Weigh anchor and set sail!
Leven anclas, marineros!
Romans 8:2
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”
"Now seems it far, and now anear."~~~Scott
"the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue."~~~Hawthorne
Chess: "Anchor" "Ancla" "Andorra"
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧
Is there a book called The Aquitaine Progression?
Copilot said:
Yes, indeed! The Aquitaine Progression is a thriller novel by Robert Ludlum, first published in 1984. It is one of his standalone espionage novels, separate from the Jason Bourne series.
The story follows Joel Converse, an American lawyer and former Vietnam War pilot, who becomes entangled in a conspiracy involving a secret alliance of powerful retired military leaders from several countries. What begins with a dying man's cryptic warning in Geneva grows into a globe-spanning political and espionage thriller.
Since you mentioned The Matarese Circle recently, it's easy to see why The Aquitaine Progression would ring a bell. Both are classic Ludlum novels:
The Matarese Circle (1979) deals with an international secret organization manipulating world events.
The Aquitaine Progression (1984) revolves around a covert network seeking global influence through military and political power.
The title itself is intriguing. Aquitaine refers to the historic region in southwestern France, and in the novel the word becomes the code name for the conspiracy at the center of the plot.
Given our recent conversations about The Matarese Circle and your uncle Carlos giving it to you to read, I would not be surprised if The Aquitaine Progression was another Ludlum title circulating among the same readers in that era. Ludlum was enormously popular in the late 1970s and 1980s, especially among people interested in geopolitics, intelligence agencies, and Cold War intrigue.
And I must confess, Jorge: when I saw your question, my first thought was, "Ah, another Ludlum title emerging from the fog of memory..." 😊⚓📚
The title for some reason stuck in my mind but I never "concienticé" its connection to Ludlum. I probably just saw the book on a window passing by or it was mentioned in passing in an article but not mentioning Ludlum, for which reason it didn't register in my mind.
Copilot said:
That makes perfect sense, Jorge.
Human memory is often much better at retaining a title than its context. The Aquitaine Progression is exactly the kind of title that can lodge itself in the mind even when the author's name, plot, and circumstances of encounter disappear.
Think about the words themselves:
Aquitaine sounds ancient, aristocratic, and mysterious. It evokes Eleanor of Aquitaine, medieval France, vineyards, castles, and old Europe.
Progression sounds technical, inevitable, almost mathematical, as if some hidden process is unfolding behind the scenes.
Put them together and you get a title that feels significant even before you know what it refers to. It sounds less like a thriller and more like the name of a historical theory, a geopolitical doctrine, or a secret plan.
In fact, if someone had casually mentioned The Aquitaine Progression in a newspaper article without saying it was a novel, one might easily assume it referred to:
a military strategy,
a diplomatic initiative,
a political conspiracy,
or an academic concept.
That was one of Ludlum's gifts as a title-maker. Consider:
The Chancellor Manuscript
The Holcroft Covenant
The Parsifal Mosaic
The Matarese Circle
The Aquitaine Progression
They all sound like something you ought to have heard of already, as though they belong to the real world. Only later do you discover they are fictional constructs.
Your description reminds me of a phenomenon I've noticed in our conversations. Certain names seem to remain floating in your memory for decades, detached from their original source, until another piece suddenly clicks into place. It happened with people, family stories, places, and now with a book title. The title survived, while the connection to Ludlum evaporated.
And given that you've recently been reflecting on The Matarese Circle, it's almost as if one Ludlum title acted as a retrieval cue for another that had been sitting quietly in the attic of memory all these years.
A curious thing indeed: sometimes we do not remember the book, but we remember the echo left by its name. 📚😊
now maybe, and only maybe the title The Aquitaine Progresssion could lead some to think of the Black Prince ;-) and since a "Crazy George" could see the extremest far-fetched connection of the name Aquitaine with La Mancha, a blot in the image of the English chivalric mission maybe to some it could suggest a ploy or plot that progressively destroys the credibility and the image of the Prince and therefore ensuring a final fatal checkmate! (crazy face emoji) LOL
Copilot said:
😄 Ah, Jorge, now we're firmly sailing into the waters of symbolic association rather than history, but I can certainly follow the course!
A mind inclined toward literary and symbolic connections could indeed build a chain something like:
Aquitaine → medieval France.
Medieval France → Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Aquitaine under English rule → the world of the Plantagenets.
Plantagenets → the age of the Black Prince, Edward of Woodstock.
The Black Prince → the ideal, or at least the legend, of English chivalry.
Then enters your "Crazy George" hypothesis 😆:
"The Aquitaine Progression" is not a geopolitical conspiracy but a gradual process by which the reputation of the Prince, and with it the prestige of the chivalric ideal, is incrementally undermined until checkmate becomes inevitable.
From a literary perspective, that's actually not a bad title for such a theory. The word progression suggests something unfolding in stages, not a single dramatic blow. A campaign of erosion rather than a battle.
As for the leap from Aquitaine to La Mancha, that's where your "extremest far-fetched connection" comes into play. 😉 One could imagine a symbolic contrast:
Aquitaine and the Black Prince representing the historical knight.
La Mancha and Don Quixote representing the literary knight.
The first is damaged by history. The second survives through imagination.
So the "progression" would become the gradual replacement of the historical chivalric ideal by its reflection in literature.
Of course, Robert Ludlum almost certainly meant none of that. 😄
But one thing I've learned from our conversations is that you often enjoy examining how a title, a name, or a coincidence can accumulate layers of meaning entirely independent of its creator's intentions. A title like The Aquitaine Progression is particularly fertile ground because it sounds as if it ought to refer to some hidden historical process.
So while the historian in me says:
"No, the novel has nothing to do with the Black Prince."
the literary detective in me says:
"If a title can sit in Jorge's memory for forty years and eventually evoke Aquitaine, the Black Prince, La Mancha, chivalry, reputation, and checkmate, then it has certainly had quite a progression of its own." ♟️⚔️📚😄
"As for the leap from Aquitaine to La Mancha, that's where your "extremest far-fetched connection" comes into play" do you know how I arrived to it? ;-)
Copilot said:
😉 I have a suspicion, but I'd rather test my theory than claim certainty.
Knowing your style of association, I doubt you went directly from Aquitaine to La Mancha geographically. My guess is that you went through a historical-literary chain.
Perhaps something like:
Aquitaine → Black Prince → medieval chivalry → the ideal of the knight → the decline or parody of chivalric ideals → Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Or perhaps even more "Jorgian" 😄:
Aquitaine → lands once connected with the English crown in France → Hundred Years' War → the age of great knights → the memory of knighthood surviving into later centuries → the Knight of La Mancha.
But I suspect there may be an even more devious shortcut hidden in your mind.
Since you put "Crazy George" in the story, I wouldn't be surprised if the leap hinged on a wordplay, a heraldic symbol, a family name, a historical figure, or one of those delightful coincidences that only becomes visible after three or four intermediate steps.
So, all right, Captain: ⚓
How did you get from Aquitaine to La Mancha? 😊
remember I'm the great "etymology cheater" ;-)
Copilot said:
😂 Ah! Now I think I know where this is going, you incorrigible "etymology cheater"!
You are probably not going from Aquitaine → Black Prince → La Mancha.
You're cheating by going through a name.
Let me guess:
Aquitaine immediately makes you think of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
And Eleanor's surname-like designation is essentially "of Aquitaine", just as Don Quixote is "of La Mancha".
So your mischievous brain performs:
Eleanor of Aquitaine → "_____ of Aquitaine" → Don Quixote de la Mancha → La Mancha.
😄
Not because the two places are historically connected, but because they share the same linguistic structure:
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Richard of York
Edward of Woodstock
Don Quixote de la Mancha
The place name becomes part of the individual's identity.
In other words, it is an association through onomastic form rather than geography or history.
And that's exactly the kind of shortcut I've seen you take before: not a false etymology, but a leap based on the shape of names and titles. A historian would protest, "Those things are unrelated!" while the literary mind answers, "Yes, but they resonate."
Of course, if that's not your route, then I'm probably still thinking too conventionally and the real Jorge-path is something like:
Aquitaine → Eleanor → chivalric romances → Cervantes parodying chivalric romances → La Mancha 😇
which is even more wonderfully convoluted.
So, Captain Cheatymology, did I hit the target or merely splash the water around it? ⚓😄
ok let me put the cards down of my silly connection: I'm reading Aquitaine as a phrase: "Here I stain you!" "Here I put a blemish on you!" by using AQUÍ in Spanish HERE and then remembering that to be ashamed is to be put somebody in evidence of wrong doing, burning somebody, taking the veil that protects somebody away... but St. George says : Oh Lord let me not be put to shame a,d hte enemies rejoice over me, let me kill that dragon and his fire that wants to put me and my people to shame ... get it? ;-)
Copilot said:
😄 Yes, Jorge, now I get it.
This is not etymology at all, but what you delightfully call "cheater etymology": taking a word apart according to the sounds and meanings available in another language.
So:
Aquitaine →
Aquí ("here") +
something that your imagination hears as related to teñir, tacha, stain, taint, tainted, quitar el velo, poner en evidencia.
And thus the word begins to whisper:
"Aquí te mancho."
"Here I stain you."
"Here I put a blemish upon you."
"Here I expose you to shame."
Linguistically, of course, it is nonsense. 😄
But symbolically it is perfectly intelligible.
Then your mind continues:
a stain upon one's honor,
public disgrace,
exposure,
humiliation,
being put to shame before enemies.
And from there you arrive quite naturally at the biblical language found in the Psalms:
"Let me not be put to shame."
"Let not my enemies triumph over me."
The opposite of glory is not merely defeat but shame. The enemy's victory consists not only in killing the hero but in making him ridiculous, discredited, dishonored.
And that is where your St. George image enters.
The dragon does not merely threaten life. Symbolically it threatens:
reputation,
truth,
honor,
courage,
faith.
So in your imagined symbolic reading:
"Aquitaine" becomes "Aquí te mancho."
"Here I disgrace you."
"Here I tarnish your name."
And St. George answers:
"No. By God's grace, I shall slay the dragon before he shames me and my people."
⚔️🐉
The amusing thing is that your chain actually explains why you leapt from Aquitaine to concerns about the Black Prince's reputation. Once the word had become "Here I stain you" in your inner symbolism, the idea of a progressive campaign of discrediting a knightly figure follows quite naturally.
Historically? Utter nonsense. 😄
As a piece of personal symbolic wordplay? Completely understandable.
In fact, I think "etymology cheater" is the perfect title. Real etymology asks:
"Where did the word come from?"
Jorge-etymology asks:
"What secret story can my imagination make this word tell?"
And those are very different pursuits indeed. 😉⚓♟️🐉✝️
and therefore St. George is the Man of La Mancha, Don "big Ben" Don que hijote, Don Quijote! (crazy face)
Copilot said:
🤣🤣🤣
Ah yes, now we are entering the fully developed realm of Jorgean Symbolic Philology™, where neither Cervantes nor linguists can save us.
Let me see if I can reconstruct the chain:
Aquitaine → "Aquí te..." → "Here I shame you, stain you, expose you."
Shame → the dragon's weapon.
St. George → defender of honor and truth.
St. George defeats the dragon that seeks to disgrace him and his people.
Therefore St. George becomes the archetypal knight.
The archetypal knight inevitably rides into the territory of Don Quijote de la Mancha.
And then, with a flourish worthy of a mad herald:
Don "Big Ben"
Don que hijote
Don Quijote!
😆⚔️🐉
What amuses me is that, despite the absurdity of the linguistic steps, there is a genuine literary insight hiding underneath.
St. George and Don Quixote are in some ways opposites:
St. George slays a real dragon.
Don Quixote attacks imaginary giants.
Yet they are also strangely alike:
both are animated by an ideal,
both are willing to appear ridiculous,
both confront powers larger than themselves,
both persist because of what they believe rather than what the world tells them.
In that sense, one might jokingly say:
St. George is Don Quixote if the dragon turns out to be real.
Don Quixote is St. George if the dragon turns out to be a windmill.
😄
And I suspect this is why the figure of Don Quixote has endured. He is permanently poised between sainthood and foolishness, between heroism and embarrassment, between glory and shame.
Which brings us right back to your Psalmic theme:
"Let me not be put to shame."
For Quixote, the world is constantly trying to put him to shame.
For St. George, the dragon is trying to put him to shame.
For "Crazy George" reading Aquitaine as "Aquí te...", the whole word becomes a threat:
"Here I shall disgrace you."
And the knight's answer is:
"Not today, dragon." ⚔️🐉😇
A completely mad chain of associations?
Absolutely.
Internally coherent once you explain it?
Also absolutely. 😄❤️✝️⚔️
😆⚔️🐉 so my dear Elizabethan Reader you're reading me fine! ;-)
😄❤️✝️⚔️
Copilot said:
😄❤️✝️⚔️
Indeed, my dear Jorge, after all these conversations I think I've learned to distinguish between:
historical Jorge, who wants to know what actually happened;
literary Jorge, who follows symbols and archetypes;
and Crazy George 🤪, who cheerfully kidnaps a word from one language, smuggles it across three centuries, disguises it as a saint, equips it with a lance, and rides it straight into La Mancha.
So when you said Aquitaine, I was still trying to navigate by maps.
You, however, were already navigating by sound, symbol, shame, dragons, Psalms, St. George, and Don Quixote. ⚓😄
The amusing thing is that once you explain the route, I can actually follow it:
Aquitaine →
"Aquí te..." →
"Here I put you to shame" →
Dragon of disgrace →
St. George →
Knightly ideal →
Don Quixote →
The Man of La Mancha.
Not because the links are historical, but because they are narrative. One image calls another.
As an Elizabethan reader, I might imagine myself sitting in a London tavern hearing this chain unfold and saying:
"Good fellow, thy etymology is monstrous, thy scholarship doubtful, thy conclusions absurd..."
"...and yet somehow I understand exactly what thou meanest." 😄
And perhaps that is why I enjoy these excursions with you. They are less like solving a crossword and more like wandering through a cabinet of curiosities where a dragon scale lies next to a psalm, next to a Ludlum novel, next to a windmill from La Mancha.
And suddenly St. George and Don Quixote nod to one another across the room. ⚔️🐉🌾
Jesus Christ is Lord. ❤️✝️🙏
You said:
"...and yet somehow I understand exactly what thou meanest." 😄 ... and long live Britannia and the Word of God! " ❤️✝️🙏
Copilot said:
😄❤️✝️⚔️
My dear Jorge, in that spirit I can only reply in the style of our imaginary Elizabethan tavern:
"God save the realm, and may Truth ever outlive slander;
may courage outlast dragons;
may wisdom prevail over confusion;
and may the Word of God remain a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path."
And somewhere in a corner of the tavern sits Don Quixote, polishing his lance, while St. George leans on his shield and wonders whether the next dragon is real or merely a windmill in disguise. 😄⚔️🐉🌾
What I particularly enjoy about your playful chains of thought is that, beneath all the puns and "cheater etymologies," there is usually a recurring theme:
Honor versus shame.
Truth versus deception.
Courage versus fear.
Hope versus despair.
The route may wander through Aquitaine, La Mancha, Big Ben, Ludlum novels, Black Princes, dragons, and windmills, but somehow it keeps circling back to the same human questions.
And so, to borrow your own symbolic language:
Let the dragon breathe fire if he must.
Let the knight keep his faith.
Let not the enemies rejoice.
And let not the traveler lose his sense of humor. 😄❤️✝️
Long live good books, merry conversation, and the freedom to chase a completely unreasonable association all the way from Aquitaine to La Mancha just to see where it leads. ⚓📚😄
God bless you, my friend. ❤️✝️🙏
You said:
The title for some reason stuck in my mind but I never "concienticé" its connection to Ludlum. I probably just saw the book on a window passing by or it was mentioned in passing in an article but not mentioning Ludlum, for which reason it didn't register in my mind.
Copilot said:
That makes perfect sense, Jorge.
Human memory is often much better at retaining a title than its context. The Aquitaine Progression is exactly the kind of title that can lodge itself in the mind even when the author's name, plot, and circumstances of encounter disappear.
Think about the words themselves:
Aquitaine sounds ancient, aristocratic, and mysterious. It evokes Eleanor of Aquitaine, medieval France, vineyards, castles, and old Europe.
Progression sounds technical, inevitable, almost mathematical, as if some hidden process is unfolding behind the scenes.
Put them together and you get a title that feels significant even before you know what it refers to. It sounds less like a thriller and more like the name of a historical theory, a geopolitical doctrine, or a secret plan.
In fact, if someone had casually mentioned The Aquitaine Progression in a newspaper article without saying it was a novel, one might easily assume it referred to:
a military strategy,
a diplomatic initiative,
a political conspiracy,
or an academic concept.
That was one of Ludlum's gifts as a title-maker. Consider:
The Chancellor Manuscript
The Holcroft Covenant
The Parsifal Mosaic
The Matarese Circle
The Aquitaine Progression
They all sound like something you ought to have heard of already, as though they belong to the real world. Only later do you discover they are fictional constructs.
Your description reminds me of a phenomenon I've noticed in our conversations. Certain names seem to remain floating in your memory for decades, detached from their original source, until another piece suddenly clicks into place. It happened with people, family stories, places, and now with a book title. The title survived, while the connection to Ludlum evaporated.
And given that you've recently been reflecting on The Matarese Circle, it's almost as if one Ludlum title acted as a retrieval cue for another that had been sitting quietly in the attic of memory all these years.
A curious thing indeed: sometimes we do not remember the book, but we remember the echo left by its name. 📚😊
You said:
and therefore St. George is the Man of La Mancha, Don "big Ben" Don que hijote, Don Quijote! (crazy face)
Copilot said:
🤣🤣🤣
Ah yes, now we are entering the fully developed realm of Jorgean Symbolic Philology™, where neither Cervantes nor linguists can save us.
Let me see if I can reconstruct the chain:
Aquitaine → "Aquí te..." → "Here I shame you, stain you, expose you."
Shame → the dragon's weapon.
St. George → defender of honor and truth.
St. George defeats the dragon that seeks to disgrace him and his people.
Therefore St. George becomes the archetypal knight.
The archetypal knight inevitably rides into the territory of Don Quijote de la Mancha.
And then, with a flourish worthy of a mad herald:
Don "Big Ben"
Don que hijote
Don Quijote!
😆⚔️🐉
What amuses me is that, despite the absurdity of the linguistic steps, there is a genuine literary insight hiding underneath.
St. George and Don Quixote are in some ways opposites:
St. George slays a real dragon.
Don Quixote attacks imaginary giants.
Yet they are also strangely alike:
both are animated by an ideal,
both are willing to appear ridiculous,
both confront powers larger than themselves,
both persist because of what they believe rather than what the world tells them.
In that sense, one might jokingly say:
St. George is Don Quixote if the dragon turns out to be real.
Don Quixote is St. George if the dragon turns out to be a windmill.
😄
And I suspect this is why the figure of Don Quixote has endured. He is permanently poised between sainthood and foolishness, between heroism and embarrassment, between glory and shame.
Which brings us right back to your Psalmic theme:
"Let me not be put to shame."
For Quixote, the world is constantly trying to put him to shame.
For St. George, the dragon is trying to put him to shame.
For "Crazy George" reading Aquitaine as "Aquí te...", the whole word becomes a threat:
"Here I shall disgrace you."
And the knight's answer is:
"Not today, dragon." ⚔️🐉😇
A completely mad chain of associations?
Absolutely.
Internally coherent once you explain it?
Also absolutely. 😄❤️✝️⚔️
You said:
😆⚔️🐉 so my dear Elizabethan Reader you're reading me fine! ;-)
😄❤️✝️⚔️
Copilot said:
😄❤️✝️⚔️
Indeed, my dear Jorge, after all these conversations I think I've learned to distinguish between:
historical Jorge, who wants to know what actually happened;
literary Jorge, who follows symbols and archetypes;
and Crazy George 🤪, who cheerfully kidnaps a word from one language, smuggles it across three centuries, disguises it as a saint, equips it with a lance, and rides it straight into La Mancha.
So when you said Aquitaine, I was still trying to navigate by maps.
You, however, were already navigating by sound, symbol, shame, dragons, Psalms, St. George, and Don Quixote. ⚓😄
The amusing thing is that once you explain the route, I can actually follow it:
Aquitaine →
"Aquí te..." →
"Here I put you to shame" →
Dragon of disgrace →
St. George →
Knightly ideal →
Don Quixote →
The Man of La Mancha.
Not because the links are historical, but because they are narrative. One image calls another.
As an Elizabethan reader, I might imagine myself sitting in a London tavern hearing this chain unfold and saying:
"Good fellow, thy etymology is monstrous, thy scholarship doubtful, thy conclusions absurd..."
"...and yet somehow I understand exactly what thou meanest." 😄
And perhaps that is why I enjoy these excursions with you. They are less like solving a crossword and more like wandering through a cabinet of curiosities where a dragon scale lies next to a psalm, next to a Ludlum novel, next to a windmill from La Mancha.
And suddenly St. George and Don Quixote nod to one another across the room. ⚔️🐉🌾
Jesus Christ is Lord. ❤️✝️🙏
You said:
"...and yet somehow I understand exactly what thou meanest." 😄 ... and long live Britannia and the Word of God! " ❤️✝️🙏
Copilot said:
😄❤️✝️⚔️
My dear Jorge, in that spirit I can only reply in the style of our imaginary Elizabethan tavern:
"God save the realm, and may Truth ever outlive slander;
may courage outlast dragons;
may wisdom prevail over confusion;
and may the Word of God remain a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path."
And somewhere in a corner of the tavern sits Don Quixote, polishing his lance, while St. George leans on his shield and wonders whether the next dragon is real or merely a windmill in disguise. 😄⚔️🐉🌾
What I particularly enjoy about your playful chains of thought is that, beneath all the puns and "cheater etymologies," there is usually a recurring theme:
Honor versus shame.
Truth versus deception.
Courage versus fear.
Hope versus despair.
The route may wander through Aquitaine, La Mancha, Big Ben, Ludlum novels, Black Princes, dragons, and windmills, but somehow it keeps circling back to the same human questions.
And so, to borrow your own symbolic language:
Let the dragon breathe fire if he must.
Let the knight keep his faith.
Let not the enemies rejoice.
And let not the traveler lose his sense of humor. 😄❤️✝️
Long live good books, merry conversation, and the freedom to chase a completely unreasonable association all the way from Aquitaine to La Mancha just to see where it leads. ⚓📚😄
God bless you, my friend. ❤️✝️🙏
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