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I carried with me a single image, the hieroglyph traced in the choir by
Belbo's corpse. Was it that symbol? To what other symbol did it correspond?
I couldn't figure it out. I know now it was a law of physics, but this
knowledge only makes the phenomenon more symbolic. Here, now, in Belbo's
country house, among his many notes, I found a letter from someone who,
replying to a question of his, told him how a pendulum works, and how it
would behave if a second weight were hung elsewhere along the length of
it's wire. So belbo-- God knows for how long-- had been thinking of the
Pendulum as both a Sinai and a Calvary. He hadn't died as the victim of a
Plan of recent manufacture; he had prepared his death much earlier, in his
imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was
planning the reality of that death.
Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco, Chapter 114 |