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

anyother subject. It would not be human for him to drive himself crazyover the Plan and at the same time pick Lincoln or Mombasa for thepassword. The password had to be connected with the Plan. Butwhat?

I tried to put myselfinside Belbo's head. He had been chainsmoking as he wrote, anddrinking. I went to the kitchen for a clean glass, found only one,poured myself the last of the whiskey, sat down at the keyboardagain, leaned back in the chair, and propped my feet on the table.I sipped my drink (wasn't that how Sam Spade did it? Or was itPhilip Marlowe?) and looked around. The books were too far away; Icouldn't read the titles on their spines.

I finished the whiskey,shut my eyes, opened them again. Facing me was theseventeenth-century engraving, a typical Rosi-crucian allegory ofthe period, rich in coded messages addressed to the members of theFraternity. Obviously it depicted the Temple of the Rosy-Cross, atower surmounted by a dome in accordance with the Renaissanceiconographic model, both Christian and Jewish, of the Temple ofJerusalem, reconstructed on the pattern of the Mosque ofOmar.

The landscape around thetower was incongruous, and inhabited incongruously, like one ofthose rebuses where you see a palace, a frog in the foreground, amule with its pack, and a king receiving a gift from a page. In thelower left was a gentleman emerging from a well, clinging to apulley that was attached, through ridiculous winches, to some pointinside the tower, the rope passing through a circular window. Inthe center were a horseman and a wayfarer. On the right, a kneelingpilgrim held a heavy anchor as though it were his staff. Along theright margin, almost opposite the tower, was a precipice from whicha character with a sword was falling, and on the other side,foreshortened, stood Mount Ararat, the Ark aground on its summit.In each of the upper corners was a cloud illuminated by a star thatcast oblique rays along which two figures floated, a nude man inthe coils of a serpent, and a swan. At the top center, a nimbus wassurmounted by the word "Oriens" and bore Hebrew letters from whichthe hand of God emerged to hold the tower by a string.

The tower moved onwheels. Its main part was square, with windows, a door, and adrawbridge on the right. Higher up, there was a kind of gallerywith four observation turrets, each turret occupied by an armed manwho waved a palm branch and carried a shield decorated with Hebrewletters. Only three of these men were visible; the fourth had to beimagined, since he was behind the octagonal dome, from which rose alantern, also octagonal, with a pair of great wings affixed. Abovethe winged lantern was another, smaller, cupola, with aquadrangular turret whose open arches, supported by slendercolumns, revealed a bell inside. To the final small four-vaulteddome at the top was tied the thread held by the hand of God. Theword "Fa/ma" appeared here, and above that, a scroll that read"Collegium Fraternitatis."

There were otheroddities. An enormous arm, out of all proportion to the figures,jutted from a round window in the tower on the left. It held asword, and belonged perhaps to the winged creature shut up in thetower. From a similar window on the right jutted a great trumpet.Once again, the trumpet.

The number of openingsin the tower drew my attention. There were too many of them, andthe ones in the dome were too regular, whereas the ones in the baseseemed random. Since only half the tower was shown in thisorthogonal perspective, you could assume that symmetry waspreserved and the doors, windows, and portholes on this side wererepeated in the same order on the other side. That would mean,altogether, four arches in the dome of the bell tower, eightwindows in the lower dome, four turrets, six openings in the eastand west facades, and fourteen in the north and south facades. Iadded it up.

Thirty-six. For morethan ten years that number had haunted me. The Rosicrucians. Onehundred and twenty divided by thirty-six came to 3.333333, going toseven digits. Almost too perfect, but it was worth a try. I tried.And failed.

It occurred to me thenthat the same number, multiplied by two, yielded the number of theBeast: 666. That guess also proved too farfetched.

Suddenly I was struck bythe nimbus in the middle, the divine throne. The Hebrew letterswere large; I could see them even from my chair. But Belbo couldn'twrite Hebrew on Abulafia. I took a closer look: I knew them, ofcourse, from right to left, yod, he, vav, he. The Tetragrammaton,Yahweh, the name of God.

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And begin by combiningthis name, YHWH, at the beginning alone, and examine all itscombinations and move it and turn it about like a wheel, front andback, like a scroll, and do not let it rest, but when you see itsmatter strengthened because of the great motion, because of thefear of confusion of your imagination and the rolling about of yourthoughts, and when you let it rest, return to it and ask it, untilthere shall come to your hand a word of wisdom from it, do notabandon it.

¡XAbulafia, Hayyeha-Nefes, MS Munchen 408, fols. 65a-65b

The name of God...Ofcourse! I remembered the first conversation between Belbo andDiotallevi, the day Abulafia was set up in the office.

Diotallevi was at thedoor of his room, pointedly tolerant. Diotallevi's tolerance wasalways exasperating, but Belbo didn't seem to mind it. He toleratedit.

"It won't be of any useto you, you know. You're not planning, surely, to rewrite themanuscripts you don't read anyway."

"It's for riling, makingschedules, updating lists. If I write a book with it, it'll be myown, not someone else's."

"You swore that you'dnever write anything of your own."

"That I wouldn't inflicta manuscript on the world, true. When I concluded I wasn't cut outto be a protagonist¡X"

"You decided you'd be anintelligent spectator. I know all that. And so?"

"If an intelligentspectator hums the second movement on his way home from theconcert, that doesn't mean he wants to conduct it in CarnegieHall."

"So you'll try hummingliterature to make sure you don't write any.''

"It would be an honestchoice."

"You thinkso?"

Diotallevi and Belbo,both from Piedmont, often claimed that any good Piedmontese