Umberto Eco on Writing ‘Politically’
‘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 describes a one-time job, designing and constructing stage-sets. His favorite “gig” of the past was doing the stage design 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 Eco novel, “Island of the Day Before,” contains one of my all-time favorite openings: 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 the ship, lost at sea together with its crew. Most of “Island of the Day Before” follows Roberto as he wanders alone on an abandoned coast, sometimes boarding a different crew-less ship, moored close-by. (This one is filled with caged animals.)
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.
