Fiction: Baudolino

Translated by William Weaver

1. Harcourt Inc., 2001, ISBN 0-15-100690-3; Hardcover $27.00.
2. Harcourt Brace & Company, 2003, ISBN 0-15-602906-5; Paperback, $15.00.



Review by Allen B. Ruch [source]

“Lying about the future produces history.”
–Umberto Eco

Near the end of Baudolino, a twelfth-century historian asks advice from a fellow Byzantine, a philosopher named Paphnutius who was blinded as punishment for the failure of his inventions to perform on command. The historian is writing an account of the ongoing sack of Constantinople during the dissipated Fourth Crusade, and is surprised by the inventor’s suggestion to omit certain details from his narrative: “Yes, I know it’s not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.” Seeing the wisdom in this, the historian nonetheless laments the loss of a beautiful story; but the blind man assures him that one day, sooner or later, a greater liar than them all will restore the tale.

The year is 1204, the historian in question Niketas Choniates, the book The Sack of Constantinople, and the omissions all concern the exploits of a fellow named Baudolino. And of course, a quick flip through its pages will reveal that Master Niketas heeded his friend’s advice – there is no mention of Baudolino; nor are there any references to his quarrelsome companions, the true cause of the death of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, a lucrative campaign to propagate fake holy relics, a convoluted quest for the Holy Grail, or a tale of unfulfilled love on the borders of utopia. (Trust me, I checked the copy I always keep on hand. Feel free to check yours, too.) As the blind man predicted, a greater liar has indeed come along, one so full of falsehood that he’s inscribed predictions of his own arrival into the very pages of the story itself.
In this, his fourth novel, professional liar Umberto Eco spins the yarn of Baudolino, a fellow artificer hailing from Eco’s hometown of Alessandria and possessing more than a bit of the author’s personality. Like Eco, Baudolino is a master of many languages, has a passion for history and politics, takes pleasure in a good meal, and tempers idealism with a wry sense of humor. Even both their origins are touched by a hint of mystery like a sly wink: Baudolino’s father is Gagliaudo Aulari, the legendary Alessandrian trickster who ended a siege by means of a deception involving his cow; Eco’s own grandfather claims to be a foundling, his last name a contraction of ex coelis oblatus, or “offered by the heavens.” (The book itself offers that the Holy Grail might be lapis ex coelis, or a stone fallen from heaven; perhaps a punning authorial watermark?) But most important of all, both Baudolino and Eco take delight in a good story.

It is this love of storytelling that animates the entire novel, Eco’s most light-hearted and comedic work to date. Guided by Paphnutius’ wise implication that history is narrative, Baudolino operates on several levels at once, combining a picaresque adventure story with a fantastical flight of historical invention. At its heart, it is the story of Baudolino, a brash opportunist with leonine hair, a silver tongue, and a heart of gold. But this being an Umberto Eco novel, nothing is that simple, and Baudolino is layered with several degrees of narrative, none of which are particular trustworthy.

To begin with, the story is largely framed as a dialogue between Baudolino and Niketas Choniates. Meeting amidst the burning fires of Constantinople, the two men forge a friendship as Latin crusaders plunge the city into chaos, sacking its priceless treasures and looting its holy reliquaries. There, while hiding from the invaders and organizing their escape, Baudolino confesses himself to be an inveterate liar and proceeds to tell Master Niketas his life’s story – and quite a story it is, taking many days to unfold. Eventually Baudolino’s narrative catches up to their present predicament, after which the Byzantine assists him in solving an old mystery, bringing an unexpected closure to his new friend’s miraculous tale. Unlike Eco’s previous novels, however, Baudolino does not purport to be an unearthed manuscript, nor is it an immediate, first-person account. While the conversations between Baudolino and Master Niketas form the main text of the book, this very dialogue is itself narrated by an omniscient author unafraid to comment on the characters and their actions. The end result is a story within a story within a story, each level supplying additional falsehoods and distortions. (To call this an “unstable” or “unreliable” narrative would be kind!)

That is not to say the story of Baudolino is difficult to follow, only difficult to believe, which is half the point. Born in a chilly swamp and named for “the only saint who never performed a single miracle,” the young Italian sees (or believes he sees, for even Baudolino admits to being hazy on the distinction) occasional visions in the fog: unicorns, saints, German emperors, that sort of thing. From an early age, Baudolino discovers that his visions have the power to influence people, from superstitious peasants to great men searching for something to confirm their beliefs. One day he unknowingly encounters Frederick I Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, and ingratiates himself to the warlord with a serendipitous lie. Taking leave of Gagliaudo, his cranky father, young Baudolino becomes something of an adopted son and junior consigliere to the Emperor. Time after time his audacious schemes play out in the Emperor’s favor, and soon Baudolino finds himself a trusted member of the imperial court, educated in Paris and studying with scholars such as Rainald von Dassel and Bishop Otto von Freising. Flitting back and forth between Paris and the Emperor’s various hot zones, Baudolino takes part in numerous political and ecclesiastical debates, imperial ceremonies, and military campaigns.

Throughout this often confusing panoply of medieval names, places, and events, Eco uses the character of Baudolino as a shuttle, weaving together diverse strands of history and legend into a unified tapestry – though one that reveals Baudolino’s signature deep in the pattern. Like Zelig, Baudolino is always attendant in the background of important events; though unlike Woody Allen’s character, Baudolino has the chutzpah to claim authorship, and does so with such casual familiarity and deadpan disavowal of his own genius that even Niketas is seduced into believing his tales. According to Baudolino, it is he himself who masterminds the political manipulations and legal subterfuges needed to legitimize Barbarossa’s reign, frees Bishop Otto from the chains of pessimism by accidentally erasing his “first draft” of the Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus, establishes the myth of the Holy Grail as it would later be revealed to Wolfram von Eschenbach, and provides Gagliaudo with the idea of using his cow to save Alessandria. Baudolino even proves to be the true author of the celebrated correspondence between Abélard and Héloîse! (Unsent love letters originally intended for the object of Baudolino’s secret infatuation, they include “her” fictional replies, and were eventually swiped in Paris by some “dissolute canon.”) The book abounds with such playful revelations, and Eco rewards the attentive reader with dozens of historical ironies, amusing connections, and absurd conspiracies. As might be expected, Baudolino is also filled with wordplay and literary in-jokes: words are borrowed from Gulliver’s Travels, Borges’ wondrous Aleph is relocated to a stairway in the Coliseum, and not only is Rabelais’ great library of Saint-Victoire brazenly expropriated, but Baudolino is also at fault for the bogus volumes of Bede catalogued in Pantagruel! Eco even alludes to his own debut novel, The Name of the Rose, which claims to be the manuscript of a fictional fourteenth-century monk named Adso of Melk. Baudolino ends his first attempt at writing by complaining, “and as the man said my thumb akes” – presumably an anachronistic reference to Adso’s concluding, “It is cold in the scriptorium, my thumb aches.”

While these cheerful layers of intertextuality provide the novel its vertical depth, forward momentum is gained via Baudolino’s increasing enchantment with the kingdom of Prester John. A persistent legend of the Middle Ages, the kingdom of Prester John was believed to be a magical realm lost somewhere in the Orient, a land where a Christian King held sway, awaiting unification with his spiritual brothers in the West. The story gained some credibility through the periodic appearances of a letter purportedly from Prester John, addressed to various Western potentates and describing a kingdom overflowing with glittering treasure, sacred relics, and marvelous creatures. Sensing both the cultural need for such a powerful myth as well as its potential political use, Baudolino sees no harm in perpetuating the story, and he soon gathers a circle of like-minded “believers” who further embroider the tale with their own idiosyncratic threads. Naturally, it is Baudolino who writes the first and original version of the infamous letter, which is soon copied, altered, and dispersed by jealous rivals. Freed from imperial service by the mysterious death of Frederick, an aging Baudolino finally decides to put faith in his own powers of creation, and he leads his group of poets and philosophers on a quest to truly find the kingdom of Prester John. Numbering twelve, the travelers pass themselves off as the “twelve magi” of medieval legend, paying for their passage by selling counterfeit holy relics. As they journey into stranger and stranger lands, they pass the time in scientific discussion and theological debate. Like Dorothy’s crew “off to see the Wizard,” each of the travelers has his own personal reason to discover the kingdom of Prester John, a utopia they themselves have imagined into being.
It is here, however, that Baudolino reveals a deep and unfortunate flaw. While this journey sounds like fertile ground for complex characterization and rich literary discussion, Eco spends far too little time developing the individual personalities of his cast. As a result, most of Baudolino’s associates appear faceless and interchangeable, leaving the reader few points of access for emotional and intellectual sympathy. Even their debates too often ring hollow, and while a dazzling array of ideas are presented, few are followed through or explored with any real vigor. One hungers for the depth and intensity Eco brought to the characters and conversations of his other, more fleshed-out works, and even the competing heresies of Pndapetzim seem pale and thin when measured against the profound discussions of Rose and Pendulum. Missing here is the sense of an authorial intellect on fire, ideas fully brought into play and folded into a rich, textual density, characters that offer compelling studies in human experience. As in The Island of the Day Before, throughout much of Baudolino Eco bends his literary talents to describing the fantastic with startling realism, and elevating the mundane through poetic fabulism. While this certainly has its own rewards – the description of the Sambatyon, a river of flowing stone, is just stunning – the reader feels somewhat blocked at the surface of the text, skipping from idea to idea like a stone across water. The happy exception to this is found during scenes with Hypatia, a siren-like beauty who captures Baudolino’s heart and restores his spirit. A devotee of Gnostic thought, Hypatia has many fascinating notions about God, and her passionate beliefs inform the best passages in the book. (It may be telling that the author himself claims to have “fallen in love” with Hypatia.) It is here that Eco approaches the sublime, marrying the language of poetic rapture with the sheer joy of thought:

“God is the Unique, and he is so perfect that he does not resemble any of the things that exist or any of the things that do not; you cannot describe him using your human intelligence, as if he were someone who becomes angry if you are bad or worries about you out of goodness, someone who has a mouth, ears, face, wings, or that is spirit, father or son, not even of himself. Of the Unique you cannot say he is or is not, he embraces all but is nothing; you can name him only through dissimilarity, because it is futile to call him Goodness, Beauty, Wisdom, Amiability, Power, Justice, it would be like calling him Bear, Panther, Serpent, Dragon, or Gryphon, because whatever you say of him you will never express him. God is not body, is not figure, is not form; he does not see, does not hear, does not know disorder and perturbation; he is not soul, intelligence, imagination, opinion, thought, word, number, order, size; he is not equality and is not inequality, is not time and is not eternity; he is a will without purpose. Try to understand, Baudolino: God is a lamp without flame, a flame without fire, a fire without heat, a dark light, a silent rumble, a blind flash, a luminous soot, a ray of his own darkness, a circle that expands concentrating on its own center, a solitary simplicity; he is...is...” She paused, seeking an example that would convince them both, she the teacher and he the pupil. “He is a space that is not, in which you and I are the same thing, as we are today in this time that doesn’t flow.”

Powerful stuff, and one wishes for more of it. Having said that, Baudolino is still filled with enough invention, wonder, and erudition to fill a dozen lesser novels, and it’s pointless to criticize it for not having the same goal as his earlier works. After three labyrinthine novels of endless conversation and theoretical convolutions, who can blame Eco for having a little fun?
And Baudolino certainly is an enjoyable read. Although there are a few longueurs – the Emperor’s comings and goings are a bit tedious, and even Eco pokes fun at the difficulty of keeping tabs on all the squabbling city states – after the death of Frederick, Eco pulls out the stops, and the narrative unwinds in increasingly more unexpected directions. Additionally, Eco invests his tale with a dry humor and a sharp sense of irony – the world of Baudolino has a lived-in feel, and is often crude, bawdy, or vulgar, inhabited by pragmatic people who know to keep their heads down when the shit flies. Eco has often reflected that his Piedmontese heritage comes with a skeptical, no-nonsense outlook, and this is especially reflected in his Alessandrian characters. Men talk about sex in the rudest of terms, the cruelty of violence is barbed by black humor, and no character is allowed to overindulge in flights of fancy without soon falling flat on his ass. Dialogue is often terse, salted with laconic observations and earthy wit. After elaborating on a plan to lure invaders into a trap, one Alessandrian asks, “And where are you going to find the asshole who falls for it?” Of course, Baudolino knows just the asshole, and he could easily be a character from one of Eco’s previous novels – Baudolino is filled with peasants and low-brow servants getting one up on their betters. Later in the book, an Eastern ruler inquires about the fabulous wonders reputed to be found in the West, from trees that drip wine to cathedrals made of crystal. As Baudolino cagily confirms these exaggerations, his companion mutters, “Who’s been telling these people such whoppers?” The fact that this companion – who has been posing as a Biblical magus and is carrying one of six heads of John the Baptist – has been strategically spreading exactly such whoppers himself is not worthy of comment. Like a Pynchon novel, Baudolino celebrates the profane lives and “honest” cunning of the preterite, and if they can exploit, dupe, or take advantage of the elect, so much the better. These rough edges give Baudolino a feeling of authenticity, and even amidst its most fantastical passages, the reader feels anchored to a believable Middle Ages precisely because it feels so much like our own daily experience.

While Baudolino may lack the soaring prose, intense discussions, and convoluted density of Eco’s previous works, like all good comedy it presents an image of the world that we instinctively recognize as true. Like a Speculum Stultorum, or medieval Mirror for Fools, Baudolino catches humanity with our pants down, hands windmilling frantically to divert attention from our exposed privates as we shuffle offstage for a drink. And yet, burlesque is born from fondness, not contempt; we allow Baudolino to tease humanity because it genuinely loves humanity. As in all Eco’s work, cynicism never sours to nihilism, critique never bites down into mockery: there is a powerful argument for life in Baudolino, an argument for love, joy, persistence, and yes, even the transformative power of dreams. Like the writing of Gabriel García Márquez or Thomas Pynchon, Eco’s fiction balances Romantic self-expression with postmodern self-awareness, emanating from a place where both currents serve to energize each other. Although truth is seen as relative, the dangers of belief are exposed, and meaning is revealed as a construct, the reader is still asked to critically engage with the thriving multiplicity of the world and invest some faith in hopeful stories – Baudolino carries the message that the individual is free to discover meaning and to act with moral courage, whether in love or war.

In the end, of course, Baudolino is just another story, and it can be read in many ways. Surely one reading suggests that Baudolino’s lies make history meaningless; but a deeper reading, perhaps, proposes that through narrative imagination we envision a better future. And if it doesn’t come true, what the hell – a greater liar will always come along.

Fiction: Foucault’s Pendulum

Translated by William Weaver

1. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988, ISBN 0-15-132765-3; Hardcover $33.00.
2. Ballantine, 1990, ISBN 0-345-36875-4; Mass Market Paperback $7.99



One of the most paranoid and complex novels written since Gravity’s Rainbow, Foucault’s Pendulum is a riveting account of one man’s voyage into the unknown; but whether he’s on a journey to enlightenment or a bad trip into a nightmare world of paranoia is a haunting uncertainty.
A conspiracy story on a grand scale, Foucault’s Pendulum was originally published in 1988 as Pendolo di Foucault, and draws from the same well often visited by Jorge Luis Borges, H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Pynchon, Milorad Pavic, and Robert Anton Wilson. (Just as Eco’s novel would set the stage for the current generation of pop-historical thrillers such The Da Vinci Code.) Foucault’s Pendulum is set in a universe where fact mingles imperceptibly with fiction, where secret societies chart the true course of human evolution, and the occult exerts its subversive influence on reality in ways barely glimpsed by the average individual. Here the Templars and the Illuminati trade secrets in the darkened house of ignorance, and the lightbearers are only as trusty as their Ur-father, Lucifer.
Or it could all be an illusion.
A sprawling tale that connects the hermetic traditions of countless cultures across thousands of years, the actual plot begins simply in present-day Milan. Here, an Italian Colonel expresses his fears about a Templar conspiracy to a pair of editors named Belbo and Diotallevi and their friend Casaubon, a doctoral student and an expert on Templar history. (Belbo, the senior editor and proud owner of a new computer, is a loosely autobiographical character; he has an apartment in Milan and a summer house in northern Italy, smokes copious amounts of cigarettes, and enjoys whiskey. Although his adult life is different from his creator’s, many of Belbo’s childhood memories from Piedmont are drawn from Eco’s actual life.) Entertained by the sheer grandiosity of the Colonel’s cliché-ridden story, the trio’s amusement turns to consternation when the Colonel is soon reported missing. Perhaps he was not quite the crackpot he seemed?
The mystery of the Colonel’s disappearance tunes the trio more closely to occult wavelengths, and as they pursue their lives across the next several years, they notice more and more connections between various religious doctines, hermetic systems, and pseudo-historical conspiracy theories. From the Templars to the Rosicrucians, from lost underground cities to Brazilian Candomblé, everything seems to develop sinister interconnections. Eventually they are reunited in Milan, and as fate would have it, they are placed on a project to publish a series of books on esoteric lore. Their work plunges them even deeper into the telluric world of concealed truths, and soon they decide to synthesize everything they’ve learned into an apocryphal tale of their own, formulating one vast, all-encompassing Plan reflecting the secret history of the world. They are helped by a mysterious individual who claims to be immortal, as well as Belbo’s new computer, Abulafia. But as the Plan grows, the men find that it becomes harder and harder to ignore its many ramifications. Within time, the Plan assumes a life of its own, and as everything starts to fall apart at the seams, the men begin to question their own sanity – and perhaps the nature of reality itself.
It’s this inevitable descent into uncertainty and madness that Eco captures so masterfully, and Foucault’s Pendulum is filled with literary devices that mirror its arcane world. Using a framework loosely based on the Qabalah, Eco employs a wide range of elements that juxtapose the modern and the ancient, the supernatural and the scientific. Computer entries show the powers of modern technology while simultaneously crunching numbers for antique formulae. Flashbacks set the idyllic scenes of childhood against the painfully adult quest for identity. Sharp postmodern ironies stab through dense tapestries of gothic horror. The reader is taken on a disorienting ride through centuries of thought, ideas flashing by on every side, but somehow Eco manages to keep the focus on his characters. Indeed, after a while one feels all too close to the poor soul narrating this awful tale, this Casaubon whose final destiny is suggested at the very beginning of the book.
As in his previous novel, The Name of the Rose, Eco makes sure that his dazzling surface rests upon a firm foundation, and he seeks to actively engage the reader in a deeper play of ideas. From very early in the book, the reader is served with Pendulum’s underlying subject matter: the importance of symbols, the meaning of secrets, and the reality of universal truths. Using the wand of his esoteric narrative, Eco summons up several centuries’ worth of hermetic systems, alphabets, symbologies, and ciphers; and through the eyes of Casaubon and his associates they are examined, cross-referenced, deconstructed, refuted, discarded, resurrected and ultimately believed, rejected, or tabled for further discussion. Throughout this arduous process a few nagging questions arise, and it is here that the reader is truly challenged, forced to confront the central issues of the sprawling tale. Eco presents us with the notion that our symbols and alphabets are merely constructs, mirrors that reflect back only what meaning we desire to see. But if these devices are only containers for meaning, what then is meaning itself? Is meaning universal, relative, or completely artificial? How is meaning related to belief? Does our belief engineer our reality, or is it the exact opposite? Is belief a prison, or is it a form of ultimate freedom? What power have we placed in belief, in secrets, in mysteries? And what if the essence of something is concealed – does revelation await the diligent, or merely layers and layers of signifiers with no objective reality? Does the mystery of belief lie in the concealment of these “truths” to all but the devout? And if there is some kind of universal truth, how can it be realized in a universe guided by ostensibly random and meaningless principles? And given all this, what then is the difference between belief and madness, or between doubt and madness?
In one particularly brilliant chapter, Casaubon’s girlfriend uses common sense and a trust in simplicity to refute nearly the entire history of the occult, overturning countless hermetic secrets with a simple wave of her hand, reducing a network of conspiracies to the importance of a laundry list. In many ways, this chapter acts as an almost Borgesian refutation of the entire novel, and undermines any confidence we may have in an ultimate resolution. Like Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 or Darren Aronofsky’s film Pi, we are left suspended between two mutually exclusive systems of thought. As the novel progresses, these contradictions and attendant paranoias press deeper into the mind of the narrator, and as the plot accelerates towards the singularity established in the beginning of the book, the borderline between inspiration and insanity grows increasingly more tenuous – for both Casaubon and the reader. But just as the ending is reached, suddenly—

Fiction: The Name of the Rose

Translated by William Weaver

1. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983, ISBN 0-15-144647-4; Hardcover, $35.00.
2. Harcourt Brace: Harvest in Translation, 1984, ISBN 0-15-600131-4; Trade paperback $15.00. Includes Postscript to The Name of the Rose.
3. Folio Society, 2001, Hardcover, £27.50.



Originally published in 1980 as Il nome della rosa, Eco’s first novel has rapidly assumed the status of a modern classic. Set in a northern Italian abbey in the year 1327, The Name of the Rose is an engaging and unusually dense mystery, harmoniously combining many different elements into one seamless whole. The book is like a marvelous play, where philosophical discussion, theological debate, and scientific discourse interact brilliantly on the stage of historical fiction; a drama where a complex plot masked as a detective story pulls the reader into surprisingly dynamic relationships with a cast of metaphysical characters.
There are many opinions of this book, which is both rare and wonderful for a work basically so young. Its fanbase is very large, and includes mystery buffs, classical lit professors, postmodern fiction enthusiasts, science fiction and fantasy fans, mathematicians and linguists – rarely does one encounter a contemporary work with a readership so diverse. Some know it only from the film version with Sean Connery and Christian Slater; a decent movie, but as a faithful rendition of the novel, it is not without serious flaws. Some consider it an historical mystery, a literary whodunit touching on everything from God to toxicology, and to others it plays like a supernatural novel of the occult, filled with arcane references and sinister monks brooding in the shadow of the Apocalypse. To some it represents a modern refutation of the Medieval world-view, a semiological reply to the question of Universal Natures in the form of a Roman a clef. And then again, more than a few have tossed the book into the corner, discouraged by its clutter and unwilling to plow through the infamous “Adso admires the door” chapter.
So what exactly is all this about?
The novel opens with a few words from the “author,” if I may put that word into quotations; for Eco uses the time-honored literary device of disavowing authorship, claiming instead to have uncovered the manuscript of a 14th Century monk named Adso of Melk. After a few mandatory notes from Eco, the reader is immediately plunged into the mind of this aging monk, who has a story to tell about a certain memorable week from his youth....
Although related by Adso, the story centers around Adso’s mentor, an English Franciscan named William of Baskerville. A disciple of Aristotle and Roger Bacon, William is a man whose religious convictions dwell in coexistence with his love of philosophy and his penchant for investigative science. These “modern” views, which largely define his character and ensure the reader’s sympathy, are about to be thrown into stark relief against the darkest facets of the medieval mind set. The plot begins when William and his enthusiastic pupil are sent to a Benedictine abbey in Northern Italy. This abbey has been chosen to host an important but controversial theological meeting, and it is William’s assignment to lay the groundwork for a smooth transaction. But prior to beginning his investigation, a gruesome murder occurs, shocking the complacent monks and intriguing the ever-curious William. As he investigates the circumstances of the murder, he and Adso set forth on a journey through a convoluted labyrinth of intrigue, where every twist brings them in contact with the superstitions, beliefs, and political machinations that rule the brothers of this strange abbey. As the story unfolds against a background of escalating violence and increasing hysteria, William and Adso find themselves pulled into a widening vortex of tension that soon threatens to unwind the very fabric of their social universe. At the eye of the storm is a secret book hidden away like a deformed child in the attic, a semi-mythical work by Aristotle which heretically declares laughter as the only escape from the doctrine of Universal Truth....
Not only is the story a fascinating one, but the book is amazingly well written, and reads more like a tour-de-force from a master novelist than the fictional debut of a semiotics professor. Eco doesn’t merely describe the fourteenth century, he thrusts the reader into its heart, soul, and bowels, his prose resurrecting the medieval world around the reader’s dazzled senses. Like the labyrinthine library at the heart of the story, his prose reflects the convolutions of the age with all its conflicting worlds of thought. At times dense and dark, at other times exploding with illumination, the narrative captures the tensions and glories of an age posed on the brink of discovery, yet desperately clinging to the past. Every nuance and detail is lovingly rendered, from the stinking muck of a stable to the glorious illuminations of a manuscript, from the apocalyptic fervor of the willfully ignorant to the intellectual wonder invoked by a pair of spectacles. The characters are beautifully drawn, many slyly referring to personalities from literature, such as Jorge of Burgos, the irascible blind librarian, a tweak of the nose to Jorge Luis Borges. Bernardo Guidoni, the Inquisitor whose visit looms over the abbey like a coming plague, is drawn from history, as is the sad heretic Ubertino of Casale. Of course, the most remarkable character is William of Baskerville. Shining through the pages of the book like a beacon of clarity, banishing the darkness of ignorance with the light of reason, Brother William is an irresistible and unforgettable protagonist, possessed with Eco’s modern sensibilities and given a name that fairly twinkles with humor, sparkles of light flashed from Sherloccam’s razor wit.
This fondness for puns and allusion is not restricted to the cast of characters. The Name of the Rose is filled with puzzles, arcane references, and literary gamesmanship, from the realization of imaginary books to the witty mechanisms of the library’s lethal maze. Even its title is an enigma of sorts, and the source of speculation for several essays, including a “Postscript” by Eco himself (included in the Harvest paperback edition). The sense of play in The Name of the Rose is grounded by a deeper level of humor, a spiritual goodwill shielded from banality by a protective layer of irony. Although the novel depicts many tragedies and profound lapses of reason, it is neither unrelentingly bleak nor mired in existential despair. William – and, one senses, Eco – has a genuine compassion for his fellow man, and even when his anger flares or his patience fails, he can still embrace life with good humor, wry understanding, and a hard-won sense of balance.
A detective story and then some; there are as many valid ways to read this work as there are readers. A modern answer to the Middle Ages, a refutation of Universals and Absolutes, a celebration of the birth of the experimental method, a dialogue between personified ideals – all are valid frames of reference, and all have something to teach us about our own modern world. Eco is here a conjuror crossing time and space, using the long ladle of Aristotelian tradition to churn up the Middle Ages in his postmodern cauldron; and as the abbey teeters towards both revelation and destruction, we are invited inside to taste the heady brew.