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

what he knew must have been so secret and awesome thatthe person he turned to did away with him.

"But let us return tohis attic. I wanted to see whether Ingolf had left any clues, so Itold the good mademoiselle that if I examined her father's books, Imight perhaps find some trace of the discovery he had made inProvins. If so, I would give him fall credit in my essay. She wasenthusiastic. Anything for poor Papa. She invited me to stay thewhole afternoon and to come back the next morning if necessary. Shebrought me coifee, turned on the lights, and went back to hergarden, leaving me in full charge. The room had smooth, whitewalls, no cupboards, nooks, or crannies where I could rummage, butI neglected nothing. I looked above, below, and inside the fewpieces of furniture; I searched through an almost empty wardrobecontaining a few suits filled with mothballs; I looked behind thethree or four framed engravings of landscapes. I'll spare you thedetails, but, take it from me, I did a thorough job. It's notenough, for instance, to feel the stuffing ,of a sofa; you have tostick needles in to make sure you don't miss any foreignobject..."

The colonel'sexperience, I realized, was not limited to battlefields.

"That left the books. Imade a list of the titles and checked for underlinings and notes inthe margins, for any hint at all. After a long while, I clumsilypicked up an old volume with a heavy binding; I dropped it, and ahandwritten sheet of paper fell out. It was notebook paper, and thetexture and ink suggested that it wasn't very old: it could havebeen written in the last years of Ingolf's life. I barely glancedat it, but suddenly noticed something written in the margin:¡¥Provins 1894.' Well, you can imagine my excitement, the wave ofemotion that swept over me...I realized that Ingolf had taken theoriginal parchment to Paris, and that this was a copy. I felt nocompunction. Mademoiselle Ingolf had dusted those books for yearsand had never come across that paper, otherwise she would have toldme. Very well, let her continue to be unaware of it. The world ismade up of winners and losers. I had had my share of defeat; it wastime now to grasp victory. I folded the paper and put it in mypocket. I bade Mademoiselle Ingolf good-bye, telling her that,though I had found nothing of interest, I would neverthelessmention her father if I wrote anything. Bless you, she said. A manof action, gentlemen, especially one burning with the passion thatblazed within me, can't have scruples when dealing with a dismalwoman already sentenced by fate."

"No need to apologize,"Belbo said. "You did it. Just tell us the rest."

"Gentlemen, I will nowshow you this text. Forgive me for using a photocopy. It's notdistrust. I don't want to subject the original to furtherwear."

"But Ingolf's copywasn't the original," I said. "The parchment was theoriginal."

"Casaubon, whenoriginals no longer exist, the last copy is theoriginal."

"But Ingolf may havemade errors in transcription."

"You don't know that hedid. Whereas I know Ingolf's transcription is true, because I seeno way the truth could be otherwise. Therefore Ingolf's copy is theoriginal. Do we agree on this point, or do we sit and splithairs?"

"No," Belbo said. "Ihate that. Let's see your original copy."

19

After Beaujeu, the Orderhas never ceased to exist, not for a moment, and after Aumont wefind an uninterrupted sequence of Grand Masters of the Order downto our own time, and if the name and seat of the true Grand Masterand the true Seneschals who rule the Order and guide its sublimelabors remain a mystery today, an impenetrable secret known only tothe truly enlightened, it is because the hour of the Order has notstruck and the time is not ripe...

¡XManuscript of 1760, inG. A. Schiffmann, Die Entstehung der Rittergrade in der Freimauereiurn die Mitte des XVIII Jahrhun-derts, Leipzig, Zechel, 1882, pp.178-190

This was our first,remote contact with the Plan. I could easily be somewhere else nowif I hadn't been in Belbo's office that day. I could be¡Xwhoknows?¡Xselling sesame seeds in Samarkand, or editing a series ofbooks in Braille, or heading the first National Bank of Franz JosefLand. Counterfactual conditionals are always true, because thepremise is false. But I was there that day, so now I am where Iam.

The colonel handed usthe page with a flourish. I still have it here among my papers, ina little plastic folder. Printed on that thermal paper photocopiesused in those days, it is more yellowed and faded now. Actuallythere were two texts on the page: the first, densely written, tookup half the space; the second was divided into fragments ofverses...

The first text was akind of demoniacal litany, a parody of a Semiticlanguage:

Kuabris Defrabax RexulonUkkazaal Ukzaab Urpaefel Tacul-bain Habrak Hacoruin MaquafelTebrain Hmcatuin Rokasor Himesor Argaabil Kaquaan Docrabax ReisazReisabrax De-caiquan Oiquaquil Zaitabor Qaxaop Dugraq XaelobranDi-saeda Magisuan Raitak Huidal Uscolda Arabaom Zipreus MecrimCosmae Duquifas Rocarbis.

"Not exactly clear,"Belbo remarked.

"No, it isn't," thecolonel agreed slyly. "And I might have spent my life trying tomake sense of it, if one day, almost by chance, I hadn't found abook about Trithemius on a bookstall and noticed one of his codedmessages: ¡¥Pamersiel Oshurmy Delmuson Thafloyn...' I had uncovereda clue, and I pursued it relentlessly. I knew nothing at all -aboutTrithemius, but in Paris I found an edition of his Steganographia,hoc est ars per occultam scripturam animi sui voluntatem absentibusaperiendi certa, published in Frankfurt in 1606. The art of usingsecret writing in order to bare your soul to distant persons. Afascinating man, this Trithemius. A Benedictine abbot of Spannheim,late fifteenth-early sixteenth centuries, a scholar who knew Hebrewand Chaldean, Oriental languages like Tartar. He corresponded withtheologians, cabalists, alchemists, most certainly with the greatCornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim and perhaps withParacelsus...Trithemius masked his revelations about secretwritings behind magical smoke screens. For instance, he recommendedsending coded messages like the one you're looking at now. Therecipient was then supposed to call upon angels like Pamersiel,Padiel, Dorothiel, and so on, to help him decipher the realmessage. But many of his examples are actually military dispatches,and his book¡Xdedicated to Philip, Count Palatine and Duke ofBavaria¡Xrepresents one of the