Hypatia in Eco’s Baudolino

Albert T. Watanabe

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

Baudolino in Umberto Eco’s 2000 eponymous novel is an inveterate liar.  Among his more entrancing lies or fictions is the story of Baudolino’s love for Hypatia, who belongs to an all-female society, perpetuating the philosophy of Hypatia, the Alexandrian philosopher (370-415).  The Hypatias (all the women have the same name) are also hybrids (part-woman, part-goat).  This paper explores the “mosntrosity” of Hypatia in comparison with the “monstrosity” of the Classical satyrs and Amazons.  While the satyrs and Amazons for the most part constitute the “other” for  Classical patriarchal society, the love of Hypatia and Baudolino undermines the hierarchical structures of medieval society.

To begin some background is necessary.  One of the major lies Baudolino tells is that he forged the letter of Prester John, the legendary medieval king whose kingdom was believed to be somewhere in Asia. Becoming caught up in his own lie he goes in search for and finds the kingdom of Prester John.  Many of the denizens of the kingdom are the monsters found at the edge of the world in Classical ethnographies (e.g. the skiapodes).  There he also finds Hypatia.  In their first passionate encounter he discovers that her lower body is goat-like (the result of the hypatias mating with the satyrs who-are-not-seen).  Instead of being repelled by the hybrid Hypatia, he finds that his love rises beyond the physical.

In Eco’s Chaosmos, Cristina Farronato relates the hybrid Hypatia to the other monsters in the kingdom of Prester John.  For her, following the thesis of David Williams’ Deformed Discourse, the monstrous disorients us, forcing us outside our usual thought patterns to achieve a better grasp of the real.  Furthermore Williams, following the theology of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, argues that only through “deformed discourse” (discourse which challenges categorical thinking) is language capable of leading to the apprehension of the divine.  In Hypatia’s case, her hybrid form transforms Baudolino’s physical love to a higher realm.  And their conversation would ultimately lead to a non-categorical apprehension of the divine, except a war intervenes.  What Farranato has not explored are the Classical parallels.

First the hybrid satyrs are similar to Hypatia.  The satyrs, however, are most well-known for their sexaul aggressiveness, while Hypatia espouses apatheia.  This self-control reminds one of Alcibiades’ description in Symposium 215ff. of Socrates as a silenus with divine images within or as a satyr.  In addition to showing Socrates’ control over the bestial Alcibiades brings out the contrast between inner and outer beauty, thus undoing the conventional link between beauty and goodness.  So Hypatia’s apatheia reveals her self-control over the bestial, which forces Baudolino to look beyond conventional associations. 

The Hypatias as an all-women society also reminds one of the Amazons., who form a counter-culture to Greek patriarchal society.  They have taken over the role of the male-warrior and associate with men only for reproduction.  The Hypatias differ from them  in pursuing philosophy but share their separation from society.  The love, however, of Hypatia and Baudolino undermines their separateness and subverts the opposition with conventional society.

To conclude, in the Classical world categorical oppositions are set up (with the exception of Socrates), whereas Eco with his Hypatia and other monsters leads us to a non-categorical apprehension of the world.  Like the Deleuzian rhizome labyrinth of The Name of the Rose (“an acentered, unhierarchical, non-signifying system”), Eco’s Hypatia strives to open up the unhierarchical structure of the universe.