Here was her Swedenborg: erotic longing, unfulfilled promises, which she felt like indulging, in which she wanted to wallow. Her personal pleasure-taking couldn’t hurt anyone, could it?
But Polina was wrong. It hurt her. Her longing grew. It became a great, iron-hard feeling, which gradually formed an obstacle to normal life. Polina began having more trouble opening her liquor window each night. No more sensuous gales, no more revels, no more soaring thoughts. It was as if several meters of snow had fallen in front of the window, first soft, then hard, and finally freezing to ice, which wouldn’t melt no matter how much mulled wine she poured in her glass, how much hot punch, anything warm, fortified tea, straight burning clear vodka poured down her throat . . . There was only the longing. Nothing else. Suddenly she had no taste for books, and her drinking became poisonous intoxication, sleep from which her alarm clock did not wake her. She even received one verbal warning, which the director of the Agency for Damatic Arts came to give Polina personally: “Dear Polina, this can’t continue.”
That was the final straw for Polina. She took her Swedenborg to a second-hand bookshop and bought books written by women instead, by Erica Jong, by Marguerite Duras. She shut her French gentleman and his intense gaze out of her mind. He had returned to his demented wife, and that was right. Polina kept her fingers in check, and that helped. Normal life resumed, and her liquor window opened and began operating in the desired fashion: just enough fresh air in, just enough books, and just enough sleep.
Here on the other side, a gentle nostalgia hovers over Swedenborg, not a deadly thirst, and so Polina once again straightens her back. She shakes her trivial notions from her mind and rushes to the place where all her intellectual groundwork has led her and her listeners in such a spiral fashion, whirling like a falling leaf. And we will allow Polina to continue without interruption, won’t we? In order for us finally to get to vote?
“On one April afternoon in 1745, something happened that completely changed the direction of Swedenborg’s life. The scene is a certain London tavern, and our main character is fifty-seven years old. Imagine yourself in a dimly lit, rather common watering hole. Before you is a large slice of hot, steaming liver pie you’ve just tucked into. You’re eating leisurely, chewing contentedly, when suddenly a fog, similar to the river mist that hangs over the Thames each morning, fills the entire room. It rises steadily, insidiously, spreading everywhere, not just from one or two corners. The fog is thin enough, however, that you can see in front of you, at least to your feet. The floor is covered in reptiles: snakes, lizards, crocodiles, and all sorts of god-forsaken creatures cloaked in scales. Instinctively you lift your feet onto the bench you’re sitting on. When the fog begins to clear, you see a man on the other side of the room bathed in light. He speaks to you, saying, ‘Don’t eat so much.’ This strange, parenthetical statement may explain Swedenborg’s ascetic diet, because according to the story, after this vision often all he would eat each day was a single bun dipped in milk with an enormous amount of coffee.
“The apparition disappeared, and the tavern returned to its previous state, but the customers and staff didn’t seem to have noticed anything special. But beginning from that moment, Swedenborg knew that he had been chosen to unpeel the hidden heart of the Bible. And so he decided to become a guide to heaven and hell.
“Could Swedenborg’s vision be explained by his circumstances? If Swedenborg had strayed from the way of tea to the beer streets of London, or farther to the gin lane of the proletariat? Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two pence, clean straw for nothing! At the time of Swedenborg’s visions, wine and beer were consumed in abundance in London, but the Gin Craze formed a veritable epidemic. Sixteen gallons of gin was distilled per resident of the city. Genever or Madame Geneva or Mother Gin was the favorite of the soldiers and sailors, cheap firewater distilled from barley and rye, with juniper berries mixed in for flavor. Men and women drank it, and even children received some. People died of it, of course, but it was a patriotic death, because the state supported the distillation of domestic grain. Processing taxes were reduced, since the government wanted to support the large agricultural producers, and they didn’t want French brandy being imported. Drinking that was like an act of treason. So could the scholar from Uppsala have been under the influence of spirits?
“Whatever the case, just as Swedenborg was on the verge of finding the human soul, he experienced the mystical revelation, as described, and permanently abandoned science. The theory of correspondences Swedenborg had developed earlier meshed naturally with his celestial visions.
“Correspondence theory means that all things in existence have three meanings within each other: natural, spiritual, and celestial. There are the senses, then the thoughts, and finally heaven; and everything correlates with its own correspondences. Swedenborg was convinced that ancient primitive man knew the secrets of correspondences and that in the ancient world all books were also written in the language of correspondences. This was the original perfect universal tongue, verbum vetustum, which humanity unfortunately lost after they became too wise . . . They forgot the words . . . which Swedenborg spent years
