The Catholic
reviewer

In 1905, the philosopher George Simmel wrote an essay on the bend of the vessel. In it, as well as to identify possible errors inherent in the aesthetic variants of the vessel - multiple loops, excessive or too close to separation from the vessel -, Simmel gives us an example of contradiction that we can find a little everywhere. He says that as a physical object "that can be touched and weighed, handled and connected environment”, the vase is a part of reality, while his artistic form leads an existence that is clearly separate" - where the existence of "material reality "would only"support". He brings it to a kind of "dualism" as a "unit" of higher order that would prevent the continuation of every possible description - and this is perfectly consistent with his philosophy as "passionate movement of thought under the givenness of the phenomena" As a "cast of soundings, and in many incompatible directions, the foundation of things, "a "foundation" that, though - I put it on there the though - "is never reached by any of them. "

I have to say the truth: I am always interested in the analysis of Simmel - is to do the fashion, money, friendliness, modesty, laziness or frames - always interested, there is acuity to see and do see that in other thinkers of the early twentieth century is rarely found. Not by chance - and shamefully - a colleague at the University of Strasbourg remembers it like the one you invite to sit down and, without sitting down at all, you immediately pitted a theory of the chair and to sit. However, his underlying problems will not do mine. His anguish in laying soundings that never stop is not mine. His "reality " and "support" that would turn to an art form as such are only metaphors. The vessel - with a loop to load - can be detected and categorized according to the manual or the artistry - is a matter of mental operations: if they do have the function of a type of use, if they do another you type the aesthetic object - without changing anything in the material and no need to assume a higher order of reality that would be metaphorical as the first.

On the pages of the “Osservatore Romano” on Oct. 30 appeared a review of The cemetery of Prague by Umberto Eco signed by Lucetta Scaraffia, professor of history, converted or reconverted to Catholicism in the right place to do annul the first marriage by ecclesiastical court. In this review, Lucetta - who once was called Lucia and not Lucia that was once known as Lucetta as it would have been expected - the victim of an implacable as blinding hatred, able to accuse Eco of anti-Semitism, or rather an unconscious anti-Semitism - maybe. She says that "one can not deny (...) that the constant descriptions of the perfidy of the Jews" contained in the novel, can be "born a suspicion of ambiguity, certainly not desired by Eco but hovering on all pages of the book. " According to her, then "forced to read disgusting things about Jews, the reader is left as soiled by this raving anti-Semite, and it is even possible that someone" - hear hear - ends with the belief "that maybe something is true if everything, absolutely everything, the characters seem to some of these atrocities. "

The argument – I do not deny it - it hit me. In principle, I do not read novels and do not read Eco even with a gun to my head, but the review of Scaraffia triggered in me as a strong, angry and irrepressible desire for justice. I ran to the bookstore to buy a copy, and what amazes me still, I read - from cover to cover.

Eco resorts to the formula of the crossed diaries and of the false memory to find their way back gradually after a Freudian trauma. So, who speaks, speaks in first person, uses the soap opera language - or the popular literature of his time - and the culture of pragmatic and cynical, which, in all its many traffic offenses to live more or less great, happen to serve the capital in the rear of his laborers - the secret services, petty crime, infiltrators, real or alleged conspiracies - and its ideological workshops - where, exactly, is being built, or rather rebuilt, that antisemitism that had already proved useful to the balance of power in the far but no distant past.

What, then, the book overflows of anti-Semitic statements is obvious - because it could not be otherwise. Talk to a weak anti-Semitic, that is, one that has few arguments against Jews that did not rub anything except being paid - well, at least until he takes - to speak ill of him. What, then, his interlocutors ultimately prove to be weak as all anti-Semitic - reducing inconsistency more evident throughout the racist theory of which they are carriers - is a result of which you should thank Eco, his labor and his intelligent use of documentation to be final.

The cemetery in Prague is a book that should be explained in any kind of school, because there is rebuilt only anti-Semitism, but our entire country's history and Western history of the nineteenth century and the first crucial years of the twentieth century - a history when you put the soul and the rest in peace Scaraffia, of "positive heroes to identify with" there is not and Eco would have criminal been if they had been served up. Who seek and those looking for them is of course - maybe even in the Vatican - would have to admit that, rather than teach history, would do well to teach fairy tales may admit or, more simply, that service is the established order.

I said that the cemetery of Prague should be explaided - I did not say that it should be read. To read it should be a titanic patience - the patience that only the view of the titanic Lucetta has given me. The language of the soap opera is boring to me s a slow aging stomach ache, the recovery of my memory and I know they are cloying literary device, change the font to designate the different subjects overs - their alternatives and the logic of 'plot that governs it - seems a trick now worn - , in short Eco certainly had fun writing it, but very few - and I - can say the same of himself in reading it.

And yet - here's the rub, here we return to Simmel pot - is ethically and politically necessary to appreciate its scope. It depends on the mental operations I perform against him: if I work in a way, I grieve with his aesthetic poverty - I can not rejoice enough of the stylistic coherence of Eco and his work alienating the nineteenth-century popular literature, I'm bored to death, but if I work the other way around - if I think the good that its dissemination would lead to equal civil and human society, though I think the story that we need - the need for a more sensible and coherent story - and if I think about how. This book could turn into a critical tool for future generations - then I say that I like it - I have no doubt - and, because of his ruthless ability to acknowledge our entire history of falsehood, it gives me a glimmer of hope for future.

The accusation of anti-Semitism for Eco should not be taken seriously - and not because it is paradoxically absurd, but because it serves to hide something else. The Lucetta Scaraffia, in fact, can not stand the idea that her Catholic Church may have played a role - and a leading role - in the horrors of the past and prepared false documents to hide them. Eco accumulates documents heavy such as boulders and very clear in showing how the Church, rather than thinking about saving souls, has worked to save the established order, that his supposedly pious interpreters rather than the sanctity are oriented to the ugliness - ready to do anything to satisfy their various appetites, very less respectful of the sanctity of life than I used to say, much more atheists than those who claim such. And that, to her own - to Scaraffia, who used a public faith in Catholicism as a tram – getting up and down when she did the most comfortable; to that story of his conversion to the hand does not seem much different from the ecstatic Eco characters who have the courage to bring or fraud, or autosuggestion, or sex repressed, or even neurological short circuit - this, oh no, not Eco it to him to do.

Felice Accame

Note
Simmel's essay is contained in a good collection entitled La questione della brocca - The issue of pitcher- that Andrea Pinotti has well cared for Mimesis in 2007. Il cimitero di Praga - The cemetery of Prague - was published by Bompiani, Milan 2010.