A journey to the world under-ground by Ludvig Holberg
"A journey to the world under-ground" by Ludvig Holberg is a satirical travel narrative written in the mid-18th century. It follows the Norwegian student Nicholas Klim, who tumbles into a hollow-earth cosmos and lands on the planet Nazar, a society of reasoning, walking trees. Through his misadventures, the work lampoons politics, law, religion, scholarship, and social pretensions in the manner of a philosophical voyage. Readers who enjoy inventive world-building with Swift-like bite
will find this a sharp, witty exploration of alternative civility. The opening of the narrative shows Klim, newly returned to Bergen and short on means, exploring a famed mountain cave; when his rope snaps he plunges into an inner firmament, duels a griffin in midair, and lands on Nazar. Mistaken for a bizarre animal—and even for a would-be assailant of a magistrate’s “wife” (a tree)—he is seized, tried with solemn ritual, and subjected to “venae-section,” then taught the language and examined by state assessors. In Keba he observes sober customs: disputations turned into stage sport, restrained funerals, high honor for husbandmen, and confinement for metaphysical hair-splitters; sent to the capital Potu, he witnesses harsh risk for legal “projectors,” meets a mild but firm prince, and is judged quick but shallow—therefore appointed royal messenger. As he begins his service, the book sketches the empire’s orderly features: a single language, ingenious machinery, incentives for large families, strict one-office rules, no inherited nobility, and a noncoercive civic religion that forbids speculative theology and treats victory in war with silence rather than triumph. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Charlene Taylor, Robert Tonsing, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
