Literary locations: Affection, Sea of Frozen Words, and Thermometer Island

Look at the names of these WONDER-FULL literary locations (in alphabetical order) in stories and novels written between 1405-1910.  Some inhabitants conceive infants in their minds and give birth through their fingers!  My personal favorite is THERMOMETER ISLAND where the islanders are born with visible signs of their vocation.

AFFECTION, a country of unknown location, on the coast of the Dangerous Sea.  Many people have expressed a desire to visit Affection, or Tendre, but from New Friendship.  Affection itself is divided by three rivers: Gratitude or Avowal, Attachment, and Esteem, which descend into an estuary leading to the Dangerous Sea.  On the Sea of Enmity are a few towns best avoided: Pefidy, Slander, and others.  However, this region is not far from the beautiful city of Affection-on-Avowal, and a few hamlets like Caring, Sensibility and Constant Friendship should be visited.  Important towns are Loveletter, Pretty-poems, and Obedience.  The capital of Tendre is Affection-on-Esteem.  To the west of the country is a desolate region which harbors the Lake of Indifference.

(Madeleine De Scudery, La Chllie, Paris, 1660)

CITY OF VIRTUOUS WOMEN, or City of Ladies.  Not much is known about this famous city except that it is inhabited by women only, who are considered, because of their nature, more important and more noteworthy than men.  It was built with enormous blocks of stone, each of which carries the name of a famous woman.  The visitor will be able to identify the names of Semiramis, Amazonia, Aenobia, Artemis, Berenice, Clelia and Fredegorida, even though their deeds are now no longer remembered.  It is said that in order to open the gates of the city, a traveler must make herself a key out of “prudence, economy and breeding.”  No other instructions are given for visiting the City of Virtuous Women.

(Christine de Pisan, La Cite des Dames, Paris, 1405)

FLUTTERBUDGET CENTRE, a large town on a hill in southern oz, almost ont he border between Quadling Country and Winkie Country.  Like Rigmorole Town, Flutterbudget Centre is one of the defensive settlements of Oz.  Anyone in the country who shows signs of becoming a Flutterbudget is sent to live there.

Flutterbudgets are characterized by their constant worrying over imaginary fears and are obsessed by the disasters that might befall them if such-and-such a thing happened.  To take only one example: a Flutterbudget may complain that he cannot sleep because in order to do so he would have to close his eyes.  If he closed his eyes, the lids might stick together and he would then be blind for life.  He may well agree that he has never heard of such a thing happening, but will immediately add that it would be dreadful if it did and that the very idea makes him so nervous that he cannot fall asleep.

(L. Frank Baum, The Emerald City of Oz, Chicago, 1910)

ISLAND OF POETRY, inhabited by distracted and dreamy people not much given to speech.  Every morning they fall on their knees to adore the goddess Dawn whom they place high above the Nine Muses and Apollo.

The islanders possess the odd chacteristic of conceiving their infants in their heads and of giving birth through their fingers.  Many of these children are monsters; however, the inhabitants of the Island of Poetry do not cast them away but feed them with a nourishing meat called esteem.  When one of the islanders dies, he is embalmed in elaborate rhetorical apparatus and the trumpets of fame are sounded at his funeral.

The lack of political organization, economic development and military forces on the island is surprising.  The inhabitants’ only occupation seems to consist of wandering, lonely as clouds, by lone seabreakers, and sitting by desolate streams, composing all sorts of indifferent verses which they like to recite with great emphasis at their social gatherings.

(Jean Jacobe de Fremont d’Ablancourt, Supplement de l’Histoire Ventable de Lucien, Paris, 1654)

SEA OF FROZEN WORDS, on the edge of the frozen sea of the north.  In winter, all words and sounds in the area are frozen; as the milder weather approaches in spring, they begin to thaw out and can be clearly heard.  Travelers can pick up the frozen words, which resemble crystallized sweets of various colors.

Crossing the sea in summer, a certain Pantagruel heard the noise of a battle between Arimaspians and the Cloud-riders–a battle which had taken place at the start of the previous winter.

(Francois Rabelais, Le quart livre des faicts et dicts du bon Pantagruel, Paris, 1552)

THERMOMETER ISLAND, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, so called because the laws of the country allow couples to sleep with each other only if the sexes of both husband and wife, measured with special thermometers, have reached the same temperature.  The sexual organs of the male inhabitants have curious shapes–parallelepipeds, pyramids, cylinders–and correspond exactly to those of the female islanders.  The queen of the island is elected from among those women who are the quickest in measuring the temperature of their own and their partners’ sex; this dexterity is highly honored on the island.

The islanders are born with the visible signs of their vocation: in this way each one is what he should be.  Those destined to the science of geometry are born with fingers in the form of a compass; someone who is to be an astronomer is born with eyes in the form of telescopes; geographers are born with heads like terrestrial globes; musicians with hornlike ears; hydraulic engineers with testicles like water pumps and they are capable from an early age of urinating in long jets.  Certain inhabitants who are born with several characteristics combined have proved in later life to be, in fact, good for nothing.

Visitors will be interested in a curious instrument found only on this island, a harpsichord that instead of producing sounds produces colors and is used by the ladies to find harmonious combinations for their dresses.

(Denis Diderot, Les Bijoux indiscrets, Paris, 1748)

TRUELAND, a country of unknown location, where nothing can be said or done that is not true.  Visitors will find upon arrival that every one of their actions must correspond to a strict code of gallantry and good manners and that everything they promise must sooner or later be fulfilled.  Should a visitor allow himself to drop even a piece of paper on the impecable streets of Trueland, he will find that it immediately jumps back into his pocket–an unpleasant characteristic of a country which has forced its inhabitants to dispense with dogs as pets.  Every blow given in Trueland comes back to the attacker, and every insult is felt as a blow by the one who has uttered it.  Visitors can go through the motions of their everyday life in Trueland, but these will here become unbearably tainted by social hypocrisy, disguised feelings or any other form of deceit.  Previous friendships, business partnerships and marriages tend to break up with astounding  regularity upon arrival and very few travellers who have been to Trueland are ever reinstated in their previous occupation.

(Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, “Voyage au Monde Vrai“, in Le Cabinet du Philosophe, Paris, 1734)