Chronicles of a Liquid Society by Umberto Eco
What was truly insane in the thinking of the Red Brigades and other terrorist groups was the conclusions they drew from it: first, that to fight the multinationals there had to be a revolution in Italy; second, to throw the multinationals into turmoil they had to kill Moro and many other good people; third, that their actions would lead the proletariat to revolution.
First of all, revolution in a single country would have made little difference to the multinationals, and in any event international pressure would have quickly restored order; second, the influence of one Italian politician in this game of interests was entirely irrelevant; and third, they ought to have realized that, however many people the terrorists killed, the working class would not have been drawn into a revolution. And to understand this, there was no need to forecast how events would develop. It sufficed to look at what had happened with the Tupamaros in Uruguay and similar movements that managed, at most, to persuade colonels in Argentina to carry out not a revolution but a coup d’état, while the proletarian masses lifted not a finger.
Now, anyone who draws three wrong conclusions from a premise that is, all in all, quite acceptable can only be wrong. If one of my school friends had said that because the Sun rises and sets, then it revolves around the Earth, I would have called him not just wrong, but an idiot.
2008
Saying sorry
I have spoken previously about the tendency to say sorry, which has now gone too far, and I used George W. Bush’s repentance over Iraq as an example. To do something that ought not to be done and then simply to say sorry is not enough. For a start, you have to promise not to do it again. Bush won’t invade Iraq a second time because the Americans have relieved him of responsibility, but perhaps he would do it again if he could. Many who throw stones and then hide their hands say sorry precisely so they can do it again. Saying sorry costs nothing.
It’s rather like the story of criminals who repent. Once upon a time, people who repented for their wrongdoing first made amends in some way, then they devoted their lives to penance, took refuge in the Thebaid and beat their breast with sharp stones, or cared for lepers in Africa. A person who repents today confines himself to giving evidence against his ex-accomplices, then keeps careful guard over his new identity in a comfortable secret location, or gets early release from prison and writes his memoirs, gives interviews, meets heads of state, and receives romantic love letters from young girls.
On the Internet there’s a whole website dedicated to “phrases for saying sorry.” The most lapidary is Sorry, I’m Clearly a Perfect Shit. Another site, called The Art of Saying Sorry, is only for lovers who have been unfaithful, and offers this advice: “The important and universal rule is never to feel yourself a loser when you say sorry. Saying sorry is not synonymous with weakness but with control and strength, it means returning straightway to the side of right, wrong-footing the partner who is forced to listen. Admitting your own errors is also a gesture of liberation: it helps to bring emotions out into the open without repressing them, and to experience them more intensely.” As if to say: sorry means summoning the strength to start all over again.
If the person who has done wrong is still alive, he apologizes in person. But if he’s dead? Pope John Paul II pointed the way when he said sorry for the trial against Galileo. Even if the wrong had been committed by one of his predecessors, it is the legitimate successor who says sorry. But it’s not always clear who the legitimate successor is. For example, who should apologize for the Slaughter of the Innocents? The wrongdoer was Herod, governor of Jerusalem; therefore his only legitimate successor is the Israeli government. Whereas responsibility for the death of Jesus, contrary to what Saint Paul led us to believe, lies not with the wicked Jews but with the Roman government. Those at the foot of the cross were centurions and not Pharisees. Once the Holy Roman Empire had gone, the sole surviving heir of the Roman government is the Italian state, so our president, Giorgio Napolitano, should be the one to apologize for the crucifixion.
Who says sorry for the Vietnam War? It’s unclear whether this should be the next president of the United States or a member of the Kennedy family. For the Russian Revolution and the murder of the Romanovs, there’s no doubt, since the only true and legitimate heir of Leninism and Stalinism is Vladimir Putin. And for the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre? It’s the French Republic, as successor to the monarchy, but since the brains behind the whole business was a queen, Catherine de’ Medici, the task of saying sorry today ought to be performed by Carla Bruni.
There would then be some rather awkward cases. Who would say sorry for the mess caused by Ptolemy, the man truly responsible for the case against Galileo? If, as some say, he was born at Ptolemais, which is part of modern Libya, the person saying sorry should be Muammar Gaddafi, but if Ptolemy was born in Alexandria, then it should be the Egyptian government. Who says sorry for the extermination camps? The sole heirs of Nazism are the neo-Nazi movements, and they don’t look as if they want to say sorry. On the contrary, they’d do it again if they could.
And who in Italy would say sorry for the assassination of socialists like Giacomo Matteotti and the Rosselli brothers during the Fascist period?
2008
The Sun still turns
The geneticist Edoardo Boncinelli recently gave a series of lectures at Bologna University on the theory of evolution, its origins and developments, and I was struck not so much by the now incontrovertible evidence about evolutionism, in its neo-Darwinian form, as by so many naïve and confused ideas, not just among those who oppose it but those who agree. For example, take the idea that according to Darwinism man is descended from the apes. (One is perhaps tempted, given instances of racism in our time, to respond as Dumas did to an impudent Parisian who made an ironic remark about his mixed blood: “I may perhaps be descended from the apes, but you, sir, are reverting to one.”)
Science always has to deal with public opinion, which is less evolved than one imagines. As educated people, we know that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not vice versa, and yet in our daily life we display a naïveté of perception and happily say that the Sun rises, is high in the sky, sets. But how many “educated” people are there? A survey carried out in 1982 by the magazine Science et Vie showed that one in three French people thought the Sun went around the Earth.
I take this news from Les Cahiers de l’Institut (2009), the publication of a national institute for studying and investigating fous littéraires, namely, all those more or less crackpot authors who put forward improbable theories. France leads the field, and I have considered the literature on the subject in two previous articles, as well as on the death of its leading expert, André Blavier. But in this issue of Les Cahiers de l’Institut, Olivier Justafré looks at those who deny the terrestrial movement and spherical form of our planet.
That the Copernican theory was still being denied at the end of the 1600s, even by eminent scholars, comes as no surprise, but the number of studies published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is quite remarkable. Justafré limits himself to French publications, but these are more than enough, from Abbé Matalène, who demonstrated in 1842 that the Sun was only thirty-two centimeters in diameter, an idea put forward by Epicurus twenty-two centuries earlier, to Victor Marcucci, according to whom the Earth was flat, with Corsica at its center.
We might make allowances for the nineteenth century, but Essai de rationalisation de la science expérimentale, by Léon Max, was printed in 1907 by a reputable scientific publishing house, and La terre ne tourne pas was published in 1936, written by one Bojo Raïovitch, according to whom the Sun is smaller than the Earth but larger than the Moon, though Abbé Bouheret in 1815 had claimed the opposite. In 1935, Gustave Plaisant, who describes himself as an ancien polytechnicien, published a work with the dramatic title Tourne-t-elle? (Does It Turn?), and as late as 1965 there was a book by Maurice Ollivier, another ancien élève of the École Polytechnique, arguing once again that the Earth is fixed in place.
In 1956, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, Samuel Shenton, founded the Flat Earth Society to continue the legacy of the Universal Zetetic Society. NASA photographed the Earth from space in the 1960s, and at that point no one could continue to deny that it was spherical. Shenton, however, claimed that such photographs could only delude an untutored eye: the entire space program was a sham, and the Moon landing a cinematic illusion aimed at deceiving the public with the false idea of a spherical Earth. Shenton’s successor, Charles Kenneth Johnson, continued to denounce the plot against Flat Earthers, writing in 1980 that the idea of a revolving globe was a conspiracy against which Moses and Columbus had fought. One of Johnson’s arguments was that if the Earth were a sphere, the surface of a great mass of water would have to be curved, whereas he had tested the surfaces of Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea and had found no curvature.
Is it any surprise, then, that there are still antievolutionists around?
2010
What you mustn’t do
Should anyone ever express an insulting opinion about your literary or artistic work, don’t sue, even if their words cross that often narrow boundary between ruthless critical judgment and insult. In 1958, Beniamino Dal Fabbro, a spirited and controversial music critic, wrote an article in Il Giorno in which he tore into a performance by Maria Callas, a diva for whom he had no love. I don’t remember exactly what he had said, but I remember the epigram that this amiable and sarcastic figure circulated among his friends at Bar Giamaica, in the Brera district of Milan: “La cantante d’Epidauro—meritava un pomidauro” (“The singer from Epidaurus—deserved a tomautus”).
Callas, not an easy character herself, was furious, and sued. I remember Dal Fabbro describing it at Bar Giamaica: he arrived at the trial dressed in black on the day his lawyer was to speak, so when the lawyer pointed to him, he would appear as a severe and incorruptible man of learning; but on the day it was the turn of Callas’s lawyer (who, according to Dal Fabbro, might have brought out some malicious stories that portrayed him as a Jonah), he turned up in a light linen suit and straw-colored Panama hat.
Naturally the court acquitted Dal Fabbro, recognizing his right to criticize. But the amusing aspect of the story was that the general public, following the case in the newspapers, had some misconceptions about the law and a person’s constitutional right to freely express his beliefs. So they interpreted the court’s judgment not as an acknowledgment of the critic’s freedom of expression, but as a confirmation of what he had said: that Callas sang poorly. And so Callas emerged from the case unjustly labeled as a bad singer by an Italian court of law.
So what do you do with those who have insulted you? Leave well alone. If you are involved in literature or the arts, you have to accept the fact that you will be criticized, and that is part of the job, and you must hope that millions of future readers will prove your enemy wrong. History has dealt justice to Louis Spohr for his description of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as “an orgy of noise and vulgarity,” and to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who wrote of Emily Dickinson: “The incoherence and formlessness of her—versicles are fatal.” And to the executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who, after screen-testing Fred Astaire, commented, “Can’t act, can’t sing. Balding. Can dance a little.”
2012
The miraculous Mortacc
My doctor has prescribed a drug to treat my arthritic pains. To avoid any tedious legal implications, I will give it a fictitious name, Mortacc.
Like any responsible person, before taking it I read the accompanying leaflet, which tells you under what circumstances you must not use it—for example, if you’ve drunk a bottle of vodka, or have to drive an articulated truck from Milan to Sicily, or have leprosy, or are pregnant with triplets. Now, my leaflet suggests that taking Mortacc can cause allergic reactions, such as swelling of the face, lips, and neck, fatigue and giddiness, and in elderly people, falls, blurring or loss of vision, spinal damage, heart and/or kidney failure, and urinary problems. Some patients have threatened suicide and self-harm, and in such cases the leaflet recommends calling a doctor—presumably as the patient is about to leap from the window (though it might be preferable to call the fire department). Naturally, Mortacc can result in constipation, paralyzed intestine, convulsions, and, if taken with other medicines, breathing difficulties or coma.
Driving a motor vehicle is out of the question, as is operating complicated machinery or a machine press while standing on a girder on the fifty-first floor of a skyscraper. If you take more than the prescribed dose of Mortacc, expect to feel confused, drowsy, agitated, and restless. If you take less, or suddenly stop the treatment, you may experience uneasy sleep, headaches, nausea, anxiety, convulsions, depression, sweating, and dizziness.
More than one person in ten experiences increased appetite, nervous tension, confusion, loss of libido, irritability, attention loss, awkwardness (sic), memory impairment, trembling, speech difficulty, tingling sensation, lethargy and insomnia, fatigue, blurred sight, double vision, dizziness and loss of balance, dry mouth, vomiting, flatulence, difficulty getting an erection, swelling, feeling of intoxication, or unsteady movement.
More than one person in a thousand experiences a drop in blood sugar levels, distorted self-perception, depression, mood swings, difficulty in recalling words, loss of memory, hallucinations, troubled dreams, panic attacks, apathy, feeling strange (sic), inability to reach an orgasm, delayed ejaculation, difficulty forming ideas, torpor, anomalous eye movement, reduced reflexes, skin sensitivity, loss of taste, burning sensations, trembling, lowered awareness, fainting, increased awareness of noises, dryness and swelling of the eyes, runny eyes, abnormal heartbeat, low blood pressure, high blood pressure, vasomotor instability, breathing difficulty, dry nose, abdominal swelling, increase in salivation, heartburn, loss of sensitivity around the mouth, excessive perspiration, shivering, muscular contractions and cramps, articular pain, backache, pain in the limbs, incontinence, difficulty and pain in urinating, weakness, falling, thirst, tight-chestedness, altered liver function. Let’s forget what happens to fewer than one person in a thousand—it’s impossible to be so unlucky.
I avoided taking a single pill, as I was sure I’d be struck down immediately with housemaid’s knee, as the immortal Jerome K. Jerome had imagined, even if the information sheet made no mention of it. I thought of throwing the pills away, but if I put them in the garbage bin I risked mutating the mouse population with epidemic consequences. I put the pills in a metal box and buried it deep down in a park.
In the meantime, I have to say, my arthritic pains have gone.
2012
Joyce and the Maserati
Looking through the catalogs from auction houses like Christie’s or Sotheby’s, apart from artworks, antique books, autographs, and assorted relics, you come across what are called memorabilia: the shoes worn by a diva in a particular film, a fountain pen that belonged to Ronald Reagan, and so on. A distinction has to be made here between collecting bizarre objects and hunting for fetishistic souvenirs. The collector is invariably slightly mad, even when he spends his last cent buying incunabula of The Divine Comedy, but his passion is legitimate. In collectors’ magazines you discover people who collect sugar packets, Coca-Cola bottle tops, and phone cards. It’s more noble, I think, to collect postage stamps than beer caps, but there’s no accounting for taste.
It’s a different matter wanting at all costs to own the shoes worn by that diva in that film. If you collect all the shoes worn by film stars, from Georges Méliès on, then you’re a collector, and your folly makes sen
Recently I found two curious news items in La Repubblica. The first reports that the Italian government is auctioning off its official cars on eBay. I can understand that someone might take a fancy to a Maserati and decide to buy one at a bargain price, even one with high mileage and the knowledge that he’ll have to spend a great deal of money looking after it. But what’s the point of competing with thousands to buy a car purchased with public money to ferry government ministers about, at a price two or three times that listed in used-car magazines? Yet that’s exactly what is happening. This is outright fetishism, and it’s difficult to understand what satisfaction is to be gained from sitting on a leather seat previously warmed by some illustrious figure—not to mention those who offer exorbitant sums to luxuriate where the buttocks of a mere undersecretary or political aide have sat.
But let’s move on to something different, which I found in the same newspaper, on a double-page spread. Love letters written by Ian Fleming at the age of twenty-six have been put up for auction, and are expected to fetch up to 66,000 euros. In them, the young agent, not yet so secret, wrote, “I want to kiss you on the mouth, on the breasts, lower down.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with collecting personal letters, and as letters go, one that’s prurient might be considered more entertaining than one that’s not. Even a noncollector would be happy to own the letter in which James Joyce writes to Nora: “I am your child as I told you and you must be severe with me . . . I wish you would smack me or flog me even. Not in play, dear, in earnest and on my naked flesh.” Or what Oscar Wilde wrote to his beloved Lord Alfred Douglas: “It is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should have been made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kisses.” They would be excellent conversation pieces about the weaknesses of great men.