To Japanese

Literature Perusal: "Mojoka"

The Calamity of Letters

 

Translated by Masatoshi Iguchi, May 2022 (Edited by Prof. Malcolm R. Mackley, August 2022)

   

   

   

Does such an entity as the spirit of letters really exist in the world?

   

The Assyrians knew a myriad of spirits, such as Lilu that jumped around at night in the darkness and its female Lilitu, Namtar that spread plagues, Etimmu the spirit of the dead, Labasu the kidnapper, etc.[1] Thus the sky of Assyria was filled with innumerable evil spirits but no one had heard of the spirit of letters.

   

At that time —— around the twentieth year of King Ashur-bani-pal’s reign[2] —— there was a strange rumour in the court of Nineveh. Every night, a suspicious voice was heard in the darkness of the library. Since it was the time that the rebellion of his brother Shamash-shum-ukin[3] had just been subsided with the fall of Babylon, an intrigue plotted by an unscrupulous man was suspected but it seemed to be unlikely, must be the voice of some spirits. Some have argued that it was the voice of the ghosts of the prisoners from Babylon who had been recently executed in front of the king, but that it was not true was evident. That thousands of Babylonian prisoners were killed by pulling out their tongues and the tongues when gathered formed a mount was the fact that everybody knew.[4] A tongueless ghost should not be able to speak. After inspecting the reason by horoscopes and sheep-liver-divination[5], a conclusion was reached that it was nothing other than the voice of books or letters. However, given the spirit of letters really existed, what kind of nature it bore was totally unclear. King Ashur-bani-pal called Nabu-ahe-eriba[6], an old doctor with big eyes and curly hair to order research on this unknown spirit.

   

From that day foreword, Doctor Nabu-ahe-eriba was absorbed in research every day in the library in question (which was destined to be buried underground after two hundred years and incidentally excavated after another 2,300 years)reading books of ten thousand volumes.[7] In the Two River Area (Mesopotamia), papyrus was not produced unlike in Egypt. People carved complex wedge-shaped signs on a clay tablet with stylus. The books were tablets, and the library resembled a warehouse of chinaware store. Every day, a pile of tablets was heaped on the old doctor's table (on the legs of which were used real lion’s legs, even the claws left intact as they were). From such weighty ancient knowledge, he tried to find a theory about the spirit of letters but to no avail. Nothing was written other than that “Letters are the kind that is controlled by God Nabu of Borsippa.[8] He had to solve the presence or absence of spirits in letters all on his own. Leaving books aside, the doctor spent the whole day staring at a single letter placed in front of him. A haruspex intuitively recognised all events by gazing at the liver of sheep. Following this method, he tried to find out the truth, or secret, by observation and contemplation. Then, a strange thing happened. When a letter was stared for a long while, it looked disrupted and became a mere aggregate of individual meaningless segments[9]. He became difficult to understand why the assembly of simple segments could have a sound and a meaning. The old scholar, Nabu-ahe-eribawas startled by discovering this mysterious fact for the first time in his life. Everything that he had taken for granted and overlooked for seventy years was neither a matter of course nor necessity. He felt as if the scales had dropped from his eyes.[10] What would bestow a certain sound and a certain meaning on the aggregate of mere independent segments? When the old doctor came to this point, he did not hesitate to acknowledge the existence of the spirit of letters. Just as the hands, legs, head, claws, belly, etc., unless controlled by the soul, would not be human, how could a mere set of segments have a sound and meaning without a spirit?

   

Starting with this discovery, the nature of the spirit of letters which was unknown until then gradually became apparent. The number of the spirit of letters must be as large as the number of things on earth and letters would give birth to offspring as field mouse does.

   

Nabu-ahe-eriba walked around the town of Nineveh to find those people who had recently learned letters and patiently asked each of them whether anything hadn’t changed after they knew letters. In this way, he was to try to clarify the effect of the spirit of letters on humans. Then, he had some strange (interesting) statistics. The overwhelming majority of people included those who said that they suddenly lost skill to catch lice after having known letters, who said that more dust tended to enter in their eyes not as before, who said that they became unable to sight eagles in the sky that had been seen well before, who said that the colour of the sky was not as blue as before, etc. “The fact that the spirit of letters damages the eyes of human is similar to what a maggot can make a hole to penetrate into the hard shell of walnut and eat the meat in the interior”[11], Nabu-ahe-eriba wrote a new note on the clay. A significant number of people said that, after learning letters, they had started coughing, sneezing, hiccupping, diarrhea and so on. “The spirit of letters seems to damage also the nose, throat and abdomen of human”, the old doctor wrote again. There were some people who said, after learning letters, their hair had suddenly turned thin. Those whose legs had weakened, those whose limbs had started to shiver and those whose jaws tended to dislocate were also there. At the end, Nabu-ahe-eriba had to write, “The extreme harms of letters are to damage the human brain and to paralyse the nerves.” Compared to before, craftsmen were less skilful, the warriors were timid and hunters missed to shoot lions more often, as clearly indicated by the statistics. Somebody had complained that after becoming familiar with letters he did not feel enjoyable when he slept with a woman, although it might not be for letters as the person was an old man above seventy years of age. Nabu-ahe-eriba considered: The Egyptians seem to regard the shadow of an object as a part of its soul[12]. Aren't the letters something like the shadow of objects?

   

Is not it the case that the letter to denote lion is the shadow of a lion? Then, doesn’t a hunter who learnt the letter of lion aim at the shadow, not the lion itself? Likewise, doesn’t a man who learnt the letter of woman hug the shadow of a woman, instead of the real woman? In the old days, prior to the flood of Pir-napishtim[13], when letters did not exist, all joy and wisdom came directly into humans. Now we only know the shadow of joy and the shadow of wisdom covered by a thin coat of letters. Recently the memory of people has been worsened. This is also a mischief of the spirit of letters. People can no longer remember anything unless they write it down. After wearing clothes, human skin became weak and ugly. With the invention of vehicles, the human leg became weak and ugly. With the spread of letters, people's heads no longer works.

   

Nabu-ahe-eriba knew an old bibliophage[14]. The old man was even more knowledgeable than Nabu-ahe-eriba. He reads not only Sumerian and Aramean, but even the Egyptian written on papyrus and parchment. There weren’t anything described about the ancient events that he did not know. He knew the weather of any day, month and year of the reign of King Tukulti-Ninib I[15]. However, he did not notice whether the weather today was sunny or cloudy. He also recited the words that the maiden Sabitu had comforted Gilgamesh[16]. But he didn't know how to console his neighbour who had lost her son. He also knew what costume Shammuramat, the consort of King Adad Nirari liked. However, he was completely unaware of what kind of clothes he was wearing now. How he loved letters and books! Unsatisfied with only reading, narrating and caressing, he once crunched the oldest clay tablet of the Gilgamesh legend, dissolved clay pieces in water and drank the solution, as he loved that particular tablet so much. He is a terrible myopia as the spirit of letters had mercilessly devoured his eyes. Since he read books with his eyes too close, the tip of his hooked nose had become callused, rubbed against the clay tablet. As the spirit of letters had also eroded his spine, he was such a hunchback that his jaw was almost touching his navel. But he probably did not know he was a hunchback, although he could write the letter of hunchback in five different languages. Doctor Nabu-ahe-eriba counted this man as the number one victim of the spirit of letters. Despite the misery of his appearance, this old man always looked happy —— indeed-totally enviably. Suspiciously Nabu-ahe-eriba attributed it to the insidious magical power of the spirit of letters, such as of the aphrodisiac.

   

Once, King Ashur-bani-pal had an illness. His court physician, Arad Nana, who observed the sickness was rather serious, borrowed the costume of the Great King, dressed it and disguised himself as the King of Assyria. By doing so, he tried to deceive the eyes of the Death Goddess Ereshkigal and transfer the illness from the Great King to himself.[17] Some young men cast distrustful eyes to this ancient common practice of doctors, saying it was unreasonable that a god such as Ereshkigal would not be cheated by this childish trick. Having heard this, Nabu-ahe-eriba, a scholar, showed a disgusting face. There was something strange in an attempt to make everything coherent, as the young men did, such as a man covered with dirt beautifully decorated only his toes. They didn't know the status of human being in the mysterious cloud. The old doctor considered such a shallow rationalism as a kind of illness. And it was without doubt the spirit of letters that caused that illness.

   

One day a young historian, a court registrar named Ishdi Nab, paid a visit and asked the old doctor, “What is history?” When he saw the old doctor look amazed, the young historian added an explanation. “There are various theories about the end of Babylonian King Shamash-shum-ukin, although it is certain that he put himself on fire. Someone is of opinion that in the last month, he was so desperate that he lived an unspeakably dissipated life, whereas another says every day he abstinently kept praying to God Shamash. There is a theory that he went into fire with only the first princess and there is another theory that he went into fire after throwing hundreds of concubines. After all, as everything literally turned to smoke, it is impossible to determine which one is right. In the near future, the Great King will give me an order to choose one of the theories and record it. This is just an example, but can history be like this?”

   

Seeing the wise old doctor wisely kept silence, the young historian changed the question as follows. “Does history mean some event that had occurred in the past? Or does it mean the letters on the clay tablet?”

   

In this question there seemed to be such a conflict that lion hunting was confused with the relief of lion hunting. The doctor felt it but, because he couldn't say it clearly, he replied as follows. “History is an event that had occurred in the past and that had also been recorded on a clay tablet. These two things ain’t the same thing.”

   

“What about the event that was mistakenly unrecorded?”

   

“Unrecorded? It's not a joke. An event that was not recorded means no event was there. After all, a seed that does not sprout is inherently as good nothing.[18] History means this clay tablet.”

   

The young historian looked at a tablet shown by the old doctor. It was the tablet in which the campaign of King Sargon to conquest Haldia recorded by Nabu-shallim-shunu, the greatest historian of the country. The seeds of pomegranate that the doctor had spit out while talking were dirtily sticking to the surface.

   

“Ishdi Nab, you still don't seem to know the terrifying power of the spirits of letters that are served by Nabu, the God of Sagacity of Borsippa. Once the spirit of the letters had captured something and revealed its own form, then that thing would be given immortal life. On the contrary, anything that was not touched by the powerful hands of the letters must lose its existence. The stars that had not been included in the ancient book of Anu Enlil do not exist. Why? It is because they weren't written in the book of Anu Enlil in letters. Gods get angry when the Great Marzuk (Jupiter) violates the border of the Shepherds (Orion) in the heavens[19], and Amorite people[20] suffer when an eclipse appears at the upper part of the moon. These events take place because they were written in letters in the ancient book. The ancient Sumerians did not know horses because they didn't have the letter for that beast. Nothing is more terrifying than the power of the spirit of letters. It is a big mistake if you and we think that we use letters to write. We are the servants of the spirits of letters, forced to write with letters. The harms caused by those spirits are also quite terrible. I am studying it now. You are now skeptical of the letters that had recorded history, probably because you have become too familiar with them and you are overwhelmed by their spirits.”

   

The young historian went home with a strange face. For a while, the old doctor was saddened that the poison of the spirits of letters was harming even the young able man. It was not a conflict that one became too familiar with letters and that he became doubtful about them. The other day, the old doctor ate up roasted meat of almost all one sheep with his natural hearty appetite and became reluctant for a while to see the face of a living sheep.

   

Shortly after the young historian returned, Nabu-ahe-eriba thought about him, holding down his head with thin curly-hair. “Today, I praised the power of the spirit of letters to that young man, didn’t I? It's a damn thing!” he clicked his tongue, “Even I am fooled by the spirit of letters.”

   

In fact, already some time ago, the spirit of letters had casted a terrible illness on the old doctor. It had started when he gazed at a letter for days to confirm the existence of the spirit of the letter. At that time, as mentioned before, the letter that should have a certain meaning and sound suddenly decomposed into mear an aggregate of segments, and since then, similar phenomena occurred for anything other than letters. As he stared at a house, it turned into a meaningless aggregate of wood, stone, brick, and gypsum in his eyes and head and he became ununderstandable why this could be the place for humans to live. It was the same for human body that was separated into various peculiar meaningless parts. It was hard to understand why the aggregate of such strange things could be a human being. It was not only the things that were visible to the eye. Daily activities and all customs of human being had lost their meanings due to the analysis phobia. Now, all the basis of human life looked to be doubtful. Doctor Nabu-ahe-eriba was almost mad. He thought, if he continued this study on the spirit of letters, then he would eventually be killed for by that spirit. Scared, he quickly compiled his research report and dedicated it to King Ashur-bani-pal. It was a matter of course that he added some political opinion: Assyria, the country of warrior, has now been completely undermined by the invisible spirit of letters. Almost nobody was aware of this. If we do not abandon our blind worship of letters now, we will be regretful in later time.

   

There was no reason for the spirit of letters to overlook this libellant. The report of Nabu-ahe-eriba had extremely displeased the Great King. This was natural for the Great King, an ardent admirer of the god Nabu and contemporary leading cultural figure. On the same day, the old doctor was ordered to be confined to his house. If it weren't the case of Nabu-ahe-eriba who was a teacher of the Great King from the latter’s childhood, he would have been sentenced to be flayed alive.[21] Frightened by the king’s unexpected ill humour, the doctor immediately realised that it was the wicked revenge of the spirit of letters.

   

But that was not the end. A few days later, when a great earthquake struck the area of Nineveh - Arbela, the doctor was happened to be in his own library. Since his house was old, the walls collapsed and the bookshelves fell down. Massive books —— hundreds of heavy clay tablets —— fell on this libellant with a terrifying cursing voice and he was miserably crushed to death.    (END)

   

The Original text, first published, obtained from: Bungakukai, No.2, Bungeishunjusha, 1 February 1942, p.138-151, by courtesy of The Museum of Modern Japanese Literature. (初出,『文學界』 第二號, 昭和十七年二月一日発行, 138-151, () 日本近代文学館の好意によりコピー入手)

   

   

List of citations (*Japanese article)

 

[Yasufiku 2001]*

Tomoyuki Yasufuku, “The ‘Mojika’ by Nakajima Atsushi - The process of its formation”, Bull. Bukkyo University Dept. Lierature, Kyoto, ( 07 ) 2001.05.11 (安福智行, 『中島敦「文字禍」論: その成立過程について』, 仏教大学京都語文 ( 07 ) 2001.05.11.)

 

[Matsumura 1995]*

Ryo Matsumura, Nakajima Atsushis Kotan (Old tales): Voice and Letters, Bull. Kokugo Kokubungaku Soc. (38) 76-85, 1995 (松村良,中島  敦『古譚』: 〈声〉と〈文字〉をめぐって,学習院大学国語国文学会誌 (38), 76-85, 1995-03-15);

 

[Yamashita 2017]*

Masafumi Yamashita, Notes and Annotations on Atsushi Nakajima's Mojika”, Bulletin of Chuo University - Nihon-Bungaku 6013-26, 2017 (山下真史, 『中島敦 「文字禍」の典拠詳解』, 中央大学国文 60, 13-26, 2017)

 

[Olmstead 1923]  

A. T. Olmstead, History of Assyria, Charles Scribner’s & Sons, New York,  1923

 

[Jastrow, Jr 1915]  

Morris Jastrow, Jr., The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1915

 

[van Ness Myers 1904]

Phillip van Ness Myers, Ancient History (2nd Revised Ed.), Gin and Co., 1904

 

[Breasted 1935]

James Henry Breasted, Ancient Times - A History of The Early World (2nd Revised Ed.), Gin and Co., 1935

 

[Budge 1901]  

Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, Egyptian Magic, Kegan          Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co..London 1901

 

[Peloubet & Peloubet 1897]

D. D. Peloubet & M. A. Peloubet, Select notes - A commentary On the International lessons For 1897, W. A. Wilde and Company, Boston 1897

 

[KJV] 

King James Bible, https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/

             

  

  

References and Notes


[1] The names of the monstrous beings were noted in Nakajima’s note - No. 6 [Yasufuku 2001]. The source is supposed to be: “Rabisu, the one lying-in-wait; Labasu, ‘overthrower’; Lilu and the feminine Lititu, ‘nightspirit’; Etimmu, ghost or shade, suggesting an identification of some demons with the dead who return to plague the living, Namtar, ‘pestilence’, …” in [Jastrow, Jr 1915, p.243].

[2] The period of King Ashur-bani-pal’ reign was 669–631 BC. Then, the twentieth year was 650 BC.

[3] Shamash-shum-ukin, an elder brother of Ashur-bani-pal who reigned as the King of Babylon since 668 BC was discontent with the expansion of Assyria. He rebelled in 652 BC but he was defeated in 648 BC and Babylon fell.

[4] The source is supposed to have been a paragraph in [Olmstead 1923, p.475]: “The fate of the citizens was terrible enough, and even those who had attempted to abandon the Babylonian prince in his last days were not received. They were carried off to Ashur to meet Ashur-bani-pal, and by the same sculptured bulls which had witnessed the assassination of Sennacherib, their tongues which had blasphemed the gods were cut out and they were deprived of life. The streets and public squares were choked by the bodies of those who had died of hunger and pestilence during the siege, and to them were added the slain in the sack of the city. There was great feasting for the wolves, vultures, and fish, for the dogs and swine which roamed the streets.”

[5] An account is found in [Olmstead 1923, p.587]: “Liver divination was the method of unveiling the future most in use at the Assyrian court. Throughout the whole world, at a certain stage of knowledge, the liver is conceived as the seat of the emotions, and the story of the last Assyrian century has shown how this belief survived side by side with the more familiar identification of this centre with the heart. While this belief was still dominant, Shumerian scholars had worked out an elaborate system of prediction based on the assumption that the future might be foretold by the most “knowing” part of the sacrificed sheep, the liver.”

[6] An account is found in [Olmstead 1923, p.386]: “The education of Ashur-bani-pal began early. At birth Marduk granted him a wide-open ear, an all-embracing understanding; Nabu, scribe of the divine hierarchy, endowed him with his own wisdom; from Urta and Nergal he obtained virility and unequalled strength. As he grew older he came to need teachers who were a little less divine. Among these, his father picked Nabu-ahe-eriba.”

[7] The author is supposed to have referred to the following accounts: “Higher interests were also cultivated among the Assyrians, and literature flourished. Assurbanipal, grandson of Sennacherib, and the last great Assyrian emperor, boasts that his father instructed him not only in riding and shooting with bow and arrow but also in writing on clay tablets and in all the wisdom of his time. A great collection of twenty-two thousand clay tablets was discovered in Assurbanipal’s fallen library rooms at Nineveh, where they had been lying on the floor for twenty-five hundred years.”, [Breasted 1935, p.160]; “Its fall was forever, and when two centuries later Xenophon and his ten thousand Greeks marched past the place, the Assyrian nation was but a vague tradition, and Nineveh, its great city, was a vast heap of rubbish as it is to-day.” [Breasted 1935, p.163], and others.

[8] The following accounts would have been referred to: “Nabu was the god of wisdom, he was also the god of Borsippa …” [Olmstead 1923, p471]; “Like all the other gods of Babylonia, Nabu starts on his career as a local patron. He belongs to the city of Borsippa, lying in such close proximity to Babylon on the west bank of the Euphrates as to become, with the extension of Babylon, almost a suburb of the latter. … Writing is his invention communicated to mankind, …” [Jastrow, Jr 1915, p.218-219]

[9] The corresponding word in the original text was “ = Lines”. Although “Wedges” may be more appropriate denote a component of a cuneiform letter, “Segments”, or lines of limited length, has been adopted in this translation.

[10] This phrase originated in the New Testament, Acts 9:18 “And immediately there fell from his (Saul’s) eyes as it had been scales: and he (Saul) received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized [KJV].” This saying is of daily use also in Japan, as the author of this novel has quoted.

[11] In modern knowledge, the maggot (of walnut husk fly, Rhagoletis complete) born from an egg laid on the surface of unripe fruit makes capillary to penetrate inside. The author would have written as if a maggot can make a hole to penetrate into the hard shell of walnut …, as Nabu-ahe-eriba, or ancient Assyrians would have comprehended. According to [Olmstead 1923, p.587], Sumerians had classified animals into “living beings,” i.e., men, vertebrates and birds, and “worms”, i.e., fish, true worms and other lower animals. They must have thought those lower animals were originated by abiogenesis. Note that even the father of zoology, Aristotle (384–322 BC), had thought that some living things could arise spontaneously from non-living matter; maggots from rotting meat, ... (Marshall, A. J. (ed), Parker, T. J. and Williams, W. D. (au), Textbook of Zoology: Invertebrates, MacMillan Education, 1972, p.1). As to the process of walnut shell hardening, cf. Nannan Xiao, Peter Bock, Sebastian J. Antreich, Yannick Marc Staedler, Jürg Schönenberger and Notburga Gierlinger, "From the Soft to the Hard: Changes in Microchemistry During Cell Wall Maturation of Walnut Shells",  Front. Plant Sci., 21 April 2020, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2020.00466

[12] The author is supposed to have read the following description in [Budge 1901, p.217]: “The peculiar ideas which the Egyptians held about the composition of man greatly favoured the belief in apparitions and ghosts. According to them a man consisted of a physical body, a shadow, a double, a soul, a heart, a spirit called the Jehu, a power, a name, and a spiritual body. When the body died the shadow departed from it, and could only be brought back to it by the performance of a mystical ceremony; the double lived in the tomb with the body, and was there visited by the soul whose habitation was in heaven. …”

[13] The Epic of Gilgamesh is regarded as the earliest surviving literature. Although the so-called "Old Babylonian" version which dates to the 18th century BC does exist in the form of copies, the epic inscribed on twelve clay tablets discovered in the Ashurbanipal Library is counted as the standard version. The story of flood was written on the Tablet XI, which was first discovered and translated by George Smith in 1872. To the present-writers understanding, it is briefly as follows. “Great Gods decided to cause a flood in the plain around Shuruppak on the banks of Euphrates River. One of them, Ea, repeated the plan to Pir-napishtim (Utnapishtim), and commanded him to build an ark, demolishing his house, and put all his family and followers, as well as all the beasts and animals of the field in it. A formidable storm came and the ark was drifted on the flooded water for six days and nights. On the seventh day the ark landed on Mount Nimush (also called Nisir) near confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Pir-napishtim sacrificed sheep and the pary settled there.” The legend is said to be the “Babylonian version” of Noah’s Ark.   

[14] As far as the present writer has surveyed, no scholar who was greater and older than Nabu-ahe-eriba has been found in literature. The author might have created this character as a double of Nabu-ahe-eriba himself.

[15] Tukulti-Ninurta I, reigned c. 1243–1207 BC as a King of Assyria. He attacked Babylon, besieged Babylon and captured the reigning king, Kashtiliash II (c. 1261-1254 .BC).

[16] The author is supposed to have referred to details in [Jastrow, Jr 1915, p.443-462].

[17]  The author might have been hinted by the descrition in [Olmstead 1923, p.412]: “The crown prince, Ashur-bani-apal, has the fever, the god is angry because of the king’s sin, let the king make his prayers of supplication in that day. The physician will make a substitute image in human form for the crown prince, with a view of thus deceiving Ereshkigal, the goddess of the dead. Shamash-shum-ukin, however, is well, he is in no need of medical attention.”

[18] The following teaching is found in a Sunday-school book, [Peloubet & Peloubet 1897]: “… In like manner, faith that is superficial, that is a mere belief of a creed or theory, so that it hath not works, the fruits that ought to come from faith, is dead, being alone. It dies as a seed that does not sprout, it has no issue beyond itself, it is dead in its very nature, as is proved by its not going out of itself.” The author might have learnt this from one of his uncles, Kwanyoku (関翊) who was an Anglican priest, or himself.

[19] In [Olmstead 1923, p.387], it is written, “If Jupiter enters Orion, the gods will rage against the land.” Nabu-ahe-eriba is said to have been an astronomer.

[20] The Amorite is a tribe that is said to have dwelled in the area to the west of the Euphrates (which was to become Syria by the 3rd century BC). In Bible, the Amorites is described as a certain highland mountaineers who inhabited the land of Canaan (Gen. 10:16).

[21] The punishment of being flayed alive seems to be commonly practiced in Assyria, as written in [van Ness Myers 1904], [Jastrow, Jr 1915], [Olmstead 1923], [Breasted 1935] and elsewhere.