The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

Date of Reading: 31/08/2012

Author: Umberto Eco

Translated by: William Weaver (from Italian)

Publisher: Warner Books

Place: San Diego

Year: 1980

          Once I had to face an exam which they said the most important in my life, and consequently the serious faces around made me panic. So now when I read this book I know what Jorge (the villain here) says about the second book of Aristotle which is said to be dealing with comedy is true. Laughter can dispel fear, it may change everything (possibly the outcome of my exam too, which was by the way, disastrous).

         Detective novels are usually considered by the so-called scholars as not worth reading and so not in anyone's academic curriculum. But here Umberto Eco has succeeded in producing a scholarly work within the frame work of crime fiction. All these facts about the Dark Ages of the Catholic Church is pretended to be non-existent, so a common reader will have to struggle hard to make some sense of this religious dilemma. So what keeps the pace is the frame story, the seven murders and the mystery pursued by William, the follower of Roger Bacon (a monk who upholds scientific belief is a strange combination indeed!), who reminds us often of Sherlock Holmes.

          The year is 1327. Adso a young novice of the Benedictine order is placed under William of Baskerville as a scribe and disciple by his parents. Church is going through what we now call the dark ages; Pope John XXII presides over Avignon and is in conflict with Emperor Louis. Factions are arising, condemning the Pope and is consequently burned as heretics by inquisition committees.

        Pope is now turned against the Franciscan order too, as they proclaim their faith in the doctrine of poverty of Christ. So William, an English man and Franciscan is to find a suitable place for the meeting between the leaders of the Franciscan order and the envoys of the Pope. As per this intention they travel to this distant abbey where terrible events are to take place in seven days.

         Adso's memoir is divided into seven days describing everything in detail. By the time they reach the abbey the death of the first man - Adelmo - has already taken place and William as a former Inquisitor is charged with the enquiry by the abbot. Secret seems to lie within the library which functions as a labirynth and is forbidden to the free roaming of others. Two more deaths follow - Venatius and Berengar - and the meeting of the envoys convene under the shadow of these recent events. Soon the herbalist, Severinus is also killed and the cellarer and his companion is mistaken for the crime. The meeting ends in vain.

         The death of Malachi, the librarian clears the mist and William succeeds in finding the clue to enter the secret place in the library, named finis Africae. Abbot becomes the sixth victim and William and Adso finds Jorge, the old blind monk, in the finis Africae. The brain behind the murders is discovered at last. He was preventing the second book of Aristotle which deals with comedy to come to the public eye.

          The book enhances the virtues of laughter, its power to quench fear and consequently Jorge feared that it could ruin the power of Church as it governs on fear. So he hides it all these years, but when the young people with their lust for knowledge, begin to search for finis Africae, he smears the book in poison and all who read it got killed. Only Adelmo's death was a suicide as a result of his sinning with Berengar.

         When he fails to convince (or kill) William, Jorge tears the pages and gulps it down. In the fight that ensued, a lamp is toppled over, the library catches fire and soon it spread to the whole abbey. All the deaths that occurred had corresponded to the signs warning the arrival of Antichrist which was only a coincidence. But as William says towards the end, we see the Antichrist in Jorge, "the Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer".


Umberto Eco

          William and Adso parts ways never to see each other again. Adso returns to the monastery at Melk where he writes down this manuscript as an old man. William, it is informed that, dies in the great plague.

Something to think about:
          
"The idea is sign of things, and the image is sign of the idea, sign of a sign".

"The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb".

"A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams".

--- the book is made into a film in 1986 starring Sean Connery as William and Christian Slater as Adso

--- the title is said to be neutral, nothing related to the story