typographiae, a title that gave the professor royal authority to scrutinize all printed materials produced in the Swedish kingdom. During the spring of 1685, Schutz decided to exercise this right.

Professor Schutz had heard that Rudbeck was about to print some unflattering comments about the College of Antiquities. What Rudbeck was in fact printing was a short but controversial collection of overwhelmingly positive reviews of his Atlantica, which his friends had assiduously accumulated over the last six years. He was hoping to drum up publicity and increase sales, and at the same time probably vent some frustration at the way he had been treated. He wanted to defend his reputation, once and for all. Schutz, by contrast, did not see it that way at all. He deplored the outrageous “bad taste” of printing such self-praise, and he particularly resented one letter that he heard would be included.

This entry, written by a monk named Sven Sithellius, not only praised Atlantica in radiant terms, but also emphasized, very bluntly, how much it surpassed the entire body of work that had so far been written about the Swedish past, including, by implication, everything from the state-funded College of Antiquities. In fact, the monk went on to propose that some special funding enjoyed by the college would be more profitably invested in Rudbeck’s more noble and valuable quest. Such comments no doubt irked the college; the belligerent words played further on their anxieties about their already meager budgets and uncertain future.

So, in the first week of April 1685, Schutz stormed the press, imposed his authority as inspector typographiae, and demanded an immediate halt to Curio’s machines. He literally ripped the sheets out of the hands of the printer, sealed them up, and took them to the university authorities, acting, as Rudbeck said, like “prosecutor, judge, and executioner all at once.”

Arrhenius, Hadorph, and other enemies of Rudbeck at the college were elated at how decisively the censor had acted. To them, the shameless self-promotion, the underhanded insult to their honor, and the calculated appeal for royal subsidies all deserved, even demanded, such an action. Rudbeck, of course, protested the censorship, complaining that such an intrusion into his affairs was unwarranted. It was just another abuse of power, and a thinly veiled attempt by the opposition to maintain their control over the past. Besides, if the efforts to stop publication of his testimonia succeeded, Rudbeck knew what the “incompetent and passionate censors” had in mind for his Atlantica.

But even assuming for the moment that he could escape the censorship, there were some formidable economic obstacles standing in the way of his dream of completing the search for Atlantis. The self-reflection forced by the Inquisition had made the costs of his crusade all too clear. He had patently jeopardized his family’s financial security. The costs of producing Atlantica were calculated at some 9,700 daler kopparmynt, not counting his own investment of time and energy in the search. Although sales of the folio volume had picked up quite a bit in the early 1680s, Rudbeck was still dangerously in debt. Six years after its publication, Rudbeck owed some 1,560 daler kopparmynt borrowed from a “good friend” and another thousand borrowed from a student society at the university. His family silver was still pawned.

Times were difficult, he said, and one had to advance cautiously. Again he saw his death approaching quickly, and feared that his family would have to “sigh for his grave.” Mentally and physically fatigued, he felt too shy to beg and no longer had the strength to quarrel. It was simply not possible to continue in this manner, sacrificing everything for the sake of his search. As the Inquisition tightened its grip and he felt the economic pressures, Rudbeck did not dare to “string the bow any tighter.” Atlantica looked doomed, destined to be engulfed by larger, uncontrollable forces, much like Plato’s fabled isle.

Almost as disheartening, perhaps, Rudbeck saw many of his colleagues lured over to the Schutz and Arrhenius faction. After helping thirty-two people gain positions in the university faculties during the last two decades, Rudbeck was sad to see how little support he received from the professors as he faced the attacks from the Inquisition and the censor. Almost everyone, it seemed, was thinking only of his own career. Rudbeck compared his feelings of betrayal to the “peasant who stumbled upon a frozen snake.” Never having seen such an object, the peasant reached down, picked it up, held it to his bosom to warm it, and saved its life. But when the snake thawed, its poisonous fangs lunged for his heart.

16

THE ELYSIAN FIELDS

What cared we for outward visions, when Agamemnon, Achilles, and a thousand other heroes of the great Past were marching in ghostly procession through our fancies?

—MARK TWAIN, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

ON MAY 13, 1685, the dispute over the controversial collection of reviews was finally resolved. An order from King Charles XI freed Rudbeck personally from the clutches of the censor. One of Count de la Gardie’s well-placed contacts had promised to help and did in fact manage to secure this royal exemption. Rudbeck’s merits, according to the official statement, had earned him this special privilege, as someone whose “integrity and experience assured that his work does not contain anything harmful, irritating, and offensive.” Rudbeck had won, at least the first battle. But the College of Antiquities immediately prepared another way to discredit the jolly nemesis who had invaded their turf.

Johan Hadorph and Claes Arrhenius, the true leaders of the college, shifted from censorship to public attack. In a letter to the university council, unsigned yet bearing the official seal of the college, the scholars accused Rudbeck of belittling their antiquarian work. They followed with a second letter to the university chancellor, criticizing Rudbeck’s bad taste in publishing self-praise, a presumptuous and misleading enterprise that could, if necessary, be countered with a publication of the work’s many flaws.

As additional ammunition, Hadorph also planned to print a peculiar historical manuscript that had long lain unfinished. Titled Dissertation on the Hyperboreans, this was a treatise penned by the esteemed poet and lethargic first president of the College of Antiquities, Georg Stiernhielm. In this work, Stiernhielm had outlined many of his arguments about the Hyperboreans, a people he believed had once lived in Sweden and had spoken the world’s oldest language. Ironically, Hadorph had never liked the work. He printed the dissertation, it seems, only to show how much Rudbeck owed to his predecessors. During the tense spring and summer of 1685, Stiernhielm’s posthumous, uncompleted, and unrevised manuscript went to press.

Rudbeck knew this work well and had certainly been influenced by its claims about the Hyperboreans. There is even reason to suspect that Verelius had loaned him the manuscript in the early days of the search, something that would have helped him as he entered the field of classical studies. But Rudbeck had gone much further in his conclusions than Stiernhielm or other patriotic historians. His search had culminated in a spectacular vision of the lost civilization of Atlantis and in his indefatigable efforts to bring the wide variety of theories together, more or less, into one unified picture of ancient Sweden. Still, by printing this work, Hadorph hoped to deflate Rudbeck’s overblown esteem, and to show that Atlantica was not as breathlessly original as its admirers believed.

So, if the efforts of the censor had failed, then perhaps an attack on Rudbeck’s credibility would succeed. Publication of Stiernhielm’s manuscript and the latest accusations against Rudbeck were two features of the college’s campaign to tarnish his reputation. Rudbeck was likened to the crow in the Aesop’s classic fable who pretended to be a peacock, a plain bird achieving his impressive appearance only by relying on borrowed plumage. Unfortunately, too, with his many loans, he had gotten it all wrong, producing an erroneous monstrosity. Rudbeck should have stuck to medicine, his first profession. Surely “a deeper and truer history,” Arrhenius wrote, could be written, and supported by state funds.

The College of Antiquities, its leaders believed, was doing just that, illustrating the history of Sweden with erudite treatises that far surpassed the “fables and errors” that decorated the pages of Rudbeck’s Atlantica. Indeed, with confidence in the merits of their own work, it is not difficult to understand why the antiquarians deeply resented Rudbeck’s printing of the testimonia, particularly the letter by the priest Sithellius. How wrong this monk must have seemed, praising Rudbeck’s achievements while unfairly dismissing their own. How inappropriate it had been for him to suggest that the college’s budget be used to finance Rudbeck’s search. And printing such a letter only seemed to confirm their suspicions: Rudbeck secretly harbored designs on their funding.

When the college filed an official complaint against this alleged scheming, Rudbeck read the charges with

Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату