UMBERTO ECO E OS MORCEGOS DA JOANINA

Na Internet fazem-se verdadeiros achados como esta notícia de um jornal canadiano que dá conta de uma visita do professor e escritor italiano Umberto Eco à Biblioteca Joanina da Universidade de Coimbra. Posso confirmar que há morcegos, que se tapam as mesas à noite, mas não confirmo que o tecto esteja coberto de morcegos. E também é um exagero o período de 400 anos anos, uma vez que Biblioteca Joanina ainda não fez 300 anos... Quanto à proposta de Eco de usar um despertador em vez dos morcegos falta saber se funciona... A propósito de Eco e de morcegos, não é verdade que a "ecolocalização" seja a localização dos morcegos pelo Eco!

Toronto Globe & Mail (National Edition)-
26/10/1996

ASK UMBERTO, by Stephen Smith:

If you - or your library, for that matter, suffer from the depradations of bookworms, you might take Umberto Eco's advice and get yourself some bats. On a visit to Toronto last week, the Italian novelist, academic, translator and polymath was remembering a recent visit to the aged library at Coimbra in Portugal.

"Spread out on the tables they had green towels, as for billiards", Eco was saying. "I asked why: They said it was to protect the furniture from the shit of the bats. They have bats; the ceiling is full of bats. During the day they sleep; during the night they shit.

"So I asked, why don't you get rid of the bats? But you see, the bats eat the bookworms that would otherwise damage the books. For 400 years the bats have been protecting the books".

Matters of book protection are of more than anecdotal interest to Eco: His personal library, shared out between apartments in Bologna and Milan and a country house, numbers nearly 40,000 volumes. "I have to suspect that somewhere I have worms", he says. So far, though, he hasn't resorted to bats."You know you can also use a big, old-fashioned alarm clock", he says. "You keep it on your shelf: It seems the tick-tock noise disturbs the worms so they will remain safely in the wood."