The Island Of The Day Before by Umberto Eco

Author:Umberto Eco [Eco, Umberto]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-28T17:47:50+00:00

The Island Of The Day Before

CHAPTER 22

T he O range D ove

in the days that followed it became clear that the Specula Melitensis could not be reached, because Father Wanderdrossel, like Roberto, was unable to swim. The longboat was still over there in the inlet, but it was as if it did not exist.

Now that he had a strong young man at his disposal, Fa?ther Caspar could have constructed a raft and made a big oar but, as he had explained, all the tools and materials were on the Island. Without an axe they could not chop down the masts or the yards, without hammers they could not unhinge the doors and nail them together.

But Father Caspar did not seem excessively troubled by his long isolation; indeed, he rejoiced, as he could once again en?joy the use of his cabin, the deck, and some instruments of study and observation.

Roberto still did not understand what Father Caspar Wan?derdrossel was. A sage? That, certainly, or at least a scholar, a man curious about both natural and divine science. An eccen?tric? To be sure. At one moment he let fall that this ship had been fitted out not at the expense of the Society but with his private funds, or, rather, the money of his brother, a rich merchant as mad as he was; on another occasion he confided, complaining, that some of his fellow Jesuits had stolen many fecondissime ideas after pretending to reject them as mere scribbling. Which suggested that back in Rome those reverend fathers had not grieved at the departure of this sophistic char?acter. Considering that he was sailing at his own expense and there was a good chance he might be lost along those perilous routes, they may have encouraged him in order to be rid of him.

The company Roberto had kept in Provence and in Paris had been such as to make him skeptical of the assertions of physics and natural philosophy that he heard the old man now make. But as we have seen, Roberto absorbed knowledge to which he was exposed as if he were a sponge, and was not distressed at believing in contradictory truths. Perhaps it was not that he lacked a taste for system; his was a choice.

In Paris the world had appeared to him a stage on which deceptions were depicted, for the spectator wanted to follow and admire a different story every evening, as if the usual things, even if miraculous, no longer enlightened anyone, and only the unusually uncertain or the certainly unusual were able still to stimulate. The ancients had affirmed that for any question a sole answer existed, whereas the great theater of Paris offered him the spectacle of a question to which the most varied replies could be given. Roberto decided to concede only half of his spirit to the things he believed (or believed he be?lieved), keeping the other half open in case the contrary was true.

If such was the disposition of his mind, we

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