Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum eco foucault (highly illogical behavior txt) 📖

random. The orderof the subjects follows that of the images and theobjects."

Diotallevi timidlyreached out as if to touch a volume. "Help yourself," Aglie said."That is the Oedypus Aegyptiacus of Ath-anasius Kircher. As youknow, he was the first after Horapollon to try to interprethieroglyphics. A fascinating man. I wish this study of mine werelike his museum of wonders, now presumed lost, scattered, becauseone who knows not how to seek will never find...A charmingconversationalist. How proud he was the day he discovered that thishieroglyph meant ¡¥The benefices of the divine Osiris are providedby sacred ceremonies and by the chain of spirits...' Then thatmountebank Cham-pollion came along, a hateful man, believe me,childishly vain, and he insisted that the sign corresponded only tothe name of a pharaoh. How ingenious the moderns are in debasingsacred symbols. The work is actually not all that rare: it costsless than a Mercedes. But look at this, a first edition, 1595, ofthe Am-phitheatrum sapientiae aeternae of Khunrath. It is saidthere are only two copies in the world. This is the third. And thisvolume is a first edition of the Tetturis Theoria Sacra ofBurnetius. I cannot look at the illustrations in the eveningwithout feeling a wave of mystical claustrophobia. The profunditiesof our globe...Unsuspected, are they not? I see that Dr. Diotalleviis fascinated by the Hebrew characters of Vigenere's Traicte desChiffres. Then look at this: a first edition of the Kabbaladenudata of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. The book was translatedinto English¡Xin part and badly¡Xat the beginning of this centuryby that wretch McGregor Mathers...You must know something of thatscandalous conventicle that so fascinated the British esthetes, theGolden Dawn. Only from that band of counterfeiters of occultdocuments could such an endless series of debasements spring, fromthe Stella Matutina to the satanic churches of Aleister Crowley,who called up demons to win the favors of certain gentlemen devotedto the vice anglais. If you only knew, dear friends, the sort ofpeople one has to rub elbows with in devoting oneself to suchstudies. You will see for yourselves if you undertake to publish inthis field."

Belbo seized thisopportunity to broach the subject. He explained that Garamondwished to bring out, each year, a few books of an esotericnature.

"Ah, esoteric." Agliesmiled, and Belbo blushed.

"Should wesay...hermetic?"

"Ah, hermetic." Agliesmiled.

"Well," Belbo said,"perhaps I am using the wrong word, but surely you know thegenre."

Aglie smiled again. "Itis not a genre. It is knowledge. What you wish to do is publish asurvey of knowledge that has not been debased. For you it may besimply an editorial choice, but for me, if I am to concern myselfwith it, it will be a search for truth, a queste duGraal."

Belbo warned that justas the fisherman who casts his net could pull in empty shells andplastic bags, so Garamond Press might receive many manuscripts ofdubious value, and that we were looking for a stern reader whowould separate the wheat from the chaff, while also taking note ofany curious by-products, because there was a friendly publishingfirm that would be happy if we redirected less worthy authors toit...Naturally, a suitable form of compensation would be workedout.

"Thank heavens I am whatis called a man of means. Even a shrewd man of means. If, in thecourse of my explorations, I come upon another copy of Khunrath, oranother handsome stuffed salamander, or a narwhal's horn (which Iwould be ashamed to display in my collection, though the Treasureof Vienna exhibits one as a unicorn's horn), with a brief andagreeable transaction I can earn more than you would pay me in tenyears of consultancy. I will look at your manuscripts in the spiritof humility. I am convinced that even in the most commonplace textI will find a spark, if not of truth, at least of bizarrefalsehood, and often the extremes meet. I will be bored only by theordinary, and for that boredom you will compensate me. Depending onthe boredom I have undergone, I will confine myself to sending you,at the end of the year, a little note, and I will keep my requestwithin the confines of the symbolical. If you consider itexcessive, you will just send me a case of fine wine."

Belbo was nonplussed. Hewas accustomed to dealing with consultants who were querulous andstarving. He opened the briefcase he had brought with him and drewout a thick manuscript.

"I wouldn't want you tobe overoptimistic. Look at this, for example. It seems to metypical."

Aglie took themanuscript: "The Secret Language of the Pyramids...Let's see theindex...Pyramidion...Death of Lord Carnarvon...Testimony ofHerodotus..."He looked up. "You gentlemen have read it?"

"I skimmed through it,"Belbo said.

Aglie returned themanuscript to him. "Now tell me if my summary is correct." He satdown behind the desk, reached into the pocket of his vest, drew outthe pillbox I had seen in Brazil, and turned it in his thin,tapering fingers, which earlier had caressed his favorite books. Heraised his eyes toward the figures on the ceiling and recited, asif from a text he had long known by heart:

"The author of this bookno doubt reminds us that Piazzi Smyth discovered the sacred andesoteric measurements of the pyramids in 1864. Allow me to roundoff to whole numbers; at my age the memory begins to fail abit...Their base is a square; each side measures two hundred andthirty-two meters. Originally the height was one hundred andforty-eight meters. If we convert into sacred Egyptian cubits, weobtain a base of three hundred and sixty-six; in other words, thenumber of days in a leap year. For Piazzi Smyth, the heightmultiplied by ten to the ninth gives the distance between the earthand the sun: one hundred and forty-eight million kilometers. A goodestimate at the time, since today the calculated distance is onehundred and forty-nine and a half million kilometers, and themoderns are not necessarily right. The base divided by the width ofone of the stones is three hundred and sixty-five. The perimeter ofthe base is nine hundred and thirty-one meters. Divide by twice theheight, and you get 3.14, the number ir. Splendid, no?"

Belbo smiled and lookedembarrassed. "Incredible! Tell me how you¡X"

"Let Dr. Aglie go on,Jacopo," Diotallevi said.

Agile thanked him with anod. His gaze wandered the ceiling as he