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

Lia saved me, at leasttemporarily.

I told hereverything¡Xor almost¡Xabout the trip to Piedmont, and eveningafter evening I came home with curious new bits of information toadd to my file of cross references. She said, "Eat. You're thin asa rail." One evening, she sat beside me at the desk. With her hairparted in the middle of her brow, she could now look straight intomy eyes. She had her hands in her lap: a housewifely pose. I hadnever seen her sit like that before, her legs wide, skirt taut fromknee to knee. An inelegant position, I thought. But then I saw herface: radiant, slightly flushed. I listened to her¡Xthough I didn'tyet know why¡Xwith respect.

"Pow," she said, "Idon't like what's happening to you with this Manutius business.First you collected facts the way people collect seashells. Nowit's as if you were marking down lottery numbers."

"I just enjoy myselfmore, with the Diabolicals."

"It's not enjoyment;it's passion. There's a difference. Be careful: they'll make yousick."

"Now, don't exaggerate.They're the sick ones, not I. You don't go crazy because you workin an asylum."

"That remains to beseen."

"You know, I've alwaysbeen suspicious of analogies. But now I find myself at a greatfeast of analogies, a Coney Island, a Moscow May Day, a JubileeYear of analogies, and I'm beginning to wonder if by any chancethere isn't a reason."

"I've seen your files,Pow," Lia said to me, "because I have to keep them in order.Whatever your Diabolicals have discovered is already here: take agood look." And she patted her belly, her thighs, her forehead;with her spread legs drawing her skirt tight, she sat like a wetnurse, solid and healthy¡Xshe so slim and supple¡Xwith a serenewisdom that illuminated her and gave her a matriarchalauthority.

"Pow, archetypes don'texist; the body exists. The belly inside is beautiful, because thebaby grows there, because your sweet cock, all bright and jolly,thrusts there, and good, tasty food descends there, and for thisreason the cavern, the grotto, the tunnel are beautiful andimportant, and the labyrinth, too, which is made in the image ofour wonderful intestines. When somebody wants to invent somethingbeautiful and important, it has to come from there, because youalso came from there the day you were born, because fertilityalways comes from inside a cavity, where first something rots andthen, lo and behold, there's a little man, a date, abaobab.

"And high is better thanlow, because if you have your head down, the blood goes to yourbrain, because feet stink and hair doesn't stink as much, becauseit's better to climb a tree and pick fruit than end up underground,food for worms, and because you rarely hurt yourself hittingsomething above¡Xyou really have to be in an attic¡Xwhile you oftenhurt yourself falling. That's why up is angelic and downdevilish.

"But because what I saidbefore, about my belly, is also true, both things are true, downand inside are beautiful, and up and outside are beautiful, and thespirit of Mercury and Manichean-ism have nothing to do with it.Fire keeps you warm and cold gives you bronchial pneumonia,especially if you're a scholar four thousand years ago, andtherefore fire has mysterious virtues besides its ability to cookyour chicken. But cold preserves that same chicken, and fire, ifyou touch it, gives you a blister this big; therefore, if you thinkof something preserved for millennia, like wisdom, you have tothink of it on a mountain, up, high (and high is good), but also ina cavern (which is good, too) and in the eternal cold of theTibetan snows (best of all). And if you then want to know whywisdom comes from the Orient and not from the Swiss Alps, it'sbecause the body of your ancestors in the morning, when it woke andthere was still darkness, looked to the east hoping the sun wouldrise and there wouldn't be rain."

"Yes, Mama."

"Yes indeed, my child.The sun is good because it does the body good, and because it hasthe sense to reappear every day; therefore, whatever returns isgood, not what passes and is done with. The easiest way to returnfrom where you've been without retracing your steps is to walk in acircle. The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; that'swhy so many cults and myths of the serpent exist, because it's hardto represent the return of the sun by the coiling of ahippopotamus. Furthermore, if you have to make a ceremony to invokethe sun, it's best to move in a circle, because if you go in astraight line, you move away from home, which means the ceremonywill have to be kept short. The circle is the most convenientarrangement for any rite, even the fire-eaters in the marketplaceknow this, because in a circle everybody can see the one who's inthe center, whereas if a whole tribe formed a straight line, like asquad of soldiers, the people at the ends wouldn't see. And that'swhy the circle and rotary motion and cyclic return are fundamentalto every cult and every rite."

"Yes, Mama."

"We move on to the magicnumbers your authors are so fond of. You are one and not two, yourcock is one and my cunt is one, and we have one nose and one heart;so you see how many important things come in ones. But we have twoeyes, two ears, two nostrils, my breasts, your balls, legs, arms,buttocks. Three is the most magical of all, because our bodydoesn't know that number; we don't have three of anything, and itshould be a very mysterious number that we attribute to God,wherever we live. But if you think about it, I have one cunt andyou have one cock¡Xshut up and don't joke¡Xand if we put these twotogether, a new thing is made, and we become three. So you don'thave to be a university professor or use a computer to discoverthat all cultures on earth have ternary structures,trinities.

"But two arms and twolegs make four, and four is a beautiful -number when you considerthat animals have four legs and little children go on all fours, asthe Sphinx knew. We hardly have to discuss five, the fingers of thehand and then with both hands you get