The Name of the Rose

by Umberto Eco

For three things concur in creating beauty: first of all integrity or perfection, and for this reason we consider ugly all incomplete things; then proper proportion or consonance; and finally clarity and light, and in fact we call beautiful those things of definite color.

rubricators,

I did not have time, however, to observe their work, because the librarian came to us.

Power and information

if the request was justified and devout.

This was a psalter in whose margins was delineated a world reversed with respect to the one to which our senses have accustomed us.

Fire!

immodest if you were not persuaded that a profound, even if not evident, spiritual meaning must surely have justified that illustration at that point.

Aristotle's Book of comedy

between silent admiration and laughter,

!

the earth is above the sky.”

Ultimate inversion

Aller wunder si geswigen, das erde himel hât überstigen, daz sult ir vür ein wunder wigen.

Erd ob un himel unter, das sult ir hân besunder vür aller wunder ein wunder.

We turned. The speaker was a monk bent under the weight of his years, an old man white as snow, not only his skin, but also his face and his pupils. I saw he was blind. The voice was still majestic and the limbs powerful, even if the body was withered by age. He stared at us as if he could see us, and always thereafter I saw him move and speak as if he still possessed the gift of sight. But the tone of his voice was that of one possessing only the gift of prophecy.

The murderer

Jorge of Burgos.

Borges the murderer

He was repeating what the Benedictines said about the eccentricities of Saint Francis of Assisi, and perhaps also the bizarre whims attributed to those friars and Spirituals of every kind who were the most recent and embarrassing offshoots of the Franciscan order. But William gave no sign of understanding the insinuation. “Marginal

hens fertilize cocks,

What is the aim of this nonsense? A world that is the reverse and the opposite of that established by God, under the pretext of teaching divine precepts!”

And Hugh of St. Victor reminded us that the more the simile becomes dissimilar, the more the truth is revealed to us under the guise of horrible and indecorous figures, the less the imagination is sated in carnal enjoyment, and is thus obliged to perceive the mysteries hidden under the turpitude of the images. . . .” “I know that

Saint Bernard was right: little by little the man who depicts monsters and portents of nature to reveal the things of God per speculum et in aenigmate, comes to enjoy the very nature of the monstrosities he creates and to delight in them, and as a result he no longer sees except through them.

Shame! For the desire of your eyes and for your smiles!”

What a blowhard

“Venerable Jorge,” he said, “your virtue makes you unjust.

that certain properties cannot be attributed to divine things, and become uncertain if portrayed by noble corporeal things.

Logical

shows Himself here more in that which is not than in that which is, and therefore the similitudes of those things furthest from God lead us to a more exact notion of Him, for thus we know that He is above what we say and think.

in this way the things of God are better hidden from unworthy persons.

whether metaphors and puns and riddles, which also seem conceived by poets for sheer pleasure, do not lead us to speculate on things in a new and surprising way, and I said that this is also a virtue demanded of the wise man. . . . And Malachi was also there. . . .” “If the venerable

The sentence was uttered in an agitated tone—at least at the beginning, because the speaker, once realizing that in urging respect for the old man he was actually calling attention to a weakness, had slowed the pace of his own interjection, ending almost in a whisper of apology. It

I love this breakdown

“He was the author of a terrible book, the Libellus de Antichristo, in which he foresaw things that were to happen; but he was not sufficiently heeded.” “The book was written before the millennium,” William said, “and those things did not come to pass. . . .” “For those who lack eyes to see,” the blind man said. “The ways of the Antichrist are slow and tortuous. He arrives when we do not expect him: not because the calculation suggested by the apostle was mistaken, but because we have not learned the art.” Then he cried, in a very loud voice, his face turned toward the hall, making the ceiling of the scriptorium re-echo: “He is coming! Do not waste your last days laughing at little monsters with spotted skins and twisted tails! Do not squander the last seven days!”

(the Lord had a great deal to forgive us in the days that followed!),

Wonderful plotting

where God’s knowledge is made manifest through the knowledge of man, and it serves to transform nature, and one of its ends is to prolong man’s very life.

holy magic,

to which the learned must devote themselves more and more, not only t...

the infidels (and I cannot tell you all the wonderful things on optics and the science of vision to be read in the books of the infidels!). And Christian knowledge must regain possession of all this learning, taking it from the pagans and infidels tamquam ab iniustis possessoribus, as they had no right to hold

“Because not all the people of God are ready to accept so many secrets, and it has often happened that the possessors of this learning have been mistaken for necromancers in league from birth with the Devil, so that they have paid with their lives for their wish to share their knowledge with everyone.

But often the treasures of learning must be defended, not against the simple but, rather, against other learned men.

Aristotle says in the book of secrets that communicating too many arcana of nature and art breaks a celestial seal and many evils can ensue. Which does not mean that secrets must not be revealed, but that the learned must decide when and how.”

Philoslpher kings?

“Excess of loquacity can be a sin, and so can excess of reticence.

enthymeme,”

An argument in which onenpremise is explicity stated

wine induces even the wise to apostasy, as Ecclesiastes reminds

“Which proves that laughter is something very close to death and to the corruption of the body,” Jorge replied with a snarl; and I must admit that he spoke like a good logician.

“Then why do you want to know?” “Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.”

Symbol sometimes of the Devil, sometimes of the Risen Christ, no animal is more untrustworthy than the cock.

thurible

the Evil One spreads petty envies, foments subtle hostilities, but all these are as smoke then dispersed by the strong wind of faith, the moment all gather in the name of the Father, and Christ descends into their midst.

the line between poison and medicine is subtle; the Greeks used the word ‘pharmacon’ for both.”

Aristotle himself had spoken of witticisms and plays on words as instruments better to reveal the truth, and hence laughter could not be such a bad thing if it could become a vehicle of the truth.

Poetics, unknown to the Christian world for such a long time, which was perhaps by divine decree, had come to us through the infidel Moors. . . .” “But it was

“It matters a great deal, because here we are trying to understand what has happened among men who live among books, with books, from books, and so their words on books are also important.”

Venantius, who knows . . . who knew Greek very well, said that Aristotle had dedicated the second book of the Poetics specifically to laughter, and that if a philosopher of such greatness had devoted a whole book to laughter, then laughter must be important. Jorge said that many fathers had devoted entire books to sin, which is an important thing, but evil; and Venantius said that as far as he knew, Aristotle had spoken of laughter as something good and an instrument of truth; and then Jorge asked him contemptuously whether by any chance he had read this book of Aristotle; and Venantius said that no one could have read it, because it has never been found and is perhaps lost forever.

Est domus in terris, clara quae voce resultat. Ipsa domus resonat, tacitus sed non sonat hospes. Ambo tamen currunt, hospes simul et domus una.

speculum mundi,

“In order for there to be a mirror of the world, it is necessary that the world have a form,” concluded William, who was too much of a philosopher for my adolescent mind.

Anti platonic

And the powers of hell are employed, or the powers of the necromancers, friends of hell, to derange the minds of the curious. . . .”