The Key to the Magic Kingdom

By Umberto Eco
('The Name of the Rose')

Marshall Blonsky mentions Barthes often enough in this book that it is perhaps worthwhile to tell a story that our author did not know until now. A bit of his prehistory.

Milano, 1974. First Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. Twenty minutes before the opening ceremony. We had planned the Congress for two hundred people. In the course of the last months, we had realized there would be more, but we were not expecting the more than eight hundred people who materialized that morning. And among them were an impressive number of Big Ones. Somebody said that the floor looked like a 'Who’s Who.'

And there, patiently waiting, a mustached young man who introduced himself as Marshall Blonsky. I felt embarrassed (you’ll see why) and I looked for Roland Barthes, who was the most distinguished member of the Reading Committee. We had spent the previous year in evaluating the papers we received, and they were so many that the Committee was obliged to split into subcommittees. Every group accepted the papers of the acknowledged leaders in our discipline, rejected the blatantly crazy ones, and the whole committee met only to discuss the dubious cases. While shaking hands with Blonsky, I realized that his case had remained unsolved because at first reading, his paper had looked to me so linguistically coiled upon itself that I was not sure it would have been understood by normal human beings.

Now, reading Blonsky’s preface to this book, I understand why. He was “probably one of the first semioticians teaching in New York City...[managing] to impregnate [his] students with Frenach ideas,” and he was doing so by inventing an intricate French-like English which in its turn was trying to imitate the German-like French of Lacan, or at least of many Lacanians. We all have to start somewhere, and the American making love to his students with 'la jouissance' (I remember that part) was the prototype Blonsky before he got to us. Thus I had put his paper apart for a further discussion with Barthes and other members of the Committee. And then I forgot it (believe me, the last two months before the opening of an international congress always are a damned mess, and I won’t repeat such an experience again).

I realized that Blonsky did not know as yet whether he was admitted or not; but, a man of faith, our Pilgrim had sailed from the East Coast to reach the Semiotic Eldorado.

So (the secretary of the Congress, Doretta Gelmini, being a genius) I retrieved in five seconds Blonsky’s paper. I found Barthes at the bar sipping a mineral water, and I told him my problem. Barthes took the paper and disappeared for fifteen minutes. Then he came back and said: “It’s true, it is awkward, but there is someting intriguing here... Let him speak.”

End of story. With this writing, Marshall is also paying a tribute to the Magic Donor who gave him the Key to enter the Enchanted Palace of All Mythologies.

Preface to Blonsky, 'American Mythologies'
(Oxford University Press, New York, 1992)

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