Rocco Capozzi 211

THE RETURN OF . BAUDOLINO HOMO LUDENS: DESCRIBING THE UNKNOWN1

nlike the fanfare2 that surrounded Umberto Eco's second novel, his most challenging and engaging essay-novel Il pendolo di UFoucault (1988; Foucault's Pendulum), or the air of suspense that preceded the publication of his third metafictional novel, L'isola del giorno dopo (1994; The Island of the Day Before), Baudolino came out - relatively speaking - with very little clamour. The question that readers may be asking is whether this novel will also go out with a "whimper", or whether it will go out with a "bang", selling millions of copies around the world, like The Name of the Rose. After three months Baudolino remains on top of the bestseller list in , but it is much too early to speak of its true or lasting success with critics or the general public. Baudolino is unquestionably another example of Eco's well known postmodern encyclopedic pastiche and has plenty of ingredients - humor, intertextuality, filmic effects, funny anecdotes, legends, and a clever fusion of history and elements taken from "pop culture" - for it to become another success story. But, regardless of the number of

1 This is the first of a two-part article on the coherence of Eco's fiction. In the second part I shall deal with specific leitmotifs that link Baudolino to The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. I shall also focus on other features such as levels of laughter, historicity, and how Eco once again deals with a variety of notions of knowledge. The second part of the title of this article refers specifically to Eco's article: "Polo: descrivere l'ignoto" (see Sugli specchi, pp. 61-66) originally published in L'Espresso as "Il Milione: descrivere l'ignoto". All quotations from Baudolino come from the first Bompiani edition and the page references will be indicated in parentheses in the text. For an account of the so-called "caso" or "fenomeno Eco", as it was labelled in Italy, see F. Pansa and A. Vinci, Effetto Eco, Rome: Nuova edizione del Gallo, 1992; M. Ganeri, Il caso Eco, Palermo: Palumbo, 1991; and R. Capozzi, "Troppi movimenti intorno al Pendolo di Eco", in Quaderni d'Italianistica 2 (1998), 301-13. Rocco Capozzi 212

copies that this novel will sell, this is without a doubt the author's most humorous and entertaining fiction so far. It is a great manifestation of combining fiction and metafiction, narration and narrativity. The existence of Baudolino was first made known during the closing ceremony of the Festival of Literature at Mantua (see Laura Lilli's interview in Repubblica, 11 September 2000), two months before its official release. On November 18, the day that Baudolino reached book stores across Italy, national newspapers like Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, and Il Messaggero, and the weekly magazine L'Espresso carried the first reviews by reputable critics such as Maria Corti, Roberto Crotoneo, Renato Minore, and Giovanni Mariotti. Thus, twenty years after the publication of the unprecedented international success story of Eco's medieval semiotic sleuth-fiction, The Name of the Rose (1980), comes out another long "quest" novel (526 pages) set in the early Middle Ages. The historical period of Baudolino precedes by over a century the time frame of the adventures of William and Adso (set in 1327), as it spans from 11553, when the main protagonist Baudolino, at the age of twelve or thirteen, is adopted by the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, to the year 1204, when he meets in Byzantium the historian Niceta Coniate, interlocutor and future narrator of the Gesta Baudolini. Throughout Baudolino we read, among other events, about the Holy Roman emperor Frederick (who drowned in March of 1190 while trying to cross the Selef River on horseback), and the Byzantine empire that is in a state of turmoil and at war with western nations. The novel opens and closes with the sack of Costantinople at the hands of the in April of 1204. In Italy these are the early days of the età comunale (age of communes) and the establishment of the Lega lombarda, when northern cities continually make and break alliances as they battle one another for territorial and economic supremacy. The XIIth Century is also a century that sees the growing struggle for power between popes and emperors and a period when the universities of Paris and Bologna become famous for the teaching of theology, philosophy, rhetoric, and law. Among the cultural activities of this period especially relevant to Baudolino are the diffusion of the Arthurian chivalric

3 An interesting coincidence that is worth mentioning in relation to Baudolino is that in 1155 a Norman poet called Wace translated Geoffrey of Monmouth's fables of Arthur and Merlin from Latin to French. And so by 1190 "the Tristan romance, the lais of Marie de France and the romances of Chrétien de Troyes had all seen the light of day" (Matarasso 11). Theoretically then, Baudolino does not invent the cultural events in his fabulation but merely appropriates them. Baudolino homo ludens 213 romances following Chrétien de Troves' publication of the legend of the Grail (Le Conte du Graal, 1190), and an increase in the number of students and clerics (whom Eco calls vagantes4) engaged in travelling, studying, discovering, interpreting, and discussing manuscripts and texts. Furthermore, it is also important to mention at this point that the saga of Baudolino takes place nearly a century before the publication of Marco Polo's Il Milione5. The first reviewers of the novel have not failed to mention Eco's narrative skills or the picaresque and autobiographical features of his writing. To some extent the author may have encouraged readers to see a connection between Baudolino and Eco when he, in his interview with Laura Lilli and in his article "Baudolino, c'est moi!", boasted, much the same way as the protagonist does in the novel, about his capacity to tell stories, such as the one about the birth of his native city of Alessandria. Readers of How to Travel With a Salmon (1994; 234- 48) may recall that in the final chapter of this collection Eco talks about the "Miracle of Saint Baudolino" and the history of Alessandria while making some autobiographical remarks6. But, if we are to focus on the autobiographical allusions in this novel, then we should perhaps consider that Baudolino is not that much different from the other main protagonists of Eco's previous novels and thus we should examine in greater depth the links between the semiotic detective William of Baskerville and Eco, the Sam Spade of publishing houses Casaubon and Eco, as well as the links between the shipwrecked metafictional narrator Roberto della Griva and Eco. The title of my article refers to the return of the renowned semiotician narrator to the art of constructing entertaining encyclopedic fiction dealing with epistemological and semiosic processes. It also paraphrases an essay by Eco on Marco Polo ("Il Milione: descrivere l'ignoto", written in 1982; see Sugli specchi 61-66), which I shall refer to in my discussion. Before entering into an analysis of Eco's newest possible world that is full of humor, irony, history, anecdotes, books and pop culture, I shall outline some of the implications in my expression "the return of Eco".

4 See section 8, "I Vagantes", in "Verso un nuovo medioevo" (1977; 202-03); also in Travels in Hyperreality, p. 80. 5 Originally published in French, in 1298. The first Italian edition appears in 1309. 6 Just as interesting here we find several elements that are used for the novel, such as the fog, the hero Gagliaudo, Frederick Barbarossa, and the Lega Lombarda. Rocco Capozzi 214

I feel that Baudolino (re)confirms Umberto Eco's remarkable coherence in his treatment of themes and leitmotifs that have also appeared in previous books. I am referring especially to those issues and debates of a linguistic, theological, and philosophical nature that in earlier works had also sent us, intratextually, back to such texts as The Role of the Reader (1979) and Semiotics and Philosophy of Language (1984), as well as, intertextually, to a myriad of other books and authors from Aristotle to the present. As I have argued elsewhere (Capozzi, 1989, 1997, 2001), the masterful exploitation of these intra- and intertextual "inferential walks" illustrates well Eco's art of docere et delectare within a brilliantly constructed encyclopedic fiction, where underneath witty narrative lies we can detect many truths about our (notions of) culture. What I am suggesting is that in Baudolino we can find many of the motifs and narrative strategies that readers have been accustomed, and even expect, to find in Eco's novels. For example, the reader will discover: a detective story, an anti-Bildungsroman7,an historical fiction, the fabrication of a plan, the art of plotting a claim to know a secret, the importance of common sense, the ability to perceive and interpret signs, metafictional narratives, a pastiche of texts including (in the tradition of Borges) apocryphal ones8, narrators winking at readers, a need to create and narrate stories, and the presence of the past in our present. Naturally, this is by no means a complete list. With the expression "the return of Eco" I am also referring to the author's overwhelming erudition and his ability to narrate the Middle Ages as a period of history, and culture, when society was undergoing massive changes. And although in this article I do not discuss Baudolino as an intertextual machine, an important and familiar practice in Eco's narrative strategies, I am certain that readers will have no difficulty in recognizing a variety of intertextual echoes pertaining most to the early Middle Ages, but also to more recent times. As we shall see, this is exactly what Eco had done in his thought provoking essay, "Verso un nuovo Medioevo" (1977: 189-211) when he points out

7I say anti-Bildungsroman in the sense that Baudolino, unlike his predecessors, Adso and Roberto, grows old but learns very little from his life experiences and teachers. 8 I am referring to the Borgesian practice of giving the appearance that information, dates, events, and people are real simply because they are mentioned or quoted in a book. Many readers would agree that Borges' story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis tertius" remains a model of and a masterpiece for illustrating the use of apocryphal texts. Baudolino homo ludens 215 the many similarities between the Middle Ages and contemporary socio-political and cultural events. Indeed, in addition to Marco Polo's Il Milione, in Baudolino readers will recognize Dantesque references (especially those to Beatrice9 and the three beasts10), Rabelaisian allusions to eating (Niceta's abundant curiosity of Baudolino's stories is matched only by his capacity to consume food), and various symbolic and allegorical figures borrowed from the beastiaries and Le livre des merveilles. But, besides works of the Middle Ages some readers may see in the clever fusion of comedy and satire that accompanies the frequent descriptions of unusual creatures like the panozi, ponci, blemmi, and cenocefoli literary echoes of strange creatures, such as Yahoos and Houyhnhnms11 from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). Others may think more in terms of popular literature and for their analogies they may resort to images/frames from the fantastic voyages of Sindbad in The Thousand and one Nights, or those of Sandokan in Emilio Salgari's adventure novels (texts well known and liked by Eco). Also, devoted postmodernists will have a field day associating Baudolino's hyperboles with the exaggerations of the French comic book hero Asterix, and lovers of the classic legends of "The Quest of the " will have no difficulty in recognizing in Baudolino's quest for the Grail and the Kingdom of Prete Giovanni some of the movie parodies of the Grail such as those of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), or Indiana Jones. The Last Crusade (1989). Confronted with Eco's description of the panozi, with their immense ears, it is unlikely that anyone will not think of Disney's "Dumbo" the flying elephant. On the same note of flying creatures, in Baudolino's amazing escape on the "roq birds" the literati may prefer to see Ariosto's Astolfo flying to the moon on a

9 I would find it hard to believe that readers would not suspect that Eco is winking at them as they read that Baudolino, while in Paris, is writing love poems and letters to his first "true love" Beatrice of Bourgogne, the emperor's wife. 10 Granted that they are not exactly the same as in the Inferno, but the Dantesque allusions are quite clear as we see that our adventurous friends ("i nostri amici") have their way blocked by three ferocious beasts, one of which will kill Abdul: "...per una petraia priva di ogni filo d'erba, videro venire loro incontro tre bestie. Una era certamente un gatto...L'altra aveva una testa di leone...La terza aveva corpo di leone, coda di scorpione e testa quasi umana" (356). 11 The allusion to Swift is quite obvious in passages such as "i nubiani chiamavano nek il cavallo forse per imitazione di nekbrafpfar, che era il cammello, mentre i blemmi indicavano il cavallo come houyhnhnm" (400). Rocco Capozzi 216 hippogriff. And speaking of fantastic literature and hippogriffs, once in this web of associations, could we not also think of Buckbeak in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)? And what about the fantastic fiction of J. R. Tolkien? Italian movie buffs may very well see in Baudolino's comical saga some funny scenes from the adventures of the miles gloriosus, Brancaleone (played by Vittorio Gasman), that captured the attention of many viewers as well as writers like Luigi Malerba (see Il Pataffio, 1978), in the late Sixties. I am referring to L'armata di Brancaleone (1968) and Brancaleone alle crociate (1969), both movies directed by Mario Monicelli with a cast of famous Italian actors. Finally, and still on movies, two specific passages in Baudolino, first when Il Poeta (496-97) makes his conjectures on who, and how, among the four friends could have stolen the Grail, and later when Pafnuzio (512-16) reconstructs the rather comical murder scene of Frederick Barbarossa, bring to mind the ingenious adductions of Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, or of similar frames derived from other famous detective novels, or perhaps even from the popular movie Clue (1985; directed by J. Lynn). A listing of the numerous intratextual allusions to Eco's own essay or of the references to his previous novels would require a separate long article. I shall instead begin my analysis of Baudolino by recalling some of Eco's journalistic essays on the Middle Ages and on Marco Polo. The few brief analogies that I shall make to the author's previous novels will be used primarily to reiterate that Baudolino fits very well into the overall frame of Eco's other possible worlds. Eco has often stated that his novels (and perhaps the famous semiotician "doth protest too much me thinks") are a complete separate activity from his philological work. The author also maintains, and quite rightly so, even though he again exaggerates a little, that in his fiction he invents very little in so far as he is merely repeating what has already been said with words or through images. In essence he says that he is only constructing a pastiche or collage of citations and allusions. This is also what Baudolino states about writing/inventing his letter of Prete Giovanni: "Io l'ho ricomposta in buon latino, ho riunito le membra disperse di cose che i saggi già sapevano e dicevano, senza che nessuno li ascoltasse. Ma tutto quello che si dice in quella lettera è vero come il Vangelo" (210). Needless to say, in the statement we detect some irony and can feel Eco winking at us. Given the highly comical tone that persists throughout the entire novel, Baudolino seems to contain more elements from popular culture than from erudite works, thus giving the impression that it exploits low Baudolino homo ludens 217 levels of language and style. However, this is only partially true because in Baudolino Eco mixes in the most seamless way a number of elements: first and third person narration, dialogues, descriptions and auctorial interventions (see the numerous parenthetical statements), as well as a superb juxtaposition of high and low levels of style, language and humor. In short, Baudolino confirms Eco's ability to combine a variety of styles such as the lyrical, the comical, the popular (including the vulgar and corporeal), the erudite, and the historical. Just as important, the novel is another brilliant demonstration of the author's remarkable art of narrating a great deal of the same subject matter that he has been theorizing about for over four decades. By this I mean his theories on language, communication, narratology, and above all, on that vast interdisciplinary field of science called semiotics12. Semiotics combined with narratology in Eco's fiction becomes a field of cognition that, as we again see in Baudolino, includes History, history of culture, history of language(s), history of ideas, as well as the history of the novel as a wide ranging genre that encompasses different forms such as romance, epic, realism, meta-narrrative, historicity, and postmodern encyclopedic fiction. We recall that The Island of the Day Before was among other things a beautiful metafictional revisitation of the history of the novel from the age of the Baroque to the days of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne. In the opening pages Saint Savin reminds Roberto that "the purpose of a story is to teach and please at once" (81). The novel ends with Robert della Griva's testimonial of his need to narrate (to write a novel), with a reminder of the importance of the "suspension of disbelief, and with the admission that it is impossible to escape the "anxiety of influence". These and other narratological features are again illustrated in Baudolino from the beginning of the novel as the main

12 The paratextual information on the book cover of the first edition of Il nome della rosa confirms my argument. We recall that in the closing lines of the blurb the author states that he has no intention of "rivelare che cosa il libro voglia dire ("revealing what the book is about"). And concludes that in this text/novel he had no intention of arguing a thesis but rather the notion that at a mature age he has realized that what cannot be theorized must be narrated: "Se avesse voluto sostenere una tesi, avrebbe scritto un saggio (come tanti altri che ha scritto). Se ha scritto un romanzo è perchè ha scoperto, in età matura, che di ciò di cui non si può teorizzare, si deve narrare". I have discussed this Wittgenstein echo elsewhere and the English reader may want to consult the excellent article of Walter Stephens, "Ec(h)o in fabula" where the editorial comment on the book cover of the first Italian edition appears translated almost in its entirety. Rocco Capozzi 218 protagonist reveals his love and need to narrate: "mi pareva di esistere solo perchè a sera potevo raccontare quello che mi era accaduto di mattina...E, mi dicevo, quando fossi avanti negli anni, come sarebbe a dire ora, sulla base di queste note stenderò le Gesta Baudolini (17)13. And without entering into an in-depth examination of Eco's theories on possible worlds, here it suffices to give one example. As we follow the process through which Baudolino and his friends construct the kingdom of Prete Giovanni, we witness a possible world being generated in front of our eyes. Starting from rumors of a letter that mentions the legendary Giovanni (rumors, interestingly enough, that have been started by a sailor called Sindbad14), the main protagonists, usually referred to as "i nostri amici", begin to invent/construct everything about his kingdom, including the palace, the landscape, the people and the animals that sorround him. We are even provided with maps on how to get there, even if these use the Bible15 more than the earth as a model. This, I should add, is only one example of how in Baudolino Eco generates a possible world and then takes his protagonists and his readers, through the type of "fictional woods" that he has theorized about elsewhere, as in The Role of the Reader (1979) and Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (1994). The entertaining and light-hearted Baudolino reveals an Umberto Eco who, in Palazzeschi style, seems to be saying: "lasciatemi divertire" ("let me have fun"). Those who have appreciated Eco for years also know that he is a writer who enjoys examining a variety of topics that, intertextually, can expand our encyclopedic competence and at the same time provide us with some fun ranging from plain entertainment to sophisticated cultural and intellectual play. Baudolino is in many ways a perfect embodiment of the "Eco ludens" that transpires in bits and pieces from his theoretical works where he colors his arguments with clever anecdotes and witty remarks. And, as I shall discuss in greater detail in part two fo this article, Baudolino revisits the Middle Ages with "humor" (The Name of the Rose gave us a taste of

13 Here we may find some real autobiographical allusions to a young Eco, but we also find the Eco on the book cover of The Name of the Rose. See the reference to "età matura" in note 10 above. 14 And here we also see mise en abîmes of embedded stories within the stories in The Thousand and One Nights tradition: "La decisione di scrivere una lettera del Prete Giovanni fu ispirata da una storia che Rabbi Solomon aveva ascoltato dagli arabi di Spagna. Un marinaio, Sindbad...diceva di aver visto sull'isola molti indiani, e quindi l'isola era vicina all'India" (139). 15 The maps are pretty much in line with Dante's reliance on the "Tmodel" map of the known world. Baudolino homo ludens 219 this) and illustrates J. Huizinga's notion of "culture as play". In his 1938 "Foreword" to Homo ludens Huizinga states: "For many years the conviction has grown upon me that civilization arises and unfolds in and as play" (Huizinga, 1949). The author also explains that in his work he has tried to "ascertain how far culture itself bears the character of play" and wishes to show how "play" is to be understood as a "cultural phenomenon". My own feeling in reading Baudolino is that the studies of Johan Huizinga and Jacques Le Goff16 on the Middle Ages are among the major inspiring forces for Eco in this novel. We would certainly have to agree that the novel, or better, that Baudolino and his friends do play with history, religion, literature, myths, and the whole notion of culture from beginning to end. This could also explain why Baudolino comes across not so much as a homo faber as a homo fabulator, since his inventions are mainly mind and word constructions.

Playing with the continual revival of the Middle Ages

Eco's competence as a medieval scholar17 was examined by several critics who have discussed the author's representation, and exploitation, of the Middle Ages in The Name of the Rose. Medievalists, regardless of the more playful tone of Baudolino, may again wish to examine how the historical, philological, theological, and literary elements make Eco's fourth novel a Medieval historical fiction. However, I am not certain that in Baudolino Eco is particularly interested in showing off his famed overwhelming erudition, and therefore I am choosing to limit my intra-intertextual remarks to the author's journalistic articles: "Dreaming of the Middle Ages" and "Living in the New Middle Ages", (which now appear in Travels in Hyperreality18); "Huizinga e il gioco" (an introduction to the 1973 Italian translation of Huizinga's Homo ludens), and the article on Marco Polo "Il Milione: descrivere l'ignoto"19.

16 Readers may in fact find Le Goff s recent illustrated text Immagini per un Medioevo, Rome: Laterza, 2000, an excellent companion to Eco's novel. 17 A reputation that he rightly gained from his documented work on Thomas Aquinas, James Joyce and the Middle Ages, and Medieval Signs, and from his overall competence with scholarly criticism on the Middle Ages associated with the great works of such authors as Jacques Le Goff, Ernst R. Curtius, and Johan Huizinga. 18 "Dieci modi di sognare il Medioevo", written in 1983, appears in Sugli specchi (1985); "Verso un nuovo medioevo" was written in 1972 and now appears in Dalla periferia dell'impero (1977). 19 Both articles are found in Sugli specchi, pp. 61-66, and 293-300. Rocco Capozzi 220

"Dreaming the Middle Ages" (see Travels in Hyperreality, 61-72) begins with the following questions:

Are there any connections between the Heroic Fantasy of Frank Franzetta, the new satanism, Excalibur, the Avalon sagas, and Jacques Le Goff? If they met abroad some unidentified flying object near Montaillou, would Dart Vafer, Jacques Fournier, and Parsifal speak the same language? If so, would it be a galactic pidgin or the Latin of the Gospel according to St. Luke Skywalker? (61).

This postmodern humorous query, could easily have been used by the author, perhaps with minor changes, by the author as a book cover blurb in reference to Baudolino's saga. We recall that The Name of the Rose came out when the so-called revival trend of the Middle Ages was widely sustained by academics and fiction writers alike. In Italy we can think immediately of essays like Maria Corti's Il viaggio testuale (1978), with the beautiful chapter on the disputatio, or of Il Medioevo prossimo venturo (1971) by Roberto Vacca, and of novels like Laura Mancinelli's I dodici abati di Challant (1981). Eco commented on this phenomenon stating: "We are witnissing, both in Europe and America, a period of renewed interest in the Middle Ages, with a curious oscillation between fantastic neo-medievalism and responsible philological examination" (63). This cultural trend may in fact be still true today, partly because Eco's novels like The Rose and Baudolino continue to fuel our interest in the Middle Ages, and also because we share the author's view that the "Middle Ages are at the root of all our contemporary hot problems", so that "looking at the Middle Ages means looking at our infancy" (63-65). In the section "Ten Little Middle Ages" Eco lists ten different ways in which we may "dream the Middle Ages":

1. "The Middle Ages as a pretext". This is the Middle Ages of opera or of Torquato Tasso...The Middle Ages are taken as a sort of mythological stage on which to place contemporary characters. 2. "The Middle Ages as the site of an ironical revisitation". Here Eco mentions Rabelais and Monty Python. 3. "The Middle Ages as a barbaric age" 4. "The Middle Ages as Romanticism" 5. "The Middle Ages of the philosophia perennis or of neo-Thomism" 6. "The Middle Ages of National Identities" 7. "The Middle Ages of Decadentism" 8. "The Middle Ages of philological reconstruction" Baudolino homo ludens 221

9. "The Middle Ages of so-called Tradition, or of occult philosophy...an eternal and rather eclectic ramshackle structure, swarming with Knights...Templars, Rosicrucians, alchemists, Masonic initiates, neo-Kabbalists, drunk on fascist Will to Power, eager to accept ...for their improbable visions all the paraphernalia of the Middle Ages number 3, mixing up René Guénon and Conan the Barbarian, Avalon and the Kingdom of ". As we can see, this can easily recall Foucault's Pendulum but also parts of Baudolino. 10. "The Middle Ages as the expectation of the Millenium".

I have quoted all ten models because I think that aspects of all of these categories are narrated in The Name of the Rose and because I also think that readers will find especially the Middle Ages of parts 2, 5, 8 and 9 also applicable to Baudolino. Furthermore, in the article "Verso un nuovo Medioevo", originally divided into 13 subsections20 (translated as "Living in the New Middle Ages", in Travels in Hyperreality, 73-85), Eco mentions relics, Byzantium and Huizinga and makes a comment that contains several elements that bring to mind The Rose and Baudolino:

The Middle Ages preserved in its way the heritage of the past but not through hibernation, rather through a constant retranslation and reuse; its immense work of bricolage, balanced among nostalgia, hope, and despair. Under its apparent immobility and dogmatism, this was paradoxically a moment of 'cultural revolution'. Naturally the whole process is characterized by plagues and massacres, intolerance and death. (84-85)

The word bricolage here captures our attention, and in a rereading of the original Italian article, the section entitled "L'arte come bricolage" may support our hunches that Baudolino is in fact a bricoleur who in loose terms of deconstructionism employs/exploits ideas, names, concepts, God, and historical events without ever demonstrating the reality of any of them but simply uses them to prove a point. In part two I shall return to the possible links between

20 "Progetto di Apocalisse; Progetto alternativo di Medioevo; Crisi della Pax Americana; La vietnamizzazione del territorio; Il deperimento ecologico; il neonomadismo; L'Insecuritas; I Vagantes; L'Auctoritas; Le forme del pensiero; L'arte del bricolage; I monasteri; La tradizione permanente". It is worth noting that in the English translation some of the opening sections have been rephrased and even more interesting the sections "Le forme del pensiero" and "L'arte come bricolage" have not been translated at all. Rocco Capozzi 222

Baudolino and Foucault' s Pendulum and examine if indeed the allusions to deconstructionism might not be in order. It is not just the idea of a "plan" that instigates this type of thinking but also expressions such as those of Rabbi Solomon on the Torah, that "Vela e svela al tempo stesso. E apre la via al vortice dell'interpretazione" (146). The same Torah, Rabbi Solomon reminds us, that starts with a "voice": "voi cristiani non capite che il testo sacro nasce da una Voce" (131).

Baudolino precursor of Marco Polo

In terms of Eco's art of recycling, revising and developing previous arguments, the article on Marco Polo's Il Milione becomes even more pertinent to our discussion especially because here we recognize passages that reappear almost verbatim in Baudolino. The opening paragraph of this article takes us to the postmodern practice of combining visual media, literature and pop culture as Eco discusses the movie and television adaptation of Marco Polo. The author suggests that Polo's dictation of his memoirs and adventures to Rustichello21 - in essence a series of encyclopedic stories - can be seen as a precursor of a narrative genre that mixes together folklore, adventure stories, and fantastic fabulations. We recall that the original title of Il Milione is "Le divisament du monde. Livre de Marco Polo citoyen de Venise, dit Million, où l'on conte le merveilles du monde" (in Italian, "Libro di Monsieur Marco Polo, cittadino veneziano, soprannominato Milione, dove son descritte le meraviglie del mondo"). Speaking of "Les merveilles du monde" Eco mentions that in an illustrated manuscript found in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, in chapter 157, where Polo describes the Kingdom of Coilu, are illustrated some unusual creatures that Polo did not speak of: "un Blemma, cioè uno di quei favolosi esseri senza testa con la bocca sullo stomaco, l'altro è uno Sciapode, che sta sdraiato all'ombra del suo unico piede, e il terzo un Monocolo". The author adds "esattamente quanto il lettore del manoscritto si attendeva di trovare in quella regione, che poi è l'India, regno del leggendario Prete Giovanni, ο Presto Giovanni come lo chiama Polo" (62). These anecdotes appear in chapters xcii and xciii of Il Milione.

21 From Ettore Camesasca's introduction to 77 Milione we learn that Rustichello was also a writer of chivalric literature dealing with the Round Table, Merlin and Lancelot. Thus we wonder if Rustichello might not have added his own flavor of romance to Polo's saga. Baudolino homo ludens 223

Considering that Eco includes blemmi, sciapodi, monocoli, and the quest for the Kingdom of Prete Giovanni in Baudolino, I find it appropriate to recall also how Eco answers his own question on why the illustrator of the manuscript dares to include these fantastic creatures that did not appear in Polo's world22. As Eco affirms, it is because Polo, just like his readers did, relied on the auctoritas of texts: "fidando in una catena ininterrotta di dottissime enciclopedie che ragguardavano sulle meraviglie del mondo, sapeva che dovevano esserci" (Sugli specchi, 62). Moreover, speaking of Marco Polo's anxiety of influence, Eco adds: "E il bello di Messer Marco Polo è che , a modo proprio, è uomo del suo tempo e non riesce a sottrarsi all'influenza di quei libri, magari non letti, che gli insegnano cosa dovrebbe vedere" (Sugli specchi, 63-64; also in , 57-58). This is precisely the notion that we find narrated in great and vivid detail in the novel beginning with chapter 6, where we learn about the "formation" and "education" of Baudolino during his years in Paris. For nearly six years the protagonist stays in the French capital where with his inseparable friends Kyot, Borone, Abdul, and Il Poeta, he not only learns about women but also reads many books, both real and apocryphal ones (see p. 90). We are also told that the library of San Vittore (in a familiar Borges/Eco fashion), which provides him with so many diverse books, is a great repository of universal knowledge (74):

Leggeva di terre lontane...Leggeva di paesi dove vivevano uomini senza giuntura alle ginocchia, uomini senza lingua, uomini dalle orecchie grandissime con le quali riparavano il corpo dal freddo, e gli sciapodi, che corrono velocissimi su un solo piede...Ma quando arrivava all'India, Baudolino quasi dimenticava Beatrice, e alla sua mente si volgeva ad altre fantasie, perchè si era messo in testa che da quelle parti dovesse esserci, se mai c'era, il regno di quel Presbyter Joannes di cui gli aveva parlato Ottone. (77-78)

Satisfying his avid curiosity, Baudolino also reads about fantastic places and thus it is only normal that the could recognize them during his Odyssey to the exotic lands in the East. In fact, when Baudolino and his friends arrive at Pndapetzim and see strange creatures that resemble the blemmi and panozi they can immediately say, but of course they are blemmi and panozi, we have read about them and therefore they exist:

22 In Ettore Camesasca's edition of Il Milione (between pp. 128 and 129) we find an illustration taken from Le livre des Merveilles depicting some strange creatures called metrucci that look exactly like the blemma and the panozi. Rocco Capozzi 224

Quando l'essere si fermò davanti a loro, videro che il suo solo piede era grande il doppio di un piede umano, ma ben formato, con unghie quadre, e cinque dita che sembravano tutte alluci, tozze e robuste...Baudolino e i suoi amici lo roconobbero subito, per averne letto e sentito parlare tante volte: era uno sciapode, e d'altra parte avevano messo sciapodi anche nella lettera del Prete. (390)

This scene is repeated with the encounter of other creatures:

Ecco i ponci e, anche se ne avevano letto, i nostri amici non cessavano di esaminare con occhio curioso quegli esseri con le gambe senza giunture alle ginocchia...Ma ciò che li faceva notare era, per gli uomini, il fallo che pendeva sul petto, e per le femmine, nella stessa posizione, la vagina, che però non si vedeva perchè la coprivano con uno scialle annodato dietro la schiena..."Proprio come era scritto sui libri", continuava a mormorare ammirato Borone. (379-380).

And when they face the cinecefoli who are imprisoning them, it is sufficient for "our friends" to say: "Erano cinecefoli. Dunque esistono." (464; "They were cinecefoli. Therefore they exist."). This line of reasoning that Eco examines in the Middle Ages is illustrated through Marco Polo who believed to have seen the proverbial unicorn that is mentioned so often in Eco's semiotic texts23: "poteva Marco Polo non cercare unicorni? Li cerca, e li trova. Voglio dire, non può evitare di guardare alle cose con gli occi della cultura" (1977; 64). The notion that in the Middle Ages it was quite common not to make a disinction between what one had read, or heard of, and what really existed, also appears in one of Eco's "Bustina di Minerva", the humorous and often provocative columns published in the weekly magazine L'Espresso. I am referring to "Siamo così diversi da Marco Polo? Vedere, guardare, e poi raccontare" ("Are we so different from Marco Polo? To look, to see, and then to narrate"24 that deals with Polo and with the remote possibility that he may not have gone to China. And here we must recall that this is also a theory of Frances Wood in Did Marco Polo Go to China? (1995).

23 See, for esample, Polo's reaction in encountering a rhino thinking it was a unicorn in Kant e l'ornitorinco (1997; Kant and the Platypus, 2000). 24 "Alla luce delle mie frequentazioni medievali, non mi stupirei affatto se Marco Polo non fosse davvero arrivato in Cina, perchè i libri di viaggi fantastici (presentati come autentici) erano diffusissimi all'epoca sua. Il valore della tradizione era tale che si riteneva che non ci fosse differenza tra aver sentito parlare di un unicorno e dire di averlo visto" (L'Espresso, 29 March 1998). Baudolino homo ludens 225

And so how could Baudolino go to the far East and not encounter a unicorn? In a memorable lyrical passage, while Baudolino meditates near an idyllic lake, moments before the beautiful creature Ipazia arrives "half woman and half goat", there appears the mythical animal: "sulle rive di quello specchio d'acqua, vide uscire dal bosco un animale che non aveva mai incontrato in vita sua, ma riconosceva benissimo...Era il liocorno o, come diceva Baudolino da piccolo, il lioncorno, ovvero l'unicorno, il monoceros delle sue fantasie infantili" (422.) In Il Milione, as in Baudolino, the unicorn is treated in the same fashion as the news about Prete Giovanni. Eco explains that Polo has seen and heard everything and while the world that he describes may be amazing, for Polo it is not incredible: "Certo, prende per la buona tutta la storia dell'impero di Prete Gianni, ma c'era in giro tanto di lettera diplomatica (seppure falsa, oggi lo sappiamo) mandata cent'anni prima all'imperatore di Bisanzio" (65). Again this is exactly what Baudolino does with rumors (le voci) about the letter and the existence of Prete Giovanni. His teacher, good friend and uncle of the emperor Frederick, cardinal Ottone, had also heard these rumors. At his death Ottone makes Baudolino promise him that he will write/invent this letter and make it appear as if it had been sent to Frederick in order to convince the emperor that he must go and search for his kingdom in the Indies. When the plan of the letter fails, Baudolino will use the quest for the "Grail" to accomplish the same goal. And thus, the expedition begins in search of Prete Giovanni, primarily because, many others, like "our four friends", had their own reasons for finding the "Grail" and "the kingdom" (see pp. 178, 321). The conclusion of the article on Marco Polo may give us a clue on how to read the man Baudolino the trickster, liar, and exaggerator, on how Niceta reads Baudolino as he fabulates lies and stories, and to some extent even on how readers should be reading the novel Baudolino. Eco explains that Polo looked around and registered with a degree of coldness that which today we believe to be outright lies. But "A differenza di ogni enciclopedia medievale, non allegorizza..." (66). In other words, Baudolino, like Polo, tells his stories as he sees them and as he believes them to be true, even if he has invented most of them. Niceta fully understands this and actually admires Baudolino's tenacity. Baudolino does not contain allegorical descriptions like those of the church's portals or of the cena Cipriani that we find in The Name of the Rose. Nonetheless, like the quest for the Holy Grail and other medieval literature than can be read on more than one level, I would think that Rocco Capozzi 226 even if Baudolino is not intended as a spiritual fable, it does contain plenty of irony, parody, satire, and overall criticism that can be directed at the events and protagonists under scrutiny. For example, in the discussions between Baudolino and Frederick about the confusion and intricacies of Italian politics ( see pp. 52, 107, 153, 154, 209) involving cities like Genova, Lodi, Milan, and Cremona, the first thing that comes to mind is that Eco expects his readers to suspect some clever association between the "Lombard League" at the time of the communes and the northern Lega headed by today's right wing leader Umberto Bossi. We need only to think of sentences such as "In questa Italia più si va avanti e più t'impantani, non si può essere imperatore là dove c'è anche un papa" (219), and immediately we feel that Eco is winking at us. In the same fashion, under the comical tone that accompanies the descriptions of the political wars conducted by the crusaders against the Turks and the Byzantine empire we can detect an Eco speaking on how there have always been fanatics who claim to fight in the name of religion, but are more interested in power and wealth. Heretics, relics, intolerance, prejudice, thirst for power (see especially the discussions with Praxeas, the leader of the eunuchs), are central themes that appear so frequently in the novel that even though they may not always be loaded with satire and irony, they do make us wonder if Baudolino should not in fact also be read as a humorous satire in the tradition of Montesquieu's Persian Letters or certainly of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In short, underneath the sheer playfulness of the fantastic stories plenty of allusions can be found to recent historical events, and in the imaginary voyages of Baudolino, we should in fact look for Eco's criticism of political, theological, and social and cultural issues of times past and of the present. Ottone, Zosimo, and Ardzouni may appear to be comical figures and caricatures of monks, clerics, and hermits of the time, but, as in Boccaccio's Decameron, they also reveal a lot of the hypocrisy, falsity, politics, and thirst for power that religious figures shared with laymen (and not just at the time of the crusades). Among other examples we could think of are the views held by the sciapode Gavagai, who does not believe in differences, or the religious rituals of the blemmi, panozi, and gimnosofisti, or the eunuchs' need to control, not to mention Diacono's doubts concerning his role as representative of Prete Giovanni.

To read is to see and to know Baudolino homo ludens 227

On numerous occasions we see the Umberto Eco who loves to discuss and narrate a variety of notions of knowledge and how we perceive things, recognize them, and name them. But Baudolino is primarily a novel that deals explicity with narrative lies and about people that (con)fuse, or blur the distinction between visions, ecstasy, deep desires, wishful thinking, faith, skepticism, heretical beliefs, faked relics, magic, fantastic creatures, unscientifically proven theories and facts, and reality. And as we have seen with the examples related to Marco Polo, the unicorn, the Grail, and the kingdom of Prete Giovanni, Baudolino is also about how people use faulty logic, mediated knowledge (and thus, texts vs. experience?), exploit the alleged veracity of texts, quotations from books that they have read or heard about, and abuse interpretation, all to prove a point. Baudolino, which often recalls pages from Foucault's Pendulum, is about inventing a plan and making people believe in it because to have or to know a secret plan also implies having power. Baudolino learned this at the court of Frederick, "il potere è tutto" (128; "Power is all"), and this is also the fundamental belief to which Praxeas and the eunuchs fully subscribe. Baudolino is mainly about the art of fabulating, but it is also a novel about friendship (especially the type of friendship that we see among knights and between Lancellot, Guenevere and King Arthur). It is also a story about believing, and not just in religious terms. From the initial pages we notice how Baudolino believes in his own fantasies to the point that he actually forgets that he is one who originally invented a story that circulates about Prete Giovanni and the Grail. We in fact see Baudolino endanger his life trying tyo rescue the "Grail" (which is really his father's soup bowl) and during this quest he loses many close friends like Abdul, Rabbi Solomon, and Gavagai. We also see how often people believe everything to be true that they have read or heard about. Eco illustrates once again how our experiences and our cultural competence may indeed be based more on indirect knowledge than on first hand experience. Abdul certainly underlines this notion, even though we may feel that Eco is ironic when the protagonist, feeling ridiculed by Il Poeta, responds: "Non è necessario essere stato in un luogo, per sapere tutto su di esso...altrimenti i marinai sarebbero più sapienti dei teologi" (82; "It is not necessary to have been at a place, in order to know everything about it...otherwise sailors would be more knowledgeable than theologians"). When Ardzrouni praises philosophy he makes an interesting observation on the power of mental practices stating: "Io non sono un meccanico, sono un filosofo, e traggo le mie conclusioni in base al pensiero" (339; "I am not a mechanic, I am a philosopher, and I draw my conclusions on the basis of thought"). But Rocco Capozzi 228 perhaps it is Ipazia who best summarizes how Baudolino and his friends claim to know a lot of things when she replies to Baudolino saying that although she had never seen a man she can conclude that there must be one: "Dava a vedere di riconoscere un uomo come lui aveva riconosciuto l'unicorno, per averne sentito parlare tante volte, senza averlo mai visto" (424). How we can get to know things and how we draw conclusions is actually a key motif that runs throughout Baudolino. It begins with Baudolino believing in having seen Saint Baudolino in the fog, in the Frascheta where he grew up; this is echoed in Abdul's story about the visions created by the "green honey", and is again reiterated in conjunction with the quest of the Grail and of Prete Giovanni. It is also alluded to in Niceta's comment on the veracity of relics and on the importance of contextualizing them: "è la fede che le fa vere, non esse che fanno la fede" (180; "It is faith that renders the relics real and not the relics that make the faith"). Ipazia's comment is even more telling when she shows Baudolino the difference between seeing and believing, stating that to see does not mean to believe, rather, to believe means to see.

The love of disputatio

In Eco's novels we encounter long debates on a variety of epistemological, philosophical, and theologicall issues. William, Casaubon, and Roberto all face interlocutors like Jorge da Burgos, Bernardo Guy, and Father Caspar with whom they argue about auctoritas, the book of Revelation, apacalyptic anxieties, the distinction between skepticism and incredulity, and about the existence and omnipotence of God. In Baudolino the discussions on the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and God's creation of a world that includes evil, death and diseases, we get the impression that these are the continuation of the debates initiated in The Island of the Day Before between Roberto and the Jesuit Father Caspar. But here the Bible, Aristotle, St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Neoplatonism, Descartes, Kant, and Spinoza, who are some of Eco's favoritte sources for these debates, may not be so obvious. What is evident is Baudolino's great pride in his competence in story-telling and in the art of debating. He even uses Ipazia's philosophical arguments on God and creation to interject a narcissistic rebuttal that draws attention to his competence: "Ipazia, sei acuta, sensibile, perspicace, sai condurre una disputatio colto meglio di me che pure ho studiato a Parigi..." (432). Baudolino homo ludens 229

In the long theological and Neo-platonic debates between Baudolino and Ipazia (see especially chapters 33 and 34) we can recognize similar ontological arguments on the existence and definition of God that appeared in previous novels, and we also recognize the Eco of the debates with Cardinal Martini (1997), especially when he states: "like Kant, I don't see how one can possibly not believe in God, can maintain that it is impossible to prove his existence, and yet also firmly believe in the nonexistence of God, maintaining that this can be proven" (1977; 96). Another passage from Belief and Non-Belief echoed in Baudolino is the reference to Thomas Aquinas when he comments on the mystery of substance of the body of Christ and if in fact it could have been taken from the female body of Mary: "as you know, the Gnostic theories that were in circulation held that Christ passed through the body of Mary like Water through a pipe, as if incidentally channeled, not touched by her body, not polluted by any of the immunditia that goes along with the physiology of childbirth" (62). In Baudolino similar arguments appear for example when Ottone explains the Trinity (see p. 58). We would have to agree that for an entertaining novel Baudolino certainly contains many argumentations on religion (see in particular chapters 29-34). Once the protagonists arrive at Pndapetzim, the theological debates abound. Of special interest are the discussions between Ipazia and Baudolino on the impossibility to define God except in terms of differences and of what he is not (432). In the chapters dedicated to Ipazia we also notice a lot of Neoplatonism in the discussions on beauty, perfection, love, women, nature, and harmony. And in one instance Ipazia is depicted as a donna angelicata, while Baudolino, like the poets of the dolce stil nuovo, remains enchanted and speechless in front of so much beauty and perfection (422-23).

Baudolino homo ludens: describing the unknown

Baudolino, not unlike his predecessors William, Casaubon, and Roberto, illustrates very well the author's notion of how man "out of necessity aspires to construct narratives capable of providing an explanation and a model, an exemplary image" (1997; 101). The references to the need, importance, function, and art of narrating stories in Baudolino are numerous. Frequently we encounter phrases such as "una storia così ben costruita" (122), that allude to a variety of notions of narrativity and metafiction. Also, throughout the novel we get to see what is meant to achieve "verisimilitude" in order to make fiction believable and enjoyable, and we are constantly reminded of how much Baudolino believes in his own fiction. His stories sound and become so Rocco Capozzi 230 real that often Niceta will observe: "Tale era il suo potere che essa diventa verità" (66), or "La passione con cui Baudolino ne parlava era la testimonianza di verità" (331). And let us not forget that writing/narrating for Baudolino is also therapeutic: "Baudolino sembrava ansioso di parlare con qualcuno, come per liberarsi di cose che si teneva dentro da chissà quando" (33); or, "Solo quando ho potuto raccontarlo a te mi sono sentito libero" (214; see also p. 28). Moreover, in a Sheharazade fashion narrating is synonymous with staying alive as we see when the four protagonists resort to recalling their own adventures in order to keep sane while they are imprisoned by the cenocefoli. Baudolino's stories which at time are reminiscent of the exchanges between Polo and Kubla Khan in Calvino's Invisible Cities, fascinate the Diacono and excite his curiosity. Niceta reprimands Baudolino for exciting the Diacono to the point of orgasm and also for showing excessive pride in his storytelling, stating: "Acceleravi la sua morte, portandolo all'estremo della frenesia e della consunzione di tutti i suoi sensi, e soddisfacevi il tuo gusto per la favola, eri orgoglioso delle tue invenzioni" (414). In addition to the art of narrating Baudolino is also a testimonial to the importance of creating possible worlds for the sake of effective argumentation. This practice is amply demonstrated by Eco whenever his protagonists are engaged in attempting to resolve philosophical or theological paradoxes, or trying to explain difficult linguistic, semiotic, historic, cultural, or narratological theories. Therefore, when we hear Baudolino claim, "Non c'è nulla di meglio che immaginare altri mondi...ad immaginare altri mondi, si finisce per cambiare anche questo" (104), or Il Poeta say: "Ogni storia può essere buona" (142), or Niceta affirm that "non ci sono storie senza senso" (17), we are in fact reminded that sometimes it is important to use and invent fables and possible worlds that provide images, models, metaphors, and cognitive systems that contribute to illustrate more effectively one's theories. Baudolino's greatest gift is unquestionably his imagination. In the opening pages we see how easily he "sees" in a thick fog saints and magic creatures, and how he hears "voices". It is not surprising when Cardinal Ottone, on his death bed, instead of assigning the job to his successor Rahewino, convinces Baudolino to write the letter of Prete Giovanni. The explanation is simple: Baudolino can narrate even that which he has never seen: "Rahewino non ha fantasia, può solo raccontare quello che ha visto, e certe volte neppure quello, perchè non capisce che cosa ha visto. Tu invece puoi immaginare ciò che non hai visto" (61). This special power of being able to narrate is reiterated continuously in the course of the novel and is often underlined by Baudolino homo ludens 231

Niceta when he at times congratulates his fellow fabulator and at other times he reprimands him for his excessive pride. However, the "Principe della menzogna" (88; "The Prince of lies") will show some modesty at the end, and when Ipazia asks if all men are great storytellers Baudolino replies: "No...forse lui ne raccontava più e meglio dei suoi congeneri, ma c'erano tra quelli anche i poeti, che sapevano raccontare meglio ancora" (426). But, what exactly is it that Baudolino, the great picaro and miles gloriosus, describes to his listeners and readers? If the "merveilles" recounted by the "trickster" (excluding the story of the birth of his native city Alessandria) are not new, what makes his fabulations so fascinating? Is it the language? His rewriting of legends? The historical background? Or is it our love for adventures to exotic lands, about which like Utopias, lost continents and futuristic heavens, we never get tired of reading? Most probably it is all of these and more. But ultimately what fascinates us in Eco's fiction is not the discovery of some hidden truths underneath the narrative lies, rather it is the amount of information (including trivia) and education that can be gleaned from his possible worlds. As already mentioned, the saga of our protagonist begins as Baudolino saves Niceta Coniate near the Hippodrome, in the church of Saint Sofia, where the masterpieces of antiquity had been stored while clerics and knights, in their haste to gain priceless relics, were also sacking churches and museums. These are the historic days of the pillaging of Costantinople. Baudolino enters the church just as Niceta was about to lose his life. We soon realize that Baudolino has saved the historian because he needs a scriptor for his gesta and Niceta is more than willing to help him because he is, after all, an historian and fabulator in his own right. In the closing pages of the novel Niceta is worried that Baudolino, who is now over sixty, is about to resume travelling. Perhaps paraphrasing Emilio Salgari's notion that "to narrate is to travel", Baudolino's reply to Niceta is that "Viaggiare ringiovanisce" (524; "Travel keeps you young"), and therefore he will resume his search for the Kingdom of Prete Giovanni. The quest must go on, be it for the Grail, or for anything that metaphorically implies an endless search for more knowledge. In the last chapter, "Baudolino non c'è più" ("Baudolino is gone"), we find Pafnuzio discouraging Niceta from writing the Gesta Baudolini not just because "uno scrittore di Istorie non può prestare fede a una testimonianza così incerta" (525), but also because of the dangerous content of Baudolino's stories. Fearing that Niceta will write about the Rocco Capozzi 232 truth of so many fake relics and lies, Pafnuzio convinces the Byzantine historian to apply some censorship to his narration when dealing with relics. More important, Pafnuzio appeals to Niceta's responsibility as an historian (and as writer in general, we can assume) and convinces him to change some historical facts:

Cancella anche i genovesi, altrimenti dovresti dire delle reliquie che fabbricavano, e i tuoi lettori perderebbero la fede nelle cose più sacre. Ti ci vorrà poco ad alterare leggermente gli eventi, dirai che sei stato aiutato da dei veneziani. Sì, lo so, non è la verità, ma in una grande Istoria si possono alterare delle piccole verità perchè ne risalti la verità più grande. (525)

Niceta is a little disappointed that he will not be able to narrate the beautiful narrative lies told by Baudolino: "Era una bella storia. Peccato che nessuno la venga a sapere". Pafnuzio, partly deflating Niceta's "narrative" ego (which is not much different than Baudolino's), replies: "Non crederti l'unico autore di storie a questo mondo. Prima ο poi qualcuno, più bugiardo di Baudolino, la racconterà" (526). In fact, possibly better than Niceta, and certainly as well as Baudolino, Umberto Eco has narrated it, and many readers will be glad that he did because this story is a wonderful fusion of pagan and Christian epics (Homer, Chrétien de Troyes, Dante, and Ariosto coming together, so to speak) about a pilgrim's Odyssey "to hell and back". Furthermore, with Baudolino Eco proves to be "a prince" of encyclopedic fables that can expand our mind and stimulate our thirst for more knowledge. We recall that Ipazia, the martyr queen of the ipazie was a teacher of philosophy, and philosophy according to Ipazia is "love for knowledge" (426). This is said almost at the end of the novel but it sends us right back to the beginning of the story when Baudolino is told to go and study in Paris because "il sapere è una forma di potere" (59; "Knowledge is a form of power").

***

One question that comes to mind as we finish reading the novel is whether with the witty fabulator Baudolino Eco is rewriting Le Conte du Graal and Il Milione, and thus he is also creating his precursors? The answer could be immediately, why not, if, like Borges in "Kafka and his precursors", we agree that in many ways every writer does create his precursors. Indeed, in Baudolino we find Homer's Ulysses, Marco Polo, and Dante's Ulysses, and echoes of Ariosto, Swift, and Baudolino homo ludens 233

Salgari, just to name a few authors, that would suggest among many other things that Eco's novel creates, and becomes at the same time a precursor of epic, chivalric, picaresque, and travel adventure fiction. Of course we must consider that the entire novel is playful. Readers have appreciated the metafictional and intertextual echoes which set the tone of the playful literal allusions in The Name of the Rose. We recall that the Prologue begins with a quotation from Genesis, "In the beginning there was the word..." and that the first Day opens with an allusion to Snoopy, "It was a beautiful morning at the end of November". Baudolino also begins with an allusion to a literary beginning. Italian scholars will easily recognize it as the first documented Italian written text, the Placito capuano (written in 960) that begins with "Sao Ke kelle terre per kelli fini ke ki contene". The first palimpsest on which Baudolino begins to write his own Gesta Baudolini is in fact written in a liguistic pastiche, in an invented piedmontese dialect that contains innumerable "ke" sounds. Eco loves to play with linguistic signs and languages, and throughout Baudolino we also see him having fun making Greek the lingua franca with which Baudolino and his friends communicate with people from far away lands, including Gavagai, Ipazia and the Diacono, all of whom speak "ottimo" and "perfetto greco." Among the plethora of hilarious witty remarks we find numerous funny ironic statements. For example, after nearly four hundred pages of fabricating lies, smuggling faked relics (including Veronica's image of Christ), we see Baudolino scandalized by the idea that "al mondo potessero esistere falsari di tal fatta" (231; "that in the world there could be such counterfeiters"). Or, after he and his friends have been telling fantastic stories about the alledged exotic East, Il Poeta upon hearing how the Diacono speaks about the exotic West (even if they feed Christians to the lions), is ready to explode: "Ma chi è che racconta tutte queste panzane a questa gente" (397; "I wonder who is telling these people all these lies"). Eco's art of docere et delectare once again comes through brilliantly as we notice how much importance the author has given to dialogues, epistemological models, and to the process of teaching through images, stories, myths, and fables. His fourth encyclopedic fiction is a reconfirmation that his texts are a web, a network, or, if you will, a cognitive system in which texts, names and events send us to other texts, frames and images from our archives of knowledge. Furthermore, with Baudolino we again enjoy a cultural (intertextual) work that allows us to play with the encyclopedias of knowledge. Rocco Capozzi 234

Playing with the history of Alessandria

Eco's essay on "The Miracle of San Bernardino" appeared in How to Travel with a Salmon and Other essays". One of the humorous statements made by the author deals in fact with the history of his native city. The author jokingly says that if one were to consult the Guide to the Italy of Legend and Fantasy, "you will see that the province of Alessandria stands out thanks to its virginity. It has no witches, devils, fairies, ...spirits, monsters, ghosts, caves, labyrinths, or buried treasure..." (244). Considering how Borone returns to Alessandria and buries the "Grail" (and in so doing returns the soup bowl to its rightful owner) inside the statue of Gagliaudo, and how Baudolino has narrated many fantastic stories about Alessandria and Frederick Barbarossa, we would have to say that Eco-Baudolino has given Alessandria the right to be included in the Guide to the Italy of Legend and Fantasy.

ROCCO CAPOZZI University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario

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