“The Ship of Theseus greets his captain,” said the tweet went in on Friday night. With these words sent him his colleagues at the publishing house “Ship of Theseus” once a final message. Perhaps would Umberto Eco, if he had been there, do not read the message. He disliked even Twitter, Facebook, the whole web culture very. Perhaps it would also him flattered that his followers and countrymen now populated his honor the worldwide network, spontaneously, by the thousands, middle of the night after one o’clock when they would gather for a final station for a pop star.
“In Internet circulates a flood of false reports”, he had recently visted again. This was not: Umberto Eco died late Friday at the age of 84 years
The news came as a surprise.. Eco was still so present in Italy’s cultural scene until a few weeks. He had just a few months ago, again reared with much energy. Against the media empire of Silvio Berlusconi to the next to the Mondadori publishing house recently also the publisher Rizzoli belongs and therefore in practice has a monopoly
He had a recent novel “zero point” published a parable about power and journalism in the Berlusconi era. In autumn 2015 he founded his own publishing house and gave him the name “Ship of Theseus” in reference to a paradoxical novel by 1949. Eco pumped into two million euros, took his former publisher Elisabetta Sgarbi with and embarked also famous colleagues such as Tahar Ben Jelloun and Hanif Kureishi one. “We’re crazy,” Eco said at the time of the daily newspaper “La Repubblica”. He considered this step but for the “only possible remedy for Alzheimer” because he had still great literary projects.
Only the Nobel Prize lacked
Umberto Eco was a writer, philosopher, Semiotikprofessor and columnist, he did research on media and masses, he was the” man who knew everything “, such as” La Repubblica “wrote Italy’s all-round intellectuals , Umberto Eco wrote difficult literature for special enthusiasts, but also books that have become world bestsellers.
In 1980, “The Name of the Rose”, a surprise success of a hitherto completely unknown author. The novel was translated into 40 languages and sold 14 million times. For Eco, it was the beginning of a literary career of superlatives, which earned him more than 30 honorary doctorates and awards from major German Order of Merit to the Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. he received only the Nobel Prize for literature – unlike his compatriot Dario Fo – never
“the name of the Rose” was unique and groundbreaking for the later successes. The Culture novel, set in the Middle Ages, was actually a historical thriller, steeped in church and history of philosophy from the 14th century, dating back to ancient times, exciting and educational at the same time and progenitor of a new literary pop culture of the late 19th century: a historical novel, which then was thoroughly declined to Dan Brown and countless, even banal copies.
The beginnings were laborious
Like his literary heir, even the “name of the Rose” a feature film, 1986 by Jean-Jacques Annaud starring Sean Connery was filmed in the main role of the Franciscan monk William of Baskerville.
” I should have known that there is no order in the world, “says brother William, as his search for Enlightenment historical puzzles and multiple murders ends in an Apennine monastery in disaster. The theme to the complexity of human life, including one’s own, Eco remained a guide to its literature.
The following publications were also all bestsellers. 1988 novel “Foucault’s Pendulum”, which deals with the partisans after the Second World War, 1994 “The Island of the Day Before” (Baroque period) and in 2000 “Baudolino” appeared (again the Middle Ages). Followed in 2004 with the novel “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana” Personal, autobiographical reminiscences from the years after the war and his native Piedmont. There, Alessandria in town, he was born in 1932, where he grew up.
Its origin could not suspect that Eco once considered one of the world’s most famous should make authors and intellectuals career. His father was an accountant. It appeared as early as rebellion, when the young Umberto recorded against his will study the history of literature and philosophy in Turin. The professional beginnings were laborious, to a failed attempt as an author at national television followed the work as an editor in a publishing house.
It stuck Ecos life always something Klein Civil on from those years: the checkered jackets and never matching shirts about. A few months ago he said in an interview with the “time” that he had his last novel “zero point” settled in time in 1992, because he was better with the former car models versed than with today.
A library of 50,000 volumes
Umberto Eco resembled a private citizen a Georges Simenon, he liked igelte in his private sphere and the family one, in Bologna, where he lived with his German wife Renate Range until recently. He was stingy with interviews or home stories, although they were so popular also because Eco home in Bologna a private library with more than 50,000 volumes entertained that would have taken many a journalist, many admirers just like in appearances. Only a few – such as filmmaker Gero von Boehm – succeeded Eco home to get in front of the camera
And yet managed Eco somehow, as a moral authority. always to be present, as a maverick in a country that groans today under philistinism and bigottem Catholicism. He was a fierce opponent of Silvio Berlusconi and the political culture that Italy two decades dominated.
Already since 1985 authored Eco ironic column “La Bustina di Minerva “in the weekly magazine” L’espresso “, in which he settled accounts with the political weaknesses of his countrymen. In 2007 he resigned as semiotics professor at the University of Bologna down, with 75, unusually early for Italian standards. But he still had enough to do with his books to avoid retirement.
the citizen Eco was politically also an enthusiastic advocate of the European idea, remembered tirelessly: “peace, we have been less than 70 years, and no one thinks of this masterpiece yourself a war between Spain and France or Italy and Germany to imagine today that provides only for joy..” He warned often against the risk of overstatement of the economic and financial crisis in the EU, euro bills demanded by the countenances of Thomas Mann and Claude Chabrol. “The culture unites Europe”, he used to say – just the culture. You he saw as the only weapon against the advancing European populism.
The Comedy doctrine of Aristotle
Yet so he was perceived as a warner, as good conscience in Italy – all warnings that he uttered, with all ills of our day that he diagnosed him but his almost stubborn, defiant optimism never went always his cautious joy, lost; it would have been different, people have worshiped him and not love.
He was always convinced blank that even the darkest hours easier by standing with humor , be it with gallows humor. In his international success, the “Name of the Rose”, is the secret treasure that the mighty Abbey harbors in the Apennines and it must be defended at any cost, just a manuscript of Aristotle’s theory of comedy. A fiction, of course. But a plea: his option against the desolation. As hard a this knowledge today, after the announcement of his death, may also fall. Umberto Eco’s legacy is laughter
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