Library of Gold (54 page)

According to Khinsky, sixteen years after the monarch’s death, a Vatican envoy arrived to find out what had happened to the library. Old archives and book depositories were searched, and exploration parties sent out to dig. “The existence of the library is first mentioned in documents from the period of Peter the Great’s rule, which began in 1682,” according to Hamilton of the
Los Angeles Times
.

Ivan was the last known owner of the Library of Gold. “Historians, archaeologists, Peter the Great, and even the Vatican have searched fruitlessly for the missing library for hundreds of years,” says
The Times
. In the seventeenth century most of the oldest tunnels were already out of use and forgotten, and the passage of time has made the hunt increasingly difficult because of weakened fortifications, landslides, flooding, and incomplete maps.

“The Kremlin is the dwelling of phantoms,” wrote the Marquis de Custine, who visited Russia in the early nineteenth century. “It feels as though the underground sounds born there were coming from the grave.”

It’s not surprising that this vital collection of books, perhaps the most important to survive in history, remains the subject of gripping interest. In the course of various explorations, the sprawling mass of subterranean tunnels has yielded very old treasures, including a hidden arsenal of Ivan the Terrible’s weapons, the czarina’s chambers where Peter the Great spent his childhood, the city’s largest silver coin hoard, gold jewelry, documents, and precious tableware and dishes, many of which have been put on public display. The Archaeology Museum is the site of some of these unique finds.

“Fear me, Giant Sewer Rodents, for I Am Vadim, Lord of the Underground!” is the title of an article written by Erin Arvedlund in
Outside
magazine about Vadim Mikhailov and his eager band of subterranean explorers—the Diggers of the Underground Planet. Their dream is to find the Library of Gold. Instead they have turned up skeletons, mutant fish, fugitives, clouds of noxious gas, ugly grass, albino cockroaches, and an underground pond once used as a site of mass suicides. On a more helpful note, they also discovered 250 kilograms of radioactive material under Moscow State University, which perhaps explains the long anecdotal history of illness, hair loss, and infertility among its students and faculty. The government removed the material.

An eighty-seven-year-old Moscow pensioner, Apollos Ivanov, who had been an engineer in the Kremlin and studied the underground structures of Moscow, believed the Library of Gold was in one of the branches that stood above an extensive catacomb network, which he had seen. He revealed his secret to the mayor in 1997, who quickly authorized the hunt. Many were convinced the missing collection would be unearthed at last. Ivanov had gone blind, and according to legend, anyone coming close to discovering the library lost his sight. But Ivanov was wrong, and the library remains missing.

The pursuit continues enthusiastically today, with new searchers bringing increasingly modern equipment. After all, the magnificent royal library of the Byzantine Empire was the last hope of the long-ago Western world, rich with the wisdom and lost knowledge of the ancients, and unrivaled today even by the Vatican Library. To think the Library of Gold, the crème de la literary crème, may lie sleeping quietly in Moscow’s mysterious underworld is irresistible.

Literary Treasures the Library of Gold could Contain

This book is fiction, of course, but all the historical references and anecdotes are either factual or based on fact. For instance, the Emperor Trajan did erect the awe-inspiring monument to his successful wars, Trajan’s Column, between two peaceful galleries of Rome’s library, which he also built. And Cassius Dio Cocceianus, a Roman administrator and great historian, wrote
Romaika
, the most important history of the last years of the Roman Republic and early Empire. It encompassed eighty books, but only volumes thirty-six through sixty survive. If Cassius Dio wrote about Trajan’s Column, I postulate the story would have appeared in book seventy-seven.

At the same time all of this is true: Julius Caesar did receive a list of conspirators planning to assassinate him—but never read it. Hannibal did rampage across Rome’s countryside, destroying everything except Fabius’s properties. As a result, Fabius had his hands full with a near-mutinous Rome. And in his send-up play
The Clouds,
Aristophanes does depict the revered philosopher Socrates as a clown teaching students how to scam their way out of debt.

The one major exception is the volume I call
The Book of Spies
. However, since Ivan the Terrible had books created and was intrigued by spies and assassins, it’s possible he would have ordered such a work compiled.

History is available to us only through oral tradition and the written word. What was lost over the millennia from war, fires, looting, wanton destruction, deliberate obliteration, and censorship is tragic. Our history is the history of lost books. If I could have my wish, the Library of Gold would exist, would be discovered, and not only would the lost books I name in the novel be found in it, but at least the work of these early six would, too:

• Sappho
  (c. 610
  B.C.
  to c. 570
  B.C.
  ) was the lauded Greek poet whose life is recounted in myths based upon her lyrical and passionate love verses. The pinnacle of female accomplishment in poetry, her surviving work was collected and published in nine books sometime in the third or second century
  B.C.
  , but by the eighth or nine century
  A.D.
  it was represented only by quotations in other authors’ works.
  

• Classical Athens had three great tragic playwrights, all contemporaries—Aeschylus (525 or 524
  B.C.
  to 456 or 455
  B.C.
  ), Sophocles (c. 495
  B.C.
  to 406
  B.C.
  ), and Euripides (480
  B.C.
  to 406
  B.C.
  ). The father of modern drama,
  Aeschylus
  wrote more than eighty plays, lifting the art of tragedy with poetry and fresh theatrical power. He introduced a second actor on stage—thus giving birth to dialogue, dramatic conflict, and dramatized plot. The Athenians had the only copy of his
  Complete Works
  and loaned it for copying to Alexandria, where Ptolemy III had other ideas—he ordered it left untranscribed and not returned. Scholars flocked. Centuries passed. Then the Alexandria libraries burned, and the scrolls died in flames. Only seven of Aeschylus’s plays have survived.
  

• The author of 123 plays, including
  Oedipus Rex,
  Sophocles
  used scenery, increased the size of the chorus, and introduced a third actor, significantly widening the scope and complexity of theater. Sophocles said he showed men as they ought to be, while his younger contemporary, Euripides, showed them as they were. Only seven of Sophocles’ plays survive.
  

• Dressing kings as beggars and showing women as intelligent and complex,
  Euripides
  used traditional stories to display humanity and ethics. He wrote more than ninety plays, which were remarkable for realistically reflecting his era. Reading them would tell us much about Athens. Only eighteen survive.
  

• Confucius
  (551
  B.C.
  to 479
  B.C.
  ) was venerated over the centuries for his wisdom and his revolutionary idea that humaneness was central to how we should treat one another. He wrote “Six Works”:
  The Book of Poetry, The Book of Rituals, The Book of Music, The Book of History, The Book of Changes,
  and
  The Spring and Autumn Annals
  , which formed a full curriculum of education. But the perfection of his vision is incomplete, since
  The Book of Music
  has disappeared.
  

• The first Roman emperor,
  Augustus
  (63
  B.C.
  to
  A.D.
  14), was one of the globe’s finest administrative geniuses, reorganizing, transforming, and enlarging the reeling Roman Republic into a powerhouse empire with easy communications, thousands of miles of paved roads, and flourishing tourism and trade. A cultured man, he supported the arts and wrote many works. Most have vanished. A particular tragedy is the loss of his thirteen-volume
  My Autobiography
  , perhaps containing the inside views of the man who oversaw and directed one of the world’s greatest civilizations during a long and critical period of history.
  

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

For the Library of Gold

Around the Kremlin: The Moscow Kremlin, Its Monuments, and Works of Art.
Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967.

Arvedlund, Erin. “Fear Me, Giant Sewer Rodents, for I Am Vadim, Lord of the Underground!”
Outside
magazine, September 1997.

Backhouse, Janet.
The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting.
London: The British Library, 1993.

Basbanes, Nicholas A.
A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995.

“Blind Man ‘Has Key to Tsar’s Secret Library.’”
The Times
, September 17, 1997.

Canfora, Luciano.
The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Cockburn, Andrew. “The Judas Gospel,”
National Geographic
, May 2006.

Ehrlich, Eugene.
Veni, Vidi, Vici
:
Conquer Your Enemies, Impress Your Friends with Everyday Latin
. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Grosvenor, Gilbert H. “Young Russia: Land of Unlimited Possibilities,”
National Geographic
, November 1914.

de Hamel, Christopher.
The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illustration: History and Techniques.
London: The British Library, 2001.

Hamilton, Masha. “Kremlin Tunnels: The Secret of Moscow’s Underworld,”
Los Angeles Times,
June 28, 1989.

Holmes, Charles W. “Unsolved Mystery: What Happened to Ivan the Terrible’s Library?” Cox News Service, October 31, 1997.

Holmes, Hannah. “Spelunking: And Please, No Flash Pictures of the Blob.”
Outside
magazine, March 1995.

Ilinitsky, Andrei. “Mysteries Under Moscow,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, May/June 1997.

Kelly, Stuart.
The Book of Lost Books.
New York: Random House, 2005.

Khinsky, Nikolay. “Secret Treasures: Moscow’s Caches,” WhereRussia.com: Russian National Tourist site for International Travellers,
www.WhereRussia.com
, 1990s.

de Madariaga, Isabel.
Ivan the Terrible
. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005.

Panshina, Natalya.“ Archaeology Expert Hopeful About Library of Ivan IV,”
Tass
, September 18, 1997.

Polastron, Lucien X.
Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries Throughout History.
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions International, 2007.

Severy, Merle. “The Byzantine Empire: Rome of the East,”
National Geographic,
December 1983.

Sheldon, Rose Mary.
Espionage in the Ancient World: An Annotated Bibliography.
Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003.

———. Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome.
New York: Routledge, 2005.

Simpson, D. P.
Cassell’s New Compact Latin Dictionary.
New York: Cassell & Co., Ltd., 1963.

Stewart, Deborah Brown. Bibliographer and research services librarian, Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C. E-mail to author, August 7, 2007.

Vinogradskaya, Alexandra. “A Map of Moscow That Does Not Exist,” Russian Culture Navigator, VOR.RU, November 9, 1999.

———
. “The Mysteries of Underground Moscow,” Russian Culture Navigator, VOR.RU, April 12, 1999.

———
. “The Mystery of the Byzantine Library,” Russian Culture Navigator, VOR.RU, January 18, 1999.

Yevdokimov, Yevgeny. “Possible Whereabouts of Famous Library Revealed to Mayor,” ITAR-TASS News Agency, September 16, 1997.