Art Journal
Moira Roth, Traveling Companions/Fractured Worlds Part 8: Of Surfaces and Depths. #2, R. and The Great Library of Alexandria
R. The Great Library and The Mouseion, #1He was young when he first arrived, just age sixteen. He had spent many months walking to Alexandria, when finally, worn out but excited, he reached the city in 295 B.C.
He came just when King Ptolemy 1 had appointed Demetrius of Phaleron, a former pupil of Aristotle, to take charge of collecting "all the books in the world."
Demetrius and R. worked together for many decades, assembling books, and conceiving this international world of the imagination.
R. ,The Great Library and The Mouseion, #2
Demetrius died, but R. mysteriously lived on.
Some said he was an alchemist who reincarnated himself over the centuries.
Certainly people from different times saw him in the Mouseion—for the Library had proved too small for the collection of books and under Ptolemy 111, a research center was build, one dedicated to the Muses.
It was there that R. sat in the afternoons.
In the mornings he could be seen walking through the streets of Alexandria, often by the water.
Deep in thought, he would wander, occasionally writing himself a note, or smiling suddenly, and bewitchingly, at a stranger.
Many were intrigued by him, but few had actually spoke to him.
R., The Great Library and The Mouseion, #3
One year, Eratosthenes of Cyrene was appointed as the chief librarian, and R. worked closely with him, reading the many drafts of Eratosthenes' On the Measurements of the Earth and his most famous book, Geographica.
R. , The Great Library and The Mouseion, #4
R. was often seen deep in conversation with Herophilus of Chalcedon.
He followed intently Herophilus' writings on anatomy. He puzzled at length over the argument that it was the brain and not the heart that was the center of human intelligence.
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The heart?
The brain?
Why the division, R. would ask himself as took his daily walks.
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In Roman times, the Mouseion became more and more a teaching institution, and R. gave some of its most famous lectures.
Students crowded the lecture room as he told them of astronomy, of poetry, of magic, of science, of love, of anatomy, of dreams and philosophy.
Always, he refused to choose between the heart and the brain, and his young students loved him for this stubborn stance—unlike that of any of the other scholars whose lectures they were also mandated to attend.
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When Plotinus came to Alexandria (he had been born in Upper Egypt), he sought out R., who was greatly drawn to Plotinus' belief in dualism and his advocacy of "unio mystica," the mystical union.
"Unio mystica," R. would murmur softly to himself as he walked.
R. , The Great Library and The Mouseion, #8
Over time, R. no longer wrote on parchment, but on the water.
He would trace, watched by fascinated crowds, long texts on the ocean's water, and then he and the crowds would gaze out as the words were swept out to sea on the waves.
For a great distance, one could still read these words. It was only beyond the horizon that they finally sunk, although they can still be seen, and read, by discerning divers at the bottom of the ocean floor.
