I’M IGGY THE DWARF

I first started writing at the age of twelve in simple four-lined rhymed stanzas. I used to tell myself that they were songs, and perhaps I would one day meet someone who could put them to music. During high school my passion for writing took off, while drawing inspiration from T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost. Before beginning university I decided I was going to make a living being a poet. Easier said than done. Although there was some early recognition by way of a verbal agreement with Coach House Books for some of my writing to be published in nineteen-ninety-five, that year I was diagnosed with a disability. Because I was in hospital unexpectedly for two months, plans for a chapbook called Killing Time fell through. Actually a lot fell through after that. I faced a lot of rejection of my writing, and work has been sporadic. Yet that never stopped me from my obsession with verse. However, it might have been an unhealthy one in retrospect. Eventually, I self-published some little books of poetry and made plans for a larger full-sized volume called Since I Left Helvetia. This manuscript represents in quantity most of what I have written since the turn of the century and is available to anyone who would like to take up the challenge of reading the first person point of view narration of Iggy The Dwarf, my super hero, alter-ego, and pseudonym. Portions of this manuscript appeared before as self-published chapbooks and in the journal named The Eclectic Muse. This writing has not received the review of a professional editor and remains to be published.

Also, I am proud to introduce the second manuscript, written in 2024.

Also..,
In this monograph that you have before you, entitled Displacement in the Ancient World, I postpone further discussion of transmutation and shapeshifting which I maintain affected the dwarves in my hometown in Switzerland. I now offer the reader a book that describes the demise of ancient civilizations due to the advancement of Rome, the legacy of which is immediately recognizable in the Graeco-Roman tradition of the Western Canon and the humanities. I much enjoyed writing this book, and was able to alleviate, somewhat, my obsession with seeking to find posthuman evidence in North America while writing it. My preoccupation with shapeshifters was causing me severe restlessness and discomfort, and I therefore sought in this project for a way to turn over a fresh field. I cite, however, another precedent pertaining to the displacement of homo sapiens by the infiltration of homo exterior; that is, the widespread war Rome waged against others. This precedent illustrates the imperceptible yet dramatic loss of human life which occurred at the end of the last century.

Some say the field of philosophy began with the barbarians and not the Ancient Greeks, as Diogenes explains in his book, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. With that he also claims that the whole human species began with Greek civilization. As moderns we are more prone to adopt the Eve hypothesis as we collect the earliest human fossils in Africa; yet the dominant tradition of the Graeco-Roman conceptualization of philosophy persists, which has been a tremendous focal point of courses studied in universities. However, there might be a desire for more diversity, and these histories of the Persians, among whom existed the Magi; the Chaldeans, who lived among the Assyrians or Babylonians; the Gymnosophists from India; Isis of the Egyptians; and the Druids who lived in family clans among the Celtics and Gallic peoples, serve to broaden our understanding of antiquity.

Both graduates and the enticed general reader of the present day - also, tomorrow’s post-secondary antiquarian youth - might find in our communities a cacophony of thoughts and opinions about the need for a shift of thought in universities and colleges; for example, in subjects pertaining to the godhead, the nature of the universe, and the origin and first principles of being (subjects pertaining to, that is, the philosophy of religion, astronomy, and metaphysics to be precise). Subsequently, some light might be shed on other civilizations which once flourished, as being different from Greece or Rome, and reading this monograph in the repose of a weekend should neither disturb the continuous work of the researcher, nor disrupt the job quests of candidates, who, in order to become independent of their parents, trade in their student lives for the axe and grind of the workaday world.

Diogenes’ book contains information which remains mostly extant concerning the history of Greek philosophy and is the resource of nearly all modern treatments of that subject, being valuable as a copious collection of anecdotes illustrative of the lives and practices of the learned sages (particularly the “Ionic” and the “Italian” philosophers). Diogenes begins the Ionic period with Anaximander and ends it with Theophrastus, and includes in it the Socratic philosophy in its multitudinous facets. The Italian period begins with Pythagoras and ends with Epicurus, in which he includes the Eleatics, also Heraclitus and the Sceptics.

Yet Magians, not ancient philosophers, who are neither Ionic nor Italian, are the subject of Part One of this book, which purposes to remind today’s reader of the culture of the Magi, Zoroaster, and more generally the prehistory and history of Ancient Iran.

Part Two of this book describes...