Renaissance man
a beautiful mind
In an age when celebrity junk rules the newsstands, it’s refreshing to hear a big thinker’s views on the state of the world. Journalist Martin Schulz heads into the mountains south of Bologna to meet Italy’s razor-sharp philosopher, novelist and political commentator Umberto Eco
words by Martin Scholz/IFA
It’s not easy to reach Umberto Eco’s country residence in the mountains of Monte Cerignone. “About 45 minutes from Rimini” is what it said in his email. In the end it takes almost two hours, with the towns getting smaller and smaller until the signposts only indicate the next village, which is not even marked on the map. “You’ll recognise my house immediately,” explained the writer. “It looks a little bit like Alcatraz on a hill.” Which turns out to be typical of Eco’s dramatic style. Instead of prison walls, I find a large, inviting property nestled between cow pastures and bumpy country lanes.
My host is standing in the driveway in a bright red pullover, chewing on a cigarillo. He gave up smoking long ago. “The chewing provides enough stimulation for my brain, which is good. However, the inspirational smoke is missing, which is bad,” he says, laughing, and leads me through the house to his study. This is where the 75 year old retires to read or write. It contains a huge sculpture, a prop from the filming of The Name of the Rose. “It’s the only thing that was left; people grabbed everything as soon as the filming was over.”
The 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, in which a Franciscan monk investigates a murder at a monastery and simultaneously uncovers a literary secret deep in the catacombs of the library, was Eco’s first international success as a writer and six years later became a film with Sean Connery. Further novels such as Foucault’s Pendulum and Baudolino also made it onto the bestseller lists. But before and parallel to his life as a novelist, the Italian was and still remains much more: a TV journalist in the 1950s, philosopher and media analyst and, since 1971, Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna.
Eco has always been a political commentator who is happy to intervene in contemporary debates, his sharply satirical commentaries appearing in both Italian and international newspapers. When government emergencies occur – as they regularly tend to in Italy, which has had a staggering 61 parliaments since World War II – Eco’s countrymen expect to hear from him. This is a man that can offer the long view on any given situation. “When there are crises or catastrophes my telephone rings night and day,” he says. “I frequently leave it unanswered and wait a couple of days. I need some time to make sense of things myself.”
Today, the writer has welcomed me in to discuss his new collection of essays Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism, where he puts the question: “Is today’s media destroying real political debate?” It’s a broad canvas that takes in global media, politics, the conflicts between Islam and Christianity – Iraq and Afghanistan.
In your new book you talk about democracy and conflict today, against a backdrop of three millennia. But the international media have been most interested in what you say about ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi…
That’s true, a lot of the international publishing houses were interested primarily because of Berlusconi. Why? Because Berlusconi isn’t just an Italian phenomenon. He’s representative of a new type of extremely powerful, influential media businessman who succeeds in controlling political life. This could happen in other countries: in Germany, England or France. When foreign journalists ask me about Berlusconi, I always say: “You’re not interested in him because you’re worried about Italy but because you’re frightened that the same thing could happen in your own country.” Rupert Murdoch, for example, could acquire power in the same manner. It’s not over. The problem wasn’t resolved with Berlusconi’s election defeat.
Do you find it hard to write satire in times of conflict?
Yes, it’s a problem. We live in an age that could reduce one to silence – out of fear of angering someone or turning them against you with what you say or write. This results in a form of silence that weighs down on culture like a concrete block. I haven’t been quite so severely affected as I’m used to delivering my kind of satire with understatement.
Even a year and a half after the Mohammed cartoons sent shockwaves around the world, many writers admit to exercising self-censorship. What’s your take on this?
From the time when political correctness took hold 20 to 30 years ago, jokes about ethnic groups have become impossible. That is why a comedian such as Lenny Bruce, who was famous for his obscene language and his lack of respect for everyone and everything, is no longer thinkable. That kind of satire has a very hard time today.
Do you find that sad?
Yes, I consider it to be a loss. There is no doubt that there are limits, but am I no longer able to make jokes about Scottish people? The space within which comic freedom can develop has continued to shrink. And, as people need a certain amount of excitement and stimulation, all these components that used to form part of satire now find their way into violent horror films and trashy entertainment, and into the football stadium.
In your new book you talk about the rise of television as religion and what that means for the world…
Religions present you with images of the gods – gods that live in a spring or on trees. And in a completely secularised society, TV is continually presenting us with its own gods. Nothing that we see on the screen actually belongs to our world, it belongs to that other world. And just like Alice, you want to step through the lookingglass, to become a part of this wonderland. But the insane competition for audience ratings decides everything and makes it virtually impossible to create good programmes.
Even back in the 1950s, television already had a pseudoreligious aura. Back then I remember how I received a discount television as an employee of the RAI [the Italian national TV network]. My family was the only one that had a television in our building. We had a young girl who helped in our household and she was convinced that Mike Bongiorno – an Italian TV star of the day – could see her, and her alone, through the television every night. The Pope achieves the same effect through his media presence. In many places he’s revered by young people like a pop star, although his attitude towards homosexuals and abortion actually tends to turn young people off. But they still make pilgrimages to his audiences with their sleeping bags days in advance – and at night they do things in their sleeping bags that he wouldn’t approve of at all.
What do you think of Dan Brown’s Vatican-conspiracy blockbuster The Da Vinci Code?
If you wanted to be unkind you could say that he has written a Name of the Rose for the less educated. He wrote a good pageturner that gives people pleasure. And at the weekend, they travel to the locations in Brown’s novel; among others to the Louvre, where, if we believe Dan Brown’s story, you’ll find the bones of Mary Magdalene. You and I know this isn’t true, but there are other people who don’t really want to know things too precisely.
In a survey, people were asked who wrote The Name of the Rose: 18% answered Umberto Eco; 49% thought it was Sean Connery. Were you offended?
Ach, no. I never complained to Sean Connery. I only met him once on set during the filming of The Name of The Rose. We sat together, drank a few scotches. Unfortunately he just wanted to talk about football.
Aren’t you interested in football?
Not particularly. But I listened anyway, so I could share his scotch
bologna the brainy
Bologna University, where Umberto Eco teaches, has a reputation for brilliance dating back to Dante’s time and well beyond…
The University of Bologna is considered to be the earliest recorded university in Western Europe, and the oldest in the world still to award degrees. With more years on the clock than Oxford and Cambridge, Uppsala and Copenhagen universities, Bologna dates from the late 11th century when teachers and students of “rhetoric, logic and grammar” formed a law school. In the 13th and 14th centuries it drew artists, such as poets Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca – whose works are now seen as cornerstones of Western literature. And some two hundred years after Dante’s day, Bologna developed a reputation for experimental science or ‘natural magic’ – the study of animals, fossils, and even an early form of plastic surgery. In the mid-1600s, scientist Marcello Malpighi made the university a hub for his pioneering use of the microscope, and still later the Industrial Revolution brought about a few big brainwaves: it was here that Luigi Galvani discovered that animal cells produce electric currents and Alessandro Volta built the first battery in 1800.
Nowadays Bologna University is home to over 100,000 students and a few famous professors – Umberto Eco teaches Semiotics in the literature faculty, and Romano Prodi holds a post as Economics professor. Though since he became prime minister for the second time, the statesman is unlikely to be a regular in the lecture halls.
The heart of the university is now on Via Zamboni but a more historic section remains in the 16th-century Palazzo di Archiginnasio at Piazza Galvani 1. Here you’ll find the fascinating Anatomical Theatre, a faithful replica of the panelled room where medical students would once have watched dissections (the original was razed by bombs during World War II). Wooden benches surround a marble slab and skinless anatomical statues support the lectern. Also open to visitors and worth seeing in the same building is the Aula Magna, the old Institute of Sciences Library, commissioned in the 18th century by Pope Benedict XIV, a Bolognese. This cathedral to books is a wonderful place to let your thoughts wander. Guided tours take place Monday to Saturday 9am-midday and Tuesday and Thursday afternoons 3pm-6pm.
www.eng.unibo.it
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