How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays (A Harvest Book)

by Umberto Eco

There followed ten minutes of delightful, thrilling transgression. I was Lucifer, arrived from the world of shadows, and I illuminated everyone with the blazing torch of sin.

the cabalistic tradition (essential today for anyone who wants to understand contemporary poetry).

In any part of the world there is one sure way of recognizing a taxi driver: he is that person who never has any change.

He has no notion of the diversity, the variety, the incomparability of the various possible worlds.

Such people are confused by the fact that a protagonist of the mass media’s imaginary world should abruptly enter real life, but at the same time they behave in the presence of the real person as if he still belonged to the world of images, as if he were on a screen, or in a weekly picture magazine.

The mass media first convinced us that the imaginary was real, and now they are convincing us that the real is imaginary; and the more reality the TV screen shows us, the more cinematic our everyday world becomes. Until, as certain philosophers have insisted, we will think that we are alone in the world, and that everything else is the film that God or some evil spirit is projecting before our eyes.

All these clocks, like the whole information industry today, run the risk of no longer communicating anything because they tell too much. But they also possess another characteristic of the information industry: they no longer speak of anything except themselves and their internal functioning.

the prime condition of the existence of an office coordinating Secret Service activities, always in reciprocal competition, is the absolute secrecy of its information. This is a principle we observe so scrupulously that, as a rule, this office—to avoid leaks—tries not to be informed of anything being done by the services it must coordinate.

judicious mixing of terms de re and terms de dicto (on the order of “if Tullius is Cicero and Tullius is a seven-letter word, then Cicero is a seven-letter word”—a kind of reasoning that, thanks probably to the high level of logical formalization achieved by our officers, proves especially popular even in the most remote garrisons of the galactic outskirts).

As the Orion civilization has developed a system of transmigration of souls a.k.a. metempsychosis, the Ori-onides regard death with extreme nonchalance, and any sports competition in which they participate thus proves extremely unsporting. If their presence is absolutely necessary, it is suggested that they be matched with other units having a highly developed sense of life after death: Swiss Guards from the Vatican, Irish Infantry, Spanish Falange, Japanese Air Force.

Granny always suggested I eat only a part of the cone, then throw away the pointed end, because it had been touched by the vendor’s hand (though that was the best part, nice and crunchy, and it was regularly eaten in secret, after a pretense of discarding it).

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.

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.

Teachers engaged on temporary contracts ought to be outside scholars of great reputation and irreplaceable expertise. But between the submission of the university’s request and notification of the ministry’s approval we usually reach the end of the academic year, with only a few weeks of instruction remaining (unless the ministry simply says no). Clearly, in such an aleatory situation, it is hard to attract a Nobel laureate, and we end up with the dean’s unemployed sister-in-law.

Culture, as we know, is all the more interesting if it serves to revise and correct nature. Nature is tough and hostile; culture, on the contrary, allows people to do things with less effort, saving time. Culture frees the body from the enslavement of toil and opens the way to contemplation.

Unfortunately, there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone in using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working.

Human beings have always been merciless with animals, but when humans became aware of their own cruelty, they began, if not to love all animals (because, with only sporadic hesitation, they continue eating them), at least to speak well of them. As the media, the schools, public institutions in general, have to explain away so many acts performed against humans by humans, it seems finally a good idea, psychologically and ethically, to insist on the goodness of animals. We allow children of the Third World to die, but we urge children of the First to respect not only butterflies and bunny rabbits but also whales, crocodiles, snakes. Mind you, this educational approach is per se correct. What is excessive is the persuasive technique chosen: to render animals worthy of rescue they are humanized, toyified. No one says they are entitled to survive even if, as a rule, they are savage and carnivorous. No, they are made respectable by becoming cuddly, comic, good-natured, benevolent, wise, and prudent.

Native Americans are severely threatened: passing the calumet from mouth to mouth has caused, as everyone knows, the near-extinction of the Indian nation. Citizens of the Middle East and of Afghanistan are exposed to the licking of camels, hence the high mortality rate in Iran and Iraq. A desaparecido runs great risk when his merciless torturers spit in his face. Cambodians and the inhabitants of Lebanese camps should avoid the (blood) bath, discouraged by nine physicians out of ten (the tenth, more open-minded, is Dr. Mengele). South African blacks are exposed to infection of various kinds when the white man considers them with contempt, grimaces, and ejects saliva. Political prisoners of every color must take great care to elude the backhand slap of the police, striking their teeth after similarly touching the gums of other persons held for questioning. Members of populations subject to endemic famine must try not to swallow frequently in an attempt to allay the pangs of hunger, as their saliva, which has come into contact with the foul air of their surroundings, can contaminate their intestines.

The instructions enclosed in the box, in contrast, succeed with a minimum of words in making incomprehensible the warnings on which our lives depend: “No counterindication, except in cases of unforeseen lethal reaction to product.”

In the flat and excessive spaces of Alessandria you become lost. When the city is really deserted, early in the morning, at night, or on the Ferragosto holiday (or even any Sunday at around 1:30 P.M.,) the way from one place to another, in this tiny city, is always too long, and all of it is in the open, where anyone in ambush behind a corner, or in a passing carriage, might see you, invade your privacy, shout your name, ruin you forever. Alessandria is more vast than the Sahara, with faded Morgan le Fays crossing it in every direction. This is why the people talk very little, merely exchanging rapid signals; they lose you (and themselves). This conditions relationships, hatreds as much as loves. Alessandria, as an urban entity, has no gathering points (or perhaps just one, Piazzetta della Lega), but it has dispersion points almost everywhere. For this reason you never know who’s there and who isn’t.

Fog is good and loyally rewards those who know it and love it. Walking in fog is better than walking in snow, tramping it down with hobnailed boots, because the fog comforts you not only from below but also from above, you don’t soil it, you don’t destroy it, it enfolds you affectionately and resumes its form after you have passed. It fills your lungs like a good tobacco; it has a strong and healthy aroma; it strokes your cheeks and slips between your lapels and your chin, tickling your neck, it allows you to glimpse from the distance ghosts that dissolve as you move closer, or it lets you suddenly discern in front of you forms, perhaps real, that dodge you and disappear into the emptiness. (Unfortunately, what you really need is a permanent war, with a blackout; it is only in such times that the fog is at its best, but you can’t always have everything.) In the fog you are sheltered against the outside world, face to face with your inner self. Nebulat ergo cogito.