Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (28 page)

Whoever reflects on four
things, it were better he had never been born: that which is above,
that which is below, that which is before, and that which is
after.

¡XTalmud, Hagigah
2.1

I showed up at Garamond
the morning they were installing Abu-lafia, as Belbo and Diotallevi
were lost in a diatribe about the names of God, and Gudrun
suspiciously watched the men who were introducing this new,
disturbing presence among the increasingly dusty piles of
manuscripts.

"Sit down, Casaubon.
Here are the plans for our history of metals." We were left alone,
and Belbo showed me indexes, chapter outlines, suggested layouts. I
was to read the texts and find illustrations. I mentioned several
Milan libraries that seemed promising sources.

"That won't be enough,"
Belbo said. "You'll have to visit other places, too. The science
museum in Munich, for instance, has a splendid photographic
archive. In Paris there's the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers.
I'd go back there myself, if I had time."

"Interesting?"

"Disturbing. The triumph
of the machine, housed in a Gothic church..." He hesitated,
realigned some papers on his desk. Then, as if afraid of giving too
much importance to the statement, he said, "And there's the
Pendulum."

"What
pendulum?"

"The Pendulum.
Foucault's Pendulum."

And he described it to
me, just as I saw it two days ago, Saturday. Maybe I saw it the way
I saw it because Belbo had prepared me for the sight. But at the
time I must not have shown much enthusiasm, because Belbo looked at
me as if I were a man who, seeing the Sistine Chapel, asks: Is this
all?

"It may be the
atmosphere¡Xthat it's in a church¡Xbut, believe me, you feel a very
strong sensation. The idea that everything else is in motion and up
above is the only fixed point in the universe...For those who have
no faith, it's a way of finding God again, and without challenging
their unbelief, because it is a null pole. It can be very
comforting for people of my generation, who ate disappointment for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. ¡¥¡¥

"My generation ate even
more disappointment."

"Don't brag. Anyway,
you're wrong. For you it was just a phase. You sang the
¡¥Carmagnole,' and then you all met in the Vended. For us it was
different. First there was Fascism, and even if we were kids and
saw it as an adventure story, our nation's immortal destiny was a
fixed point. The next fixed point was the Resistance, especially
for people like me, who observed it from the outside and turned it
into a rite of passage, the return of spring¡Xlike an equinox or a
solstice; I always get them mixed up...For some, the next thing was
God; for some, the working class; and for many, both. Intellectuals
felt good contemplating the handsome worker, healthy, strong, ready
to remake the world. And now, as you've seen for yourself, workers
exist, but not the working class. Perhaps it was killed in Hungary.
Then came your generation. For you personally, what happened was
natural; it probably seemed like a holiday. But not for those my
age. For us, it was a settling of scores, a time of remorse,
repentance, regeneration. We had failed, and you were arriving with
your enthusiasm, courage, self-criticism. Bringing hope to us, who
by then were thirty-five or forty, hope and humiliation, but still
hope. We had to be like you, even at the price of starting over
from the beginning. We stopped wearing ties, we threw away our
trench coats and bought secondhand duffle coats. Some quit their
jobs rather than serve the Establishment..."

He lit a cigarette and
pretended that he had only been pretending bitterness. An apology
for letting himself go.

"And then you gave it
all up. We, with our penitential pilgrimages to Buchenwald, refused
to write advertising copy for Coca-Cola because we were
antifascists. We were content to work for peanuts at Garamond,
because at least books were for the people. But you, to avenge
yourselves on the bourgeoisie you hadn't managed to overthrow, sold
them videocassettes and fanzines, brainwashed them with Zen and the
art of motorcycle maintenance. You've made us buy, at a discount,
your copies of the thought of Chairman Mao, and used the money to
purchase fireworks for the celebration of the new creativity.
Shamelessly. While we spent our lives being ashamed. You tricked
us, you didn't represent purity; it was only adolescent acne. You
made us feel like worms because we lacked the courage to face the
Bolivian militia, and you started shooting a few poor bastards in
the back while they were walking down the street. Ten years ago, we
had to lie to get you out of jail; you lied to send your friends to
jail. That's why I like this machine: it's stupid, it doesn't
believe, it doesn't make me believe, it just does what I tell it.
Stupid me, stupid machine. An honest relationship."

"But I¡X"

"You're innocent,
Casaubon. You ran away instead of throwing stones, you got your
degree, you didn't shoot anybody. Yet a few years ago I felt you,
too, were blackmailing me. Nothing personal, just generational
cycles. And then last year, when I saw the Pendulum, I understood
everything."

"Everything?"

"Almost everything. You
see, Casaubon, even the Pendulum is a false prophet. You look at
it, you think it's the only fixed point in the cosmos, but if you
detach it from the ceiling of the Conservatoire and hang it in a
brothel, it works just the same. And there are other pendulums:
there's one in New York, in the UN building, there's one in the
science museum in San Francisco, and God knows how many others.
Wherever you put it, Foucault's Pendulum swings from a motionless
point while the earth rotates beneath it. Every point of the
universe is a fixed point: all you have to do is hang the Pendulum
from it."

"God is
everywhere?"

"In a sense, yes. That's
why the Pendulum disturbs me. It promises the infinite, but where
to put the infinite is left to me. So it isn't enough to worship
the Pendulum; you still have to make a decision, you have to find
the best point for it. And yet..."

"And yet?"

"And yet...You're not
taking me seriously by any chance, are you, Casaubon? No, I can
rest easy; we're not the type to take things seriously...Well, as I
was saying, the feeling you have is that you've spent a lifetime
hanging the Pendulum in many places, and it's never worked, but
there, in the Conservatoire, it works...Do you think there are
special places in the universe? On the ceiling of this room, for
example? No, nobody would believe that. You need atmosphere. I
don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe
it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe, to recognize
it, we have to believe in it. Well, let's go see Signor
Garamond."

"To hang the
Pendulum?"

"Ah, human folly! Now we
have to be serious. If you're going to be paid, the boss must see
you, touch you, sniff you, and say you'll do. Come and let the boss
touch you; the boss's touch heals scrofula."

Prince of Babylon,
Knight of the Black Cross, Knight of Death, Sublime Master of the
Luminous Ring, Priest of the Sun, Grand Architect, Knight of the
Black and White Eagle, Holy Royal Arch, Knight of the Phoenix,
Knight of Iris, Priest of Eleusis, Knight of the Golden
Fleece.

¡XHigh grades of the
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite

We walked along the
corridor, climbed three steps, went through a frosted-glass door,
and abruptly entered another universe. The rooms I had seen so far
were dark, dusty, with peeling paint, but this looked like a VIP
lounge at an airport. Soft music, a plush waiting room with
designer furniture, pale-blue walls decorated with photographs
showing gentlemen who looked like Members of Parliament presenting
Winged Victories to gentlemen who looked like senators. On a coffee
table, as in a dentist's office, were slick magazines, in casual
disarray, with titles like Literature and Wit, The Poetic Athanor,
The Rose and the Thorn, The Italic Parnassus, Free Verse. I had
never seen any of them before, and I later found out why: they were
distributed only to Manutius clients.

At first I thought these
were the offices of the Garamond directors, but I soon learned
otherwise. This was another publishing firm entirely. The Garamond
lobby had a little glass case, dusty and clouded, displaying the
latest publications, but the books were unassuming, with uncut
pages and sober gray covers imitating French university
publications. The paper was the kind that turned yellow in a few
years, giving the impression that the author, no matter how young,
had been publishing for a long time. But here the glass case,
lighted inside, displayed Manutius books, some of them opened to
reveal bright pages. They had gleaming white covers sheathed in
elegant transparent plastic, with handsome rice paper and clean
print.

Whereas the Garamond
catalog contained such scholarly series as Humanist Studies and
Philosophia, the Manutius series were delicately, poetically named:
The Flower Unplucked (poetry), Terra Incognita (fiction), The Hour
of the Oleander (including Diary of a Young Girl's Illness), Easter
Island (assorted nonfiction, I believe), New Atlantis (the most
recent release being Kdnigsberg Revisited: Prolegomena to Any
Future Metaphysics Presented as Both a Transcendental System and a
Science of the Phenomenal Noumenon). On every cover there was the
firm's logo: a pelican under a palm tree, with the D'Annunzian
motto "I have what I have given."

Belbo had been laconic:
Signor Garamond owned two publishing houses. In the days that
followed, I realized that the passageway between Garamond and
Manutius was private and secret. The official entrance to Manutius
Press was on Via Marchese Gualdi, the street in which the purulent
world of Via Sincero Renato ceded to spotless facades, spacious
sidewalks, lobbies with aluminum elevators. No one could have
suspected that an apartment in an old Via Sincero Renato building
might be joined, by a mere three steps, to a building on Via
Marchese Gualdi. To obtain permission for this, Signor Garamond
must have Had to perform feats of persuasion. I believe he had help
from one of his authors, an official in the City Planning
Bureau.

We were received
promptly by Signora Grazia, bland and matronly, her designer scarf
and suit the exact color of the walls. With a guarded smile she
showed us into an office that recalled Mussolini's.

The room was not so
immense, but it suggested that hall in the Palazzo Venezia. Here,
too, there was a globe near the door, and at the far end the
mahogany desk of Signor Garamond, who seemed to be looking at us
through reversed binoculars. He motioned us to approach, and I felt
intimidated. Later, when De Gubernatis came in, Garamond got up and
went to greet him, an act of cordiality that enhanced even more the
publisher's importance. The visitor first watches him cross the
room, then crosses it himself, arm in arm with his host, and as if
by magic the space is doubled.

Garamond waved us to
seats opposite his desk. He was brusque but friendly: "Dr. Belbo
speaks highly of you, Dr. Ca-saubon. We need good men. You realize,
of course, we're not putting you on the staff. Can't afford it. But
you'll be well paid for your efforts. For your devotion, if I may
say so, because I consider our work a mission."

He mentioned a flat fee
based on estimated hours of work; it seemed reasonable for those
times. I accepted.

"Excellent, Casaubon."
Now that I was an employee, the title disappeared. "This history of
metals," he went on, "must be splendid¡Xmore, a thing of beauty.
Popular, but scholarly, too. It must catch the reader's
imagination. An example. Here in the first draft there is mention
of these spheres¡Xwhat were they called? Yes, the Magdeburg
hemispheres. Two hemispheres which, when put together and the air
is pumped out, create a pneumatic vacuum inside. Teams of draft
horses are hitched to them and they pull in opposite directions.
The horses can't separate the hemispheres. This is scientific
information. But it's special, it's picturesque. You must single it
out from all the other information, then find the right image¡Xa
fresco, an oil, whatever¡Xand we'll give it a full page, in
color."

"There's an engraving I
know of," I said.

"You see? Bravo! A whole
page. Full color."

"Since it's an
engraving, it'll have to be in black and white," I said.

"Really? Fine, black and
white it is. Accuracy above all. But against a gold background. It
has to strike the reader, make him feel he's there on the day the
experiment was carried out. See what I mean? Science, realism,
passion. With science you can grab the reader by the throat. What
could be more dramatic than Madame Curie coming home one evening
and seeing that phosphorescent glow in the dark? Oh, my goodness,
whatever can that be? Hydrocarbon, golconda, phlogiston, whatever
the hell they called it, and voila, Marie Curie invents X rays.
Dramatize! But with absolute respect for the truth."

"What connection do X
rays have with metals?" I asked.

"Isn't radium a
metal?"

"Yes."

"Well then. The entire
body of knowledge can be viewed from the standpoint of metals. What
did we decide to call the book, Belbo?"

"We were thinking of
something sober, like Metals."

"Yes, it has to be
sober. But with that extra hook, that little detail that tells the
whole story. Let's see...Metals: A World History. Are there Chinese
in it, too?"

"Yes."

"World, then. Not an
advertising gimmick: it's the truth. Wait, I know: The Wonderful
Adventure of Metals."

It was at that moment
Signora Grazia announced the arrival of Commendatore De Gubernatis.
Signer Garamond hesitated, gave me a dubious look. Belbo made a
sign, as if to say that I could be trusted. Garamond ordered the
guest to be shown in and went to greet him. De Gubernatis wore a
double-breasted suit, a rosette in his lapel, a fountain pen in his
breast pocket, a folded newspaper in his side pocket, a leatherette
briefcase under his arm.

"Ah, my dear
Commendatore," Garamond said, "come right in. Our dear friend De
Ambrosiis told me all about you. A life spent in the service of the
state. And a secret poetic vein, yes? Show me, show me the treasure
you hold in your hands...But first let me introduce two of my
senior editors."

He seated the visitor in
front of the desk, cluttered with manuscripts, while his hands,
trembling with anticipation, caressed the cover of the work held
out to him. "Not a word. I know everything. You come from Vitipeno,
that great and noble city. You were in the customs service. And,
secretly, night after night, you filled these pages, fired by the
demon of poetry. Poetry...it consumed Sappho's young years, it
nourished Goethe's old age. Drug, the Greeks called it, both poison
and medicine. Naturally, we'll have to read this creation of yours.
I always insist on at least three readers' reports, one in-house
and two from consultants (who must remain anonymous; you'll forgive
me, but they are quite prominent people). Manutius doesn't publish
a book unless we're sure of its quality, and quality, as you know
better than I, is an impalpable, it can be detected only with a
sixth sense. A book may have imperfections, flaws¡Xeven Svevo
sometimes wrote badly, as you know better than I¡Xbut, by God, you
still feel the idea, rhythm, power. I know¡Xdon't say it. The
moment I glanced at the incipit of your first page, I felt
something, but I don't want to judge on my own, though time and
again¡Xah, yes, often¡Xwhen the readers' reports were lukewarm, I
overruled them, because you can't judge an author without having
grasped, so to speak, his rhythm, and here, for example, I open
this work of yours at random and my eyes fall on a verse, ¡¥As in
autumn, the wan eyelid'...Well, I don't know how it continues, but
I sense an inspiration, I see an image. There are times you start a
work like this with a surge of ecstasy, carried away. Cela dit, my
dear friend, ah, if only we could always do what we like! But
publishing, too, is a business, perhaps the noblest of all, but
still a business. Do you have any idea what printers charge these
days? And the cost of paper? Just look at this morning's news: the
rise of the prime rate on Wall Street. Doesn't affect us, you say?
Ah, but it does. Do you know they tax even our inventory? And they
tax returns, the books I don't sell. Yes, I pay even for
failure¡Xsuch is the calvary of genius unrecognized by the
philistines. This onionskin¡Xmost refined of you, if I may say so,
to type your text on such thin paper. It smacks of the poet. The
typical clod would have used parchment to dazzle the eye and
confuse the spirit, but here is poetry written with the heart¡Xthis
onionskin might as well be paper money."

The phone rang. I later
learned that Garamond had pressed a button under the desk, and
Signora Grazia had sent through a fake call.

"My dear Maestro! What?
Splendid! Great news! Ring out, wild bells! A new book from your
pen is always an event. Why, of course! Manutius is proud,
moved¡Xmore, thrilled¡Xto number you among its authors. You saw
what the papers wrote about your latest epic poem? Noble material.
Unfortunately, you're ahead of your time. We had trouble selling
the three thousand copies..."

Commendatore De
Gubernatis blanched: three thousand copies was an achievement
beyond his dreams.

"Sales didn't cover the
production costs. Take a look through the glass doors and you'll
see how many people I have in the editorial department. For a book
to break even nowadays I have to sell at least ten thousand copies,
and luckily I sell more than that in many cases, but those are
writers with¡Xhow shall I put it?¡Xa different vocation. Balzac was
great, and his books sold like hotcakes; Proust was equally great,
but he published at his own expense. You'll end up in school
anthologies, but not on the stands in train stations. The same
thing happened to Joyce, who, like Proust, published at his own
expense. I can allow myself the privilege of bringing out a book
like yours once every two or three years. Give me three years'
time..." A long pause followed. An expression of pained
embarrassment came over Garamond's face.

"What? At your own
expense? No, no, it's not the amount. We can hold the costs
down...But as a rule Manutius doesn't...Of course, you're right,
even Joyce and Proust...Of course, I understand..."

Another pained pause.
"Very well, we'll talk about it. I've been honest with you, and
you're impatient...Let's try what the Americans call a joint
venture. They're always way ahead of us, the Yanks. Drop in
tomorrow, and we'll do some figuring...My respects and my
admiration."

Garamond seemed to wake
up from a dream. He rubbed his eyes, then suddenly remembered the
presence of his visitor. "Forgive me. That was a writer, a true
writer, perhaps one of the Greats. And yet, for that very
reason...Sometimes this job is humbling. If it weren't for the
vocation...But where were we? Ah, yes, I think we've said
everything there is to be said now. I'll write you, hmm, in about a
month. Please leave your work here; it's in good hands."

Commendatore De
Gubernatis went out, speechless. He had set foot in the forge of
glory.