Wake up

 

Insula sau Continent?

Uscatul forma un fel de golf mic, mărginit de nisipul ce albea în întunericul vag, dar, aşa cum se întîmplă cu orice naufragiat, Roberto nu putea spune dacă era insulă sau continent. Se dusese împleticindu-se pînă la celălalt bord şi întrevăzuse ― dar de data aceasta departe, aproape de linia orizontului ― vîrfurile unui alt profil, mărginit şi acela de două promontorii. În rest numai mare, aşa încît dădea impresia că vasul era acostat într-o radă în care intrase trecînd printr-un canal larg ce despărţea cele două porţiuni de uscat.

Roberto hotărîse că, dacă nu era vorba de două insule, cu siguranţă că era o insulă din apropierea unui uscat mult mai vast. Nu cred că mai făcuse şi alte ipoteze, dat fiind că nu auzise niciodată de golfuri atît de largi încît să dea impresia cui s-ar fi aflat în mijlocul lor că se află în faţa a două uscaturi gemene. Aşa că, neştiind pe acolo vreun continent mai mare, ghicise bine.

 

Din cartea lui Eco “A spune cam acelasi lucru. Experiente in traducere” am aflat despre “Insula misterioasa” a lui Jules Verne. Daca nu as fi gasit aceasta mentiune a lui Eco, as fi sarit usor peste aceasta trimitere. Sa spun drept nici nu-i gasesc insemnatatea. Fiind una, dintre multe altele trebuie sa o luam in seama.

M-am fortat de am citit “Insula misterioasa”. Nu inteleg de ce mi-a fost atat de greu sa o termin. Ceea ce vreau sa spun e ca nu am citit-o cu placere. Care e mesajul lui Eco? Face o comparatie a naufragiilor si cum au fost vazute ele de-a lungul timpului? Din moment ce are de a face si el cu un naufragiat, cam la asa ceva ne-am putea astepta de la el.

Daca e sa scriu despre un naufragiu, trebuie sa stiu ce s-a scris despre naufragiile pana la mine incoace…

Cum sunt naufragiatii lui Jules Verne? Nu-mi vine in cap o comparatie potrivita. Sunt harnici, isteti si bravi. Omul zilei e “inginerul” care le stie pe toate, in stare sa faca din rahat bici care sa si pocneasca. Cuvantul “pionierii” e folosit de vreo 400 si ceva de ori – poate datorita acestui cuvant am avut si eu probleme de m-am poticnit in “explorare”.

“—    Să nu ne mai considerăm nişte naufragiaţi. Ar fi mai potrivit să ne considerăm nişte pionieri veniţi aici ca să colonizăm ţinutul.”

“Fără să mai piardă o clipă, pionierii se apucară să construiască cuptorul, pentru coacerea diferitelor vase necesare gospodăriei lor.”

“Răbdarea şi ingeniozitatea pionierilor fură puse la grea încercare. Totuşi, operaţia izbuti[...]“  etc

Pionierul sef, Cyrus Smith, cum se vede ajuns pe pamant e obsedat de o singura intrebare:

Din nou şopti cîteva cuvinte, aceleaşi, fără îndoială, pe care le şoptise şi prima dată şi care arătau gîndu- rile ce nu încetau să-l frămînte. De data asta îl înţeleseră.

—    Insulă sau continent ? murmură el.

—    Ah ! — nu se putu stăpîni să exclame Pencroff —- puţin ne pasă, bine că trăieşti dumneata, domnule Cyrus. De-i insulă sau continent, vedem noi asta mai tîrziu.

Acuma sa ne batem in naufragiati. Cum sunt pionierii lui Jules Verne, comparativ cu naufragiatul nostru? Oare Robert e luat de acelasi val al descoperirilor si ingineriei ca oamenii lui Verne? Da, intr-o anumita masura.

Totusi autorul nu mai este atat de extaziat ca Verne. E mai matur, mai mistocar. Nu-l trec fiorii descoperirilor stiintifice.

Insula sau Continent? Roberto zice ca Insula, dar nu prea are cum sa-si verifice ipoteza, noroc de autor ca-l ajuta mereu.

“Insula Misterioasa” mi-a lasat un gust amar in gura, nu pentru ca ar fi o carte rea ci pentru ca a fost folosita ca manual de instructie pentru micul “pionier”, micul fascist, sau orice alt idiot mic in drum spre idealuri.

 

 

Umberto Eco la “On Point” – 15 noiembrie 2007

 

21 kAsIm

 

Tusitala

L-am gasit azi la Google:

13 Noiembrie 2010 - "Google doodle" aniverseaza 160 de ani de la nasterea lui Robert Louis Stevenson

 

Robert Louis Stevenson e folosit la greu de Eco in Insula. Am sa ma ocup de subiect, daca tot e ziua lui. :)

Chiar aveam pofta sa citesc ceva de genu asta.

La Multi Ani Tusitala!!!!

 

Nicolae Steinhardt si Umberto Eco

Ma gandeam zilele astea cum ar fi, sau mai bine zis, cum ar fi fost o intalnire intre cei doi. Poate, s-or fi intalnit ..mai stii?

Sa ne imaginam o astfel de intalnire.

Sa zicem ca ar fi candva prin 1983 . Sunt 20 de ani diferenta intre ei. In ’83 Eco avea 51 de ani, iar Steinhardt 71. Pozele sunt oarecum din acea perioada. Cea cu Eco, e dintr-un documentar despre Numele Trandafirului – filmul (deci probabil e de prin 1986) si cea cu Steinhardt nu stiu din ce an e.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In ce limba ar fi vorbit? :)

Din ce am citit, Steinhardt stia vreo 11. Eco nu sta nici el prost la domeniu asta. Totusi pe Steinhardt mi-l imaginez mai aproape de franceza, habar n-am de ce.

Probabil ca ar fi vorbit amestecat, trecand de la o limba la alta, dar ii vad vorbind banalitati. Unii oameni cred ca se inteleg fara sa vorbeasca prea mult.

Ar fi afara. Ar mirosi a fan proaspat cosit, merele ar fi bune de strans, dar e si izul ala de ceata care se simte toamna. Ar sta undeva intr-un foisor, poate gustand un pahar de vin si niste branza.

Printre altele ar vorbi si despre carti. Probabil ca l-ar duce sa-i arate biblioteca si cartile de care are grija. Ar mai sta apoi la umbra si-ar mai rontai niste mere. Cam asa-i vad eu. … nu e cine stie ce descriere. Dar noh! Cata palarie, atata minte :))

Intr-o cartulie a lui Steinhardt am gasit un articol intitulat “Cu privire la Numele Rozei“. Numele trandafirului a fost publicata in italiana in 1980. In 1984 a fost publicata in Romania. Steinhardt a citit-o inainte, probabil in versiunea originala. Asta zice Steinhardt despre Numele Trandafirului:

***

Socotesc util a încerca să desprind particularităţile unei cărţi oarecum ciudate, care a stârnit multă vâlvă, a cunoscut un strălucit succes pe plan mondial şi se prezintă sub forma unui foarte compozit roman. Mă refer la Numele Rozei de Umberto Eco, pe larg comentat şi în mică măsură tradus de Secolul 20, nr. 8-9-10 / 1983.

Prima precizare: Il nome della rosa nu este, în ciuda aparenţelor, un roman istoric şi poliţist, deşi acţiunea se petrece în 1327 şi povestirea cuprinde – ca la Edgaw Wallace – o serie de morţi năprasnice. (Nota bene: e mai corect să spun morţi năprasnice, nu crime: fiindcă cele şase cadavre găsite de-a lungul a şase zile consecutive într-o mănăstire benedictină din nordul Italiei nu sunt victimele directe ale unei aceleiaşi mâini ucigaşe – precum ar fi cerut tipicul poliţist – ci rodurile unor imprejurari încâlcite şi mult ori mai puţin fortuite implicate, ce-i drept, într-o singură succesiune de întâmplări şi otrăviri cu iz senzaţional, lor adăugându-li-se o sinucidere şi un asasinat în ziua a şaptea.

A doua: nu e nici un roman propriu-zis istoric, în ciuda numeroaselor, întinselor pasaje consacrate evenimentelor şi intrigilor politice ale perioadei. Cadrul istoric alcătuieşte numai arierplanul necesar accenturii caracterului haotic, focos, şi crâncen al incidentelor narate. Potrivit a fost ales veacul al XIV-lea, al dezlănţuirii războiului de o sută de ani, al marii schisme din biserica apuseană, al ciumei negre, al exacerbării rivalităţii dintre papa şi împărat, al banditismului even epidemic, al tuturor calamitatilor. (Romanul, din acest punct de vedere, al cronologiei, e presărat cu observaţii nostime şi pitoreşti: bunăoară pomenirea ochelarilor şi furculiţelor, pe atunci mari şi uimitoare noutăţi.)

A treia, dar nu e, deopotrivă, nici un autentic roman detectiv, explicaţia finală dovedind că nu a fost vorba de asasinate voite şi coerent legate între ele. Cât despre motivul declanşator al tragediei, se poate afirma că, în perimetrul literaturii poliţiste, nu merită mai mult decât menţiunea “suficient”.

A patra: e, cumva, o apologie creştină ori anticreştina? Deloc. Nu este un roman apologetic: creştinismul nu-l defăima şi nu-l slăveşte. Dar monahii sunt înfăţişaţi cu belşug de slăbiciuni şi păcate! Răspuns: acestea poartă o marcă strict individuală, nu pun în discuţie validitatea credinţei lor, teoriile şi crezurile nejudecandu-se după uscaturile din cuprinsul obştii care se supun respectivelor teorii şi crezuri. Conflictele dintre papa şi împărat, dintre pretendenţii la papalitate, dintre diversele ordine călugăreşti sunt descrise, ironic şi întru totul nepărtinitor, drept ceea ce au şi fost: accidente, peripeţii, păţanii ale mersului istoriei.

Dacă nu-i roman istoric, roman poliţist, roman istorico-politist ori roman apologetic, înseamnă că Numele rozei scapa oricărei definiţii? Câtuşi de puţin. E, limpede şi cert, o parabolă. O foarte contemporană şi totodată atemporala parabola al cărei sens major este denunţarea şi defăimarea fanatismului, teroarei şi falsei gravitaţi (austerităţi, solemnităţi). Un aprig rechizioriu împotriva dogmatismului, intrasigenţei axiologice, furiei doctrinare. Învăţătura lui Guillem de Baskerville, călugărul franciscan, eroul cărţii, detectivul, înţeleptul, liberalul se rezumă în silă şi oroarea faţă de orice formă de absolutism şi tâmpă habotnicie. Cenzură îi este odioasă. La fel ipocrizia. Toruerii îi dezvăluie nu numai bestialitatea ci şi volnicia de a-l transforma pe cel căreia i se aplică în drogat şi demonizat[1]. Impetous îi displace şi gravitatea (emfază) în exprimarea adevărului, adevărurile (la plural) fiind foarte relative. Să avem dreptate cu socotinţa, cu modestie şi-n chip îngăduitor. Să nu aplicăm legile, chiar şi bune, cu cerbicie şi fără discernământ. Să avem întotdeauna vie, în sinea noastră, conştiinţa relativităţii lucrurilor şi să ne ferim a fi mai logici şi încruntaţi, a deveni severi căpăţânoşi, cruzi şi prin fire expuşi primejdiei de a ne lua prea în serios, în tragic. Să ne deprindem a zâmbi: de nu, logica de gheaţă şi gravitatea teroarei şi torturii, omorului şi delaţiunii. Zâmbetul şi moderaţia, doar ele ne pot salva. Ele, antidot sigur împotriva otrăvirii sufletului şi minţii cu fanatism.

Aceasta-i lecţia rezoneurului cărţii şi a cărţii însăşi. Pentru a o formula cât mai pregnant şi a o răspândi pe zone cât mai largi, autorul a recurs la învesmântarea ei cu podoabele şi nurii romanului istoric şi poliţist (care se bucura de îndoită putere de atracţie a unor genuri literare îndeobşte îndrăgite). Parabola, desigur, e destul de naiv camuflată, nu însă fără graţie, verva şi talent[2]. Maeştrii literari ai autorului sunt Anatole France (de la el: însuşirea nenumăratelor interminabile titluri de cărţi latineşti), Herman Hesse (de la el: imaginea celor doi vizitatori sosiţi pe-nsearte într-o abaţie medievală şi partea romantico-magica a fabulei), Thomas Mann (de la el: incontestabilele elemente baroce şi predilectia pentru lungimi şi amănunte, pentru enciclopedism), Ernst-Robert Curtius, a cărui vastă lucrare Literatură europeană şi evul mediu latin a fost din plin folosită. Pe linie poliţista: Arthur Conan Doyle, fireşte, Guillem de Baskerville şi Adso de Melk figurând pe Sherlock Holmes şi pe doctorul Watson. Baskerville e numele – îl ştiu toţi amatorii de proză “criminală” – primului caz al cronicii lui Holmes (The hound of the Baskervilles), iar Adso e un Watson tânăr, mai aproape de ipostaza-i românească, băiatul Taxon (Taxon băiete, zise genialul detectiv, adu-mi o ţuică să mă încălzesc), decât de originalul britanic. După aceea, Poe: bibliotecă (spaţiu primordial, adevărat axis mundi ori loci), manuscrisele misterioase, multiplicitatea alfabetelor, descifrarea cripticei însemnări ce va deschide uşa camerei secrete, călugărul erudit, ucigaş indirect, fanatic şi orb (la propriu; iar denumirea – Juan de Burgos – de îndată o aminteşte pe a bătrânului scriitor orb J.L. Borges), îmbinarea cărturăriei cu trama poliţistă pe el îl evoca; Chersterton (creatorul preotului-detectiv, Father Brown, şi primul care nu s-a sfiit a pune laolaltă consideraţiile filosofice şi dizertaţiile teologice cu misterul poliţist); S.S. Van Dine (al cărui Philo Vance este şi el un detectiv rafinat, inteligent şi meşter psiholog). Dar mai ales Dorothy Sayers. Mai întâi că autoarea aceasta de romane detective a fost şi dramaturg, a scris piese cu subiect teologal. Apoi, şi în special, pentru că eroul ei, lordul Peter Wimsey, e tot atât de atotştiutor, doct, livresc şi subtil ca şi Părintele Guillem. De Gaudy night, roman deopotrivă poliţist şi universitar – se petrece la Oxford, citadela a învăţământului medieval, şi-i un adevărat foc de artificii cultural! – se apropie Il nome della rosa mai mult decat de orice altă scriere. Il nome e o carte remarcabilă dar cu totul originală nu e, de vreme ce a precedat-o cu câteva decenii Guady night!

Defecte? Multe: lungimi inutile (hiperbolice), excesiv de amănunţite expuneri arhitecturale, supraproducţie de titluri de cărţi (reale, imaginare) latineşti şi orientale, surplus de erudiţie (ia uneori aspect de exhibiţionism cerebral), o destul de puerila vrere de a scandaliza, rătăciri şi adăstări pe cărări lăturalnice. De nu se numără, toate printre procedeele curente ale autorilor genului anchetator, cale adică de a deruta lectura, de a-l pierde în labirinturi nesemnificative pe cel care citeşte, a-i distrage atenţia de la firul conducător, a-l împiedica să descopere el pe criminal! (Şi aceasta chiar, foarte probabil, sunt.)

Il nome della rosa: întrucât e pastişă poliţistă, eşafodaj istorico-teologic: izbutită, biruind lungimile şi digresiunile, vioaie, pe urmele lui G.K.Chesterton, Anatole France (a se vedea şi Răscoală îngerilor), Dorothy Sayers: excelente modele; întrucât e operă literară: cu defecte şi calitaţi, prisoselnic inundată de erudiţionism; întrucât e parabolă antifanatică: admirabilă contribuţie la o cauză bună. Şi aceasta din urmă trăsătura justifică totul.

Pentru înţelegerea psihologiei personajelor, nimerit este a nu uita că alde Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown, Guillem de Baskerville sunt – în esenţă şi-n tonalitatea Simonei de Beauvoir – nişte prea iscusiţi şi mult voitori de bine mandarini. Inteligenţa pusă în slujba binelui şi a libertăţii, iată numele de taină al rozei! şi acest sens i l-a dat poate şi evul mediu făcând din trandafir predilectul simbol al purităţii.

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[1] Rândurile despre tortură sunt revelatoare: “Un singur lucru îl excită pe animal mai abitir decât plăcerea, şi acela-i durerea. Sub efectul torturii trăieşti aidoma ca sub stăpânirea buruienilor care stârnesc vedenii. Tot ceea ce ai auzit povestindu-ti-se, tot ceea ce ai citit îţi vine în minte de parcă ai fi purtat nu spre cer, ci spre iad. Sub tortura spui nu numai ce vrea inchizitorul, ci şi ceea ce îţi închipui tu că-i poate fi pe plac, fiindcă se făureşte o legătură – cu adevărat drăcească legătura – între tine şi el…Toate acestea le ştiu, Ubertine, am făcut şi eu parte din tagma oamenilor care cred că odrăslesc adevărul cu fierul roşu. Ei bine, afla, incandescenţa adevărului e de cu totul alt soi decât a fierului roşu. Sub tortura, Bentivegna poate să fi dat glas minciunilor celor mai năstruşnice, pentru că nu el vorbea, ci luxura sa, demonii sufletului său. 

-Luxura?

-Da, există o luxură a durerii, după cum există o luxură a umilinţei.”.

[2] Profesorul de semiotică nu a dat o carte scrisă în italieneşte, a întocmit-o într-un soi de lingua franca, de sabir italo-latino-greco-anglo-german: atât de abil şi savant sunt amestecate idioamele încât nu se poate să nu-l amuze şi încânte pe cititorul avizat.

 

De ce Kircher?

Se pomenise în lumina slabă a unui opaiţ, cu o ferestruică pe pereţii rotunjiţi din fund. Iar acolo, pe un culcuş, cu genunchii aproape lipiţi de bărbie, şi cu braţul întins ca să apuce un ditamai pistolul, se afla Celălalt.

Era un bătrîn, cu pupilele dilatate, cu faţa uscată, încadrată de o barbă scurtă şi încărunţită, cu păru-i rar şi albit ridicat vîlvoi în creştetul capului, cu gura aproape fără nici un dinte şi cu gingiile de culoarea afinei şi înfofolit într-o zdreanţă care probabil fusese neagră, însă acum era plină de pete unsuroase şi spălăcite.

Îndreptîndu-şi spre el pistolul de care aproape se agăţa cu amîndouă mîinile, în timp ce braţele-i tremurau, ţipa cu o voce piţigăiată. Prima frază fu în nemţeşte sau în olandeză, iar cea de a doua, care desigur că repeta acelaşi mesaj, fu într-o italiană stricată ― semn că dedusese originea interlocutorului său spionîndu-i prin hîrtii.

“Dacă tu te mişti, eu omor!”

Roberto rămăsese atît de surprins de vedenia aceea încît reacţiona cu întîrziere. Şi bine făcu, căci astfel putu să-şi dea seama că arma nu avea cocoşul ridicat şi deci Inamicul nu era cine ştie ce priceput în ale milităriei.

Şi atunci se apropiase de-a dreptul, înşfăcase pistolul de ţeavă şi încercase să-l descleşteze din mîinile acelea strînse în jurul patului în timp ce nemţoteiul scotea nişte strigăte guturale şi mînioase.

Cu chiu cu vai Roberto îi luase în cele din urmă arma, celălalt se lăsase să cadă pe spate, iar Roberto îngenunchease alături de el, susţinîndu-i capul.

“Domnule”, spusese el, “nu vreau să vă fac nici un rău. Sînt un prieten. Înţeles? Amicus!”

Celălalt tot deschidea şi închidea gura, dar nu vorbea; i se vedea numai albul ochilor, sau mai bine zis roşul lor, iar Roberto se temu să nu cumva să-şi dea duhul. Îl luă în braţe, aşa moale cum era, şi îl duse în odaia lui. Îi dădu apă, îl îndemnă să bea puţin rachiu, iar acela zise “Gratias ago, domine”, ridică mîna ca pentru a-l binecuvînta, iar în clipa aceea Roberto îşi dădu seama, uitîndu-se mai cu atenţie la hainele lui, că era un călugăr.

Despre Kircher si Schott vor fi mai multe de vorbit, dar vreau sa redau un articol scris de Eco si publicat in cartea Memoria Vegetala, Editura Rao, 2008, in traducere din limba italiana de  Anamaria Gebaila:

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Nu-mi amintesc cand am intalnit pentru prima oara in viata numele lui Athanasius Kircher, dar imi amintesc foarte bine momentul in care am inceput sa-i rasfoiesc cartile, pentru a extrage unele dintre imaginile sale pline de fantezie. Se intampla catre sfarsitul lui 1959, cand incepusem sa adun material pentru Storia figurata delle invenzioni, care a aparut la Editura Bompiani si pentru care am cutreierat nu numai bibilioteci, ci si arhive ale muzeelor de stiinte, precum cea (foarte bine dotata) de la Deutsches Museum din München.

De ce amintesc acest fapt care, in sine, ar fi interesant doar in vederea unei nedorite autobiografii? Ei bine, pentru a spune ca, pe vremea aceea, Kircher era cunoscut numai drept cineva care a anticipat masinarii ale viitorului, precum fotografia sau cinematograful, drept un Jules Verne avant la lettre; in rest, textele sale zaceau in biblioteci, consultate de vreun suprarealist intarziat sau de vreun vanator de carti stranii si desuete precum Baltrusaitis. Daca ma uit in bibliografia cartii Athanasius Kircher S.J., Master of a Hundred Arts a lui P. Conor Relly (Weisbaden, Ed. Del Mondo, 1974) si in cea a cartii lui Valerio Rivosecchi (Esotismo in Roma barocca Roma, Bulzoni, 1982) gasesc o lista de titluri, in majoritate de articole, mai scurta decat lista operelor lui Kircher. Desi Kircher a lucrat si a trait la Roma, la noi interesul in ceea ce-l priveste s-a manifestat serios abia in 1985, prin actele colocviului asupra lui Kircher (Enciclopedismo in Roma barocca, Venetia, Marsilio, 1986); nu intamplator, printre cei care semneaza prefata actelor acestui colocviu se numara kircherieni “vechi”, precum Eugenio Battisti si Giulio Macchi.

Ca o curiozitate, atunci cand, la inceputul anilor ’80, am inceput sa colectionez toate operele sale, o carte a lui Kircher se putea cumpara in schimbul a vreo opt sute de mii de lire italiene. Astazi, fara sa fie vorba de Oedipus complet, de China, de Mundus subterraneus sau de Musurgia, care bat spre mai multe zeci de milioane fiecare, ajung la vreo cateva milioane si operele minore, lipsite de ilustratii, ca Archetypon Politicum, o carte foarte modesta pentru bibliofili.

Amintesc aceste date pentru a  spune ca, dincolo de atentia savantilor, asupra lui Kircher s-a concentrat in ultimii ani si atentia bibliofililor. Nu prea am avea de ce sa ne minunam, cartile lui Kircher au ilustratii splendide; insa vechile cataloage din secolul al XIX-lea le considerau putin cautate, deci si conceptul de valoare a ilustratiei variaza de-a lungul vremii.

Farmecul lui Kircher se datoreaza si dificultatii de a-l incadra intr-o categorie. Se poate face o lista cu afirmatiile gresite facute de Kircher de-a lungul vietii in cartile sale si, astfel, bietul iezuit ar fi redus la un autodidact lipsit de simt critic, care nu le-a nimerit deloc. In acest sens, Kircher ar apartine acelei categorii denumite in franceza “les fous litteraires”, care cuprinde si nebunii stiintei; despre acestia din urma exista cataloage si biblioteci de specialitate. Ar fi o aventura trista pentru un membru atat de important al ordinului iezuitilor si atat de apreciat de contemporanii sai, inclusiv de Leibniz, sa se vada exilat ca un exponat al acelor muzee de teratologie naturala pe care el insusi le-a intemeiat, ca o minunatie buna numai pentru o Wunderkammer.

Pe de alta parte, in operele sale se amesteca, adesea in mod confuz, ceea ce astazi am numi date stiintifice, farmecul, exceptionalul si ipotezele indraznete si, in mod sigur, nesabuite. A se vedea, spre exemplu, studiile sale de egiptologie, de la Prodromus coptus sive aegyptiacus (1636) si Obeliscus pamphilius (1650), trecand prin monumentalul Oedypus Aegyptiacus (1652-1654) si ajungand pana la Obelisci aegyptiaci interpretatio hieroglyphica (1666) si la Sphynx mystagoga (1676). Kircher a studiat obeliscurile romane si orice alte izvoare pe care le putea gasi la Roma si a dedus o teorie de descifrare a scrierii hieroglifice, incantatoare fara indoiala, dar cu desavarsire falsa. Cu toate acestea, in lipsa ilustratiilor din cartile sale, Champollion n-ar fi putut sa aprofundeze acelasi subiect si n-ar fi gasit (avand totusi la dispozitie si stela trilingva de la Rosetta) cheia potrivita pentru a descifra toate acele imagini. De aceea, pana in zilele noastre, Kircher este numit parintele egiptologiei, desi a fost un parinte prea fantezist.

Am putea fi insa generosi si sa luam in consideratie numai ceea ce a nimerit. In China (1667), gratie relatiilor confratilor sai iezuiti, culege si documenteaza numeroase informatii despre aceasta tara. Interpretandu-le dupa propria opinie, mai si greseste, o cauza fiind imaginatia desenatorilor, pe care el insusi o atata. Totusi, intelesese ca ideogramele chinezesti erau de natura iconica; poate parea ciudat, dar personaje ilustre precum Bacon sau Wilkins nu banuisera acest fapt. Mai mult, Kircher intuise viitorul unui tip de antropologie culturala care inseamna sa mergi pe continente indepartate si necunoscute si sa strangi orice fel de document. Kircher a fost un bun exemplu de explorator neobosit care, fara a se misca de la el de-acasa, isi punea confratii la treaba.

In Ars magna lucis et umbrae (1646) si mai ales in editia din 1671, printre inventarea de spectacole de lumini si printre studii mai putin importante, putin ii lipseste sa nu inventeze cinematograful, in Ars magna sciendi (1669), scrierea in stilul lui Llull[1], intesata de analiza combinatorica, avanseaza ipoteze care si astazi ii uimesc pe cercetatorii in informatica. Desigur, in ambele domenii era un epigon, deoarece camera obscura nu fusese inventata de el, ci vorbise despre ea Della Porta, la ocularul pentru lunete se gandise deja Huygens si Thomas Rasmunssen Walgenstein o facuse deja cunoscuta, iar in descoperirea extraordinara a analizei combinatorice fusese precedat de Ramon Llull.

Cu siguranta insa, Kircher intelesese necesitatea microscopului si cum trebuie utilizat, si ca epidemiile erau pricinuite de microorganisme. Se temuse sa calce pe urmele lui Galilei, dar incercase solutia de mijloc propusa de Tycho Brahe, care era la moda in vremea aceea; ideea era falsa, dar ingenioasa. Ca sa nu mai vorbim despre observatiile asupra vulcanilor, pe care le facuse personal, pe teren; acestea i-au facut pe vulcanologi sa publice recent o noua si frumoasa editie anastatica din Mundus subterraneus[2].

De altfel, opera fusese luata in serios si la vremea ei, chiar si de cei care erau de acord cu ea numai in mica masura (Huygens spunea despre Kircher ca “trebuie apreciat mai degraba pentru piosenia decat pentru inteligenta sa”). Oricum, chiar inainte de publicare, Oldenburg ii scria lui Boyle despre carte, Spinoza ii trimisese un exemplar lui Huygens, Stenone face referire la ea, si acelasi Oldenburg scrie o recenzie in primul volum din The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, iar in numarul urmator reproduce o parte din carte (An experiment of a way of preparing a liquor that shall sink into a color the whole body of marble….)[3]

Evident, nici in aceasta opera Kircher nu se dezminte. Pasionat si de neoprit, ne vorbeste despre luna si despre soare, despre maree, despre curentii oceanici, despre eclipse, despre apele si focurile din strafundurile pamantului, despre rauri, lacuri si despre izvoarele Nilului, despre ocne si mine, despre fosile, metale, insecte si ierburi, despre distilare, focuri de artificii, despre germinarea spontana si cea produsa de germenii vitali raspanditi pretutindeni, insa cu aceeasi dezinvoltura ne povesteste (si ne arata) despre dragoni si uriasi. Pe de alta parte, naturalisti ilustri, de la Aldovandi la Johnston, nu puteau renunta la dragoni, si Kircher insusi arata ca stie ceva despre iguane, iar un naturalist care a vazut o iguana sau a auzit vorbindu-se despre ea poate sa ia in serios si dragonii.

Insa, dincolo de interesul geologic, un aspect prezentat in Mundus este de importanta capitala pentru istoria culturii si – as adauga – pentru afirmarea unei mentalitati stiintifice dincolo de delirul stiintelor oculte.

In cea de-a unsprezecea carte din Mundus, Kircher decide sa clarifice problema alchimiei. Perspectiva adoptata este cea a istoriei si a cercetarii experimentale: pe de-o parte reciteste toate operele traditionale ale alchimiei, de la izvoarele antice (fundamental fiind, desigur, Hermes Trismegistul, dar nu sunt neglijate nici izvoarele copte si ebraice sau traditia araba), pana la pseudo lullo, Arnaldo di Villanova, Roger Bacon sau Basilio Valentino si altii; pe de alta parte, pune la punct in laboratorul sau (asa cum ne arata prin intermediul desenelor) diferite tipuri de cuptoare, colectioneaza retete vechi de secole, le incearca, critica lipsa lor de utilitate sau caracterul vag. Este clar ca, pentru a demonstra (sau a demonstra din nou) o serie intreaga de principii traditionale, primise la curtea sa o multime de sarlatani, ca sa le invete tertipurile si pentru a intelege in profunzime principiile pe care astazi le-am numi “rationale” sau demonstrabile experimental, fara a recurge la vreo ipoteza a Pietrei Filosofale.

Astfel, Kircher distinge doua categorii: cei care cred ca transformarea alchimica este imposibila – sau o considera posibila numai prin interventii divine sau diavolesti –, dar care continua cercetarile chimice asupra metalelor dedicate altor scopuri, si cei care vand imitatii de aur si argint, facand comert prin sarlatanie.

Nu era putin lucru in vremurile de atunci sa te raportezi critic la Paracelsus[4], si mai ales – asa cum reiese din cartea a unsprezecea – sa te inversunezi impotriva unor autoritati recunoscute precum Sendivogius[5] sau Robert Fludd[6], sa lupti la limita exorcismului impotriva traditiei protestante, careia ii apartineau primele manifeste ale lui Rosenkreuzer; dar, in plin secol al XVII-lea, Kircher militeaza pentru o viziune mai rationala si bazata pe experiment a chimiei viitorului, in vreme ce alchimia isi va urma cursul pana la masonii secolului XIX-lea, iar, daca judecam dupa textele care mai circula si astazi, n-a murit inca, cel putin sub aspectele sale mistico-ermetice.

Asadar, s-ar putea trage concluzia ca rabojul lui Kircher sta sub semnul echitabilitatii: a avut dreptate in multe privinte, a gresit in altele. Rautaciosii vor spune ca, deoarece s-a ocupat de toate domeniile de-a lungul a zeci de mii de pagini, statistic numai asa se putea intampla: uneori sa nimereasca, alteori nu, ca la jocurile de noroc.

Ramane insa fara raspuns intrebarea de ce Kircher ni se pare fascinant. Eu as spune ca ni se pare fascinant din  celasi motiv pentru care a gresit in atat de multe privinte. Motivele sunt voracitatea, bulimia sa stiintifica, aviditatea enciclopedica si faptul ca si-a urmat pasiunea desi se gasea, nu din vina lui, la mijlocul parcursului intre doua epoci ale enciclopediei. Cea dintai, cea greco-romana (sa ne gandim la Pliniu) si medievala, in care enciclopedistul aduna tot ce auzise fara sa mai verifice informatiile, cea de-a doua, cea  dominata de Enciclopedia iluminista, in care enciclopedistul  avea in spate munca multor experti, care vorbeau fiecare despre ceea ce aflasera prin experimentare directa. Kircher vorbeste despre toate, si uneori din auzite, dar vrea sa aduca dovezi, sa schiteze imagini, diagrame, sa gaseasca legi de functionare, cauze si efecte. Nascandu-se prea tarziu sau poate prea devreme, Kircher vorbeste pe un ton stiintific despre lucruri asupra carosa se insala si nu renunta la a vorbi despre toate.

Desigur, cauza principala a farmecului sau este domeniul pe care nu l-a dezvoltat, dar pe care l-a conceput, reprezentarile iconice.

Acest om a stiut sa puna in miscare imaginatia colaboratorilor sai, imboldindu-i sa inventeze, impreuna cu el, cel mai minunat teatru baroc. Faptul ca, de la carte la carte, ni se pare ca aceeasi mana a desenat acele imagini ne demonstreaza cat de importanta este contributia lui Kircher. Mai mult decat in opera scrisa, in reprezentarile iconice din cartile lui Kircher exigenta rigorilor stiintifice genereaza cel mai nebunesc delir al imaginatiei, astfel incat devine de-a dreptul imposibil sa se discearna ce este adevarat si ce, fals.

In fond, nu intamplator Kircher a fost iubit de suprarealisti. Modul sau de a privi stiinta este suprarealist. El este un vanator al miraculosului si poetica sa, dimpreuna cu justificarea atator greseli, pot fi regasite in dedicatia pe care o facea imparatului Ferdinand al III-lea la inceputul celei de-a treia carti din Oedipus, in care configuratiile hieroglifice se transforma intr-un fel de generator de halucinatii:

“In fata ochilor tai, o, Preasfinte Imparat, dezvalui imparatia cu nenumarate fete ale lui Morfeu Hieroglific: voiesc a spune o scena cu o nemarginita varietate de monstri, nu cu simpli monstri zamisliti de fire, ci astfel gatita de Himerele ascunse ale unei stravechi stiinte in care am incredere ca mintile ascutite vor da de urma comorilor peste masura de bogate ale cunoasterii, cu folos si pentru maiestria cuvintelor. Ici cainele din Bubasti, Leul din Sais, Tapul din Mendes, Crocodilul inspaimantator,cu falcile-i ingrozitoare cascate, toate acestea scot la iveala intelesurile ascunse ale dumnezeirii, ale naturii, ale duhului Stiintei Strabune, dedesubtul jocului amagitor al imaginilor. Colo insetatii Dipsozi, aprigele Viperele, Ihneumonii cei vicleni, Hipopotanii cei nemilosi, monstruosii Dragoni, broscoiul cu pantecele umflat, melcul cu cochilia intoarsa, omida cea paroasas, alte nenumarate aratari sunt infatisate in minunatul lant oranduit ce creste in altarele naturii. Aici ni se arata felurite soiuri de lucruri nemaivazute in imagini, mereu altele si preschimbate prin metamorfoze in infatisari omenesi si iarasi intorcandu-se la ele insele, intr-o intrepatrundere a animalicului cu lumescul si cu dumnezeuiescul. Si la urma dumnezeiescul, ce, cum spunea Porphyrius, curge prin universul intreg, urzeste dimpreuna cu toate fapturile un tot monstruos, unde, cu chipul frumos baltat, se arata Cinocefalii, ridicandu-si ceafa de caine, Ibisul cel marsav si Soimul cel cu cioc incovoiat…si unde, momind cu infatisarea-i feciorelnica, sub mantia Scarabeului se-ascunde acul Scorpionului…[si enumerarea continua de-a lungul a cinci pagini] pe aceasta scena a Firii, ne minunam dinainte tuturor formelor infatisate privirilor noastre, sub valul alegoric al unui inteles intunecat.”

Este greu sa-l incadrezi pe Kircher, care a trait cu un picior pe aceasta scena a tuturor formelor si cu celalalt in laboratorul controlului direct al datelor pe care le aduna. Daca au existat vreodata personaje baroce, el se numara printre ele, ca un Arcimboldo al istoriei stiintelor, iar in zilele noastre a sfarsit prin a-i incanta mai mult pe visatori decat pe oamenii de stiinta.

Dar pana la urma, lui Kircher ii datoram ideea ca se poate visa si la stiita si tehnica, lucru cunoscut de orice om de stiinta, luand in consideratie si anumite limite, si de orice autor de proza stiintifico-fantastica, scriitor care isi propune sa treaca dincolo de limite. Si in acest caz, Kircher se gaseste la mijloc, intre grija pentru exactitate a omului de stiinta (dincolo de care incearca mereu sa treaca) si imaginatia povestitorului (pe care se straduieste mereu s-o tina in frau).

Poate ca noi il recitim (si mai ales il privim iarasi si iarasi) pe Kirchner tocmai datorita acestei tensiuni pe care el, din fericire, n-a fost in stare sa o domoleasca.

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[1] Ramon Llull (1235-1315), filosof, scriitor si misionar spaniol de limba catalana. A scris opera de filosofie, teologie, pedagogie, medicina, stiinte ale naturii, fizica, matematica, precum si opera literare. Printre scrierile apocrife atribuite lui se numara si unele de alchimie. (n. tr)

[2] Mundus subterraneus in XII Libros digestus. Editio Teria. Editie ingrijita de Gian Battista Vai, Bologna, Forni, 2004 (n.a.)

[3] vezi P. Conor Reilly, Athanasius Kircher S.J. Master of Hundred Arts, Weisbaden-rom, Edizioni del Mondo, 1974 (n.a.)

[4] Theophrastus Bombasus von Hohenheim, zis Paracelsus 1493-1541), alchimist elvetian, parinte al medicinei ermetice. Doctrina sa are ca fundament corespondenta dintre lumea exterioara (macrocosmosul) si diferitele parti ale organismului uman (microcosmosul) (n.tr).

[5] Michal Sedziwoj (Michael Sendivogius) (1566-1636), alchimist, filosof si medic polonez, foarte apreciat ca alchimist in vremea sa si considerat printre putinii care detineau secretul Pietrei Filosofale.

[6] Robert Fludd (1574-1637), cunoscut si sub numele de Robertus de Fluctibus, celebru fizician si astrolog englez, adept al ideilor lui Paracelsus.

***

 

La 15 ani “poetry is like masturbation”

Din seria:

“A mother is proud of her own son, even if the son is completely stupid.” :))

Un interviu interesant, publicat in The Paris Review in 2008. Il bag integral aici, ca sa fie. Aici este sursa: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5856/the-art-of-fiction-no-197-umberto-eco

Umberto Eco, The Art of Fiction No. 197

Interviewed by Lila Azam Zanganeh

The first time I called Umberto Eco, he was sitting at his desk in his seventeenth-century manor in the hills outside Urbino, near the Adriatic coast of Italy. He sang the virtues of his bellissima swimming pool, but suspected I might have trouble negotiating the region’s tortuous mountain passes. So we agreed instead to meet at his apartment in Milan. I arrived there last August on ferragosto, the high point of summer and the day the Catholic Church celebrates the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Milan’s gray buildings gleamed with heat, and a thin layer of dust had settled on the pavement. Hardly an engine could be heard. As I stepped into Eco’s building, I took a turn-of-the-century lift and heard the creaking of a door on the top floor. Eco’s imposing figure appeared behind the lift’s wrought-iron grating. “Ahhh,” he said with a slight scowl.

The apartment is a labyrinth of corridors lined with bookcases that reach all the way up to extraordinarily high ceilings—thirty thousand volumes, said Eco, with another twenty thousand at his manor. I saw scientific treatises by Ptolemy and novels by Calvino, critical studies of Saussure and Joyce, entire sections devoted to medieval history and arcane manuscripts. The library feels alive, as many of the books seem worn from heavy use; Eco reads at great speed and has a prodigious memory. In his study, a maze of shelves contains Eco’s own complete works in all their translations (Arabic, Finnish, Japanese . . . I lost count after more than thirty languages). Eco pointed at his books with amorous precision, attracting my attention to volume after volume, from his early landmark work of critical theory, The Open Work, to his most recent opus, On Ugliness.

Eco began his career as a scholar of medieval studies and semiotics. Then, in 1980, at the age of forty-eight, he published a novel, The Name of the Rose. It became an international publishing sensation, selling more than ten million copies. The professor metamorphosed into a literary star. Chased by journalists, courted for his cultural commentaries, revered for his expansive erudition, Eco came to be considered the most important Italian writer alive. In the years since, he has continued to write fanciful essays, scholarly works, and four more best-selling novels, including Foucault’s Pendulum (1988) and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004).

With Eco’s paunch leading the way, his feet shuffling along the floor, we walked into his living room. Through the windows, a medieval castle cut a gigantic silhouette against the Milanese sky. I had expected tapestries and Italian antiques, but instead found modern furnishings, several glass cases displaying seashells and rare comics, a lute, a collection of recorders, a collage of paintbrushes. “This one, you see, by Arman, is dedicated especially to me . . .”

I sat on a large white couch; Eco sank into a low armchair, cigar in hand. He used to smoke up to sixty cigarettes a day, he told me, but now he has only his unlit cigar. As I asked my first questions, Eco’s eyes narrowed to dark slits, suddenly opening up when his turn came to speak. “I developed a passion for the Middle Ages,” he said, “the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.” In Italy, he is well known for his battute, his comedic sallies, which he drops at nearly every twist of his snaking sentences. His voice seemed to grow louder the longer he spoke. Soon he was outlining a series of points, as if speaking to a rapt classroom: “Number one: when I wrote The Name of the Rose I didn’t know, of course, since no one knows, what was written in the lost volume of Aristotle’s Poetics, the famous volume on comedy. But somehow, in the process of writing my novel, I discovered it. Number two: the detective novel asks the central question of philosophy—who dunnit?” When he deemed his interlocutor clever enough, he was quick to extend professorial appreciations: “Yes, good. But I would also add that . . .”

After our initial two-hour interview session, Mario Andreose, the literary director of Bompiani, Eco’s Italian publisher, arrived to take us to dinner. Renate Ramge, Eco’s wife of forty-five years, sat up front with Andreose, and Eco and I took the backseat. Eco, who just minutes before had brimmed with wit and vitality, now appeared sullen and aloof. But his mood lightened soon after we entered the restaurant and a plate of bread was placed before us. He glanced at the menu, dithered, and as the waiter arrived, hastily ordered a calzone and a glass of Scotch. “Yes, yes, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t . . .” A beaming reader approached the table, “Are you Umberto Eco?” The professore lifted an eyebrow, grinned, and shook hands. Then, at last, the conversation resumed, as Eco launched into excited riffs about Pope Benedict XVI, the fall of the Persian Empire, and the latest James Bond movie. “Did you know,” he said while planting a fork in his calzone, “that I once published a structural analysis of the archetypal Ian Fleming plot?”

INTERVIEWER

Where were you born?

UMBERTO ECO

In the town of Alessandria. It is known for its Borsalino hats.

INTERVIEWER

What kind of family did you come from?

ECO

My father was an accountant and his father was a typographer. My father was the eldest of thirteen children. I am the first son. My son is my first child. And his first child is a son. So if by chance someone discovers that the Eco family is descended from the emperor of Byzantium, my grandson is the dauphin!

My grandfather had a particularly important influence on my life, even though I didn’t visit him often, since he lived about three miles out of town and he died when I was six. He was remarkably curious about the world, and he read lots of books. The marvelous thing was that when he retired, he started to bind books. So he had a lot of unbound books lying here and there around his apartment—old, beautifully illustrated editions of popular nineteenth-century novels by Gautier and Dumas. Those were the first books I ever saw. When he died in 1938, many of the owners of the unbound books did not ask for them to be returned, and the family put them all in a big box. Quite by accident, this box landed in my parents’ cellar. I would be sent to the cellar from time to time, to pick up some coal or a bottle of wine, and one day I opened this box and found a treasure trove of books. From then on I visited the cellar rather frequently. It turned out my grandfather also collected a fabulous magazine, Giornale illustrato dei viaggi e delle avventure di terra e di mare—the illustrated journal of travels and adventures by land and by sea—devoted to strange and cruel stories set in exotic countries. It was my first great foray into the land of stories. Unfortunately, I lost all of these books and magazines, but over the decades I have gradually recovered copies of them from old bookstores and flea markets.

INTERVIEWER

If you didn’t see any books until you visited your grandfather, does that mean your parents didn’t own any?

ECO

It’s odd, my father was a voracious reader when he was a young man. Since my grandparents had thirteen children, the family struggled to make ends meet, and my father couldn’t afford to buy books. So he went to the book kiosk and stood reading in the street. When the owner was tired of seeing him hanging around, my father made his way to the next kiosk and read the second part of a book, and so forth. This is an image I treasure. The dogged pursuit of books. As an adult, my father only had free time in the evenings and he’d mainly read newspapers and magazines. In our house there were only a few novels, but they weren’t on shelves, they were in the closet. Sometimes I saw my father reading novels borrowed from friends.

INTERVIEWER

What did he think of your becoming a scholar at such an early age?

ECO

Well, he died very early, in 1962, but not before I had published a few books. It was academic stuff, and probably confusing to my father, but I discovered that very late in the evening he would try to read them. The Open Work was published exactly three months before his death and was reviewed by the great poet Eugenio Montale in the Corriere della Sera. It was a mixed review—curious, friendly, and nasty—but it was a review by Montale nonetheless and I think that, for my father, it would have been impossible to imagine anything more. In a sense, I paid my debt, and in the end, I feel I met all his wishes, though I imagine he would have read my novels with greater pleasure. My mother lived ten more years, so she knew that I wrote many other books, and that I was invited to lecture by foreign universities. She was very sick, but she was happy, though I don’t think she quite realized what was happening. And you know, a mother is proud of her own son, even if the son is completely stupid.

INTERVIEWER

You were a child when Fascism thrived in Italy and the war began. How did you perceive it then?

ECO

It was a strange time. Mussolini was very charismatic, and like every Italian schoolchild at that time, I was enrolled in the Fascist youth movement. We were all obliged to wear military-style uniforms and attend rallies on Saturday, and we felt happy to do so. Today it would be like dressing up an American boy as a marine—he’d think it was amusing. The whole movement for us as children was something natural, like snow in the winter and heat in the summer. We couldn’t imagine that there was another way of living. I remember that period with the same tenderness with which anyone remembers childhood. I even remember the bombings, and the nights we spent in the shelter, with tenderness. When it all ended in 1943, with the first collapse of Fascism, I discovered in the democratic newspapers the existence of different political parties and views. To escape the bombings from September 1943 to April 1945—the most traumatic years in our nation’s history—my mother, my sister, and I went to live in the countryside, up in Monferrato, a Piedmontese village that was at the epicenter of the resistance.

INTERVIEWER

Did you see any of the fighting?

ECO

I remember watching shoot-outs between Fascists and Partisans, and almost wishing I could join the brawl. At one point I even remember dodging a bullet myself, and jumping to the ground from a perch. And then, from the village we were in, I remember seeing every week that they were bombing Alessandria, where my father still worked. The sky burst like an orange. The telephone lines didn’t work, so we had to wait until he came home for the weekend to know whether he was still alive. During this period, living in the countryside, a young man was forced to learn how to survive.

INTERVIEWER

Did the war have any impact on your decision to write?

ECO

No, there is no direct connection. I had started writing before the war, independently of the war. As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa. I was a perfectionist and wanted to make them look as though they had been printed, so I wrote them in capital letters and made up title pages, summaries, illustrations. It was so tiring that I never finished any of them. I was at that time a great writer of unaccomplished masterpieces. Obviously, however, when I began writing novels my memories of the war played a certain role. But every man is obsessed by the memories of his own youth.

INTERVIEWER

Did you show those early books to anyone?

ECO

It’s possible that my parents saw what I was doing, but I don’t think I gave them to anybody else. It was a solitary vice.

INTERVIEWER

You’ve talked before about trying your hand at poetry in this period. In an essay on writing, you said, “my poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne.”

ECO

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

INTERVIEWER

Who encouraged you in your literary endeavors?

ECO

My maternal grandmother—she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was a member of the municipal library, and she brought home two or three books a week for me. They could be dime novels or Balzac. In her eyes, there was not much difference—they were all fascinating. My mother, on the other hand, had the education of a future dactylographer. She started French and German, and though she read a lot in her youth she succumbed to a sort of laziness when she got older, reading only romance novels and women’s magazines. So I didn’t read what she read. But she spoke gracefully, with a good Italian style, and wrote so beautifully that her friends asked her to compose their letters for them. She had a great sensitivity for language, even though she left school at an early age. I think I inherited from her a genuine taste for writing, and my first elements of style.

INTERVIEWER

To what extent are your novels autobiographical?

ECO

In some way I think every novel is. When you imagine a character, you lend him or her some of your personal memories. You give part of yourself to character number one and another part to character number two. In this sense, I am not writing any sort of autobiography, but the novels are my autobiography. There’s a difference.

INTERVIEWER

Are there many images that you’ve transferred directly? I’m thinking about Belbo playing the trumpet in the cemetery in Foucault’s Pendulum.

ECO

That scene is absolutely autobiographical. I am not Belbo, but it happened to me and it was so important that now I will reveal something that I’ve never said before. Three months ago I bought a high-quality trumpet for about two thousand dollars. To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was. I don’t feel anything for the violin, but when I look at the trumpet I feel a world stirring in my veins.

INTERVIEWER

Did you find that you could play the tunes of your childhood?

ECO

The more I play, the more vividly I remember the tunes. Certainly there are passages that are too high, too difficult. I repeat them several times, I try, but I know that my lips simply don’t react the right way.

INTERVIEWER

Does the same thing happen with your memory?

ECO

It’s odd, the older I get, the more I remember. I’ll give you an example: my native dialect was Alessandrino, a bastard Piedmontese with elements of Lombard, Emilian, and Genovese. I didn’t speak this dialect because my family came from the petite bourgeoisie, and my father thought that my sister and I should speak only Italian. Yet among themselves my parents spoke dialect. So I understood it perfectly but was unable to speak it. Half a century later, all of a sudden, from the cavern of my belly or from my unconscious, the dialect grew, and when I met my old friends from Alessandria I could speak it! So as time went by in my own life I was not only able to retrieve things I had forgotten, but things I believed I had never learned.

INTERVIEWER

Why did you decide to study medieval aesthetics?

ECO

I had a Catholic education and during my university years I ran one of the national Catholic student organizations. So I was fascinated by medieval scholastic thought and by early Christian theology. I started a thesis on the aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, but right before I finished it my faith suffered a trauma. It was a complicated political affair. I belonged to the more progressive side of the student organization, which meant that I was interested in social problems, social justice. The right wing was protected by Pope Pius XII. One day my wing of the organization was charged with heresy and communism. Even the official newspaper of the Vatican attacked us. That event triggered a philosophical revision of my faith. But I continued to study the Middle Ages and medieval philosophy with great respect, not to mention my beloved Aquinas.

INTERVIEWER

In the postscript to The Name of the Rose you wrote, “I see the period everywhere, transparently overlaying my daily concerns, which do not look medieval, though they are.” How are your daily concerns medieval?

ECO

My whole life, I have had innumerable experiences of full immersion in the Middle Ages. For instance, in preparing my thesis, I went twice for monthlong trips to Paris, conducting research at the Bibliothèque Nationale. And I decided in those two months to live only in the Middle Ages. If you reduce the map of Paris, selecting only certain streets, you can really live in the Middle Ages. Then you start to think and feel like a man of the Middle Ages. I remember, for instance, that my wife, who has a green thumb and knows the names of just about all the herbs and flowers in the world, always reproached me prior to The Name of the Rose for not looking properly at nature. Once, in the countryside, we made a bonfire and she said, Look at the embers flying up among the trees. Of course I didn’t pay attention. Later on, when she read the last chapter of The Name of the Rose, in which I describe a similar fire, she said, So you did look at the embers! And I said, No, but I know how a medieval monk would look at embers.

INTERVIEWER

Do you think you might have actually enjoyed living in the Middle Ages?

ECO

Well if I did, at my age, I’d already be dead. I suspect that if I lived in the Middle Ages my feelings about the period would be dramatically different. I’d rather just imagine it.

INTERVIEWER

For the layman the medieval era is pervaded with an air of mystery and remoteness. What draws you to it?

ECO

It’s hard to say. Why do you fall in love? If I had to explain it, I would say that it’s because the period is exactly the opposite of the way people imagine it. To me, they were not the Dark Ages. They were a luminous time, the fertile soil out of which would spring the Renaissance. A period of chaotic and effervescent transition—the birth of the modern city, of the banking system, of the university, of our modern idea of Europe, with its languages, nations, and cultures.

INTERVIEWER

You’ve said that in your books you never make conscious parallels between the Middle Ages and modern times, but that seems to be part of the period’s attraction for you.

ECO

Yes, but one must be extremely careful with analogies. Once I wrote an essay in which I made some parallels between the Middle Ages and our time. But if you give me fifty dollars, I will write you an essay about the parallels between our time and the time of the Neanderthals. It’s always easy to find parallels. I think nonetheless that being concerned with history means making erudite parallels with the present time. I confess to being monstrously old-fashioned, and I still believe, like Cicero did, that historia magistra vitae: history is the teacher of life.

INTERVIEWER

Why as a young medieval scholar did you suddenly take up the study 
of language?

ECO

For as long as I can remember I have been interested in making sense of communication. In aesthetics the question was, What is a work of art, and how does a work of art communicate with us? I became especially fascinated with the how. Moreover, we are recognized as human beings insofar as we are able to produce language. As it turned out, immediately after my thesis I started working for Italian state television. This was in 1954, only a few months after the first television broadcasts were made. It was the beginning of the era of mass visual communication in Italy. So I began to wonder if I had a bizarre sort of split personality. On the one hand, I was interested in the most advanced functions of language in experimental literature and art. On the other hand, I relished television, comic books, and detective stories. Naturally I asked myself, Is it possible that my interests are really so distinct?

I turned to semiotics because I wanted to unify the different levels of culture. I came to understand that anything produced by the mass media could also be an object of cultural analysis.

INTERVIEWER

You once said that semiotics is the theory of lying.

ECO

Instead of “lying,” I should have said, “telling the contrary of the truth.” Human beings can tell fairy tales, imagine new worlds, make mistakes—and we can lie. Language accounts for all those possibilities.

Lying is a specifically human ability. A dog, following a track, is following a scent. Neither the dog nor the scent “lies,” so to speak. But I can lie to you and tell you to go in that direction, which is not the direction you have asked about, and yet you believe me and you go in the wrong direction. The reason this is possible is that we depend on signs.

INTERVIEWER

Some of the enemies of semiotics as a field of study assert that semioticians ultimately cause all reality to vanish.

ECO

This is the position of the so-called dECOnstructionists. Not only do they assume that everything is a text—even this table right here—and that every text can be infinitely interpreted, but they also follow an idea coming from Nietzsche, who said that there are no facts, only interpretations. On the contrary, I follow Charles Sanders Peirce, undoubtedly the greatest American philosopher and the father of semiotics and the theory of interpretation. He said that through signs we interpret facts. If there were no facts and only interpretations, what would there be left to interpret? This is what I argue in The Limits of Interpretation.

INTERVIEWER

In Foucault’s Pendulum you write, “The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power.”

ECO

A secret is powerful when it is empty. People often mention the “Masonic secret.” What on earth is the Masonic secret? No one can tell. As long as it remains empty it can be filled up with every possible notion, and it has power.

INTERVIEWER

Would you say that your work as a semiotician is completely separate from your work as a novelist?

ECO

It might seem incredible, but I never think of semiotics when I am writing my novels. I let others do the work afterward. And I am always surprised by the result when they do.

INTERVIEWER

Are you still obsessed with television?

ECO

I suspect that there is no serious scholar who doesn’t like to watch television. I’m just the only one who confesses. And then I try to use it as material for my work. But I am not a glutton who swallows everything. I don’t enjoy watching any kind of television. I like the dramatic series and I dislike the trash shows.

INTERVIEWER

Are there any shows that you particularly love?

ECO

The police series. Starsky and Hutch, for instance.

INTERVIEWER

That show doesn’t exist anymore. It’s from the seventies.

ECO

I know, but I was told that the complete series was just released on DVD, so I am thinking of acquiring it. Other than that I like CSI, Miami Vice, ER, and most of all, Columbo.

INTERVIEWER

Have you read The Da Vinci Code?

ECO

Yes, I am guilty of that too.

INTERVIEWER

That novel seems like a bizarre little offshoot of Foucault’s Pendulum.

ECO

The author, Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault’s Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters’ fascinations—the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.

INTERVIEWER

This idea of taking a fictional premise seriously seems to be present in many of your novels. Fictions somehow acquire substance and truth.

ECO

Yes, invention can produce reality. Baudolino, my fourth novel, is exactly about that. Baudolino is a little trickster living at the court of Frederick 
Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor. And the boy invents a wild number of things—from the legend of the Holy Grail to the legitimization of Barbarossa’s reign by Bolognese jurors. In doing so he produces factual consequences. Fakes or errors can produce real historical events. Just like the letter of Prester John: it was a forgery—and in my novel it was invented by none other than Baudolino himself—but it really incited medieval explorations of Asia because it described a fabulous Christian kingdom thriving somewhere in the mysterious Orient. Or take Christopher Columbus. His vision of the earth was completely wrong. He knew, like everybody in antiquity, including his adversaries, that the earth was round. But he believed it was much smaller. Led by this false idea, he discovered America. Another famous example is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s a fake, but it corroborated Nazi ideology and in a sense paved the way to the Holocaust, because Hitler used the document to justify the destruction of Jews. He might have known it was a fake, but in his mind it described the Jews exactly as he wanted them to be, and thus he took it as authentic.

INTERVIEWER

Baudolino declares in the end that, “The kingdom of the Priest is real because I and my companions have devoted two-thirds of our life to seeking it.”

ECO

Baudolino forges documents, devises utopias, constructs imaginary schemes about the future. His lies become real when his friends gaily embark on an actual journey to the legendary East. But this is only one side of the narrative business. The other is that you can use real facts that, in the framework of a novel, seem incredible and absolutely fictitious. In my novels, I have used countless real stories and real situations, because I find them far more romantic, or novelistic even, than anything I have ever read in so-called fiction. In The Island of the Day Before, for instance, there is a part where Father Caspar makes up a strange instrument to look at the satellites of Jupiter and the result is pure slapstick comedy. This instrument is described in the letters of Galileo. I simply imagined what would have happened if Galileo’s instrument had actually been created. But my readers take all this as a comic invention.

INTERVIEWER

What drew you to write novels based on historical events?

ECO

The historical novel for me is not so much a fictionalized version of real events as a fiction that will actually enable us to better understand the real history. I also like to combine the historical novel with elements of the bildungsroman. In all my novels, there is always a young character who grows up and learns and suffers through a series of experiences.

INTERVIEWER

Why didn’t you begin writing novels until you were forty-eight years old?

ECO

It wasn’t as much of a leap as everyone seems to think, because even in my doctoral thesis, even in my theorizing, I was already creating narratives. I have long thought that what most philosophical books are really doing at the core is telling the story of their research, just as scientists will explain how they came to make their major discoveries. So I feel that I was telling stories all along, just in a slightly different style.

INTERVIEWER

But what made you feel that you had to write a novel?

ECO

One day in 1978, a friend told me she wanted to oversee the publication of a string of little detective novels written by amateur writers. I said there was no way I could write a detective story, but if I ever did write one it would be a five-hundred-page book with medieval monks as characters. That day, returning home, I began making a list of names of fictional medieval monks. Later the image of a poisoned monk suddenly emerged in my mind. It all started from there, from that one image. It became an irresistible urge.

INTERVIEWER

Many of your novels seem to rely upon clever concepts. Is that a natural way for you to bridge the chasm between theoretical work and novel writing? You once said that “those things about which we cannot theorize, we must narrate.”

ECO

It is a tongue-in-cheek allusion to a sentence by Wittgenstein. The truth is, I have written countless essays on semiotics, but I think I expressed my ideas better in Foucault’s Pendulum than in my essays. An idea you have might not be original—Aristotle will always have thought of it before you. But by creating
a novel out of that idea you can make it original. Men love women. It’s not an original idea. But if you somehow write a terrific novel about it, then by a literary sleight of hand it becomes absolutely original. I simply believe that at the end of the day a story is always richer—it is an idea reshaped into an event, informed by a character, and sparked by crafted language. So naturally, when an idea is transformed into a living organism, it turns into something completely different and, likely, far more expressive.

On the other hand, contradiction can be the core of a novel. Killing old ladies is interesting. With that idea you get an F on an ethics paper. In a novel it becomes Crime and Punishment, a masterpiece of prose in which the character can’t tell whether killing old ladies is good or bad, and in which his ambivalence—the very contradiction in our statement—becomes a poetic and challenging matter.

INTERVIEWER

How do you begin researching your novels?

ECO

For The Name of the Rose, since I was already interested in the Middle Ages, I had hundreds of files at hand, and it took me only two years to write it. Foucault’s Pendulum took me eight years to research and write! And since I don’t tell anybody what I’m doing, it occurs to me now that I lived in my own world for nearly a decade. I went out on the street, I saw this car and that tree and I said to myself, Ah, this could be connected to my story. So my story grew day by day, and everything I did, every tiny scrap of life, every conversation, would give me ideas. Then I visited the actual places I write about—all the areas of France and Portugal where the Templars lived. And it became like a video game in which I might take up the personality of a warrior and enter a sort of magical kingdom. Except that with a video game you become completely stoned, while in writing you always have a critical moment in which you jump off the locomotive, only to jump on again the next morning.

INTERVIEWER

Do you proceed methodically?

ECO

No, not at all. One idea immediately summons another. One random book makes me want to read another. And it happens at times that, reading a completely useless document, I suddenly get the right idea for making a story proceed. Or for inserting another little box in a larger collection of inset boxes.

INTERVIEWER

You have said that in writing a novel you must first create a world and then “the words will practically come on their own.” Are you saying that a novel’s style is always determined by its subject?

ECO

Yes, for me the main issue is to start constructing a world—a fourteenth-century abbey with poisoned monks, a young man playing the trumpet in a cemetery, a trickster caught in the midst of the sack of Constantinople. Researching then means setting all the constraints for these worlds: How many steps in a spiral staircase? How many items on a laundry list? How many comrades on a mission? The words will coil round these constraints. In literary terms, I feel we often commit the mistake of believing that style has only got to do with syntax and lexicon. There also exists a narrative style, which dictates the way we pile certain blocks together and build up a situation. Take flashback. Flashback is a structural element of style, but it has nothing to do with language. So style is far more complex than sheer writing. To me it functions more like montage in a movie.

INTERVIEWER

How hard do you work to get the voice just right?

ECO

I rewrite the same page dozens of times. Sometimes I like to read passages out loud. I am terribly sensitive to the tone of my writing.

INTERVIEWER

Do you, like Flaubert, find it painful to produce even one good sentence?

ECO

No, it’s not painful for me. I do rewrite the same sentence several times, but now, with the computer, my process has changed. I wrote The Name of the Rose in longhand and my secretary copied it out on a typewriter. When you rewrite the same sentence ten times, it is very difficult to recopy. There was a real carbon base, but we also worked with scissors and glue. With the computer it is very easy to go over a page ten or twenty times on the same day, correcting and rewriting. I think we are by nature never happy with what we have done. But now it is so easy, perhaps too easy, to correct it. Therefore in a sense we have become more demanding.

INTERVIEWER

Bildungsromans usually involve some degree of sentimental, and sexual, education. In all your novels you describe only two sexual acts—one in The Name of the Rose, and the other in Baudolino. Is there a reason for this?

ECO

I think I just prefer to have sex than write about it.

INTERVIEWER

Why does Adso quote the Song of Songs when he has sex with the peasant girl in The Name of the Rose?

ECO

That was a stylistic amusement, because I was not so much interested in the sexual act itself as I was to describe how a young monk would experience sex through his cultural sensibility. So I made a collage of at least fifty different texts of mystics describing their ecstasies, together with excerpts from the Song of Songs. In the entire two pages that describe his sexual act, there is hardly a single word of mine. Adso can only understand sex through the lens of the culture he has absorbed. This is an instance of style, as I define it.

INTERVIEWER

When in the day do you write?

ECO

There is no rule. For me it would be impossible to have a schedule. It can happen that I start writing at seven o’clock in the morning and I finish at three o’clock at night, stopping only to eat a sandwich. Sometimes I don’t feel the need to write at all.

INTERVIEWER

When you do write, how much do you write every day? Is there no rule for that as well?

ECO

None. Listen, writing doesn’t mean necessarily putting words on a sheet of paper. You can write a chapter while walking or eating.

INTERVIEWER

So every day is different for you?

ECO

If I am in my countryside home, at the top of the hills of Montefeltro, then I have a certain routine. I turn on my computer, I look at my e-mails, I start reading something, and then I write until the afternoon. Later I go to the village, where I have a glass at the bar and read the newspaper. I come back home and I watch TV or a DVD in the evening until eleven, and then I work a little more until one or two o’clock in the morning. There I have a certain routine because I am not interrupted. When I am in Milan or at the university, I am not master of my own time—there is always somebody else deciding what I should do.

INTERVIEWER

What kinds of anxieties do you have when you sit down to write?

ECO

I have no anxieties.

INTERVIEWER

You have no anxieties. So you’re just very excited?

ECO

Before I sit down to write, I am deeply happy.

INTERVIEWER

What is the secret of such prolific production? You have written prodigious quantities of scholarly work, and your five novels are not exactly short.

ECO

I always say that I am able to use the interstices. There is a lot of space between atom and atom and electron and electron, and if we reduced the matter of the universe by eliminating all the space in between, the entire universe would be compressed into a ball. Our lives are full of interstices. This morning you rang, but then you had to wait for the elevator, and several seconds elapsed before you showed up at the door. During those sECOnds, waiting for you, I was thinking of this new piece I’m writing. I can work in the water closet, in the train. While swimming I produce a lot of things, especially in the sea. Less so in the bathtub, but there too.

INTERVIEWER

Do you ever not work?

ECO

No, it doesn’t happen. Oh, well, yes, there was a period of two days when I had my surgery.

INTERVIEWER

What are your greatest pleasures today?

ECO

Reading novels at night. Sometimes I wonder whether as a renegade Catholic there might not still be this fluty voice in my head whispering that novels are too pleasurable to be read during the day. Hence the day is usually for essays and hard work.

INTERVIEWER

What about guilty pleasures?

ECO

I am not in confession! OK: Scotch. Smoking was a guilty pleasure until I quit three years ago. I could smoke about sixty cigarettes a day. But I was a former pipe smoker so my habit was to puff the smoke away while I was writing. I didn’t inhale too much.

INTERVIEWER

You have been criticized for the erudition you put on display in your work. A critic went so far as to say that the main appeal of your work for a lay reader is the humiliation he feels for his own ignorance, which translates into a naive admiration of your pyrotechnics.

ECO

Am I sadist? I don’t know. An exhibitionist? Maybe. I am joking. Of course not! I have not worked so much in my life in order just to pile knowledge before my readers. My knowledge quite literally informs the intricate construction of my novels. Then it is up to my readers to detect what they might.

INTERVIEWER

Do you think your extraordinary popular success as a novelist changed your perception of the role of the reader?

ECO

After being an academic for so long, writing novels was like being a theater critic and all of a sudden stepping in front of the footlights and having your former colleagues—the critics—stare at you. It was quite bewildering at first.

INTERVIEWER

But did writing novels change your idea of how much you could influence the reader as an author?

ECO

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.

INTERVIEWER

Do you think your status as a best-selling novelist has diminished your reputation as a serious thinker around the world?

ECO

Since the publication of my novels I have received thirty-five honorary degrees from universities around the world. From this fact I gather that the answer to your question must be no. In the university milieu, professors were interested by the oscillation between narrative and theory. They often found links between the two aspects of my work, even more than I myself believed existed. If you want, I will show you the entire wall of scholarly publications on me.

Besides, I continue to produce theoretical essays. I continue to live like a professor who writes novels during the weekends, instead of living like a writer who also teaches at the university. I attend scientific colloquia more often than I attend PEN conferences. In fact, one could say the opposite: perhaps my academic work has disrupted my consideration as a writer in the popular press.

INTERVIEWER

The Catholic Church has certainly given you a hard time. The newspaper of the Vatican called Foucault’s Pendulum “full of profanations, blasphemies, buffooneries, and filth, held together by the mortar of arrogance and cynicism.”

ECO

The strange thing is that I had just received honorary degrees from two Catholic universities, Leuven and Loyola.

INTERVIEWER

Do you believe in God?

ECO

Why does one love a certain person one day and discover the next day that the love is gone? Feelings, alas, disappear without justification, and often without a trace.

INTERVIEWER

If you don’t believe in God, then why have you written at such great length about religion?

ECO

Because I do believe in religion. Human beings are religious animals, and such a characteristic feature of human behavior cannot be ignored or dismissed.

INTERVIEWER

In addition to the scholar and the novelist, there is a third persona jockeying for position within you—the translator. You are a widely translated translator who has written at length on the conundrums of translation.

ECO

I have edited countless translations, translated two works myself, and have had my own novels translated into dozens of languages. And I’ve found that every translation is a case of negotiation. If you sell something to me and I buy it, we negotiate—you’ll lose something, I’ll lose something, but at the end we’re both more or less satisfied. In translation, style is not so much lexicon, which can be translated by the Web site Altavista, but rhythm. Researchers have run tests on the frequency of words in Manzoni’s The Betrothed, the masterpiece of nineteenth-century Italian literature. Manzoni had an absolutely poor vocabulary, devised no innovative metaphors, and used the adjective good a frightening amount of times. But his style is outstanding, pure and simple. To translate it, as with all great translations, you need to bring out the anima of his world, its breath, its precise tempo.

INTERVIEWER

How involved are you with the translations of your work?

ECO

I read the translations in all the languages I can follow. I am usually happy because the translators and I work together, and I have been lucky to have the same translators all my life. We now collaborate with a sort of mutual understanding. I also occasionally work with translators in languages I don’t know—like Japanese, Russian, and Hungarian—because they are so intelligent that they are able to explain what the real problem is in their own language, so that we may discuss how to solve it.

INTERVIEWER

Does a good translator ever offer a suggestion that opens up possibilities you hadn’t seen in the original text?

ECO

Yes, it can happen. Again, the text is more intelligent than its author. Sometimes the text can suggest ideas that the author does not have in mind. The translator, in putting the text in another language, discovers those new ideas and reveals them to you.

INTERVIEWER

Do you have time to read the novels of your contemporaries?

ECO

Not so much. Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it.

INTERVIEWER

What do you think of the state of Italian literature today? Are there great authors in Italy that we have yet to hear about in America?

ECO

I don’t know if there are great authors, but we have improved the middle-level authors. The strength of American literature, you see, is not only to have had Faulkner or Hemingway or Bellow, but to have also a good army of middling writers who produce respectable commercial literature. This literature requires good craftsmanship, especially in the fertile field of the detective novel, which for me is a barometer of literary production in any country. The army of average writers also means that America can produce enough material to satisfy the needs of the American reader. That’s why they translate so little. In Italy that kind of literature was absent for a long time, but now at last there is a group of young writers producing these books. I am not an intellectual snob, I don’t think, and I do rECOgnize that this brand of literature is part of the literary culture of a country.

INTERVIEWER

But why don’t we hear from Italian writers? You are probably the only Italian writer at the moment who’s read internationally, at least on a large scale.

ECO

Translation is the problem. In Italy, more than twenty percent of the market is work in translation. In America, it’s two percent.

INTERVIEWER

Nabokov once said, “I divide literature into two categories, the books I wish I had written and the books I have written.”

ECO

Well, all right, in the former category I would put books by Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Paul Auster. Generally, though, I like the contemporary Americans far more than the French, even though my culture is basically French for geographical reasons. I was born near the border, and French is the first language I studied. I may even know French literature better than Italian literature.

INTERVIEWER

And if you had to name influences?

ECO

Usually I say Joyce and Borges to keep the INTERVIEWER quiet, though it’s not absolutely true. Just about everyone has influenced me. Joyce and Borges, certainly, but also Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke—you name it.

INTERVIEWER

Your library here in Milan is a legend in and of itself. What kind of books do you like to collect?

ECO

I own a total of about fifty thousand books. But as a rare books collector I am fascinated by the human propensity for deviating thought. So I collect books about subjects in which I don’t believe, like kabbalah, alchemy, magic, invented languages. Books that lie, albeit unwittingly. I have Ptolemy, not Galileo, because Galileo told the truth. I prefer lunatic science.

INTERVIEWER

With so many volumes, when you go to the bookshelf, how do you decide which book to pick up and read?

ECO

I don’t go to the bookshelves to choose a book to read. I go to the bookshelves to pick up a book I know I need in that moment. It’s a different story. For instance, if you were to ask me about contemporary authors, I would look through my collections of Roth or DeLillo to remember exactly what I loved. I am a scholar. In a way I should say I am never freely choosing. I am following the needs of the job I am doing at any given time.

INTERVIEWER

Do you ever give books away?

ECO

I receive an enormous quantity of books every day—novels, new editions of books I already own—so every single week I fill up some boxes and send them off to my university, where there is a big table with a sign that says take a book and run.

INTERVIEWER

You are one of the world’s most famous public intellectuals. How would you define the term intellectual? Does it still have a particular meaning?

ECO

If by intellectual you mean somebody who works only with his head and not with his hands, then the bank clerk is an intellectual and Michelangelo is not. And today, with a computer, everybody is an intellectual. So I don’t think it has anything to do with someone’s profession or with someone’s social class. According to me, an intellectual is anyone who is creatively producing new knowledge. A peasant who understands that a new kind of graft can produce a new species of apples has at that moment produced an intellectual activity. Whereas the professor of philosophy who all his life repeats the same lecture on Heidegger doesn’t amount to an intellectual. Critical creativity—criticizing what we are doing or inventing better ways of doing it—is the only mark of the intellectual function.

INTERVIEWER

Are intellectuals today still committed to the notion of political duty, as they were in the days of Sartre and Foucault?

ECO

I don’t believe that in order to be politically committed an intellectual must act as a member of a party or, worse, write exclusively about contemporary social problems. Intellectuals should be as politically engaged as any other citizen. At most, an intellectual can use his reputation to support a given cause. If there is a manifesto on the environmental question, for instance, my signature might help, so I would use my reputation for a single instance of common engagement. The problem is that the intellectual is truly useful only as far as the future is concerned, not the present. If you are in a theater and there is a fire, a poet must not climb up on a seat and recite a poem. He has to call the fireman like everyone else. The function of the intellectual is to say beforehand, Pay attention to that theater because it’s old and dangerous! So his word can have the prophetic function of an appeal. The intellectual’s function is to say, We should do that, not, We must do this now!—that’s the politician’s job. If the utopia of Thomas More were ever realized, I have little doubt it would be a Stalinist society.

INTERVIEWER

What benefits have knowledge and culture afforded you in your lifetime?

ECO

An illiterate person who dies, let us say at my age, has lived one life, whereas I have lived the lives of Napoleon, Caesar, d’Artagnan. So I always encourage young people to read books, because it’s an ideal way to develop a great memory and a ravenous multiple personality. And then at the end of your life you have lived countless lives, which is a fabulous privilege.

INTERVIEWER

But an enormous memory can also be an enormous burden. Like the memory of Funes, one of your favorite Borges characters, in the story “Funes the Memorious.”

ECO

I like the notion of stubborn incuriosity. To cultivate a stubborn incuriosity, you have to limit yourself to certain areas of knowledge. You cannot be totally greedy. You have to oblige yourself not to learn everything. Or else you will learn nothing. Culture in this sense is about knowing how to forget. Otherwise, one indeed bECOmes like Funes, who remembers all the leaves of the tree he saw thirty years ago. Discriminating what you want to learn and remember is critical from a cognitive standpoint.

INTERVIEWER

But isn’t culture itself, in the larger sense, already a filter?

ECO

Yes, our private culture is a secondary operation, so to speak, because culture in the general sense discriminates already. In a way, culture is the mechanism by which a community suggests to us what has to be remembered and what has to be forgotten. Culture has decided, for instance—look in every encyclopedia—that what happened to Calpurnia after the death of her husband, Julius Caesar, is irrelevant. Most likely nothing interesting happened to her. Whereas Clara Schumann became more important after the death of Schumann. She was rumored to be the lover of Brahms, and she became an acclaimed pianist in her own right. And all this remains true until the moment a historian retrieves an unknown document that will show that something we neglected was in fact relevant.

If culture did not filter, it would be inane—as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor. For you and for me it is enough to know that Einstein proposed the theory of relativity. But an absolute understanding of the theory we leave to the specialists. The real problem is that too many are granted the right to bECOme a specialist.

INTERVIEWER

What do you make of those who proclaim the death of the novel, the death of books, the death of reading?

ECO

To believe in the end of something is a typical cultural posture. Since the Greeks and the Latins we have persisted in believing that our ancestors were better than us. I am always amused and interested by this kind of sport, which the mass media practice with increasing ferocity. Every season there is an article on the end of the novel, the end of literature, the end of literacy in America. People don’t read any longer! Teenagers only play video games! The fact of the matter is that all over the world there are thousands of stores full of books and full of young people. Never in the history of mankind have there been so many books, so many places selling books, so many young people visiting these places and buying books.

INTERVIEWER

What would you say to the fearmongers?

ECO

Culture is continuously adapting to new situations. There will probably be a different culture, but there will be a culture. After the fall of the Roman Empire there were centuries of profound transformations—linguistic, political, religious, cultural. These types of changes happen ten times as quickly now. But thrilling new forms will continue to emerge and literature will survive.

INTERVIEWER

You have said in the past that you would like to be remembered more as an academic than a novelist. Do you really mean that?

ECO

I don’t remember having said that because it’s the sort of feeling that changes according to the context in which I’m asked this question. But at this point experience tells me that the work of an academic survives with great difficulty because theories change. Aristotle survives, but countless texts from academics of just one century ago are not republished. Whereas many novels are continuously republished. So technically speaking there are more chances to survive as a writer than as an academic, and I take into account these pieces of evidence independently from my own wishes.

INTERVIEWER

How important to you is the notion of your work surviving? Do you often think about your legacy?

ECO

I don’t believe one writes for oneself. I think that writing is an act of love—you write in order to give something to someone else. To communicate something. To have other people share your feelings. This problem of how long your work can survive is fundamental for every writer, not just for a novelist or a poet. The truth is, the philosopher writes his book in order to convince a lot of people of his theories, and he hopes that in the next three thousand years people will still read that book. It is just as you hope that your kids survive you, and that if you have a grandchild he survives your children. One hopes for a sense of continuity. When a writer says, I am not interested in the destiny of my book, he is simply a liar. He says so to please the interviewer.

INTERVIEWER

Do you have any regrets at this point in your life?

ECO

I regret everything, because I have committed many, many mistakes in all walks of life. But if I had to start again, I honestly think I would commit the same mistakes. I’m being serious. I’ve spent my life examining my behavior and my ideas, and criticizing myself. I’m so severe that I would never tell you what my worst self-criticism is, not even for a million dollars.

INTERVIEWER

Is there a book you never wrote but ardently wish you had?

ECO

Yes, just one. Until the age of fifty and throughout all my youth, I dreamed of writing a book on the theory of comedy. Why? Because every book on the subject has been unsuccessful, at least all the ones I’ve been able to read. Every theoretician of comedy, from Freud to Bergson, explains some aspect of the phenomenon, but not all. This phenomenon is so complex that no theory is, or has been thus far, able to explain it completely. So I thought to myself that I would want to write the real theory of comedy. But then the task proved desperately difficult. If I knew exactly why it was so difficult, I would have the answer and I would be able to write the book.

INTERVIEWER

But you have written books on beauty and, more recently, on ugliness. Aren’t those notions just as ungraspable?

ECO

Compared to beauty and ugliness, comedy is terrifying. I’m not talking about laughter, mind you. No, there is an uncanny sentimentality of the comic, which is so complex that—I cannot quite explain it. And this, alas, is why I didn’t write the book.

INTERVIEWER

Is comedy a specifically human invention, as you said lying is?

ECO

Yes, since it seems that animals are bereft of humor. We know that they have a sense of play, they feel sorry, they weep, they suffer. We have proof that they are happy, when they are playing with us, but not that they have comic feelings. It is a typical human experience, which consists of—no, I can’t exactly say.

INTERVIEWER

Why not?

ECO

OK, fine. I have a suspicion that it is linked with the fact that we are the only animals who know we must die. The other animals don’t know it. They understand it only on the spot, in the moment that they die. They are unable to articulate anything like the statement: All men are mortal. We are able to do it, and that is probably why there are religions, rituals, and what have you. I think that comedy is the quintessential human reaction to the fear of death. If you ask me for something more, I cannot tell you. But perhaps I’ll create an empty secret now, and let everyone think that I have a theory of comedy in the works, so when I die they will spend a lot of time trying to retrieve my secret book.

In truth, what really happened with my desire to write a book on comedy was that I wrote The Name of the Rose instead. It was one of those cases in which, when you are unable to construct a theory, you narrate a story. And I believe that in The Name of the Rose, I did, in narrative form, flesh out a certain theory of the comic. The comic as a critical way of undercutting fanaticism. A diabolical shade of suspicion behind every proclamation of truth.

 

Eco – o noua carte – “Cimitirul din Praga”

Cel mai recent roman al lui Umberto Eco tradus la Polirom

de D.S. HotNews.ro

Luni, 26 iulie 2010, 15:44

Cimtirul din Praga, cel mai recent roman al celebrului scriitor si semiotician, Umberto Eco va fi disponibil in traducere in limba romana la Tirgul de Carte Gaudeamus 2010, la numai o luna de la publicarea lui in Italia, informeaza editura Polirom. Actiunea romanului se petrece in secolul al XIX-lea, dar trimite spre conditia omului de astazi.

Romanul Cimtirul din Praga apare la 30 de ani de la publicarea Numelui trandafirului (1980), roman laureat al Premiului Strega in 1981 – volumul care a marcat istoria bestseller-ului italian si care l-a transformat pe Eco din semioticianul apreciat doar de „intelighentia” si lumea academica intr-unul dintre scriitorii predilecti ai noii fictiuni. Romanul a cucerit o popularitate fara precedent, fiind tradus in  peste 35 de limbi si ecranizat de Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1986, cu Sean Connery, Christian Slater si F. Murray Abraham in rolurile principale.

Cimitirul din Praga, in traducere de Stefania Mincu, este cel de-al sasea roman publicat in colectia BIBLIOTECA POLIROM.

Tirgul de Carte Gaudeamus 2010 va avea loc in perioada 18-22 noiembrie.

Sursa

 

Galileo Galilei si Jupiter

“Iar lui Roberto care-l întreba dacă acel Galilei era unul şi acelaşi cu cel ce făcuse o ipoteză foarte condamnabilă despre mişcarea pămîntului, părintele Caspar îi răspundea că da, că atunci cînd se băgase în metafizică şi în sfintele scripturi acel Galilei, spusese lucruri foarte rele, dar ca mecanic era om de geniu, şi încă foarte mare. Iar la întrebarea dacă nu era rău să folosească ideile unui om pe care Biserica le respinsese, iezuitul răspunsese că întru slava cea mai mare a lui Dumnezeu pot conlucra chiar şi ideile unui eretic, dacă ele în sine nu sînt eretice. Şi doar nu ne-om închipui noi că părintele Caspar, care primea toate metodele existente, fără să jure pe niciuna, dar trăgînd foloase din gîlceava lor împăciuită, n-ar fi trebuit să tragă folos şi din metoda lui Galilei.

Dimpotrivă, era foarte folositor pentru ştiinţă şi credinţă să profite cît mai curînd de ideea lui Galilei; acesta încercase chiar să o vîndă olandezilor, şi mare noroc că aceia, ca şi spaniolii cu cîteva decade mai înainte, nu se încrezuseră în ea.

Galilei scosese bazaconii dintr-o premisă care în sine era foarte justă, şi anume aceea de a fura ideea lunetei de la flamanzi (care o foloseau numai ca să supravegheze corăbiile în port), şi de a îndrepta instrumentul acela spre cer. Iar acolo, printre atîtea alte lucruri pe care părintelui Caspar nici prin vis nu-i trecea să le pună la îndoială, descoperise că Jupiter sau Joe, cum îl numea Galilei, avea patru sateliţi, cum s-ar zice, patru lune, niciodată văzute, de la începuturile lumii pînă în timpurile acelea. Patru steluţe ce se învîrteau în juru-i, în timp ce el se învîrtea în jurul soarelui ― şi vom vedea că pentru părintele Caspar faptul că Joe se-nvîrtea în jurul soarelui, era admisibil, cu condiţia ca pămîntul să fie lăsat în pace.”

Despre Galileo Galilei vor fi mai multe de spus. Nu ar avea rost sa ma arunc pana nu citesc destul. Deocamdata nu trebuie sa dau multe explicatii caci ele sunt deja date in citatul de mai sus. Vin doar cu cateva poze:

Pe această pagină, Galileo a notat pentru prima oară o observație a sateliților lui Jupiter.

“La 7 ianuarie 1610, Galileo a observat cu telescopul său ceea ce a descris la acea vreme ca „trei stele fixe, totalmente invizible prin micimea lor”, toate apropiate de Jupiter, aflate pe o linie dreaptă cu acesta. Observațiile din nopțile ulterioare au arătat că pozițiile acestor „stele” în raport cu Jupiter se modifică într-un fel ce nu putea fi explicat dacă ar fi fost considerate stele fixe. La 10 ianuarie, Galileo a observat că una dintre ele a dispărut, observație explicată de el prin faptul că ea se află în spatele lui Jupiter. În câteva zile, el a concluzionat că ele toate se roteau în jurul lui Jupiter: El descoperise trei dintre cei mai mari patru sateliți naturali ai lui Jupiter: Io, Europa și Callisto. El l-a descoperit și pe al patrulea, Ganymede la 13 ianuarie. Galileo a denumit cei patru sateliți descoperiți stelele mediceene, în cinstea viitorului său patron, Cosimo II de’ Medici, Mare Duce al Toscanei, și în cinstea celor trei frați ai săi. Astronomii de mai târziu le-au schimbat numele în sateliții galileeni în cinstea lui Galileo.” (Sursa Wikipedia)

Jupiter si cei 4 sateliti vazuti de Galileo in 1610, revazuti in septembrie 2008 in trei seri succesive cu un telescop modern. Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.