Harper Lee and Umberto Eco in the same day. It's like when Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day.
Umberto Eco has died
11–20 of 137 posts
Re: Umberto Eco has died
#12I'm going to re-read The Name of the Rose this weekend and raise a glass in thanks to all the pleasure that this wonderful writer has added to my life.
Great book!
Re: Umberto Eco has died
#13One remarkable thing about The Name of the Rose is that the characters in it don't think and talk like modern people who happen to have been transported into the Middle Ages. They seem to think differently -- about what's possible, what people can expect from life, how you know things, what counts as an argument...
Possibly my favorite part:
"What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless. Er muoz gelîchesame die leiter abewerfen, sô er an ir ufgestigen . . . . Is that how you say it?"
"That is how it is said in my language. Who told you that?"
"A mystic from your land. He wrote it somewhere, I forget where. And it is not necessary for somebody one day to find that manuscript again. The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away."
The "mystic from your land" was Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said that in his Tractatus 591 years after that conversation was set, in modern rather than medieval German ("Er muss sozusagen die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr hinaufgestiegen ist") - "he must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up on it".
Re: Umberto Eco has died
#14Foucault's Pendulum was maybe the most transformative book I've ever read - it changed how I think about literature (and of course the Knights Templar). Ah well, guess it's time to reread it. :(
Re: Umberto Eco has died
#15Harper Lee and Umberto Eco in the same day. It's like when Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day.
A search engine tells me that Cervantes died on April 22nd and Shakespeare died on the 23rd (1616).
Re: Umberto Eco has died
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
From: http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2016/02/20/news/morto_lo_sc... > La conferma della scomparsa dell'autore de "Il nome della Rosa" e de "Il pendolo di Focault" è stata data dalla famiglia a Repubblica. La morte è avvenuta alle 22.30 di ieri sera nella sua abitazione. Which says that his family has confirmed it to La Repubblica, which is a respected Italian newspaper.
I almost feel how this is how he would have wanted to go - with conflicting reports from contemporary sources.
I thought exactly the same thing. I can imagine the author smiling at this.
What is true? he would say.
Re: Umberto Eco has died
#17Harper Lee and Umberto Eco in the same day. It's like when Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day.
A search engine tells me that Cervantes died on April 22nd and Shakespeare died on the 23rd (1616).
You must do really well in life. Search engining and correcting people all the time and all.
Re: Umberto Eco has died
#18Harper Lee and Umberto Eco in the same day. It's like when Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day.
A search engine tells me that Cervantes died on April 22nd and Shakespeare died on the 23rd (1616).
It's even worse than that... According to Wikipedia:
"Spain had adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582, but England was still using the Julian calendar. Shakespeare's death on 23 April 1616 (Julian) was equivalent to 3 May 1616 (Gregorian). This was 10 days after Cervantes was buried and 11 days after he died."
Re: Umberto Eco has died
#19I can't believe how many legendary people have died in the last few months. I still remember reading Foucault's Pendulum when it came out in English - I was too young to really dig the story at the time, but I can recall struggling to get my head around some his prose because he was just on a whole different level from the other books I had been reading back then.
I read Baudolino some years ago, but didn't come away from it with the same sense of awe that I got from reading Name of the Rose, or Foucault's Pendulum.
Re: Umberto Eco has died
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
A search engine tells me that Cervantes died on April 22nd and Shakespeare died on the 23rd (1616).
It's even worse than that... According to Wikipedia: "Spain had adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582, but England was still using the Julian calendar. Shakespeare's death on 23 April 1616 (Julian) was equivalent to 3 May 1616 (Gregorian). This was 10 days after Cervantes was buried and 11 days after he died."
It's still an astonishing near-coincidence and I'm glad that you mentioned it.