Fiction: For Umerto Eco, the literary and the popular are not mutually exclusive and his latest novel, Baudolino is an example of this fusion at its best, writes Marco Sonzogni
'Serendipty", Horace Walpole told Mann in 1754, was a word he had coined from the fairytale The Three Princes of Serendip. In the tale the heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of".
In i (1998), one of his most thought-provoking essay collections, Umberto Eco explored the "force of the false". By uncovering the mistakes of professional scholars and amateur seekers in their attempts to make sense of the world, the riddles of history, he maintained, can be unravelled. One such enigma - the authenticity of a mythical letter describing a Christian kingdom in the Far East (Marco Polo too was intrigued by it!) - re-emerges in Baudolino, Eco's latest work of historical fiction.
Titled after the name of the protagonist, Baudolino is a historical novel embedded in the fantastical narrative of a picaresque adventure. For Eco, the literary and the popular are not mutually exclusive. Baudolino is an example of this fusion at its best. The novel, mixing pages of intellectual discussion and exhilarating comedy, deals with battles, politics, religion, sex and much more in a festival of baroque abundance that further reveals Eco's practically inexhaustible erudition.
For this latest book, Eco returns to the Middle Ages, the setting of his bestselling work, The Name of the Rose. In Baudolino, however, the lay world of Frederick Barbarossa's imperial court replaces the world of the monastery and the internal disputes of the church.
Set in 12th-century Europe and the Near East, the story begins when Baudolino is in Constantinople as it is sacked by the crusaders. There, he saves the life of a historian and high court official, Niketas, to whom he decides to disclose the "tall tales" of his life.
A talented scoundrel of peasant origin (the Italian equivalent of Schelm in Germany or Trickster God in England), Baudolino is adopted by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa. With a band of intrepid friends who have met at university in Paris, Baudolino engineers all sorts of, to borrow George Steiner's expression, "salutary exaggerations".
Because he believes in his invented utopias and acts upon them with the world around him as his co-conspirator, Baudolino's lies become truths. By "telling stories", in both the literal and idiomatic senses, he shapes the course of history as a Big Brother-like collective illusion. So we learn, for example, that he is the creator of the Holy Grail myth as well as the alleged ghostwriter of Héloîse and Abélard's renowned love letters and part of what is to become The Name of the Rose. But Baudolino's ultimate dream originates in the letter of the legendary priest and ruler, Prester John. He is determined to travel to the Far East in pursuit of that mythical Christian kingdom and persuades Barbarossa to embark on this unachievable mission. During the journey, the emperor dies in mysterious circumstances.
Baudolino continues the expedition to his "promised land" and encounters all sorts of creatures, from strange monsters in medieval bestiaries to fairytale unicorns and maidens. Narrating his life, including his love for a unique woman, to his erudite confidante, Baudolino realises that he has come to understand something important and that "his destiny" is not yet fulfilled. This realisation provokes a surprising finale.
In Eco's latest work of fiction, the reader is confronted with the enigmatic yet illuminating interaction of truth and imagination when recording history. Reading Baudolino, the margins between reality and fantasy, chronicle and fable, epic and cartoon, scholarship and entertainment are continuously blurred. Thus, the reader ends up questioning real events (such as Carlo Magnus's canonisation and the Magi's translation) as the fabrications of a ludic mind.
When Baudolino débuted in Italy, the late Maria Corti pointedly observed that in this work Eco was at his most playful. Another critic identified Eco's "irreverent and deliciously vulgar" sense of humour. This is brilliantly retained in Weaver's impeccable translation and will charm readers worldwide, establishing Baudolino as another bestselling title.
Its intellectual playfulness is reminiscent of Woody Allen. Might the American director (whose early works Eco translated into Italian) make a film of this enthralling book? If Sean Connery was the perfect Guglielmo da Baskerville, "liar liar" Jim Carrey would make a believable Baudolino.
Marco Sonzogni is faculty fellow in Italian at University College, Dublin
Baudolino. By Umberto Eco. Translated by William Weaver. Secker & Warburg, 512pp. £18