The idea of calling my book The Name of the Rose came to me virtually by chance, and I liked it because the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left: Dante’s mystic rose, and go lovely rose, the Wars of the Roses, rose thou art sick, too many rings around Rosie, a rose by any other name,5 a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, the Rosicrucians.
5. It is curious that in America and the United Kingdom, the Latin verse reminded many reviewers of Romeo and Juliet. It is curi-ous, because it seems to me that the sense of Juliet's words is exactly the opposite of that of Bernard's. Shakespeare suggests that names do not matter and do not affect the substance of the thing-in-itself. Bernard might have agreed with Shakespeare that names are only arbitrary labels, but for the Benedictine what remains of the real (?) rose (if any) is precisely this evanescent, powerful, fascinating, magical name.
