Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

Inside, the guests weremany and lively, crowding around a buffet in a spacious hall fromwhich two staircases rose to upper floors. I saw other faces notunknown to me, among them Bra-manti and¡Xto mysurprise¡XCommendatore De Gubernatis, an SEA already exploited byGaramond, but perhaps not yet made to face the terrible prospect ofhaving all the copies of his masterpiece pulped, because heapproached my boss with a show of obsequious gratitude. Aglie wasin turn approached obsequiously by a tiny man with wild eyes, whosethick French accent told us that this was the Pierre we had heardaccusing Bramanti of sorcery through the curtain of Aglie'sstudy.

I went to the buffet.There were pitchers with colored liquids I couldn't identify. Ipoured myself a yellow beverage that resembled wine; it wasn't bad,tasting like an old-fashioned cordial, and it was definitelyalcoholic. Perhaps there was a drug in it as well: my head began toswim. Around me facies her-meticae swarmed, the stern countenancesof retired prefects, fragments of conversation...

"In the first stage youmust renounce all communication with other minds; in the second youproject thoughts and images into beings, infuse places withemotional auras, gain control over the animal kingdom, and in thethird stage you project your double¡X bilocation¡Xlike the yogis,and you can appear in different plates simultaneously and indifferent forms. Beyond that, it's a question of passing tohypersensitive knowledge of vegetable essences. Then, you achievedissociation, you assume telluric form, dissolving in one place,reappearing in another, but intact, not just as a double. The finalstage is the extension of physical life,..."

"Notimmortality..."

"Not atonce."

"What aboutyou?"

"It takes concentration,it's hard work, and, you know, I'm not twentyanymore..."

I found my group again.They were just entering a room with white walls, curved corners. Inthe rear, as in a muse'e Grevin¡X but the image that came into mymind that evening was the altar I had seen in Rio,' in the tenda deumbanda¡Xwere two wax statues, almost life-size, clad in materialthat glittered like sequins, pure thrift shop. One statue was of alady on a throne, with an immaculate (or almost immaculate) garmentstudded with rhinestones. Above her, from wires, hung creatures ofindefinite form, made, I thought, out of Lenci felt. In one corner,a loudspeaker: a distant sound of trumpets, music of good quality,perhaps Gabrieli. The sound effects showed better taste than thevisuals. To the right, a second female figure, dressed in crimsonvelvet with a white girdle, and on her head a crown of laurel. Sheheld gilded scales. Aglie explained to us the various symbols, butI was not paying attention; I was interested in the expressions ofmany of the guests, who moved from image to image with an air ofreverence and emotion.

"They're no differentfrom those who go to the sanctuary to see the Black Madonna in anembroidered dress covered with silver hearts," I said to Belbo. "Dothe pilgrims think it's the mother of Christ in flesh and blood?No, but they don't think the opposite, either. They delight in thesimilarity, seeing the spectacle as a vision and the vision as areality."

"Yes," Belbo said, "butthe question isn't whether these people here are better or worsethan Christians who go to shrines. I was asking myself: Who do wethink we are? We for whom Hamlet is more real than our janitor? DoI have any right to judge¡XI who keep searching for my own MadameBovary so we can have a big scene?"

Diotallevi shook hishead and said to me in a low voice that it was wrong to make imagesof divine things, that these were all epiphanies of the GoldenCalf. But he was enjoying himself.

58

Alchemy, however, is achaste prostitute, who has many lovers but disappoints all andgrants her favors to none. She transforms the haughty into fools,the rich into paupers, the philosophers into dolts, and thedeceived into loquacious deceivers...

¡XTrithemius, AnnaliumHirsaugensium Tomi II, S. Gallo, 1690,141

Suddenly the room wasplunged into darkness and the walls lighted up. I realized thatthree-quarters of the wall space was a semicircular screen on whichpictures were about to be projected. When these appeared, I becameaware that a part of the ceiling and of the floor was made ofreflecting material, as were some of the objects that had firststruck me as cheap because of the tawdry way they sparkled: thesequins, the scales, a shield, some copper vases. We were immersedin a subaqueous world where images were multiplied, fragmented,fused with the shadows of those present. The floor reflected theceiling, the ceiling the floor, and together they mirrored thefigures that appeared on the screen. Along with the music, subtleodors spread through the room: first Indian incense, then others,less distinct, and sometimes disagreeable.

At first the penumbraabout us fell into absolute night. Then a grumbling was heard, achurning of lava, and we were in a crater, where dark and slimymatter bubbled up in the fitful light of yellow and bluishflames.

Oily vapors rose, todescend again, condensing as dew or rain and an odor of fetid earthdrifted up, a stench of decay. I inhaled sepulcher, tartar,darkness; a poisonous liquid oozed around me, snaking betweentongues of dung, humus, coal dust, mud, smoke, lead, scum, naphtha,a black blacker than black, which now paled to allow two reptilesto appear¡Xone light blue, the other reddish¡Xentwined in anembrace, each biting the other's tail, to form a singlecircle.

It was as if I had drunktoo much alcohol: I could no longer see my companions, who werelost in the shadows, I could not recognize the forms gliding pastme, hazy, fluid outlines...Then I felt my hand grasped. I didn'tturn, not wanting to discover that I had deceived myself, because Icaught Lorenza's perfume, and only then did I realize how great wasmy desire for her. It must have been Lorenza; she had come toresume the dialog of fingernails scraping on my door, to finishwhat she had left unfinished the night before. Sulfur and mercuryjoined in a wet warmth that made my groin throb, but withouturgency.

I was expecting theRebis, the androgynous youth, the philosopher's salt, thecoronation of the Work of the White. I seemed to know everything.All my reading of the past few months was, perhaps, now resurfacingin my mind, or perhaps Lorenza was transmitting the knowledge to methrough the touch of her hand.