The Seventh Function of Language

Simon thinks about Bianca, who has stayed behind in the Drogheria, and would like to make it clear to everyone within earshot that he does not work for the French secret services but, to spare himself the bother of putting his growing identity crisis into words, he remains silent. He also realizes that they did not come to Bologna simply to interrogate Eco. And he notes that Eco does not ask what the Logos Club is, so he decides to ask the question himself: “What do you know about the Logos Club, Monsieur Eco?”

Eco strokes his beard, clears his throat, lights a cigarette.

“The Athenian city was founded on three pillars: the gymnasium, the theater, and the school of rhetoric. The trace of this tripartition remains today in a society obsessed with spectacle that promotes three categories of individuals to the rank of celebrity: athletes, actors (or singers: the ancient theater made no distinction between the two), and politicians. Of these three, the third, up to now, has always been dominant (even if, with Ronald Reagan, we see that some overlap is possible), because it involves the mastery of man’s most powerful weapon: language.

“From antiquity until the present day, the mastery of language has always been at the root of all politics, even during the feudal period, which might look as though it was dominated by the laws of physical force and military superiority. Machiavelli explains to the Prince that one governs not by force but by fear, and they are not the same thing: fear is the product of speech about force. Allora, whoever has mastery of speech, through its capacity to provoke fear and love, is virtually the master of the world, eh!

“It was on the basis of this supposition, and also to counter Christianity’s growing influence, that a sect of heretics founded the Logi Consilium in the third century A.D.

“Thereafter, the Logi Consilium spread through Italy, then through France, where it took the name the Logos Club in the eighteenth century, during the revolution.

“It developed as a highly compartmentalized secret society, structured like a pyramid, with its leaders—a body of ten members known as the sophists—presided over by a Protagoras Magnus, practicing their rhetorical talents, which they used essentially in the service of their political ambitions. Certain popes—Clement the Sixth, Pius the Second—are suspected of having been leaders of the organization. It has also been said that Shakespeare, Las Casas, Roberto Bellarmino (the inquisitor who led the trial of Galileo, sapete?), La Boétie, Castiglione, Bossuet, Cardinal de Retz, Christina of Sweden, Casanova, Diderot, Beaumarchais, de Sade, Danton, Talleyrand, Baudelaire, Zola, Rasputin, Jaurès, Mussolini, Gandhi, Churchill, and Malaparte were all members of the Logos Club.”

Simon remarks that this list is not restricted to politicians.

Eco explains: “In fact, there are two main currents within the Logos Club: the immanentistes, who consider the pleasure of the oratory duel an end in itself, and the fonctionnalistes, who believe rhetoric is a means to an end. Functionalism itself can be divided into two subcurrents: the Machiavellians and the Ciceronians. Officially, the former seek simply to persuade, and the latter to convince—the latter thus have more moral motivations—but in reality, the distinction is blurred because the goal for both factions is to acquire or conserve power, so…”

Bayard asks him: “And you?”

Eco: “Me? I’m Italian, allora…”

Simon: “Like Machiavelli. But also like Cicero.”

Eco laughs: “Si, vero. Anyway, I would be more of an immanentist, I think.”

Bayard asks the man in gloves for the password. He has recovered from his fright a little and protests: “Ma, it’s a secret!”

Behind Bayard, Enzo, Bianca, Stefano, and half the wine merchant’s clientele, drawn by the noise, have come to see what is going on. All of them listened to Umberto Eco’s little lecture.

Simon asks: “Is it an important meeting?” The man in gloves replies that tonight the standard will be extremely high because there is a rumor that a sophist may attend, maybe even the Great Protagoras himself. Bayard asks Eco to accompany them, but Eco refuses: “I know those meetings. I went to the Logos Club when I was young, you know! I even went up onstage and, as you can see, I didn’t lose a finger.” He proudly shows them his hands. The man in gloves represses a grimace of bitterness. “But I didn’t have time for my research, so I stopped going to meetings. I lost my rank a long time ago. I would be curious to see how good today’s duelists are, ma I am going back to Milan tomorrow. I have a train at eleven a.m. and I have to finish preparing a lecture on the ekphrasis of Quattrocento bas-reliefs.”

Bayard cannot force him, but in the least threatening tone he can manage, he says: “We still have questions to ask you, Monsieur Eco. About the seventh function of language.”