Chronicles From The Future: The amazing story of Paul Amadeus Dienach

The Greek Macedonian theosophist had obviously worded the above thoughts in impeccable purist Greek (since he was infused with this linguistic tradition). I, however, transcribe them here in the vernacular, since it is the variant of this entire pre-introductory and critical note. He was assisted in reading the manuscripts by a young German-speaking reader, a relative or a friend of his—a student of the pedagogical academy or an archaeologist if I remember correctly. He was the only one among the four not to have mastered Dienach’s mother tongue. He had not read the entire manuscript, he said. Nevertheless, he talked to me about them. He believed that only the “First Diary” and the “Second Diary” were actually written by Dienach himself. He attributes the Diary with the Chronicles From the Future to Northam. Regarding Northam, he also believed that at the age of twenty-eight he was meant to be—upon some very serious injury, which had temporarily led to his clinical death—Paul Dienach’s reincarnation, which is, he says, “a totally rare case of reincarnation since it occurred in a European region of our own sphere.”

I remember that in one of our meetings this theosophist and Mason and respectable friend formulated the thought that all those who had happened to meet Dienach in person and then read his Diary would have made. The thought that the author of these texts bore in mind the same facts, the same things, the same incidents, the same “material” in a word, on which the future historians shall work after a very long time. The difference is that the latter shall give this material the form of historical research and historiography and their methodology shall be totally different. Here, Dienach handles that same material as a traveller-narrator and assigns it the external form of “travel fiction” of a somewhat literary nature in the wording of the text and with that embellishment which was so familiar to his mentality and did not fit with the usual style of our times. I remember my respectable friend added that the most interesting element underlying these texts is the retrograde perspective of times not too far from us now (the 21st and the 22nd centuries) that can be adopted by someone recording historical impressions in those very distant years in the future.

George M. Papachatzis

August 1966

FIRST DIARY

REMEMBRANCES FROM THE PAST

December 2nd, 1918

I have decided to write a bit every day so that I can tell my sad story, little by little, from beginning to end.

During the first twenty-one years of my life, you would think I was the happiest person on earth. It’s been eleven years since then — eleven unbearable years. The only thing I am longing for now is some solace or something to keep me occupied.

It feels like yesterday, those happy days of craving a never-ending bliss with Anna. It can’t be true that this love has had such a sad and irreparable ending, that Anna has been dead for so many years now, that everything has faded away. No, I can’t believe it. Nine whole years without her…

“Why do you keep torturing yourself by thinking about all that?” they ask me. I understand. I need closure, but it is hard to find.

You do not know. Our love was no ordinary love. We were still at school when we fell in love with each other. Since then I had been imagining her name next to mine.

That man who brought destruction into our lives and sent her to the grave never loved her! He never considered Anna his one and only, like I did. He never saw anything in her eyes.

When I was young, I would stare for hours through my window, which overlooked hers. And when the weather was foul, that is when I would not budge an inch from there! I saw the people hurrying along, smiling at the thought of a warm soup and a cosy bed at home while I was wishing that the weather would continue so that I’d have a better chance of seeing her.

“What is Anna feeling at the moment? What does this colourless world look like through her eyes?” I would think.

And when I saw her in the lamplight, holding her embroidery, my longing became a life goal vindicated, my salvation from loneliness…

Only on holidays did I wish for good weather because a storm would lessen my chances to happen upon Anna and her family in the park. But still, I became nervous. I would have to greet her and it would be shameful for her parents to see me blush with embarrassment.

How happy were the days that followed! Shortly before her brother left the city to study, I got to know him better. He invited me to his home and I went many a time indeed. I swear to God, my acquaintance with Anna was not the product of my own initiative. I never would have found the courage. Those who have loved purely and vigorously in their early adolescence are well aware of that and deeply understand it.