Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [123]
“Here are three volumes that have come out in recent years, all of them successful. The first is in English; I haven’t read it, but the author is a famous critic. What has he written? The subtitle calls it a gnostic novel. Now look at this: a mystery, a best-seller. And what’s it about? A gnostic church near Turin. You gentlemen may know who these Gnostics are...” He paused, waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. They’re something demoniacal; that’s all I need to know...Yes, maybe I’m being hasty, but I’m not trying to talk like you, I’m trying to talk like Bramanti—that is, I’m speaking as a publisher, not as a professor of comparative gnoseology or whatever it is. Now, what was it that I found clear, promising, inviting—no, more, intriguing— in Bramanti’s talk? His extraordinary capacity for tying everything together. He didn’t mention Gnostics, but he easily could have, what with geomancy, maalox, and mercurial Radames. And why do I insist on this point? Because here is another book, by a famous journalist, who tells about incredible things that go on in Turin—Turin, mind you, the city of the automobile. Sorceresses, black masses, consorting with the Devil—and for paying customers, not for poor crazed peasants in the south. Casaubon, Belbo tells me you were in Brazil and saw the savages down there performing satanic rites...Good, later you can tell me about it, but really, it’s all the same. Brazil is right here, gentlemen. The other day I went personally into that bookshop— what’s it called? Never mind; it doesn’t matter—you know, the place where six or seven years ago they sold anarchist books, books about revolutionaries, Tupamaros, terrorists—no, more, Marxists...Well, the place has been recycled. They stock those things Bramanti was talking about. It’s true today we live in an age of confusion. Go into a Catholic bookshop, where there used to be nothing but the catechism, and you find a reassessment of Luther, though at least they won’t sell a book that says religion is all a fraud. But in the shops I’m talking about they sell the authors who believe and the authors who say it’s all a fraud, provided the subject is—what do you call it?”
“Hermetic,” Diotallevi prompted.
“Yes, I believe that’s the right word. I saw at least a dozen books on Hermes. And that’s what I want to talk to you about: Project Hermes. A new branch...”
“The golden branch,” Belbo said.
“Exactly,” Garamond said, missing the reference. “It’s a gold mine, all right. I realized that these people will gobble up anything that’s hermetic, as you put it, anything that says the opposite of what they read in their books at school. I see this also as a cultural duty: I’m no philanthropist, but in these dark times to offer someone a faith, a glimpse into the beyond...Yet Garamond also has a scholarly mission...”
Belbo stiffened. “I thought you had Manutius in mind.”
“Both. Listen, I rooted around in that shop, then went to another place, a very respectable place, but even it had an occult sciences section. There are university-level studies on these subjects sitting on the shelves alongside books written by people like Bramanti. Think a minute: Bramanti has probably never met any of the university authors, but he’s read them, read them as if they were just like him. Whatever you say to such people, they think you’re talking about their problem, like the story of the cat, where the couple was arguing about a divorce but the cat thought they were disagreeing about the giblets for its lunch. You must have noticed it, Belbo; you dropped that remark about the Templars and he nodded immediately. Sure, the Templars, too, and cabala, and the lottery, and tea leaves. They’re omnivorous. Omnivorous. You saw Bramanti’s face: a rodent. A huge audience, divided into two categories—I can see them lining up now, and they’re legion. In primis: the ones who write about it, and Manutius will greet them with open arms. All we have to do to