Current Reading: The Name of the Rose

Yesterday, I started reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Or, rather, re-reading, because I originally read the book in translation about thirty years ago. The hardcover I read then was the same cover seen above. I am currently reading the ebook version.

The book was a sensation and, at least according to wikipedia, sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. It inspired at least one movie as well as many other "texts" including at least two board games: Mystery of the Abbey and The Name of the Rose.

Michal is also reading the book and we are also both reading Aristotle's Poetics as well because Aristotle and his thoughts about comedy are a central concern of the book.

The basic plot of the book (spoiler alert) is that, in fourteenth century Italy, a monk arrives at a monastery to investigate a series of murders that seem to be connected to the library. The murderer turns out to be a blind librarian named Jorge of Burgos who has been murdering people in order to make sure that no one is able to pass along the ideas contained in Aristotle's book on comedy (a book of the poetics that has since been lost). The library itself is an elaborate labyrinth that only the librarian can navigate. The story ends with the library in flames and the last copy of Aristotle's Poetics lost forever.

The character of Jorge of Burgos is clearly based on the twentieth century writer Jorge Luis Borges. Like the fictional character, Borges was blind for much of his adult life, he was for a time, the national librarian of Argentina. His writings also were often interested in murder mysteries, libraries, labyrinths, mirrors, and compasses. In addition to Borges, Eco's novel is filled with ideas from semiotics and literary criticism, as well as the ideas of a number of thinkers who wrote well past the fourteenth century. This includes a quote near the end of the book from Wittgenstein's Tractatus that

The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like 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.