To dream up a world, then to realize that the dreaming has changed the world you are in -- to lie with honest intentions, create stories that become history and are pronounced as facts -- Umberto Eco introduces us to Baudolino in Chapter one with ‘Baudolino tries his hand at writing’.
The chapter is a scribbled piece where Baudolino introduces himself through his own early attempt at writing. The writing is on a page that Baudolino has stolen from the cabinet of Bishop Oto, scraped it clean and written on. We stumble across phrases with a strike through them or the remains of Latin that Baudolino was unable to remove. The meta-quality of the book begins its pervasion.[break]
Baudolino’s storytelling begins when he rescues Niketas, a Byzantium historian, during the siege of Constantinople in 1204. He guides Niketas to safety among the Genoese people and finds that he enjoys telling Niketas his own story. The novel then unfolds as we hear his side of the story. The telling of the story seems important for Niketas to understand his rescuer but later, it becomes more important for Baudolino to continue telling the story until he himself is the rescued.
Eco sometimes deviates from Baudolino’s point of view and we see things that he may have only heard of or when he was not present in-scene. The writing is compelling enough to not raise questions as the reader understands that Baudolino is a liar and what he says is not necessarily to be believed. However, Baudolino is different from other liars -- he lies to create truths with positive outcomes and lies so sincerely as not to do harm. He himself says, “...the problem of my life is that I’ve always confused what I saw with what I wanted to see.”
Born to a poor peasant family, Baudolino is the son of Gagliaudo Aulari, a legendary figure who saved the city of Alessandria. When the Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa meets Baudolino, he finds the boy fascinating and decides to take him under his wing even though he knows he is a liar. Baudolino considers Barbarossa his adopted father and is devoted to carrying out his missions; until he finds himself torn when he falls in love with the empress and his adopted mother.
He decides to part ways from his father and leaves for Paris to pursue Among them is Abdul, a young man in love with a woman he has never seen, and the Poet, who is never able to write a poem.
The Poet, Abdul and other friends of Baudolino end up in Barbarossa’s court. Baudolino writes poems for the Poet and he creates reasons for his other friends to be with him. The boys had together in Paris invented the world of Prester John, and long after Paris, while serving Barbarossa, decide to go in search of the Prester John’s land. The baffling and beguiling element here of Eco’s stories is that what began as a myth begins to take shape as reality.
We leave in search of Prester John with the characters and quickly drop our guards and forget our doubts about what is real and what is not. The skiapods and hypatia are taken with good standing and when Baudolino begins to create relics in order to survive, we are cheering them on. Eco, with his vast knowledge of history and the ways in which they are created, writes a fine tale.
The only drawback is that he sometimes gets caught up in the descriptions, which span over pages, making the reading tedious. Sometimes, he skims over the conflicts and relationships of his characters too easily, dwelling instead of the city and places they pass through.
Baudolino is not as well constructed as In the Name of the Rose, but it is certainly entertaining to read. The story doesn’t quite end with Baudolino’s narration and continues to follow him until he himself becomes a mythical figure of folklore.
Definitely a book worth finishing once you’ve started.
“There is nothing better than imaging 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.”