On a genius – Benjamin Breen in The Public Domain Review (a friend said, ‘this is a fantastic article,’ and he was right.)

‘A handsome youth with shoulder-length golden hair sits in a London garret, pondering. He is composing his first book — a work he believes will transform him from a penniless foreigner into a literary cause célèbre. But first he must answer a self-imposed question: what do Taiwanese aristocrats eat for breakfast? Inspiration hits, and his quill nib glides over linen paper. “All who can live without working, eat their Breakfasts about seven of the Clock in the Morning”, the young man scribbles. “First they smoke a Pipe of Tobacco, then they drink Bohea, Green or Sage Tea; afterwards they cut off the Head of a Viper, and suck the Blood out of the Body.” His quill pauses, waiting for the mixture of innocence and archness that comes so easily. “This, in my humble Opinion,” he concludes, “is the most wholsom Breakfast a Man can make.”1 Roughly a year later, in a cluttered meeting chamber, a crowd presses around a periwigged physician as he exhibits a “foot of a human Body dried in Tenariffe” alongside a piece of Indian Ocean driftwood carved with cryptic letters. The assembled gentlemen, all fellows of the Royal Society, debate the plausibility of a letter written by a woman “who pretended to live without food”. They scrutinize a rare prize from overseas: “the forked Penis… of the Male Opossum”. A physician dissects the organ then and there, aiming to determine “to what Species in the Praedicament of Animals this Creature might properly be reduced”. A new invention — the world’s first air pump capable of creating a vacuum—makes its debut, the fellows aware that the hand-blown glass bell topping the device could implode at any moment.
At the evening’s close, the same young man — his dreams of literary fame now fulfilled — stands to address the crowd of scientists and savants. An aging Isaac Newton sits at the head of the table. Upon catching sight of the speaker’s pale skin and honey-colored locks, a member of the audience privately notes to himself that the foreigner seems to “look like a young Dutch-man”. But the speaker declares that he is actually a native of one of the world’s most remote and mysterious nations. In the twenty-first century we call it Taiwan; in 1704 it was known to Europeans as “Formosa, an Island belonging to the Emperor of Japan.” The man contends that he is a Formosan aristocrat, reared from infancy in the capitol city of Xternetsa and tutored in Greek by an evil Jesuit. He refuses to divulge his Formosan name, but he calls himself George Psalmanazar.’

(…)

‘Who was this man? The available facts remain surprisingly slim. Despite hundreds of years of research by everyone from the father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to contemporary scholars at Penn and the National Taiwan University, we still don’t even know Psalmanazar’s real name or place of origin (although he was likely from southern France). We know that elite figures ranging from the scientists of the Royal Society to the Bishop of London initially believed his claims, but he eventually fell into disgrace as competing experts confirmed that he was a liar. Beyond this, we move into the fictional realms that "Psalmanazar", like a Borges character come to life, summoned into existence with his voice and pen.

Fascinatingly, however, we also possess a confessional autobiography that an aged Psalmanazar wrote as an act of personal penance. The Memoirs of ****, Commonly known by the Name of George Psalmanazar; a Reputed Native of Formosa went to press in 1764, a year after its octogenarian author had died.3 In old age, Psalmanazar had abandoned his claims of Formosan origin, lamenting his “unaccountable pride, folly, and stupid villainy, in opposition to reason, religion, and all checks of conscience.” Yet he still refused to reveal his real name or place of birth, and his old Formosan habits died hard — not least the “vast quantity of laudanum” (opium tincture) he continued to take on a daily basis, which Psalmanazar attributed to his “vanity and senseless affectation of singularity”.’

(…)
‘As an historian of early modern globalization and the drug trade, I first became interested in Psalmanazar due to his surprisingly detailed descriptions of opium addiction.5 Coming some sixty years before the far more famous account of Thomas de Quincey, they number among the earliest firsthand descriptions of recreational drug abuse in Western literature.6 I became hooked, however, by his inventions about Formosan culture — like his description of a sorcerer who prophesied that the appearance of “100 Birds Singing” in a nobleman’s garden foretold that the souls of his “Deceas’d Relations had been Transform’d into Stars”.’

(…)

‘Psalmanazar’s adult life is literally bookended by his two memoirs, the Description of Formosa (1704), and Memoirs of **** (1764), written some fifty years later and published after his death. But what of the intervening decades? By 1711, London’s resident Formosan had become a punching bag for the literati. The Spectator, the famed satirical newspaper, kicked off its very first issue with a fake advertisement for an upcoming play that poked fun at Psalmanazar’s tendency to extoll the virtues of cannibalism: On the first of April will be performed at the Play-house in the Hay-market an opera call’d The Cruelty of Atreus. N.B. The Scene wherein Thyestes eats his own children is to be performed by the famous Mr. Psalmanazar lately arrived from Formosa: The whole Supper being set to Kettle-drums.9 As Psalmanazar lost his followers among London’s elite, it would seem that he tried to appeal to more popular audiences by spinning increasingly lurid yarns of Formosan cannibalism. Although the original inspiration for his descriptions is impossible to trace, I believe he drew heavily upon travel accounts describing pre-Columbian ritual cannibalism in Mesoamerica. However, Psalmanazar cleverly couched violent details within a matter-of-fact narrative voice. “When the Victims are a slaying,” he wrote in one representative passage, Every one may sit upon the ground (for they have no Seats or Pews, such as you use here in England,) only the richer sort have a Cushion to sit on; while the Flesh is a boiling, every one stands with his Hands join’d together, looking towards the upper part of the Tabernacle. After the Flesh is boil’d, every one of the People takes a piece of the Flesh from the Priest and eats it, and what remains, the Priests keep for themselves.’

(…)

‘Psalmanazar’s own religiously-motivated condemnation of his imposture has strongly influenced later authors’ take on his life. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, authors lampooned the “false Formosan” as little more than a common charlatan. Having spent several years in the literary company of Psalmanazar, though, I’m left with little doubt that he was a sort of genius. His invented Formosan language was so internally consistent that it continued to fool linguistic scholars throughout the nineteenth century. And while his Description is hardly a rival to Defoe or Swift as a literary work, Psalmanazar’s authorship of himself was a masterpiece. His life, as they say, was his art.
Reading Borges’ story about the fictional Pierre Menard, who re-wrote Don Quixoteword for word as an original work by occupying the mental universe of Cervantes, it struck me that Psalmanazar’s strange, amoral brilliance might have found a more welcoming home in the twentieth century.’

Read the article here.

Alas, we live in twenty-first century, and I’m doubtful whether there is much place for ‘strange, amor brilliance.’

The con man is fascinating as ever, but in times of fake news, social media, and virtual currencies the con man has completely democratized.

Everybody is entitled to be fifteen minutes a con man. Or let’s say fifteen days.

And those who fear to be a con man will be diagnosed with a disease, the impostor syndrome.

I have fond memories of a woman I met in 2018 in Arizona who was kidnapped by extraterrestrials. Amoral? Not really? Brilliant? Probably not. But much better than the average opinion with which we fill small talk and dinner parties.

And later this summer I will read Psalmanazar.