“Perhaps I might make a little etymological remark, to begin with? You will no doubt have noted, dear audience, honorable members of the jury, that the verb forcener no longer exists in modern French, its only surviving trace being the substantive forcené, which signifies a mad individual who behaves violently.
“Now, this definition of forcené might lead us into error. Originally—if I may make a little orthographical remark—forcener was written with an s, not a c, because it came from the Latin sensus, ‘sense’ (‘animal quod sensu caret’): forsener, then, is literally to be out of one’s senses, in other words, to be mad, but to begin with there was no connotation of force.
“That said, this connotation must have appeared gradually, with the orthographic renovation that suggested a false etymology and, I would say, that from the sixteenth century onward this spelling was attested to in Middle French.
“Allora, the question that I would have discussed, if my honorable opponent had raised it, is this: Is ‘forcener doucement’ an oxymoron? Is this an association of two contradictory terms?
“No, if one considers the true etymology of forcener.
“Si, if one accepts the connotation of force in the false etymology.
“Si, but … are gentle and strong necessarily opposed? A force can be exercised gently, for example when you are taken by the current of a river, or when you gently squeeze a loved one’s hand…”
The singsong accent resonates through the large room, but everyone has grasped the violence of the attack: beneath his debonair appearance, Eco has calmly underlined the insufficiencies in Sollers’s speech by conjuring, alone, a discussion that his opponent was unable to even begin.
“But none of that tells us what it’s about, no?
“I will be more modest than my opponent, who attempted some very ambitious and, I think, pardon me, somewhat fanciful interpretations of this expression. For my part, I will simply try to explain it to you: he who ‘forcène doucement’ is the poet, ecco. It is the furor poeticus. I am not sure who uttered that phrase, but I would say it is a sixteenth-century French poet, a disciple of Jean Dorat, a member of the Pléiade, because one can clearly sense here the Neoplatonic influence.
“For Plato, you know, poetry is not an art, not a technique, but a divine inspiration. The poet is inhabited by the god, in a trancelike state: that is what Socrates explains to Ion in his famous dialogue. So the poet is mad, but it is a gentle madness, a creative madness, not a destructive madness.
“I do not know the author of this citation, but I think it is perhaps Ronsard or Du Bellay, both of them disciples of a school where, giustamente, ‘on forcène doucement.’
“Allora, we can discuss the question of divine inspiration, if you like? I don’t know, because I didn’t really understand what my honorable opponent wanted to discuss.”
Silence in the room. Sollers realizes that it is his turn to speak. He hesitates.
Simon mechanically analyzes Eco’s strategy, which can be summarized very simply: do the opposite of Sollers. This implies adopting an ultramodest ethos and a very sober and minimalist level of development. The refusal of all fanciful interpretations and a very literal explanation. By falling back on his proverbial erudition, Eco simply explained without making an argument, as if to underline the impossibility of discussion in the face of his opponent’s frenzied logorrhea. He uses rigor and humility to highlight his megalomaniacal adversary’s mental disorder.
Sollers starts to speak again, less confidently: “I talk about philosophy because the action of literature now is to show that the philosophical discourse can be integrated into the position of the literary subject, if only so that its experience be taken all the way to the transcendental horizon.”
But Eco does not reply.
Sollers, panic-stricken, blurts out: “Aragon wrote a thundering article about me! About my genius! And Elsa Triolet! I have their autographs!”
Embarrassed silence.
One of the ten sophists makes a gesture and two guards, stationed at the room’s entrance, seize the dazed Sollers, who rolls his eyes and yells: “Tickle-wickle! Ho ho ho! No no no!”
Bayard asks why there has not been a vote. The old man replies that in certain cases, unanimity is obvious.
The two guards lay the loser on the marble floor in front of the platform and one of the sophists advances, a large pair of pruning shears in his hands.
The guards strip Sollers from the waist down as he screams beneath Tintoretto’s Paradise. Some of the other sophists leave their seats to help control him. In the confusion, his mask comes off.
Only the first few rows of the audience see what happens at the foot of the platform but everyone, all the way to the back, knows.
The sophist with the doctor’s beak wedges Sollers’s balls between the two blades of the shears, firmly grips the handles, and presses them together. Snip.
Kristeva shudders.
Sollers makes an unidentifiable noise, a sort of throat-clack followed by a long caterwaul that ricochets off the paintings and reverberates throughout the room.
The sophist with the doctor’s beak picks up the two balls and drops them in a second urn, which Simon and Bayard now realize was put there for that very purpose.
Pale-faced, Simon asks his neighbor: “Isn’t the penalty normally a finger?”
The man replies that it is when one challenges a duelist of a rank just above yours, but Sollers wanted to cut corners. He had never participated in a single duel and he directly challenged the Great Protagoras. “In that case, the price is higher.”
While the attendants attempt to give first aid to Sollers, who squirms and makes horrible moaning noises, Kristeva takes the urn containing the testicles and leaves the room.
Bayard and Simon follow her.
She quickly crosses Piazza San Marco, cradling the urn in her arms. The night is still young and the square is packed with tourists, stilt-walkers, fire-eaters, actors in eighteenth-century costumes pretending to duel with swords. Simon and Bayard push their way through the crowds so as not to lose her. She rushes down narrow alleyways, crosses bridges, does not turn around once. A man dressed as Harlequin grabs her by the waist to kiss her, but she emits a piercing cry, escapes his clutches like a small wild animal, and runs away carrying her urn. Crosses the Rialto. Bayard and Simon are not certain that she knows where she is going. From far off, in the sky, they hear fireworks exploding. Kristeva trips on a step and almost drops the urn. Her breath hangs in the air. It’s cold, and she has left her coat at the Doge’s Palace.
All the same, she does make it somewhere: to the basilica Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, home, in her husband’s own words, to “the glorious heart of the Serenissima,” with Titian’s tomb and his red Assumption. At this time of night, the basilica is closed. But she doesn’t want to go inside.
It is chance that has brought her here.
She advances over the little bridge that straddles the Rio dei Frari and stops in the middle. She puts the urn on the stone ledge. Simon and Bayard are just behind her, but they dare not set foot on the bridge, nor climb the handful of steps to join her.
Kristeva listens to the murmur of the city, and her dark eyes stare down at the little waves formed by the nocturnal breeze. A fine rain wets her short hair.
From within her blouse, she takes a sheet of paper folded in four.
Bayard feels an urge to throw himself at her and tear the document from her hands, but Simon holds him back. She turns toward them and narrows her eyes, as though she has only just noticed their presence, as though she has only just learned of their existence, and glares at them with hatred, a cold look that petrifies Bayard, while she unfolds the page.
It is too dark to see what is written on it, but Simon thinks he can make out a few cramped letters. And there is definitely writing on both sides.
Slowly, calmly, Kristeva starts to rip it up.
As she does this, the increasingly small scraps fly off over the canal.
In the end, nothing remains but the black wind and the delicate sound of rain.
93
“But in your opinion, did she know or didn’t she?”
Bayard tries to understand.