From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation

by Umberto Eco

  Behind this semiotics there lies a metaphysics: reality exists, and can be investigated, so long as people follow “a method which has been recommended to them for long enough—the method of observing, listening, comparing and thinking before they begin to talk” (p. 583). This rule is not as simplistic as it might appear at first sight. It repeats in a popular form a precept of Galileo’s, which the positive and prudent characters in the novel, however, when confronted with everyday reality, put into practice in the light of common sense and not according to the dictates of the Accademia del Cimento. But when it comes to applying it to historical reconstruction, Manzoni shows us nonetheless how it works. Given that words are misleading, and what we know about things that happened in the past we know only through verbal accounts, Manzoni instinctively appeals to a precept already formulated by Saint Augustine in his De Doctrina Christiana. When confronted with the various versions of the sacred books, all of them translations of translations, while the mystery of the original Hebrew text, by now hopelessly adulterated, remains unknown, all we can do is compare the versions among themselves, set them one against the other, and obtain from the one clarification of what is lacking in the other.

  This is what Manzoni does, in dealing with the manuscript of the anonymous author, which has unreliability, so to speak, written all over it, given the verbal excesses with which, with typical baroque emphasis, it is embellished. Since he feels that behind this discourse (which is verbal) there lies “such a good story” (and a story is a fabula, a sequence of events or, as Aristotle would have said, the imitation of an action, something nonverbal), Manzoni decides “to search among the memoirs of the period, to satisfy ourselves whether that was really the way things happened in those days” (p. 21). And his investigation, in the form of a collation of texts, dissipates all doubt: though camouflaged by so much literary artifice, something must indeed have occurred.

  The same procedure is followed with regard to the plague. Consider the opening of chapter 31: “The plague … really had arrived,”1 where that word “really,” a verificative intrusion of the narrative voice, liquidates once and for all any doubts to which the conflicting verbal texts might give rise. The thing in itself, the Dynamical Object, is there somewhere or other, or was there; our problem is to interpret the signs and make it reappear. But even here, as long as what we are dealing with are verbal accounts, “Every one of them leaves out essential facts which others record … every one of them contains material errors, which can be recognized and corrected with the help of one of the others, or of the few official documents that have come down to us in published or unpublished form. Often one writer gives us the cause of effects which we have already seen floating unconnectedly in the pages of another” (p. 564). And therefore, “examining and collating” the various sources we may hope, not only to identify the most salient facts, but also “to arrange them in the order in which they happened” (p. 565).

  We are dealing here, not with Manzoni’s idea of historical truth or with his theory of knowledge, which is what it is. What we want to underscore is that, unless philological scrupulousness is exercised to the full, verbal accounts are deceptive by their very nature. The author Manzoni may well reconstruct the order of events through language, but the characters in the novel are either poor devils or persecutors of poor devils (only the positive characters are gifted with a kind of paraphilological, so to speak, intuition), and as a rule, in the novel, language is a bearer of wind, if not of lies.

  Let us take a look at the passage which Manzoni (not Quine) devotes in chapter 27 to the impossibility, not so much of translation between one language and another, but of that daily process of interpretation by which an illiterate person tells the scrivener what he wants to say, the scrivener writes down what he understands to have happened or what he thinks should have happened, the reader recruited by the addressee interprets it for himself, and the illiterate addressee, seeking criteria for interpretation in the facts that he knows, distorts the message in his turn. This is an extremely effective representation of how, through successive interpretations, the message becomes completely garbled and is made to express, not only what the original sender did not mean to say, but also what the same message, as the linear manifestation of a text, set against a code, ought not to say, if a community of interpreters inspired by common sense and respect for the rules were to get together and agree on a publicly acceptable reading. Which is not what happens; and Manzoni’s description comes across as a portrait of a process of interpretive drift. With, in the end, “the two sides … at the same stage of mutual understanding as two medieval scholars might once have been after four hours of argument about the entelechy” (p. 497).

  The peasant who cannot write, and needs something written, turns to someone who has learned to use a pen. He chooses him, as far as he can, among those of his own class; for he is either shy of approaching others, or does not trust them sufficiently. He tells the man what has gone before, with such clarity and logical order as he can muster, and then tells him, in the same style, what he wants to say. The literate friend understands part of what he says, and misunderstands another part; he advises him, suggests a couple of changes, and then says ‘Leave it to me!’ He takes up his pen, and puts the first man’s thoughts in literary form, as best he can; corrects them or improves on them, adds emphasis or takes it away, even leaves bits out, as seems best to him. For there is no getting away from it—a man who knows more than his neighbors does not care to be a passive tool in their hands, and once he has become involved in their affairs, wants to give them a little guidance. Moreover, the literate friend may not always succeed in saying what he means. Sometimes he says something quite different. (We professional writers of books have been known to do the same.) When such a letter reaches the other correspondent, who is equally ignorant of his ABC, he takes it to another learned man of the same caliber, who reads it and explains it to him. Then doubts arise over what the letter really means. The interested party, with his knowledge of what has gone before, maintains that certain words must mean one thing; but the man who is doing the reading, from his knowledge of the written language, claims that they must mean something else. In the end the man who cannot write must put himself in the hands of the of the man who can, and must charge him with the task of replying. The answer will be composed in the same fashion as the first letter, and will be submitted to the same sort of interpretation. (p. 497)

  And if that wasn’t enough to make us distrustful of language, we have only to see what Don Ferrante, with his extensive library, does with it when it comes to discussing the plague (chapter 37). After two chapters of nonverbal evidence, thanks to which the reader is by now fully informed, the Aristotelian librarian, with a few well-chosen syllogisms (the contagion cannot be a substance) and an equal number of paralogisms (the contagion cannot be an accident), succeeds in covering up reality to such a point that he can recognize it only when he will no longer be conscious of it. And, as just punishment for the arrogance of the word, his famous library “may well be still lying around on the secondhand bookstalls” (p. 700).

  That discourses lie, or can never be sufficiently explicit, seems clear enough. If proof were required, we need only recall the fact that many readers, of Manzoni’s novel, with understandable indolence, skip all the examples of those inconclusive, ambiguous, and confused discourses, living parasitically off one other, that are the seventeenth-century edicts against the bravoes.

  What is it then that, read correctly, does not lie? I would say, primarily, what is not oral, but visual, and, if it is oral, what belongs to the sphere of the paralinguistic, the suprasegmental, or the tonemic—the inflections, volume, and rhythms of the voice.

  14.2. Popular Semiosis

  We referred at the beginning to a natural semiosis as opposed to the semiosis of the word. It would be inexact to say that in Manzoni the classical distinction between motivated, unintentional, natural semiosis and conventional and arbitrary semiosis
is clearly discernible. The best I can do, to define the first term of the opposition, is to call it “popular” semiosis. On the one hand we have verbal language, artificial (deceptive), at the beck and call of the powerful, on the other we have various systems of signs, which of course include the so-called natural signs, medical and atmospheric symptoms, physiognomic traits, but also those “languages” that are not natural, and are instead the effect of rules and habits, like dress, bodily posture, pictorial representations, the productions of folklore, liturgy—that somehow appeal to an ancestral and instinctive competence that belongs, not only to the learned, but also to the meek. Because of the natural nature of this competence, of the instinctive popularity of the encyclopedia to which it refers, we could call this type of semiosis, though it may be founded on rules and custom, the natural effect of a long-term deposit in the collective memory, not subject to the same rapid and reserved variations as the exercise of the verbal arts.

  It is not that popular semiosis is more “true” that the verbal kind: we will see how and to what extent it too can give rise to misunderstanding and mendacity. But to the meek it seems more comprehensible than verbal language, and they therefore consider it more reliable. So much so that when they make a mistake or are deceived about these forms of signification, they appear more vulnerable, because they do not employ the same systematic diffidence toward them that they employ toward verbal language. Take what happens (and we will have more to say about this later) during Renzo’s visit to Azzeccagarbugli (Dr. Quibbler) or in the entire case of the plague and the anointers (untori).

  The meek are suspicious of verbal language because it imposes a logical syntax abolished by natural semiosis, since the latter does not proceed by linear sequences but by “pictures,” or lightning “iconologemes.” Whereas the threads of the linguistic sequences may multiply ad infinitum, while the simple-minded become lost in this dark wood, natural semiosis on the other hand permits, or seems to permit, an easier access to the truth of things, of which it is a spontaneous vehicle: an authentic, instinctive gesture can reveal the intentional falsity of a previous gesture. The notary who arrests Renzo speaks to him encouragingly, Renzo distrusts the words but he could be taken in by the tone; the notary, however, has him handcuffed, and, seeing this sign, Renzo realizes without the shadow of a doubt that he is in trouble.

  The object of the narration is this popular semiosis in all its forms, because from it and through it the reader, no less than the characters, learns what is really happening, in other words the story, beneath the veil of the discourse.

  We constantly find, throughout the novel, this opposition between “natural” sign and verbal sign, between visual sign and linguistic sign. Manzoni is always so embarrassed by the verbal sign, so anxious to demonstrate his diffidence, that in all the instances of enunciation with which the novel is studded, he makes excuses for the way he is telling the story, whereas, when he assumes a veridictive tone, it is to point out the credit that must be given to a proof, a piece of evidence, a trace, a symptom, a clue, a finding.

  His characters act in the same way: either they speak with the deliberate intention of using language to lie, confuse, or conceal the proper relationships between things, or they apologize and complain that they are incapable of saying what they know. Though Renzo wants his children to learn how to read and write, he cannot help calling these verbal and grammatological artifices birberie, “a scoundrelly business” (p. 719). Renzo is suspicious of the language par excellence, Latin, and the only time that he quotes it he makes up a Babelic version (siés baraòs trapolorum, p. 279). Only once, in the final chapter, when by that time he has made his peace with Don Abbondio, does he say that he accepts the Latin of the wedding ceremony and the mass, but that is because it is “an honest, holy sort of Latin … and besides, you clerical gentlemen have to read what’s written in the book” (p. 709). The good Latin of the liturgy is not a spoken language; it is chant, formula, psalmody, plainsong, gesture, but it does not say anything and therefore cannot be false. It is like an article of clothing, a wave of the hand, a facial expression: all signs (and “signs” [segni] is what Manzoni calls them over and over again) that are part of a natural semiosis.

  At this point we would be advised to go through the entire novel to see if our hypothesis holds, whether it is true that at every stage there is this clear opposition between natural semiosis and language. It will be sufficient for now, however, to verify it in a few essential episodes.

  14.3. The Meeting with the Bravoes

  Don Abbondio has lived, and he is able to interpret many signs. He comes on the scene exhibiting the sign par excellence, the index finger, which he places in his breviary (per segno, as a sign, Manzoni naturally remarks). He passes an example of visual communication, a clumsily painted tabernacle, in which there can be no doubt that certain “long, snaky shapes with pointed ends … were meant by the artist and understood by the local inhabitants to be flames” (p. 27), and he sees “something he did not expect or want to see at all” (p. 28). Don Abbondio’s entire life, lived under the sign of tranquility, rests upon his faith in tried and true patterns of action, habitual frames and scenarios; and his tragicomedy begins the moment these expectations are frustrated—from then on he starts to see a number of things that he could never have expected, including a scoundrel who becomes a saint. Don Abbondio immediately recognizes the bravoes by “certain unmistakable signs”—their dress, their attitudes, their appearance—“which left no doubt about what they were” (p. 28). There follows the famous description of the bravoes, on the strength of which the reader will be able to recognize them every time they appear in the novel—except when they are described in words by the edicts, because from that confused set of injunctions, threats, and prescriptions the descriptions that emerge are vague and poorly defined.

  Don Abbondio recognizes the bravoes for what they are because he is in possession of a behavioral, vestimentary, and kinesic code. Otherwise, it would be hard to understand why he is able to identify them at first sight as “individuals of the species known as bravoes” (p. 28). (It is curious how scholastically rigorous Manzoni is at this point, how, using Aristotelian terms, he is able to suggest the semiotic relationship between type and token.)

  We may note in passing that Don Abbondio is fully aware that the habit and not the name make the monk. In the last chapter he will jestingly discuss with Renzo the inanity of the decree that grants to cardinals the title of “eminence” (p. 707). It has come about because at this point everybody was called “monsignor” or “your grace,” but before long everybody will want to be called “eminence,” and the linguistic innovation will have done nothing to bring order to the universe of ecclesiastical dignity and human vanity.

  The meeting with the bravoes takes place under the sign of the opposition between word and visual evidence. The bravoes speak, but what Don Abbondio understands always anticipates their words. The priest realizes “by certain unmistakable signs” (p. 32) that he is the one they are waiting for; he puts on a casual attitude, in the vain hope of deceiving the threatening characters who are lying in wait for him, running the first two fingers of his left hand under his collar; he decides that to run for it would have lent itself to an inauspicious interpretation (“it would have been the same as saying, follow me, or worse”); once more he pretends to be relaxed, reciting a verse or two out loud; he composes his face into as calm and carefree an expression as he can muster (because he knows that, since gestures and facial expressions speak, they can be manipulated in order to lie); he prepares a smile; and, to indicate his submission, he comes to a halt.

  As for the bravoes, when they speak (and so far they speak saying nonthreatening things), they speak with a menacing attitude, they speak in his ear “in a tone of impressive command” (p. 33), and they know full well that their attitude speaks louder than their words, because “if these things had to be settled by talk, [Don Abbondio with his book learning] would make rings round [
them]” (p. 33).

  There’s just one thing, at the end of the episode, that seems to challenge our hypothesis, and to this we must now turn our full attention.

  14.4. Proper Names

  The bravoes mention the name of Don Rodrigo and “The effect of that name on Don Abbondio’s mind was like a flash of lightning in the middle of the storm at night, which illuminates one’s surroundings confusedly for a moment, and makes them more terrifying than before” (p. 34). Confronted with this power of the name, it has to be said that, of all the flatus vocis that we cannot trust, proper names, because of their indexical nature, take on a particular status which makes them cognate with symptoms or visual signs.

  The novelist must certainly have faith in proper names, to identify his characters without ambiguity. Now it appears that when he needs these indispensable labels, for Renzo, Lucia, Agnese, Tonio, or Donna Prassede, Manzoni makes the most neutral choices possible, dipping into the liturgical calendar or into the Scriptures,

  For the historical characters in the background, he uses the names that history obliges him to use (Federigo, Ambrogio Spinola, Ferrer), but for the most part he could not be more careful about using as few surnames and place names as he can, resulting in the great abundance of asterisks that we are all familiar with, and the unrevealing antonomasias like “the Signora,” arriving finally at that masterpiece of reticence that is the name of the Unnamed, written with a lower case initial in the original no less.

  In other words, Manzoni has the same reluctance to divulge names that Renzo demonstrates at the inn in the presence of the pseudo-Ambrogio Fusella. And he does not appear to do so merely in obedience to the rules of the genre. He seems to lack faith in names because he realizes that, even regarding names, the chronicles, which speak of facts, are ambiguous, so much so that we do not even know what the correct name is of the man who was the first bearer of the contagion, and we have to choose between two, both of which are probably false. And when havoc has been wreaked upon real names (as in the case of the name of Giangiacomo Mora), an image that does not correspond to reality has attached itself to the label, connoting in infamous fashion a name that ought by rights to evoke feelings of pity.