CORRESPONDENCErnLetter From Italyrnby Andrea SciffornThe Gay Nihilism ofrnUmberto EcornSimone Weil wrote, with respect to literature,rnthat “nothing is more beautiful,rnwonderful, ever new, ever more surprising,rnmore sweetly and lastingly intoxicatingrnthan the good. Nothing is more arid,rnsad, monotonous and cranky than thernhad. Such are authentic goodness andrnevil. The fictional good and bad are opposite.rnThe fictional good is cranky andrnflat. The fictional bad is varied, interestinglyrnattractive, profound, and full ofrnseductions.”rnThis statement could well be appliedrnto the two novels of the celebratedrnItalian semioticist Umberto Eco. Onernmight even add that passage of Nietzsche’srnwhich accuses Plato of “inventingrngood and evil . . . the most ominous ofrnerrors . . . [such that] Christianity isrnnothing more than platonism for thernpeople.” It is indeed nihilism that hidesrnbehind the “nominalism” in Eco’s writings.rnIn particular. The Name of the Rosern(1980) paints a grandiose fresco intendedrnto discredit the revealed truth ofrnChristian faith.rnThis has long been the belief of thernItalian Jesuit priest Guido Sommavilla,rna literary critic and the translator intornItalian of the work of Hans Urs vonrnBalthasar, the Catholic theologian. Inrncontrast to his Jesuit confreres in thernUnited States (who awarded Eco a degreernHonoris Causa at Loyola University),rnFather Sommavilla warns about thern”little botde of poison” spilled over thernpages of Eco’s novel. Sommavilla’s commentsrnabout Eco in his 1993 book Uomo,rnDiavolo, e Dio nella Letteratura Contemporanearnand about Eco’s most famousrnwork. The Name of the Rose, in a widelyrnpublicized interview with Expresso (inrnNovember 1993) is what rekindled debaternhere in Italy over Eco’s work.rnThe controversy actually began backrnin 1981, with Sommavilla’s review of ThernName of the Rose. The book’s underlyingrntheses, he argued, were that good andrnevil are indistinguishable, that truth doesrnnot exist, and that “God” is solely arn”name.” The Latin hexameter at thernend of the novel {Nuda Nomina Tenemus:rn”We have only bare names”) seemsrnto be the motto of structuralism, thernschool of thought to which Eco adheres.rnBesides, there is enough evidence tornshow how erroneous philosophical orientationsrnlead to despair, how the nominalismrnof the structuralists paves the way forrnnihilism. Levi-Strauss had already affirmedrnin 1991 that “the ultimate end ofrnthe human sciences is not to constituternman, but to dissolve him.” Similariy, inrna 1977 letter to writer Rodolfo Quadrelli,rnthe Catholic Italian philosopher AugustornDel Noce spoke of the “decadence”rnof the French Noveaux Philosophers ofrnthe 1960’s and defined structuralism asrn”barbarism without a name.”rnFrom the literary point of view, ThernName of the Rose has several obscurernpoints. For example, the horse ride (FirstrnDay, “Prime”) looks a little too much likerna page from Voltaire. In the I980’s thernCretan writer Sokratous accused Eco ofrnplagiarism. The trial that followed eventuallyrnended in victory for Eco. But werernthe allegations valid? If so, then we mustrnquestion Eco’s contention that he writesrn”for the pure love of writing.” The Namernof the Rose is cleady an ideological novel,rnsimilar to the 18th-century works of thernEnlightenment or to those of contemporaryrnauthors who attack the very idearnof truth as well as the logical principle ofrnnoncontradiction.rnFurthermore, the book (as well as J.J.rnAnnaud’s 1985 film based on the book)rnpresents a Middle Ages of “dark legend,”rnof violence, horror, obscurantism, cupidity,rnand darkness. Yet, as medievalistrnMarco Tangheroni of the University ofrnPisa has shown, this is a “deceitful accountrnof the Middle Ages [that] was formulatedrnin virtue of an anti-Christianrnhatred that emerged between the 18thrnand I9th centuries so as to deformrnconsciously a glorious and enlightenedrnepoch of the history of humanity . . . andrnto defame those ages because they wererncompletely permeated by faith in thernGospel.” Thus, the apparently innocentrnnarrative game of the semioticist is notrnan open play of signs but rather a secretrnplan for a precise goal: atheism.rnThe deception, however, does not gornunobserved by the more attentive readers.rnThe protagonist of Eco’s novel, FriarrnWilliam, is the fictional transformationrnof the 14th-century Franciscan philosopherrnWilliam of Ockham. Yet a distinguishedrnOckhamist, Professor AlessandrornGhisalberti from the CatholicrnUniversity of Milan, observes that “Eco’srnaffirmations are completely false; theyrncan be made onlv by someone who hasrnnever read the texts of Ockham firsthand.”rnThe insinuation is strong, butrnEco has not denied it. Perhaps it isrnenough, in tendentious books, to arousernsuperficially those doubts which are destinedrnto ferment precisely in superficialrnminds.rnIn this way, The Name of the Rosernalmost resembles a programmatic manifestornof structuralist nominalism, thernaim of which is to demonstrate thatrnbehind words, there is nothing—a visionrncontrary to that of realists who argue thatrnevery discourse refers always to somernreahty. Eco’s nominalism is, therefore,rnreally a “short-circuit.” Every discoursernrefers to another discourse, in an infiniternfeedback, and this prevents any attainmentrnof the real truth of things. Thisrnis the characteristic of structuralistrnparadigms by which the structure is arnframework in which things do not existrn”in themselves” but only in relationrnto each other, Man becomes definedrnas “a tangle of relations,” a network ofrnintercommunications. Nothing meansrnanything. Every (individual) thing refersrnalways (and only) to itself.rnAll of which ends in nothingness, thernnothing to which each thing is reduced.rnFor Friar William, “the root of sin is thernvery same root of sanctity,” i.e., the hbidornof Freud, the motor of history. The physicalrnlaw of entropy asserts that “everythingrnruns down.” At the time of thernGreek Presocratic philosophers, Heraclitusrnsaid Panta Rei (everything moves).rn38/CHRONICLESrnrnrn