Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum

by eco umberto foucault

  "My little theater," Aglie said, "in the style of those Renaissance fantasies where visual encyclopedias were laid out, syl-loges of the universe. Not so much a dwelling as a memory machine. There is no image that, when combined with the others, does not embody a mystery of the world. You will notice that line of figures there, painted in imitation of those in the palace of Mantua: they are the thirty-six decans, the Masters of the Heavens. And respecting the tradition, after I found this splendid reconstruction¡Xthe work of an unknown artist¡XI went about acquiring the little objects in the glass cases, which correspond to the images on the ceiling. They represent the fundamental elements of the universe: air, water, earth, and fire. Hence the presence of this charming salamander, the master-work of a taxidermist friend, and this delicate reproduction in miniature, a rather late piece, of the aeolipile of Hero, in which the air contained in the sphere, were I to activate this little alcohol stove, warming it, would escape from these lateral spouts and thereby cause rotation. A magic instrument. Egyptian priests used it in their shrines, as so many texts inform us. They exploited it to claim a miracle, which the masses venerated, while the true miracle is the golden law that governs this secret and simple mechanism of the elements earth and fire. Here is learning that our ancients possessed, as did the men of alchemy, but that the builders of cyclotrons have lost. And so I cast my gaze on my theater of memory, this child of so many vaster theaters that beguiled the great minds of the past, and I know. I know better than the so-called learned. As it is below, so it is above. And there is nothing more to know.''

  He offered us Cuban cigars, curiously shaped¡Xnot straight, but contorted, curled¡Xthough they were thick. We uttered cries of admiration. Diotallevi went over to the shelves.

  "Oh," Aglie said, "a minimal library, as you see, barely two hundred volumes; I have more in my family home. But, if I may say so, all these have some merit, some value. And they are not arranged at random. The order of the subjects follows that of the images and the objects."

  Diotallevi timidly reached out as if to touch a volume. "Help yourself," Aglie said. "That is the Oedypus Aegyptiacus of Ath-anasius Kircher. As you know, he was the first after Horapollon to try to interpret hieroglyphics. A fascinating man. I wish this study of mine were like his museum of wonders, now presumed lost, scattered, because one who knows not how to seek will never find...A charming conversationalist. How proud he was the day he discovered that this hieroglyph meant ¡¥The benefices of the divine Osiris are provided by sacred ceremonies and by the chain of spirits...' Then that mountebank Cham-pollion came along, a hateful man, believe me, childishly vain, and he insisted that the sign corresponded only to the name of a pharaoh. How ingenious the moderns are in debasing sacred symbols. The work is actually not all that rare: it costs less than a Mercedes. But look at this, a first edition, 1595, of the Am-phitheatrum sapientiae aeternae of Khunrath. It is said there are only two copies in the world. This is the third. And this volume is a first edition of the Tetturis Theoria Sacra of Burnetius. I cannot look at the illustrations in the evening without feeling a wave of mystical claustrophobia. The profundities of our globe...Unsuspected, are they not? I see that Dr. Diotallevi is fascinated by the Hebrew characters of Vigenere's Traicte des Chiffres. Then look at this: a first edition of the Kabbala denudata of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. The book was translated into English¡Xin part and badly¡Xat the beginning of this century by that wretch McGregor Mathers...You must know something of that scandalous conventicle that so fascinated the British esthetes, the Golden Dawn. Only from that band of counterfeiters of occult documents could such an endless series of debasements spring, from the Stella Matutina to the satanic churches of Aleister Crowley, who called up demons to win the favors of certain gentlemen devoted to the vice anglais. If you only knew, dear friends, the sort of people one has to rub elbows with in devoting oneself to such studies. You will see for yourselves if you undertake to publish in this field."

  Belbo seized this opportunity to broach the subject. He explained that Garamond wished to bring out, each year, a few books of an esoteric nature.

  "Ah, esoteric." Aglie smiled, and Belbo blushed.

  "Should we say...hermetic?"

  "Ah, hermetic." Aglie smiled.

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

  Aglie smiled again. "It is not a genre. It is knowledge. What you wish to do is publish a survey of knowledge that has not been debased. For you it may be simply an editorial choice, but for me, if I am to concern myself with it, it will be a search for truth, a queste du Graal."

  Belbo warned that just as the fisherman who casts his net could pull in empty shells and plastic bags, so Garamond Press might receive many manuscripts of dubious value, and that we were looking for a stern reader who would separate the wheat from the chaff, while also taking note of any curious by-products, because there was a friendly publishing firm that would be happy if we redirected less worthy authors to it...Naturally, a suitable form of compensation would be worked out.

  "Thank heavens I am what is called a man of means. Even a shrewd man of means. If, in the course of my explorations, I come upon another copy of Khunrath, or another handsome stuffed salamander, or a narwhal's horn (which I would be ashamed to display in my collection, though the Treasure of Vienna exhibits one as a unicorn's horn), with a brief and agreeable transaction I can earn more than you would pay me in ten years of consultancy. I will look at your manuscripts in the spirit of humility. I am convinced that even in the most commonplace text I will find a spark, if not of truth, at least of bizarre falsehood, and often the extremes meet. I will be bored only by the ordinary, and for that boredom you will compensate me. Depending on the 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 request within the confines of the symbolical. If you consider it excessive, you will just send me a case of fine wine."

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

  "I wouldn't want you to be overoptimistic. Look at this, for example. It seems to me typical."

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

  "I skimmed through it," Belbo said.

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

  "The author of this book no doubt reminds us that Piazzi Smyth discovered the sacred and esoteric measurements of the pyramids in 1864. Allow me to round off to whole numbers; at my age the memory begins to fail a bit...Their base is a square; each side measures two hundred and thirty-two meters. Originally the height was one hundred and forty-eight meters. If we convert into sacred Egyptian cubits, we obtain a base of three hundred and sixty-six; in other words, the number of days in a leap year. For Piazzi Smyth, the height multiplied by ten to the ninth gives the distance between the earth and the sun: one hundred and forty-eight million kilometers. A good estimate at the time, since today the calculated distance is one hundred and forty-nine and a half million kilometers, and the moderns are not necessarily right. The base divided by the width of one of the stones is three hundred and sixty-five. The perimeter of the base is nine hundred and thirty-one meters. Divide by twice the height, and you get 3.14, the number ir. Splendid, no?"

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

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

  Agile thanked him with a nod. His gaze wandered th
e ceiling as he spoke, but it seemed to me that the path his eyes followed was neither idle nor random, that they were reading, in those images, what he only pretended to be digging from his memory.

  48

  Now, from apex to base, the volume of the Great Pyramid in cubic inches is approximately 161,000,000,000. How many human souls, then, have lived on the earth from Adam to the present day? Somewhere between 153,000,000,000 and 171,900,000,000.

  ¡XPiazzi Smyth, Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, London, Isbister, 1880, p. 583

  "I imagine your author holds that the height of the pyramid of Cheops is equal to the square root of the sum of the areas of all its sides. The measurements must be made in feet, the foot being closer to the Egyptian and Hebrew cubit, and not in meters, for the meter is an abstract length invented in modern times. The Egyptian cubit comes to 1.728 feet. If we do not know the precise height, we can use the pyramidion, which was the small pyramid set atop the Great Pyramid, to form its tip. It was of gold or some other metal that shone in the sun. Take the height of the pyramidion, multiply it by the height of the whole pyramid, multiply the total by ten to the fifth, and we obtain the circumference of the earth. What's more, if you multiply the perimeter of the base by twenty-four to the third divided by two, you get the earth's radius. Further, the area of the base of the pyramid multiplied by ninety-six times ten to the eighth gives us one hundred and ninety-six million eight hundred and ten thousand square miles, which is the surface area of the earth. Am I right?"

  Belbo liked to convey amazement with an expression he had learned in the cinematheque, from the original-language version of Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney: "I'm flabbergasted!" This is what he said now. Aglie also knew colloquial English, apparently, because he couldn't hide his satisfaction at this tribute ttrhis vanity. "My friends," he said, "when a gentleman, whose name is unknown to me, pens a compilation on the mystery of the pyramids, he can say only what by now even children know. I would have been surprised if he had said anything new."

  "So the writer is simply repeating established truths?" "Truths?" Aglie laughed, and again opened for us the box of his deformed and delicious cigars. "Quid est veritas, as a friend of mine said many years ago. Most of it is nonsense. To begin with, if you divide the base of the pyramid by exactly twice the height, and do not round off, you don't get IT, you get 3.1417254. A small difference, but essential. Further, a disciple of Piazzi Smyth, Flinders Petrie, who also measured Stonehenge, reports that one day he caught the master chipping at a granite wall of the royal antechamber, to make his sums work out...Gossip, perhaps, but Piazzi Smyth was not a man to inspire trust; you had only to see the way he tied his cravat. Still, amid all the nonsense there are some unimpeachable truths. Gentlemen, would you follow me to the window?"

  He threw open the shutters dramatically and pointed. At the corner of the narrow street and the broad avenue, stood a little wooden kiosk, where, presumably, lottery tickets were sold.

  "Gentlemen," he said, "I invite you to go and measure that kiosk. You will see that the length of the counter is one hundred and forty-nine centimeters¡Xin other words, one hundred-billionth of the distance between the earth and the sun. The height at the rear, one hundred and seventy-six centimeters, divided by the width of the window, fifty-six centimeters, is 3.14. The height at the front is nineteen decimeters, equal, in other words, to the number of years of the Greek lunar cycle. The sum of the heights of the two front corners and the two rear corners is one hundred and ninety times two plus one hundred and seventy-six times two, which equals seven hundred and thirty-two, the date of the victory at Poitiers. The thickness of the counter is 3.10 centimeters, and the width of the cornice of the window is 8.8 centimeters. Replacing the numbers before the decimals by the corresponding letters of the alphabet, we obtain C for ten and H for eight, or C10H8, which is the formula for naphthalene."

  "Fantastic," I said. "You did all these measurements?" "No," Aglie said. "They were done on another kiosk, by a certain Jean-Pierre Adam. But I would assume that all lottery kiosks have more or less the same dimensions. With numbers you can do anything you like. Suppose I have the sacred number 9 and I want to get the number 1314, date of the execution of Jacques de Molay¡Xa date dear to anyone who, like me, professes devotion to the Templar tradition of knighthood. What do I do? I multiply nine by one hundred and forty-six, the fateful day of the destruction of Carthage. How did I arrive at this? I divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by two, by three, et cetera, until I found a satisfying date. I could also have divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by 6.28, the double of 3.14, and I would have got two hundred and nine. That is the year in which Attalus I, king of Pergamon, joined the anti-Macedonian League. You see?"

  "Then you don't believe in numerologies of any kind," Dio-tallevi said, disappointed.

  "On the contrary, I believe firmly. I believe the universe is a great symphony of numerical correspondences, I believe that numbers and their symbolisms provide a path to special knowledge. But if the world, below and above, is a system of correspondences where tout se tient, it's natural for the kiosk and the pyramid, both works of man, to reproduce in their structure, unconsciously, the harmonies of the cosmos. The so-called pyr-amidologists discover with their incredibly tortuous methods a straightforward truth, a truth far more ancient, and one already known. It is the logic of research and discovery that is tortuous, because it is the logic of science. Whereas the logic of knowledge needs no discovery, because it knows already. Why must it demonstrate that which could not be otherwise? If there is a secret, it is much more profound. These authors of yours remain simply on the surface. I imagine this one also repeats all the tales of how the Egyptians knew about electricity..."

  "I won't ask how you managed to guess."

  "You see? They are content with electricity, like any old Marconi. The hypothesis of radioactivity would be less puerile. There is an interesting idea. Unlike the electricity hypothesis, it would explain the much vaunted curse of Tutankhamen. And how were the Egyptians able to lift the blocks of the pyramids? Can you lift boulders with electric shocks, can you make them fly with nuclear fission? No, the Egyptians found a way to eliminate the force of gravity; they possessed the secret of levitation. Another form of energy...It is known that the Chaldean priests operated sacred machines by sounds alone, and the priests of Karnak and Thebes could open the doors of a temple with only their voice¡Xand what else could be the origin, if you think about it, of the legend of Open Sesame?"

  "So?" Belbo asked.

  "Now here's the point, my friend. Electricity, radioactivity, atomic energy¡Xthe true initiate knows that these are metaphors, masks, conventional lies, or, at most, pathetic surrogates, for an ancestral, forgotten force, a force the initiate seeks and one day will know. We should speak perhaps"¡Xhe hesitated a moment¡X "of telluric currents."

  "What?" one of us asked, I forget who.

  Aglie seemed disappointed. "You see? I was beginning to hope that among your prospective authors one had appeared who could tell me something more interesting. But it grows late. Very well, my friends, our pact is made; the rest was just the rambling of an elderly scholar.''

  As he held out his hand to us, the butler entered and murmured something in his ear. "Ah, the sweet friend," Aglie said, "I had forgotten. Ask her to wait a moment...No, not in the living room, in the Turkish salon."

  The sweet friend must have been familiar with the house, because she was already on the threshold of the study, and without even looking at us, in the gathering shadows of the day at its end, she proceeded confidently to Aglie, patted his cheek, and said: "Simon, you're not going to make me wait outside, are you?" It was Lorenza Pellegrini.

  Aglie moved aside slightly, kissed her hand, and said, gesturing at us: "My sweet Sophia, you know you are always welcome, as you illuminate every house you enter. I was merely saying good-bye to these guests."

  Lorenza turned, saw us, and made a cheerful wave of greeting¡XI don't be
lieve I ever saw her discomposed or embarrassed. "Oh, how nice," she said; "you also know my friend! Hello, Jacopo."

  Belbo turned pale. We said good-bye. Aglie expressed pleasure that we knew each other. "I consider our mutual acquaintance to be one of the most genuine creatures I ever had the good fortune to know. In her freshness she incarnates¡Xallow an old man of learning this fancy¡Xthe Sophia, exiled on this earth. But, my sweet Sophia, I haven't had time to let you know: the promised evening has been postponed for a few weeks. I'm so sorry.''

  "It doesn't matter," Lorenza said. "I'll wait. Are you going to the bar?" she asked us¡Xor, rather, commanded us. "Good. I'll stay here for a half hour or so. Simon's giving me one of his elixirs. You should try them. But he says they're only for the elect. Then I'll join you."

  Aglie smiled with the air of an indulgent uncle; he had her take a seat, then accompanied us to the door.