The Library of Maps, #39
THE UNFINISHED MAPPA MUNDI AND TIRESIAS

There is always a certain point
In the life of an aging astronomer
When he develops
An almost insatiable appetite
For honey and barley.

So,
When it happened this time,
The young astronomers,
Rolling their eyes at one another,
Exclaimed in exasperated tones:

“There goes another …
When he should be
Hard at work
In his last years,
Mapping new galaxies
And imagining
The expanses of dark matter,

What does he do
But eat honey and barley and dream?”

And it is true,
The Old Astronomer dreamt incessantly.

He dreamt
Of sailing up the Acheron River
http://www.apws22.dsl.pipex.com/odyssey/acheron.html

Amidst its hanging kingfisher nests,
http://www.gazard.com/images/gallery/africa/uganda/animals/kingfisher_nests.jpg

Swarms of butterflies,
And flocks of swallows,

And
Of passing by its banks of willows and poplars
To reach a ruin nearby
http://www.apws22.dsl.pipex.com/odyssey/

in order to attempt
Communication with the dead.
http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Underworldmap.html

“With all the reading he does these days about ancient Greece,”
The young astronomers grumbled,
“Hasn’t he found out
That since the Nekyomanteion
http://www.culture.gr/2/21/211/21112n/e211ln06.html

Was discovered forty years ago,
Scholars have been increasingly
Disputing the speculation
That this was the place
Where Odysseus
Sought out advice from the dead seer Tiresias?”

“Doesn’t he know
That the underground chamber
May have been merely a storage room,
And the tools and objects found there
Were for agricultural use?”
http://www.he.net/~archaeol/9805/abstracts/insight.html

After more of such lamenting,
The young astronomers
—some with rueful smiles, others with superior airs—
Returned to their lofty discussions
About the latest scientific findings
And the newest speculations
About the beginning of light and color
In the young universe.

Meanwhile,
The Old Astronomer
—who had heard but paid scant attention to these exchanges—
Resumed work on his new project,
The fashioning of a small pair
Of reading glasses.

The Chief Librarian
Had given him a bag of discarded glass shards
(she had found these hidden beneath stones outside one of the Library’s least used windows),
And he was assembling these
With the same tools
He had once used
To make the giant lenses
Of his masterpiece,
The telescope in the Observatory,
Through which the young astronomers
Still study the universe.

At last the Reading Glasses were ready.

Everyone,
Even the young astronomers,
Gathered around him,
As it was hoped
That these Reading Glasses of his
Would enable the Old Astronomer to describe
The tiny images and words of the map
That the Library had recently acquired
But which none could decipher.

Peering through his glasses,
He began to describe
In meticulous detail
The images on the map’s borders
—the labyrinthine profusion of gardens,
Dense with butterflies,
Through which five rivers
Snaked their way.

Then he read the names of the rivers of death silently to himself, staring down at the map.
Lost in his musings, he forgot for a long time to address his audience.

After this silence, he looked up at them, and then turned back to study the map again.

“It is unfinished. There is nothing in the center. It reminds me of those medieval maps of the world,
http://www.history.ac.uk/maps/imagetheme.html

The most famous being Hereford’s Mappa Mundi,
http://www.herefordcathedral.co.uk/Cathedral_pages/Main_pages/mappa_mundi.html

but that has Jerusalem in the middle
http://academics.vmi.edu/gen_ed/map.jpg

whereas this …”

He let the sentence dangle.

More silence.

Then a woman (Rachel Marker) spoke from the back of the expectant crowd.

“This is, I believe, the last and greatest of the Mappa Mundis, the one that we all thought was lost.”

“It is said that in the eighteenth century a nun in the Meteora area of Northern Greece began the map, but later in a vision she was instructed to leave it unfinished.”

“It is said that she put down her brushes and pens with great relief, and because she had told no one of her vision, most thought she left her map unfinished because she was too old and frail to complete it.”

“I think,” Rachel Marker continued, now addressing only the Old Astronomer, ”That you will understand her decision.”

The Old Astronomer nodded, laid down his Reading Glasses and gave them, smilingly, to his friend, the Chief Librarian, for safekeeping in her Library.

Later on,
Many attempted,
Eagerly consuming barley and honey,
To complete the map.
But the parchment stubbornly resisted all markings.

Thwarted, they attempted to dream
Of the Acheron River and of Tiresias,
For surely he,
If anyone,
Would know about uncharted territory
—but in their dreams
The Nekyomanteion was always empty of his presence
As it was not yet
Time for them to encounter him.
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/tiresias.html

When the old Astronomer died,
They found in his will instructions for his ashes
To be scattered in the Acheron River,
And in these waters
Is where he and Tiresias have at last met.

by Moira Roth
Written 6/26/03 and 6/28-30/03 in Parga and Milopotamos, Northern Greece; revised 7/05/03 on plane from London to San Francisco and 7/08/03 in Berkeley

Acknowledgment: My deepest gratitude to Giles Peaker for introducing me to the Acheron/Nekyomanteion site and its history, and for the images of it on his website.