Umberto Eco resists time and continues to speak in the present

Talking about Umberto Eco ten years later means first of all acknowledging a paradox: his figure has become historic, but “his work has not stopped acting”. Andreose, speaking to Adnkronos, says it naturally, almost with modesty. For those who, like him, continue to deal with his work on a daily basis, Eco is not only a great author of the recent past, active on the publishing scene since the early 1960s, but “a constant interlocutor”.

“His books continue to come out, to be republished in new editions, to circulate around the world; others are in preparation”, underlines Andreose. The international diffusion of his work is “a process that is far from over”, and it is The Ship of Theseus that today preserves “the broadest and most vital nucleus”.

In this sense, the question of what is missing most about Umberto Eco inevitably shifts from the private to the cultural level. “Of course, the man is missing, the daily dialogue, the sharing of a job” which for Mario Andreose was also friendship and intellectual adventure. But that lack is continually crossed by an operational presence: Eco continues to “work”, through his texts, within contemporary publishing and within the global cultural debate.

It is from here that the reflection on its stature as a “classic” also arises. Defining Umberto Eco a “contemporary classic” may seem almost automatic, yet Andreose urges caution. The very notion of “classic”, especially applied to the second half of the twentieth century, is problematic today. “We grew up – recalls the publisher – with the idea of ​​contemporary classics, authors who belonged to our time but who already possessed a dimension of duration. Today that category seems more fragile, more uncertain. And yet Eco resists this erosion: his work continues to be entrusted to the future thanks to a constant international response, to the continuous re-edition of his books, to their ability to speak to readers of different generations and cultures”.

Umberto Eco, observes Andreose, is a classic without being a museum one. “He does not yet have – and perhaps does not need to have – a monumental definitive edition that closes the work in an immobile canon”. Thinking of a complete collection would mean imagining dozens of volumes, including fiction, non-fiction, articles, interventions, theoretical texts. “An undertaking that sooner or later will be inevitable, but which today appears almost overcome by the autonomous vitality of the individual books”.

But Umberto Eco was not only a great writer and a world-renowned scholar of semiology, linguistics and mass media. He was also – and perhaps above all – “a civil intellectual”, a polemicist capable of interpreting his time with an ironic and ruthless gaze. On this point Andreose is clear: “Today, more than ever, we feel the lack of a voice like his. The quality of public debate, of journalistic controversy, of intervention essays appears impoverished when compared with the lucidity, liveliness and depth with which Eco knew how to intervene on current events. Contemporary reality is a sad confirmation of how absent and irreplaceable that voice is”.

It is not surprising, therefore, that today we return to reading Umberto Eco precisely as an interpreter of the present. His articles, his speeches, his essays on media, communication, customs and ideology reveal “an almost prophetic ability to anticipate problems that fully exploded only years later”. The manipulation of information, the relationship between truth and fiction, the building of consensus, the fragility of critical thinking: themes that today dominate public debate and which Eco had already addressed with very solid theoretical tools and with accessible, never academic writing, Andreose underlines.

Alongside this Eco essayist and polemicist, the narrator naturally remains. And here Andreose introduces an important distinction, especially thinking of younger readers: “Approaching Eco does not mean following an obligatory path. His universality consists precisely in offering different texts for different needs and skills. Non-fiction and intervention writings are often more immediate, capable of involving a wide audience because they speak directly about society and the present. The narrator, on the other hand, requires a different preparation: a familiarity with history, with philosophy, with the game of quotations and complex structures. It is not a barrier, but a challenge, which can prove extraordinarily fruitful for those who are willing to accept it”.

The editorial work on Eco, moreover, never stopped at the Ship of Theseus. Indeed, he continues to provide new perspectives on his work. The recent edition of the novel “The Island of the Day Before”, enriched by the author’s notes and drawings, goes in this direction, as has already happened for “The Name of the Rose”. Materials that do not introduce unpublished texts in the strict sense, but which allow you to enter Eco’s creative laboratory, to grasp his irony, precision and intellectual freedom. Alongside these are the new projects being released for the tenth anniversary of his death such as “The human thirst for prefaces”, a collection of his preliminary texts from 1956 to 2015, and the personal and affectionate story of the writer Roberto Cotroneo, simply entitled “Umberto”, which contribute to outlining a non-celebratory, but profoundly human portrait.

In remembering Umberto Eco ten years later, Mario Andreose carefully avoids the rhetoric of commemoration. His is rather the testimony of a prolonged coexistence with a legacy that is both cumbersome and fruitful. Eco is missing, of course: “his ready intelligence, his irony, his ability to unmask simplifications are missing. But what perhaps matters most remains: a work that continues to question the present and resist time”. And this is perhaps precisely the most authentic sign of a classic: not being definitively consigned to memory, but “continuing, obstinately, to be necessary”. (by Paolo Martini)