In
the blurb to the first Italian edition of the novel, Umberto Eco, a
semiotician, wrote:
‘… this
novel… may perhaps be read in three ways. The
first category of readers will be taken by the plot (…)
and will accept even the long bookish discussions and the
philosophical dialogues, because it will sense that the signs, the
traces and the revelatory symptoms are nesting in those inattentive
pages. The second category will be impassioned by the debate of
ideas, and will attempt to establish connections (which the author
refuses to authorize) with the present. The third will realize that
this text is a textile of other texts, a ‘whodunnit’
of quotations, a book built on books.’ 1
At
some point in the novel, the main character, William, makes the
observation that all books speak only of other books, and that no
story is new because it has already been told; consequently, it makes
sense that Eco regards The Name
of the Rose as ‘a book built on books’, and it also makes
sense that the library, with all its riddles and false promises, is
at the heart of the mystery.
Although
The
Name of the Rose
is a detective story set in an isolated monastery in the fourteenth century, it is not a light
read, and the detective element - why are all these people dying, and who is killing them? - is merely the scaffolding on which
Eco hangs many theological and philosophical questions and riddles. I
was fascinated by the title
and eventually
discovered
that Eco had chosen
the title because:
‘…
the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it
hardly has any meaning left.’ 2
The
Name of the Rose puts forward ideas, possibilities and clues,
but, like the labyrinth of the library itself, nothing is perfectly
clear, much is hidden, and, at the end of the book, William (the
detective in the story) says: ‘… The order that our mind imagines
is like a net, or a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward
you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it
was useful, it was meaningless… ’ 3
Even Adso, the novice monk
travelling with William and the narrator of the story, looks at what
he has written and wonders whether there is a hidden meaning (or
several) somewhere among the pages, or whether perhaps there is no
meaning at all.
Apart
from the suspense of the actual detective story, I feel that the
reader is given a multitude of ideas that he/she can then take in
whatever direction he/she wishes. As with the library, many of these
directions will hit a wall without any opening, while others will
follow complicated trails not previously considered. It is definitely
a book than can, and probably should, be read more than once.
1 The
Name of the Rose,
Umberto Eco, Alfred A. Knopf, UK, 2006,
Introduction, p.xiv
2 “Postscript
to the Name of the Rose”,
The
Name of the Rose,
Umberto Eco,
Harcourt, Inc., 1984 p.506
3 The
Name of the Rose,
Umberto Eco, Alfred A. Knopf, UK, 2006,
p.550