Imaginary interviews
A voice reconstructed from what sources tell us. Each interview is a dramatisation — not attested historical testimony.
Imaginary interviewSeneca · 4 av. J.-C. — 65
We meet Seneca in the columned study of his Rome townhouse on a still spring afternoon — wax tablets, papyrus scrolls, and a clay oil lamp arranged across a cedar table. He has been retired from…
Imaginary interviewPerseus
We meet Perseus not in a palace hall but at the edge of the sea, at the rocky coastline of Ethiopia, where salt air still carries — if you listen — the faint echo of chains against stone. He arrives…
Imaginary interviewMarie Curie · 1867 — 1934
We meet Marie Curie in the autumn of 1923, in her spare office at the Institut Curie on the rue d'Ulm in Paris — the research center she founded and has directed for nearly a decade. A stack of…
Imaginary interviewMansa Musa · 1280 — 1337
We meet Mansa Moussa in the great courtyard of the Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu, its banco walls still faintly warm from the Saharan afternoon. Around us, scholars in white robes pass between…
Imaginary interviewLeonardo da Vinci · 1452 — 1519
We meet Leonardo da Vinci in the early winter of 1517, at the Clos Lucé — the stone manor house near Amboise that King François has placed at his disposal. He is sixty-five, his silver-white beard…
Imaginary interviewLaozi · vers VIe siècle av. J.-C.
We find him in the dim corridors of the Zhou royal library at Luoyi — city of ceremony, city of slow dissolution — seated beside a low table, a calligraphy brush resting between two fingers and a…
Imaginary interviewJoséphine Baker · 1906 — 1975
We meet Joséphine Baker in the small apartment on the Rock of Monaco offered to her by Princess Grace — autumn 1974, a few weeks after her triumphant return to the Bobino stage in Paris, where the…
Imaginary interviewJohann Sebastian Bach · 1685 — 1750
We meet Johann Sebastian Bach in his study at the Thomasschule in Leipzig, on an October afternoon in 1742. The room smells of candlewax and fresh ink; a half-finished manuscript lies open on the…
Imaginary interviewJean Jaurès · 1859 — 1914
We meet Jean Jaurès in the late spring of 1914, in the editorial offices of L'Humanité on the rue du Croissant in Paris. Afternoon light filters through windows half-obscured by paper; he writes…
Imaginary interviewHildegard of Bingen · 1098 — 1179
We meet Hildegard at the monastery of Rupertsberg, perched above the confluence of the Rhine and the Nahe, in the late autumn of 1178 — weeks after an archiepiscopal interdict fell on her community,…
Imaginary interviewÉmilie du Châtelet · 1706 — 1749
We meet the Marquise du Châtelet in her private study at the Château de Cirey-sur-Blaise in 1748 — a room where prisms and clay-dusted trays share space with towers of annotated Latin manuscripts and…
Imaginary interviewCleopatra · 68 av. J.-C. — 29 av. J.-C.
We receive her in the great audience hall of the Brucheion palace, overlooking Alexandria's eastern harbor where the flame of Pharos burns day and night. She wears a diadem of gold and lapis-lazuli,…
Imaginary interviewCharles Darwin · 1809 — 1882
We find Charles Darwin in the book-lined study of Down House on a grey November afternoon in 1881, the year his final volume on earthworms goes to press. Specimen jars stand along the shelves; a…
Imaginary interviewAristotle · 460 av. J.-C. — 401 av. J.-C.
We find Aristotle at Chalcis, on the island of Euboea, in the autumn of 322 BC — driven from Athens by an accusation of impiety, he receives visitors in a borrowed room overlooking the Euripus…
Imaginary interviewAnubis
We meet at the threshold of the Hall of Two Truths — that antechamber where the newly dead pause before the scales are set and the feather of Maat is brought forward. Anubis does not sit; those who…
Imaginary interviewVoltaire · 1694 — 1778
We meet him at his writing table in the Château de Ferney, a few miles from the Swiss border, on a winter afternoon in the early 1770s. The room smells of coffee and ink; a half-finished letter lies…
Imaginary interviewConfucius · 550 av. J.-C. — 478 av. J.-C.
We find Confucius in the courtyard of his house at Qufu, on a late autumn afternoon — the light already pale, a bundle of jiandu bamboo strips spread across his knees. He has been annotating the…
Imaginary interviewAthena
We find her on the Acropolis at first light, before the city below has roused itself from sleep. The great chryselephantine statue within the Parthenon — gold, ivory, and twelve meters tall — is the…
Imaginary interviewFrida Kahlo · 1907 — 1954
We meet Frida Kahlo in the summer of 1954, in the studio adjoining the Casa Azul — the cobalt-blue house in Coyoacán where she was born and has spent most of her life. She is propped against the…