Chapter 00 (Prologue)
Posted: 01 Mar 2008 11:45
This prologue is set far in the future of the events that take place in the rest of the book and is an excerpt from a speach given by the archeologist who discored Dar-es-balat, Leto II's invisible storehouse for his Journals.
A popular poet reads a sample from the first page of the first volume Leto's Journals:
I ASSURE you that I am the book of fate.
Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode! Answers leap up like a
frightened flock, blackening the sky of my inescapable memories. Not one answer,
not one suffices.
What prisms flash when I enter the terrible field of my past. I am a chip of
shattered flint enclosed in a box. The box gyrates and quakes. I am tossed about
in a storm of mysteries. And when the box opens, I return to this presence like
a stranger in a primitive land.
Slowly (slowly, I say) I relearn my name.
But that is not to know myself!
This person of my name, this Leto who is the second of that calling, finds other
voices in his mind, other names and other places. Oh, I promise you (as I have
been promised) that I answer to but a single name. If you say, "Leto," I
respond. Sufferance makes this true, sufferance and one thing more:
I hold the threads!
All of them are mine. Let me but imagine a topic, say . . . men who have died by
the sword-and I have them in all of their gore, every image intact, every moan,
every grimace.
Joys of motherhood, I think, and the birthing beds are mine. Serial baby smiles
and the sweet cooings of new generations. The first walkings of the toddlers and
the first victories of youths brought forth for me to share. They tumble one
upon another until I can see little else but sameness and repetition.
"Keep it all intact," I warn myself. Who can deny the value of such experiences,
the worth of learning through which I view each new instant? Ahhh, but it's the
past. Don't you understand? It's only the past!
-The Stolen Journals
A popular poet reads a sample from the first page of the first volume Leto's Journals:
I ASSURE you that I am the book of fate.
Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode! Answers leap up like a
frightened flock, blackening the sky of my inescapable memories. Not one answer,
not one suffices.
What prisms flash when I enter the terrible field of my past. I am a chip of
shattered flint enclosed in a box. The box gyrates and quakes. I am tossed about
in a storm of mysteries. And when the box opens, I return to this presence like
a stranger in a primitive land.
Slowly (slowly, I say) I relearn my name.
But that is not to know myself!
This person of my name, this Leto who is the second of that calling, finds other
voices in his mind, other names and other places. Oh, I promise you (as I have
been promised) that I answer to but a single name. If you say, "Leto," I
respond. Sufferance makes this true, sufferance and one thing more:
I hold the threads!
All of them are mine. Let me but imagine a topic, say . . . men who have died by
the sword-and I have them in all of their gore, every image intact, every moan,
every grimace.
Joys of motherhood, I think, and the birthing beds are mine. Serial baby smiles
and the sweet cooings of new generations. The first walkings of the toddlers and
the first victories of youths brought forth for me to share. They tumble one
upon another until I can see little else but sameness and repetition.
"Keep it all intact," I warn myself. Who can deny the value of such experiences,
the worth of learning through which I view each new instant? Ahhh, but it's the
past. Don't you understand? It's only the past!
-The Stolen Journals