Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco OMRIwas an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician and university professor. He is best known internationally for his 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He later wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucaultand L'isola del giorno prima. His novel Il cimitero di Praga, released in 2010, was a best-seller...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 January 1932
CountryItaly
I could work in the shower if I had plastic paper.
I have to admit that I only read 'War and Peace' when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then.
The problem with the Internet is that it gives you everything - reliable material and crazy material. So the problem becomes, how do you discriminate?
I am a professor who writes novels on Sundays
Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for.
Authors frequently say things they are unaware of; only after they have gotten the reactions of their readers do they discover what they have said
For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - "le suggérer, voilà le rêve!").
I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the methodical path of the Jesuits.... It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that all can reach salvation.
Hypotyposis is the rhetorical effect by which words succeed in rendering a visual scene.
You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the true primordial passion. It is love that's abnormal. That is why Christ was killed: he spoke against nature. You don't love someone for your whole life - that impossible hope is the source of adultery, matricide, betrayal of friends ... But you can hate someone for your whole life - provided he's always there to keep your hatred alive. Hatred warms the heart.
...we can only add to the world, where we believe it ends, more parts similar to those we already know (an expanse made again and always of water and land, stars and skies).
I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.
... luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene.
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.