The Infinity of Lists
| Author | Eco, Umberto |
| Published | 2009 |
| Status | read |
| Rating | 5/5 |
Maybe the best combination of visual art and literary commentary I’ve read. An esoteric subject, clearly thought out, made accessible. I love this book.
It has a vibe coincident with The Poetics of Space (Bachelard), and I like them for the same reason: they run the ordinary through a filter of poetry and intertext, and the result is a cloud of wonder, fun, and illumination.
As an example, here’s a source woven into a series of plates representing fishes:
“And you who of two species are neither and both, who are not yet salmon and no longer trout, and who, holding the place between the two, O salmon-trout, are caught at an intermediate age? You also must be mentioned among the river-armies, O gudgeon, who are no larger than two thumbless hands, but very fat and round, and bigger with your egg-laden belly. O gudgeon, you have counterfeited thee hanging beard of the barbel. You, now shall be celebrated, great silurus, sea animal: your body seems smeared with Attic oil; I think of you as the dolphin of the river: so grandly do you glide through the water, and, in the shallows or the river’s weeds, you move with difficulty and weariness the curves of your long body.” (Decimus Magnus Ausonius, The Mosella, related on pp. 55-57 of The Infinity of Lists)
I happened to have read Finnegans Wake for the first time around when I read The Infinity of Lists, so a mention of the Liffey as represented by Joyce was welcome, too, in the “Lists of Places” chapter. Lists turn out to be a great context in which to navigate literary history and human thought:
“Another dizzying list of places is brought into play by Joyce in the chapter of Finnegans Wake called Anna Livia Plurabelle where, to give the sense of the flowing of the river Liffey, Joyce inserted hundreds of names of rivers in all countries, variously disguised in the from of puns or portmanteau words. It is not easy for the reader to recognize virtually unknown rivers such as the Chebb, Futt, Bann, Duck, Sabrainn, Till, Waag, Bomu, Boyana, Chu, Batha, Skillos, Shari, Sui, Tom, Chef, Syr Darya, or Ladder Burn, and so on. Since the translations are usually quite free, often the reference to the river appears not in the same place as in the original or, as was the case with the first attempt at an Italian translation made with the collaboration of Joyce himself, there are references to Italian rivers such as the Serio, Po, Serchio, Piave, Conca, Aniene, Ombrone, Lambro, Taro, Toce, Belbo, Sillaro, Tagliamento, Lamone, Brembo, Trebbio, Mincio, Tidone, and Panaro, which do not exist in the English text. The same thing happened with the first historic French translation.” (Eco, The Infinity of Lists p. 82)
