Umberto Eco - On Literature
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On Literature, Umberto Eco. New York: Harper Via, 2005.
Summary: A collection of occasional writings on literature and literary criticism, many adapted from conference presentations given over several decades.
If you are familiar at all with Umberto Eco, it may be through one or more of his novels: The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, or one of the others. These were written late in an academic life of amazing breadth: a medievalist, philosopher, a literary critic and a specialist on semiotics, the science of signs and the making of meaning. He was also known for his amazing personal library of nearly 50,000 volumes between his two residences.
The writings in this collection represent conference presentations and articles, mostly of an academic nature given over a couple decades, on various questions and problems in literature. One senses the massive intellect and library of Eco in reading these essays, by turns fascinating, and at other times, utterly obscure, as when he writes on Nerval’s Sylvie or Camporesi. I found most of the essay on Borges challenging because I’ve read nothing of Borges, but he uses it to discuss his theory of influences in literature, illustrating with how this worked with Borges and his writing of The Name of the Rose.
Many of the writings concern different aspects of understanding literature. For example, his article on Wilde was one of the best for exploring the nature of aphorism and paradox–aphorisms may often be contradictory while paradoxes hold the contradiction together to reveal a larger idea. The collection opens with a more general discussion on some of the functions of literature which may be read simply for pleasure, may keep a language alive, and requires a certain integrity of the reader–we cannot read anything into literature we want. Above all, literature tells us our own story–and teaches us how to die.
His discussions of literary works range from Dante’s Paradiso, which he believes is the best of Dante’s tri-partite Divine Comedy, to an exploration of the style of The Communist Manifesto, a wonderfully succinct summary of the work. His presentation on James Joyce, "A Portrait of the Artist as Bachelor" is a wide-ranging exploration of the influences on Joyce during his undergraduate education as they turn up in works ranging from Finnegan’s Wake to Ulysses.
For many of us who would read more deeply, there is much to be gained in his explorations on symbolism, style, and poetics. We see that library at work in his presentation on intertextuality and levels of reading. We never merely read a book but books talking to other books, absorbed into the lives of writer and reader.
The final essay, "How I Write," is a must read for anyone who has read and wondered about Eco’s novels. He describes how The Name of the Rose developed around the idea of a monk poisoned while reading in a library and how the images of a pendulum and a trumpet grew into Foucault’s Pendulum. He describes how he constructed their worlds and created a style. Unlike Wendell Berry, we learn that Eco made friends with the computer.
Who should read this? First of all, if you are a fan of Eco, you will find much to enjoy. Also, if you want to understand how literature works, Eco will raise ideas that make you think afresh about the transaction of one person putting words to a page, drawing not only upon her own imagination but all those who, consciously or not, influence the writing, how a writer seeks to "mean," and then the ways what is written is apprehended by the reader, each who has his or her own prior influences and predilections. It is actually quite an amazing world we bibliophiles inhabit, one which only gains in fascination as it is examined. But prepare to work…and to be humbled by what remains obscure.