Awake

The only certainty is that nothing is certain, and that there is nothing more miserable or more proud than man.

– Pliny the Elder

AWAKE

PRAISE FOR AWAKE

‘Reading Voetmann’s books makes me feel so alive. His voice is like no other, his hold on his material masterful. You will never read anything like Awake – a hardcore, pulsating portrait of a first century Roman weirdo. A wonderful and unpleasant treasure.’

– Olga Ravn

‘No one else can describe ancient life with such beauty and humour, while never sparing you from the gross and terrifying pain of being human.’

– Naja Marie Aidt

‘With a scholar’s knowledge and a poet’s playfulness, Harald Voetmann brings us into the mind and times of its protagonist, Pliny the Elder. Visceral and lyrical, entertaining and provoking, it evokes a dazzling world on the brink of destruction, resounding with our own conflicted age.’

– Sjón

‘Vivid, earthy, by turns hilarious, gross, and tragic, but always powerfully engaging. Reading and rereading this book remains a rare pleasure.’

– Susanna Nied

‘Awake is original, piercing, and richly exhilarating. Voetmann’s text is a sharp reminder of how powerfully and succinctly well-chosen words can create a world, render experiences, and express thoughts – in short, transport us, to places and in ways we could not have imagined.’

– Harper’s

‘A slim novel of ideas, seemingly turning its back on the present, or rather illuminating from within a turn that leads to the very history of European mentality.’

– Svenska Dagbladet

‘A flawless and sparkling little monument to human life.’

– Information

1

It is the same to me where I begin for I shall go back there again.

– Parmenides of Elea

It is the same to me where I begin for I shall go back there again. I shall go back to where I began. To the finding, in this case. I shall return to the finding that it is of no relevance where we begin. Though it must be said that this particular beginning – the moment when we first noted that we can begin anywhere, in turn granting each beginning its own irrelevance, yes, its very own – is more striking than others after all because it springs from a truth despite landing in falsehood. When I return to the point where we established the irrelevance of beginnings, the point is no longer a beginning. It is no longer subjected to the irrelevance of beginnings, but to the more general irrelevance of the whole, which naturally includes the point of beginning itself, which thereby loses all, or part, of its distinction. Wherefrom holds no more meaning than whereto, wherefore, where. ‘To,’ indeed, ‘to’ is the purest expression of irrelevance – to all this I shall return. Look around. There’s room here, and opportunity, you need only crane your neck to see what’s on offer. What it all comes down to is glimpsing something worth craning your neck for. Preferably far enough that if the head were severed from the outstretched and so proffered neck, there would be ample time to marvel at it spinning toward the desired object. The animals here refuse to let my body sleep off the wine and my work suffers for it. At dawn, the cocks on the mountainside crow, then the cocks by the coast respond, and soon after the birds initiate their trilling in the sky before, worst of all, the dogs launch into rabid barking. By noon, I am too drained to continue my work. I will have a bite of bread, perhaps an egg, then at least no cock will hatch from it, and drink the day’s first cup of wine. Otherwise, any attempt at sleep is futile. At about this point, human noises intrude. All human acts can be sorted into three groups: work, play, and sex. Apart from that there is only rest, which includes any revitalisation of the body such as bathing and supping, but rest, as we know, is not an act. Upon further scrutiny, we may narrow down the three categories. Play is training and education, and a child’s play is, in large measure, serious. Play is labour too. Sex can be either play or labour depending on the participant’s role and reasons for taking part, but as we have eliminated the category of play, there is only one option left. Sexual activity can only be defined as a kind of labour, and all participants would do well to strive for the superior work ethic of the slaves who know they must endure it. You won’t hear them cursing and fuming and acting out while others are trying to nap – trouble springs from the perceived masters of the situation who trust that their ejaculation, under the right circumstances, is for pleasure, never realising that their urge is but slavery imposed on them. I shall come back to this. Presently, we are left with one category that encompasses all human activity not counting the body’s revitalisation. That category is labour. The body rests in preparation for labour, and rest can hereby be considered an activity in and of itself, which is to say part of the activity since only one activity, labour, exists. As labour goes, rest is no more passive than whatever else we are made to endure, i.e. toiling at the grain mill, or being mounted by one’s owner. Let the toiler take solace in the fact that the world only has one ruler, and tyrants and cutthroats are governed by it too. And by this force, the cock crows, the prick throbs, the dog barks. I don’t know this despot’s name, but I curse it day in and day out. I rarely get my afternoon nap, even after drinking wine. Instead, I toss and turn for hours, and, once roused, only wine can lift the headache of prior consumption. By evening, I don’t always succeed in making meaningful conversation. When I arrived in this town, my reputation for wisdom gained abroad preceded me. The reputation still holds, though it is wearing thin. Now, right now, as I was dictating this, a bird shat on my hand. My cue, perhaps. Perhaps some authority is attempting to impart how meaningless it is to curse it. But why would it bother? Better to establish irrelevance and classify it incessantly until your tissue has hornified from inside out, than to curse and fume. From this point on, you may be considered wise, though don’t get overexcited. The bird’s dropping is yellow and thin with a dense white lump at the centre, which, upon closer inspection, will probably turn out to contain a sort of kernel. A seed. By way of a bird’s behind, a berry has ejaculated on me. But the seed has fallen on barren ground. My hand will not sprout. My hand shall not make anything sprout.

The little houses and tombs by the coast are indistinguishable from up here on the mountainside. Little, red-tiled blocks all. The necropolis lies closer to the sea whereas the living have settled on the slopes. For that reason alone, I can tell them apart. Each morning, the fishermen pass through the city of the dead with their nets. And the children scramble by, naked, on their way to bathe in the sea. At night, a few come out to make bonfires for their dead, and the beggars stand by to partake of