and the Sargasso Sea and the Dark Sea
searching for that isle . . . But the island was not there.
In vain the round-bottomed sailing galleys,
in vain the caravels armed their bows:
with due respect to the pope, the isle is hidden,
and Portugal and Spain still search for it.
The isle exists, appearing sometimes from afar
between Teneriffe and Palma, suffused in mystery:
“ . . . the Island Never Found!” From the high peak of Teide
the good Canarian points it out to the foreigner.
Marked on the ancient maps of the corsairs.
. . . Hifola to—be found? . . . Hifola pilgrim? . . .
The magic isle that glides over the seas;
mariners sometimes see her near . . .
And point their bows toward her blessed shore:
Among unfamiliar flowers soar lofty palms,
The divine aromatic forest, thick and lush,
Weeping cardamom, seeping rubber sap . . .
Herald like the arrival of a perfumed courtesan,
the Island Never Found . . . Yet, if the pilot draws closer,
it rapidly fades away, like a vain shadow,
tinged with the azure color of faraway . . . (“La più bella”)
I don’t suppose Gozzano had in mind some of the maps we find in eighteenth-century books on sea travel, but this idea of the island that “fades away, like a vain shadow, tinged with the azure color of faraway” makes us think about the way in which, before the problem of longitude had been solved, islands were identified using drawings of their profiles as they had been seen for the first time. Arriving from a distance, the island (whose shape did not exist on any map) was recognized from its skyline, as we would say of an American city today. And what happened if there were two islands with very similar skylines, as if there were two cities, both with the Empire State Building and (at one time) the Twin Towers south of it? They would land on the wrong island, and who knows how many times this happened.
Moreover, the profile of an island changes with the color of the sky, the haze, the time of day, and perhaps even the time of year, which alters the appearance of the vegetation. Sometimes the island is tinged with the azure color of faraway, it can disappear in the night or in the mist, or clouds can hide the shapes of its mountains. There is nothing more elusive than an island about which we know only its profile. Arriving on an island for which we have neither map nor coordinates is similar to moving about like one of Edwin Abbott’s characters in Flatland, where there is only one dimension and we see things only from the front, like lines with no thickness—with no height and no depth—and only someone from outside Flatland could see them from above.
And it was said, in fact, that the inhabitants of the islands of Madeira, La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro, deceived by the clouds or by the mirages of the fata morgana, sometimes thought they had seen the insula perdita toward the west, shimmering between the water and the sky.
Thus, in the same way that an island that didn’t exist could be sighted among the reflections of the sea, so it was also possible to confuse two islands that did exist, or never to find the one that was the intended destination.
And that is how islands become lost.
And why islands are never found. As Pliny said (book 2, chapter 96), some islands are forever wavering.
[Published in the Almanacco del bibliofilo—Sulle orme di san Brandano (Milan: Rovello, 2011) and based on a paper given at a conference on islands held in Carloforte, Sardinia, in 2010.]
Thoughts on WikiLeaks
IN TERMS OF CONTENT, WikiLeaks has turned out to be a false scandal, but in terms of its formal implications, it has been, and will prove to be, something more. As we shall explain, it marks the beginning of a new chapter in history.
A false scandal is one in which something becomes public that everyone had known, and had been talking about in private, and that, so to speak, was only being whispered about out of hypocrisy (for example, gossip about adultery). Everyone knows perfectly well—not just those well-informed about diplomatic matters but anyone who has ever seen a film about international intrigues—that embassies have lost their diplomatic role since at least the end of the Second World War, in other words since the time when heads of state could pick up the telephone or fly off to meet each other for dinner (was an ambassador sent off in a felucca to declare war on Saddam Hussein?). Except for minor tasks of representation, they have been transformed, more overtly, into centers to gather information on the host country (with more competent ambassadors playing the role of sociologist or political commentator) and, more covertly, into full-blown dens of espionage.
But now that this has been openly declared, American diplomacy has had to admit that it is true, and therefore to suffer a loss of image in formal terms—with the curious consequence that this loss, leak, flow of confidential information, rather than harming the supposed victims (Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Gaddafi, or Merkel), has harmed the supposed perpetrator, in other words, poor Mrs. Clinton, who was probably just receiving messages sent by embassy staff carrying out their official duties, as this was all they were being paid to do. This, from all the evidence, is exactly what Assange wanted, since his grudge is against the American government and not against Berlusconi’s government.
Why have the victims not been affected, except perhaps superficially? Because, as everyone realizes, the famous secret messages were simply “press echo,” and did no more than report what everyone in Europe already knew and was talking about, which had even appeared in America in Newsweek. The secret reports were therefore like the clippings files sent by company press offices to their managing director, who is too busy to read the newspapers.
It is clear that the reports sent to Mrs. Clinton are not about secret dealings—they were not spy messages. And although they dealt with apparently highly confidential information, such as the fact that Berlusconi has private interests in Russian gas deals, even here (whether true or false) the messages would have done no more than repeat what had already been talked about by those who in Fascist times were branded café strategists, in other words, those who talked politics at the bar.
And this goes to confirm another well-known fact, that every dossier compiled for the secret service (in whatever country) consists entirely of material already in the public domain. The “extraordinary” American revelations about Berlusconi’s wild nights reported what could have been read months earlier in any Italian newspaper (except the two controlled by the premier), and Gaddafi’s satrapic follies had for some time been providing—rather stale—material for cartoonists.
The rule that secret files must contain only information already known is essential for the operation of a secret service, and not just in this century. Likewise, if you go to a bookshop specializing in esoteric publications, you will see that every new book (on the Holy Grail, the mystery of Rennes-le-Château, the Knights Templar, or the Rosicrucians) repeats exactly what was written in earlier books. This is not simply because occult writers are averse to carrying out new research (nor because they don’t know where to go looking for information about the nonexistent), but because followers of the occult believe in only what they already know, and in those things that confirm what they have already learned. It is the formula behind the success of Dan Brown.