Q by Luther Blissett (poetry books to read txt) 📕

‘Some other time. We are awaited at court, and I wouldn’t like to waste the little time at our disposal in idle boasting. Let’s talk business.’

‘Of course.’ A swift clap of the hands and a boy in a white tunic brings a tray with a steaming pot and some cups.

The servant pours a dark liquid, with an intense and unfamiliar scent.

I look at Jossef.

He talks to me in Flemish, the language of those far-off days in Antwerp.

‘This is the business we’re going to talk about. Try it.’

A diffident smile. The hot liquid goes down my throat, a strong, slightly bitter taste, then a sudden sensation of vigour and a sharpening of the senses. A longer sip, and the grains that had settled on the bottom of the cup are left on my tongue.

‘Fine, but I don’t understand…’

‘It’s called qahv�. It comes from a plant that grows in the regions of Arabia.’

The merchant hands us a little bag of green beans, and Jossef takes out a handful.

‘You roast them and grind them to powder, and they’re ready to infuse in boiling water. They’ll go crazy for it in Europe.’ He senses my puzzlement. ‘The Sultan is demonstrating his appreciation of the services and information that we’re supplying to him, but it’s always wise to have a few other projects, a few good deals to develop. Believe me, the coarse people of Europe are going to appreciate, one by one, these little pleasures that make life worth living.’

I smile and think of my tub full of warm water.

Jossef goes on: ‘They’re already setting up shops here where you can drink restoring beverages. Places like this one, where you can talk, do business and smoke tobacco from these fantastic water pipes. You’ll see, it won’t be long before we introduce similar habits to Europe. We’ll just have to start sending bags of these precious beans along our commercial routes and showing people how to use them.’

‘Europe isn’t keen on pleasures, Jossef, you know that.’

‘Europe’s finished. Now that they’ve signed their agreement, they’ll start fighting each other again, chasing a dream of barbarous supremacy. The world is ours.’

The boy refills the cup.

I draw a good mouthful of smoke from the mouthpiece of the narghile. My limbs relax and I sink into the cushion.

I smile. No plan can take everything into account. Other people will raise their heads, others will desert. Time will go on spreading victory and defeat among those who pursue the struggle.

I sip with satisfaction.

We deserve the warmth of baths. May the days be aimless.

Do not advance the action according to a plan.

Characters, cities, documents

Thanks�

For their indispensable contribution the authors would like to thank: Silvia Urbini, Andrea Alberti, Susanna Fort, Guido Novello Guidelli Guidi, Gianmassimo P. Vigazzola and Antimo Santoro.

Captions

In a flyer of 1616, the chief stages of the life of Martin Luther. ‘Therefore let everyone who can, smite; slay, and stab […] remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you.

Thoms M�ntzer in a sixteenth-century engraving by Christoffel van Sichem. ‘So tell me, wretched and disgusting vermin, who it was that appointed you prince of the people?’ (Letter to Count Mansfeld, 12 May 1525)

Jan Matthys in an engraving by van Sichem. In the background, his death during the siege of M�nster.

‘God is going to sweep his threshing-floor!’

John of Leyden in a 1536 engraving by Heinrich Aldegrever.

‘The epic of the Anabaptists and the legends of the enemies have turned us into monsters of shrewdness and perversion. Well, in truth, they were the horsemen of the apocalypse. A baker prophet, a pimp poet and a nameless outcast, an eternal fugitive.’

Bernhard Knipperdolling in a 1536 engraving by Heinrich Aldegrever. ‘We have begun the struggle, and we will see it to its conclusion.’

Melchior Hofmann in a print by van Sichem.

‘One of the most eccentric prophets I have ever met, quite unique of his kind, and, in madness and oratory, second only to the great Matthys.’

Out of Europe: Beatriz de Luna and Jo�o Miquez in a 1932 illustration by Arthur Szyk.

‘A Europe in which political changes are determined by German bankers; in which religious faith is raised on the banners of mercenary armies; in which entire populations are subjected to martial law. A Europe criss-crossed by columns of refugees, in which the rebellion of the desperate faces a compact front made up of the old families and the emerging mercantile powers. The same shitty response as always: cannons and genocide, and then fire and the sword…’

[Map 1]

Regno di Inghilterra — Kingdom of England

Paesi Bassi — Low Countries

Sacro Romano Impero — Holy Roman Empire

Regno di Polonia — Kingdom of Poland

Regno di Francia — Kingdom of France

Regno di Spagna — Kingdom of Spain

Rep. Di Venezia — Republic of Venice

Impero Ottomano — Ottoman Empire

Stato Chiesa — Papal state

Regno di Napoli — Kingdom of Naples

Regno di Sicilia — Kingdom of Sicily

Possedimenti di Carlo V — Possessios of Charles V

Sacro Romano Impero — Holy Roman Empire

‘…We’ve never had any interest in generic calls to peace: war today, like war four centuries ago, has its own very powerful raison d’�tre, deeply rooted in the criminal economic and political choices of the multinational powers and nation-states. The choices of the United States, like those of the empire of Charles V. Just as there is a nauseating reason for ethnic cleansings and reprisals, a reason that does not belong to us, and which we have never stopped fighting against […] It would be immoral and incoherent not to use every space and every public occasion to denounce the madness of the rulers and the apathy of the ruled.’ (From the press communiqu� by the authors of Q against the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, 1st April 1999.)

[Map 2]

Leeuwarden — Leeuwarden

Bolsfard — Bolsfard

Emden — Emden

Groningen — Groningen

Leiden — Leiden

Amsterdam — Amsterdam

Anversa — Antwerp

Vilvoorde — Vilvoorde

M�nster — M�nster�

Frankenhausen — Frankenhausen

Wittenberg — Wittenberg

Allstedt — Allstedt

Weimar — Weimar

Zwickau — Zwickau

Colonia — Cologne

Worms — Worms

Norimberga — Nuremberg

Strasburgo — Strasbourg

Augusta — Augsburg

Basilea — Basle

San Gottardo — St Gotthard

Milano — Milan

Bergamo — Bergamo

Padova — Padua

Rovigo — Rovigo

Finale E. — Finale Emilia

Venezia — Venice

Ferrara — Ferrara

Ravenna — Ravenna

Bologna — Bologna

Firenze — Florence

View of Nuremberg from the South. Woodcut by Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and Michael Wolgemut, 1493. ‘The imposing towers of the imperial Fortress remind us of what we know already: this city is one of the biggest, finest and wealthiest cities in the whole of Europe.’

View of Antwerp. At the bottom, the port of the same city in a drawing by Albrecht D�rer. To the right, the Rialto bridge from Jacopo de’ Barbari’s view of Venice. ‘The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.’ (K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party).

Beheading of peasants after the battle of Frankenhausen. ‘So the sum total is: 80 beheaded, 69 of whom had their eyes put out and their fingers cut off, which comes to 114 florins and two cents. From this should be deducted: 10 florins, received from the citizens of Rothenburg; 2 florins received by Ludwig von Hutten; leaving: 102 florins. To this should be added two months’ pay; for each month 8 florins = 16 florins, which makes: 118 florins and two cents.’ (The receipt of the executioner Augustin, known as Awe, addressed to the Margrave.)�

Frontispiece of the Twelve Articles of the peasants of Swabia.

Peasants being tortured in a chronicle from 1548. ‘I was tortured in the barracks of the Second Paduan Brigade. Tied to the table, my head dangling, I was made to swallow litres of salt water. They beat me, breaking some of my ribs and causing me a internal lesion to one eye. They gave me electric shocks to my testicles and burned my groin. They cut my thighs and my calves, then sprinkling them with salt.’ (Cesare di Lenardo, May 1982, quoted in: Luther Blissett Project, Nemici dello Stato, Derive Approdi, Rome 1999, p. 63)

The ‘Company of Anabaptists’, diffamatory illustration by Heinrich Aldegrever. ‘Horrendous processions of twenty or thirty paedophiles staged in the avenues of the cemeteries of the Modenese lowlands, dissolving into boundless orgies, destroying the innocence of their own children and the children of their acquaintances.’ (The chronicler Luigi Spezia, ibid, p. 149)

Top: Dislocation with red-hot pincers, from: R. Vaneigem, The Movement of the Free Spirit, New York, 1994.

Bottom: ‘One God, one faith, one baptism’, slogan engraved on a coin from the kingdom of M�nster.

The cages in which the corpses of the heads of M�nster were displayed. ‘No one looks at them. The past hangs right over their heads. And if they try to lift their heads too far, the cages are there as a reminder.’

From an anti-Anabaptist ‘Newe Zeitung’: John of Leyden dressed as Goliath, brought low by David.

Anti-clerical flyer of the late 16th century. ‘A sodomite! They all knew I’ve only ever liked women, not little boys and all that filth the abbots get up to.’

Bust of the pope in the manner of Arcimboldo, from a drawing by Thomas Stimmer.

‘The origin of the monks’, flyer of 1545 from the workshop of Lucas Cranach.

p. v Prologue

vii Out of Europe, 1555

ix Carafa’s eye (1518)

Part one. The Coiner

Frankenhausen (1525)