February / Italy Reading: The Name of the Rose

[Janine]

Virgil, on your long post and great observations! That was very helpful. Thanks.

[Virgil]

Virgil, on your long post and great observations! That was very helpful. Thanks.

Janine, these are just my theories. I can't even begin to consider myself an expert on this novel. If someone has better ideas or thinks otherwise, I'm more than open to revising my thoughts.

[Janine]

Janine, these are just my theories. I can't even begin to consider myself an expert on this novel. If someone has better ideas or thinks otherwise, I'm more than open to revising my thoughts.

I know that and that is ok, I like you theories. They help me understand the book much better. I am hoping to actually read the book now. I can't promise anything. It is a library book and so it is hard having a time limit to read it. I would really like to mull over it for months; I read like that sometimes, you know. I will have two weeks, and I can renew it another two weeks and then have a grace period, so that is a long time, I suppose. I have other books to read too, so we will see. I have only part of the last chapter left in "Kangaroo"; will be done with that novel today. I have enjoyed it. Then we have Chekhov and Lawrence short stories and "Dubliners"; I can deal with those easily though. Oh yeah, and still need to listen to second half of "Women in Love"....do I sound bogged down? Well, it should all work out now. I have the desire to do all these mentioned. Thanks for recommending this novel TNOTR. I find it fascinating

[Jason Renzi]

god i loved this book...
i'll have to read through all your posts...i just wanted to express how much i love and respect mr. eco and this book...

[Niamh]

OOOHHHHH!!!!
I really hope William out smarts that bernard whats his face guy!!!

[Virgil]

Here is a very interesting exchange between William and Jorge. It's on the second day, the Terce chapter. They are back in the library and the two have a debate over laughter and comedy.

At first I could not understand why William had embarked on this learned discussion, and with a man who seemed to dislike such subjects, but Jorge’s reply told me how subtle my master had been.

“That day we were not discussing comedies, but only the licitness of laughter,” Jorge said grimly. I remembered very well that when Venantius had referred to that discussion, only the day before, Jorge had claimed not to remember it.

“Ah,” William said casually, “I thought you had spoken of poets’ lies and shrewd riddles. ...”

“We talked about laughter,” Jorge said sharply. “The comedies were written by the pagans to move spectators to laughter, and they acted wrongly. Our Lord Jesus never told comedies or fables, but only clear parables which allegorically instruct us on how to win paradise, and so be it.”

“I wonder,” William said, “why you are so opposed to the idea that Jesus may have laughed. I believe laughter is a good medicine, like baths, to treat humors and the other afflictions of the body, melancholy in particular.”

“Baths are a good thing,” Jorge said, “and Aquinas himself advises them for dispelling sadness, which can be a bad passion when it is not addressed to an evil that can be dispelled through boldness. Baths restore the balance of the humors. Laughter shakes the body, distorts the features of the face,
makes man similar to the monkey.”

“Monkeys do not laugh; laughter is proper to man, it is a sign of his rationality,” William said.

“Speech is also a sign of human rationality, and with speech a man can blaspheme against God. Not everything that is proper to man is necessarily good. He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating. This is why the Rule says, ‘The tenth degree of humility is not to be quick to laughter, as it is written: stultus in risu exaltat vocem suam.’ ”

“Quintilian,” my master interrupted, “says that laughter is to be repressed in the panegyric, for the sake of dignity, but it is to be encouraged in many other cases. Pliny the Younger wrote, ‘Sometimes Ilaugh, I jest, I play, because I am a man.’ ”

“They were pagans,” Jorge replied. “The Rule forbids with stern words these trivialities: ‘Scurrilitates vero vel verba otiosa et risum moventia aeterna clausura in omnibus locis damnamus, et ad talia eloquia
discipulum aperire os non permittimus.’ ”

“But once the word of Christ had triumphed on the earth, Synesius of Cyrene said that the divinity could harmoniously combine comic and tragic, and Aelius Spartianus said of the Emperor Hadrian, man of lofty behavior and of naturaliter Christian spirit, that he could mingle moments of gaiety with
moments of gravity. And finally Ausonius recommended moderate use of the serious and the jocose.”

“But Paulinus of Nola and Clement of Alexandria put us on guard against such foolishness, and Sulpicius Severus said that no one ever saw Saint Martin in the grip of wrath or in the grip of hilarity.”

“But he recalled some replies of the saint spiritualiter salsa,” William said.
“They were prompt and wise, not ridiculous. Saint Ephraim wrote an exhortation against the laughter of monks, and in the De habitu et conversatione monachorum there is a strong warning to avoid
obscenity and witticisms as if they were asp venom!”

“But Hildebertus said, ‘Admittenda tibi ioca sunt post seria quaedam, sed tamen et dignis ipsa gerenda modis.’ And John of Salisbury authorized a discreet hilarity. And finally Ecclesiastes, whom you quoted in the passage to which your Rule refers, where it says that laughter is proper to the fool, permits at least silent laughter, in the serene spirit.”

The spirit is serene only when it contemplates the truth and takes delight in good achieved, and truth and good are not to be laughed at. This is why Christ did not laugh. Laughter foments doubt.”

“But sometimes it is right to doubt.”

“I cannot see any reason. When you are in doubt, you must turn to an authority, to the words of a father or of a doctor; then all reason for doubt ceases. You seem to me steeped in debatable doctrines, like those of the logicians of Paris. But Saint Bernard knew well how to intervene against
the castrate Abelard, who wanted to submit all problems to the cold, lifeless scrutiny of reason not enlightened by Scripture, pronouncing his It-is-so and It-is-not-so. Certainly one who accepts dangerous ideas can also appreciate the jesting of the ignorant man who laughs at the sole truth one should know, which has already been said once and for all. With his laughter the fool says in his heart, ‘Deus non est.’ ”

“Venerable Jorge, you seem to me unjust when you call Abelard a castrate, because you know that he incurred that sad condition through the wickedness of others. ...”

“For his sins. For the pride of his faith in man’s reason. So the faith of the simple was mocked, the mysteries of God were eviscerated (or at least this was tried, fools they who tried), questions concerning the loftiest things were treated recklessly, the fathers were mocked because they had
considered that such questions should have been subdued, rather than raised.”

“I do not agree, venerable Jorge. Of us God demands that we apply our reason to many obscure things about which Scripture has left us free to decide. And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation. Thus,
you see, to undermine the false authority of an absurd proposition that offends reason, laughter can sometimes also be a suitable instrument. And laughter serves to confound the wicked and to make their foolishness evident. It is told of Saint Maurus that when the pagans put him in boiling water, he complained that the bath was too cold; the pagan governor foolishly put his hand in the water to test it, and burned himself. A fine action of that sainted martyr who ridiculed the enemies of the faith.”

Jorge sneered. “Even in the episodes the preachers tell, there are many old wives’ tales. A saint immersed in boiling water suffers for Christ and restrains his cries, he does not play childish tricks on the pagans!”

“You see?” William said. “This story seems to you offensive to reason and you accuse it of being ridiculous! Though you are controlling your lips, you are tacitly laughing at something, nor do you wish me to take it seriously. You are laughing at laughter, but you are laughing.”

I think the key line is William's response mid way: "“But sometimes it is right to doubt.”" The connection between laughter as a response to doubt is a central theme, but I think Eco is also suggesting, although not so much in this scene, that redicule, that which produces laughter, is a method of undercutting ideals and that is why Jorge is so compelled to prevent the comic impulse.

[Dark Muse]

I also found the discussion about laguhter within the book to be an interesting one, though I have not yet gotten that far within the book as I have been reading other things as well, but I do recall their previous discussions on the subject

[Janine]

Hey, Virgil, you didn't vote yet for the book.

[Virgil]

Hey, Virgil, you didn't vote yet for the book.

I didn't finish. I'm only a third of the way through. I will eventually.

[Janine]

I didn't finish. I'm only a third of the way through. I will eventually.

Geez, I should have kept with it. I took the book back to my library thinking it was hopeless when I got sick. I didn't know you had not progressed further. Now I am into other reading so I guess I will have to abandon this for now - unless I relisten to the audiotapes - which are quite fascinating actually. A second time around would be so much better and clearer to me. I may do that if this is not too late in here and apparently this thread is left "open-ended". It is certainly a fascinating book to me.

[thelastmelon]

I didn't finish. I'm only a third of the way through. I will eventually.

My vote is coming as well. I didn't read as much as I should've, when other books got in my way. I've got about 300 pages left.

[Niamh]

Just finished reading the novel. Brilliant!
Had ordered the movie on dvd, which arrived yesterday...might go watch that...
I had kind of suspected you know who (no spoiler for those who havent finished it yet) a few times, but then went nah!

[Janine]

Just finished reading the novel. Brilliant!
Had ordered the movie on dvd, which arrived yesterday...might go watch that...
I had kind of suspected you know who (no spoiler for those who havent finished it yet) a few times, but then went nah!

Hi Niamh, Glad you liked the book. I guess it is not too late to post something in here - right? Now that pressure is off, I might try to listen again to the audiobook. I felt it was brilliant, too. If I make it to my library, in the next few days, I should try to check it out. It was quite good the first time around, but during some of it, I lost my full attention span, because I was multi-tasking.
I would love to see that film. Cross-my-fingers, maybe this month it will come into my library. I think I saw it there once before. If not, maybe I can request it from another library. Let me know how is it, if you can.

[papayahed]

Just finished the book!! Whoo Hoo. Now I have to read through all the posts.

[Virgil]

Ok, I finally finished The Name of the Rose. I was a great book, and the ending was magnificent. I must say that I cannot claim to understand the core of the work, but I can sense the major themes. Here are some of them. (1) Semiotics, how do we interpret the signs in the world. (2) The labyrinth as a metaphor for our traveling through our lives. (3) The establishment of an understanding of the world’s order based on how we interpret the signs and how we wind our way through the labyrinth. (4) Subversion of the established understanding of the world’s order. (5) Apocalypse as the metaphor for the destruction of one world view so that can be constituted.

I can’t copy from a web site instances of these themes and I don’t have the patience to type out huge swaths of narrative, but I think if you look through the scenes you can those themes. I’m sure there are more. Here’s a particular passage at the climax where Jorge and William confront each other and argue. This is Jorge speaking on why he has hid the Aristotle book on laughter and comedy:

“…And so the cosmos, which for the Areopagite revealed itself to those who knew how to look up at the luminous cascade of the exemplary first cause, has become a preserve of terrestrial evidence for which they refer to an abstract agent. Before, we used to look to heaven, deigning only a frowning glance at the mire of matter; now we look at the earth, and we believe in the heavens because of earthly testimony. Every word of the Philosopher, by whom now even saints and prophets swear, has overturned the image of the world. But he had not succeeded in overturning the image of God. If this book were to become…had become an object for open interpretation, we would have crossed the last boundary.”

What Jorge is referring to is the transition that has occurred from the Platonic view of the universe held n the early middle ages to the Aristotelian view (represented by William of Occam and Thomas Aquinas) by the high middle ages, and that if this book (which I don’t think actually exists or has been lost to history) would further undermine the nature of our understanding of God.

William rebuts with the nature of jokes and how they liberate the mind, and actually concludes his rebuttal with the most fascinating of lines:

“The hand of God creates; it does not conceal.”

That is an incredible line that strikes at the very themes of the novel. Perhaps if there is a central theme of the novel it may be that. Semiotics is a human endeavor, completely lacking in significance to the outside world. There is no real interpretation of the world, just the human mind making something out of what it sees. And so I think that’s why the novel may be post modern. Ultimately it undermines all generated orders of the universe.

A side note, those that try to find signs in history toward some destination (for instance Marx) are foolishly interpreting signs, according to this understanding of reality. There are no signs or destinations predetermined. Just events.

Something I don’t understand though. Why this animosity by Eco to Jorge Borges. Jorge, the character, the villain, is clearly modeled on Borges the writer. I don’t understand that in the least.

If I have a negative criticism, the characters sometimes, actually many times, come across as stick figure ideas. They are not very deep or three dimensional. But this is a novel of ideas, rolled together into a cracker jack mystery story. I consider this a great novel.