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

et cetera. Don't you see?The real magician isn't the bleary-eyed guy who doesn't understanda thing; it's the scientist who has grasped the hidden secrets ofthe universe. Discover the miraculous all around us! Hint that atMount Pal-omar they know more than they're lettingon..."

To encourage me, he gaveme a raise, almost perceptible. I concentrated on the miniatures ofthe Liber Solis of Trismosin, the Mutus Liber of Pseudo-Lullus; Ifilled folders with pentacles, sefirotic trees, decans, talismans;I combed the loneliest rooms of libraries; I bought dozens ofvolumes from booksellers who in the old days had peddled thecultural revolution.

Among the Diabolicals, Imoved with the ease of a psychiatrist who becomes fond of hispatients, enjoying the balmy breezes that waft from the ancientpark of his private clinic. After a while he begins to write pageson delirium, then pages of delirium, unaware that his sick peoplehave seduced him. He thinks he has become an artist. And so theidea of the Plan was born.

Diotallevi went alongwith the game because, for him, it was a form of prayer. As forJacopo Belbo, I thought he was having as much fun as I was. Irealize only now that he derived no real pleasure from it. He tookpart in it nervously, anxiously biting his nails. Or, rather, heplayed along, in the hope of finding at least one of the unknownaddresses, the stage without footlights, which he mentions in thefile named Dream. A surrogate theology for an angel that will neverappear.

FILENAME:Dream

I don't remember if Idreamed one dream within another, or if they followed one anotherin the course of the same night, or if they alternated night bynight.

I am looking for awoman, a woman I know, I have had an intense relationship with her,but cannot figure out why I let it cool, it was my fault, notkeeping in touch. Inconceivable, that I could have allowed so muchtime to go by. I am looking for her¡Xor for them, there is morethan one woman, there are many, I lost them all in the same way,through neglect¡Xand I am seized by uncertainty, because even justone would be enough for me, because I know this: in losing them, Ihave lost much. As a rule, in my dream, I cannot find, no longerpossess, am unable to bring myself to open the address book wherethe phone number is written, and even if I do open it, it's as if Iwere farsighted, I can't read the names.

I know where she is, or,rather, I don't know where the place is, but I know what it's like.I have the distinct memory of a stairway, a lobby, a landing. Idon't rush about the city looking for the place; instead, I amfrozen, blocked by anguish, I keep racking my brain for the reasonI permitted¡Xor wanted¡Xthe relationship to cool, the reason Ifailed to show up at our last meeting. She's waiting for a callfrom me, I'm sure. If only I knew her name. I know perfectly wellwho she is, I just can't reconstruct her features.

Sometimes, in thehalf-waking doze that follows, I argue with the dream. You remembereverything, I say, you've settled all your scores, there's nounfinished business. There is no place you remember whose locationyou don't know. There is nothing to the dream.

But the suspicionremains that I have forgotten something, left something among thefolds of my eagerness, the way you forget a bank note or a paperwith an important fact in some small marsupial pouch of yourtrousers or old jacket, and it's only later that you realize it wasthe most important thing of all, crucial, unique.

Of the city I have aclearer image. It's Paris. I'm on the Left Bank. And when I crossthe river, I find myself in a square that could be Place desVosges...no, more open, because at the end stands a kind ofMadeleine. Passing the square, moving behind the temple, I come toa street¡Xthere's a secondhand bookshop on the corner¡Xthat curvesto the right, through a series of alleys that are unquestionablythe Barrio Gotico of Barcelona. It could turn into a very broadavenue full of lights, and it's on this avenue¡Xand I remember itwith the clarity of a photograph¡Xthat I see, to the right, at theend of a blind alley, the Theater.

I'm not sure whathappens in that place of pleasure, no doubt something entertainingand slightly louche, like a striptease. For this reason I don'tdare make inquiries, but I know enough to want to return, full ofexcitement. In vain: toward Chatham Road the streets becomeconfused.

I wake with the taste offailure, an encounter missed. I cannot resign myself to not knowingwhat I've lost.

Sometimes I'm in acountry house. It's big, I know there's another wing, but I'veforgotten how to reach it, as if the passage has been walled up. Inthat other wing there are rooms and rooms. I saw them once, and indetail, thoroughly¡Xit's impossible that I dreamed them in anotherdream¡Xwith old furniture and faded engravings, brackets supportinglittle nineteenth-century toy theaters made of punched cardboard,sofas with embroidered coverlets, and shelves filled with books, acomplete set of the Illustrated Journal of Travel and of Adventureson Land and Sea. It's not true that they came apart from being readso often and that Mama gave them to the trash man. I wonder who gotthe corridors and stairs mixed up, because that is where I wouldhave liked to build my buen retire, in that odor of preciousjunk.

* * *

Why can't I dream ofcollege entrance exams like everybody else?

65

....the frame....wastwenty foot square, placed in the middle of the room. Thesuperficies was composed of several bits of wood, about the bignessof a die, but some larger than others. They were all linkedtogether by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered on everysquare with paper pasted on them, and on these papers were writtenall the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses,and declensions, but without any order...The pupils at his commandtook each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were fortyfixed round the edges of the frame, and giving them a sudden turn,the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He thencommanded six and thirty of the lads to