Adam Erlich Sachs' THE ORGANS OF SENSE

It was well known at that time that meteorological conditions in Prague were usually connected to conditions in the Emperor's mind, a phenomenon that certain churchmen as well as the vulgar attributed to the action of demons flitting in and out of the emperor's head, which evidently they could, on this theory, enter at will - "anything of course can be explained by recourse to a head entering demon."

While the title and stunningly odd cover art of Adam Erlich Sachs' stunningly odd The Organs of Sense suggest that this weird little novel will chiefly concern itself with how we apprehend the world directly, the text is occupied with a very different but related matter: how most of what we say we "know' about the world actually comes at many removes from such direct apprehension. 

Told as an encounter between a young Gottfried Leibniz (he of the monads and the famous dispute with Isaac Newton over which of them could claim to have invented calculus*) and an elderly, blind astronomer, The Organs of Sense never lets the reader forget the chain of custody through which the facts and ideas being discussed are coming to us. We are constantly reminded, for instance, that our knowledge of what happened in this encounter and what was said comes to us via later writings of Leibniz.** And very, very often, we are also reminded how various anecdotes the astronomer shares with Leibniz reached the astronomer, as when he relates a story in which the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II punked his art agent over how dumb it was for that agent to hold forth for an absurd length of time over the various technical and art historical qualities of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's painting, Water, without having once mentioning fish. I mean... Look.

Anyway, the astronomer originally heard the story from Emperor Rudolf's Court Chamberlain, who presumably had to oversee clean-up efforts after Rudolf convinced his art agent that he was facing severe punishment for being a phony and a blowhard and the art agent wet himself. 

So yes, there are some amusing moments in this otherwise very serious book. 

But why has Leibniz traveled out of his way, right after being denied his doctorate for his first learned publication, to meet an unnamed blind astronomer in his remote mountain observatory? 

Because not only does this astronomer claim to have invented the telescope (a feat usually credited, in a prefiguring of Leibniz' future in the calculus dispute, to someone more famous) and has in fact built the longest one then in existence, but he also claims that doing so led directly to the loss of his eyes (he is not only blind but has empty hollows where his eyes were, but, as we soon learn, his tear ducts are still intact and functional); and not only has he invented and built the greatest of telescopes but lost his eyes, but he also claims he can still see through said telescope***, and that in doing so he, alone in all the world, has predicted a total solar eclipse for the very day and location on which and to which Leibniz has made his scientific pilgrimage. 

Leibniz wants to be there to see whether or not the old guy is right.

And meantime, they have a few hours to kill. During which the astronomer relates his story to Leibniz and makes a frequent show of putting an empty eye socket to the viewfinder of his telescope, "looking" for a moment, and then jotting something down with a quill. He is adding to his catalog of stars, which he is determined will be longer than anybody's.

Of course I thought of this scene from what is perhaps my very favorite movie of all time, Peter Greenaway's**** Drowning by Numbers:

Will the eclipse actually happen? Will we find out how the astronomer still "sees?" Will we get to find out what he's been writing down? Will his dad ever realize his dream of being re-appointed the Imperial Sculptor?

Speaking of the astronomer's dad, fans of a fictional trope that's turning up a lot in late 20th and early 21st century fantasy fiction makes an appearance of sorts here: that of an actual, physical city that is a tangible representation of a human creator's memory palace. I'm speaking mostly of Jeffrey Ford's Well-Built City and of Alex Pheby's Cities of the Weft and maybe also Jeff Noon and Steve Beard's Gogmagog and Ludluda. Is that enough to call it a trend or a trope? I feel like Christopher Priest and Susanna Clarke may have played with it, too. At any rate, the Vienna of Emperor Maximilian's day, the astronomer insists to us via Liebniz, via Liebniz' translator, was a physical representation of the mind of the astronomer's father, who had designed most of its facades and buildings and sculptures during his time as Imperial Sculptor to Maximilian. Who was later fired by Rudolf when Rudolf dumped all of Maximilian's functionaries and moved to imperial court from gold and marble Vienna to "black-spired" Prague.

And it is in Prague that the astronomer, or so he tells Leibniz, who tells us via his unknown translator, loses his eyes and loses credit for inventing the telescope and loses his dignity to become, well, the punchline of a shaggy dog story, the point of which really seems to be that "learning math is important, actually."

To the point where I almost think that conveying this is, actually, the point of this novel, for all that it mostly consists of amusing scenes of Hapsburg court politics and pseudoscience and discovery and madness, feigned and un-.

By the way, this is also very much an alternate history in addition to its other attributes: the Rudolph II of The Organs of Sense seems much the same as our historical Hapsburg, but book-Rudolph  had fewer children with his mistress and gave them different names, though the Prince Heinrich of the novel shares the outlines if not the details of the real eldest son's, Julius', main claim to fame, as a murderer. Heinrich comes to relate this story in considerable and exhausting detail to the astronomer while the astronomer is disguised as a priest come to hear Heinrich's confession, adding yet another layer of indirect storytelling to the text. 

Which Sachs' continues to emphasize, so at least once we are reminded that one of the princesses told something to Heinrich, who told the disguised astronomer, who years later told Liebniz while they awaited an eclipse that may or may not happen, who relayed the tale as part of a journal article, which a translator then rendered into English, from which Sachs derived the story he is telling us. 

Got that?

*A significant factor in the vast and convoluted plots of Neal Stephenson's incredible trilogy, The Baroque Cycle, a perennial favorite for re-reads, chez moi.

**And yes, adding still further to the chain of custody through which this story has passed, our actual narrator for this overall account is the unnamed translator of this fictional account of this fictional event in the life of the very real Leibniz.

***Yes, of course I'm thinking of how Paul Atriedes can still "see" in Dune Messiah. This astronomer's "vision," too, may be "oracular."

****Duh!