Isn’t this a good time for a cheerfully post-apocalyptic novel?
There is a scene from such a novel I think about frequently, and have done so for decades—the scene in Walter M. Miller’s excellent sci fi classic, A Canticle For Leibowitz, where the guileless Br. Francis finally makes his way to New Rome to deliver a precious relic of his order’s founder to the pope.
The “relic” is a fragment of an electrical engineer’s blueprint for a “transistorized control system,” an artifact from so long in the past of this post-apocalyptic, mostly post-literate world, that no one knows what kind of information it is, much less what it was for.
They do know it was made by the hand of someone they consider a martyred saint, and the order’s entire charism is to preserve knowledge in a hostile world; so Br. Francis has spent the last many years lovingly and laboriously transcribing the mysterious blueprint into a highly decorated illuminated manuscript.
But on his way to New Rome, he is waylaid by bandits, who assume the beautiful piece is actually the main treasure Francis wanted to guard, and they steal it. They leave him the original blueprint, though, which he presents to the pope. The pope thanks him and then says that he heard the copy was beautiful. Francis responds:
“It was nothing, Holy Father. I only regret that I wasted 15 years.”
The way I remember it, the pope responds that it was not wasted, because it was done in love, and that he can offer that up to God. But I looked it up, and that’s not quite what the pope says. He said:
“Wasted? How ‘wasted’? If the robber had not been misled by the beauty of your commemoration, he might have taken this, might he not?”
The pope asks Francis if he knows what the relic means, and then admits that he doesn’t, either. He then reverences it and says:
“We thank you from the bottom of our heart for those 15 years, beloved son,” he added to Br Francis. “Those years were spent to preserve this original. Never think of them as wasted. Offer them to God. Someday the meaning of the original may be discovered, and may prove important.”
Two of the overarching themes of the book are that knowledge is worth preserving . . . and that man inevitably uses knowledge to destroy himself. This happens repeatedly in the book, which is divided into three parts, each recounting a different era.
The book is not anti-intellectual, by any means, but it does ask you to question the value of human progress, when progress apparently inevitably leads to apocalypse.
The pope thought Francis’ effort was not in vain because it helped save the original manuscript, which may someday aid the whole world. But is that really the reason it was worthwhile?
Many things can be true at the same time…. Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Image: The monk Eadwine, Trinity College Psalter, Cambridge (Creative Commons)
This was one of your loveliest, Simcha.
I’m visiting a cousin at the moment. I visited her last summer for the first time ever in her own home, and got to know her five living children, making especial friends with the second-youngest.
Yesterday I finally made it back. He was standing with his happy face pressed to the glass of the patio door as my car pulled in.
This afternoon I got to do what I’ve been daydreaming about since last summer: I sat reading with him, answering his questions and listening to the little facts he shared as we read our book.
But I’ve been very sleep deprived, and when my cousin walked in, she saw me struggling to stay awake. She told me I didn’t have to read with him. I told her I was fine, but I wasn’t clear headed enough to tell her how much I had been looking forward to this exact thing for months.
I’ve had a nap, now. I think I’ll go down and tell her— and maybe read another book with her littles.