Subject: Lojvan, Logvan, Henry A. Wallace, cults, and gurus

From: "T. Peter Park" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 17:57:00 -0500

ju'i lobypli! coi lojbab.! coi pendo!
Greetings cyberfriends!
Many of us are familiar with Lojban ("Logical Language") as the name of
a constructed language, and with "Loglan" as the name of a predecessor
of Lojban.
Most of us are probably quite unaware, however, of the close
resemblance of the names Lojban and Loglan to "Logvan," a name by which
Henry Agard Wallace (1888-1965), FDR's Secretary of Agriculture from
1933 to 1940 and 1948 "Progressive Party" Presidential candidate, called
himself in a mystical cult he belonged to, founded by the Russian
painter, stage set designer, archaeologist and mystic Nikolay Roerich
(1874-1947). In THE NATION, December 11, 2000, p. 2, I saw the following
letter to the editor, titled "Tales of 'Old Bubblehead,'" by one Jim
Tuck from Guadalajara, Mexico commenting on Kai Bird's June 12 NATION
review of a recent biography of Henry Wallace:
<<In a hagiographic review of the Culver/Hyde biography of Henry
Wallace ["The Wallace Doctrine," June 12], Kai Bird rhetorically
inquires as to "who wouldn't" like his protagonist. I, for one. Whatever
Truman's failings, at least he didn't belong to a weird cult in which he
used the code names "Shamballa" and "Logvav' (his wife was "Poroona")
and uttered such inanities as "I shall obey the Gita as renmorselessly
as Krishna." For all his loony mysticism, Wallace was quite capable of
double-crossing his guru, Nicholas Roerich, when he thought he had
become a political embarrassment. Having sent him on a mission to Asia,
Wallace prevented him from returning by threatening him with a $14,000
tax lien.
<<Wallace's insensitivity in personal relations was legendary. Given a
new car when he married, he went off on a three-hour solo spin while his
bride waited in bewilderment. A rich man, he was such a stingy tipper
that at restaurants aides would have to surreptitiously lesh out his
niggardly gratuities. In World War I, his well-heeled family kept him
out of military service as an "essential farmer." After the 1948
electuion he walked out of his headquarters without a word of thanks to
devoted campaign workers. When asked by H.L. Mencken about the "guru
letters"--fawning missives he had addressed to "Beloved Master" Roerich
in happier days--Wallace weaseled, causing intense mirth among the press
corps, who unnaffectionately referred to him as Old Bubblehead.
Objective scrutiny of the man and his record makes Westbrook Peglers of
us all.>>
In the same NATION issue, Kai Bird replied to Jim Tuck from Washington,
D.C.: <<So Wallace was quite a character! I'll still take his
eccentricities any day over the men who defeated him.>> 
I'm sure the resemblance between Lojban/Loglan and Henry Wallace's
Logvan is purely fortuitous.
In the 1930's, Wallace's guru Roerich wangled a Federal grant from
Wallace's Department of Agricutlture to tour the Far East at taxpayer
expense for the ostensible purpose of studying drought-resistant strains
of grass to help Dust Bowl farmers save their topsoil from being blown
away by the wind. Roerich spent two or three years wandering through
China, Mongolia, Tibet, and Siberia, studying not too much
drought-resistant grass, but visiting lots of Buddhist monasteries,
talking with monks and lamas, and, so it has been alleged, also
conferring with left-wing Chinese and Mongolian nationalists on how best
to fight Japanese imperialism. Roerich tried to reconcile mysticism and
Communism, was on good terms with Lenin, and is now venerated as the
guru or demigod of a contemporary Russian neo-pagan cult. His visionary
paintings of Central Asian landscapes were favourites of American horror
writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), and can be seen now in a Nicholas
Roerich Museum on the upper West Side of New York City, near Columbia
University.
Regards,
T. Peter