Maxims förlag and The Planet of Trees

Under the imprint of his own publishing house, Maxims förlag, he published the book Trädens planet (The Planet of Trees, 79 pages, with black-and-white illustrations, ISBN 91-970950-1-X) in July 1987. He signed it with the pseudonym Ael Gi. In it, the author poses as a visitor from another world looking at the Earth from outside.

The original copy of the book is now on display in the Dobrá Vila café, right next to the suitcase that accompanied Gabriel on several journeys around the world.

He himself called it “a protest book against man’s arbitrary behaviour”, presenting a new philosophy of life. Trees are the noblest beings on Earth, and man is described as an occupier of the planet. The ideal planets Juro and Mara serve as a contrast.

When he found errors in the text after printing, he had a notice added to the back cover: the Swedish of the “foreign visitor” is not always quite correct, so the book is also suitable as “an exercise book for correcting Swedish”.

A letter from Lars Gyllensten

Shortly after publication, Gabriel sent the book to the writer and physician Lars Gyllensten (1921 – 2006). Gyllensten was a member of the Swedish Academy, its permanent secretary in 1977 – 1986 and, from 1987, chairman of the Nobel Foundation. He replied in a Swedish Academy envelope from Holmhällar near Burgsvik on Gotland:

A dispute over the book

The library service was far stricter. Swedish public libraries bought books based on reviews by the library service Bibliotekstjänst (BTJ). Two readers called the book dull and full of language errors. According to Gabriel, these reviews discouraged both librarians and booksellers.

Gabriel would not accept it. On 15 December 1987 he lodged an appeal with BTJ. He recalled that a hundred years earlier even the Impressionists’ paintings had been excluded from official exhibitions for breaking academic norms. He objected that the reviewers attributed to him views that were not in the book, and argued that a book with new and different views should not be excluded from libraries just because it is inconvenient or was not written by a linguist. He asked for the entry to be corrected in the database and in the order catalogue.

“Drága mulatság”

On New Year’s Eve 1987 the Maxims förlag publishing house ceased to exist and was deleted from the Stockholm commercial register. That day Gabriel wrote, in Slovak, a candid “Analysis of the causes of the failure of the book Ael Gi Trädens planet and of the end of my publishing house”.

The publishing house started in 1973 with a postage stamp album, “Frimärksalbum hela världen” (Stamp album – the whole world), printed in 1,000 copies. He donated one copy to the Postal Museum in Stockholm, which thanked him in writing on 21 December 1973. The entire print run was destroyed by a fire in a cellar in Fittja. It was followed by a registered design, “Stamps of the countries”, which he never had printed. Finally he published his “life’s work”, The Planet of Trees.

He blamed himself above all for the book’s failure:

• Two colleagues corrected the Swedish text chapter by chapter, but in his view they deliberately left errors in it.
• He saved about a thousand crowns on paid proofreading. On average one error per page remained, and the added notice about an “exercise book in Swedish” made the book ridiculous, in his words.
• He set the wrong price. Bookshops were by then adding 50 % instead of 40 %, so the book cost 56 crowns instead of a realistic 34. “Too late now – I tripped myself up.”

He was left with about 500 copies, which he planned to give away gradually. Over the 15 years of the publishing house he put a total of 37,240 Swedish crowns into it, 15,000 of them in 1987 alone. He closed the analysis in Hungarian: “Drága mulatság. Rémes.” – “An expensive amusement. Dreadful.”

The mysterious temple pyramid of Java

Gabriel did not only take photographs on his travels – he also wrote. In January 1987 he sent the Swedish travel magazine ResGuide, “the largest travel magazine in the North”, a manuscript entitled Javas gåtfulla tempelpyramid – The Mysterious Temple Pyramid of Java. It ran to almost 17 A4 pages and was illustrated with his own drawings.

He first took the reader across Java, by bus and train from Jakarta via Bandung to Yogyakarta. He then described in detail the 9th-century Buddhist temple pyramid of Borobudur and the Hindu temples around it. Finally he put forward his own hypothesis: Borobudur’s stepped pyramid may be the roof of a temple building that is still covered by the temple hill.

The editor Anders Mathlein replied on 2 February 1987. He praised in particular the “finely condensed descriptions of the foundations of Hinduism and Buddhism”, but rejected the text for the magazine as too long and too specialised, recommending a popular science periodical instead. Gabriel did not give up. In June 1988 he sent a revised manuscript to Harry Järv, whom he had met at the Hedengrens bookshop in Stockholm, for the magazine Fenix.

Both versions survive in the archive. The first has 17 pages and opens with a travelogue through Java. The revised version has 14 pages and omits the travel section: it begins directly with a description of Borobudur and concentrates on its construction, history and Gabriel’s hypothesis. It is probably the text he offered to Fenix in 1988.

The Aztec calendar in a clearer light

Old calendars were another of Gabriel’s passions. In Swedish he wrote the study Aztekisk tidräkning i klarare belysning (Aztec time-reckoning in a clearer light), in which he tried to decipher a system that, in his view, even the Spanish chroniclers had not understood.

According to him, the Aztec calendar was built on the numbers four, five and thirteen, which recur on the famous calendar stone. He also saw in the stone traces of an even older 56-part circular calendar, similar to the one at Stonehenge.

The Aztecs used two calendars: a ritual one of 260 days (13 numbers × 20 day signs) and a civil one of 360 days plus five “unlucky” days. Gabriel showed that the two meet after 13 years, because 13 × 360 = 18 × 260 = 4,680 days. With his own tables he was able to reconstruct, at least in part, the lost tonalamatl – the “books of days” by which Aztec priests foretold fates and named children after their day of birth.

For his readers he added an example: the day “1-Serpent” was considered a good day to start a trading journey. On which day should one set out if it is the beginning of the third year of a thirteen-year period? According to his calculation, on the 5th day of the 9th “month”.

Stonehenge for Disney

Gabriel wanted to turn his theory of Stonehenge as a solar furnace into an attraction. On 16 August 1985 he sent the management of Disney World in Orlando a “Stonehenge Attraction” offer with seven annexes: drawings of the pavilion, of cars with grandstands, of an entrance hall in megalithic style, and a detailed script.

On 5 September 1985 the Walt Disney World legal department replied with a form letter: as a matter of principle the company does not consider unsolicited proposals and was returning the material “unreviewed”.

Gabriel did not give up. He also learned about Euro Disneyland from the Swedish press. He kept a clipping about the shipping company Stena Line planning a hotel by the park, and above it he noted by hand the address of the management, “Euro Disney Resort, Directory, Marne-la-Vallée”. Shortly after Euro Disneyland opened near Paris, he sent the “Stonehenge Attraction” offer again on 16 April 1992. Euro Disney received it on 30 April and sent him forms, which he signed in Stockholm on 27 July 1992 – a French “Lettre d’engagement” and an English “Release”. As sender he gave “Gabriel Maxim, Sobrance, Slovaquie”, adding that he was moving to Slovakia within two months. On 22 September 1992 the Euro Disney legal department returned the material – once again unreviewed.