When I first saw “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” I thought it was set in the future, didn’t I? Francis, a novitiate at Leibovitz Abbey, stumbled upon a 600-year-old cave. Recognizing the words “shelter for radiation survivors” in the cave, he drew the sign of the cross in horror and stepped backwards in his limited pre-apocalyptic English. In his imagination, the radiant half of his body was a salamander. Legend has it that the founder of Leibovitz Abbey was also exposed to radiation and tortured by it for months before being baptized with a spell to exorcise it. In that future, after nuclear war, humanity returns to the darkness of darkness.
Francis dug into the old box in the hole and found a blueprint, with the date, patent number, reference number, and name printed in a box in the lower right corner, when he saw “Circuit Designer: I.E. “Leibovitz,” his hands shook violently, almost tearing the fragile document. He had found the relics of Saint Leibovitz! “Blessed one Leibovitz, bless me!” Brother Francis whispered a prayer at once.
Yes, Leibovitz, who designed the circuit, was the founder of the monastery. As radiation, pestilence, madness, and linguistic confusion erupt in the wake of the fire, a crazed mob names rulers, scientists, administrators, engineers, and teachers as the culprits, and a bloody massacre begins, forcing Leibovitz to seek refuge in the church. He took the robes and built the monastery, dividing its members into “book carriers” and “memorizers.” The book carrier smuggled the books in and buried them in a small bucket; The memorizer is responsible for digesting entire volumes of history, literature, and science to save even a tiny fraction of a civilization that has been destroyed.
It’s mind-numbing to stare at this graph for long enough to see how disorganized it is. “Perhaps the ancients had a systematic way of describing pure thought. This is clearly not a picture of some recognizable object… It seems to me a remarkable way to convey in a highly abstract way an idea of the blessed man Leibovitz.” Francis began tracing every detail, down to a brown smudge in the center of the blueprint. He thought it was probably the saint’s blood; others thought it was just the core of a rotten apple.
Leibovitz Abbey has been carefully preserving the prehistoric heritage of ancient knowledge, preserving the spark of civilization when the world slept, until more than a thousand years after the extinction of mankind began to wake up. “This will be the greatest physical advance in the Abbey since we invented the printing press a hundred years ago.” Brother Kornhall was proud of his dynamo, which consisted of wheels, axles, pulleys, and belts, and Abbot Paul thought these odd things might work as torture devices for prisoners.
The king’s own territory was not spared, because the enemy did not restrain his anger, but fought him as he fought him… There was a plague on the earth, and people went mad, and they stoned the wise and the powerful who survived. At the same time, a man named Leibovitz, who in his youth loved worldly wisdom over God’s wisdom, but now saw that such great and useful knowledge could not save the world, he turned to God and confessed…” “The author is a young friar who lived through the destruction. He got secondary sources from the disciples of Leibovitz, who were the earliest book carriers and memorizers.” The dean said to the scholar, “Yes, I have heard similar stories. Obviously something terrible has happened.” Scholars are not interested in these legends at all.
But at the moment when Brother Kornhall lit the lamp for the scholar, a dazzling light filled the room, the splendour of which had not been seen in twelve centuries. Everyone froze, the abbot’s face turned white and he could not speak, and the scholar’s assistant panicked and froze for a moment, then suddenly ran away, Shouting, “Fire!” The scholar recovered from the shock of the moment and began to investigate the dynamo carefully. There were four friars, who were turning the axle of the wheel with their bicycles, silently assessing the significance of the wheel dynamo.
Scholars eagerly studied the incomplete knowledge at monastery monastery, with their eyes on fire, prophesying, “In a century’s time, men will soar in robot birds, metal carts will ride along man-made stone roads, buildings will be ten stories high, ships will sail under the sea, and all work will be left to machines.”
Yes, in eighteen hundred years after the end of the world, just as the scholars had predicted, everything was left to the machines — Abbot Zetsch of Leibovitz, in his office, set the mode selection button of the automatic shorthand machine to “wireless telegraphy,” the procedure setting button to “oral record,” and the translation combination to “southwestern dialect input” and “Allegheny output.” Confirm that the writing is set to off, press the open microphone button, and begin to dictate: “Urgent: to the Holy Communication Department of the Vatican, New Rome… Most Exalted Excellency: Throughout the world today, tensions are rising, new international crises are looming, and there are even frequent reports of a secret nuclear arms race… We respect the Escape Plan as we always do, and are ready to execute it on six weeks’ notice…”
Soon the abbot received a reply: “The congregation will leave at once. ‘Escape from Earth’ as soon as possible.”
The plan was for a team of twenty-seven people from Leibovitz Abbey, six nuns from St. Joseph’s School, twenty children, some scientists, and three bishops to escape Earth in a starship. Before leaving, the abbot told Brother Joshua, who was leading the group, “When the diocese is established on the Sagittarius Settlement, you will establish Leibovitz Monastery on the hill there, and the ship will remain in your possession… More than 4,000 years of records and memories are with you. Some of you, or your descendants, will become missionaries or wanderers, teaching history to people… Let people remember the earth, remember where to come from. Remember this earth, don’t forget her, but — never come back. When you return, you may encounter an Archangel at the eastern end of the Earth, with a sword of fire guarding the entrance…”
A cloud of smoke rose from the cloudless sky. The friars standing on the ship’s escalator looked away from the flash, and when the light died down, they turned around and saw Satan’s mushroom cloud growing and rolling… When the last friar was about to enter, he paused for a moment, stood in the open hatch, took off his sandals, and said to himself: “The glory of the world is gone.”
Nuclear war has been repeated on Earth, and future humans will start breeding on another planet… I think that in order to remember the Earth, to remember where they came from, they may have named their planet Earth as well, and the ancient Earth with the archangels guarding the entrance with flaming swords may be named Eden in the next chronicle. Who knows whether the fable of “A Canticle for Leibowitz” is science fiction of the future, or a lost civilization of humanity’s past?
