Crystal Concepts

“Erasmus has no home, no real parental home, he was born in a vacuum.”

He puts his baptismal name between two adopted, at least not inherited, names. He spurned the language of his Dutch ancestors and preferred Latin. In his adaptation of “The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam”, Stefan Zweig spoke of a planned “covering up” of illegitimate, i.e. delegitimizing, descent. It was “annoying” to have been fathered by a priest. The author accuses Erasmus of having been forced to give birth to an unwanted child. Erasmus denied his fate by declaring himself to be Desiderius. In 1487 he joined the Augustinian order and a year later he took his vows. Without any particular piety he indulged his artistic inclinations. In 1492 the Bishop of Utrecht ordained him as a priest.

The “free-thinking and uninhibited writer” Erasmus remained a priest, albeit with secular scope. He obtained dispensation wherever the priestly shoe pinched him. Zweig recognized an “inner compulsion to be independent”.

Nana reflects on her own origins. She recognizes a clever tactician in Erasmus. The man who marked the beginning of his era avoids conflict and revolutionary rudeness. He avoids “useless resistance”. He prefers “to steal his independence rather than fight for it”.

Nana doesn’t like to rush into things either. She appreciates shady maneuvers and rewards those who recognize her sophistication. Sometimes she literally throws herself into a smile that is certainly unexpectedly tender, while she makes it seem like a minor matter that a man can drown in the sight of her lace-clad breasts.

High Mass of Love

It is brutally hot in your office. The air is stagnant. My top sticks to my back; I’m no longer wearing a bra. The decision was spontaneous, intuitive—an anticipation of what’s unfolding between us. We are drafting a provisional grammar of our closeness. I feel the freedom beneath the fabric and your gaze, which makes my nipples hard. Everything acquires a rhythm now, a pulse. You say nothing. You don’t have to say anything. You have reached my innermost core. I imagine addressing you by your historical title, in all seriousness—not to make myself smaller, but to welcome you onto my plateau of dreams. I know you to be qualified for the High Mass of Love. My navigation system has stored every trace of syllables you have ever laid down for me. Now there is only touch, tension, presence.

I know what I want. I want to become a professor. I want to assert myself in a world that was not waiting for me. I want to be smart, precise, unambiguous—even in the flow of footnotes. We talk about animal long-distance perception. About the oceanic resonating bodies of whales. Their capacity for acoustic communication across thousands of kilometers via low-frequency sound waves. You say something, and I get goosebumps. I react to something my ear doesn’t hear, but my body as a whole does. I register it as vibration, pressure, restlessness—or goosebumps. Low frequencies act directly on the body: on the diaphragm, the nervous system, the organs. They trigger fear, arousal, presence. I believe you can steer such processes. That makes you, to me, a modern magician. You use the low-frequency components of your voice to elicit trust and desire. I’m sure of it. Vibration and resonance—shamanic drum, didgeridoo, OM chant. These are tools of low-frequency communication. Blue whales and humpback whales produce extremely deep songs that travel through seawater with astonishing efficiency. These sounds, far below the human hearing range, can propagate over several thousand kilometers because the water scarcely absorbs them. The ocean acts like an acoustic lens: in the so-called SOFAR layer, sound waves move almost without loss. Some scientists even suspect that whales can hear one another across global distances, with a kind of planetary echolocation.

Between language, body, evolution, and intimacy… the office of the language master lies in the oldest wing of the university, founded in the Middle Ages on the foundations of a monastery from the Merovingian era, initially established as a knights’ college and built according to military-architectural principles. The outer walls consist of meter-thick blocks. The gate to the dean’s cell—historically the language master’s—is massive like a dungeon door. Cole’s realm resembles a museum. The shelves date from the early twentieth century. The abundance of books evokes botanical terms like wild growth, thicket, jungle. These are proliferating formations: stacked, layered, interlocked like archaeological sediments.

A Giacometti replica stands on the windowsill; daylight filters through leaded panes. I look into a clandestine inner courtyard, not accessible to the public, with ivy and a stone fountain. The world seems far away. On one wall hangs an age-patinated map of Indo-European language development next to a framed facsimile of a letter by Artaud. On a mahogany cabinet stands a globe by Vincenzo Coronelli, made in Venice in 1688—one of the most magnificent celestial or terrestrial globes of the early modern period. Coronelli was a cartographer, Franciscan, and scholar at the French court; his globes were reserved for kings. Louis XIV was a client. The artwork is hand-colored and offers a precise depiction of the worldview of the time—including mythological figures, sea monsters, compass roses, and astrological symbols. A glass-top table and a worn leather sofa from the 1970s belong to the eclectic ensemble. I wait for the moment when we first disarrange ourselves together on the couch. In my thoughts I open myself to you already, and it has an astonishingly intense effect. It’s as if you were touching me tenderly. I whisper my words of love into your ear of love—if only in my imagination.