Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

42 Beelzebub in America

42.959

“I must tell you that it was just during those years when the beings of Tikliamish were inventing these ‘wonder beds,’ that this planet of yours underwent a common cosmic process of ‘Chirnooanovo,’ that is to say, that, concomitantly with the displacement of the gravity center movement of this solar system in the movement of the common-cosmic harmony, the center of gravity of this planet itself was also displaced.

42.959

“During such years, as you already know, thanks to this cosmic manifestation, there increases everywhere on planets—in the psyche of the beings inhabiting any planet undergoing ‘Chirnooanovo’—a ‘Blagonoorarirnian sensation,’ or, as it is otherwise called, ‘remorse of conscience’ for one’s past deeds against one’s own convictions.

42.959-60

“But there on your planet, thanks to the common presences of your favorites having become so odd, from a variety of causes both proceeding from outside of them and arising through their own fault, the result of the action of this common-cosmic actualization does not proceed in them as it proceeds in the presences of the three-brained beings arising on other planets during ‘Chirnooanovo’; that is to say, instead of this remorse of conscience, there usually arise there and become widespread certain specific processes, called the ‘reciprocal destruction of Microcosmoses in the Tetartocosmos,’ which processes, when proceeding in them, they themselves look upon as what are called among them ‘epidemics’ and which in ancient times were known by the names ‘Kalunom,’ ‘Morkrokh,’ ‘Selnoano,’ etc., and in present days by the names ‘Black Death,’ ‘cholera,’ ‘Spanish influenza,’ and so on.