1989
How It Begins, and How It Ends
There is a drama in my life. I pursued my advanced studies as a guest of the University College of Turin, where I had won a scholarship. Of those years I have retained the happiest of memories and a lasting dislike of tuna fish. It so happened that the college refectory remained open exactly one hour and a half for each meal. Those who arrived within the first half hour were served the specialty of the day; latecomers were given tuna. Except for the summer holidays and Sundays, then, over those four years I ate 1,920 meals featuring tuna fish. But that is not the drama I refer to.
My drama springs from the fact that, while we students had no money, we still hungered for movies, music, and plays. So we would arrive at the theater ten minutes early and approach the gentleman—what was he called?—the leader of the claque, shaking his hand and slipping a hundred lire into his palm. Then he would admit us. We were a paying claque.
It also happened that the doors of the college were locked inexorably at midnight. After that hour, those who were outside remained out, because there were no residential obligations, and if a student wished, he could be absent even for a month. Practically speaking, this meant that at ten minutes to midnight we had to leave the theater and scurry to our destination. But at ten minutes to midnight the play had not yet ended. And so it was that, over a four-year period, I saw the theatrical masterpieces of every time and place, except for their last ten minutes.
Thus I have lived a lifetime without knowing if Oedipus faced up to the horrible revelation, or what became of the six characters in search of an author, whether Oswald Alving was cured thanks to penicillin, if Hamlet finally discovered that to be was better than not to be. I still don’t know who the real Signora Ponza was, if Ruggero Ruggeri/Socrates drank the hemlock, if Othello punched up Iago before setting off on a second honeymoon, if the imaginary invalid’s health improved, if everyone threw rice after Romeo and Juliet, and who was Bunbury. I thought I was the only human being afflicted by this ignorance until, casually reliving old memories with my friend Paolo Fabbri, I discovered that for years he has suffered from the same anguish in reverse. During his student years he worked in a theater, organized and run by students; his job was to stand at the door and take tickets. As many ticket-holders arrived late, he was never able to slip into a seat before the beginning of the second act. He saw Lear, blind and raving, wandering around with the corpse of Cordelia in his arms; but he had no idea what had brought the two of them to that ghastly pass. He heard Blanche Dubois profess her faith in strangers, but he racked his brain trying to figure out why such a sweet lady was being carted off to the bin. He never understood why Hamlet was so down on his uncle, who seemed a perfectly nice man. He saw Othello perform his dread act, but had no notion why such a docile little wife was being placed beneath a pillow and not on top of one.
Well, to make a long story short, Paolo and I exchanged confidences. And we discovered that a splendid old age lies before us. Seated on the front steps of a country house or on a bench in the park, for years we will tell each other stories: he, endings; I, beginnings, amid cries of amazement at every discovery of prelude or catharsis.
«You don’t mean it! What did he say?»
«He said: ‘Mother, I want the sun!’ «
«Ah, then he was done for.»
«Yes, but what was wrong with him?»
I whisper the answer in his ear.
«My God, what a family! Now I understand….»
«But tell me about Oedipus!»
«There isn’t a lot to tell. His Mom commits suicide and he blinds himself.»
«The poor kid. All the same … they tried to tell him in every possible way.»
«True, I just can’t figure it. Why didn’t he understand?»
«Put yourself in his place. The plague begins. He’s a king, happily married….»
«So when he married his Mom, he didn’t—»
«Of course not! That’s the whole point.»
«It’s like a Freud case history. If they told you, you wouldn’t believe it.»
Will we be happier afterwards? Or will we have lost the freshness of those who are privileged to experience art as real life, where we enter after the trumps have been played, and we leave without knowing who’s going to win or lose the game?
1988
How to Justify a Private Library
Generally speaking, from my childhood on, I have been always subjected to two (and only two) kinds of joke: «You’re the one who always answers» and «You resound in valleys.» All through my early years I believed that, by some strange chance, all the people I met were stupid. Then, having reached maturity, I was forced to conclude that there are two laws no human being can escape: the first idea that comes into a person’s mind will be the most obvious one; and, having had an obvious idea, nobody ever thinks that others may have had the same idea before.
I possess a collection of review headlines, in all the languages of the Indo-European family, going all the way from «The Echo of Eco» to «A Book with Echoes.» In the latter case I suspect the printed headline wasn’t the first idea that came into the subeditor’s mind. What probably happened was this: the editorial staff met, they debated some twenty possible titles, and finally the managing editor’s face lighted up and he said, «Hey, guys, I’ve had a fantastic idea!» And the others responded, «Boss, you’re a devil! Where do you get them?» «It’s a gift,» he must have replied.
I’m not saying people are banal. Taking as divine inspiration, as a flash of originality, something that is obvious reveals a certain freshness of spirit, an enthusiasm for life and its unpredictability, a love of ideas—small as they may be. I will always remember my first meeting with that great man Erving Goffman, whom I admired and loved for the genius and penetration with which he could identify infinitesimal aspects of behavior that had previously eluded everyone else. We were sitting at an outdoor café when, looking at the street after a while, he said, «You know something? I believe there are too many automobiles in circulation in our cities.» Maybe he had never thought this before because he had had far more important things to think about; he had just had a sudden epiphany and still had the mental freshness to express it. I, a little snob infected by the Unzeitgemässe Betrach-tungen of Nietzsche, would have hesitated to say it, even if I thought it.
A second shock of banality occurs to many people in my condition—that is, people who possess a fairly sizable library (large enough in my case that someone entering our house can’t help but notice it; actually, it takes up the whole place). The visitor enters and says, «What a lot of books! Have you read them all?» At first I thought that the question characterized only people who had scant familiarity with books, people accustomed to seeing a couple of shelves with five paperback mysteries and a children’s encyclopedia, bought in installments. But experience has taught me that the same words can be uttered also by people above suspicion. It could be said that they are still people who consider a bookshelf as a mere storage place for already-read books and do not think of the library as a working tool. But there is more to it than that. I believe that, confronted by a vast array of books, anyone will be seized by the anguish of learning, and will inevitably lapse into asking the question that expresses his torment and his remorse.
The problem is that when someone says, «Eco? You’re the one who always answers,» you can reply with a little laugh and, at most, if you want to be polite, with «That’s a good one!» But the question about your books has to be answered, while your jaw stiffens and rivulets of cold sweat trickle down your spine. In the past I adopted a tone of contemptuous sarcasm. «I haven’t read any of them; otherwise, why would I keep them here?» But this is a dangerous answer because it invites the obvious follow-up: «And where do you put them after you’ve read them?» The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: «And more, dear sir, many more,» which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: «No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office,» a reply that on the one hand suggests a sublime ergonomic strategy, and on the other leads the visitor to hasten the moment of his departure.
1990
How to Compile an Inventory
The Italian government has given assurances that something will be done to guarantee the autonomy of our country’s universities. Italian universities were autonomous in the Middle Ages, and they functioned better than they do today. American universities, whose perfection has become legendary for Europeans, are autonomous. German universities are under the jurisdiction of the regional authorities, but local governments are more
