The Letter from Dr. Wertlos
Translated from the German
Your Notability,
I have but recently received the monograph of Prof. Pappnase surveying the whole of the so-called debate between himself and those other scholars whom I shall not even name to spare them further embarrassment than they have already heaped upon themselves (you will have no doubt before had the misfortune of acquainting yourself with their meritless writings). Do not think however that Pappnase should escape censure for the vain nonsense he in his pretended erudition has foisted upon society! No, he is as bad as the rest, or worse. A more risible collection of fools could not be assembled. To think that anyone could pen such childish farcical scribbling and possess the temerity to call it scholarship! The gall! It bespeaks a rot at the heart of the great universities across the whole of Europe that these charlatans have been allowed to flourish unchecked. A less temperate and benevolent, yet perhaps more just, society than our own would put them in the stocks for their impertinence. It should go without saying that I do not advocate for any such punishment but merely note it could not be said to be unwarranted.
As for their actual claims to the facts, nothing could be more laughable than the interpretations of The Greater Wisdom of the Age of Ages and of the Sphere passage most especially that they have vomited forth into the world. To wit, their suggestion is that that most famous of passages means precious little more than that we live here on Earth! Who would dare regard the book as worthy of the veneration it has received if burdened with the banality of their imaginations? How trite this ship of fools would have such a profound sentiment be! They claim that theirs is a more straightforward reading (worse that such literalist hermeneutics are by nature to be preferred!) but nevertheless they must engage in every manner of legerdemain to make sense of anything. All in pursuit of that hoary misbegotten fancy upon which their paltry minds are fixed. One must of course note that such abject failure at worthy thought follows their previous rubbish in the field, which has equally little to recommend it. To imagine that the great mystic minds of Antiquity could be preoccupied with such mundanities as they would have them stretches credulity to an absurdity beyond comprehension. The literal Planets indeed! To say nothing of the arrant nonsense of the tortured astrological readings produced by those Professors who must be presumed to suffer from some congenital idiocy! So great a stupidity combined with viciousness and arrogance in the groves of Academe is truly a pockmark upon the face of civilization. Here I must say no more of any such foolishness or I shall never stop and this letter will become a tome. Suffice it thus that you know well now my opinion of the matter.
Cordially,
Dr. Wertlos
P.S. Do not even speak to me of those ignoramuses who would have the passage be meaningless, for I have had my fill of fools already and am in no mood to talk of madmen.