Bibliofreakblog

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco was already an established genius when he set his sights on writing fiction.  He had a few ideas in mind:  He wanted it set in the Middle Ages (natch) and he “wanted to poison a monk.”  The rest he made up around these two basic ideas. 

Now, you might be leery of reading a novel set in the middle ages written by someone who is such an expert in the fields of Mideval history, semiotics, language, literature, religion, and a plethora of intellectual pursuits.  However, despite all of his work, his literary criticism, his interpreting of symbols, Eco himself writes in the modern edition’s postscript, “The author should die once he had finished writing.  So as to not trouble the path of the text.”  In effect, Eco has given the reader license to do with this book as he pleases.  Whether or not the reader “gets” Eco’s intentions or reads more intentions than, well, intended, makes little difference to Eco.  He does draw on his vast knowledge of the aforementioned topics, but understanding much of any of them isn’t actually necessary to enjoy the story.  So fear not.

The Name of the Rose covers a week at a Medieval Italian monestary, and is structured as such.  The rigorous schedule of the monks’ lives and prayers is also that of the book.  Each day covers eight segments, from Matins around 2 or 3 o’ clock in the morning to Compline, around 6 or 7 at night when the monks go to bed (fun stuff, I know, right?).  The book itself is supposed to be a translation of a manuscript the author stumbled upon in Prague in the 1960’s, by a certain Adso of Melk who writes with his last days of his youth.  Of course, the introduction by the so-called translator is part of the novel itself, just so we’re clear. 

The plot of the novel revolves around an older monk and his young sidekick (I know what you’re thinking, and while some of that may come later regarding other characters, get your mind out of the gutter).  The elder is William of Bskerville, a detective and student himself of Roger Bacon et al., and the younger is Adso.  Monks start dropping like flies, and team Baskerville/Melk are on the case!  Is it the Apocalypse?  Is it the rival Church in Avignon?  Is it the scary blind guy?  Only logic can solve this mystery!  (if you are suddenly reminded of Sherlock Holmes,  its deliberate).

The mystery pays full homage to semiotics and literature, including such beloved elements as: the old blind guy, the dumb guy who loves animals, the labyrinth, etc., but don’t think for a split second that you’ve seen any of them before.  While Eco employs many details straight out of the Collective Unconscious, he does so in a way that shapes them, fleshes them out, and doesn’t rely on old stand-bys.  You think you’ve read it all before, but you haven’t.  This is a mystery that cuts no corners, neither under or over estimates its reader, and is filled with beautiful prose (thanks in part to English translator William Weaver) that is actually fun to read.

A couple random examples I found I’d underlined in my copy:

“William coughed politely.  ‘Er…hm…’ he said.  This is what he did when he wanted to introduce a new subject.  He managed to do it gracefully because it was his habit-and I believe this is typical of the men of his country [England]-to begin every remark with long preliminary moans, as if starting the exposition of a completed thought cost him a great mental effort.  Whereas, I am now convinced, the more groans he uttered before his declaration, the surer he was of the soundness of the proposition he was expressing.”

“…we would find ourselves on a kind of terrace in the mountain, which fell sharply down to beautiful bays, and then a little later we would enter deep chasms, where mountains rose among mountains, and one blocked from another the sight of the distant shore, while the sun could hardly force its way into the deep valleys.  Never before had I seen, as I saw in that part of Italy, such narrow and sudden juttings of sea and mountains, of shores followed by alpine landscapes, and in the wind that whistled among the gorges you could catch the alternate conflict of the marine balms with icy mountain gusts.”

“As, half fainting, I fell on the body to which I had joined myself, I understood in a last vital spurt that flame consists of a splendid clarity, an unusual vigor, and an igneous ardor, but it possesses the splendid clarity so that it may illuminate and the igneous ardor that it may burn.  Then I understood the abyss, and the deeper abysses that it conjured up.”

As you can tell, Eco doesn’t recall stereotypes to expound on his characters; he expounds on stereotype to further recall his characters.  He doesn’t let our own image of mountains meet sky meet sea, he edges those lines with invocation of senses.  And he doesn’t just smear around clichés simulating a “body says no, eyes say yes” feeling, he twists a dagger into the heart of the character, torturing him over his experience, which over the course of three pages is so thoroughly sweet, rapturous, and sorrowful that it is unlike any other uncertain loss of virginity in the history of sex scenes. 

Eco is a master of language, of symbolism, of making the same old thing you don’t care to read any more so thoroughly engaging you won’t want to put it down but won’t want it to end.
Buy The Name of the Rose on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Baudolino by Umberto Eco
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Book of Q by Jonathon Raab
The x-rated book: Sex and obscenity in the Bible by J. Ashleigh Burke
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by unknown
Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Decameron by Giovanni Baccaccio
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Fool by Christopher Moore
Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen
Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks 
Watermark by Vanitha Sankaran

Other works by Umberto Eco:

The Search for the Perfect Language
How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays 
Apocalypse Postponed 
Interpretation and Overinterpretation 
Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
A Theory of Semiotics 
The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas 
The Island of the Day Before
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 
The Bomb and the General 
The Three Astronauts 
The Limits of Interpretation 
Misreadings 
Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages
The Open Work 
The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce 
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language 
Baudolino 
Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
Experiences in Translation 
Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition
On Literature 
On Beauty
Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation
On Ugliness
Five Moral Pieces 
Travels in Hyperreality 
The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts  

With Cardinal Martini:

Belief or Nonbelief? : A Dialogue