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

Now, about Pradelli (3rd century of their chronology): I had been told that he wasn’t one of the top ones. Indeed his era was a time of recession in arts and creativity. For a long time his name and work had been forgotten but, in the beginning of their new era, the Nojere (their year 986 or our own 3382 AD), he was rather lucky since the people of that era were obsessed with searching among the old intellectuals for things they had “predicted without being aware of it”. And the main cause of that obsession was the fact that the “Great Revelation” they witnessed reminded them that past generations had many a time predicted and expressed—though faintly and vaguely—enough relevant things and clues whose importance and meaning their contemporaries could not and did not grasp.

The same can be observed in these verses of his that I heard tonight—the only ones that have survived:

Passai la mia vita qui piangendo

Da nostalgia di Qualche Cosa

Che on questo mondo non existe

They don’t owe their survival to their value, but to the fact that they were written 700 years before the Nibelvirch

.

Silvia recited them all in one fell swoop, piously and with a voice full of joy and enthusiasm even though a Parisian wouldn’t be able to bear her pronunciation.

Who would have known, however, where all the old hopes and sorrows of those sensitive human beings were aimed? Who would have thought how timid all those expectations would prove compared to what “truly exists”?

I believe I have already mentioned that, nowadays, they are strongly convinced that the one and only, the root cause of the entire historical culture of the world, is the yearning for the Samith; this sacred thirst of the heart and soul, this “metaphysical pain”, as the past generations used to call it. Without its existence our life would be the same as that of an animal or a robot, they say.

From the purist Volkies, the most popular ones were not necessarily the greatest ones. Selius, from the era of the first Nibelvirches—or the period right after them—is a typical example: he became popular with his “verse-cry”, in which he beautifully caught the atmosphere of astonishment that prevailed in the midst of the “holy horror” and skilfully revived the cry of ecstasy that was heard before the miracle happened. “Samith efir! Samith ves gret efir!” It was the cry that was heard from the Valley and more specifically from the Aidersen Institute, followed by the torrent of the unrestrained Roisvirch

that came to conquer human life. Sylvia knows all of these verses by heart. As she comes across the page, she recites it almost without looking at the text, while her moistened eyes prevent her from reading.

There it is! There’s the amazing flame,

that made everything sparkle!

You can finally see it from up here!

After a climb of centuries,

through countless tribulations,

we finally reached the top,

and we can see it from up here!

That’s what happened back then in the Valley—what is now considered as “the greatest event in human history”. It was followed by the unprecedented preaching: “Something exists, something so great that it’s impossible to grasp it with our human minds, something so great that the mere expectation of it will be enough to fill the world with endless happiness!”

Silvia continues to read. I’m sitting next to her and looking at her. The book jumps in her trembling hands. She’s trying to suppress her emotion. The last words she managed to utter, before she burst into tears, I think were of our own Lamartine:

Deux mille ans sont passés, je te cherche aujourd’hui.

Deux mille ans passeront et les enfants des hommes

S’agiteront encore dans la nuit où nous sommes.

It looked like her whole existence was protesting and crying out “no!”

Her voice, charged with emotion, faded while she read the last sentence. She mumbled the name of Volky and of the Valley and told me that if it hadn’t been for him, the pessimistic prophecy of the poet could have been verified. She wiped her eyes and stood up.

“It’s time to go, Andreas,” she told me.

GRETVIRCHAARSDAG

(At night)

Silvia and I were in the temple when, after midnight, Olaf Ledestrem directed one of the greatest parts of Ruthemir’s glorious Mass. Stefan and Hilda, who had arrived two days ago, were sitting next to us.

The first part of this magnificent work was played in the midst of complete silence, without the slightest sound being made from the 14,000 souls who were present!

I remember listening avidly and devoutly, feeling like I was hovering somewhere between the earth and sky, thinking to myself how helplessly impotent human hearing is to appreciate such a miracle and hoping it would never end!