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| Hagbard Celine | |
|---|---|
| The Illuminatus! Trilogy character | |
| First appearance | The Eye in the Pyramid (1975) |
| Created by | Robert Shea Robert Anton Wilson |
| In-universe information | |
| Full name | Howard Crane |
| Alias | Hagbard Celine |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
Hagbard Celine is a centralprotagonist inThe Illuminatus! Trilogy series of books byRobert Shea andRobert Anton Wilson named after the legendary Viking heroHagbard, who died for love. In theSchrödinger's Cat Trilogy written afterIlluminatus!, it is stated that "Hagbard Celine" is a pseudonym and that his legal name isHoward Crane. However, the trilogy passes through many different universes.
Hagbard has parallels toJules Verne's character,Captain Nemo. Both are genius captains aboard a fantastic submarine. Both are rogues who have mostly broken off from society, yet help the oppressed. Some have even theorized that Hagbard Celine is Captain Nemo,[1] though Verne'sTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas is set in the second half of the nineteenth century. He is also comparable to a degree toRagnar Danneskjold, a libertarian pirate inAyn Rand's novelAtlas Shrugged, which is spoofed in the chronicles as "Telemachus Sneezed". Like Danneskjold, Hagbard participates in the black market, exploiting and resisting governments, and both characters have Norwegian roots.
Hagbard is a notorious prankster and liar (telling one character not to trust anyone with the initials H.C.). This character trait is displayed throughoutIlluminatus!. Celine tends to give misinformation about himself and his intentions and that he faked the death of an actress, implied to beMarilyn Monroe,[2] in order to train her into becoming an embodiment of the goddessEris. Celine subsequently fell in love with the woman and announces his intention to marry her during the trilogy.
ADiscordiananarchist, he fights the Illuminati from a golden submarine, theLeif Ericson (named afterthe Viking explorer). The submarine was supposedly designed and built by himself, stolen from theUnited States Navy, or a gift fromthe Mafia. Despite its size—the equivalent of five city blocks long with a three-story-highconning tower—it has so far remained undetected.
He has a Norwegian mother and a Sicilian father, physically resemblingAnthony Quinn. In a section printed in the introductions of volumes I and II of the trilogy, though not reprinted in the single-volume compilation, the narrator mentions that he has a raft of Irish relatives in Ohio named McGee and Marlowe. Wilson also implies inThe Historical Illuminatus Chronicles that Hagbard is related to one of the central characters, Sigismundo Celine.
He speaks Norwegian, Italian, English, German, Latin, Greek and Swahili. He graduatedfrom Harvard with a somewhat strangedouble major incontract law andnaval engineering.
A formernaturalized United States citizen, Hagbard supposedlyrelinquished his citizenship after representing aMohawk reservation in court against theBureau of Indian Affairs. Hagbard generally told people he was an engineer building a dam during his time with the Mohawk because he was ashamed of being a lawyer.
He later became a citizen ofEquatorial Guinea, of whichFernando Poo is a part, having papers referring to this by the time of theWalpurgisnacht rock concert. The appendix to the trilogy mentions that Hagbard builds astarship and leaves to exploreAlpha Centauri in the year 1999.
Hagbard designed a supercomputer called the First Universal Cybernetic Kinetic Ultramicro-Programmer. Among other things, he used to calculate the chances ofWorld War III starting, which it does by throwing virtualI Ching sticks.
His manifesto is calledNever Whistle While You're Pissing, containing hisDefinitions and Distinctions, an anarchist interpretation of capitalist concepts.[3]
