Umberto Eco on Writing ‘Politically’ as a European
‘There is no rule… only the risk of contradiction.’
I’ve been friends — and even worked together — with a wonderful Berlin artist, Wolfgang Nieblich (1948- ), who told me about designing and constructing stage-sets for a German stage production of “Name of the Rose.” Like me, Wolfgang is a great fan of the original novel, as well as its Italian author, Umberto Eco (1932-2016).
Another novel by Umberto Eco, “Island of the Day Before,” contains one of my all-time favorite fiction beginnings: The protagonist, Roberto della Griva, is an Italian nobleman. Roberto awakens as the survivor of a storm at sea, the night before. His life has been saved by the fact that a common sailor had lashed him to a cross-beam — basically, to a cross, which had broken away from the doomed ship.
Roberto comes slowly to consciousness, gradually aware that he is bobbing on gentle waves, still lashed to the beams of a ship that is gone, together with its crew. Most of the book follows Roberto alone on an abandoned coast, with a different crew-less ship, moored close-by. All this takes place in 17th-century Europe, a subject that Eco, as a European historian, has studied intensely enough to provide us with plenty of believable detail.
Eco was a brilliant writer of both historical fiction and nonfiction, and I was recently drawn back to him by another book, “Travels in Hyper-Reality,” his account of traveling around in the United States during the late 1970s or early ’80s. Writing as a European, Eco describes his experience of being immersed in the growing American “messaging culture,” already going globally viral (via analog media of that time).
Part of the reason Eco wrote and published these essays on American communications/media back then — including its language — was because of his everyday work, which was the study of “signs and symbols.” He was especially interested in the way that our reading of symbols — including language — changes, according to geography or over time. Another reason to publish “Travels in Hyper-Reality,” he said, was his “duty” to interpret events and experiences politically — which he understood as very much a part of his everyday work, as a writer in Italy.
‘Sometimes you have to speak because
you feel the moral obligation to say something,
not because you have…scientific certainty….’
— Umberto Eco.
“(M)any Italian scholars and literary critics also write columns where they take a stand on political questions,” he explained to his English readers. “And they do this, not only as a natural part of their work, but also as a duty.”
In his writing, Eco feels especially compelled to explain this to his American readers, who then believed — as many still do — that “doing politics” is a “profession,” best left to elected and paid “experts.” This, says Eco, is in contrast to the views of Europeans, who see political expression and conversation as a civic “right and a duty.” In Europe, he says, “each of us feels the moral obligation to be involved in some way….”