Umberto Eco
Baudolino

Dear Umbertone,
I hope there's something better to read up there than this miserable little page. And if, by any chance, as I fear, your hunger for reading isn't satisfied, at least try to be understanding with me! What the hell of a journey did you take to write Baudolino or rather, what the hell of a journey did you make me take by accompanying that ragtag crew of globetrotters? In which deep and clear wells of knowledge did you tap to develop a circular plot worthy of the best picaresque on the road work one can find in a bookstore?

The story of Baudolino is a bit like your story, that of a man born between the winter mists and the summer heat of Alessandria, between the Bormida and the Tanaro. It's the story of a countryman who intertwines with the History we read in schoolbooks, that of the twelfth century AD, the Italy of the Communes, that of Frederick Barbarossa who would become his adoptive father, that of the Crusades and the sack of Constantinople taken as a stage to recount his long wanderings to the wise Nicetas. You led a group of madmen into an incredible mythological world made of giants, white Huns, sciapods, blemmyes, panotii, Roq birds, eunuchs among vast prairies of ferns, immense rivers of rock, magical stones, and ever-dark forests. A long journey to reach an unreachable and mysterious place, an earthly Eden dominated by John, Presbyter, thanks to the Omnipotence of God, King of Kings and Sovereign of sovereigns, and 'sti cazzi I would add!

But did you happen to find the Kingdom of Prester John up there? And that great satire of Hypatia? Tell me you see her every day like you did in Pndapetzim. Do you know how excited I was when you skillfully described your sexual approaches with the half-woman half-goat? Do you say I'm sick? But you don't mess around either! And that holy woman Colandrina? Poor thing, she was so good and generous. And Beatrice of Burgundy, wife of Frederick, the beautiful unattainable and untouchable? Do you still see her?

A fantasy and utopian book, light and engaging, that wittily mocks those who emphasize every day the stupid differences that exist between man and man, that entertains when it tells of the medieval market of relics, of the religious commerce in which we are entirely submerged today. A journey into the depths of your culture, of your personal history, an imaginary journey, a free outpouring of your immense mind. I'm not here to pay you compliments because I don't think you need them. I'm here only to pique someone's interest, even if it were just one person, and already these few lines of mine would make more sense.

Dear Umbertone, I miss you, I don't hide it. In your works, I have always found a peaceful refuge; they have always been for me little parallel universes easy to visit and hard to leave. Now you are no longer here, but fortunately, you had the kindness to leave behind thousands and thousands of pages of knowledge and culture.

Dear Umbertone, I now imagine you greedily licking Hypatia's hoof. I know it might be a disrespectful idea, but in a way, you were also asking for it. I imagine you now behind me, ready to smack me on the back of the head or, perhaps as a good old professor, rightly pinch my ear. And you don't know how much this pain would please me...

And you don't know how much it would please me to know that "Stairway to Heaven" accompanied you up there as a soundtrack. Who knows what Saint Peter would have said, for heaven's sake, but who is arriving?