“I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”
This quote by Umberto Eco could be a concise introduction to his highly influential work in semiotics, aesthetics, linguistics, and his best-selling novels. Throughout his many works, Eco has been concerned with how individuals derive meaning from the data and symbols surrounding them in their culture, and he has turned this interest into insightful philosophy, erudite criticism, and suspenseful thought-provoking novels that thoroughly encapsulate this primary idea.
Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria, Italy in 1932. His father was an accountant, but also a military man who fought in three wars. The family’s last name, Eco, was actually taken from the first letters of the phrase, “ex coelis oblatus,” a latin phrase meaning “a gift from the heavens” – a city official gave Umberto’s grandfather this name.
Originally, Umberto’s father expressed the desire that his son should become a lawyer. But instead he decided to study medieval literature and philosophy at the University of Turin, eventually writing his doctoral dissertation on the 13th century theologian and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas; a process which caused Umberto to lose his faith in religion and become an atheist.
After receiving his degree he began lecturing at the University of Turin and also became an editor of culture for Radiotelevisione Italiana. A short time later he became a columnist for Il Verri magazine, which was devoted to ideas of the avant-garde as well as various experiments in linguistics. Later these columns were collected in his book, Misreadings.
The book Opera Aperta was Eco’s first treatment of semiotics, which is the study of symbols and signs and how they indicate meaning to people depending upon their individual perspectives, and also how signs and differently construed meanings affect culture. This subject runs throughout most of Eco’s major works, whether it be nonfiction or fiction. In Opera Aperta, he argued that works of literature which are more open to interpretation are the most rewarding kind, while also dealing extensively with contextual ideas – how words and sentences placed in different contexts can greatly change meaning.
After establishing himself as a respected semiotician, Umberto decided to become a novelist. His first and most popular novel, The Name of the Rose, is basically a detective story with a monk as the protagonist (the monk solves murders that center around the library of his monastery), but Eco also brought in many of his original ideas in literary theory and semiotics, while also infusing other genres into the mystery aspect of the novel, and even incorporating extensive Biblical knowledge. When asked how he got the idea for the book, Eco responded, “I desired to poison a monk.” Taking inspiration from his semiotic theory of how texts are more interesting when they are open to several ways of interpretation, Eco strove to make his story complex and even rather puzzling so it would contain many different layers of meaning. Today, over nine million copies of the novel have sold, and a film starring Sean Connery was also made based on the book.
After writing a successful novel, Eco returned to semiotics and wrote several more books. One of which was The Search for the Perfect Language. With this work, he tackled the linguistic notion that before the Tower of Babel collapsed, people on earth spoke a perfect language that had been developed in the Garden of Eden; and this language adequately captured the essence of all worldly objects and ideas. Eco’s historical treatment of this idea is thorough and encompasses many other topics such as Cabalism, various grammars, and also the biographies and ideas of other individuals who tried to create “perfect” languages of their own.
There are many other ideas related to semiotics that are important to Eco, and which he has written books or articles about. One of which is hermeneutics, the theory of understanding or interpreting texts to see if one can arrive at “truth” through textual study (which is what many of his characters do in his novels). Also with hypertextuality, the way all literary texts can be seen to be connected, and thus their interpretation is affected as a result. Much of Eco’s academic work centers around the basic idea of how our world-views are shaped by our own cognitive abilities and perspectives, and with the notion that a person’s consciousness creates their own personal meaning.
After his popular novel, The Name of the Rose, Eco wondered if his achievement of writing a successful work of fiction was simply good luck or not. So he began work on a second novel, Foucalt’s Pendulum, which also became a best-seller. Although the plot is too complicated to set out here, suffice it to say that it deals with many of the same concepts set forth in The Name of the Rose, but with a different plot. Interestingly, Eco’s wife, Renate Ramge, a graphic artist born in Germany, helped with the German translation of Foucalt’s Pendulum.
Although Eco’s novels are popular with many intellectuals, some people find his fiction too difficult to read. They say the frequent historical allusions and intricate plots are too hard to penetrate. But if readers would simply skip the allusions they do not understand, they would still be able to appreciate the overall picture enough to enjoy the book. Plus, we must keep in mind that Eco intends his books to be cryptic, to allow for multiple interpretations. He once said that he wants many layers of meaning in his novels, to parallel the numerous layers of meaning found in the world.
Today Umberto Eco works at the University of Bologna as a professor of semiotics, a post he achieved when he was only 39 years of age. He has homes in both Rimini and Milan and has received more than thirty honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including France, Russia, Germany, Canada, the United States – (Yale and Harvard have sought him out for brief teaching appointments) – and many others. He has also written books for children.
Umberto Eco’s personality is such that he is prone to having lively conversations, and in fact regularly shouts to get his point across. He smokes several packs of cigarettes a day while working on multiple projects which he says are very important to him since he feels lost if he doesn’t have something to do.
Eco is probably the first well-respected semiotician in his field to break through the academic boundaries and become a best-selling novelist. And the world is better off because of it.
