Personal Blogs

'But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempts to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth' (Eco, pp 95).

I don't always write about how a book made me feel, but when I do, it's because I genuinely cannot help it. And I've just finished Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco, and it is exactly the sort of book you need to talk about in order to wrap your head around. 

I was aware, tangentially, that Eco had an excellent grasp on the follies of human nature, but this one really hits it out of the park. It is weird, wild, and frustratingly ambiguous right up until the very end. And I would dare to say that's the point. Causabon and Belbo are not characters to be understood, I think, no matter how one might relate to one or both, or how they try to understand each other. And if the understanding of the self as mastery of the world is not the theme of this book, I will found a secret order and create a Plan to make sure that it becomes so. If you get it, you get it. 

Eco's expression of the deep psychological desire for control and the very human need to pull order and structure from chaos makes for an incredibly interesting read; with a slow build and a tumultuous rush to the bizarre ending, it drew me in and twisted my perceptions until I, too, was trying to make sense of Abulafia's connections. It's a poignant commentary about the need for meaning and the willingness of the human mind to deceive itself, if only that meaning can be attained; 'A Plan, a guilty party. The dream of our species. An Deus sit. If He exists, it's His fault' (Eco, pp 528). 

Also, I now know way too much about Templar conspiracies and esoteric rituals; the research for this novel must have been insane. This novel is insane. 641 pages well-spent, I would say. 

'We offered a map to people who were trying to overcome a deep, private frustration. What frustration? Belbo's last file suggested it to me: There can be no failure if there really is a Plan. Defeated you may be, but never through any fault of your own. To bow to a cosmic will is no shame. You are not a coward; you are a martyr' (Eco, pp 619).

I'm not laughing, thanks. As predicted, I'm not especially good at keeping up with these sorts of things. Consistency is not a virtue I possess, I can admit that. 

I'm really only back because I've been struck with the sudden desire to rant about 'Narcissus and Goldmund' by Hermann Hesse. Why is it that some translations read so smoothly and some just feel...awkward? I'm not sure, of course, but I am really enjoying the language of Hesse's novel. I haven't actually finished it yet, I'm about two-thirds of the way through, but some of the themes are just kinda...smack-you-in-the-face obvious. Light and dark, maternal and paternal, freedom and duty, emotion and reason, love and abstinence. Art versus intellectualism.  I could go on. Got a lot of lovely point and counterpoint, classic foils, and epic quotes. Like....

"I call a person awake who with his reason and consciousness, knows himself, knows his innermost, irrational forces, urges and weaknesses, and how to take them into account."

Or

"Perhaps, he thought, the root of all art, and perhaps also of all intellectual activity, is the fear of death. We fear it, we shudder at the ephemeral nature of all things, we grieve to see the constant cycle of fading flowers and falling leaves and are aware in our own hearts of the certainty that we too are ephemeral and will soon fade away." 

Calm down, Hermann. Like I know you got a Nobel Prize for Literature, I get it. I see why. You're a counter-culture icon and I know it. 

Also, as a prediction: I have the sneaking suspicion that Goldmund is going to die. He's gonna die in the end, and you know how I know? Because he's symbolised life and living in the animal reality of the body and with the winds of fate and chance and you just know that he's going to die and Narcissus will outlive him and probably watch him die and be all....I dunno, psychopomp to Goldmund's soul in the same way that he was Goldmund's awakening to life. Might be crazy. I'll finish the book and get back to you. 

I definitely ought to be more focused on writing my first TMA, but I really can't help myself.