Eco - Reviews_ Humanitas Review of _Foucault's Pendulum

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Foucault's Pendulum

Geoffrey Sauer

Humanitas: 12 February 1990

'Listen, Jacopo, I thought of a good one: Urban Planningfor Gypsies.''Great,' Belbo said admiringly. 'I have one, too: Aztec

Equitation.''Excellent. But would that go with Potio-section or the

Anynata?''We'll have to see.' Belbo said. He rummaged in his drawer

and took out some sheets of paper. 'Potio-section...' He lookedat me, saw my bewilderment. 'Potio-section, as everybodyknows, is the art of slicing soup. No, no,' he said to Diotallevi.'It's not a department, it's a subject, like MechanicalAvunculogratulation or Pylocatabasis. They all fall under the

heading of Tetrapyloctomy.''What's tetra...?''The art of splitting a hair four ways. MechanicalAvunculogratulation, for example, is how to build

machines for greeting uncles.' (74)

introduction

The above quotation seems an apt microcosm of Foucault's Pendulum:at once amusing, bewildering, ironic, exceedingly intellectual, andeminently unlikable. Umberto Eco's novel, only released in an Englishhardcover late last year, is a second expedition into the novel form by theItalian scholar and acclaimed author of The Name of the Rose. Thisadventure is an detective story about a search for the center of an ancient,still-living conspiracy of men who seek not merely power over the earthbut over the psychic, 'telluric' powers of the earth itself, and who in theend draw their pursuers into a circle (a pentagram?) where discovery ofthe truth is lethal. The story is inordinately difficult to follow -- itsencyclopedic richness of historical detail breaks any smooth transparencyof prose -- but it is not meant to be easy. Neither was The Name of theRose, which became a bestseller, even if one wonders how many actuallyread all of it. Foucault's Pendulumwill almost certainly achieverecognition as well, for it is a complex artifact of Eco's postmodernaesthetic at work in a traditional literary form: in this case like his firstnovel, the detective thriller.

Eco is an active scholar, and forges links between his academic andpopular works. In a 1988 essay 'Dreaming of the Middle Ages,' the Italian

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, .Eco is an active scholar, and forges links between his academic and

popular works. In a 1988 essay 'Dreaming of the Middle Ages,' the Italianidentified ten types of nostalgic neo-medievalism. Number nine he labelledthe Middle Ages of Tradition, 'an eternal and rather eclectic ramshacklestructure swarming with Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, alchemists, andMasonic initiates;' that passage seems a prophetic formula for Foucault'sPendulum-- itself the celebration of the attempt to rediscover that world.If nothing else the work is undeniably 'eternal': the only reason the volume

doesn't reach seven hundred pages is because Eco declines to finish itproperly. It isn't even really a novel in the strict sense of the word, more asort of formidable gathering of information, delivered playfully by a mastermanipulating his own invention -- a long, erudite (if often dry), joke.

plot

The novel as narration is put into the mouth of Causaubon, a scholarwho writes his doctoral dissertation on the Knights Templar, andestablishes himself a business in Milan, styling himself a kind of SamSpade of information (a 'regular Joe' Mycroft Holmes? a lean, married,Nero Wolfe?). For a price, he will track down any fact -- even though heseems to know everything already (except that he is named for the scholarof George Eliot'sMiddlemarch, who also knew everything though it didhim no good). He accepts a job as consultant for the Garamond Press, andjoins Jacopo Belbo (a commonsensical Piedmontese companion) andDiotallevi (an ex-foundling Piedmontese, who fancies himself Jewish).These three spend most of their time drunk or bored, creating parodicword-games, and ridiculing anyone who takes himself seriously. Belbo'sfavorite sentence he saves for pretentiousness, 'Ma gavte la nata,' whichmeans something like 'take the cork out [of his ass] and let the wind out.'

These three -- 'clowns' is perhaps the best word for them -- in theirresearch for a book entitled The History of Metals, advertise formanuscripts about the diabolical histories of secret societies. If the story sofar seems to veer a bit, just wait -- it gets better. They decide as a game to

feed all the hermetic plots that ever were into their computer. The resultsgo beyond even paranoid fantasy: the unexplained phenomena of history,they find, can be fitted into a single, cosmic plan that embraces opposites,provide better interpretations than orthodox history has of certain pastevents, and reveals the greatest secret of history. What every major societyof Europe, from the thirteenth century onward, has wanted -- Templars,Rosicrucians, Masons, Jesuits, even Nazis, we discover -- is control of theEarth's 'telluric currents,' the psychic forces which control the land, seas,and skies.

The pre-Celts built Stonehenge; the Gothics erected immense cathedralspires; Eiffel contrived his tower. Why? 'What need did Paris have of thisuseless monument? It's the celestial probe, the antenna that collects

information from every hermetic valve stuck into the planet's crust!' This,the ultimate conspiracy, synthesizes all possible conspiracies -- though thelist is so comprehensive one wonders precisely who they're plottingagainst. No matter. A plot is a structure, a semiotic fabrication. UmbertoEco is a professor of semiotics, a grand master of codes, signs, and hiddenmeanings. The obsessiveness of the three Italians becomes contagious, andsoon no single fact seems innocent.

What is truly remarkable is how compelling 'the Plan' can seem, thoughthe reader knows it to be false. It cannot be true; we watch, as the wordprocessor groups together facts with its random number generator -- anyresulting coherence must surely be accidental. And reading the novel, it ispossible to watch the three become obsessed and irrational, fabricating

unlikely 'ifs' in order to fit missing pieces. One feels exhausted when thepuzzle's last pieces are fitted into place.


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,unlikely 'ifs' in order to fit missing pieces. One feels exhausted when thepuzzle's last pieces are fitted into place.

'Not bad, not bad at all,' Diotallevi said. 'To arrive at the truththrough the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.' (459)

the pendulum as analog

Eco first heard about the pendulum (which swings in the Conservatoire

des Arts et Mtiers in Paris) from a professor of civil engineering andarchitecture at Cornell University. The instrument, a twenty-eight kilosilver ball with a needle point, hanging by wire from a fixed point on theceiling sixty-seven meters above, was invented by Jean Bernard LonFoucault (1819-68) to demonstrate the rotation of the earth; it swingsperpetually, given momentum by the instability of the solid floor beneathit. The mechanism itself seems harmless, the confirmation of a comfortingpermanence, but turns sinister toward the end.

Causaubon becomes irritated early in the novel by the indifference ofpassersby to the pendulum's miracle:

"Above her head was the only stable point in the cosmos, the

only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and sheguessed it was the pendulum's business, not hers. A momentlater the couple went off -- he, trained on some textbook thathad blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitiveto the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomenessof their encounter -- with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable.How could you fail to kneel before this altar of certitude?" (6)

The poetry of the pendulum is the poetry of Eco's novel, and of historyitself. One writes a novel as Causaubon, Belbo and Diotallevi write their'Plan' -- in order to rewrite history -- a history in which they then become apart. The pendulum, privileged, looms over the lunacy, scorn, and fear of

the world because itspoint of attachment, alone in the universe, is fixed --wherever you choose to put it. This 'centeredness' so desired by thecabalists' metaphysics, by Italian scholars' cynicism, of poetry and historyare only possible because of the force which maintains the pendulum.

It takes over six hundred pages to get from our first view of thePendulum to the last. These pages are crammed not with action but withinformation. I happened to be writing on fifteenth-century Venetianprinters and was not surprised to find them there. If you want to knowabout the Gregorian calendar, or the theory that the Holy Grail is really St.Mary Magdalene, you will find it here. The book clearly needs an index.Perhaps Dr. Eco has already got his semiology students to work on it; asthere was a little volume of metafiction to supplement The Name of the

Rose, so may we expect something hermeneutic about its successor.But in the meantime, all three of Eco's heroes discover with alarm thatneither their parody nor their new-found Plan can protect them from auniverse ruled simultaneously by both and neither. Diotallevi first isdiagnosed as having cancer, and moralizes on his deathbed:

"And what are my cells? For months, like devout rabbis, weuttered different combinations of the letters of the Book.GCC, CGC, GCG, CGG. What our lips said, our cells learned.What did my cells do? They invented a different Plan, andnow they are proceeding on their own, creating a history, aunique, private history. My cells have learned that you can

blaspheme by anagrammizing the Book, and all the books ofthe world. And they have learned to do this now with mybody. They invert, transpose, alternate, transform themselves


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asp eme y anagramm z ng e oo , an a e oo s othe world. And they have learned to do this now with mybody. They invert, transpose, alternate, transform themselvesinto cells unheard of, new cells without meaning, or withmeaning contrary to the right meaning. There must be a rightmeaning and a wrong meaning; otherwise you die. My cellsjoke, without faith, blindly."

Similarly Belbo meets an unpleasant fate, trapped by his own creation,

the TRS conspiracy come to life and curious about his secret knowledge.In the Paris Conservatoire, at midnight, in the pendulum room, heconfronts his fiction-turned-real.

'Now you will speak,' Aglie said. 'You will speak, and youwill join the great game. If you remain silent, you are lost. Ifyou speak, you will share in the victory....this night you and Iand all of us are in Hod, the Sefirah of splendor, majesty, andglory; Hod, which governs ritual and ceremonial magic; Hod,the moment when the curtain of eternity is parted. I havedreamed of this moment for centuries. You will speak, andyou will join the only ones who will be entitled, after your

revelation, to declare themselves Masters of the World.Humble yourself, and you will be exalted. You will speakbecause I order you to speak, and my words efficiunt quodfigurant!'

And Belbo, now invincible, said, 'Ma gavte la nata...'

The proximity of the pendulum's focus, the center of the universe,ennobles and melodramatizes both. Belbo is killed, magnificently,symbolically, hung by the wire of the pendulum. Causaubon's finalmonologue reflects the uncertainty with which he awaits his fate.


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