Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (important books to read .txt) 📗

who had come in for a whiskey after putting thepaper to bed, while the first trucks were already out distributingthe Establishment's lies to the newsstands. But at Pilade's thereporter also felt like an exploited proletarian, a producer ofsurplus value chained to an ideological assembly line, and thestudents forgave him.

Between eleven at nightand two in the morning you might see a young publisher, anarchitect, a crime reporter trying to work his way up to the artspage, some Brera Academy painters, a few semisuccessful writers,and students like me.

A minimum of alcoholicstimulation was the rule, and old Pilade, while he still stockedhis big bottles of white for the tram drivers and the mostaristocratic customers, replaced root beer and cream soda withpetillant wines with the right labels for the intellectuals andJohnnie Walker for the revolutionaries. I could write the politicalhistory of those years based on how Red Label gradually gave way totwelve-year-old Ballantine and then to single malt.

At the old billiardtable the painters and motormen still challenged each other togames, but with the arrival of the new clientele, Pilade also putin a pinball machine.

I was never able to makethe little balls last. At first I attributed that toabsent-mindedness or a lack of manual dexterity. I learned thetruth years later after watching Lorenza Pellegrini play. At thebeginning I hadn't noticed her, but then she came into focus oneevening when I followed the direction of Belbo's gaze.

Belbo had a way ofstanding at the bar as if he were just passing through (he had beena regular there for at least ten years). He often took part inconversations, at the counter or at a table, but almost always hedid no more than drop some short remark that would instantly freezeall enthusiasm, no matter what subject was being discussed. He hadanother freezing technique: asking a question. Someone would betalking about an event, the whole group would be completelyabsorbed, then Belbo, turning his pale, slightly absent eyes on thespeaker, with his glass at hip level, as though he had longforgotten he was drinking, would ask, "Is that a fact?" Or,"Really?" At which point everyone, including the narrator, wouldsuddenly begin to doubt the story. Maybe it was the way Belbo'sPiedmont drawl made his statements interrogative and hisinterrogatives taunting. And he had yet another Piedmont trick:looking into his interlocutor's eyes, but as if he were avoidingthem. His gaze didn't exactly shirk dialogue, but he would suddenlyseem to concentrate on some distant convergence of parallel linesno one had paid attention to. He made you feel that you had beenstaring all this time at the one place that wasunimportant.

It wasn't just his gaze.Belbo could dismiss you with the smallest gesture, a briefinterjection. Suppose you were trying hard to show that it was Kantwho really completed the Coper-nican revolution in modernphilosophy, suppose you were staking your whole future on thatthesis. Belbo, sitting opposite you, with his eyes half-closed,would suddenly look down at his hands or at his knee with anEtruscan smile. Or he would sit back with his mouth open, eyes onthe ceiling, and mumble, "Yes, Kant..." Or he would commit himselfmore explicitly, in an assault on the whole system oftranscendental idealism: "You really think Kant meant all thatstuff?" Then he would look at you with solicitude, as if you, andnot he, had disturbed the spell, and he would then encourage you:"Go ahead, go ahead. I mean, there must be something to it. The manhad a mind, after all."

But sometimes Belbo,when he became really angry, lost his composure. Since loss ofcomposure was the one thing he could not tolerate in others, hisown was wholly internal¡Xand regional. He would purse his lips,raise his eyes, then look down, tilt his head to the left, and sayin a soft voice: "Ma gavte la nata." For anyone who didn't knowthat Piedmontese expression, he would occasionally explain: "Magavte la nata. Take out the cork." You say it to one who is full ofhimself, the idea being that what causes him to swell and strut isthe pressure of a cork stuck in his behind. Remove it, andphsssssh, he returns to the human condition.

Belbo's remarks had away of making you see the vanity of things, and they delighted me.But I drew the wrong conclusion from them, considering them anexpression of supreme contempt for the banality of other people'struth.

Now, having breached thesecret of Abulafia and, with it, Belbo's soul, I see that what Ithought disenchantment and a philosophy of life was a form ofmelancholy. His intellectual disrespect concealed a desperatethirst for the Absolute. This was not immediately obvious, becauseBelbo had many moods-irresponsibility, hesitation,indifference¡Xand there were also moments when he relaxed andenjoyed conversation, asserting absolutely contradictory ideas withlighthearted disbelief. Then he and Diotallevi would createhandbooks for impossibilities, or invent upside-down worlds orbibliographical monstrosities. When you saw him so enthusiasticallytalkative, constructing his Rabelaisian Sorbonne, there was no wayof knowing how much he suffered at his exile rrom the faculty oftheology, the real one.

I had deliberatelythrown that address away; he had mislaid it and could never resignhimself to the loss.

In Abulafia's files Ifound many pages of a pseudo diary that Belbo had entrusted to thepassword, confident that he was not betraying his often-repeatedvow to remain a mere spectator of the world. Some entries carriedold dates; obviously he had put these on the computer out ofnostalgia, or because he planned to recycle them eventually. Otherswere more recent, after the advent of Abu. His writing was amechanical game, a solitary pondering on his own errors, but it wasnot¡Xhe thought¡X"creation," for creation had to be inspired bylove of someone who is not ourselves.

But Belbo, withoutrealizing it, had crossed that Rubicon; he was creating.Unfortunately. His enthusiasm for the Plan came from his ambitionto write a book. No matter if the book were made entirely oferrors, intentional, deadly errors. As long as you remain in yourprivate vacuum, you can pretend you are in harmony with the One.But the moment you pick up the clay, electronic or otherwise, youbecome a demiurge, and he who embarks on the creation of worlds isalready tainted with corruption and evil.

FILENAME: A bevy of fairwomen

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