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

fly off like a balloon, and with it this dayand the event of this day, this action without transition, thissequence without before and after, which was unfolding, motionless,only because it was in his power to will it thus.

If he stopped, stoppedto attack a new note, a rent would have been heard, far louder thanthe volleys that had deafened him, and the clocks would all resumetheir tachycardial palpitation.

Jacopo wished with hiswhole soul that this man beside him would not order Taps. I couldrefuse, he said to himself, and stay like this forever.

He had entered thattrance state that overwhelms the diver when he tries not tosurface, wanting to prolong the inertia that allows him to glidealong the-ocean floor. Trying to express what he felt then, Belbo,in the notebook I was now reading, resorted to broken, twisted,unsyntactical sentences, mutilated by rows of dots. But it wasclear to me that in that moment¡Xthough he didn't come out and sayit¡Xin that moment he was possessing Cecilia.

The fact is that JacopoBelbo did not understand, not then and not later, when he waswriting of his unconscious self, that at that moment he wascelebrating once and for all his chemical wedding¡Xwith Cecilia,with Lorenza, with Sophia, with the earth and with the sky. Aloneamong mortals, he was bringing to a conclusion the GreatWork.

No one had yet told himthat the Grail is a chalice but also a spear, and his trumpetraised like a chalice was at the same time a weapon, an instrumentof the sweetest dominion, which shot toward the sky and linked theearth with the Mystic Pole. With the only Fixed Point in theuniverse. With what he created, for that one instant, with hisbreath.

Diotallevi had not yettold him how you can dwell in Yesod, the Sefirah of foundation, thesign of the superior bow drawn to send arrows to Malkhut, itstarget. Yesod is the drop that springs from the arrow to producethe tree and the fruit, it is the anima mundi, the moment in whichvirile force, procreating, binds all the states of beingtogether.

Knowing how to spin thisCingulum Veneris means knowing how to repair the error of theDemiurge.

You spend a life seekingthe Opportunity, without realizing that the decisive moment, themoment that justifies birth and death, has already passed. It willnot return, but it was¡Xfull, dazzling, generous as everyrevelation.

That day, Jacopo Belbostared into the eyes of Truth. The only truth that was to begranted him. Because¡Xhe would learn¡X truth is brief (afterward,it is all commentary). So he tried to arrest the rush oftime.

He didn't understand.Not as a child. Not as an adolescent when he was writing about it.Not as a man who decided to give up writing about it.

I understood it thisevening: the author has to die in order for the reader to becomeaware of his truth.

The Pendulum, whichhaunted Jacopo Belbo all his adult life, had been¡Xlike the lostaddresses of his dream¡Xthe symbol of that other moment, recordedand then repressed, when he truly touched the ceiling of the world.But that moment, in which he froze space and time, shooting hisZeno's arrow, had been no symbol, no sign, symptom, allusion,metaphor, or enigma: it was what it was. It did not stand foranything else. At that moment there was no longer any deferment,and the score was settled.

Jacopo Belbo didn'tunderstand that he had had his moment and that it would have to beenough for him, for all his life. Not recognizing it, he spent therest of his days seeking something else, until he damned himself.But perhaps he suspected this. Otherwise he wouldn't have returnedso often to the memory of the trumpet. But he remembered it as athing lost, not as a thing possessed.

I believe, I hope, Ipray that as he was dying, swaying with the Pendulum, Jacopo Belbofinally understood this, and found peace.

Then Taps was ordered.But Jacopo would have stopped in any case, because his breath wasfailing. He broke the contact, then blared a single note, high,with a decrescendo, tenderly, to prepare the world for themelancholy that lay in store.

The commander said,"Bravo, young fellow. Run along now. Handsome trumpet."

The provost slippedaway, the partisans made for a rear gateway where their vehiclesawaited them, the gravediggers went off after filling the graves.Jacopo was the last to go. He couldn't bring himself to leave thatplace of happiness.

* * *

In the yard below, thepickup truck of the parish hall was gone.

Jacopo asked himself whyDon Tico had abandoned him like this. From a distance in time, themost probable answer is that there had been a misunderstanding;someone had told Don Tico that the partisans would bring the boyback down. But Jacopo at that moment thought¡Xand not withoutreason¡Xthat between Assembly and Taps too many centuries hadpassed. The boys had waited until their hair turned white, untildeath, until their dust scattered to form the haze that now wasturning the expanse of hills blue before his eyes.

He was alone. Behindhim, an empty cemetery. In his hands, the trumpet. Before him, thehills fading, bluer and bluer, one behind the other, into aninfinity of humps. And, vindictive, over his head, the liberatedsun.

He decided tocry.

But suddenly the hearseappeared, with its Automedon decorated like a general of theemperor, all cream and silver and black, the horses decked withbarbaric masks that left only their eyes visible, caparisoned likecoffins, the little twisted columns that supported theAssyro-Greco-Egyptian tympanum all white and gold. The man with thecocked hat stopped a moment by the solitary trumpeter, and Jacopoasked: "Will you take me home?"

The man smiled. Jacopoclimbed up beside him on the box, and so it was on a hearse that hebegan his return to the world of the living. That off-duty Charon,taciturn, urged his funereal chargers down the slopes, as Jacoposat erect and hieratic, the trumpet clutched under his arm, hisvisor shining, absorbed in his new, unhoped-for role.

They descended, and atevery curve a new view opened up, of vines blue with verdigris indazzling light, and after an incalculable time they arrived in ***.They crossed the big square, all arcades, deserted as onlyMonferrato squares can be deserted at two o'clock on a Sundayafternoon. A schoolmate at the corner saw Jacopo on the hearse, thetrumpet