Misreadings

by Umberto Eco

  The End Is at Hand Ideology? If there is one: Accept what is given and use it as a tool of persuasive argumentation. The most recent, infamous handbook by this Aristotle, Rhetoric, is nothing less than a catechism of market- ing, a motivational inquiry into what appeals and what doesn't, what's believed and what's rejected. Now you know the irrational stimuli that govern the actions of your fellows, he says, and therefore your fellows are at your mercy. Push their buttons: they are yours. With this work, as Zollaphontes observes, "we have a fabrication that does not reflect the nat- ural tendencies of the public but calculates its effects as far as salability goes, heightening the colors ac- cording to the laws of brute reaction to stimuli. "2� The effect? Delectatio morosa or, in other words, foreplay, the forge of every vice. Fantasy, daydream. Tragedy gives this the highly visible seal of social approval, raising a temple to a monster appearing from the shadows of a barbaric society. But I don't want to give the impression that the poor Boeotian victim is being defrauded only in the state amphitheater, on the day of the performance. Aristotle himself, in his Politics (Book 8), talks about music and "its sensible effect on our temperament." Study the rules of songs as imitations of the stirrings of the soul, and you will learn how to "stir the emotions," you will see that the Phrygian mode leads to orgiastic behavior, the Doric mode to "virility." Need anything be added? Here you have a textbook for the emotional manipulation of the korai or, as 2�Exttrtre, p. 42. 111

  MISREADINGS they say nowadays, teenagers. Enforced somnam- bulism is no longer a utopian dream, it is a reality. These days the flute is played everywhere, though the great Adorn?s inveighed at length against it. Thanks to Aristotle's popularizing, musical skill is within everyone's grasp, and it is taught to children in school. In no time a song of Tyrtaeus will become an air anybody can whistle in the baths or on the banks of the Ilissus. Music and tragedy now show us their true face: a manipulation of the emotions, which the crowd rushes blissfully to accept, welcom- ing this role of masochism. It is from the lecterns of hidden persuaders that our young people are educated, transformed into a flock of sheep in the gymnasia. When they are adults, the same science of public opinion will teach them how to behave in communal life, reducing virtue, sentiment, and true talent to a mask. Hear what Hippocrates has to say: "For the doctor it is ob- viously an excellent testimonial to appear well fed and healthy; the public will believe that he who cannot take proper care of his own body will not be able to attend to the bodies of others . . A doctor entering the room of a patient must be careful how he sits, how he acts; he must be well dressed, with serenity in his expression. ,,21 Falsehood becomes a mask; the mask becomes the person. One day, in the not-too-distant future, to define man's most pro- found being the only term left will be mask, persona, which denotes the most superficial appearance. Corpus Hippocraticum, passim. 112

  The End Is at Hand Enamored of his own appearance, mass-man will be able to enjoy only what appears real, he will take pleasure only in imitation, 22 that is to say the parody of what is not. You see this in the lust found in painting (where the highest praise is reserved for illustrators whose painted grapes birds would swarm to peck at) and in sculpture, supremely skilled now in reproducing naked bodies that seem real, or lizards scuttling tree trunks who lack only the power of speech, as the vulgar exclaim ecstatically. And in red figure vases they have begun to introduce forms seen frontally, as if the traditional profile did not suffice to suggest, through poetic allusion, the full object of the imaginative gaze. But artistic production now bears the heavy yoke of industrial necessity, and crafty mass-man has slyly transformed that necessity into choice. Art bows to the laws of science: among the columns of temples you now see golden proportions established, which the architect hails with the enthusiasm of a surveyor; and Polycletus supplies you with a "canon" for the production of perfect, industrialized statuary, for his Doryphoros, as has been noted bitterly, is no longer a work but a poetics, a treatise in stone, a concrete example of a mechanical rule. 23 Art and industry now move in step; the cycle is achieved; the spirit cedes its place to the assembly line; cybernetic sculpture is perhaps already at the gate. The last stage of initiation 22Poetics, IV, 55. 23 Cf. Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis V. Cf. also Pliny, Nat. Hist. XXXIV. 113

  MISREADINGS is the herd solution. Ephebes are lined up in regi- menting exercises. Healthy revolt against the father is replaced by surrender to the group, against which the youth is incapable of defending himself. Egalitar- ianism undermines every difference between old and young, and the episode of Socrates and Alcibiades confirms this. With such leveling, the expression of personal feelings atrophies. Thus today's model of Attic man will remain unchanged until death and beyond. The manufacturing of emotion, having per- vaded everyday life, will be imposed also on the last breath. Not you but professional mourning women will mime a sorrow of which you are now incapable; as for the deceased, the great step will not suffice to make him give up the little sordid pleasures to which he clung in life. In his mouth you will place a coin (the pretext is an obol for Charon) and a cake for Cerberus. For the rich you will add toiletries, weap- ons, necklaces. And this same undiscriminating mass will form the audience that flocks to enjoy the cheap pornog- raphy of Aristophanes. The mysterious connection between Love and Hate, which the pre-Socratic phi- losophers barely led us to suspect, already bores them. As for knowledge, all has now been reduced to a temporary learning; it is enough to memorize the theorem of Pythagoras (every Boeotian knows this dreary little trick with triangles), while Euclid has agreed to melt down all mathematical wisdom into a conventional and undemonstrable postulate. Before long, the schools doing their part, everyone will know how to read and do sums and will demand 114

  The End Is at Hand nothing further, except perhaps that the right to vote be extended to women and resident aliens. Is it worth resisting? Who can summon the strength to oppose the mounting tide of vulgarity? Soon everyone will want to know everything. Euripides has already tried to make the Eleusinian mysteries common knowledge. For that matter, why retain any area of mystery now, when the democratic constitution gives everyone the leisure to idle away his time at the abacus and the alpha and beta? Re- porters tell us that a certain Mesopotamian artisan has invented a thing called a water wheel, which turns on its own power and moves a grindstone thanks simply to the flow of a fiver. Thus the slave formerly in charge of the mill will have time to devote to the stylus and the waxed tablet. But as a gardener from some distant Eastern country said when con- fronted with a similar device: "I once heard my master say: He who uses the machine becomes the machine. He who is a machine in his work has the heart of a machine . . I do not know your inven- tion, but I would be ashamed to use it." Citing this pithy apologue, Zollaphontes asks: "How can a worker ever aspire to holiness? "24 But mass-man does not aspire to holiness; his symbol is the great beast de- picted for us by Xenophon, the slave of his own thirst, who writhes on the ground like a crazed monkey, shouting: "Thfilatta, thfilatta." Will we per- haps forget that nature "makes the bodies of free men different from those of slaves" and that "men 24Exh6o'o'ff, p. 113. 115

  MISREADINGS are slaves or free by right of nature," as Aristotle, in one of his more lucid moments, asserted? 25 Will we yet manage to elude, even a handful of us, the oc- cupations that mass culture assigns to a race of slaves, attempting to involve also the free man? Then the free man's only recourse is to retire, if he has the strength, into his private contempt, his private grief. Unless one day the culture industry teaches even the slaves their letters, and undermines that last founda- tion of the aristocracy of the spirit. 1963 2Spolitics, I, passim. 116

  Letter to My Son Dear Stefano, Christmas is marching upon us, and soon the big stores downtown will be packed with excited fathers acting out their annual scenario of hypocritical gen- erosity, having joyfully awaited this moment when they can buy for themselves pretending it's for their sons their cherished electric trains, the puppet theater, the target with bow and arrows, and the fam
ily Ping-Pong set. But I will still be an observer, because this year my turn hasn't yet come, you are too little, and Montessori-approved infant toys don't give me any great pleasure, probably because I don't enjoy sticking them in my mouth, even if the man- ufacturer's label assures me that they cannot be swal- lowed whole. No, I must wait, two years, or three or four. Then it will be my turn; the phase of mother- dominated education will pass, the rule of the teddy bear will decline and fall, and the moment will come when with the sweet and sacrosanct violence of pa- 117

  MISREADINGS ternal authority I can begin to mold your civic con- science. And then, Stefano Then your presents will be guns. Double-barreled shotguns. Repeaters. Submachine guns. Cannons. Bazookas. Sabers. Armies of lead soldiers in full battle dress. Castles with drawbridges. Fortresses to besiege. Casemates, powder magazines, destroyers, jets. Machine guns, daggers, revolvers. Colts and Winchesters. Chassepots, 91's, Garands, shells, arquebuses, culverins, slingshots, crossbows, lead balls, catapults, firebrands, grenades, ballistas, swords, pikes, battering rams, halberds, and grappling hooks. And pieces of eight, just like Captain Flint's (in memory of Long 'John Silver and Ben Gun), and dirks, .the kind that Don Barrejo so liked, and Toledo blades to knock aside three pistols at once and fell the Marquis of Montelimar, or using the Neapolitan feint with which the Baron de Sigognac slayed the evil ruffian who tried to steal his Isabelle. And there will be battle-axes, partisans, misericords, krises, javelins, scimitars, darts, and sword-sticks like the one John Carradine held when he was electrocuted on the third rail, and if nobody remembers that, it's their tough luck. And pirate cutlasses to make Carmaux and Van Stiller blanch, and damascened pistols like none Sir James Brook ever saw (otherwise he wouldn't have given up in the face-of the sardonic, umpteenth cigarette of the Portuguese); and stilettos with tri- angular blades, like the one with which Sir William's disciple, as the day was gently dying at Clignancourt, killed the assassin Zampa, who killed his own mother, the old and sordid Fipart; and pires d'angoisse, like 118

  Letter to My Son those inserted into the mouth of the jailer La Rame while the Duke of Beaufort, the hairs of his coppery beard made even more fascinating thanks to the con- stant attention of a leaden comb, rode off, anticipat- ing with joy the wrath of Mazarin; and muzzles loaded with nails, to be fired by men whose teeth are red with betel stains; and guns with mother-of- pearl stocks, to be grasped on Arab chargers with glistening coats; and lightning-fast bows, to turn the sheriff of Nottingham green with envy; and scalping knives, such as Minnehaha might have had, or (as you are bilingual) Winnetou. A small, flat pistol to tuck into a waistcoat under a frock coat, for the feats of a gentleman thief, or a ponderous Luger weighing down a pocket or filling an armpit la Michael Shayne. And shotguns worthy of Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickok, or Sambigliong, muzzle-loading. In other words, weapons. Many weapons. These, my boy, will be the highlight of all your Christmases. Sir, I am amazed--some will say--you, a member .of a committee for nuclear disarmament and a sup- porter of the peace movement; you who join in marches on the capital and cultivate an Aldermaston mystique on occasion. Do I contradict myself ? Well, I contradict myself (as Walt Whitman put it). One morning, when I had promised a present to a friend's son, I went into a-department store in Frankfurt and asked fo/r a nice revolver. Everyone looked at me, shocked. We do not carry warlike toys, sir. Enough to make your blood run cold. Mortified, I left, and ran straight into two Bundes- 119

  MISREADINGS wehr men who were passing on the sidewalk. I was brought back to reality. I wouldn't let anybody fool me. From now on I would rely solely on personal experience and to hell with pedagogues. My childhood was chiefly if not exclusively bel- licose. I used blowpipes improvised at the last minute among the bushes; I crouched behind the few parked cars, firing my repeater rifle; I led attacks with fixed bayonets. I was absorbed in extremely bloody bat- tles. At home it was toy soldiers. Whole armies engaged in nerve-racking strategies, operations that went on for weeks, long campaigns in which I mo- bilized even the remains of my plush teddy bear and my sister's dolls. I organized bands of soldiers of fortune and made my few but faithful followers call me "the terror of Piazza Genova" (now Piazza Mat- teotti). I dissolved a group of Black Lions to merge with another, stronger outfit, then, once in it, I uttered a pronunciamento that proved disastrous. Resettied in the Monferrato area, I was recruited forcibly in the Band of the Road and was subjected to an initiation ceremony that consisted of a hundred kicks in the behind and a three-hour imprisonment in a chicken coop. We fought against the Band of Nizza Creek, who were filthy dirty and awesome. The first time, I took fright and ran off; the second time, a stone hit my lips, and I still have a little-knot there I can feel with my tongue. (Then the real war arrived. The partisans let us hold their Stens for two seconds, and we saw some friends lying dead with a hole in their brow. But by now we were becoming adults, and we went along the banks of the Belbo 120

  Letter to My Son River to catch the eighteen-year-olds making love, unless, in the grip of adolescent mystical crises, we had renounced all pleasures of the flesh.) This orgy of war games produced a man who managed to do eighteen months of military service without touching a gun, devoting his long hours in the barracks to the grave study of medieval philoso- phy. A man of many iniquities but one who has always been innocent of the squalid crime of loving weapons and believing in the holiness and efficacy of warrior values. A man who appreciates an army only when he sees soldiers slogging through the muck after the Vajont disaster, engaged in a peaceful and noble civic purpose. A man who absolutely does not believe in just wars, who believes wars are unjust and damned and you fight always with reluctance, dragged into the conflict, hoping it will end quickly, and risking everything because it is a matter of honor and you can't evade it. And I believe I owe my profound, systematic, cultivated, and documented horror of war to the healthy, innocent, platonically bloody releases granted me in childhood, just as when you leave a Western movie (after a furious brawl, the kind where the balcony of the saloon collapses, tables and big mirrors are broken, someone shoots at the piano player, and the plate-glass window shatters) cleaner, kinder, relaxed, ready to smile at the passerby who jostles you and to succor the sparrow fallen from its nest--a Aristotle was well aware, when he de- manded of tragedy that it wave the blood-red flag before our eyes and purge us totally with the divine Epsom salts of catharsis. 121

  MISREADINGS Then I imagine the boyhood of Eichmann. Lying on his stomach, with that death's bookkeeper expres- sion on his face as he studies the Meccano pieces and dutifully follows the instructions in the booklet; ea- ger also to open the bright box of his new chemistry set; sadistic in laying out the tiny tools of The Little Carpenter, the plane the width of his hand and the twenty-centimeter saw, on a piece of plywood. Be- ware of boys who build miniature cranes!_ In their cold and distorted minds these little mathematicians are repressing the horrid complexes that will motivate their mature years. In'every little monster who op- erates the switches of his toy railway lies a future director of death camps! Watch out, if they are fond of those matchbox cars that the cynical toy industry produces for them, perfect facsimiles, with a trunk that really opens and windows that can be rolled up and down--terrifying! A terrifying pastime for the future commanders of an electronic army who, lack- ing all passions, will coldly press the red button of an atomic war! You can identify them already. The big real-estate speculators, the slumlords who enforce evictions in the dead of winter; they have revealed their person- ality in the infamous game of Monopoly, becoming accustomed to the idea of buying and selling property and dealing relentlessly in stock portfolios. The Pre Grandets of today, who have acquired with their mother's milk the taste for acquisition and learned insider trading with bingo cards. The bureaucrats of death trained on Lego blocks, the zombies of bu- reaucracy whose spiritual decease began with the 122

  Letter to My Son rubber stamps and scales of the Little Post Office. And tomorrow? What will develop from a child- hood in which industr
ialized Christmases bring out American dolls that talk and sing and move, Japanese robots that jump and dance thanks to an inexhaustible battery, and radio-controlled automobiles whose mechanism will always be a mystery? . . Stefano, my boy, I will give you guns. Because a gun isn't a game. It is the inspiration for play. With it you will have to invent a situation, a series of relationships, a dialectic of events. You will have to shout boom, and you will discover that the game has only the value you give it, not what is built into it. As you imagine you are destroying enemies, you will be satisfying an ancestral impulse that boring civili- zation will never be able to extinguish, unless it turns you into a neurotic always taking Rorschach tests administered by the company psychologist. But you will find that destroying enemies is a convention of play, a game like so many others, and thus you will learn that it is outside reality, and as you play, you will be aware of the game's limits. You will work off anger and repressions, and then be ready to receive other messages, which contemplate neither death nor destruction. Indeed, it is important that death and destruction always appear to you as elements of fantasy, like Red Riding Hood's wolf, whom we all hated, to be sure, but without subsequently harbor- ing an irrational hatred for Alsatians. But this may not be the whole story, and I will not make it the whole story. I will not allow you to fire your Colts only for nervous release, in ludic pur- 123

  MISREADINGS gation of primordial instincts, postponing until later, after catharsis, the pars construens, the communica- tion of values. I will try to give you ideas while you are still hiding behind the armchair, shooting. First of all, I will teach-you to shoot not at the Indians but at the arms dealers and liquor salesmen who are destroying the Indian reservations. I will teach you to shoot at the Southern slave owners, to shoot in support of Lincoln. To shoot not at the Congo cannibals but at the ivory traders, and in a weak moment I may even teach you to stew Dr. Livingstone, I presume, in a big pot. We will play Arabs against Lawrence, and if we play ancient Ro- mans, we'll be on the side of the Gauls, who were Celts like us Piedmontese and a lot cleaner than that Julius Caesar whom you will soon have to learn to regard with suspicion, because it is wrong to dprive a democratic community of its freedom, leaving as a tip, posthumously, gardens where the citizens can stroll. We'll be on the side of Sitting Bull against that repulsive General Custer. And on the side of the Boxers, naturally. With Fantomas rather than with Juve, who is too much a slave of duty to refuse, when required, to club an Algerian. But now I am joking: I will teach you, of course, that Fantomas was a bad guy, but I won't tell you, not in complicity with the corrupt Baroness Orczy, that the Scarlet Pimpernel was a hero. He was a dirty Venden who caused trouble for the good guy Danton and the pure Robespierre, and if we play French Revolution, you'll participate in the taking of the Bastille. These will be stupendous games. Imagine! And 124