Unfortunately, as is often the case, I haven’t been able to live up to my intentions – Ulysses, by James Joyce hasn’t gone past the second chapter, and though I still intend (horrible word) on reading it in the near future, I have come to the conclusion that reading on the computer is a dreadful pain in the ass. On the other hand I have just finished another book ‘Baudolino’, by Umberto Eco. I’ll say right off the bat that Umberto Eco has had a substantial influence on my concept of culture and will most likely continue to do so in any forthcoming creative endeavors. Though mainly known as a novelist, what attracted me to him and his work are his reflections and academic publications on semiotics and socio-linguistics. However, he still is a novelist and, as a matter of fact, Baudolino is one of his novels.
The plot is rather long and winding but this is the premise: during the sack of Constantinople, Nikelai, a government official, is saved by Baudolino, a mysterious adventurer. Nikelai is then asked by his rescuer to listen to his outstanding life story. At the same time, however, he warns him that he has a great talent for telling lies. While the city burns to the ground, Nikelai is mesmerized by the intriguing, though outrageous tales told by this self-confessed liar about legendary lands, conspiracies, friendships, wars, mythical creatures and transfiguration. Throughout the book, we cannot but share Nikelai’s distrust for Bauldolino’s tales, no mater how plausible they may be. We are constantly led by the author to doubt what is being told, to the point that we almost no longer believe what we know to be true to begin with.

I believe it was Umberto Eco who once said that a symbol is anything that may be used to tell a lie, and in the book itself he indirectly refers to himself as a greater liar than Baudolino. The book seems to be an entertaining demonstration of how one may use a relatively small number of alleged truths to fabricate an outstanding amount of fascinating lies – lies which end up having a tremendous impact on our own existence and on the entire course of history.
As he sees it, our human heritage is a complex web of more-or-less unintentional falsehood, misconception and ambiguous contingencies. But as Baudolino says, ‘by imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.’
The process has both political and aesthetic value: while demystifying cornerstones of human experiences such as culture, history, religion and even what we call reality, portraying them as figments of our fallible and gullible minds, Eco elevates them to the realm of the exquisite and the significant - world where everything is relative but at the same time only that which is relative can be meaningful.

A friend of mine referred to the book as verbose, and I have to agree it is at times difficult to read. The narration falls short of being entertaining tout-court. Some pages do make you want to roll your eyes and put down the book. This could partially be attributed to an inadequate or excessively literal translation. Italian tends to have a higher tolerance for elaborated prose. The same doesn’t necessarily hold true for English and at times an unfiltered translation of Italian syntax may be difficult to digest. Coming from an Italian background, I tend to do the same. On the other hand, I also remember an Italian acquaintance telling me he was unable to get thorough ‘the Island of the day before’ - so the books faults cannot only be imputed to the unfortunate translator.

However, in my opinion, anyone who can cleverly scramble religion, politics, divination, science, history, myth, deceit and love, insolently insinuating they are all equally valid attempts to bestow meaning on otherwise vile and senseless human lives, is to be reverenced.