Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

His discourse made me observe the sick man more attentively and at the first glance I perceived that his head was as large as a butt and open in various places.

"Come", said Campanella, drawing me by the arm, "all the help we should think we were giving this dying man would be useless and would merely serve to disturb him. Let us go on, since his disease is incurable. The swelling of his head comes from his having over-exercised his mind; for although the elements with which he has filled the three organs or the three ventricles of his brain are very small images, they are corporeal and consequently occupy a large space when they are very numerous. Now you must know that this philosopher so swelled up his brain by piling into it image upon image that, unable to contain them any longer, it burst. This manner of dying is that of great geniuses, and is called Bursting with Wit."

We walked on as we talked and the first things which presented themselves to us furnished us with subjects of conversation. I should have liked to leave the opaque regions of the Sun and to return to those which are luminous; for the reader knows that all its countries are not diaphanous: some are obscure as in our world and but for the light of a Sun, which is seen there, would be enveloped in darkness. Now, in proportion as one enters these opaque regions one gradually becomes opaque and on approaching the transparent regions one sheds that dark obscurity under the vigorous irradiation of the climate.

I remember that, apropos this desire which consumed me, I asked Campanella whether the province of the philosophers were brilliant or shadowy.

"It is more shadowy than brilliant", he replied, "for since we still sympathize greatly with the Earth, our native land, which is opaque by nature, we have not been able to settle in the brightest regions of this globe. Nevertheless, when we so desire we can render ourselves diaphanous by a vigorous effort of will; and the greater part of the philosophers do not even speak with the tongue but, when they desire to communicate their thought, they purge themselves by a sally of their fantasy of a dark vapour under which their conceptions are generally hidden; and as soon as they have caused this darkness of the spleen, which darkened them, to return to its seat, their body becomes diaphanous and there can be perceived through their brain what they remember, what they imagine, what they judge; and in their liver and their heart what they desire and what they resolve; for although these little portraits are more imperceptible than anything we can imagine, yet in this world our eyes are sharp enough to distinguish easily the smallest ideas.

"Thus, when one of us desires to show his friend the affection he bears to him, his heart is seen to throw its rays as far as his memory upon the image of the person he loves; and when on the contrary he desires to show his aversion, his heart is seen to project swirls of burning sparks against the image of the person he hates and to retire as far as possible from it: similarly, when he speaks to himself the elements, that is to say, the character of everything he is meditating upon, are clearly seen either impressed or in relief, presenting before the eyes of the onlooker not an articulated speech, but a pictured story of all his thoughts."

My guide would have continued, but he was interrupted by an accident hitherto unheard of: and this was that we suddenly perceived the earth grow dark beneath our feet and the burning rays of the sky grow faint above our heads, as if a canopy four leagues square had been spread betwixt us and the Sun.

It would be difficult to tell you what we imagined at this occurrence; we were assailed by all manner of terrors, even by that of the end of the world, and none of these terrors seemed to us beyond all likelihood; for, to see night in the Sun or the air darkened with clouds, is a miracle which never happens there. But this was not all; immediately afterwards a sharp squealing noise, like the sound of a pulley turning rapidly, struck our ears and at the same time we saw a cage fall at our feet. Scarcely had it touched the sand when it opened and was delivered of a man and a woman; they dragged out an anchor, which they hooked in the roots of a rock; after which we saw them coming towards us. The woman led the man and dragged him along with menaces. When she was near us she said in a slightly excited voice:

"Gentlemen, is not this the province of philosophers?"

I answered that it was not, but that we hoped to arrive there in twenty-four hours, that the old man, who suffered me to remain in his company, was one of the principal officers of that monarchy.