Fiction and Reality in Eco's Words

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The quotation above is the end of the book I aim to discuss (see Lector in Fabula .... speaks of the reality or of an idea which is personal to the author – an ...
Bujar Hoxha

Fiction and Reality in Eco’s Words It was a fiction, because the story was invented by the director of the planetarium, it was History, as it used to tell what would happen in the universe in one moment in the past, it was a realistic life, because I was a real man, not a character from a novel. For one moment, I became the Model Reader of the Book of the Books. This was a fictional wood, which I would never like to leave. However, as life is cruel, for you like for me, I am here. (Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, 1994: 140).

Introduction The quotation above is the end of the book I aim to discuss (see Lector in Fabula & Sei passeggiate nei boschi narrativi). I would however raise some questions, in relation to it: which is the planetarium that Eco is talking about? What does he mean by a “History”, which may be interrupted suddenly at a certain moment in the past? And finally, is there any limit between reality and fiction, or do they simply belong to an infinity of uninterruptable semiotic processes? My task in this text, among other related issues, shall be an attempt to draw a clear-cut distinction on such so-called boundaries which find themselves in-between reality and fiction. After all, semiotic processes in general, as well as signs’ growth in general, recently avoid exactitude of expression, results, and/or of paradigms etc., in an attempt to produce a multitude of signification possibilities, thus obtaining its omnipresence, including artistic expressivities as one of the many possibilities. Prior to our attempt at defining some theoretical matters that explicitly relate to the above quotation, let us see some practical matters regarding Eco’s narrative productivity.

Seeming and reality in Eco’s “labyrinth” of writing If one considers some of Eco’s significant narrative works of art, some questions may be advanced initially: why for instance does Roberto, in the “Island of the Day Before” (Eco 1994a), through around four hundred pages, not ever like to get outside of the Island’s adventures? Why does Casaubon, in “Foucault’s Pendu-

Bujar Hoxha, South-East European University, Macedonia DOI 10.1515/9781501507144-029

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lum” (Eco 1996), go through such permanent discussions with Bilbo (with other characters of the work as well), through around seven hundred pages, in order just to talk, negotiate, and render an intrigue? What are the reasons that Adso has a permanent need to be advised by his teacher William in “The Name of the Rose” (Eco 1980), in order to find out determined phenomena in the Cathedral, that were not clear to him? One who has read these works in the quality of “an empirical reader” (especially in their original language), as opposed to the term “model reader” (which will be explained in this text)[ see: (Eco 1994b)], has noticed that in each of them there is a plan: a strategy for entering and exiting the narrative texts or, better, there may be found even a realistic geographical chart for the realistic reconstruction of events. The “labyrinth” is a term frequently used in Eco’s vocabulary, and it should primarily refer to its metaphorical sense. Prior to each book’s beginning and/or towards its end, we find a drawing, which tries to represent the picture of events in an original way: the beginning, the plot, etc. Each of these units, in Eco’s terms, has a special importance, for his implicit acts of speech, in the shape of the many techniques of writing being used, would not immediately display to us the implicit secret that he permanently keeps with himself. This is done in the form of an intrigue aimed at achieving a determined purpose in the frames of his characters’ actions. This is what one may call a “labyrinth”. It is such a “concept” and/or a technique of writing that he wishes to explain to his readers. But why does it represent a labyrinth? If one closely analyzes Eco’s narrative works, one would analyze above all the concept of reconstruction of events, which is closely related to the relationship between story and discourse, in the semiotic sense of the word. Moreover, one would examine the realistic picturing of events, in the way that Eisenstein did  – where each episode has its due place. Finally, what one would do is to explicate the meaning out of the content’s viewpoint, or in a form of uniting form and meaning, so as to reach the point of semiosis. Why should all of this be necessary? The answer is as follows. One of the most complex questions raised by Eco, in almost each of his novels, is the relation, the semiotic relation, between seeming (appearance) and reality as one of the semiotic systems such as defined in: (Eco 1979), seen from the theoretical viewpoint. This relationship is a semiotic relation, and it definitely belongs to semiotics. Eco, however, never finds himself outside of the labyrinth, as the topic he discusses is by all means infinite in terms of explications, repetitiveness, and similar segments of writing techniques, specific to introducing terms like “narrators,

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“readers”, “authors” etc. which are otherwise specific to the modern sort of prose artistic production.1 The elements above especially that concerning a “semiotic relation”, are an integral part of Eco’s narrative works, seen from the theoretical point of view. Notwithstanding this fact, one should emphasize here that their decent analysis represents a double discourse. It means that they comprise both his narrative and theoretical works, if seen through the eyes of a semiotician. If we take the novels as an example, the relation between seeming and reality will never obtain an expected and realistic answer by the reader, or better, a realistic solution. This presupposition of an empirical reader (Eco 1994b) can be asserted by the fact that the author lets the reader find out if the real author speaks of the reality or of an idea which is personal to the author – an imaginative one. An empirical reader can, for example, talk and/or write up to a determined number of pages, thus describing a determined point of an event (in some of his works, Eco tells us even the precise and exact number of pages therein), which tell us whether it is an imagined idea, a plot, or an interaction of the characters, etc. Starting from a specific point of his narrative art and, further, within his own narration technique, he lets us decide and draw conclusions on matters that might have a logical occurrence within described plots of the stories narrated. This last remark firmly implies the interpretation process within. Moreover, it thus overcomes the limits of “semiology”, and becomes an integral part of what one may call semiotics today: a cognitive (interpretative) science of (producing) meaning. It is for such reasons that in terms of the narration entity as such, one can talk of many sorts of unforeseen and/or unpredictable meaning(s) deductions. Or, in conclusion, to express this in the simplest of ways: each reader’s conclusion and/ or prediction for a determined flow of a story is a truth (or a semiotic possibility) by itself. The relation between seeming and reality otherwise becomes indispensable from the theoretical viewpoint. Moreover, although Eco does not discover the truth immediately, he discovers another phenomenon: the fact that the complex time parallelism in a literary work of art (but also, in an analogous way, within whichever work of whichever kind of art) is one of the most important elements for him, which has a decisive role within the issue we are discussing – whether we (as readers) find ourselves within the reality described, or outside its frames. If we take both aspects into consideration, a question emerges: why does Eco never get out of the “labyrinth”? The fact is that in the frames of his novels he

1 I refer here above all to the “openness of the work of art, because of its indetermination”. The paraphrasing is mine; see: (Eco 1962).

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constantly becomes more complex in many aspects, be they historical, argumentative, and scientific, in the plot and in intrigue making. The author consciously renders this topic complex. He consciously renders the message more complex, he over-codes it, and thus he penetrates deeper into the labyrinth. The metaphor of the “labyrinth” lies in the artistic being of this author. The purpose is, in this instance, perfectly natural: to be read.

The semiotic nature of the “wood” metaphor Eco’s “walking through woods” (Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, 1994) is a metaphorical reference to the processes that find themselves in the frames of an artistic creation. Semiotically speaking, this should not only refer to artistic realities as complex ones, but to other social phenomena under analysis as well. It should be remarked however that here our focus shall be exactly on the component of narration, which is a semiotic tool for expressing a capability of constructing an “artistic story”. Let us now see why should “history” (as is otherwise mentioned in the above quotation) be interrupted at a certain point of the past, and/or of the present. As otherwise suggested in Eco (1994), “time” references contain the key importance in terms of the writing possibilities, naturally, as far as the artistic sort of writing and/or “telling” and “re-telling” is concerned. It would be logical to state that one writes primarily out of his experience, that is, out of what one may have “lived” and/or experienced. It is from this point of view that Eco considers the imperfect tense to be the “sacred” one in terms of narrating. If something occurred in the past (in the continuous sense of the word), the grammatical tense is “open” on one hand, whereas on the other, if something unexpectedly happened, a “closed” tense should be used. Iteration, and/or a sort of repetitiveness of expression, should stand for on-going processes while narrating. This implies a flow of the story, or that, building the plot itself, is under process. Let us now take some examples. If, for instance, the concept of “love” is described in “Romeo and Juliet”, then it is a story that is on-going in the play; yet it does not come true, since a determined conflictual situation interrupts it. All events that occur in relation to the conflictual relationships of the parents of the lovers are represented in a “closed” tense. If father and daughter (as another instance) show affection to each other, such as in the case of Verdi’s “Rigoletto”, all of that is told into a “tense” expressing iteration, i.e., re-told in the sense that the story is still on its course. However, Gilda’s “secret” lover on the other hand, the Duke of Mantua, interrupts such a course, by a fact of exposing himself in the scene. Or, as another

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example: while Rigoletto tells his daughter his family history, throughout their Duet in Act I, the voice of the serving-woman, telling about the presence of the Duke, interrupts this course. It is this sort of “history” that Eco explains in this work. Even in the grammatical sense of the word, “the imperfect tense” is the “sacred” tense aimed at achieving the narration component (Eco 1994c), which at certain moments of writing and/or creating an artistic work can be interrupted by a certain “closed” tense in the past, aimed at giving the final content line and/or the conclusion of a given narrated story. After all, not all works of arts have only one line of narrating. This might perhaps be better expressed by noting that not only one event can be expressed, specifically speaking, for instance, in a novel. It is for this reason that one should foresee a determined time expression, (which, as we said, may even belong to certain grammatical categories, be they in their standardized shape or not), so that a determined theoretical goal is achieved. Otherwise, Eco has well elaborated even this concept previously, especially with his concept of “indetermination” of a work of art (Eco 1962). It is thus that the “History” in the above quotation refers to past events, which are permanently flowing, and may be interrupted by certain other events which may be significant for the flow of the plot of the story. One can thus justify the “story” and “discourse” distinction, in the way as described in various structurally minded literary theories such as, for instance in: (Chatman 1980).

The model reader as an example My aim in this part of the present paper is to examine, as well as to give some of Eco’s definitions, in relation to both concepts in the subtitle above. It would be logical to state therefore that one has at least two reasons to mention them here: one, because both of them represent an integral part of Eco’s textual theory, and two, because one of the concepts is a part of the quotation we are discussing. The key question to discuss here is whether the author imagines these kinds of readers, or if they realistically exist. The questions which we shall try to resolve are: whether the author’s creation brings an art’s creation into reality, or is it a creating process itself? Is it true that the authors include facts from realistic lives? What is it that one adds to the work of art? Eco gives responses to such questions within some of his theoretical works (see, among other related issues: (Eco 1984). In relation to the questions above we shall quote Eco, who says that a Model Reader has “to know everything, as his power is encyclopedic” (My paraphrasing). Therefore: “Many texts make evident their Model Readers by implicitly presupposing apertis verbis a specific encyclopedic competence“. (Eco 1984: 7)

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What is the “encyclopedic competence” Eco talks about? It is one that refers to a wholeness of a determined text. In this situation, the “competence” which can be created and/or imagined by the side of the real author is the one of the Model Reader aimed at a text’s creation. The real author needs the Model Reader, because of the act of creating a work of art. Thus, it can be concluded that this tool is Eco’s innovation, which serves as a textual strategy. The Model Reader has to exist for the text’s creation, because of the mentioned competence. Here is what Eco has to say in relation to this issue: To foresee the proper Model Reader doesn’t mean only “hoping” that he/she exists, but it means moving the text into the creation mode. Not only that a text relies on, but it contributes for producing a competence. (Eco 1984: 7)2

As can be seen, it is the real author of the work who conceptualizes creating a Model Reader. It is so, as it serves the real author to create a textual strategy. The role of the Model Reader concerns two main components: first, it is due to technical reasons for the sake of a textual strategy; second, it is due to the “competence” (only a professional, i.e. a well-prepared realistic reader) is eligible to create a textual strategy out of the Model Reader. The reason is, as should be understandable, to make the work readable, or otherwise expressed, in Barthes’ terms: readerly. (Barthes 1992) In conclusion, therefore, being “the Model Reader of the Book of the Books” [see the quotation above, p.140] means that Eco has a strategy by which he explains to the reader certain events in determined artistic productions. It is the original author’s technique to render matters metaphorical for the sake of artistic writing’s creation.

Conclusion The “Planetarium” Eco is referring to is the “world of possibilities” [ see: (Eco 1994b)]; it means, his own “world of imagination”, the world one chooses to write a work of art. A reality, however, as opposed to a fiction, and/or seeming, is what the real author is – in the present case, Eco himself. One who would never wish to exit and/or escape the “narrative woods” is as a matter of fact the one who creates fiction. As has been explained, it also refers to the known dichotomy between “seeming” and “reality” also in the Greimasian sense of the word (Greimas 1973).

2 A part of this citation is my own translation. The English version says: “ But at the same time (…) text creates the competence of its Model Reader” (: 7)

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Due to this world of possibilities, Eco is the one who would permanently wish to remain in the “narrative wood”. As I have stated elsewhere: ”Eco is one of such authors, who would eternally like to be a part of the artistic reality, instead of the realistic one” (Hoxha 2013), because of the fact, as he himself says, that “life is cruel”.

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