by Umberto Eco
God, the gods, which if they were not the God of the Christians were necessarily false and treacherous ... But what was this hypatia saying? Baudolino wondered. However, it mattered little to him, for him it was enough to hear her and he was already prepared to die for her truth.
"Tell me one thing at least," he interrupted her. "You are the hypatias, in the name of that Hypatia: this I can understand. But what is your name?"
"Hypatia."
"No, I mean you—yourself—what are you called? To distinguish you from another hypatia ... I'm asking: what do your companions call you?"
"Hypatia."
"But this evening you will go back to the place where all of you live, and you will meet one hypatia before the others. How will you greet her?"
"I will wish her a happy evening. That's what we do."
"Yes, but if I go back to Pndapetzim, and I see, for example, a eunuch, he will say to me: Happy evening, O Baudolino. You will say: Happy evening, O ... what?"
"If you like, I will say: Happy evening, Hypatia."
"So all of you then are called Hypatia."
"Naturally. All hypatias are called Hypatia, no one is different from the others, otherwise she wouldn't be a hypatia."
"But if one hypatia or another is looking for you, just now when you are absent, and asks another hypatia if she has seen that hypatia who goes around with a unicorn named Acacios, how would she say it?"
"Just as you did. She is looking for the hypatia who goes around with a unicorn named Acacios."
If Gavagai had given him such an answer, Baudolino would have been tempted to slap him. But not with Hypatia: Baudolino already was thinking how marvelous the place must be, where all the hypatias were called Hypatia.
"But it took several days, Master Niketas, for me to understand what the hypatias really were...."
"So you saw more of each other, I imagine."
"Every day, or almost. I couldn't do without seeing her and listening to her: this shouldn't surprise you, but it surprised me, and filled me with infinite pride, as I understood that she, too, was happy to see me and listen to me. I was ... I was like a child again who seeks its mother's breast, and when the mother is not present, he weeps for fear she will never come back again."
"It happens also to dogs with their masters. But this matter of the hypatias arouses my curiosity. Because perhaps you know, or don't know, that Hypatia really did exist, even if it was not a thousand thousand years ago, but, rather, eight centuries, and she lived in Alexandria in Egypt, when the empire was ruled by Theodosius and then by Arcadius. She really was, we are told, a woman of great wisdom, learned in philosophy, in mathematics, and in astronomy, and even men drank in her every word. In the meantime our holy religion had triumphed in all the territories of the empire. There were still some unruly people who were trying to keep alive the thought of the pagan philosophers, such as the divine Plato, and I will not deny that they were doing good, transmitting also to us Christians the learning that would have been lost otherwise. But one of the greatest Christians of the time, who later became a saint of the Church, Cyril, a man of great faith but also of great intransigence, considered Hypatia's teaching contrary to the Gospels and unleashed against her a horde of ignorant and enraged Christians, who didn't even know what she was preaching, but now considered her, with Cyril as witness, dissolute and a liar. Perhaps she was slandered, even if it is also true that women should not meddle in divine questions. In sum, they dragged her into a temple, stripped her naked, killed her, massacred her body with sharp shards of broken vessels, and put her corpse on a pyre. ... Many legends sprang up about her. They say she was very beautiful, but had taken a vow of virginity. One young man, her disciple, fell madly in love with her, and she showed him a cloth with the blood of her menses, telling him that only this was the object of his desire, not beauty itself. ... In reality, what she taught no one has ever known exactly. All her writings were lost; those who had preserved her spoken thought had been killed, or had tried to forget what they had heard. Everything we know of her has been handed down to us by the holy fathers who condemned her, and, honestly, as a writer of history and chronicles, I tend not to give too much credence to words that an enemy puts into the mouth of an enemy."
They had other meetings and many conversations. Hypatia would talk, and Baudolino hoped her learning was extensive, infinite, so he would never stop hanging on her lips. She answered all of Baudolino's questions, with intrepid sincerity, never blushing: nothing for her was restricted by any sordid prohibition, all was transparent.
Baudolino finally dared ask her how the hypatias, after so many centuries, perpetuated themselves. She answered that at every season the Mother chose some of them who would procreate, and she accompanied them to the fecundators. Hypatia was vague about these; naturally, she had never seen them, nor had she ever seen the hypatias destined for the rite. They were led to a place, at night, they drank a potion that inebriated and dazed them, they were fecundated, then they returned to their community, where those who remained pregnant were tended by their companions until the birth: if the fruit of their womb was male, it was returned to the fecundators, who would bring it up as one of themselves; if it was female, it remained in the community and grew up as an hypatia.
"To be joined carnally," Hypatia said, "like animals, who have no soul, is only a way of multiplying the error of creation. The hypatias sent to the fecundators accept this humiliation only because we must continue to exist, to redeem the world from that error. Those who have undergone fecundation remember nothing of that act, which, if it were not performed in the spirit of sacrifice, would alter our apathy...."
"What is apathy?"
"The state in which every hypatia lives and is happy to live."
"What is the error of creation?"
"Why, Baudolino," she said, laughing with innocent amazement, "does it seem to you that the world is perfect? Look at this flower, look at the delicacy of the stem, look at this kind of porous eye that triumphs in its catch of the morning dew as in a shell, look at the joy with which it offers itself to this insect that now is sucking its juice... Isn't it beautiful?"
"It is indeed beautiful. But, in fact, isn't it beautiful that it is beautiful? Isn't this a divine miracle?"
"Baudolino, tomorrow morning this flower will be dead, in two days it will be rotten. Come with me." She led him into the brush and showed him a mushroom, its red crown striped with yellow flames.
"Is this beautiful?" she said.
"It is beautiful."
"It's poisonous. Anyone who eats it, dies. Do you consider a creation perfect when death is hiding in it? You know that I, too, would be dead one day, and I, too, would be rotten matter, if I were not dedicated to God's redemption?"
"God's redemption? Explain..."
"Surely you're not a Christian, too, Baudolino, like the monsters of Pndapetzim? The Christians who killed Hypatia believed in a cruel divinity who had created the world, and, with it, death, suffering and—even worse than physical suffering—the sickness of the soul. Created beings are capable of hating, killing, of making their fellows suffer. You can't believe that a just God could have destined his children to this misery...."
"These things are done by unjust men, and God punishes them, while saving the good."
"But then why would this God have created us, only to expose us to the risk of damnation?"
"Why? Because the supreme good is the freedom to do good or evil, and, to give his children this supreme good, God must accept the fact that some of them will make bad use of it."
"Why do you say that freedom is good?"
"Because if they deprive you of it, if they put you in chains, if they will not allow you to do what you wish, you suffer, and therefore the absence of freedom is an evil."
"You can turn your head so that you can look behind you, but can you really turn it until you can see your own back? Can you enter that lake and remain under water until evening, I mean really under wat
er, without ever sticking your head out?" she asked, laughing.
"No, because if I tried to turn my head completely, I would break my neck, if I remained under water it would prevent me from breathing. God created me with these restrictions to prevent me from doing myself harm."
"Then you say that he has deprived you of some freedoms for a good end, is that right?"
"He took them from me so that I would not suffer."
"Then why has he given you the freedom to choose between good and evil, with the risk that you may then suffer eternal punishments?"
"God gave us freedom thinking that we would use it well. But there was the revolt of the angels, which brought evil into the world, and the serpent tempted Eve, so now we all suffer from original sin. It isn't God's fault."
"And who created the rebel angels and the serpent?"
"God, of course, but before they rebelled the angels were good, as he had made them."
"Then it was they who created evil?'
"No, they committed it, but it existed before, as a possibility of rebellion against God."
"So it was God who created evil?"
"Hypatia, you are clever, sensitive, quick, you can conduct a disputatio much better than I, even though I studied in Paris. But don't say such things to me about the good God. He cannot wish evil."
"Certainly not. A God who wishes evil would be the contrary of God."
"So?"
"So God found evil beside him, without wishing it, as the dark part of himself."
"But God is the totally perfect being!"
"Of course, Baudolino. God is the greatest perfection that can exist, but if you only knew what hard work it is to be perfect! Now, Baudolino, I'll tell you who God is, or, rather, what he is not."
She truly was afraid of nothing. She said: "God is the Unique, and he is so perfect that he does not resemble any of the things that exist or any of the things that do not; you cannot describe him using your human intelligence, as if he were someone who becomes angry if you are bad or who worries about you out of goodness, someone who has a mouth, ears, face, wings, or that is spirit, father or son, not even of himself. Of the Unique you cannot say he is or is not, he embraces all but is nothing; you can name him only through dissimilarity, because it is futile to call him Goodness, Beauty, Wisdom, Amiability, Power, Justice, it would be like calling him Bear, Panther, Serpent, Dragon, or Gryphon, because whatever you say of him you will never express him. God is not body, is not figure, is not form; he does not have quantity, quality, weight, or lightness; he does not see, does not hear, does not know disorder and perturbation; he is not soul, intelligence, imagination, opinion, thought, word, number, order, size; he is not equality and is not inequality, is not time and is not eternity; he is a will without purpose. Try to understand, Baudolino: God is a lamp without flame, a flame without fire, a fire without heat, a dark light, a silent rumble, a blind flash, a luminous soot, a ray of his own darkness, a circle that expands concentrating on its own center, a solitary multiplicity; he is ... is..." She paused, seeking an example that would convince them both, she the teacher and he the pupil. "He is a space that is not, in which you and I are the same thing, as we are today in this time that doesn't flow."
A faint flame trembled on her cheek. He was silent, frightened by that incongruous example, but how could he consider incongruous any addition to a list of incongruities? Baudolino felt the same flame piercing his chest, but in his fear for her embarrassment, he stiffened, not allowing a single muscle of his face to betray the stirrings of his heart, nor his voice to tremble, and asked, with theological firmness: "But ... creation then? And evil?"
Hypatia's face resumed its roseate pallor. "Then the Unique, because of his perfection, through generosity of himself, tends to expand, to widen in ever broader spheres of his own fullness; he is, like a candle, victim of the spreading light, the brighter it grows the more it melts. Yes, God liquefies in the shadows of himself, becomes a throng of divine messengers, Eons that have much of his power, but in a form already weaker. There are many gods, demons, Archons, Tyrants, Forces, Sparks, Stars, and what the Christians call angels or archangels. ... But they are not created by the Unique, they are an emanation of him."
"Emanation?"
"You see that bird? Sooner or later it will generate another bird through an egg, as a hypatia can generate a child from her womb. But, once generated, the creature, whether hypatia or little bird, lives on its own, survives even if the mother dies. Now think, on the contrary, of fire. Fire does not generate heat: it emanates it. Heat is the same thing as fire; if you were to put out the fire, the heat would also cease. The heat of the fire is very strong where the fire is born, and it becomes gradually weaker as the flame becomes smoke. So it is with God. As he gradually expands from his own dark center, he somehow loses vigor, and he loses more and more until he becomes viscous and insensitive matter, like the shapeless wax of the melting candle. The Unique could not wish to emanate so far from himself, but he cannot resist this dissolving of himself into multiplicity and disorder."
"And this God of yours cannot dissolve the evil that ... that forms around him?"
"Oh, yes, he could. The Unique constantly tries to reabsorb this sort of breath that can become poison, and for seventy times seven thousand years he has succeeded continually to make his residue return into nothingness. The life of God was a regulated breathing, he panted without effort. Like this: listen." She breathed in the air, vibrating her delicate nostrils, then exhaled the breath from her mouth. "One day, however, he was unable to control one of his intermediary powers, which we call the Demiurge, and which is perhaps Sabaoth or Ildabaoth, the false God of the Christians. This imitation of God, through a mistake, or through pride, or through ignorance, created time, where before there had been only eternity. Time is an eternity that stammers. You understand? And with time, he created fire, which gives heat but also risks burning everything; water, which quenches thirst but also drowns; earth, which nourishes the grasses but can become avalanche and suffocate them; air, which lets us breathe but can become hurricane. ... He did everything wrong, poor Demiurge. He made the sun, which gives light, but can scorch meadows; the moon, which succeeds in dominating night for only a few days, then grows thinner and dies; the other celestial bodies, which are splendid but can emit baleful influences, and then the creatures endowed with intelligence, but unable to understand the great mysteries; the animals, who are sometimes faithful and sometimes threaten us; the vegetables, which feed us but have brief life; the minerals, without life, without soul, without intelligence, condemned never to understand anything. The Demiurge was like a child, who messes in the mud to imitate the beauty of a unicorn, and what comes out looks more like a mouse!"
"So the world is a sickness of God?"
"If you are perfect, you cannot fail to emanate yourself; if you emanate yourself, you become sick. And you must try to understand that God, in his fullness, is also the place, or non-place, where the opposites are confounded, isn't he?"
"The opposites?"
"Yes. We feel heat and cold, light and darkness, and all those things that are one contrary to the other. Sometimes we do not like the cold, and to us it seems bad compared to heat; but sometimes the heat is too great, and we want coolness. We are the ones who, confronted with opposites, believe, as our whim, our passion takes us, that one of them is good and the other evil. Now, in God opposites are reconciled and find reciprocal harmony. But when God begins to be emanated, he can no longer control the harmony of the opposites, and this is broken and they fight with one another. The Demiurge has lost control of the opposites, and has created a world where silence and noise, yes and no, one good against another good fight among themselves. This is what we feel is evil. "
Warming to her argument, she moved her hands like a little girl who, speaking of a mouse, imitates its form, or, naming a tempest, draws whirlwinds in the air.
"You speak of the errors of creation, Hypatia, and of evil, but as
if none of it touched you, and you live in this wood as if everything were beautiful like you."
"If evil itself comes from God, there must be something good in evil. Listen to me, because you are a man, and men are not used to thinking in the right way of everything that is."
"I knew it. I also think wrong."
"No, you just think. And thinking isn't enough; this isn't the right way. Now: try to imagine a spring that has no source and spreads out into a thousand rivers, without ever going dry. The spring remains calm always, cool and clear, while the rivers flow towards different places, and become murky with sand, become congested among rocks, and cough, strangled; and sometimes they run dry. Rivers suffer greatly; did you know that? And yet, however muddy the rivers or the streams may be, they are still water, and come from the same source as this lake. This lake suffers less than a river because in its clarity it recalls better the source from which it is born, a pond full of insects suffers more than a lake or a stream. But all in some way suffer because they would like to return whence they came, and they have forgotten how."
Hypatia took Baudolino by the arm, and made him turn towards the wood. As she did this, her head moved close to his, and he sensed the vegetal perfume of those tresses. "Look at that tree. What flows in it, from the roots to the last leaf, is the same life. But the roots are strengthened in the earth, the trunk grows sturdier and survives all the seasons, whereas the boughs tend to turn brittle and break, the leaves last a few months and then fall, the buds live a few weeks. There is more sickness in the fronds than in the trunk. The tree is one, but it suffers as it expands, because it becomes many, and in multiplying, it is weakened."
"But the fronds are beautiful; you yourself enjoy their shade...."