The four delightful essays in Between Lies and Irony deal with lies and exaggeration in all their forms. Umberto Eco—the most important Italian intellectual of this century—speaks of the great charlatan Cagliostro as "the eternal archetype of the man without qualities," and moves on to Manzoni's "The Betrothed," emphasizing the prevalence of the point of view of the humble, who instinctively avoid "disguising" reality the way the powerful do. It continues with an explanation of the works and personality of Achille Campanile, concluding with a brief essay entitled "The Imperfect Geography of Corto Maltese." Eco amuses himself, and us, by identifying the places where language short-circuits and contradicts itself, exploding in ambiguities and discrepancies. Cagliostro lies with his words, with his clothes, with his behavior, and the legends that transformed him from a small adventurer into a myth lie about Cagliostro (even today, mysterious and faithful hands lay flowers in the cell where he died, in the castle of San Leo), a symbol of free thought, a victim of clerical obscurantism. Manzoni, although in his essays he devoted much more complex pages to language, suggests in "The Betrothed" an opposition between verbal language, a vehicle of lies and deception, and natural signs, through which the humble understand, even when the powerful deceive them with their Latin. Campanile plays with language and its clichés, turns ready-made phrases inside out like gloves, and provokes effects of estrangement. Hugo Pratt plays with geography, which, by the way, he knows very well, and uses real maps to make them improbable, to elude boundaries, to make distances levitate, and with them our imagination. Campanile and Pratt lie out of irony, Cagliostro lies out of interest (or perhaps out of condemnation, gradually becoming a prisoner of his own myth), and Manzoni indignantly takes the side of the poor who suffer the wiles of the language of the powerful; but in reality — since he also practices irony — he does irony squared and condemns words through the narrative word.
Umberto Eco (1932-2016), reconhecido como um dos mais importantes escritores e pensadores dos últimos tempos, foi filósofo, semiólogo, crítico literário e professor de semiologia na Universidade de Bolonha. Grande parte de sua obra se encontra publicada no Brasil pela Editora Record.
Carlo Maria Martini nasceu em Torino em 1927. Em 1944, entrou para a Companhia de Jesus e ordenou-se sacerdote em 1952. Em 1958, formou-se em teologia fundamental pela Universidade Gregoriana de Roma — da qual mais tarde seria reitor — e em 1962 iniciou a atividade de docente no Pontificio Istituto Biblico, que depois iria dirigir. Foi elevado a cardeal em 1983 pelo papa João Paulo II.