The Mind, Body, and Spirit of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

Text

Intertext

"I was not surprised that the mystery of the crimes should involve the library. For these men devoted to writing, the library was at once the celestial Jerusalem and an underground world or the border between terra incognita and Hades: They were dominated by the library, by its promises and by its prohibitions. They lived with it, for it, and perhaps against it, sinfully hoping one day to violate all its secrets. 'Why should they not have rushed death to satisfy a curiosity of their minds, or have killed to prevent someone from appropriating a jealously guarded secret of their own?'" (Eco, 184).

“[The serpent] said to the woman, ‘Did God really say: You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’ The woman replied to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the other trees in the garden. It is only the fruit of the tree in the middle of garden that God said: “You shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die.”’ And the serpent said to the woman, ‘You are not going to die, but God knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like divine beings who know good and bad’” (Genesis 3:1-5).

Significance / Connection

Hegelian dialectics depends upon the production of a synthesis out of the clash between a thesis and an antithesis. The synthesis is a third term, which not only resolves the clash between thesis and antithesis but takes us to a new higher position or state of consciousness or knowledge. Dialectics, therefore, implies that human thought and society can transcend or leap to a totality of knowledge, a third position, which resolves prior conflicts and ambivalences (Allen, 46).

The concept of knowledge within The Name of the Rose, is a large theme, and very complex. The relationship between Chapter 3 of Genesis and Terce in Eco’s novel is one of a dialectic nature. God walked among the Garden of Eden, his creation mingled with the divine. Adam and Eve are representative of the human body and mind, separate from the spiritual or the divine—that of God’s essence. The tension between these two concepts—flesh and spirit—were embodied within the ‘middle tree,’ also known as ‘forbidden tree,’ or ‘The Tree of Knowledge.’ Knowledge, then, being a higher truth. Human desire, profane in comparison to God’s essence, must act given its predicament. This is the desire for a better understanding, to delight in wisdom, a wisdom that is withheld by a single command, albeit the ‘Command of God.’ The serpent’s function is that of catalyst: he presents a conflict and moves the plot towards a type of ‘resolution,’ though we must agree that what truly is resolved by the end of Genesis 3 is disputable. For now, we’ll be content with intellectual transcendence as resolution. Humankind’s disobedience was foreshadowed within Genesis, it was necessary for the acquisition of a higher truth. Adam and Eve interacted and existed among God’s sacred creation, and had full access to the middle tree: they were not able to fully experience it thus producing the desire to obtain this forbidden fruit and relieve themselves of the wonder of its secrets. In The Name of the Rose, the monk’s were mingling among books, the vast library of knowledge. They copied and read day in and day out, week by week, year by year. They were constantly privy to information, research, understanding, and secrets of the world; a horde of knowledge at their fingertips. This knowledge was to the monks, of divine essense. The power of words is explicit, for in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. God had only utter the words let there be light, and light came into being. Language, in and of itself, is godly. The monks knew what they had, and knew what they could lose without diligent preservation. Adam and Eve risked death, despite the placation of the serpent’s words. The monk’s remained in the library, devouring the multitude of books; they risked death or perhaps even forced upon themselves a perpetual Fallen state for the precious eye opening scholarship and secrets these books contained. Dialectics contribute to the understanding of the text in that it allows for the reader to grasp the oppositional themes at play. The textual experience is heightened, the reader becomes a part of the transformation through text. By pinpointing the contradictory phenonmenons the reader can trace the resolution of conflicts within the text. Unity is restored

Bibliography:
Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. Routlege. London. 2000.
Book of Genesis. HarperCollins Study Bible, NRS. NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1993. 6-10.
Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Harcourt, 1984.