Last year Umberto Eco, a story that captivated thousands of readers

Umberto Eco, born on January 5, 1932 in Alessandria, Piedmont, would only say that anyone who would live only one life in his seventy years, while he would live 5,000 years: it was at the time when Cain met Abel, when Leopardi admired infinity… because reading is again immortality.”

Quiz because Umberto Eco knew the secret, now that February 19 has been ten years since his death, the image follows seduciendo to readers around the worldfascinated by his wisdom, his pleasantness and his sense of humor.

The father of modern semiotics and a successful storyteller, philosopher and professor, Eco was the son of a merchant. Although his family wanted Derecho to study, he was a doctor of philosophy and literature at the University of Turin in 1954 with a thesis he published two years later entitled An aesthetic problem in Santo Tomás de Aquino (1956) however paradoxically stated that Tomás de Aquino left her “tastefully cared for in her life”.

As a doctor, he was RAI’s cultural editor and began working as a professor at the universities of Turin and Florence before performing for two years in Milan (1956-1964). In 1966 he returned to Florence to become a teacher of visual communication. During this period he met Group 63a collection of artists who influence their writing careers.

He was truly a man, admired for his knowledge and passion for the Middle Ages. Their open-mindedness and their hospitality overshadow their students and especially their colleagues because, as journalist Gianni Rotta put it, It was revolutionary that “a semiologist, a critic, even a philosopher, deals with comicsor that a professor like him preaches that to understand mass culture you must first love it, or that it is impossible to write an opinion about machines pinball without playing with her”.

Also the groundbreaking results of his works: in recent years he has published essential works for semiotics, as Open shadow (1962), Apocalyptic and integrated (1964) y Absent structure (1968).

For this reason, semiotics was “the study of anything that can be used to lie, say, any system of signs and symbols that communicates, interprets, or represents the world, including culture, art, and language.”

More serious (at least more academic), defined semiology as the logic of culture that serves to understand the processes of interpretation which differ in social and historical form according to the interpretations carried out by certain cultural groups.

Co-funder of the Asociación Internacional de Semiología (1969), he began teaching at the University of Bologna in 1971 and held the chair of semiotics at that university from 1975 to 2007. Later, in 2000, the Escuela Superior de Estudios Humanísticos was created in Bologna, an academic initiative for high school graduates only, destined to spread a universal culture. In 2008 he was appointed professor emeritus in Bologna.

In the mid-1960s I started publishing fiction, one of the children’s stories illustrated by Eugenio Carmi, The Bomb and the General y Three cosmonautswhich has gained a certain fame in Italy.

Nothing compared to the confusing outcome of his first novel, The name of the rose (1980), a detective fable set in a Benedictine monastery in 1327, whose mystery, metal literature, culture and irony eclipsed the world. When asked why she wrote it, she asked with her usual catchphrase, “For all your ganas”.

When they came out of the stories, as soon as they said it, they always thought of this novel, which was considered postmodern for its innocence: “In my novel, it’s Borges, but also Rabelais or Cervantes: Postmodernism is a mistake of innocence. The writer today is no innocent, he knows that there are other dirty books. But the reader just is.”

WITH more than sixty thousand copies sold worldwidethe 1986 film version, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Sean Connery, gained a much larger readership.

It’s been a while since I released another novel, Foucault’s Pendulum (1988), a controversial story that disappointed people hoping for a fix The name of the rosealthough it was a secret conspiracy of wisdom around esoteric subjects.

I believe that the homes are not celebrated in memory for at least ten years. Things we celebrate today

Then we’ll be back The island of the previous day (1994), on uncertainty and the need for answers; Baudolino (2000), a picaresque novel set in the Middle Ages that quickly morphed into another best seller; The mysterious lama de la Reina Loana (2004); Prague cement plant (2010); and on the latest amendment, Yes number (2015).

I have been suffering from cancer for several years, Death surprised her on February 19, 2016transformed into a world-renowned article writer and with many ongoing projects such as the editorial La nave di Teseo to be founded with Sandro Veronesi, Hanif Kureishi and Tahar Ben Jelloun. According to his death, his Italian editor Mario Andreose reported that Eco wrote “until the end, except for the last three days. He wrote and wrote, he was a formidable worker”.

The day after his fall, the chronicles recounted how his students searched the Plaza Castello to leave white roses behind his teacher’s house. A legendary house with a library of 35,000 volumeswhich was spread over the two plants of the house, in a chaos that Eco vehemently denied: “This is the study of ideas, right at the sink I care about English logic…”. It is said that she was able to meet any author the journalist mentioned, as long as her body did not change color over time.

On February 20, in exchange, not only Italy, All of Europe mourned the death of a well-adjusted and insightful scholar. Facing the cenotaph of roses, she admired the imposing castle of Castello Sforzesco, which Eco contemplated from his home. His funeral was celebrated there, a civil ceremony of sending off, as the philologist and writer had written in his will, which of course also meant that for at least ten years there should be no domestic celebrations or celebrations in his memory. Things we celebrate today.