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

She neverlies.

I love you, shesays.

See youSunday?

No. I'm spending theweekend with a friend...

A girlfriend,naturally.

No, a man friend. Youknow him. He's the one who was at the bar with me last week. Ipromised. You wouldn't want me to break my promise?

Don't break yourpromise, but don't come here to make me...Please, I have an authorcoming in.

A genius tolaunch?

A poor bastard todestroy.

A poor bastard todestroy.

I went to pick you up atPilade's. You weren't there. I waited a long time, then I went bymyself; otherwise the gallery would have been closed. Somebodythere told me you had all gone on to the restaurant. I pretended tolook at the pictures, though they tell me art's been dead sinceHolderlin. It took me twenty minutes to find the restaurant,because dealers always pick ones that are going to become famousnext month.

You were there, amongthe usual faces, and beside you was the man with the scar. Youweren't the least embarrassed. You looked at me with complicityand¡Xhow do you manage both at the same time?¡X defiance, as if tosay: So what? The intruder with the scar looked me up and down, asif I, not he, were the intruder. The others, in on the story,waited. I should have found an excuse to pick a fight. I'd havecome out of it well, even if he hit me. Everybody knew you werethere with him to provoke me. My role was assigned. One way or theother, I was to put on a show.

Since there had to be ashow, I chose drawing-room comedy. I joined the conversation,amiable, hoping someone would admire my control.

The only one who admiredme was me.

You're a coward when youfeel you're a coward.

The masked avenger. AsClark Kent I take care of misunderstood young geniuses; as SupermanI punish justly misunderstood old geniuses. I collaborate in theexploitation of those who, lacking my courage, have been unable toconfine themselves to the role of spectator.

Is this possible? Tospend a life punishing people who will never know they have beenpunished? So you wanted to be a Homer, eh? Take that, wretch, andthat!

I hate anyone who triesto see me as an illusion of passion.

41

When it is recalled thatDaath is situated at the point where the abyss bisects the MiddlePillar, and that up the Middle Pillar lies the Path of the Arrow,the way by which consciousness goes when the psychic rises on theplanes, and that here also is Kundalini, we see that in Daath isthe secret of both generation and regeneration, the key to themanifestation of all things through the differentiation into pairsof Opposites and their union in a Third.

¡XDion Fortune, TheMystical Qabalah, London, Fraternity ofthe Inner Light, 1957,7.19

In any case I wasn'tsupposed to concern myself with Manutius; my job was the wonderfuladventure of metals. I began by exploring the Milan libraries. Istarted with textbooks, made a bibliography on file cards, and fromthere I went back to the original sources, old or new, looking fordecent pictures. There's nothing worse than illustrating a chapteron space travel with a photograph of the latest American satellite.Signer Garamond had taught me that it needs, at the very least, anangel by Dore.

I reaped a harvest ofcurjous reproductions, but they weren't enough. To choose the rightpicture for an illustrated book, you have to reject at least tenothers.

I got permission to goto Paris for four days. Not much time to visit all the archives.Lia came with me. We arrived Thursday and had return reservationsfor the Monday-evening train, and I scheduled the Conservatoire forMonday, a mistake, because I found out the Conservatoire was closedMondays. Too late. I left Paris crestfallen.

Belbo was vexed, but Ihad collected plenty of interesting things, and we went to showthem to Signer Garamond. He leafed through the reproductions, manyof them in color, then looked at the bill and let out a whistle."My dear friend," he said, "our work is a mission, true, we toil inthe fields of culture, ca va sans dire, but we're not the RedCross¡Xmore, we're not UNICEF. Was it necessary to buy all thismaterial? I mean, I see here a mustachioed gentleman in hisunderwear who looks like d'Artagnan, surrounded by abracadabras andcapricorns. Who is he? Mandrake?"

"Primitive medicine.Influence of the zodiac on the different parts of the body, withthe corresponding curative herbs. And minerals, including metals.The doctrine of the cosmic signatures. Those were times when theboundary between magic and science was ratherill-defined."

"Interesting. But whatdoes this title page mean? Philosophia Moysaica. What's Moses gotto do with it? Isn't that being a little too primitive?"

"It's the dispute overunguentum armarium, otherwise known as weapon salve. Illustriousphysicians spent fifty years arguing whether this salve could healwounds by being smeared on the weapon that had dealt theblow.''

"Incredible. And that'sscience?"

"Not in today's sense ofthe word. But they considered this seriously, because they had justdiscovered the marvels of the magnet, the magic possibility ofaction at a distance...These men were wrong, but later, Volta andMarconi were not. What are electricity and radio if not action at adistance?"

"Well, well. Bravo,Casaubon. Science and magic going arm in arm, eh? Great idea. Let'spursue this. Throw out some of those revolting generators and putin a few more Mandrakes. Perhaps a summoning of the Devil, say, ona gold background."

"I wouldn't want to gotoo far. This is the wonderful adventure of metals. Oddities workonly when they're to the point."

"The wonderful adventureof metals must be, most of all, the story of science's mistakes.Stick in the catchy oddity, and in the caption say it's wrong. Inthe meantime, the reader's hooked, because he sees that even thegreats had crazy ideas, just like him."

I told them about astrange thing I had seen in Paris, a bookshop near quaiSaint-Michel. Its symmetrical windows advertised its ownschizophrenia: on one side, books on computers and the electronicsof the future; on the other, occult sciences. And it was the sameinside: Apple and cabala.

"Unbelievable," Belbosaid.

"Obvious," Diotallevisaid. "Or, at least, you're the last person who should besurprised, Jacopo. The world of machines seeking to rediscover thesecret of creation: letters and numbers."

Garamond said nothing.He had clasped his hands as if in prayer, and his eyes were turnedheavenward. Then he smacked his hands together. "What you've saidtoday confirms