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Eco, Umberto “Baudolino” Hbk Secker &
Warburg, 2002 £17.99; Pbk Vintage, 2003 £7.99. 522pp. (Prices are r.r.p.)
Fortean Times rarely publishes reviews books that are
straightforward “Fiction”, as opposed to
“Non-Fiction” (however factual). However, I feel that this novel of
ideas by Umberto Eco is well worthy of consideration on any Forteans bookshelf.
Hell, they may even read the thing eventually. And that’s because Eco is
working in territory that will be familiar to any Fortean, dealing with human
beliefs, understandings, meanings of a wide variety of phenomena. N.B. those
expecting a novel with dense characterisation and attention to the minutiae of
everyday life will be disappointed in this. It simply isn’t that sort of a
book, but it does feature a “Byzantine” plot.
The tale is set in early 13th century Europe /
Asia, and the central character is an Italian peasant, raised by chance to a
functionary of the Holy Roman Emperor himself, the mighty “Babarossa” or
Frederick the Great as others might know him. Frederick gives Baudolino the
opportunity to escape the endless fighting between himself and the recalcitrant
Italian city-states and the odd Pope or two, to obtain an education in Paris.
Here he meets up with his merry band of seekers who concoct a story concerning
the legendary Prester John, who allegedly lives in a far away land to the East,
beyond civilisation. Each of the seekers creates in his mind his ultimate wish-fulfilment
and between them they create a flimsy but just-believable land, which they
ultimately persuade Barbarossa himself to lead to crusade to find.
Thus this tapestry of desire and meaning, deceit and
intrigue becomes for each his own quest, and inevitably when we talk quest, we
talk Holy Grail, or Grasal, as it is termed here. Eco then further complicates
the story by embedding the hero’s narration of it in the sacking of Byzantium
(or was it Constantinople by then?) by the Christians of the Fourth Crusade, and
complicates Baudolino’s life by involving him in three love affairs, each
differing from the others in vital ways, but each central to the quest. And it
wouldn’t be an Eco without an echo of a murder mystery, here provided by the
strange death of Frederick the Great somewhere in Asia Minor. For whose death
each of the merry band is secretly suspected by some of the others, and each, in
turn, fears he may have been responsible for it in some way.
Probably the most comic, poignant and ultimately tragic
episode is near the end where the Baudolino (who we know survives as he is
recounting his adventures (or so he claims) subsequent to the events) and the
remaining crew, and now posing as the Magi of biblical fame, although of
uncertain appearance and number, eventually arrive in a land populated by the
legendary characters found on certain ancient (well medieval anyway) manuscripts
and maps, on the borders of the lands of Prester John himself. Eco’s treatment
of how the travellers deal with and come to terms with difference is well
handled, but even better is the working out of how a society of such characters
could have functioned. For this is the land of the skiapods (people with one leg
and a huge foot on the end of it), the blemmyae (people with no head but with
facial features on their chests), panotians (people with monstrous ears which
they can totally envelop themselves), ponces, the tongueless, nubians and
one-eyed giants. Here the creatures are sharply divided but not on the basis of
their physiognomy but their religious beliefs, in particular which of the
Christian heresies they firmly believe in.
And then beyond this land there is a land where the hypatia live, all named Hypatia, after the Egyptian mathematician, who have lived there for centuries in an all-female society, searching for the ultimate truth, breeding with the satyrs-who-are-not-seen. And, naturally, this particular Hypatia has a unicorn. And Baudolino falls in love with her.
I don’t want to spoil the book for those who are about to
read it, so I won’t give away too much, especially the denouement. But do read
closely the chapters on Frederick’s death and see if you can work out how he
died. But that mystery is, in many ways, a red herring. For what the book is
really about (or is it?) is the search for the truth, for meaning, for identity,
for riches, for power, for whatever it is that gives the impetus to keep going
in the face of all that life throws at you. (And there are some very unpleasant
things flying around at times in this book!) But can you believe any of it. (OK
it’s a work of fiction anyway, with a storyteller narrating his tale to
someone else, neither of whom is particularly trust-worthy.) Which, in it’s
own way, brings back to the Fortean aspects of this book.
Central to the Fortean “quest” is the documentation of
the “strange”, the unusual, the out-of-place, the unnatural, the freak. On
top of that has been added the questioning of the reliability of reports, the
influence that our minds have on what we perceive and on a larger scale, how
society, through language, education etc, help create our ideas. What reading
this book should do is question the very concept of the “strange”. That is,
who defines what is strange and what is normal. By what criteria do we judge
strangeness? As the 30th anniversary issue of FT has hinted at, the
concept is not static, it changes through time with changes in science, in
social understandings and perceptions, through changes in moral judgement and
simple fashions. One possible reading one can glean from this book is that what
constitutes “difference” varies between peoples and times and societies. But
what seems to endure is “difference” in some form or another. Perhaps we
should therefore re-cast Fortean Times as a chronicle of “difference” and
how it varies and changes, to avoid the normative connotations of “the
strange”.
Summary: An intellectual quest novel, well worth reading.
8/10
Richard Alexander