Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [161]
As we climbed from terrace to terrace, the gardens changed. Some were in the form of a labyrinth, others in the form of an emblem, but each terrace could be viewed in its entirety only from a higher one. Looking down, I saw the outline of a crown, and other patterns I had been unable to embrace as I was passing through them. But even from above, I could not decipher them. Each terrace, seen as one moved among its hedges, presented some images, but the perspective from above revealed new, even contradictory images, as if every step of that stairway spoke two different languages at once.
As we moved higher, we noticed some small structures. A fountain of phallic shape stood beneath a kind of arch or portico, and there was a Neptune trampling a dolphin, a door with vaguely Assyrian columns, an arch of imprecise form, as if polygons had been set upon other polygons, and each construction was surmounted by the statue of an animal: an elk, a monkey, a lion...
“And all this means something?” Garamond asked.
“Unquestionably! Just read the Mundus Symbolicus of Pici-nelli, which, incidentally, Alciati foresaw with extraordinary prophetic power. The whole garden may be read as a book, or as a spell, which is, after all, the same thing. If you knew the words, you could speak what the garden says and you would then be able to control one of the countless forces that act in the sublunar world. This garden is an instrument for ruling the universe.”
He showed us a grotto. A growth of algae; the skeletons of marine animals, whether natural or not, I couldn’t say; perhaps they were in plaster or stone...A naiad could be discerned embracing a bull with the scaly tail of some great Biblical fish; it lay in a stream of water that flowed from the shell a Triton held like an amphora.
“I will tell you the deeper significance of this, which otherwise might seem a banal hydraulic joke. Caus knew that if one fills a vessel with water and seals it at the top, the water, even if one then opens a hole in the bottom, will not come out. But if one opens a hole at the top, also, the water spurts out below.”
“Isn’t that obvious?” I said. “Air enters at the top and presses the water down.”
“A typical scientific explanation, in which the cause is mistaken for the effect, or vice versa. The question is not why the water comes out in the second case, but why it refuses to come out in the first case.”
“And why does it refuse?” Garamond asked eagerly.
“Because, if it came out, it would leave a vacuum in the vessel, and nature abhors a vacuum. Nequaquam vacui was a Rosicrucian principle, which modern science has forgotten.”
“Very impressive,” Garamond said. “Casaubon, this has to be put in our wonderful adventure of metals, these things must be highlighted: remember that. And don’t tell me water’s not a metal. You must use your imagination.”
“Excuse me,” Belbo said to Aglie, “but your argument is simply post hoc ergo ante hoc. What follows causes what came before.”
“You must not think linearly. The water in these fountains doesn’t. Nature doesn’t; nature knows nothing of time. Time is an invention of the West.’’
* * *
As we climbed, we encountered other guests. Belbo nudged Diotallevi, who said in a whisper: “Ah, yes, facies hermetica.”
And among the pilgrims with the facies hermetica, a little off to one side, a stiff smile of condescension on his lips, was Signer Salon. I nodded, he nodded.
“You know Salon?” Aglie asked me.
“You mean you know him?” I asked. “I do, of course. We live in the same building. What do you think of him?”