“The Name of the Rose” ( Italian: Il nome della Rosa ) is the first novel by the Italian writer, professor of semiotics, University of Bologna, Umberto Eco . It was first published in Italian in 1980 . Included in the " 100 best detective novels of all time ." Translated into Russian by Elena Aleksandrovna Kostyukovich .
| Rose name | |
|---|---|
 Cover of the first Italian edition | |
| Genre | novel |
| Author | Umberto Eco |
| Original language | Italian |
| Date of writing | 1980 |
| Date of first publication | 1980 |
| Publishing house | Bompiani |
| Following | |
Content
Story
Introduction
The main characters, Wilhelm of Baskerville and his young companion, Adson Melksky, have to investigate the death of a certain Adelm Otrantsky , a monk of the Benedictine monastery. The action takes place at the end of November 1327 in an unnamed area, with a foggy indication of the border of Liguria , Piedmont and France , that is, in the north-west of Italy . The plot unfolds over the course of a week. Wilhelm, whose original goal was to prepare a meeting between the theologians of Pope John XXII and Emperor Louis IV of Bavaria , must now reaffirm his reputation as a learned husband and formerly famous inquisitor .
Key Events
Library
The abbot of the monastery, Abbon, unreasonably does not allow heroes into the library, meanwhile there is a version that Adelm, the first victim, fell out of the window of the book depository. The library is a labyrinth located on the third floor of the Temple ( emphasis: Hramina ) - a tower that strikes Adson with its size, magnificence and symbolism of the architectural form. On the second floor there is a scriptorium in which monks rewrite manuscripts. Two monastic parties clashed here - Italians and foreigners. The former advocate free access to all books, work with the native language, while the latter, conservatives, have gained leadership positions ( German Malachi is a librarian, his assistant is the Englishman Berengar and the “gray cardinal” Spaniard Jorge) and therefore do not share the aspirations of Italians. In order to clarify the reason for what is happening, William and Adson secretly penetrate the library at night. Heroes stray, meet ghosts, who in fact turned out to be traps, a trick of the human mind. The first sortie yielded nothing: having hardly got out of the labyrinth, Wilhelm and Adson doubted their own abilities and decided to solve the riddle of the labyrinth “outside”.
Nomen nudum
The next night, Adson, independently, driven by emotional excitement, enters the library, safely descends to the first floor (where the kitchen is) and meets a girl who gave herself to Kelar for food. With her, Adson has a connection reprehensible to the novice.
Subsequently, he realizes that, having lost his beloved, he is deprived of even the last consolation - to cry, pronouncing her name. Probably, this episode is directly related to the name of the novel (according to another version, the name refers to the rhetorical question in the dispute between realists and nominalists - “ What remains of the name of the rose after the rose disappears? ”).
Dispute over Christ's poverty
Then representatives of the emperor gather in the monastery - mainly the Franciscans (like brother Wilhelm), led by Order General Mikhail Tsezensky, and the papal embassy, headed by Inquisitor Bernard Guy and the Poggett Cardinal. The official purpose of the meeting is to discuss the conditions under which Mikhail Tsezensky will be able to arrive in Avignon to Pope John to give explanations. The pope considers the doctrine that Christ and the apostles had no property, which was proclaimed by the Perugia chapter of the Franciscan Order, as heresy, while the emperor, who was opposed to the pope, supported the decision of the chapter. The debate about Christ's poverty is only a formal occasion, behind which there is a tense political intrigue. According to William, “... the question is not whether Christ was poor, but whether the church should be poor. And poverty in relation to the church does not mean whether to own it any good or not. The question is different: is she entitled to dictate her will to the earthly rulers? ”Mikhail sincerely seeks reconciliation, but William from the very beginning does not believe in the success of the meeting, which is subsequently fully confirmed. The delegation of the pope, and especially Bernard Guy (or Guidoni, as the Italians call him) needs only a pretext to confirm the validity of the allegations of Franciscan minority heresies. This reason becomes the interrogation of Kelar Remigius of Varaginsky and Salvator, who were at one time heretics-Dolcinians. Wilhelm could not find the killer, and the French archers subordinate to Bernard take control of the monastery (an unidentified killer is a danger to embassies).
Wilhelm and Adson once again penetrate the library, open the system in the chaos of the rooms and find a mirror - the entrance to the "border of Africa", where all traces of the book lead - the causes of all crimes. The door did not open, and when they returned to their cells, the heroes witnessed the capture by Bernard Guy of the "guilty" - the monk Salvator and the girl who was with Adson, who had prepared for the love affair. The next day there is a debate between the embassies, in the end Bernard uses Salvator and his friend Kelar Remigius as a weapon against the Franciscans. Under the pressure of the inquisitor, they confirm that they once belonged to the Minorites , and then found themselves in the Dolchin sect , professing views of Christ's poverty similar to the minority ones and fighting against the authorities, then betrayed their sect and ended up in this monastery, having been “cleansed”. It appears that Remigius carried the letters of heretic Dolchin to his supporters and that he asked these letters to be kept by the librarian Malachi, who, not knowing their contents, hides them in the library and then issues them to Bernard Guy. Under pain of torture, Remigius pleads guilty to the murders that occurred earlier in the monastery, and explains them with his connection with the devil. Thus, it turns out that the heretic Dolcian, an obsessed devil killer, has lived in the abbey for many years, and the letters of the heresiarch Dolchin were kept in the library. As a result, the authority of the monastery was undermined, and negotiations were interrupted. The sixth and last day comes, the embassies depart, but before that they become witnesses of another mysterious death - the librarian of Malachi. Wilhelm asks an audience with the Abbot, at the end of which Abbon invites him to leave the monastery in the morning. By the Vespers , the abbot himself is not, and in the confusion that has arisen, Wilhelm and Adson return to the library, find the key, and penetrate the "border of Africa."
World Fire
In the "limit of Africa" they find blind Jorge with the only surviving copy of the second book of " Poetics " by Aristotle . There is a dispute in which the blind argues for the concealment of this work, and William - the need for his discovery to the world. Jorge of Burgos saw in his book his chief enemy, since it perfectly proved the need for laughter. (The main argument of the blind man: Jesus never laughed). The old man tears off a page saturated with poison, and begins to eat it, puts out the light (there are no windows in the “limit of Africa”), follows the pursuit of the book depository, then he “eats up” that in front of Wilhelm and Adson, tears out the lamp from the heroes and sets fire to the library. She burns, the whole Temple is engaged in it, the fire spreads to the rest of the buildings. All efforts to extinguish the fire are in vain. Adson comes to mind the image from the life of St. Augustine - a boy scooping the sea with a spoon.
Epilogue
Adson and William leave the ashes and soon parted. Subsequently, already in adulthood, Adson returned to the place where the monastery was, collecting scraps of miraculously preserved pages. Already in his old age, at the end of the century, he is completing his memories, preparing for a meeting with God .
The book is a demonstration of the scholastic method, which was very popular in the 14th century . Wilhelm shows the power of deductive reasoning.
The solution to the central secret of the murder depends on the content of the mysterious book ( Aristotle 's book on comedy , the only copy of which has been preserved in the monastery library).
Poetics
The novel is the embodiment of the theoretical ideas of Umberto Eco on a postmodern work. It includes several semantic layers available to different readership. For a relatively wide audience, “The Name of the Rose” is a complexly constructed detective story in historical scenery, for a slightly narrower one there is a historical novel with a lot of unique information about the era and partly decorative detective story, for an even narrower one there is a philosophical and cultural reflection on the difference between a medieval worldview and a modern one , about the nature and purpose of literature , its relationship with religion , the place of one and the other in the history of mankind and the like problems.
The range of allusions contained in the novel is extremely wide and ranged from generally available to understandable only to specialists. The protagonist of the book, William of Baskervilles, on the one hand, with some of his features points partly to William Ockham , partly to Anselm of Canterbury , on the other he explicitly refers to Sherlock Holmes (uses his deductive method, nicknamed one of the most famous Holmesian texts ; in addition , the parallel between the satellites is obvious: Adson and Watson ). His main adversary, the blind monastic librarian Jorge, is a complex parody of the image of the classic of postmodern literature, Jorge Luis Borges , who was the director of the national library of Argentina , and became blind in his old age (in addition, Borges has an impressive image of civilization as the “ Babylonian library ”, from which perhaps the whole Umberto Eco novel has grown).
Films
- In 1986, the novel was filmed. The director of the film “ The Name of the Rose ” was Jean-Jacques Annot . The role of William of Baskervilles was played by Sean Connery , Adson - Christian Slater .
Despite the numerous awards and the success of the film at the box office, Umberto Eco himself was not satisfied with the incarnation of his book on the screen. Since then, he has never given permission to film his works. He even refused to Stanley Kubrick , although later he regretted it.
- In March 2019, the series “ The Name of the Rose ”, directed by Giacomo Battiato, began to be released.