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

even though you're God and with a snap of your fingers canturn the world to ashes. But, infinitely powerful as you are, youcan afford to be long-suffering.

A novel about Godincognito. No. If I thought of it, somebody else must have alreadydone it.

* * *

You're an author, notyet aware of your powers. The woman you loved has betrayed you,life for you no longer has meaning, so one day, to forget, you takea trip on the Titanic and are shipwrecked in the South Seas. Youare picked up, the sole survivor, by a pirogue full of natives, andspend long years, forgotten by the outside world, on this islandinhabited only by Papuans. Girls serenade you with languoroussongs, their swaying breasts barely covered by necklaces of puablossoms. They call you Jim (they call all white men Jim), and onenight an amber-skinned girl slips into your hut and says: "I yours,I with you." How nice, to lie there in the evening on the verandaand look up at the Southern Cross while she fans yourbrow.

You live by the cycle ofdawn and sunset, and know nothing else. One day a motorboat arriveswith some Dutchmen aboard, you learn that ten years have passed;you could go away with these Dutchmen, but you refuse. You start abusiness trading coconuts, you supervise the hemp harvest, thenatives work for you, you sail from island to island, and everyonecalls you Seven Seas Jim. A Portuguese adventurer ruined by drinkcomes to work with you and redeems himself. By now you're the talkof the Sunda, you advise the maharajah of Brunei in his campaignagainst the Dayaks of the river, you find an old cannon from thedays of Tippo Sahib and get it back in working order. You train asquad of devoted Malayans whose teeth are blackened with betel. Ina skirmish near the coral reef, old Sampan, his teeth blackenedwith betel, shields you with his own body; I gladly die for you,Seven Seas Jim. Good old Sampan, farewell, my friend.

Now you're famous in thewhole archipelago, from Sumatra to Port-au-Prince. You trade withthe English, too; at the harbor master's office in Darwin you'reregistered as Kurtz, and now you're Kurtz to everyone¡Xonly thenatives still call you Seven Seas Jim. One evening, as the girlcaresses you on the veranda and the Southern Cross shines brighterthan ever overhead¡Xah! so different from the Great Bear¡Xyourealize you want to go back. Just for a little while, to see what,if anything, is left of you there.

You take a boat toManila, from there a prop plane to Ball, then Samoa, the AdmiraltyIslands, Singapore, Tenerife, Timbuktu, Aleppo, Samarkand, Basra,Malta, and you're home.

Eighteen years havepassed, life has left its mark on you: your face is tanned by thetrade winds, you're older, perhaps also handsomer. Arriving, youdiscover that all the bookshops are displaying your books, in newcritical editions, and your name has been carved into the pedimentof your old school, where you learned to read and write. You arethe Great Vanished Poet, the conscience of a generation. Romanticmaidens kill themselves at your empty grave.

And then I encounteryou, my love, with those wrinkles around your eyes, your face stillbeautiful though worn by memory and tender remorse. I almost passyou on the sidewalk, I'm only a few feet away, and you look at meas you look at all people, as though seeking another beyond theirshadow. I could speak, erase the years. But to what end? Am I not,even now, fulfilled? I am like God, as solitary as He, as vain, andas despairing, unable to be one of my creatures. They dwell in mylight, while I dwell in unbearable darkness, the source of thatlight.

* * *

Go in peace, then,William S.! Famous, you pass and do not recognize me. I murmur tomyself: To be or not to be. And I say to myself: Good for you,Belbo, good work. Go, old William S., and reap your meed of glory.You alone created; I merely made a few changes.

We mid wives, who assistat the births of what others conceive, should be refused burial inconsecrated ground. Like actors. Except that actors play with theworld as it is, while we play with a plurality of make-believes,with the endless possibilities of existence in an infiniteuniverse...

How can life be sobountiful, providing such sublime rewards formediocrity?

12

Sub umbra alarum tuarum,Jehova.

¡XFama Fraternitatis, inAllgemeine und general Reformation, Cassel, Wessel, 1514,conclusion

The next day, I went toGaramond Press. Number 1, Via Sincere Renato, opened into a dustypassage, from which you could glimpse a courtyard and arope-maker's shop. To the right was an elevator that looked likesomething out of an industrial archeology exhibit. When I tried totake it, it shuddered, jerked, as if unable to make up its mind toascend, so prudently I got out and climbed two flights of dusty,almost circular wooden stairs. I later learned that Mr. Garamondloved this building because it reminded him of a publishing housein Paris. A metal plate on the landing said GARAMOND PRESS, and anopen door led to a lobby with no switchboard or receptionist of anykind. But you couldn't go in without being seen from a little outeroffice, and I was immediately confronted by a person, probablyfemale, of indeterminate age and a height that couldeuphemistically be called below average.

She accosted me in aforeign language that was somehow familiar; then I realized it wasItalian, an Italian almost completely lacking in vowels. When Iasked for Belbo, she led me down a corridor to an office in theback.

Belbo welcomed mecordially: "So, you are a serious person. Come in." He had me sitopposite his desk, which was old, like everything else, and piledhigh with manuscripts, as were the shelves on the walls.

"I hope Gudrun didn'tfrighten you," he said.

"Gudrun?That...signora?"

"Signorina. Her nameisn't really Gudrun. We call her that because of her Nibelung lookand because her speech is vaguely Teutonic. She wants to sayeverything quickly, so she saves time by leaving out the vowels.But she has a sense of justitia aequa-trix: When she types, sheskips consonants."

"What does she dohere?"

"Everything,unfortunately. In every publishing house there is one person who isindispensable, the only one who can find things in the mess that heor she creates. At least