A Funeral Shroud for Laertes - A Preface to the Third Edition of A Wheel Inside a Wheel
A Funeral Shroud for Laertes
A Preface to the Third Edition of A Wheel Inside a Wheel
We refer to history as being woven: a tapestry. It’s a familiar metaphor, and one that’s well suited to its subject. Plenty of my friends, those who have spent their single and precious lives in this universe thinking of less gloomy things than I do, would remind me that humanity’s history is much more tied to the history of cloth than it is to the developments of new kinds of killing machines. They might be correct.
Since the ancient Greeks, or even before, we have considered each human life a single thread: one that the fates spin from whatever souls are made of, measure out in years and days, and cut finally at the end. All we can do with that thread once it’s been cut is to pick it up and weave it in to that thing we call history.
In his memoirs, Julian Mintz explains his dedication to preserving Yang Wen-li’s memory and writings. The importance of history was that it could topple a dictator a thousand years later, with the pen win a war that could not be won by the sword. If only that were true!
No matter how we weave the threads of our forebears’ lives into the shape we call history, that will not bring them back to life, and it will change neither the past nor the present. And yet, we try.
When I began writing this story, it was because the men and women described— in the memoirs of Wolfgang Mittermeyer, the private letters of Annerose von Grunewald, the scattered writings of Yang Wen-li, the old photographs, the contemporary texts— all of these people in the weaving seemed so vivid and larger than life. I spent countless hours, many sleepless nights, picking up the tapestry created by others and turning it over and over in my hands.
The longer you stare at a fabric, the more you become aware of how it is constructed. Warp and weft slide over and around each other, obscuring threads from view and uncovering them again. And as much as a fabric is made up of fibers, it is also made of the spaces in between them.
When I start pulling out one thread to look at it more closely, the whole thing begins to fray. Like Penelope, I can unweave the funeral shroud and weave it back up again. I can switch the warp and the weft, to see what parts of the thread become hidden, and what are revealed.
It has surprised me how much people have enjoyed this game I’ve been playing. This is the third edition of _ A Wheel Inside a Wheel _ , and, as I sit here writing this preface for my publisher, I’m struck once again by the strange feeling, the knowledge that, for many people, my versions of these men and women of history will be the ones that truly come to life in their minds. The story of Hank von Leigh and Reinhard von Müsel will feel more urgent and compelling than photographs in a dry history textbook, facts memorized for a test, cold statues in the center of the square.
Although I have tried to construct a story that feels true, it is only a story. But perhaps the same can be said of every attempt to rationalize history. Anything beyond a simple list of facts is an extrapolation, and even those who were there, who participated, were unable to tell anything close to the complete truth. Annerose von Grunewald famously burned much of her correspondence; Wolfgang Mittermeyer’s memoirs have glaring omissions; Julian Mintz could not resist the urge to ‘translate’ Yang Wen-li’s life and make it more of a series of parables than a life story.
We all tell the stories we can bear to tell, trying to bring the long-dead and well-loved back to life once more, if just for a moment, if just for the time it takes to turn a page. Three hundred years of distance has not given me a scrap more of objectivity, I’m sorry to say.
My view is more limited than I would like. I’m sitting out on my balcony, looking across the capital city. In the distance, I can see the space elevator, still standing. On the horizon, the capitol’s lights glitter gold. In the square down below me, there’s a statue of Kaiser Reinhard’s son, Kaiser Alexander. I can’t understand these people and their times except through the lens of my own, and through the actions that brought us to where we are.
Why did I choose to tell the story that I did? Because it felt like the only one I could tell. Because I’m blind to every other.
But the tapestry did not weave itself, the images in the fabric did not leap into being of their own accord. I chose the threads and their colors, and I wove it together, day after day. It’s hard for me to imagine a life in which Reinhard does not stretch his hand to the stars, trying to grasp the whole universe. There are places, even in this story, where it’s clear where the limits of my imagination lie. There are places where I fumble, where I pull away from things I find too painful to contemplate. If you look, you will find those places.
_ A Wheel Inside a Wheel _ is a story about history, but it probably reveals more about my world and myself than it does of Yang Wen-li or Kaiser Reinhard.
Kaiser Reinhard von Lohengramm, studying the life of Alexander the Great, had access to the same texts as I do. I’m sure when we looked into the same eyes— one as blue as sky, one as dark as night— each of us would bring back to life a different man in our mind. The picture we would be compelled to weave would be too different. But what I would give to read the history that Kaiser Reinhard would have written. What I would give to have read more of Yang Wen-li’s. As I grow older, the more I believe that the truest reflection of ourselves will always be in the way we speak of others.
I am grateful for all the texts that have brought these people to life for me. When I was researching and writing this story, I felt often as though I was visiting old friends. They can neither speak to me nor hear me shouting, but when I read the words I wrote years ago, I’m back as I was then: unweaving the history, and restringing my loom.
N. Rome
335 N.I.C.
Phezzan
About the Author
Nat Rome is the author of several historical and fantasy novels. Rome received a degree in space engineering from Mittermeyer Polytechnic Institute on Phezzan, and worked as a teacher and engineer before discovering a passion for writing.
Rome’s historical nonfiction has been published in several journals, including the _ Mintz University Review _ and the _ Odin Historical Society Press. _