by Umberto Eco
“Like Salvatore?”
“More or less. Vikings from the Far North came down along the rivers to sack Rome. The pagan temples were falling in ruins, and the Christian ones did not yet exist. It was only the monks of Hibernia in their monasteries who wrote and read, read and wrote, and illuminated, and then jumped into little boats made of animal hide and navigated toward these lands and evangelized them as if you people were infidels, you understand? You have been to Bobbio, which was founded by Saint Columba, one of them. And so never mind if they invented a new Latin, seeing that in Europe no one knew the old Latin any more. They were great men. Saint Brendan reached the Isles of the Blest and sailed along the coasts of hell, where he saw Judas chained to a rock, and one day he landed on an island and went ashore there and found a sea monster. Naturally they were all mad,” he repeated contentedly.
“These images are . . . I can hardly believe my eyes! So many colors!” I said, drinking it all in.
“From a land that doesn’t have many colors, a bit of blue and much green. But we mustn’t stand here discussing Hibernian monks. What I want to know is why they are here with the Anglians and with grammarians of other countries. Look at your chart; where should we be?”
“In the rooms of the west tower. I’ve copied down the scrolls, too. So, then, leaving the blind room, we enter the heptagonal room, and there is only one passage to a single room of the tower; the letter in red is H. Then we go from room to room, moving around the tower, and we return to the blind room. The sequence of the letters spells . . . you are right! HIBERNI!”
“HIBERNIA, if we come from the blind room back into the heptagonal, which, like all the others, has the letter A for Apocalypsis. So there are the works of the authors of Ultima Thule, and also the grammarians and rhetoricians, because the men who arranged the library thought that a grammarian should remain with the Hibernian grammarians, even if he came from Toulouse. It is a criterion. You see? We are beginning to understand something.”
“But in the rooms of the east tower, where we came in, we read FONS. . . . What does that mean?”
“Read your map carefully. Keep reading the letters of the rooms that follow, in order of access.”
“FONS ADAEU . . .”
“No, Fons Adae; the U is the second east blind room, I remember it; perhaps it fits into another sequence. And what did we find in the Fons Adae, that is, in the earthly paradise (remember that the room with the altar facing the rising sun is there)?”
“There were many Bibles there, and commentaries on the Bible, only books of Holy Scripture.”
“And so, you see, the word of God corresponding to the earthly paradise, which as all say is far off to the east. And here, to the west: Hibernia.”
“So the plan of the library reproduces the map of the world?”
“That’s probable. And the books are arranged according to the country of their origin, or the place where their authors were born, or, as in this instance, the place where they should have been born. The librarians told themselves Virgil the grammarian was born in Toulouse by mistake; he should have been born in the western islands. They corrected the errors of nature.”
We resumed our way. We passed through a series of rooms rich in splendid Apocalypses, and one of these was the room where I had had visions. Indeed, we saw the light again from afar. William held his nose and ran to put it out, spitting on the ash. To be on the safe side, we hurried through the room, but I recalled that I had seen there the beautiful, many-colored Apocalypse with the mulier amicta sole and the dragon. We reconstructed the sequence of these rooms, starting from the one we entered last, which had Y as its red initial. Reading backward gave us the word YSPANIA, but its final A was also the one that concluded HIBERNIA. A sign, William said, that there were some rooms in which works of mixed nature were housed.
In any case, the area denominated YSPANIA seemed to us populated with many codices of the Apocalypse, all splendidly made, which William recognized as Hispanic art. We perceived that the library had perhaps the largest collection of copies of the apostle’s book extant in Christendom, and an immense quantity of commentaries on the text. Enormous volumes were devoted to the commentary of the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana. The text was more or less always the same, but we found a rich, fantastic variation in the images, and William recognized some of those he considered among the greatest illuminators of the realm of the Asturias: Magius, Facundus, and others.
As we made these and other observations, we arrived at the south tower, which we had already approached the night before. The S room of Yspania—windowless—led into an E room, and after we gradually went around the five rooms of the tower, we came to the last, without other passages, which bore a red L. Again reading backward, we found LEONES.
“Leones: south. On our map we are in Africa, hic sunt leones. And this explains why we have found so many texts by infidel authors.”
“And there are more,” I said, rummaging in the cases. “Canon of Avicenna, and this codex with the beautiful calligraphy I don’t recognize . . .”
“It could be a Koran, but unfortunately I have no Arabic.”
“The Koran, the Bible of the infidels, a perverse book . . .”
“A book containing a wisdom different from ours. But you understand why they put it here, where the lions, the monsters, are. This is why we saw that book on the monstrous animals, where you also found the unicorn. This area called LEONES contains the books that the creators of the library considered books of falsehood. What’s over there?”
“They’re in Latin, but from the Arabic. Ayyub al-Ruhawi, a treatise on canine hydrophobia. And this is a book of treasures. And this is De aspectibus of Alhazen. . . .”
“You see, among monsters and falsehoods they have also placed works of science from which Christians have much to learn. That was the way they thought in the times when the library was built. . . .”
“But why have they also put a book with the unicorn among the falsehoods?” I asked.
“Obviously the founders of the library had strange ideas. They must have believed that this book which speaks of fantastic animals and beasts living in distant lands was part of the catalogue of falsehoods spread by the infidels. . . .”
“But is the unicorn a falsehood? It’s the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ, and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters’ snares.”
“So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it’s a fable, an invention of the pagans.”
“What a disappointment,” I said. “I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what’s the pleasure of crossing a wood?”
“It’s not certain the animal doesn’t exist. Perhaps it’s different from the way it’s illustrated in these books. A Venetian traveler went to very distant lands, quite close to the fons paradisi of which maps tell, and he saw unicorns. But he found them rough and clumsy, and very ugly and black. I believe he saw a real animal with one horn on its brow. It was probably the same animal the ancient masters first described faithfully. They were never completely mistaken, and had received from God the opportunity to see things we haven’t seen. Then this description, passing from auctoritas to auctoritas, was transformed through successive imaginative exercises, and unicorns became fanciful animals, white and gentle. So if you hear there’s a unicorn in a wood, don’t go there with a virgin: the animal might resemble more closely the Venetian’s account than the description in this book.”
“But did the ancient masters happen to receive from God the revelation of the unicorn’s true nature?”
“Not the revelation: the experience. They were fortunate enough to be born in lands where unicorns live, or in times when unicorns lived in our own lands.”
“But then how can we trust ancient wisdom, whose traces you are always seeking, if it is ha
nded down by lying books that have interpreted it with such license?”
“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind. The unicorn, as these books speak of him, embodies a moral truth, or allegorical, or analogical, but one that remains true, as the idea that chastity is a noble virtue remains true. But as for the literal truth that sustains the other three truths, we have yet to see what original experience gave birth to the letter. The literal object must be discussed, even if its higher meaning remains good. In a book it is written that diamond can be cut only with a billy goat’s blood. My great master Roger Bacon said it was not true, simply because he had tried and had failed. But if the relation between a diamond and goat’s blood had had a nobler meaning, that would have remained intact.”
“Then higher truths can be expressed while the letter is lying,” I said. “Still, it grieves me to think this unicorn doesn’t exist, or never existed, or cannot exist one day.”
“It is not licit to impose confines on divine omnipotence, and if God so willed, unicorns could also exist. But console yourself, they exist in these books, which, if they do not speak of real existence, speak of possible existence.”
“So must we then read books without faith, which is a theological virtue?”
“There are two other theological virtues as well. The hope that the possible is. And charity, toward those who believed in good faith that the possible was.”
“But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn’t believe in it?”
“It is of use to me as Venantius’s prints in the snow were of use, after he was dragged to the pigs’ tub. The unicorn of the books is like a print. If the print exists, there must have existed something whose print it is.”
“But different from the print, you say.”
“Of course. The print does not always have the same shape as the body that impressed it, and it doesn’t always derive from the pressure of a body. At times it reproduces the impression a body has left in our mind: it is the print of an idea. The idea is sign of things, and the image is sign of the idea, sign of a sign. But from the image I reconstruct, if not the body, the idea that others had of it.”
“And this is enough for you?”
“No, because true learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth. And so I would like to go back from this print of a print to the individual unicorn that stands at the beginning of the chain. As I would like to go back from the vague signs left by Venantius’s murderer (signs that could refer to many) to a sole individual, the murderer himself. But it isn’t always possible in a short time, and without the help of other signs.”
“Then I can always and only speak of something that speaks to me of something else, and so on. But the final something, the true one—does that never exist?”
“Perhaps it does: it is the individual unicorn. And don’t worry: one of these days you will encounter it, however black and ugly it may be.”
“Unicorns, lions, Arab authors, and Moors in general,” I said at that point, “no doubt this is the Africa of which the monks spoke.”
“No doubt this is it. And if it is, we should find the African poets mentioned by Pacificus of Tivoli.”
And, in fact, when we had retraced our steps and were in room L again, we found in a case a collection of books by Floro, Fronto, Apuleius, Martianus Capella, and Fulgentius.
“So this is where Berengar said the explanations of a certain secret should be,” I said.
“Almost here. He used the expression ‘finis Africae,’ and this was the expression that so infuriated Malachi. The finis could be this last room, unless . . .” He cried out: “By the seven churches of Clonmacnois! Haven’t you noticed something?”
“What?”
“Let’s go back to room S, where we started!”
We went back to the first blind room, where the verse read “Super thronos viginti quatuor.” It had four openings. One led to room Y, which had a window on the inner octagon. Another led to room P, which continued, along the outside façade, the YSPANIA sequence. The opening toward the tower led into room E, which we had just come through. Then there was a blank wall, and finally an opening that led into a second blind room with the initial U. Room S was the one with the mirror—luckily on the wall immediately to my right, or I would have been seized with fear again.
Looking carefully at my map, I realized the singularity of this room. Like the other blind rooms of the other three towers, it should have led to the central heptagonal room. If it didn’t, the entrance to the heptagon would have to be in the adjacent blind room, the U. But this room, which through one opening led into a room T with a window on the octagon, and through another was connected to room S, had the other three walls full, occupied with cases. Looking around, we confirmed what was now obvious from the map: for reasons of logic as well as strict symmetry, that tower should have had its heptagonal room, but there was none.
“None,” I said. “There’s no such room.”
“No, that’s not it. If there were no heptagon, the other rooms would be larger, whereas they are more or less the shape of those at the other extremes. The room exists, but cannot be reached.”
“Is it walled up?”
“Probably. And there is the finis Africae, there is the place that those monks who are now dead were hovering about, in their curiosity. It’s walled up, but that does not mean there is no access. Indeed, there surely is one, and Venantius found it, or was given its description by Adelmo, who had it from Berengar. Let’s read his notes again.”
He took Venantius’s paper from his habit and reread it: “The hand over the idol works on the first and the seventh of the four.” He looked around. “Why, of course! The ‘idolum’ is the image in the mirror! Venantius was thinking in Greek, and in that tongue, even more than in ours, ‘eidolon’ is image as well as ghost, and the mirror reflects our own image, distorted; we ourselves mistook it for a ghost the other night! But what, then, can be the four ‘supra idolum’? Something over the reflecting surface? Then we must place ourselves at a certain angle in order to perceive something reflected in the mirror that corresponds to Venantius’s description. . . .”
We tried every position, but with no result. Besides our images, the mirror reflected only hazy outlines of the rest of the room, dimly illuminated by the lamp.
“Then,” William meditated, “by ‘supra idolum’ he could mean beyond the mirror . . . which would oblige us to go into the next room, for surely this mirror is a door. . . .”
The mirror was taller than a normal man, fixed to the wall by a sturdy oak frame. We touched it in every manner, we tried to thrust our fingers into it, our nails between the frame and the wall, but the mirror was as fast as if it were part of the wall, a stone among stones.
“And if not beyond, it could be ‘super idolum,’” William murmured, and meanwhile raised his arm, stood on tiptoe, and ran his hand along the upper edge of the frame. He found nothing but dust.
“For that matter,” William reflected gloomily, “even if beyond it there were a room, the book we are seeking and the others sought is no longer in that room, because it was taken away, first by Venantius and then, God knows where, by Berengar.”
“But perhaps Berengar brought it back here.”
“No, that evening we were in the library, and everything suggests he died not long after the theft, that same night, in the balneary. Otherwise we would have seen him again the next morning. No matter . . . For the present we have established where the finis Africae is and we have almost all the necessary information for perfecting our map of the library. You must admit that many of the labyrinth’s mysteries have now been clarified.”
We went through other rooms, recording all our discoveries on my map. We came upon rooms devoted solely to writi
ngs on mathematics and astronomy, others with works in Aramaic characters which neither of us knew, others in even less recognizable characters, perhaps texts from India. We moved between two overlapping sequences that said IUDAEA and AEGYPTUS. In short, not to bore the reader with the chronicle of our deciphering, when we later perfected the map definitively we were convinced that the library was truly laid out and arranged according to the image of the terraqueous orb. To the north we found ANGLIA and GERMANI, which along the west wall were connected by GALLIA, which turned then, at the extreme west, into HIBERNIA, and toward the south wall ROMA (paradise of Latin classics!) and YSPANIA. Then to the south came the LEONES and AEGYPTUS, which to the east became IUDAEA and FONS ADAE. Between east and north, along the wall, ACAIA, a good synecdoche, as William expressed it, to indicate Greece, and in those four rooms there was, finally, a great hoard of poets and philosophers of pagan antiquity.
The system of words was eccentric. At times it proceeded in a single direction, at other times it went backward, at still others in a circle; often, as I said before, the same letter served to compose two different words (and in these instances the room had one case devoted to one subject and one to another). But obviously there was no point looking for a golden rule in this arrangement. It was purely a mnemonic device to allow the librarian to find a given work. To say of a book that it was found in “quarta Acaiae” meant that it was in the fourth room counting from the one in which the initial A appeared, and then, to identify it, presumably the librarian knew by heart the route, circular or straight, that he should follow, as ACAIA was distributed over four rooms arranged in a square. So we promptly learned the game of the blank walls. For example, approaching ACAIA from the east, you found none of the rooms led to the following rooms: the labyrinth at this point ended, and to reach the north tower you had to pass through the other three. But naturally the librarians entered from the FONS, knowing perfectly well that to go, let us say, into ANGLIA, they had to pass through AEGYPTUS, YSPANIA, GALLIA, and GERMANI.