Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [218]
In 1661, when the Accademia del Cimento foreshadows the conclusions of Foucault, Leopold of Tuscany dissolves it in the space of five years, and immediately afterward receives from Rome, as a secret reward, a cardinal’s hat.
But there is more. In the centuries that follow, the hunt for the Pendulum continues. In 1742 (a year before the first documented appearance of the Comte de Saint-Germain!), a certain Mairan presents a paper on pendulums at the Academic Royale des Sciences. In 1756 (the year the Templar Strict Observance originates in Germany!), a certain Bouguer writes Sur la direction qu ‘affectent tous les fits a plomb.
I found phantasmagorical titles, like that by Jean Baptiste Biot in 1821: Recueil d’observations geodesiques, astronomiqu.es et physiques, executees par ordre du Bureau des Longitudes de France, en Espagne, en France, en Angleterre et en Ecosse, pour determiner la variation de la pesanteur et des degres terrestres sur le prolongement du meridien de Paris. In France, Spain, England, and Scotland! And referring to the meridian of Saint-Martin! And what about Sir Edward Sabine, who in 1823 publishes An Account of Experiments to Determine the Figure of the Earth by Means of the Pendulum Vibrating Seconds in Different Latitudes? And the mysterious Graf Feodor Petrovich Litke, who in 1836 publishes the results of his research into the behavior of the pendulum in the course of a voyage around the world? This under the auspices of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg. The Russians, too?
And what if in the meantime a group, no doubt of Baconian descent, decides to discover the secret of the currents without map or pendulum, relying instead on the source, the respiration of the Serpent? Salon’s hunch was right, for it was more or less at the time of Foucault that the industrial world, creature of the Baconian camp, began digging underground systems in the heart of the great cities of Europe.
“It’s true,” Belbo said, “the nineteenth century is obsessed with the underground—Jean Valjean, Fantomas and Javert, Rocambole, all that coming and going in sewers and tunnels. My God, now that I think of it, all of Verne is an occult revelation of the mysteries of the underground! The voyage to the center of the earth, twenty thousand leagues under the sea, the caverns of the Mysterious Island, the immense underground realm of the Black Indies! If we drew a diagram of his extraordinary travels, we would be sure to obtain, finally, a sketch of the coils of the Serpent, a chart of the leys drawn for each continent. Verne explores the network of the telluric currents from above and below.’’
I collaborated. “What’s the name of the hero of the Black Indies? John Garral. Close to Grail.”
“We’re not ivory-tower eggheads; we’re men with our feet on the ground. Verne gives even more explicit signals. Robur le Conque”rant, R.C., Rosy Cross. And Robur read backward is Rubor, the red of the rose.”
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Phileas Fogg. A name that is also a signature: Eos, in Greek, has the sense of the global (it is therefore the equivalent of pan, of poly,) and Phileas is the same as Polyphile. As for Fogg, it is the English for brouillard....and no doubt Verne belonged to “Le Brouillard.” He was even kind enough to indicate the relationship between this society and the Rose + Cross, because what, enfin, is our noble traveler Phi-leas Fogg if not a Rose + Cross?....And further, doesn’t he belong to the Reform Club, whose initials, R.C., designate the reforming Rose + Cross? And this Reform Club stands in Pall Mall, suggesting once again the Dream of Polyphile.
—Michel Lamy, Jules Verne, initie et initiateur, Paris, Payot, 1984, pp. 237-238
The reconstruction took us days and days. We would interrupt our work to confide in one