Umberto Eco: Wise is he who selects and combines glimmers of light. Why “Baudolino” is Umberto Eco’s best novel: critic Michael Wiesel explains Umberto Eco never ran for transport

An intellectual novel can be a bestseller

It’s too early to talk about which of Eco’s texts will stand the test of time, but one thing is clear - the writer’s first novel, “The Name of the Rose,” not only became a bestseller, but also spawned an avalanche of historical detective stories, which, after Eco, began to be written by both Ackroyd and Perez -Reverte, and Leonardo Padura with Dan Brown and Akunin. In 1983, after the publication of The Name of the Rose in English (the original Italian version was published in 1980), the novel sold tens of millions of copies. The popularity of the book led to numerous reprints of Eco's academic works and journalism: even the most serious of his books (Joyce's Poetics, The Role of the Reader, Art and Beauty in Medieval Aesthetics and others) were published in hundreds of thousands of copies.

Umberto Eco writes a lot and in detail about his love for old comics in his semi-autobiographical novel “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana.” In The Role of the Reader, for example, he examined Superman as the embodiment of the complexes of the modern reader: an ordinary person is deprived of the opportunity to use physical force in a world filled with machines. The heroes of popular literature feel just as at ease in Eco’s texts. “The Island of the Day Before” is home to both “The Three Musketeers” and quotes from Jules Verne. Eugene Sue is hiding in “The Prague Cemetery,” and Sherlock Holmes and Watson are hiding in “The Name of the Rose.” And in the same book “The Role of the Reader” Eco talks about the narrative structure of James Bond novels.

Fascism is not as far away as it seems

In 1995, Umberto read the report “Eternal Fascism” in New York, the text of which was later included in the book “Five Essays on Ethics.” In it he formulated 14 signs of fascism. Eco's theses can be easily found on the Internet using any search engine, including a summary. This list is not very pleasant for the Russian-speaking reader. You can conduct (and many have conducted) a good, sobering experiment: read Eco’s theses to the audience without mentioning the word “fascism” and the name of the author, and ask those present to bend their fingers on every statement that is consistent with the current political situation and mood in society. As a rule, most of the audience is missing fingers on both hands. And this is true not only in Russia: the situation is no better in our closest neighbors.

The graduate must know several languages

The material for the book “How to Write a Thesis” (1977) was given to the writer by observations of students from different countries, not only Italy. Therefore, Eco’s advice and conclusions are universal. He, for example, believes that it is impossible to write a good thesis (at least on a humanitarian topic) without resorting to foreign language research. You cannot take a topic that requires knowledge of a foreign language unknown to the student, especially if he does not intend to learn this language. You cannot write a thesis on an author whose original texts the student cannot read. If the graduate student persists in his reluctance to study foreign languages, he can only write about domestic authors and their influence on something domestic, but even in this case it would be better to check whether there are any foreign studies on this topic - fundamental and unfortunately not translated. How many Russian diplomas meet these requirements? This is a rhetorical question.

Europe awaits an Afro-European round of history

The topic of migration, to which Russian publicists so obsessively return, was touched upon by Umberto Eco in 1997, entitled “Migration, Tolerance and the Intolerable,” included in the book “Five Essays on Ethics.” Eco argues that Europe is unable to stop the flow of immigrants from Africa and Asia. This is a natural process, like the Great Migration of Peoples in the 4th–7th centuries, and “not a single racist, not a single nostalgic reactionary can do anything about it.” In one of his journalistic speeches in 1990, later published in the book “Cartons of Minerva,” Eco pursues the same idea: “Great migrations are unstoppable. And we just need to prepare for life in a new round of Afro-European culture.”

Laughter is the enemy of faith and totalitarianism

Likhachev, Jacques Le Goff and Aron Gurevich also wrote about medieval laughter before Umberto Eco, but it was Umberto Eco in “The Name of the Rose” who brought laughter and faith into conflict in an intractable conflict - and did it so vividly that the reader has no doubt: the questions posed in the novel are not limited to the era described. “Truth without a doubt, a world without laughter, faith without irony - this is not only the ideal of medieval asceticism, it is also the program of modern totalitarianism,” Yuri Lotman said after reading The Name of the Rose. And we will just give one quote from the novel - and leave it without comment: “You are worse than the devil, minor,” replies Jorge. “You’re a buffoon.”

Modern anti-Semitism is born of fiction

In an article (1992), later included in the book “Cartons of Minerva,” Eco writes about the novel “Biarritz” (1868) by the German Hermann Goedsche (hiding under the English pseudonym John Radcliffe). In it, twelve representatives of the tribes of Israel meet at night in a cemetery in Prague and conspire to seize power throughout the world. Plot-wise, this scene goes back to one episode of Alexandre Dumas’s novel “Joseph Balsamo” (1846), in which, however, no Jews are mentioned. A little later, a fragment of Goedsche’s novel begins to circulate as an authentic document, allegedly falling into the hands of the English diplomat John Radcliffe. Later still, diplomat John Radcliffe became Rabbi John Radcliffe (this time with one "f"). And only then this text formed the basis of the so-called “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, in which the “wise men” shamelessly listed all their vile plans. The fake “Protocols” were created and first published in Russia. The story of their origin was later told by Umberto Eco in the novel Prague Cemetery (2010). So the fruit of the imagination of a forgotten German writer returned to where it belongs - in the world of fiction.

Back in 1962, Umberto Eco, who had not yet thought about a writing career, published the book “Open Work”. With this term he called a literary text in which the creative function of the “performer” is great - an interpreter who offers one or another interpretation and becomes a real co-author of the text. The book was polemical for its time: in the 1960s, structuralists presented a work of art as a closed, self-sufficient whole that can be considered independently of its author and reader. Eco argues that the modern open work itself provokes multiple interpretations. This applies to Joyce and Beckett, Kafka and the “new novel”, and in the future it may be applicable to a wider range of literary texts - Cervantes, Melville, and Eco himself.

Parquets are elderly nymphets

Even earlier, in 1959, the young Umberto Eco responded to the appearance of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita (1955), Nonita. It talks about Humbert Humbert's attraction to elderly beauties - “parquets” (from mythological parquets). “Nonita. The color of my youth, the melancholy of the nights. I'll never see you again. Nonita. But-no-that. Three syllables - like a denial woven from tenderness: But. Neither. Ta. Nonita, may the memory of you remain with me forever, until your image becomes darkness, and your rest is the tomb...” To be fair, let’s say that, unlike “nymphet,” the term “parquet” never took root in culture.

Don't expect to get rid of books

This is the name of the book of dialogues between Eco and the French intellectual Jean-Claude Carriere (author of scripts for Godard and Buñuel). The more books you read, the more you need to read; it's an endless process. At the same time, a person who feels the need to read has no chance of reading everything he would like to read. However, this does not mean that unread books gape like black holes in our cultural baggage: each important unread book affects us indirectly, through dozens of others that were influenced by it. Considering how many works Umberto Eco wrote, it seems that few people have the chance to master his entire legacy. However, Eco still has an influence on us. Even if we haven't read it.

Umberto Eco (Italian: Umberto Eco, January 5, 1932, Alessandria, Piedmont, Italy - February 19, 2016, Milan, Lombardy, Italy) - Italian scientist, philosopher, specialist in semiotics and medieval aesthetics, cultural theorist, literary critic, writer, publicist .

Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria (a small town in Piedmont, near Turin). His father, Giulio Eco, worked as an accountant and later fought in three wars. During World War II, Umberto and his mother, Giovanna, moved to a small village in the mountains of Piedmont. Grandfather Eco was a foundling; according to the practice accepted in Italy at that time, he was given an abbreviated surname from Ex Caelis Oblatus, that is, “given by heaven.”

Giulio Eco was one of thirteen children in the family and wanted his son to receive a law education, but Umberto entered the University of Turin to study medieval philosophy and literature, and graduated successfully in 1954. During his studies, Umberto became an atheist and left the Catholic Church.

Umberto Eco worked on television, as a columnist for the largest newspaper Espresso (Italian: L’Espresso), and taught aesthetics and cultural theory at the universities of Milan, Florence and Turin. Professor at the University of Bologna. Honorary doctorate from many foreign universities. Officer of the French Legion of Honor (2003).

Since September 1962 he was married to German art teacher Renate Ramge. The couple had a son and daughter.

Eco died at his home in Milan on the evening of February 19, 2016 from pancreatic cancer, which he had been fighting for two years.

Books (25)

Collection of books

In his numerous works, Umberto Eco argues that true happiness lies in the pursuit of knowledge - “There is nothing aristocratic in the joy of knowledge. This work is comparable to the work of a peasant who comes up with a new way to graft trees.”

Baudolino

Umberto Eco's fourth novel has become one of the most read books on the planet.

It combines everything that is familiar to readers from the author’s previous works: the fascination of “The Name of the Rose”, the fantastic nature of “Foucault’s Pendulum”, the sophistication of the style of “The Island of the Day Before”. The peasant boy Baudolino, a native of the same place as Eco himself, by chance becomes the adopted son of Frederick Barbarossa. This lays the foundation for the most unexpected incidents, especially since Baudolino has one mysterious property: any of his inventions is perceived by people as the purest truth...

Satan's curse. Chronicles of a Fluid Society

Umberto Eco is the most famous Italian writer of our time, the author of the world bestsellers “The Name of the Rose” and “Foucault’s Pendulum”, a medieval historian, semiotics specialist, philologist and cultural historian, winner of the most prestigious awards, whose books have been translated into forty languages.

"The Spell of Satan. Chronicles of a Fluid Society" is a collection of notes published by the author in the Milanese magazine L’Espresso from 2000 to 2015, on various current topics of modern politics, philosophy, religion, mass media and book culture in the context of the current social situation, characterized by a crisis of ideologies and political positions. “The Conjuring of Satan,” the last book by Umberto Eco, prepared for publication by himself, is a kind of continuation of “The Cardboards of Minerva.”

History of deformity

In this book, Umberto Eco addresses the phenomenon of the ugly, which has most often been seen as the opposite of the beautiful, but has never been studied in detail.

However, ugliness is a much more complex concept than the simple negation of various forms of beauty. Does ugliness always symbolize evil? Why, for many centuries, philosophers, artists, writers have invariably turned to deviations from the norm, disproportions, depicting the machinations of the devil, the horrors of the underworld, the suffering of martyrs and the tragedy of the Last Judgment? What did they want to say with their works? How did contemporaries react to them and how do we perceive these works today?

How to write a thesis. Humanitarian sciences

A world-famous writer, professor at several universities, Umberto Eco, in this book addresses his favorite audience - teachers and students.

Everything that a scientist needs to know, especially when he undertakes a diploma, dissertation, or one of his first scientific articles, is presented in this book with intelligence and tact, with purely artistic expressiveness and excellent technicality. Any supervisor, giving this book to a graduate student or graduate student, will get rid of the hassle. Any young scientist, after working through this book, will get rid of doubts. Any cultured person, after reading this book, will receive intellectual joy.

Minerva cardboards. Notes on matchboxes

Umberto Eco, a famous scientist and writer, has been writing a weekly column in the Milanese magazine Espresso since 1985 - its name was inspired by the Minerva matches that Professor Eco, a smoker, always has on hand. His articles are the response of an intellectual, endowed with a strong sense of responsibility, to large and small events in the world. This book contains texts from 1991 to 1999, which, in particular, contain Eco’s thoughts on how much it costs to bring down an empire, why it is a shame not to have enemies, and what to do if you are called a dirty bourgeois of the Stalinist breed.

Don't expect to get rid of books!

“Don’t get your hopes up!” - say two European intellectuals, participants in the friendly conversation offered to you: “A book is like a spoon, a hammer, a wheel or scissors. Once they were invented, nothing better could be invented.”

Umberto Eco is a famous Italian writer, medievalist and semiotician. Jean-Claude Carrière is a famous French novelist, historian, screenwriter, actor, patriarch of French cinema, who collaborated with such directors as Buñuel, Godard, Wajda and Milos Forman.

About literature. Essay

This collection of essays can be seen as a natural continuation of Six Walks in Literary Woods.

Eco conducts a conversation with the general public about the role of literature, about his favorite authors (here are Aristotle, Dante, as well as Nerval, Joyce, Borges), about the influence of certain texts on the development of historical events, about important narrative and stylistic devices, about key concepts literary creativity. Illustrating his reasoning with vivid examples from classical works, Eco turns semiotic analysis into an easy and fascinating journey through the universe of fiction.

Revelations of a young novelist

A book by the great Italian writer Umberto Eco, in which he shares the secrets of his craft. The famous novel “The Name of the Rose” was published in 1980. When a prominent scientist - a semiologist, a medievalist, a specialist in popular culture - suddenly became the author of a world bestseller, he was seriously suspected of inventing a clever computer program that generated literary masterpieces. More than thirty years have passed, and Umberto Eco, one of the greatest masters of literary prose, invites his readers “behind the scenes,” to where new worlds are being created.

Why does Anna Karenina's suicide not leave us indifferent? Can we say that Gregor Samsa and Leopold Bloom “exist”? Where is the line between reality and fiction?

A fascinating study of the writer's creative arsenal brings unexpectedly close to answers to seemingly rhetorical questions: where do novels come from, how are they written, and why do they play such an important role in our lives.

The search for a perfect language in European culture

Umberto Eco approaches the topic of the formation of Europe in a special, unique manner. The world-famous specialist in semiotics and information theory addresses the key problem of mutual understanding between the inhabitants of Europe. Do we need a universal language for this? And if necessary, which one?

Eco examines the long and fascinating history of the search that has been undertaken in this direction over the centuries: from the proto-language of Adam and the Babylonian confusion of dialects, through Kabbalistic research and Raymond Lull's "Great Art". magical and philosophical languages ​​- to the “natural” projects of the 19th-20th centuries, including the famous Esperanto.

Full back!

The book collects a number of articles and speeches written from 2000 to 2005.

This is a special period. At its beginning, people experienced traditional fear of the change of millennia. The change occurred, and 9/11, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War struck. Well, in Italy... In Italy, this time, on top of everything else, was the era of Berlusconi's rule...

Say almost the same thing. Experiments on translation

The book is addressed to everyone who is interested in translation problems and, first of all, of course, to translators.

Eco does not seek to build a general theory of translation, but in an accessible and entertaining form summarizes his wealth of experience in order to give quite serious recommendations to everyone who recreates “almost the same thing” in their native language.

The essence of the translation process, according to Eco, is in the “negotiations” that the translator conducts with the author in order to reduce losses: they have every chance of ending successfully if the source text was reinterpreted “with passionate complicity.”

Make yourself an enemy. And other texts on occasion (collection)

Umberto Eco is an outstanding Italian scientist-philosopher, medievalist historian, semiotics specialist, literary critic, writer, author of the novels “The Name of the Rose” (1980), “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988), and “The Island on the Eve” (1995), well known to Russian readers. ) and “Prague Cemetery” (2010).

The collection “Create Yourself an Enemy” has the subtitle “texts on occasion”, since it includes essays and articles written “by order” - for thematic magazine issues or based on reports at conferences devoted to various fields of knowledge, as well as articles of acute polemical in nature... Different “cases” - different topics. Why do people need to create an enemy for themselves? When does a soul appear in human embryos? How does technological progress change the essence and tasks of the diplomatic service?

Often these texts are humorous or parody in nature, that is, Eco wrote them, wanting to entertain both himself and his readers.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

Umberto Eco, the greatest contemporary writer, medievalist, semiotician, specialist in popular culture, author of the intellectual bestseller “The Name of the Rose” (1980), presents us with a completely new type of novel. The text in it is based on illustrations, and each illustration is a quote extracted from the context of not only the hero’s personal history, but also the history of an entire generation.

A burst blood vessel, a damaged area of ​​the brain, a completely erased personal memory. Sixty-year-old antiquarian bookseller Giambattista Bodoni remembers nothing about his past. He even forgot his name. But the treasury of “paper” memory remains unplundered, through it lies the path to oneself - through images and plots, medieval treatises and stories for teenagers, old records and radio programs, school essays and comic books - to where the mysterious flame of Queen Loana dawns .

Six walks in literary forests

Six lectures given by Umberto Eco in 1994 at Harvard University are devoted to the problem of the relationship between literature and reality, author and text.

A specialist in semiotics, the greatest writer of our time and an attentive, omnivorous reader appear in this book as one person.

Umberto Eco is known throughout the world as a writer, philosopher, researcher and teacher. The public became acquainted with Eco after the release of the novel “The Name of the Rose” in 1980. The works of the Italian researcher include dozens of scientific works, short stories, fairy tales, and philosophical treatises. Umberto Eco founded the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Republic of San Marino. The writer was appointed president of the Graduate School of Humanities at the University of Bologna. He was also a member of the Lingxi Academy of Sciences.

Childhood and youth

In the small town of Alessandria, not far from Turin, Umberto Eco was born on January 5, 1932. Back then, his family couldn’t even imagine what the little boy would achieve. Umberto's parents were simple people. My father worked as an accountant and participated in several wars. Umberto's father came from a large family. Eco often recalled that the family did not have much money, but his thirst for books was limitless. So he came to bookstores and started reading.

After the owner drove him away, the man went to another establishment and continued to get acquainted with the book. Eco's father planned to give his son a legal education, but the teenager opposed. Umberto Eco went to the University of Turin to study literature and philosophy of the Middle Ages. In 1954, the young man received a bachelor's degree in philosophy. While studying at the university, Umberto became disillusioned with the Catholic Church, and this led him to atheism.

Literature

For a long time, Umberto Eco studied the “idea of ​​the Beautiful”, voiced in the philosophy of the Middle Ages. The master outlined his thoughts in the work “The Evolution of Medieval Aesthetics,” which was published in 1959. Three years later, a new work was published - “Open Work”. Umberto says in it that some works were not completed by the authors deliberately. Thus, they can now be interpreted differently by readers. At some point, Eco became interested in culture. He has long studied various forms, ranging from “high” to mass culture.

The scientist found that in postmodernism these boundaries are significantly blurred. Umberto actively developed this topic. Comics, cartoons, songs, modern films, even novels about James Bond have appeared in the field of study of the writer.

For several years, the philosopher carefully studied literary criticism and aesthetics of the Middle Ages. Umberto Eco collected his thoughts into a single work, in which he highlighted his theory of semiotics. It can be traced in other works of the master - “Treatise of General Semiotics”, “Semiotics and Philosophy of Language”. In some materials the writer criticized structuralism. The ontological approach to the study of structure, according to Eco, is incorrect.

In his writings on the topic of semiotics, the researcher actively promoted the theory of codes. Umberto believed that there are unambiguous codes, for example, Morse code, the connection between DNA and RNA, and there are more complex, semiotic ones hidden in the structure of language. The scientist put forward his opinion on social significance. It was this that he considered important, and not at all the relation of signs to real objects.

Later, Umberto Eco became interested in the problem of interpretation, which the author carefully studied for several decades. In the monograph “The Role of the Reader,” the researcher created a new concept for himself: the “ideal reader.”

The writer explained this term as follows: this is a person who is able to understand that any work can be interpreted many times. At the beginning of his research, the Italian philosopher was inclined towards general classifications and global interpretations. Later, Umberto Eco became more interested in “short stories” about certain forms of experience. According to the writer, works are capable of modeling the reader.

Umberto Eco became a novelist at the age of 42. Eco called his first creation “The Name of the Rose.” The philosophical and detective novel turned his life upside down: the whole world recognized the writer. All actions of the novel take place in a medieval monastery.

Three years later, Umberto published a small book, “Notes in the Margins of “The Name of the Rose.” This is a kind of “behind the scenes” of the first novel. In this work, the author reflects on the relationship between the reader, the author and the book itself. It took Umberto Eco five years to create another work - the novel “Foucault’s Pendulum”. Readers became acquainted with the book in 1988. The author tried to make a unique analysis of modern intellectuals, who, due to mental sloppiness, can give birth to monsters, including fascists. The interesting and unusual theme of the book made it relevant and fascinating to society.

“Many people think that I wrote a science fiction novel. They are deeply mistaken; the novel is absolutely realistic.”

In 1994, from the pen of Umberto Eco came a heartfelt drama that evokes pity, pride and other deep feelings in the souls of readers. "The Island of the Eve" is about a young guy who wanders around France, Italy and the South Seas. The action takes place in the 17th century. Traditionally, in his books, Eco asks questions that have been troubling society for many years. At some point, Umberto Eco switched to his favorite areas - history and philosophy. The adventure novel “Baudolino” was written in this vein, which appeared in bookstores in 2000. In it, the author talks about how the travels of the adopted son of Frederick Barbarossa took place.

The incredible novel "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" tells the story of a hero who lost his memory due to an accident. Umberto Eco decided to make small adjustments to the fate of the participants in the book. Thus, the main character does not remember anything about his relatives and friends, but the memory of the books he read is preserved. This novel is a reader's biography of Eco. Among Umberto Eco's latest novels is “Prague Cemetery.” Only a year after its publication in Italy, the book appeared in translation on the shelves of Russian stores. Elena Kostyukovich was responsible for the translation of the publication.

The author of the novel admitted that he wanted to make the book his last. But after 5 years another one comes out - “Number Zero”. This novel marked the completion of the writer's literary biography. Do not forget that Umberto Eco is a scientist, researcher, philosopher. His work entitled “Art and Beauty in Medieval Aesthetics” turned out to be striking. The philosopher collected the aesthetic teachings of that time, including Thomas Aquinas, William of Occam, rethought them and put them into a single short essay. Among Eco’s scientific works, “The Search for a Perfect Language in European Culture” stands out.

Umberto Eco sought to know the unknown, so he often searched in his works for the answer to the question of what beauty is. In each era, according to the researcher, new solutions to this problem were found. It is interesting that concepts with opposite meanings coexisted in the same time period. Sometimes positions conflicted with each other. The scientist’s thoughts on this matter are clearly presented in the book “The History of Beauty,” published in 2004.

Umberto did not stop studying only the beautiful side of life. The philosopher turns to the unpleasant, ugly part. Writing the book “The History of Ugliness” captivated the writer. Eco admitted that they write and think about beauty a lot and often, but not about ugliness, so during his research the writer made many interesting and fascinating discoveries. Umberto Eco did not consider beauty and ugliness to be antipodes. The philosopher stated that these are related concepts, the essence of which cannot be understood without each other.

James Bond inspired Umberto Eco, so the author studied materials on this topic with interest. The writer was recognized as an expert in bondology. Following Eco's research, he published the following works: “The Bond Affair” and “The Narrative Structure in Fleming.” The list of the author's literary masterpieces includes fairy tales. In English-speaking countries and the writer’s native Italy, these stories became popular. In Russia, the books were combined into one publication called “Three Tales”.

Umberto Eco’s biography also includes teaching activities. The writer gave lectures at Harvard University about the complex relationship between real and literary life, book characters and the author.

Personal life

Umberto Eco was married to a German woman, Renate Ramge. The couple got married in September 1962.

The writer’s wife is an expert in the field of museum and art education. Eko and Ramge raised two children - a son and a daughter.

Death

On February 19, 2016, Umberto Eco died. The philosopher was 84 years old. The tragic event occurred at the writer’s personal residence located in Milan. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer.

For two years the scientist struggled with the disease. The farewell ceremony for Umberto Eco was organized at the Sforza Castle in Milan.

Bibliography

• 1966 - “The Bomb and the General”
• 1966 - “Three Astronauts”
• 1980 - “The Name of the Rose”
• 1983 - “Notes on the margins of “The Name of the Rose”
• 1988 - “Foucault’s Pendulum”
• 1992 - “Gnomes of the Wildebeest”
• 1994 - “Island on the Eve”
• 2000 - “Baudolino”
• 2004 - “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana”
• 2004 - “The Story of Beauty”
• 2007 - “The Story of Ugliness”
• 2007 - “The Great History of European Civilization”
• 2009 - “Don’t expect to get rid of books!”
• 2010 - “Prague Cemetery”
• 2010 - “I promise to get married”
• 2011 - “History of the Middle Ages”
• 2013 - “The History of Illusions. Legendary places, lands and countries"
• 2015 - “Number Zero”

Italian writer, historian and philosopher Umberto Eco died at the age of 85 at home.

The most famous works of Umberto Eco are the novels “The Name of the Rose” (1980), “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988), “The Island of the Day Before” (1994). In January 2015, the writer’s last novel, “Number Zero,” was published.

1. Italian writer, historian and philosopher Umberto Eco died at the age of 85 at home.

2. “I was born in Alessandria, the same town famous for its borsalino hats.”

Eco in Italy was considered a rather stylishly dressed man, and there was a certain touch of humor in his wardrobe.

3. In 1980, his novel “The Name of the Rose” was published, which became a bestseller and glorified the writer throughout the world.

This book subsequently became his most famous literary work and was filmed in 1986. The main roles in the film were played by Sean Connery and Christian Slater.

4. Eco himself considered writing not the most important part of his life. “I'm a philosopher. I only write novels on weekends.”

Umberto Eco was a scientist, a specialist in popular culture, a member of the world's leading academies, a laureate of the world's largest prizes, a holder of the Grand Cross and the Legion of Honor. Eco was an honorary doctor from many universities. He wrote a large number of essays on philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, and medieval aesthetics.

5. Umberto Eco is a recognized expert in the field bondology, that is, everything related to James Bond.

6. Umberto Eco's library had about thirty thousand books.

7. Umberto Eco never ran for transport.

“One day, my Parisian classmate, the future novelist Jean-Olivier Tedesco, said, convincing me that I shouldn’t run to catch the metro: “I don’t run after trains”…. Despise your destiny. Now I don't rush to run in order to leave on schedule. This advice may seem very simple, but it worked for me. Having learned not to chase trains, I appreciated the true meaning of grace and aesthetics in behavior, and felt that I was in control of my time, schedule and life. It’s only a shame to be late for the train if you’re running after it!”

In the same way, not achieving the success that others expect from you is only offensive if you yourself strive for it. You find yourself above the mouse race and the queue at the feeding trough, and not outside of them, if you act in accordance with your own choice,” Eco reasoned.

8. To warm up, in the morning, Mr. Eco solved the following astrological puzzles.

“Everyone is always born under the wrong star, and the only way to live like a human being is to correct your horoscope every day.”

9. Eco has many fans (namely fans, not book lovers) all over the world.

License plate of an Eco fan from the USA.

10. “The best way to approach death is to convince yourself that there are only fools around.”

Umberto Eco wrote: “The idea that when death comes, all this wealth will be lost is the cause of both suffering and fear... I think: what a waste, dozens of years have been spent on building a unique experience, and all this has to be thrown away. Burn the Library of Alexandria. Blow up the Louvre.

To imprison in the depths of the sea the most wondrous, richest and full of knowledge Atlantis.” — In this essay, Eco comes to the conclusion that eternal life, despite all this, would burden him.

Mikhail Vizel

Chief editor of the Year of Literature portal, translator, book reviewer

© Yana Smirnova

I don’t know whose initiative this is and how it happened, but I am very glad that this course is being opened by Umberto Eco. This writer turned out to be some kind of cornerstone of literature of the 21st century, and it is no coincidence that we are starting with a novel from 2000, from the turn of the era.

I foresee your question: why am I talking specifically about “Baudolino”, and not about the famous “The Name of the Rose” - not about the first novel, and not about the last, which was published as recently as the fall of 2015, less than a year before the death of the author. I am convinced that “Baudolino” is his most harmonious, most fascinating and most revealing novel, which allows us to trace the techniques that made the phenomenon of Umberto Eco as a writer possible. I myself translated three of his books and have an uneven feeling for this author - I hope that this will be passed on to you too.

Baudolino is the fourth novel by Umberto Eco. At the time of publication of the book he was 68 years old. As we know, before becoming a successful prose writer, he had an excellent academic career: Eco’s first novel was published when he was under 50. He readily responded to all sorts of pressing issues of our time in his ironic manner, connecting things that seemed completely unconnected. He enjoyed this convergence of topics dear to him. And when, in the mid-1970s, publishers suggested to him: “Write some short novel, and we will publish it,” he said: “No, if you write, then only thick, hefty novels.” And he wrote “Name of the Rose.” But we’re not talking about him now, we’re talking about Baudolino.

It seems important to me that this novel was written by a 68-year-old author and that Eco was an excellent academic scholar, medievalist and semiotician. His first major work, “Open Work,” proclaimed that the role of the reader of the text is much more important than the role of the author. Nietzsche also wrote on the same topic, and Eco couched it in the language of sophisticated humanitarian science. Why am I talking about this: the very idea that the reader is more important than the writer fascinated Umberto Eco as a novelist, and this manifested itself precisely in his fourth novel.

Who is this book about? The main character is Baudolino, a peasant boy born in 1141, who was born in Eco's own place, in Italian Lombardy. Baudolino is endowed with a rare feature - he immediately grasps foreign languages, which were then in abundance: Italian itself did not yet exist and each region used its own dialects. Moreover, at that time Barbarossa was waging fierce wars with the Italian states and communes, and therefore waves of multilingual troops constantly rolled through Lombardy. It was enough for Baudolino to listen to how two people communicate in some language, and he himself began to speak it. As they would say now, Baudolino is a pure humanitarian: throughout the entire book he does not pick up a weapon and generally does not want to know how to handle it. His weapon is a sharp tongue.

The second hero is Nikita Choniates, a historical figure, one of the dignitaries of the Byzantine Empire. He acts as a counter-partner, an interlocutor of Baudolino: it is to him that he tells the story of his life. The third character is the Poet, thanks to whom Baudolino realizes his character traits. This is a half-real, half-fictional hero. It goes back to a real person known as the Archipiity of Cologne.

There are two more characters who seem to frame Baudolino - his fathers: the biological one - the peasant Gagliaudo and the adopted one - Friedrich Barbarossa. It so happened that Barbarossa got lost in the fog and met Baudolino, who took him to his hut, fed him, gave him something to drink and put him to bed - and, most importantly, prophesied that Barbarossa would win the battle tomorrow. Baudolino said this without knowing that Barbarossa was in front of him: he thought that this was a German baron who would give him a coin for a good prediction. And he not only gave the coin, but also took it to his camp and issued an order that Baudolino was now his son - and he spent the rest of his life at the court of Barbarossa.

What is this book about? As I already said, “Baudolino” is the most harmonious of all Eco’s works, because in it, in particular, there is a big story and a small one. The big story is about the knightly exploits of Barbarossa, who, not sparing his belly, wages wars with the Italian commune cities. Barbarossa, convinced that all of Italy should obey him, rushes about: before he had time to subjugate one city, another rebelled. But we must also take into account the fact that Umberto Eco was married to a German woman all his life, and for him the history of relations between Italians and Germans is personal. Just as the fates of Baudolino and Barbarossa are combined, Italian and European fates are intertwined in the novel.

But why does the elderly professor Umberto Eco need all this? I think this is a novel about correcting reality: this is exactly what Baudolino has been doing all his life. According to Umberto Eco, it was he who was the behind-the-scenes creator of the texts that have come down to us from that period - from poems to bestiaries. In his mature years, Baudolino works as a “political strategist” - he organizes the injection of necessary information, leaks, black PR - everything to prove: Barbarossa is the spiritual leader of Western Europe. But there is one significant difference between Baudolino and modern marketers and black PR specialists. At his public lectures, Eco liked to repeat that the medieval cathedral with its stained glass windows, shutters and frescoes served as a constantly running educational television program - with the only difference that the producers of that time were for the most part educated, moral people who sincerely wished the best for the then television viewers , that is, parishioners. That’s how Baudolino is: he controls reality to create a unified empire.

What makes Baudolino a postmodern novel? Vadim Rudnev, in his wonderful book “Dictionary of 20th Century Culture,” says that in the last century the fiction/non-fiction opposition was replaced by another hierarchy. It has become pointless to say that this is true and this is fiction: we should talk about layers of reality - like an onion or cabbage. “Baudolino” demonstrates precisely the change in this paradigm. No matter how much I analyzed the book, I still cannot understand whether Eco is mocking the readers, or Baudolino is mocking Nikita Choniates.

In “Marginal Notes on The Name of the Rose,” Eco wrote: “The postmodern position reminds me of the position of a man in love with a very educated woman. He understands that he cannot tell her: “I love you madly,” because he understands that she understands (and she understands that he understands) that such phrases are the prerogative Liala Pseudonym of the Italian writer Liana Negretti (1897–1995), popular in the 30s and 40s.. However, there is a way out. He should say: “In Lial’s words, I love you madly.” At the same time, he avoids feigned simplicity and directly shows her that he is not able to speak in a simple way; and yet he brings to her attention what he intended to bring to her attention - that is, that he loves her, but that his love lives in an era of lost simplicity. If a woman is ready to play the same game, she will understand that a declaration of love remains a declaration of love. Neither of the interlocutors is given simplicity, both withstand the onslaught of the past, the onslaught of everything that was said before them, from which there is no escape, both consciously and willingly enter into the game of irony... And yet they managed to talk about love once again.”

This, it seems to me, is the whole essence of the postmodern novel: we still turn to fiction and deception, but we dress it in the clothes of scholarship, irony, augmented reality, and it is no longer clear where one ends and the other begins. Of course, Eco’s game of quotation and allusion has been brought to a monstrous level. When translating, you have to constantly use your brain, solve puzzles and puzzles - at first it’s amazing, but it’s pretty tiring. Here’s what the author himself wrote about this: “Sometimes I wonder: am I writing novels just to allow myself these references that only I can understand? But at the same time, I feel like an artist who paints patterned damask fabric and among the curls, flowers and shields places the barely noticeable initial letters of his beloved’s name. If even she cannot distinguish them, it does not matter: after all, actions inspired by love are committed unselfishly.”

This is why I love Umberto Eco - he was obsessed with his learning and how smart he was. If in relation to Kafka they write about the poetics of bureaucracy, then in connection with Eco we can talk about the poetics of footnotes, catalogs, lists. He adored it, he bathed in it: it is no coincidence that he created such a terrible image of the blind villain - Reverend Jorge from The Name of the Rose. And despite the fact that in the days of Wikipedia all these allusions have exhausted themselves, and citations can be found with a mouse click, the infatuation with bibliography has migrated into the 21st century and, I hope, will remain for a long time. Although postmodernism in the form in which it is presented in the works of Umberto Eco ended with the end of the “end of history” according to Fukuyama, it still lives and brings unexpected results - and I look forward to what will happen next.

Full schedule of lectures for the course “History of modern literature: 10 main novels of the late 20th - early 21st centuries” - Directorate of Educational Programs of the Moscow Department of Culture.