Pseudo-Review: The cemetery of Prague (Umberto Eco)
Well, contemporaries and posterity, here today I would have to bring a review of cemetery in Prague of Eco, but I'm me and I have so many problems with the formats, even the most vulgar, and the fact that in the past I has written articles (which I tend to forget) magically does not make me automatically now able to apply those organic and accessibility that a review should have.
On the other hand the desire to write a review I do not have a love for this practice, but the fact that the output of the novel is been accompanied by negative criticism and unnecessary. Because it considers unnecessary, or "redundant", it says in the review below. This way of settling the novel I was on the ball even before I had read, for simple reasons repeatedly mentioned, namely: Eco proceeds, interest, parallel to me - or vice versa, I should say, but a parallel is not a source of 'origin and a person who receives it. In short, Cemetery Prague was summed up in the keyword "1800", "nationalism", "Jewish question", "representation" - and my last three papers are in order on the Jewish question, on nationalism and techniques representation literature. The 1800 is implicit in the era of nationalism.
There is also a basic reason, which is the sense of Eco in history, that of semiology. As a novelist I'm not crazy, and I can not even say that his prose like it or not I like it, because Eco is an expert in communication and learn this and in this experiment, so that it has a lot of prose. Sure, there are all his traits, except for the verbosity (which is not needlessly redundant for those who can follow it), and these her features I do not particularly love.
If I devour books with Eco taste and affection for what is in these novels Eco inserted, namely their skills and visions - and the favorite themes at the moment, those who proceed in parallel with mine.
why I do not know how to analyze Eco novelist, and I think that to make a meaningful review of a book Eco should be experts in some branch of the communication. Experts of "signs" in general, ideally, but the English wiki I own Eco cites in making a history of semiotics, and therefore should review Eco himself, and somehow it does, writing novels - rather than enchant the reader by hiding tricks of the trade - reveals how the discourse (the discourse ) can create worlds of fiction or not.
For the record, The cemetery of Prague did not make me mad it's too 4dummies (but must be exactly so), and develops the themes dear to me in areas I care less (hence the Italian and French history, while I was more interested in English and German). It then refers to a specific format, that of nineteenth-century novel of the appendix, which is the pillar of the format 4dummies - that those who (like me) look with suspicion at the French Revolution and the democratization of the country may be blessed not to love.
I seem to have introduced the no-good review in the sense that I made intricate and conceited and pedantic as the non-review (never betray).
There are abstruse words of academics whose aim is not self-celebration, and that can be folded completely the interpretation of a book.
If, for example, take Cemetery Prague and approaches the word othering, we can liquidate the comment Scaraffia, who called the novel a "raving anti-Semite," as a surface charge. Surface because there is no anti-Semitism in the book, but because the function of the book - the potential role that offers the reader - is precisely in revealing these tricks that can give rise to new "anti-X-isms."
L 'othering is the "build the next", or, more specifically, the building's neighbor as oneself more than to build the self. It's the "I understand what they are going to exclude, or you having to represent something (fortune) are not."
The Jew is the Other par excellence, the fundamental paradigm for granted because (not because the Jews were the first ethnic group subject to an attempted murder, but because the analysis of 'othering is inextricably linked to social and moral consequences of the Holocaust).
L 'othering , analyzed as a practice, is favored son of the age of nationalism (in which individual identity upon to give them a collective of nation-race), that same nineteenth century in which Eco set his latest novel.
Scaraffia is a historic, Eco semiologist a writer of historical novels and respected, since it too can be accused of revisionism for writing The cemetery in Prague. The narrator becomes
specific historical, at the end of the novel, that "the only fictional character is the protagonist of this story" and goes on stressing that the construction work has consistently drawn, ie in a binding, by historical fact. It concludes with a note that the use of the story must make sense, "Simone Simonini also, although the effect of a collage [...] is somehow lived. Indeed, to be honest, he is still with us. "
Scaraffia, historical, paradoxically becomes less lucid writer, confusing history and politics, and dealing with the Holocaust - as so often - not as a historical fact, but as a policy matter is still open. As political history, the Holocaust as a theme becomes the limit of free expression.
The problem is upstream, and arises from a generalization: for the Jew was the first to be recognized more as an innocent victim, which has triggered a series of social and legal measures at the end of World War II (to be seen Universal Declaration of Human Rights , lyrically trying to make every human being equal to others and untouchable from discrimination - but it does so, the daughter of their own times and revealing a degree of hypocrisy, using the word "race"), establishes an Aristotelian syllogism is fallacious, for which the Jew is the Other, and then offend the Jew automatically mean to offend each other. There is nothing wrong with that principle (apart from a certain logical fallacy), because it would lead to a priori respect for diversity with the Jew as a spokesperson (but the Jew, then, this role will be fine?). The problem arises when the Jew catalyzes any compassion for the victims for the following sixty years, and we find ourselves in front of neighbors giving the Nazi who makes jokes on the Jews and then say to Senegalese and Albanians to "go home" (not knowing, naively, that National originally envisaged an exile of the Jewish community outside the territory of the Reich , not an extermination).
For this reason the specification of a narrator on current Simone Simonini, the protagonist, is crucial. For this Cemetery Prague becomes universal instrument that uses the Jew as the paradigm of the Other, and it shows - step by step - like yesterday and today and tomorrow we can get to build the more you listen as the accumulation of impressions childhood, fiction extracts that blend with the record, trap-interpretations of facts (such as a given physiognomic) that trap in simplistic conclusions (such as those that establish a precise correspondence between skull shape and type of intelligence, or lack of it).
Eco's latest novel, in short, shows how the anti-Semite is neither inherently evil (as Simonini is just an opportunist, who would do good if the world does not put some front forks), or obtusely stupid.
certainly can not say that Simonini is commendable, in terms of intellectual - and, therefore, can not therefore say that anti-Semitism in the novel is convincingly shown. The thesis with which Simonini justify its fear and its contempt for the people elected are easy to disassemble, and for a simple reason: we have already been dismantled. They are an accumulation of narratives worthy of a novel appendix too, even from first-person accounts, and cliché that nobody believes anymore. The falsehood (but not false, because the stories do not relate to "real" and "false", if anything "likely" and "unlikely") that Eco poses challenges to the reader how to take apart to understand how mountains are a sham in fact challenges 4dummies , which does not require the reader nor a particular critical skills or broad knowledge of history. Improbabilities are already digested by past generations of anti-anti-Semites, documentaries and public dissection of memory, and the reader is asked to suspend disbelief for just get in the shoes unsustainable Simonini, that this is not because evil or why stupid, but because moderately smart (and here is a reference to the "banality of evil," Arendt - but only if you want).
Jonathan Littell, in The Kindly , was much more clever, staging a leading intellect more subtle and less rancorous, and therefore more persuasive in the stigmatization of the Jew. Because the problem of Simonini, what makes him unconvincing as a threat to the player, which is partially bidimensionalizzato the pillar that supports it, anti-Semitism, which affirms the continuation without basing it convincingly. This led me to wonder if he Scaraffia skin is too thin on certain issues, thus responding phobic and losing lucidity in analyzing syndrome (common to post-Holocaust generation, it seems), or whether as a reader has more fake dummy of dummies in the novel has turned - if that is, failing to remove the 4 dummies clumsy accusations brought to the Jews, felt that even the average reader will be able to. Eco
use statements by other characters to justify maldisposizione the protagonist, and this makes de Cemetery Prague a split on Europe of the late nineteenth century - as too often forgotten, giving all the blame to the Germans - and was quietly seriously (citing Genet inappropriately) racist, with the same candor with which today expresses the logic of "since most crimes are committed by immigrants, would like to say something."
is that "would like to say something" to be lethal, regardless of the space-time, because it appeals to demonstrations that can not be shown if not generalizing. And to generalize about Jews, for those who have the least depth the question is easy.
Hitler, Mein Kampf leads explanations difficult to deconstruct, if you do not have an overall picture, because consistently draws from history, not the way it draws on sources compiled in accordance with the principle of 'ipse dixit where Authority is the expert on the subject, but drawing from history as it is commonly perceived - in a way not dissimilar from that used by Simonini, which is the way born with nationalism and which still stands today. This popularization of history allows the public access to Hitler on the one hand, but on the other makes only a small portion of this audience - the erudite - to refute it. Why, for removing the reinterpretation of historical facts Hitler, one must first know them. (The fact that Eco has been called a revisionist is not due to an accurate control of the sources he used, but the fact is that Eco Eco, and Littell as revisionist would make little sense, since it is of Jewish origin.)
The contemporary reader would have benefited by reading Mein Kampf critically, because tens of years after allowing a wider and more skeptical view of the overall picture, and above all allow you to compare their own premises (ie things that are taken for granted - and nineteenth took for granted the importance of the difference between races, and the connection between blood and behavior) with those of the author.
Cemetery Prague had to be written by an Eco, because an Eco read it in many, and few people read the Mein Kampf . Both tools make it possible to develop a critical view of 'othering , but Eco does more: unlike Hitler reveals the structure that allows certain collectively shared beliefs to become reality. It does this using a Simonini certainly tenacious in their rejection of the Jew, but not as complex as a Hitler, or as thin as a Littell. Distancing himself, Eco is taking another step, similar to that made by Hitler: the semiologist simplifies, makes his prose more approachable, it applies to itself the popularization adopting a narrator who addresses the masses and not restricted to a circle of scholars in search of phrases that a dictionary can not even explain. On
historical content, Eco merely doing what both Hitler and Littell have done: draw from the historical town and accessible, often mixed with a parastoria made of events recorded in mixed conclusions incorporated on who writes history. Because Jews have had to do with the money for centuries is a historical fact, but it is the conclusion that they want lenders because parasites by blood or culture. The transition between fact and conclusion is that "would like to say something" common today as in the nineteenth century.
We still unresolved shoulders a taboo that will not allow a proper analysis of the sources that led to anti-Semitism, and unfortunately can list them to pass anti-Semitic, because the history we know is not too dissimilar from those used by Hitler, a Simonini or an Littell. The Jews were for centuries are explicable by the accumulation of large sums of money have been historically known to be loan sharks (and if this is true or not we'll never know, because history does not is omniscient and is partial, and tends to create the Other as the individuals who compose it), but it is not pure that we must look to history, but the way in which history is built , it reads and interprets - and what Eco does, making Cemetery Prague, more than a book on the history of the nineteenth century, a book on the history of representations in the nineteenth century - and thus representative of the methods in general, still valid.
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