Author umberto1/7/2023 ![]() The last line of the book says, in Latin: “Yesterday’s rose endures in its name we hold empty names.” That meant, Eco said, that ideas are the only imperishable things.Įco retouched the thriller in 2012, telling Corriere della Sera that he wanted to change “certain expressions and repetitions that annoyed me,” while also lightening up some of the Latin citations to help readers, “even if I could have forgotten the readers, seeing as the book has sold 30 million copies.”Įco told the newspaper that the official publishing numbers may have been off by a large margin, explaining that when “The Name of the Rose” was published there were no deals with publishing houses in Eastern Europe and Asia, which published their own translations without obtaining rights or paying royalties. “When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind.” “Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry,” he wrote. The book sparkled with references to his intellectual preoccupations. “The Name of the Rose” sold millions of copies, a feat for a narrative filled with partially translated Latin quotes and puzzling musings on the nature of symbols.Įco said his work on the novel was “prodded by a seminal idea: I felt like poisoning a monk.” “The Name of the Rose” made Eco an international celebrity, especially after the medieval thriller set in a monastery was made into a film starring Sean Connery in 1986. The bearded, heavy-set scholar, critic and novelist took on the esoteric theory of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols in language popular culture icons like James Bond and the technical languages of the Internet. Italian author Elisabetta Scarbi, who founded a publishing house last year with Eco and other Italian writers, called him “a great living encyclopedia” who taught young people “the capacity to love discoveries and marvels.”Īuthor of books ranging from novels to scholarly tomes to essay collections, Eco was fascinated with the obscure and the mundane, and his books were both engaging narratives and philosophical and intellectual exercises. Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said Eco “united a unique intelligence of the past and an inexhaustible capacity to anticipate the future.” A memorial service will be held on Tuesday at Milan’s Sforza Castle, a grand citadel which is overlooked by Eco’s book-filled house.įrench President Francois Hollande remembered Eco as “an immense humanist,” adding that “libraries have lost an insatiable reader, universities a dazzling professor and literature a passionate writer.” His death was earlier confirmed by his American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Įco’s contribution to Italian literature was lauded by political and cultural figures alike.
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