The Geographer's Library

THE ETHIOPIAN
After many a summer dies the swan, and after many an era dies the myth. My
colleague Lönnrot believes that myths do not die so much as they are supplanted.
But this seems to me not so much incorrect as based on a limiting and
unimaginative view of matter. In full spring, leaves supplant blossoms, but it is
equally true that in late autumn leaves that are ‘are not’ supplant the leaves that
were. Within these brief emptinesses we would see wondrous things, if we but
knew how to look.
—olav grynzstein, Menelik’s Chamber
November 19, 1979
Axum, People’s Revolutionary State of Ethiopia
To: Comrade Colonel Virju Saarju, Army of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, Special Liaison to the Union of Researchers
and Professors of Ethiopian Ethnography, Estonian Division
From: Captain Felix Armando Correa, Cuban People’s
Revolutionary Army
Comrade Colonel:
I send fraternal greetings in the name of the people’s continuing revolution
and the socialist struggle against menshevism, regression, bourgeoisism,
counterrevolutionary thinking, formalism, and superstition.
I send warm personal greetings also, to your wife, Natasha Georgovna,
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