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Christopher Columbus - Diario of Christopher Columbus First Voyage to America
This is probably the most research I have put into a Small Works List entry. It often happens that I have no idea who the author is and what they have written that is most significant. I am thinking here of Ki No Tsurayuki and trying to track down what he wrote inside of the Kokin Wakashu. Then I think about Guaman Poma whose name couldn’t have been more obscure from me, but it was clear what the document he would be known for. Isaac Newton also presented some problems for me to get a document that I could actually understand.
Christopher Columbus is probably one of the most famous, or infamous, people who ever lived. Towns, Countries, parks, statues, a national holiday that has recently been renamed (and for good reason), and there isn’t a clear book or text that he wrote? How odd is that? I did a bit of Googling and I found that Penguin Classics has a collection of documents that they package together and call it The Four Voyages. I ordered this book to find out that most of what is in that book is not directly written by Columbus himself. Then I found out that Bartolome de las Casas abridged and translated Columbus’ first voyage log and included a portion of it in his History of the Indies. He actually translated the whole thing but that whole translation was lost from 1531 to the 1820s which is par for the course for these early Americas texts like Guaman Poma and Huarochiri Manuscript.
So, I checked out a bunch of different editions of this document and I finally found one that I liked, Diario of Christopher Columbus First Voyage to America which had the Spanish translation on one page and the English on the other. I found an Audible audio book that was a faithful translation of just the first voyage and I listened to it in all one setting. It was a captivating account of a pretty terrible person trying to write a sort of travel brochure to the King of Spain and to the Church officials that would read his work and keep on the good side of each constituent. This is a deeply rhetorical document that tries to capture the essence of the voyage, make himself look as good as possible while having a pretty terrible trip by his own terms, not to mention the atrocities he admits to in his own journal.
Listen, here is a thought experiment that I have asked several people in my life to get a baseline of what they remember about Columbus. Everyone can name the three ships. Everyone can name the year, and the basic outline of the story. A Spanish (actually Italian) guy wants to find a new route to India for the spice trade and ends up finding a different place all together. But beyond that, what do you actually know about the voyages, what happened, and what happened just after it? I asked two Scottish friends of mine, I asked a young British student that I have, and a wide range of professors, friends, and family members and no one I know has any in-depth information about what happened on these voyages.
Columbus’ first voyage does not show a seasoned sailor in charge of the nature of the voyage. He doesn’t know where he is going and the first thing he does, literally on day one, is he lies to his crew about how far they have actually gone. Before he really sets out in earnest, one of the ships has a broken rudder that cannot be repaired. Beyond this, when he gets to the ‘new world,’ Columbus doesn’t think that he would have made it to India, he thinks he would have made it to Japan but he knows that he hasn’t traveled far enough to get to Japan so he is confused as to where this place could be. As soon as he makes landfall, he asks the locals where the mainland is, where their king is, and who they are but he doesn’t have anyone with him that can translate for him. He references often how he communicates via symbols and hand gestures.
He describes the indigenous people like children, naïve and unprepared. He constantly references how they do not wear any clothes and how the women are beautiful. He describes them physically often and that they do not have any metal. The first people he meets do not seem to have a good handle on where other things are even in their own area of the world. He notices that some of them have gold in their noses, and so he knows they know what gold is and this is how he thinks these local people can be helpful to him and the cause of Spain. He asks them where they get their gold from but they don’t really tell him, and when they do they reference a place that they can’t help get him to. At some point, Pizone, the captain of the Pinta, decides he is done with Columbus and sets off on his own to find the gold he thinks he can find. Columbus takes captive some women and children to help him on board his ship and to convince the other islanders that he is not a bad person (weird choice). He says that every island he goes to the people flee before he gets there and thinks they are cowards. Word travels fast, I imagine, when a whole new civilization shows up. If he were a nice guy and would tell the whole story of what is happening here, maybe people would not keep fleeing before he gets to their island.
This is a deeply fraught text that sort of exudes the reason in and of itself why this story is not remembered in any coherent way. From the beginning, this was a stumble into an invasion story and Columbus realized that pretty quick. He figures out pretty quickly that there was no mainland, and that each one of these islands is basically a self-sufficient but deeply under-resourced community that does not have to protect itself from invaders because there are none. Each island is aware of and is terrorized by an island of cannibals nearby but they know where those people are and have ways of dealing with them. The Spanish ships offer something totally new for these people and by Columbus’ admission enter into relationship with him in a fairly trusting way. Columbus takes this as naivete and weakness which is odd because this is all that he prepared for.
Columbus is a bad dude, that’s the long and short of it and the reason why this book isn’t more widely read is because people knew it and didn’t want to tell that story. He is also a bad sailor. He runs his only ship aground on a sand bar in what he talks about as some of the most wide open harbors in the world. He goes to bed and leaves his second in command in charge of the night watch, and that person entrusts this duty to a ‘boy’ who doesn’t get a name. This is not very good sailing we are doing here.
By the end of his trip, he finally runs into these cannibals who attack his ship when he is getting ready to leave. They get the best of him, but they chase them away pretty quickly and it feels like Columbus saves this incident for last to sort of position the narrative that he gave these people a chance, that he offered them a peaceful diplomatic approach and they respond by attacking him. I don’t think I will read the 2nd, 3rd or 4th journey as I imagine it will only get worse but I feel like this is Columbus way of setting the stage for what happens next.
Down the Rabbit Hole I Go with Washington Irving – The Life of Christopher Columbus
It is hard to piece together without getting way down in the weeds here, but it appears that by the time Columbus’ voyage logs are rediscovered in the early 1800s, this is when Washington Irving gets involved to write the comprehensive biography of Columbus. Irving is an interesting choice for this because of his background with writing local legends and folklore which is definitely the stank he puts on the Columbus account. It seems to be that the concept of the earth being flat and that story line being a crucial part of the Columbus narrative is a totally fabricated notion wholly invented by Irving. I talked with a astronomer friend of mine who seems to agree with this notion though he may not have been aware of exactly where this idea came from. I have included the quote as I can see it from Irving’s biography of Columbus volume 1.
I will note here that this idea is not mentioned once in the First voyage, not even referenced. Columbus thought he was going to land in Japan first and then work his way down to India from there. Columbus knew the world was round and knew where Japan would be the most eastern island he would approach first.
Irving believes that Lactantius and Augustine were the leading theological thinkers during Columbus’ time which is a weird thing to think. I imagine Aquinas might figure more prominently then but whatever.
“The passage cited from Lactanius to confute Columbus, is in a strain of gross ridicule, unworthy of so grave a casusist. “Is there any one so foolish,” he asks, “as to believe that there are antipodes with their feet opposite of ours; people who walk with their heels upward, and their heads hanging down? That there is a part of the world in which all things are topsyturvy: where the trees grow with their branches downward, and where it rains, hails and snows upward? The idea of the roundness of the earth,” he adds, “was the cause of inventing this fable of the antipodes, with their heels in the air, for these philosophers, having once erred, go on in their absurdities, defending one another.”
“More grave objections were advanced on the authority of St. Augustine. He pronounces the doctrine of antipodes incompatible with the historical foundations of our faith; since, to assert that there were inhabited lands on the opposite side of the globe, would be to maintain that there were nations not descended from Adam, it being impossible for them to have passed the intervening ocean. This would be, therefore, to discredit the Bible, which expressly declares, that all men are descended from one common parent.
Such were the unlooked - for prejudices which Columbus had to encounter at the very outset of his conference, and which certainly relish more of the convent than the university. To his simplest proposition, the spherical form of the Earth, were opposed figurative texts of scripture. They observed that in the Psalms the heavens are said to be extended like a skin, that is, according to commentators, the curtain or covering of a tent, which among the ancient pastoral nations was formed of the skins of animals; and that St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, compares the heaven to a tabernacle, or tent, extended over the Earth, which they thence inferred must be flat” (Irving 76).
So there’s that, huh?
John Milton – Paradise Lost
I decided to read Paradise Lost (as a randomized big book list entry) because a professor friend of mine has to read this text for his dissertation and so I decided to jump in here and read along with him. A history professor friend of ours also decided to read it with us and so I decided that is random enough for me, and jumped in.
I actually began reading Paradise Lost in the sort of ‘proto-list’ phase during the first COVID summer. I thought that I would try to engage with some classic literature because Audible had a bunch of books for free then and we all needed something to do. I powered through Frankenstein, loved that, and the next book on the list for free then was Paradise Lost. I tried then, but I just couldn’t get my head around it, and left it undone. This time we had a deadline and I thought I would really try to sink my teeth into it, and I am glad I did. I loved it.
I went back to the audiobook but I took a different approach this time. I would listen to sections of it at a time, and then when I finished a book, 1 of 12, I would stop, read a short summary of it on Sparknotes or whatever, and make sure that I was tracking with the narrative. Then after I read the summary, I went back and actually read the text silently or I would play the audio book version again with the text in front of me. I did this for the first 4 or 5 chapters until I felt like I was comfortable enough with the cadence of the work. After that, I would listen to the audio book and then I would read a summary then by the time I got to book 9, 10, 11, and 12 - I was just listening to the audio book because I was so engrossed in the story that I didn’t want to stop and slow down and reread.
I loved this text. Just like War and Peace, there is a part of me that doesn’t want to like this book because people are supposed to like these books but it is so worth the work to get deeply inside of this story. I have study Christian theology and the Bible as a text at the graduate level, and I know the content that he is describing quite well but the way that Milton talks about it is so unique and so well crafted that it is as if I am encountering these ideas anew. It is incredible. Also, the way that he shifts the locus of the action of the stories here is fascinating. Almost nothing happens as it is happening but is largely told in a way that is sort of recovering the narrative throughout the work. Most of what I have written here is about the text as a thing and not addressing the work itself because it is almost too much to contend with.
So much has been written about this text that it feels like an impossible task to address here. Even the first story takes place just after the action happens, Satan and his crew are reeling from being kicked out of heaven. He assembles a force and they talk through next steps. There is some deeply fascinating stuff happening here. Then Satan decides to go off on his own and charge the gates of hell by himself. Then he has one of the strangest interactions in the history of literature with his ‘daughter’ Sin which is just a bit too much for me really. Sin and Death are guarding the gates of hell and they let Satan out. As soon as Satan gets out he encounters Chaos on his way to Earth suspended on a golden chain from heaven which is a majestic image. As soon as Satan makes his way to Earth, God and the rest of the Trinity are aware of his actions, and God and the Son discuss what will have to happen now that Satan has taken this turn. It is in this moment that I am alive with questions and retracing all of these terrible ideas of predestination and free will that I have argued with seminarians about for hours. Milton spells it all out here in the most clean and earnest way that I am sort of mad that it took me this long to figure all of this out. Eve telling Adam about her dream where Satan first tempts her is a mystifying scene.
Adam working through what happened as he retells the incident to Michael is a very interesting moment where you can feel the love for Eve here in the tension of loving that which lets you down, choosing Eve over the will of God, being trapped by circumstance in a way that is all too human and no easy answer here is just f***ing masterful in a way that feels modern and full of pathos that is sort of aggravating how beautifully written it is. Its almost too much for one document. Read this text.
Russian Circles does it for me here. With the very dark materials being read in this month’s selections, Russian Circles has this punishing, deep, rhythmic tone that propels you through the reading. Russian Circles is one of my favorite post rock bands, their entire catalog is just one continuous string of excellent mood setting notes. Pelican, Russian Circles, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros, and This Will Destroy You are all groups that I have on my list to see live at some point but I will be the weird in the back reading a book, hopefully not Tale of the Heike. Tune into Memorial to get a glimpse of what Russian Circles is all about.
Currently Reading: I am still reading Tale of the Heike. It’s not that it is bad, but it is long and there is no audio book version of it. I really enjoy the sections that I do read but it is not a page turner. It is a disciplining text that makes you work for the little nuggets of gold you stumble across as you encounter it on its own terms.
I pulled The Lamentation Over the Destruction of Ur from the Ancient Anonymous Forest and let me tell you I regret pulling in all of these strange ancient texts. But who knows, they may be fun.
If you have gotten to this point yet again, thank you for reading along. This is a labor of love for me, and knowing that others take part in it even if it is just skimming through is well worth the work. Thanks again.