On Eco

Ranjini, as you had said, it is his words that are interesting. Umberto Eco, in my opinion, is one great writer. He is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, Italy. His works are absolutely brilliant. You can read a short biography here. Eco does not write. He instead constructs sentences. Sentences enhanced by the architecture of semiotics. To understand his works, you need to have a through understanding of subjects ranging from arcane mythology to simple logic. The best way to read one of his books, especially his The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, is to have an entire library at their disposal for reference. If some one says to me, they read a lot of books, I ask them, "Can you tell me if you have read Foucault's Pendulum?" That's it. That one book is equivalent to reading several books on a wide range of subjects. For example, I am reproducing the first 5 paragraphs of Foucault's Pendulum below. Read it and tell me your thoughts on it.

That was when I saw the Pendulum.

The sphere, hanging from a long wire set into the ceiling of the choir, swayed back and forth with isochronal majesty.

I knew—but anyone could have sensed it in the magic of that serene breathing—that the period was governed by the square root of the length of the wire and by Π, that number which, however irrational to sublunar minds, through a higher rationality binds the circumference and diameter of all possible circles. The time it took the sphere to swing from end to end was determined by an arcane conspiracy between the most timeless of measures: the singularity of the point of suspension, the duality of the plane’s dimensions, the triadic beginning of π, the secret quadratic nature of the root, and the unnumbered perfection of the circle itself.

I also knew that a magnetic device centered in the floor beneath issued its command to a cylinder hidden in the heart of the sphere, thus assuring continual motion. This device, far from interfering with the law of the Pendulum, in fact permitted its manifestation, for in a vacuum any object hanging from a weightless and unstretchable wire free of air resistance and friction will oscillate for eternity.

The copper sphere gave off pale, shifting glints as it was struck by the last rays of the sun that came through the great stained-glass windows. Were its tip to graze, as it had in the past, a layer of damp sand spread on the floor of the choir, each swing would make a light furrow, and the furrows, changing direction imperceptibly, would widen to form a breach, a groove with radial symmetry—like the outline of a mandala or pentaculum, a star, a mystic rose. No, more a tale recorded on an expanse of desert, in tracks left by countless caravans of nomads, a story of slow, millennial migrations, like those of the people of Atlantis when they left the continent of Mu and roamed, stubbornly, compactly, from Tasmania to Greenland, from Capricorn to Cancer, from Prince Edward Island to the Svalbards. The tip retraced, narrated anew in compressed time what they had done between one ice age and another, and perhaps were doing still, those couriers of die Masters. Perhaps the tip grazed Agarttha, the center of the world, as it journeyed from Samoa to Novaya Zemlya. And I sensed that a single pattern united Avalon, beyond the north wind, to the southern desert where lies the enigma of Ayers Rock.

Since you have got me interested in Eco, I will be posting more on him later. Maybe after you come back from your tour. Take pictures and put them online. Have a wonderful weeekend. Others, see you tomorrow!