It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors and proceeds to tell his own magical story.
Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts – a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When still a boy, he meets a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander – who proves to be Emperor Frederick Barbarossa – adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends.
Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search of Prester John, a legendary priest-king said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East – a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs, of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens.
This is Umberto Eco the storyteller at his brilliant best.
This book is not a light read. Literally. The hardback version I read is deceptively slim – it is a beautifully made example of the publisher’s art, with thin yet dense sheets compressed into a baffling economy of space. And the book’s physical form is a good metaphor for the contents of its pages. Startling, baffling, dense. Definitely not a light read.
This is the story of Baudolino, a man who rose from nothing and vanished into nothing. The novel is structured as a frame story, in which an older Baudolino recounts the story of his life to a Greek historian. Niketas Chonites, whom Baudolino rescued from the sack of Constantinople by the knights of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Baudolino has been intimately involved in the Fourth Crusade, despite being a self-proclaimed “man of peace.” A fateful chance threw Baudolino together with Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, whom he so impressed with his silver tongue that the Emperor goes on to adopt Baudolino as his son, plucking him from his existence as an Italian peasant and elevating him into a world of education and privilege.
In the first few pages, we see evidence of one of Baudolino’s remarkable talents. He is a polyglot. He demonstrates excellent mastery of at least three languages just during his rescue of Chonites, including the “hirsute language” of the pillagers. Baudolino’s other talent quickly becomes apparent. He is a master of falsehood, with a quick mind and glib tongue. This second attribute is a bit difficult for the reader – particularly given what follows as Baudolino weaves the fantastical tapestry of the tale of his life for his curious audience.
It is a classic case of the “unreliable narrator,” in which the reader is left to wonder exactly how much to believe. Some find this device titillating – I tend to find it irritating, but that is a personal quirk. Baudolino’s unreliability becomes more of an issue as the tale progresses, for the story is an uneasy marriage of an historical novel and a fantasy adventure, with the Fourth Crusade featuring prominently as the major historical event of the book.
As Baudolino’s tales get taller, Baudolino’s propensity for lying makes it harder to maintain the suspension of disbelief necessary for the enjoyment of a good fantasy tale. Of course, reading an historical novel requires a suspension of disbelief, too, but of a different sort. In an historical novel, the reader is asked to set aside his knowledge that the author doesn’t know exactly how it all went down, and just pretend that the story is fly-on-the-wall reporting. The very realism necessary to help reinforce this illusion is undermined by the fantasy elements of the story, which demand that all the rules get tossed out the window. This results in a situation in which anything goes, and a complete suspension of disbelief is required. Adding the uncertainty of whether Baudolino isn’t just making up huge chunks of the tale for obscure reasons of his own completes the destabilization by forcing the reader to question the very things a fantasy novel requires to be taken on faith.
The author, Umberto Eco, is something of a philosopher, and that is evident throughout this book, as weighty ideas such as the act of invention resulting in acts of creation jostle cheek-by-jowl with fantastical monsters, theological debate, an overtly Oedipal tangle, the quest for the Holy Grail, and imaginary realms. Baudolino himself is an oddly jester-like figure, and his comedic antics seem sometimes out of place amidst the general tone and feel of the prose. The dialogue lurches ineptly and seems frequently out of character for the style of the novel. In fact, the book had me lurching – between knotty intellectual concepts and slapstick action. This book tried to be so many different things, but without a clear organizing principle, resulting in an odd dreamlike feeling while reading. You know the one. You feel you ought to know exactly where you are, and what you’re doing, but somehow you can’t ever quite pin it down, and you drift through a strange landscape with calm urgency. Baudolino drifts in a similarly rudderless way, taking the reader on a bizarre, fascinating, but ultimately unsatisfying journey through places strange and beautiful.
Umberto Eco is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna and the bestselling author of numerous novels and essays. He lives in Italy. Visit him on the web at his homepage.
This book was published in Italian in 2000; William Weaver’s English translation was published in 2002 and the hardcover edition was purchased by Elvie.
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Classic Eco story, but I am surprised at how short it is. I suppose, I have to read it. Still a fan of his.
I read in the name of the rose a long time ago because christian slater was in the movie.
I love Umberto Eco … beautiful way with words.
Thanks for this Elvie!
grazie-
I have not read this book…now I must!
I read this one some time ago, and I remember that I loved the surreality and wackyness of it. Must do a re-read some time soon.