Baudolino

Baudolino

Two years have passed since I started reading this amazing book: Baudolino by Umberto Eco. Two long, amazing and exciting years I’ve lived by his side, reading and almost living his thoughts, feelings and words, but now it’s over just like the last chapter title, Baudolino is not here anymore. He has left, or I left him. It’s hard to say who left who, after all in the book he leaves, but I’m the one who finished and closed the book. Finishing killed me. I almost cried. To don’t do so I felt asleep because it was 12 pm or am. It doesn’t matter since the hour on my clock was 0:00. No hours no more stories to read or tell. The next morning I woke up and saw the book by my side, closed to never be opened by me again. That feeling stroke me; I wanted to cry again, and the need to do so was much harder to contain within my heart. I decided I needed to write about it, about Baudolino. He deserves it even if he never existed, even if he was never true, but Eco wrote about him and I read it, and now he exists for me as he exists for millions of other readers. I’m sitting here, now trying to write. Actually I know what I will write, but I want to choose a letter font that deserves to write about Baudolino, It was quite hard, but I choose this one. It’s not very easy to read because it’s small and tight, I cannot follow the English rules of italicizing the book title because the font is already italicized, but it was the closest I could get to Baudolino story: the best lie of history.

Baudolino is a great liar, and so are his friends, but he’s the greatest. He never lied just to lie, he never lied to hurt; he lied for good, but never lied about great events, always about the small happenings, never something you could notice or doubt. If he existed and knew how to write correctly, he would be a great writer, but his desires and ambitions went much farther away from the parchment. He needed to live more what he lived, keep his promises and do what he wanted to do over all the things he wanted: visit the kingdom of Priest John and give him the Holy Grail and do all he said he would do, but to know what those other “things” are you must read the book; I highly recommend it to everyone but children.

I always wanted to be an archeologist and an actress, and now I know what I will do when I start my archeology career. I’ll start adapting Baudolino’s maps to modern maps and try to find Priest John reign. The adapting will start this vacation and the searching will be later, maybe in my college years. Supposedly it is around Iraq or Iran, I’m not sure. It sounds hard, but I don’t care, I’ll do it anyway, or at least try.

 If people look for Atlantis, why can’t they look for Priest John reign? There are many people in the world looking for for glory and greatness. I’m here, with hundreds of other people, looking for lost relics, places and reins. This is one of the oldest professions, and since I like ancient and old objects, I choose this.

Some quotes from the book:

“You see there are moments when perfection itself appears in a hand or in a face, in some nuance on the flanks of a hill or on the sea’s surface, moments when your heart is paralyzed before the miracle of beauty… I saw something ancient, because I knew I was not seeing something beautiful, but beauty itself, like the holy thought of God. I was discovering that perfection even glimpsing it once, and once only, was something light and lovely.” Baudolino by Umberto Eco

“There are no stories without meaning. And I am of those men who can find it even when others fail to see it. Afterwards the story becomes the book of the living, like a blaring trumpet that raises from the tomb those who have been dust for centuries…”Baudolino by Umberto Eco

“Yes, I know, it’s not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.” Baudolino by Umberto Eco

“There, Master Nikets,’Baudolino said, ‘when I was not pre to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. A bit with the help of wine, and a bit with that of the green honey. There is nothing better than imagining other worlds,’ he said, ‘to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn’t yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.” Baudolino by Umberto Eco.

“If you want to become a man of letter and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise you History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.” Baudolino by Umberto Eco