This historical curiosity, a delightful science-fiction tale nearly contemporary with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, takes its cue from the world of ballooning. The first manned balloon flights took place in 1783, when a balloon sailed over Paris. Two years later a balloonist was killed as he attempted to cross the EnglishChannel in a double balloon. Willem Bilderdijk dashed off his Short Account of a Remarkable Aerial Voyage in the space of a few days in 1811.


The Short Account is not only short — barely sixty pages — but quite untypical of its author, a polymath and polyglot, a prolific but fractious and undisciplined genius who was a painter and draughtsman as well as a writer, and occupied himself not only with the arts and history but also with architecture, mathematics, geology, biology and medicine, also writing on law, philosophy, literature and theology. His poetic oeuvre alone runs to more than three hundred thousand lines.


It may be possible to read the Short Account as a philosophical tale with a touch of satire, but as sheer fantasy it has much more appeal. Supposedly translated from the Russian, it tells of a learned traveller who finds himself stuck temporarily in northern Persia. Engaging the locals in spirited debate about the possibility of aerial flight, he inadvertently promises to construct a balloon and travel through the air. The balloon and basket are duly built, the device is filled with gas, and the traveller takes off, but too quickly: the balloon shoots up, he faints, and when he regains consciousness he has crash-landed in a strange world. As he explores this new and surprisingly pleasant environment, it gradually dawns on him that he must have discovered a new planet, a secondary moon located between the earth and the moon, and blessed with its own atmosphere, lakes, flora and fauna.


All the animals are similar to and yet different from their counterparts on earth. He spots ostriches, ducks and bats, and is mauled by a bunch of aggressive turkeys. He eventually comes across a human thighbone, a bronze axe, and inscriptions in a form of ancient Greek, which he deciphers effortlessly as a record left by one Abaris, a Scythian or Hyperborean about whom it was said that he travelled on an arrow, which in reality was probably a forerunner of the modern balloon. By now our traveller has christened his new planet Selenion and is considering ruling it under the adopted name of Abaris the Second, but then he realizes he will not have any heirs. He decides to repair his balloon and return to earth. Again he loses consciousness, and so is unable to recall any details of the flight. He crashes into the Pacific and is picked up by a Russian ship. Soon afterwards he writes up his notes in the form of the book we have been reading. A fuller account is promised, but has never appeared. It must have got lost.

This was all very well. I could have been king like Adam on a planet where I had no rival; but I lacked precisely what Adam lacked. And there was no remedy for it: my kingdom was destined to end like that of my Scythian forerunner, its memory to vanish with me, and my own to be lost. For how could I fool myself that another aerial traveller would soon land here and that communication would be established with the Earth? Such a link was indeed very desirable for an emperor whose only armed forces would consist in the remainder of the turkeys, which he would have to wipe out, except for a very few, in order to ascend the throne. These thoughts no sooner arose than they took hold of me. But to be forever alone and miserable, to perish here like Abaris, perhaps with my eyes pecked out by my poultry, my bones at least pecked clean by them when they became dried! And not a trace of me left! (p. 54, tr. Paul Vincent)