TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/83/83capbks.2

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                U                                                              June 13, 1983

BOOKS

Murders in a Medieval Monastery


The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco;
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 502 pages; $15.95


When a renowned Italian expert in semiotics, the arcane science
of signs, sets out to write a thriller, the resulting fiction
is bound to bristle with more obscure clues, mysterious ciphers
and symbolic happenings than were ever conjured up by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle. So it is with Umberto Eco's first novel, The Name
of the Rose, a Sherlock Holmesian fantasy in a medieval setting.

Eco, 51, is the author of a study of the sources of James
Joyce's language, as well as more than a dozen other scholarly
works, including The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the
Semiotics of Texts (Indiana University Press; 1979). By far the
most successful of his writings, The Name of the Rose won the
two top literary awards in Italy, the Premio Strega and the
Premio Viareggio, and has sold 500,000 copies there since 1980.

In the U.S., where the Middle Ages are less modish than in
Europe, the book's popularity depends on how much medieval
esoterica readers are willing to slog through to reach the heart
of the story. For Eco's novel, fluidly translated by William
Weaver, is not only an entertaining narrative of a murder
investigation in a monastery in 1327. it is also a chronicle
of the 14th century's religious wars, a history of monastic
orders and a compendium of heretical movements. All of this is
recounted in the language of theological disputation, Scholastic
discourse and--caveat lector--Latin.

The author tips his hat to Sir Arthur early on. The name of
his medieval detective, William of Baskerville, is an echo of
the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles. In the
14th century context, William is a Franciscan friar, famed for
his formidable powers of deduction. His companion and disciple
is called Adso, or in French, Adson, as in the phrase
"Elementary, my dear Adson."

The pair are traveling together at a time of troubles for the
church. An inquisition is raging against heretics, casting a
dark and menacing shadow over the whole era. The Emperor in
Milan and the Pope in Avignon are battling for ascendancy over
the Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor, Louis IV, has sent William
to the abbot of a rich and powerful Benedictine monastery in
Italy on a mission of conciliation. The Franciscan and Adso
arrive at the abbey right after the body of a young monk has
been discovered. Suicide or murder is suspected. The abbot,
aware of William's skills at detection, persuades him to
investigate the death.

The atmosphere at the abbey, already poisoned by suspicions of
heresy and unholy lust among some of the monks, quickly becomes
lethal as other mysterious deaths take place--a total of seven
bloody deeds. William speculates that the killer may be inspired
by the Book of Revelation, where it is prophesied that a series
of seven trumpet calls will signal death and destruction before
the Apocalypse.

William's attention focuses on the abbey's library, a repository
of divine and secular texts that is meant to symbolize all the
world's knowledge. No one but the librarian and his assistant
has access to its labyrinthine secret rooms. The abbot
explains:  "The library defends itself, immeasurable as the
truth it houses, deceitful as the falsehood it preserves."
William suspects that the victims were murdered for seeking out
a single forbidden book. "What the temptation of adultery is
for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular
ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks." he
muses. "Why should they not have risked death to satisfy a
curiosity of their minds, or have killed to prevent someone
from appropriating a jealously guarded secret of their own?"

After some 450 pages, William locates both the forbidden volume
and the "Antichrist" who has engineered the murders. It would
violate the rules of sport to give more away, except to report
that the book is the "lost" second volume of Aristotle's
Poetics. Book I explored the nature of tragedy; Book II
supposedly inquired into comedy, extolling it as a force for
good. This the murderer could not abide. As William explains
to Adso, he "did a diabolical thing because he loved his truth
so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood.
... Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make
people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the
only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane
passion for the truth."

Critics in Italy have viewed Eco's book as a parable of
contemporary Italian political life, which has its share of
murderous fanatics and absolutist ideologies. Others have seen
it as a work of vast erudition, to be read on several levels of
ethical, political and historical concern. More likely, though,
The Name of the Rose is a monumental exercise in mystification
by a fun-loving scholar. The enigmatic title offers a clue to
his intentions. When queried about its meaning, Eco replied
that "the name of the rose" is an expression sometimes used in
the Middle Ages to denote the infinite power of words:
"Abelard, for example, claimed that the rose subsists in its
name, even if the rose is not there, or has never existed."  As
a retort, some readers might find a plebeian Latin saying
singularly apt. It is res. non verba, which translates roughly
into a call for more substance, fewer words.

--By Patricia Blake


Excerpt

"Don't worry. The horse came this way and took the path to the
right.' `When did you see him?' the cellarer asked. "We haven't
seen him at all, have we Adso?'  William said. `How did you
know?'  `Come, come," William said, `It is obvious you are
hunting for Brunellus, the abbot's favorite horse, 15 hands, the
fastest in your stables, with a dark coat, a full tail.'  A few
minutes later, monks and servants reappeared, leading the horse
by its halter. `And now tell me' -- in the end I could not
restrain myself--`how did you manage to know?' `My good Adso,'
my master said, `during our whole journey I have been teaching
you to recognize the evidence through which the world speaks to
us like a great book.'"