When it was released in Italy in 1999 under the original title Qthen during its publication in 2001 in France under the name The Eye of Carafathis novel quickly established itself as a literary UFO. Its success was resounding and in just a few months, it found its audience and established itself among the best sellers. Reissues and translations follow one another.
Critically acclaimed, The Eye of Carafa imposes its mark. It combines historical erudition, thriller tension and fine political analysis. But it is also the dark side surrounding its authors which intrigues and fuels the dynamic of success. Indeed, no one really knows who is hiding behind an intriguing pseudonym. The Eye of Carafa achieves the status of manifesto of a new literary generation, daring, non-conformist; both deeply contemporary and classic.
At the heart of the novel, a strong and fascinating theme: the crossing of Europe in the 16the century, against a backdrop of Reformation, religious wars and ideological clashes. The reader is caught up in the journey of a nameless hero, an eternal fugitive, who adopts multiple identities to adapt to intrigues whose ingredients are espionage, manipulation and popular struggles.
The political dimension of the work escapes no one. We denounce the fabrication of truths, the mechanisms of power and propaganda. The novel questions the reader about individual and collective resistance, the circulation of information, the birth of legends and the difficulty of writing history. In this sense, this vast historical canvas resonates with the concerns of the present. The shock produces a blast effect, or even a chain reaction which gives an exceptional lifespan to The Eye of Carafa.
Who is Luther Blissett?
Quickly, the name of the author intrigues. Because “Luther Blissett” is not an individual, but a collective pseudonym, already known in alternative circles for his provocative actions and artistic hoaxes. The choice of this anonymity fuels the rumor. Some see in it the hand of a great hidden writer (the name of Umberto Eco is sometimes whispered). Others evoke a clandestine network of activists or subversive artists handling reality as well as fiction in a volatile and unstable cultural subcontinent.
The media are getting carried away, the skillfully maintained secrecy feeds the public’s curiosity and the shifting identity of the collective becomes a subject in itself, inseparable from the success of the work. The quality of the work nourishes the secret and the secret enhances the notoriety of the work. We are faced with a perfect mechanism in which each cog makes sense.
The “Luther Blissett” legend was then at its peak. Everything is possible, but everything is suspect. The boundaries between artistic performance, political engagement and media manipulation are becoming porous. The identity of the collective, maintained by a demonstrated taste for cryptography, is methodically blurred. The Eye of Carafa remains fully a literary and political mystery, where the author’s quest becomes almost as thrilling as that of the novel.
The fog skillfully maintained around the identity of the Luther Blissett collective has nourished an imagination of esotericism and secrecy. The very reference to the 16th centurye century and the wars of religion in The Eye of Carafa encourages certain readers and observers to suppose that the authors are themselves members of initiatory societies or, at a minimum, do they maintain links with contemporary esoteric groups: Freemasons, Martinists, Rosicrucians?
Some critics have claimed to discern in the book coded references to alchemy, Kabbalah or Gnostic currents, in particular through the figure of the unnamed main character. It evokes the myths of wandering, secrets and the inner quest.
A supposed link to secret societies
In alternative circles and among certain journalists in search of a scoop, the rumor is spreading that Luther Blissett operates on the model of secret societies, with initiation ceremonies, rites of passage under the impetus of an exegesis whose corpus hides unknown dogmas. Stories are circulating of nocturnal meetings in squats or underground passages in Italian cities. During these assemblies, we exchange coded instructions, the “passwords” which allow us to join the inner circle of the collective.
Others go so far as to assert that the very name “Luther Blissett” is intrinsically a bearer of talismanic values and claim to detect in it a hidden reference to Martin Luther (the Protestant reformer) and to alchemical or illuminist practices.
Contemporary extensions of these rumors even suggest a connection with the Illuminati or the heirs of Pythagorean societies: the mastery of hoaxes and media manipulation is interpreted as the sign of a secret technicality, inherited from occult traditions. Some blogs and forums specializing in counterculture evoke a “invisible international”a sprawling network ready to act in the shadows to overthrow the established order, in the manner of the secret societies which have punctuated the history of modern Europe.
All these legends found fertile ground in the very attitude of the collective. Its followers deny nothing, use their own cryptic humor at will, share a taste for double bottom and symbolic confusion. Rather than defending themselves from it, the historical members of Luther Blissett nourish this dimension and send their interlocutors towards other enigmas. This supposed link to secret societies has thus become an integral component of the Blissett myth, illustrating the extent to which the narrative power of the collective goes far beyond the literary sphere and irrigates contemporary imaginations of secrecy, conspiracy and emancipation.
Dadaist punks at work
Behind this cultural and literary ghost train, the Luther Blissett project, born in 1994 in Bologna (Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy), brings together writers, artists, activists and anonymous people around a rather Dadaist and frankly punk objective: to subvert the media and cultural order through collective creation, anonymity and the diversion of dominant codes. The very name of Luther Blissett can be adopted by anyone, provided they continue this form of commitment in open source.
Regarding the novel Q / The Eye of Carafathe secret gradually lifts. It is an eight-handed work, written by Roberto Bui, Giovanni Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi and Luca Di Meo, initiators of the collective. The media hoaxes created by Luther Blissett, who became Wu-Ming at the dawn of the year 2000, generated journalistic investigations to verify a new rumor: was the collective at the origin of the QAnon conspiracy movement?
Their action is not limited to literature. Luther Blissett orchestrates performances, hoaxes and real media actions: false sects, false manifestos, media hacks, revealing the flaws of a system quick to build fears and swallow rumors. The blind mirror of capitalism. The affair of false satanic rituals in Viterbo – a city located in Lazio, in central Italy – illustrates Luther Blissett’s commitment in trapping journalists and politicians at the heart of a campaign of mass intoxication. Their approach announces the advent of jamming culture (or cultural diversion) and European artivism.
The revelation that the novel is the work of activists shakes everything up. This committed collective transposes into fiction its strategies of anonymity, reversal of point of view, deconstruction of certainties. The Eye of Carafa does not just revisit history or entertain: it questions the very notion of narrative, constantly playing on the multiplicity of voices, uncertain identities, the relativity of facts.
From then on, fiction becomes a critical weapon, the historical novel a laboratory of ideas where ancient struggles resonate with contemporary struggles. In the German forests of the 16th centurye century or in the demonstrations that punctuate international summits, the identified enemy is the same. But if its ugly face travels through time and nestles in people’s minds, it is perhaps just as important to be wary of those who lead the harshest campaigns against it.
The originality of the treatment lies in this permanent weaving between narration, commitment and political experimentation. Subversion does not only apply to the content, it also innervates the very form and structure of the story.
The reader is not only invited to perceive a truth that would be elsewhere, he is asked to advance on a canvas whose meshes are secondary, poorly mapped tracks. It is up to him to understand that the truth is only a perception in the image of the collective: elusive in essence. More than a book, The Eye of Carafa is the demonstration, through literature, that it is possible to rewrite history, reverse the balance of power and offer the reader an experience by stimulating their critical vigilance in the face of powers and the making of myth.
This is why The Eye of Carafa remains a major milestone, an actor of the subversive power that a collective work can infuse into contemporary literature. Unless this power, this subversion and this breath are fully part of the farce?
