father what I had found in Ljungström's book about Nostradamus he assumed that it would thrill Bo "Pax" Göransson, one of his colleagues at the local newspaper Norra Skåne. I knew Pax, a nice man and knowledgeable journalist, but also a religious zealot of great proportions, with an unfortunate propensity for strange cults and inadequate prophecies, something he occasionally vented in Norra Skåne under the heading The Hazelnut. Amusing, but usually quite crazy reflections.

My father lent my Nostradamus book to Pax, but a few months later he suffered a tragic accident. On his way to work during a snowstorm, Pax had no car but rode a bike or walked to work, he got lost in the haze and was run over by a truck. Thus my Nostradamus book also disappeared.

Billquist, John Eric (1986) Strindberg as a Modern Poet: A Critical and Comparative Study. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fermosel, José Luis A. (1981) ”Jorge Luis Borges: ”No Estoy seguro de que yo exista en realidad”, in El País, 26 September. Nostradamus (2012) The Prophesies. A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text. New York: Penguin Classics. Olivier, Guilhem (2003) Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God: Tezcatlipoca, "Lord of the Smoking Mirror". Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Tedlock, Barbara (1992) Time and the Highland Maya. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Verissimo, Luis Fernando (2005) Borges and the Eternal Orangutans. New York: New Directions. Woollet, Benjamin (2001) The Queens Conjuror: The Life and Magic of Dr Dee. London: HarperCollins. Zangwill, Israel (2007) The Big Bow Mystery. New York: Dybbuk Press.

When I a few days ago indolently watched TV I ended with a rather insane science fiction movie called Pandorum. It was about how 60,000 people in 2174 had been induced to hyper sleep and sent off on a 123-year-long trip to a planet called Tanis, reckoned to be similar to Earth. Every two years two crew members were awakened to watch over their cargo of sleeping people, while their predecessors returned to hyper sleep. The movie became increasingly bizarre when it turned out that a supervillain through gene altering fluids, which he had introduced into some of the sleeper's oxygen supply had transformed them into degenerate, man-eating monsters.

Pandorum is one of several other science fiction films in which people have travelled in deep sleep, far away into unknown spheres of existence. It would suffice to mention 2001, Planet of the Apes and Alien as some of the better contributions to a genre with roots down deep in Antiquity.

In the Middle East there exist age-old traditions about how men have fallen asleep in a cave and been awakened hundreds of years later. One such legend gained a  compelling influence during the 400's AD, perhaps in conjunction with the Council of Ephesus in 431 when Virgin Mary was recognized as worthy of veneration and cult throughout Christendom at the same as it was decided that all the temples destined for the cult of Roman emperors were to be destroyed.

Some five kilometres outside of Ephesus, not far from modern Izmir in Turkey, you may if you are lucky, since it is occasionally is sealed off by a fence, visit the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. Several Christians and Muslims believe in the miracle of the Seven Sleepers, especially since it is highlighted in the Qur´an. Since the Qur´an is not telling us where the miracle occurred, several caves are currently venerated as the place where the seven men fell asleep. The most visited cave is under a modern mosque just outside of Amman in Jordan. However, everything indicates that the cave outside Ephesus is the original site of the Christian worship of the Seven Sleepers.

The large cave below a hill called Panayirdag was already in the sixth century the goal of numerous pilgrimages. Between 1927 and 1928 the site was excavated and hundreds of graves from different time periods were found. They had been placed under mosaic and marble floors in various shrines erected at different times. In the seventh century a now vanished, large dome surmounted a mausoleum built on the hill slope. Several graves were from the fifth century and inscriptions in tombs and on the cave walls were referring to the Seven Sleepers. Such inscriptions are actually mentioned in the Qur´an.

The fascinating and for its time incomprehensibly well informed historian Edward Gibbon provides in his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written as early as in the 1770s, a comprehensive account of how the story of the Seven Sleepers was written down already fifty years after the event was said to have occurred, i.e. under Theodosius II's reign (408-450). Gibbon tells us how the legend spread throughout the Near East, how it reached the Arabs and Muhammad and soon ended up on the far away northern coasts of Germania, where Paul the Deacon (720-799) places the story, which by him has been turned into a different kind of miracle story, implying that the pagan peoples in the far North might one day become Christians as well:

In the farthest boundaries of Germany toward the west-north-west, on the shore of the ocean itself, a cave is seen under a projecting rock, where for an unknown time seven men repose wrapped in a long sleep, not only their bodies, but also their clothes being so uninjured, that from this fact alone, that they last without decay through the course of so many years, they are held in veneration among those ignorant and barbarous peoples. These then, so far as regards their dress, are perceived to be Romans. When a certain man stirred by cupidity, wanted to strip one of them, straightaway his arm withered, as is said, and his punishment so frightened the others that no one dared touch them further. The future will show for what useful purpose Divine Providence keeps them through so long a period. Perhaps those nations are to be saved some time by the preaching of these men, since they cannot be deemed to be other than Christians.

Paul the Deacon obviously did not know the legend in the form it had obtained within the former Roman Empire, though the bishop of Tours in the Loire Valley of France, knew it quite well and wrote it down two hundred years before Paul the Deacon. In his chronicle of Frankish history Gregory of Tours (538-594) tells the story of the Seven Sleeper in a way that basically is consistent with the version Jacobus Voragine in 1260 presented in his book The Golden Legend, a collection of legends that became one of Christendom's most popular books.

According to the legend, the Seven Sleepers were wealthy, young Christians who lived around the year 250 in Ephesus, their names were Maximian, Malchus, Marcianus, Dionysius, John, Serapyon and Constantine. In that year the Roman Emperor Decius had decreed that all Roman citizens who did not sacrifice for the emperor's wellbeing would be executed. The seven men gave away their possessions to the poor and withdrew to a cave under the mountain of Celion. When the emperor learned about this he ordered the cave to be sealed off by a stone wall while the young men were sound asleep inside, with the intention that they would die of hunger and thirst, after as Gregory of Tours wrote "devouring one another." The day after the erection of the wall, two men wrote down the immured men´s life story and stuck a parchment with it between the stone blocks.

Thirteen years after Emperor Theodosius II had come to power the wall in front of the sleepers cave was torn down, i.e. ten years before the Council of Ephesus. Here Voragine is poorly informed because he writes that it was 372 years after the men had been detained within the cave, in fact it was 180 years. The Qur´an states that "they stayed in their cave for three hundred years, and [some] add nine." It is interesting to note that the Qur´an use solar years, and not lunar years, which otherwise is customary in Islam. The Qur´an states that "some add nine" - 309 lunar years are actually equivalent to 300 solar years.

The wall in front of the cave entrance was torn down because some shepherds wanted to use the cave as a corral for their sheep and thus replaced the wall with a fence. The following morning brought the sunlight to the sleeping men and woke them up. They thought they had slept for just one night and sent Malchus down to Ephesus to buy bread and to check upon the current situation. He became surprised when he saw the newly erected fence outside the cave and a Christian cross above the city gate. When he tried to pay the bread with centuries-old coins, it rose quite a stir in the market place since people assumed that Malchus had found a buried treasure.

Malchus was brought to the bishop and the mayor and explained to them that he and his friends had the day before fled from the persecutions of Emperor Decius, but he could not understand how the city could have changed so thoroughly during one night and not the least that the behaviour and looks of its inhabitants could have been so utterly transformed overnight. The bishop and the mayor followed Malchus up to the cave, where they among the torn down stone blocks found the parchment that affirmed Malchus story.

They authorities sent for Emperor Theodosius, who at once travelled down to Ephesus, expressly to speak to the resurrected men. After the Seven Sleepers had spoken to the emperor they returned to their cave, laid down and died in their sleep. Almost at once the Seven Sleepers became objects of intense worship, not the least since their long sleep came to be regarded as proof that the death of pious men was nothing more than a long sleep before the upcoming Last Judgment.

Stories about awakened sleepers who have overslept is not an unusual theme in fairy tales. Legends of heroes and villains who sleep for hundreds of years are known worldwide, as well as tales of sleeping beauties, or men who end up in worlds beyond time and space, in mountain caves or under lakes, only after long periods of time to return to places changed beyond recognition. The story of the Seven Sleepers is a legend and as legends commonly do it presents us with name of the actors, the place where the extraordinary event took place and also the time when it all happened. 

It is true that Ephesus around 200 AD was largely a Christian city. It had since the 90s been a bishop seat and an important centre for the spread of Christianity. When Decius came to power in the year 250 he was in his fifties and had served as senator, consul, governor and a general for Roman troops stationed in the Balkan, thus he had become convinced that Rome's central power must be secured and all tendencies to split it up contested. Decius regarded Christianity as a state within the state and demanded tangible proofs of the Christian faithfulness to the Roman supremacy.

The sign that the Christians considered themselves as loyal Roman subjects was that they took part in public sacrifices to the Roman emperor's welfare. This did not mean that they renounced their faith, it was only considered as a visible act that they accepted that the State was their superior. Romans generally distinguished between personal piety and the state cult, the latter had nothing to do with an individual's relation to various deities. Sacrifices for the emperor´s health were simply considered as a proof of an acceptance of the governing laws of the State and that those who supported the sacrifices were opposed to anarchy and any opposition to the Government.

If Christians refused to sacrifice for the emperor's welfare it was considered as an open revolutionary act and in accordance with Decius decree punishable with death. If Christians participated in the sacrifice for the Emperor´s wellbeing they received a written statement from the officiating priest to be used as a guarantee that they were not at all opposed to the supremacy of Roman government.

Naturally, the decree caused violent disturbances. Many Christians refused to sacrifice and several of them were sentenced to death. Some Christians´ refusal to sacrifice also led to violent anti-Christian pogroms in Carthage and Alexandria, where mobs incited by demagogues who claimed that the Christians had poisoned public wells, which according to them had led to a violent plague that affected the entire Roman Empire. This is reminiscent of how Christians much later massacred Jews during the Black Death, for similar, equally baseless accusations of well poisoning.

Only two years after his enthronement Decius died in a battle against the Goths, though his decree that all Roman citizens had to sacrifice for the wellbeing of the emperor was not withdrawn until ten years later, when Emperor Gallienus realized that the whole empire was falling apart and he needed the Christian support to preserve it.

It is possible that Decius attacked the Christians of Ephesus particularly hard, but it could not have been as violent as Gregory of Tours described it:

When Decius came to Ephesus, he ordered that Christians be persecuted to the elimination, if possible, of their faith. He burned them amidst their pleas and fear. They burned victims and the whole city went dark with fumes.

According to Gregory, Decius spared seven young people because they were so handsome, that the emperor thought it would be a waste to execute such strong men and suggested to them that they would closely consider their refusal to sacrifice. If they had changed their mind, he would spare them when he returned to Ephesus within a year. Nevertheless, when Decius returned, he found that the seven young Christians had disappeared from the city and through threats and violence, he received information from their relatives that they were hiding in a cave and while the seven men were asleep Decius´ soldiers sealed the cave.

In Orhan Pamuk's novel My Name is Red, stories are intertwined, forming an intricate pattern, a complicated structure. One of the different perspectives is provided a dog, who is being able to transmit his thoughts. A free and fairly ferocious creature that both confirms and denies several Muslims´ aversion to dogs. He tracks different conceptions of dogs' value and characteristics and thus mentions the legend of the Seven Sleepers, stating that if a faithful dog was worthy of being mentioned in the Holy Qur´an this fact is a great honour for any dog. Accordingly do creatures like him merit more respect from orthodox Muslims.

The Qur’an’s eighteenth sura is called The Cave and we understand that this protective cave is equated with the doctrine Allah revealed in the Qur'an:

And now, having abandoned them and what they worship other than God, let us take refuge in a cave, and God will spread out his mercy and make it easy for you to find the prudent path to follow in this matter.

The eighteenth sura is one of the Qur´an´s longer chapters and mentions several myths and legends. It seems to suggest that the legend of the Seven Sleepers was well known in the world in which the Holy Scripture was revealed. Like so much else in the Qur´an, there is a concrete touch to the story. It is for example explained how it came about that the sleepers did not obtain any bedsores during their long sleep on the hard rock and that their dog could keep guard over them:

And you would have imagined them to be awake as they slept on. We would turn them from right side to left, as their dog spread its paws across the entrance.

The Qur'an emphasizes that there is no point to argue about a narrative´s irrelevant particulars, such as to discuss whether the sleepers were three, five or seven in number.

They shall say:”They were three in number, their dog a fourth.” Others will say: “They were five in number, their dog a sixth” – predicting the Unseen. Yet others will say: “Seven, their dog an eighth.” Say: “My Lord knows best what their number was, and none knows it but few.” So do not dispute this issue with them except in a superficial manner, and do not solicit the opinion of any of them concerning their number.

Most important is what the story really tells us, its deeper meaning, namely that truth consists regardless of the passage of time, how much we humans might argue about it. The Qur´an states that the truth behind everything is God's permanent presence. His all-encompassing power persists whatever we humans might undertake. The proof is that when the seven sleepers entered their cave, it was uncertain whether the truth would be able to survive the divisive perceptions of what was right or wrong, but when the sleepers woke up after their three-hundred-years long sleep, the found that truth had triumphed.

What Pamuk´s dog is proud of the fact that it was a dog that was chosen to watch over the sleepers, it seems to imply that he, unlike humans with all their acquired knowledge, through his animal instinct is an integral part of nature and thus represents God´s unwavering order. The laws of God remain forever true. Or as Galileo Galilei observed when, after having been forced to admit that the Earth does not revolve around the sun eppur si muove, "yet it does move".

Incidentally, this neatly expressed opinion, as well as many other famous sayings and quotes, has been questioned. The first time it was mentioned in the literature was in 1757, more than a hundred years after Galileo's death. However, in 1911 a wealthy family in Brussels left a painting to a restaurateur for cleaning. It represented Galileo in a prison cell, and he held a nail in his hand. When the painting had been cleaned it was found it was signed in the year 1643, the year after Galileo's death and that on the prison wall behind the Italian mathematician the words Eppur si muove was engraved. It is known that Galileo's friend Ascanio Piccolimini after the great scientist's death ordered a painting from the famous painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo. However, like most good stories the tale about the lost portrait is also being doubted. The painting has disappeared and it only remains as a reproduction in lot of books about Galileo, where the picture is taken from a book published in 1929.

That we humans, unlike the cats and dogs that we live together with, have no intimate contact with the great, marvellous universe that surrounds us, also pops up in a strange and frankly speaking quite difficult novel by José Saramago. It is called The Cave, and when I read about the Seven Sleepers I came to think about it, not the least since it is a dog Achado, “Found”, which has a leading role in the story. Achado shows up in an abandoned dog house in the potter Cipriano Algor´s garden. Cipriano lives in a depopulated village near a giant Centre, which mercilessly devours not only the world of the humans, but also their entire way of thinking. An artificial consumption and residential conglomerate where large, artificial establishments are made to imitate nature - storms, lush vegetation, waterfalls, etc. It is the market forces that govern The Centre. Unceasing control and security measures make residents losing their personality and reduce them to mere consumers.

Even the potter Cipriano is pulled into The Centre's relentless march forward. Though the dog Achado saves him from losing his soul. Achado is part of the reality - nature - that surrounds us all, completely in accordance with Galileo's observation eppur si muove. Like the Seven Sleepers in their cave are protected by their faithful dog, Achado is watching over Cipriano. The dog's secure patience, sincere loyalty, tenderness and tranquillity that Ciproano finds reflected in Achado´s gaze make the redundant potter (The Centre has replaced his earthenware with plastic products) relaize the deep love he has for his daughter and her husband. Achado appeared at Cipriano´s place out of his own free will. Cipriano´s realization that the dog actually  chose to live with him and thereby abandoned his previous existence makes it possible for the potter to make the decision to liberate himself and his loved ones from The Centre's ever increasing and immersive parasitism.

All this being said does not mean that I appreciated Saramago's novel in full – the style was far too heavy, too compact and preaching, the parables were too obvious, but in spite of this the story stuck with me. Maybe since its description of different characters was strong and I thus could identify with the poor Cipriano, a loser about the same age as me.

All these stories about sleeping and waking up to strange worlds made me think about how it might feel like to have lost a large part of your life. People who have lost their lives in work, dreams and illusions. Who believed that an attractive, though unrealised future might release them from all their troubles and shortcomings; that money, fame and admiration will finally be bestowed upon them and make them happy. People who have not realized the truth of John Lennon's beautiful words in the song to his son Sean, Beautiful Boy:

Before you cross the street take my hand.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans

We read and hear about people who have been imprisoned year out and year in, only to be released into an alien world. An essential theme in masterpieces like Chaplin's Modern Times and Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz. There are plenty of examples of individuals, both guilty and innocent, who have lost their lives in prisons and labour camps, simply to be thrown headlong into worlds that have changed beyond recognition and where no one seems to know them anymore.

An entertaining story about a sleeper is Washington Irving's short story Rip Van Winkle from his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gen. It tells the story about a charming lazybones who suffered hard after having married a stern lady who constantly, and with good reason, complained about him. Rip stayed as often as possible away from home, roaming in the forests, fishing or helping neighbours and friends with errands and odd jobs that "men avoid doing in their own homes." He was popular with everyone, except his wife who:

… kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing to his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going and everything she said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that by frequent use had grown in to a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house – the only side, which in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband.

A sunny day Rip van Winkle wandered far away, in among the Catskill Mountains, which the Hudson River is winding through. In a glade he surprised a peculiar group of under seized men, who dressed in archaic clothes played nine-pin bowling. They were unusually taciturn and serious, but generously offered Rip a large flagon with a tasty drink reminding him of excellent Dutch ale, before they doggedly return to their skittles. Mug after mug with the tasty ale, mixed with the muffled rumbling of the wooden balls made Rip fall asleep on the deep, cushy grass.

When he woke up, it was a warm and sunny morning. When he came up on his feet he was surprised by how stiff his joints had become and assumed the hard ground had given him a bout of rheumatism. His clothes were worn and torn: "Oh" he thought, "that wicked flagon! What excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle?” He was looking for his gun, but in its place there was an old firelock with its barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off and the stock worm-eaten. When he called his faithful it refused to appear. On his way home Rip marvelled at how there was a mountain stream where there had been a ditch the day before, and he became even more amazed when he arrived in  his home village and found that people were pointing fingers at him. They seemed to be both amazed and worried. He put his hand to his face and found that it was wrinkled and an unkempt beard had grown a foot long.

When Rip faltered to his home, he found a dilapidated, overgrown hovel. Soon, he encountered a couple of old men and under their beards and wrinkles they revealed themselves as his old drinking cronies, telling him that he had been missing for over twenty years. Rip van Winkle´s wife had died long ago, after a vein had ruptured in a fit of passion at a New England peddler. Rip´s children were grown-ups. The boy was the same lazy fellow as Rip once had been, but the daughter wass both beautiful and thrifty and allowed her aged father to stay with her and her family.

An old man explained that Rip Van Winkle had fallen victim to Henry Hudson and his men, who after their death for more than one hundred and fifty years ago every twenty years was having a party while they visited the place where they once had anchored and where their captain gave the river its name. They then drank a beverage that kept them alive, but at the same time caused them to wake up just for one day and night in every twenty years´ time. It was such a drink they had invited Rip Van Winkle to. The villagers assumed that this might be the only explanation to why an aged Rip had appeared in their village after twenty years of deep sleep.

Oddly enough Rip Van Winkle did not regret that he had slept away twenty years of his life. Instead, he was pleased by the fact that his wife had died and that he, as an old man, was not expected to do any hard work but could devote himself to his favourite pastimes - fishing, walking and tell stories to the village children.

For sure, reality is much worse. Rip Van Winkle slept away twenty years of his life, but other men and women have lost year after year in hell, which they every morning were forced to wake up to. As in Primo Levi´s horrifying memories from Auschwitz where shouts of Wstavac! and Aufstehen! were dreaded because they signify a new day of unfathomable suffering. Have you been imprisoned, racked and separated from normal life you cannot become the same person you were before you entered the gates of hell.

Andrzej Wajda's film Landscape After Battle begins with scenes of how concentration camp inmates in striped prison clothes, to the triumphant sounds of Vivaldi's The Spring, comes running towards us in a drab, grey winter landscape A man walks up to the barbed wire fence and gently grasps a wire - there is no deadly current. He and several others tear down the barbed wire and rush out into the empty, snow-covered landscape. Out there, they meet soldiers and embrace them. Though after a while close-ups reveal bewilderment in the once joyous faces, people do not know where to go and slowly return back towards the barracks, where other groups of prisoners are waiting. The music, which for a while has calmed down, again becomes cheerful and sprightly. Liberated inmates smash windows, burn books, gobble down food (but we see that it makes them sick), hunt down and kill camp guards, undress in the snow, while they naked burn their prison clothes. However, the music once more becomes subdued, melancholic. Once again close-ups of confused faces. Men move between barbed wire fences, or across barren fields. Snow, cold, greyness, emptiness.

Wajda´s movie is based on parts of Tadeusz Borowski´s memories from his time in Auschwitz - This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, a book filled with scenes drilling into your memory. Like Wajda´s movie Borowski´s text swings between close-ups and group shots, activity and reflection, empty landscapes and cramped rooms, portraying Auschwitz, the terrible numbness and emptiness that reigned there and continued to haunt those who survived that hell. Like so many others survived the concentration camps and told as about them, like Primo Levi and Paul Celan, Borowski took his own life.

When I asked my high school pupils, which was their favourite movie they seemed to be almost unanimously in agreement that it was Shawshank Redemption by Frank Darabont. I was surprised, particularly since that film was made in 1994, long before they were born. But their choice was understandable, it is an excellent movie about lost lives and fulfilled dreams, a film about a miracle. It seems that schoolchildren could almost instinctively identify themselves with lifetime prisoners in an inhumane prison. As students they are forced to go to school every work day, while constantly being judged as individuals and according to their efforts. The burden of homework and tests may for some of them be devastating, in particularly if they are constantly monitored by demanding teachers and parents. Most of them certainly dream about a final exemption from the school treadmill, a liberation that might direct them towards money and success.

Darabont´s film is based on a short story by Stephen King Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, in which he lets an old jailbird, Red (in the movie played by Morgan Freeman) tell the story about a man who with intelligence and infinite patience managed to damage the system and turn himself into free man. When Stephen King is in great form, he is very good. Red tells his story in a dry, cynical and colloquial manner. Listen to him describing his hero Andy Dufresne´s predecessor as prison librarian. An institutionalized man imprisoned for over thirty years, Brooks Hatlen had once in drunken madness killed his wife and daughter, but was finally pardoned:

He was sixty-eight and arthritic when he tottered out of the main gate in his Polish suit and his French shoes, his parole papers in one hand and a Greyhound bus ticket in the other. He was crying when he left. Shawshank was his world. What lay beyond its walls was as terrible to Brooks as the Western Seas had been to superstitious fifteenth-century sailors. In prison, Brooksie had been a person of some importance. He was the librarian, an educated man. If he went to the Kittery library and asked for a job, they wouldn’t even give him a library card. I heard he died in a home for indigent old folks up Freeport way in 1953, and at that he lasted about six months longer than I thought he would. Yeah, I guess the State got its own back on Brooksie, all right. They trained him to like it inside the shithouse and then they threw him out.

In his movie Frank Darabont expands the poor librarian´s pathetic role and deepens it further. In an interview he explained:

I realized that Brooks Hatlen, a character mentioned in passing in one paragraph of the novella, needed to be a main character, and that we needed to see his experience in order to relate to the entire theme of the movie, and to Red’s (Morgan Freeman) experience at the end of the movie.

In the movie the library of the calm and resigned Brooks Hatlen becomes a sanctuary for the abused, beaten and battered Andy Dufresne, a place where he finds strength to slowly and patiently put together his great and complicated escape plan. Like Burt Lancaster in John Frankenheimer´s Birdman of Alcatraz, Brooks Hatlen keeps a tame bird, a crow called Jake. When he finally is pardoned, Brooks releases Jake and takes the bus back to freedom, where he is shocked by the changes - houses, cars, people, all the stress, all the bustle, the terrible loneliness in the middle of a seething life. He ends up in a dreary rehabilitation apartment and works packing merchandize into bags at a supermarket. Finally, Brooks writes a letter to his prison pals, describing his fears, his loneliness and feeling of worthlessness. On a roof beam in his depressing abode, he carves the message "Brooks was here", before he attaches a rope around it and hangs himself. When Red finally comes out of prison, he ends up on the same flophouse and when he sees the words that Brooks carved on the beam Red realizes that he also is doomed to despair and misery, but a miracle delivers him - Redemption in the form of a message from his friend and hero Andy Dufresne.

I read King's short story four years after I during a summer had worked at Saint Lars´ mental hospital in Lund, Sweden. Even then I was impressed by the short and admirably concentrated paragraph about Brooks Hatlen´s fate. I was once again and even stronger reminded of my time at Saint Lars when I ten years later saw the movie.

Just like in Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the patients at Sankt Lars regularly received their small plastic cups with differently coloured psychotropic drugs. I believe that those drugs, combined with the stupefying boredom of the day area and the individual rooms, were instrumental in making the inmates severely institutionalized. The day room was bright and quite nicely furnished, with comfortable sofas, potted plants, board games, books and magazines. The patients could come out into the kitchen to get coffee, mineral water and slices of a sweet loaf, which I will never forget and surely will not eat again, though the food was quite decent. They were dressed in their everyday clothes and occasionally I found the patients nicer and more normal than some of the personell.

I got talking to an elderly gentleman who had been detained since his youth, sometime in the late 1930s. He had been an underpaid farmhand and in youthful bravado put fire on the residence of the landlord. I do not remember if anyone had died or been injured due to the fire, but the perpetrator was interned as "mentally unreliable" and had since then been shuffled from institution to institution, until he ended up in the sofa in the day area at Saint Lars, where he sat reading a newspaper or a book. He was somewhat lethargic in his speech, but to me he gave the impression of being quite normal and when I asked the personnel about him they were all agreed that it was not really anything wrong with him, other than that the constant medication had dulled him down and the medical doctors considered it would be irresponsible to release him outside of Saint Lars´ gates.

What surprised me when I spoke with the patients was that they, contrary to what I had assumed, considered themselves to be in need of care. Even the old man, who when I asked him why replied: "I don´t know about anything else and I don´t want to know anything else either."

Borowski, Tadeusz (1992) This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. London: Penguin Classics. Paul the Deacon (2003) History of the Lombards. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Drake, Stillman (1995) Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. New York: Dover Publications. Gibbon, Edward (2005) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Abridged Edition. London: Penguin Classics. Gregory of Tours (1974) History of the Franks. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics. Irving, Washington (2012) Legend of Sleepy Hollow and other stories. London: HarperColllins. Khalidi, Tarif (2008) The Qur´an. A New Translation. London: Penguin Classics. King, Stephen (1982) “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” in Different Seasons. New York: Viking Press. Saramago, José (2002) The Cave. New York: Harcourt. Pamuk, Orhan (2002) My Name is Red.  New York: Vintage Books. Potter, David S. (2002) The Roman Empire at Bay AD 180–395. London and New York: Routledge. Voragine, Jacobo di (1998) The Golden Legend: Selections. London: Penguin Classics.