Reverse Time Ripple from "Foucault's Pendulum" Posted by Robert C. Cohen on June 02, 1998 at 16:13:29:
In Reply to: Ripple posted by Andy on February 14, 1998 at 08:06:56:
In addition to my other follow ups and connections
to Andy's Ripple poem, focusing on the idea of
reverse time, I found the following quote from
Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum:
"'Take the debate on the Corpus Hermeticum. When that document came to light in Europe
in the fifteenth century, Pico della Mirandola, Ficino, and many other people of great
wisdom immediately realized that it had to be a work of most ancient wisdom, antedating
the Egyptians, antedating even Moses himself. It contained ideas that would later be
expressed by Plato and Jesus.'
'What do you mean later? That's the same argument Bramanti used to prove Dante was a
Mason. If the Corpus repeats ideas of Plato and Jesus, it must have been written after them!'
'You see? You're doing it, too. That was exactly the argument of modern philologists, who
also added wordy linguistic analyses intended to show that the Corpus was written in the
second century of our era. It's like saying that Cassandra must have been born after Homer
because she predicted the destruction of Troy. The belief that time is a linear, directed
sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the
effect producing the cause. . . . What does coming before" mean or "coming after"? Does your
beautiful Amparo come before or after her motley ancestors? She is too splendid-if you will allow
a dispassionate opinion from a man old enough to be her father. She thus comes before. She is the
mysterious origin of whatever went into her creation.'"
--Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum pt. 32