“Heaven’s Gate” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

In Heaven’s Gate, the second novel of the cycle, Schmitt revives the complex and brilliant Mesopotamian civilization.

Two years ago, we highlighted in this column the wonderful book with which Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt opens his extensive Romanian cycle “Crossing the Centuries” – “Lost Paradises”. I signaled to you from the beginning the immense documentation of the French writer, starting with an astonishing explanation of the Flood. During the Quaternary glaciation, the Black Sea became an enormous freshwater lake, its surface being more than a hundred meters from the shores on which, little by little, a Neolithic civilization appeared. In 1993, marine geologists William Ryan and Walter Firman, exploring the depths of the Black Sea, found some inexplicable sediments, which should have been in a freshwater lake, not a saltwater sea. Six years later, oceanographer Bob Ballard discovered a beach, one hundred and fifty meters underwater, with petrified shells belonging to species that had lived in fresh water. Through tests with Carbon 14, they were dated: seven thousand eight hundred dc years: instead, those that, not far away, assumed a salty environment, were only seven thousand three hundred years old. The theory that the sea had taken the place of a lake was demonstrated. When the ice age ended, the warming of the climate caused an important melting of the glaciers, the level of the seas and oceans increased. warming the weather by four degrees was enough to raise the level of the waters of the Mediterranean by one hundred and thirty meters. The lake was defended from the Mediterranean, to the south, by the present-day Bosporus and Dardanelles straits which were isthmuses and which gave way, under the pressure of the waves, and millions of cubic kilometers poured a hundred and forty meters below, over the lake and the surrounding plains and thousands of people drowned. The result of nature’s unleashing was a less salty sea, which stretches for a thousand kilometers from west to east and six hundred from north to south – the Black Sea.

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s novel takes place on this territory, a novel cycle that proves to be an immortal love story that defies time, and at the same time a broad panorama of the history of humanity.

The Titanic project troubled Eric Emmanuel Schmitt from the age of twenty-five. In the shadow of his other texts (novels, short stories, theater, essays), the author worked tirelessly, gathering historical, scientific, religious, medical, sociological, philosophical, technical information, and at the same time letting his imagination shape strong, impressive characters, unforgettable, to which they attach themselves or with which they identify.

The Romanian cycle started with “Paradisuri pierdute”, about the end of the Neolithic and the Flood, will have seven more novels: Gate of Heaven (Babel and the Mesopotamian civilization); The dark sun (Egypt of the pharaohs and Moses); The light of happiness (Greece of the 4th century BC); The two kingdoms (Rome and the birth of Christianity); Mystification (medieval Europe and Joan of Arc); The time of conquests (Renaissance and discovery of the Americas); Revolutions (Political, industrial, technical revolutions).

In the meantime, the second volume, “Porta cerului”, has also appeared in Romanian, just as captivating, a novel that takes its heroes on, just as surprising. It’s about “Mesopotamian memories”, the appearance of writing (cuneform) and the rise of the famous Babel city. With the same kind of amazing submissions as well as knowledge from all fields – architecture, irrigation, the world of the stars, writing, etc.

The editors write: “In biblical times, in the noisy city of Babel, where a tyrannical king would do anything to see his crazy dream come true – a tower that would reach the gods -, Noam, the protagonist of this saga, discovers, along with new friends, writing, architecture, astronomy and meet old enemies and allies again”.

“Like his hero, Schmitt uses all his creative resources to transport us to the past. His spectacular erudition is intertwined with an irresistible desire to tell a captivating story. Seriousness and playfulness dance a waltz in several times, one for farce and one for drama, one for madness and one for philosophy, one for thought and one for sex. At the beginning of the book, Noam finds himself in a truly critical moment: the present.” — Le Point

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt – Heaven’s Gate. Vol II of Traversing the Centuries. Translation by Doru Mareş. Humanitas Fiction publishing house, Raftul Denisei collection. 524 pages