The Atlantean Myth (Part IV): Golden Mountain's Tale
In the glorious days of the Third Age, the Thunderer wrested control of Atlantis from the evil Lemurians and their predecessors the Empire. Or so the politically correct and factually negligent account goes.
What is for sure is that Atlantis had already begun to devolve. The Empire's grasp had been fatally weakened and yet, unlike previous empires, it was to prove itself able to fall from grace with a great deal of clever graciousness. It also attempted to tangle the world up in a ball of unpickable knots (some of which still exist in the darker continents, as the Imperials were wont to say).
One such knot was Lemuria, an agglomeration or loose confederation of minor princedoms and submonarchies. Within Greater Lemuria were several semi-independent or semi-autonomous cities, and Atlantis was the greatest of these. In fact, Atlantis inherited the bulk of the Empire's legacy, and if it hadn't been a success, then the Thunderer would have been judged a failure.
The cleverness of the Thunderer and his gang was that they turned this on its head: new line—Atlantis was a success because of the Thunderer. But what to do about the myriads of homeless and starving that any country in this region has had to cope with?
Here is where Golden Mountain's story begins. He was one of the First, and one of the most easily forgotten. He was the Gnome's predecessor in Education, but his forte was Nation-Building. Literally. Like a modern Hephaistos, he forged a dream from stone and metal and glass, and built the topless towers of a modern Ilium. If Helen was the face that launched a thousand ships, Golden Mountain's was the fist that piled the foundations of a myriad blocks of concrete.
For the Golden Mountain was a canny man, a clever and perceptive soul who wanted none of the limelight and all of the doing of things. He was pragmatic, definitive; for him praxis was the apotheosis of thought. He saw through most people and he sawed through most obstacles. And he housed 400,000 people in a year and a day (well, not quite, but this is myth we're talking about here).
Whereas the Thunderer was the Eminence of the Height, and the Gnome was the Brain of the Operation, and Black Diamond was the Voice of the Temple; Golden Mountain was the Builder of the Nation. It is impossible to think of modern Atlantis, the way it looks now, without him; yet it is only too possible not to think of him at all. He died in the heat of summer, in the same year as Black Diamond. In the aftermath of the Diamond's passing, the Mountain received some recognition.
And that was it.
Personally, I remember a shrewd and wise old patriarch who could say a lot and had a temper. But he was also a Wyvern, like the Gnome, and he remained true to his principles of necessity and pragmatism, directness and craft. We will not see his like again.
What is for sure is that Atlantis had already begun to devolve. The Empire's grasp had been fatally weakened and yet, unlike previous empires, it was to prove itself able to fall from grace with a great deal of clever graciousness. It also attempted to tangle the world up in a ball of unpickable knots (some of which still exist in the darker continents, as the Imperials were wont to say).
One such knot was Lemuria, an agglomeration or loose confederation of minor princedoms and submonarchies. Within Greater Lemuria were several semi-independent or semi-autonomous cities, and Atlantis was the greatest of these. In fact, Atlantis inherited the bulk of the Empire's legacy, and if it hadn't been a success, then the Thunderer would have been judged a failure.
The cleverness of the Thunderer and his gang was that they turned this on its head: new line—Atlantis was a success because of the Thunderer. But what to do about the myriads of homeless and starving that any country in this region has had to cope with?
Here is where Golden Mountain's story begins. He was one of the First, and one of the most easily forgotten. He was the Gnome's predecessor in Education, but his forte was Nation-Building. Literally. Like a modern Hephaistos, he forged a dream from stone and metal and glass, and built the topless towers of a modern Ilium. If Helen was the face that launched a thousand ships, Golden Mountain's was the fist that piled the foundations of a myriad blocks of concrete.
For the Golden Mountain was a canny man, a clever and perceptive soul who wanted none of the limelight and all of the doing of things. He was pragmatic, definitive; for him praxis was the apotheosis of thought. He saw through most people and he sawed through most obstacles. And he housed 400,000 people in a year and a day (well, not quite, but this is myth we're talking about here).
Whereas the Thunderer was the Eminence of the Height, and the Gnome was the Brain of the Operation, and Black Diamond was the Voice of the Temple; Golden Mountain was the Builder of the Nation. It is impossible to think of modern Atlantis, the way it looks now, without him; yet it is only too possible not to think of him at all. He died in the heat of summer, in the same year as Black Diamond. In the aftermath of the Diamond's passing, the Mountain received some recognition.
And that was it.
Personally, I remember a shrewd and wise old patriarch who could say a lot and had a temper. But he was also a Wyvern, like the Gnome, and he remained true to his principles of necessity and pragmatism, directness and craft. We will not see his like again.
Labels: Building, Myth, Nationalism
etched with acid at 11:24:00 am
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