Susan Gerstein's Blog - Posts Tagged "umberto-eco"

The other day I had been rummaging through some old files looking for a letter on an unrelated subject when, unexpectedly, I came upon one I wrote long ago to Umberto Eco, whose book, “The Name of the Rose”, was an enormously successful best seller just then. It was 1984, the book was the rage of the year, read by a giant spectrum of readers of all intellectual attainments: it was an hugely entertaining who-done-it set in a medieval cloister among monks and priests that could appeal on a strictly popular level, yet it introduced a complicated power struggle among the priestly hierarchy that could be read as a roman a clef about much more recent history. There was much conversation and argument going on about the exact meaning of the plot, and my strong feelings about the interpretation of it were by no means shared among my friends and fellow readers. So who else but the author himself would settle this argument? Almost as a joke, as if casting the proverbial bottle on the ocean, I wrote a letter with my question to Umberto Eco,not even remotely hoping for an answer. I sent my inquiry care of the publisher of the book, and promptly forgot about it. Imagine my surprise when, about six months later, a handwritten note arrived – from Umberto Eco himself, addressing, though ultimately sidestepping, my concerns.

Here is the correspondence from thirty years ago about the “Name of the Rose”:

My letter, written in August, 1984

Dear Mr. Eco,

Having encountered “The Name of the Rose” this past year, I am now to be numbered among the multitudes of your fervent admirers. This book, to which I have come unacquainted with any of your previous work, has been a most memorable reading experience: spellbound, one attempts to penetrate the various levels, the games-within-games of which it consists, all the while becoming fonder and fonder of William and his Adso. A book to savor, to go back to and rediscover time and time again.

Having said this, I now arrive at a request I have of you, hardly daring to hope for an answer: I ask for a clarification that would resolve a raging argument and perhaps save several friendships (not to speak of a marriage). It is this: reading the book, many elements of it seem to me to be intended as a parable of our current, most recent history; or rather that of the inter-Communist factions, thus Avignon paralleling Moscow while the Christian heresies – and even the factions (such as the Franciscans) within the Church proper - representing various elements of Euro-Communists, Eastern Europeans (Hungary? Poland? Yugoslavia?) and their attempt at working out a modus vivendi of their own and yet endeavoring to remain within the ideological fold. This had struck me most powerfully on first reading, though I felt quite inadequate at solving what I thought – and still think – to be a giant jigsaw puzzle. Coming to the end of the book I had gone in search of reviews published when it first appeared, hoping to have my “theory” clarified; but to my utter amazement the reviewers, while full of enthusiastic praise and indeed clarifying much I have missed (including, by John Updike, the allusion in the very title), none of them touched upon my real questions. Having failed with the critics, I turned to friends and much discussion followed. I found that each one seemed to have read a different book, so to speak, ranging from the detective-story aficionado to one who had used your books on semiotics in his own work and concentrated on that aspect of it, and on to the medievalist – none of them seemed to see any intention to suggest political parallels.

I had begun to think that I had perhaps fantasized, and proceeded to re-read the book with that in mind – but instead I found even more “clues” to my theory, more possible hidden meanings, and still no one to clarify them if indeed they were there. Could Gherardo Segarelli be the prototype Mussolini and Fra Dolcino Hitler? Does the Empire (and Louis of Bavaria, in the instance of the alliance formed to defeat Fra Dolcino) not represent the West? Is not Michael of Cesena’s position similar to that of Dubcek’s, of Tito’s for that matter, in the various manifestations of the their respective relationships to Moscow? Does John XXII bear a resemblance to Krushchev? And finally, is not William of Baskerville the archetypal Western liberal who, while retaining left-leaning views rescued from a now-repudiated Communist (Inquisitorial?) past, argues for a degree of self-determination and democracy during the central parley? My questions go on and on.

I hardly dare hope for an answer, let alone a detailed one; but if you were so immeasurably kind as to even “confirm or deny” that you had this general background in mind while writing “The Name of the Rose” (perhaps having to do with your self declared obsession, born of a visit to Prague in ’68?), you would make one reader immeasurably relieved of her own obsession, and very happy.


I received the following letter about six months later:


Just arrived in NYC – where I’ll teach for 3 months at Columbia (French & Romance languages dept.) – and I find your letter.

I neither confirm nor deny. I am respectful of the interpretive freedom of my readers: a book is a dialogue where sometimes the reader tells the author how to read. As a personal position (but my personal positions have nothing to do with the text) I do not like strict allegorical readings. In any case it’s not me that has put in the story parables of current history. Our ancestors said “historia magistra vitae”. If people read more history they would not repeat (over and over again) the same patterns.

Everything I told in my book (at least as far as historical facts and figures are concerned) really happened. If some my stories resemble our history, the fault is not of my story but of history.

But I repeat. It seems to me exaggeratedly Talmudic to posit point to point equivalences such as Ubertino=X or John XXII=Y. Perhaps X, Y, Z etc. = John XXII (but the old man does not bear any responsibility).


So, I did not get the answer I wanted. Still, I was pleased at his reply, and retreated into my own, clearly personal interpretation. – This is all thirty years ago; perhaps it is time to re-read “The Name of the Rose” and see how much it, and I, changed.

I find myself re-reading increasingly; it must be a sign of aging. In a recent review of a newly published novel the reviewer quotes several writers of fiction who pronounce the very genre dead: it seems that “making up stories about imaginary people” is passé, thus the avalanche of barely fictionalized accounts of the minutiae of the daily life of authors, such as “My Struggle” by Karl Ove Knausgaard, and its ilk. The rules are changing, the world and its mirror image in literature, in music, in visual arts hurtles forward ever faster and I seem to fall back increasingly on books from the past, old friends, for solace. So recently I tested the slightly dangerous waters of picking up books after decades-long intervals; as I said in a post in March of 2013, this step requires some bravery since one never knows if one will retain the solace of an old friendship or find the cherished connection lost. Two books provided examples of both possibilities.

The publishing of Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” was a major literary event in the early eighties; the fame of the book preceded it even before the English translation of the Italian original (excellent, by William Weaver) had appeared in the U.S. and immediately catapulted on to the best-seller list. The author, a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, had written a classic Whodunit, a crime story replete with multiple murders and a brilliant investigator who arrives at the solution to the mysterious events in a nick of time. We are transported to an abbey in the early 14th century, the object of desire causing the series of murders is a lost manuscript, and victims, suspects, and detectives are all monks. The background to all this is an intensely political atmosphere having to do with the rival factions within the Church as well that of the rivalry of the Church itself with the Holy Roman Empire. I devoured it avidly when it appeared, I saw parallels in the detailed descriptions of the schisms, the no-holds-barred enmities of a divided 14th century Europe to the 20th century versions of it, its hot and cold wars raging, its powerful Popes replaced by powerful dictators of Fascism and Communism vying for supremacy with Western Liberalism. Somehow the enormously detailed references to medieval marginalia, minutely detailed descriptions of religious symbolism in the abbey’s art, philosophical arguments among the monks about tiny divergences of dogma did not faze me in the least; I was enthralled. There were huge arguments raging at the time among critics as well as readers about the underlying political meaning of the story, even whether there was any contemporary reference at all, or was this simply a very erudite work of a brilliant medievalist having some fun. To make an attempt at solving this question, (see the post of March 6, ’14) I wrote a letter to the person in the best position to answer it: the author himself, and to my utter shock, he answered. He essentially said that the political parallels were in the eye of the beholder, i.e. the reader; but since history seems to repeat itself endlessly, such interpretations are not unreasonable. – And that’s where matters were left, until I picked up the book again recently, after thirty years have gone by. I wish I hadn’t. I changed; it changed. Where on first encountering it, I found the minutiae riveting, now I found it over-detailed, mannered, precious. Where long ago I found the solution to the crimes clever, this time I found it forced and artificial, depending less on clever reasoning than a series of haphazard revelations. And where the political parallels were then clear to me, I saw them as much less relevant now; perhaps the minute details of the then raging Cold War made me more acutely sensitive to them. Undoubtedly it is my loss, for while I recognize the book as full of fascinating details of medieval life and literature written by a master, the personal appeal it had for me long ago is severely diminished; partly perhaps because the intense interest in finding the solution to the crimes that had kept one riveted was now gone, somehow it all seemed thinner. I should have savored the memory of it.

On the other hand. “Howards End”, by E. M. Forster, recently re-read for the third time, is a book of such balm, such endless pleasure, such an overwhelming embrace by an old friend, such a madeleine to bring back the memories of first encountering it, remembering how one was then and how the book impressed then, and how one changed and yet how the book has a world of things to say still, though they may be different things than they were years ago. Here remembering the denouement diminishes the reading experience not at all; if anything, it enhances it. I was struck, again, about the modernity of a book written a century ago: the minute differences among the upper and lower tiers of the middle classes and the difficulty of communications across those barriers, the enormous importance of being financially comfortable, the gentrification of London, the displacement of charming neighborhoods by expensive high rise apartment buildings could have been written about present day New York. The language is lyrical; the story is riveting; and the final peace that arrives with the unexpected denouement never ceases to bring a sense of completion to the reader. This is one to return to over and over again.