After the mystery novel “The Name of the Rose” was published in 1980, a writer from Italy, Umberto Eco, became famous throughout the world. He later published several more books, but not one of them reached the popularity of The Name of the Rose. There seemed to be nothing more for the writer to surprise his fans, but after 30 years the world was shocked by his new book, Prague Cemetery. Umberto Eco's work filled this not only with a bunch of puzzles, but also mixed in the plot a lot of historical facts and personalities. Because of this, many readers are confused: what is the author’s invention, and what really happened. So, let's look at the intricacies of this book.
The author of the novel “Prague Cemetery” - Umberto Eco
First of all, you should learn a little about the creator of the Prague Cemetery. This extraordinary man was born in January 1932 in the small Italian town of Alessandria, in the suburbs of Turin.
While the father of the family fought on the fronts of World War II, the mother and 12 brothers and sisters Eco moved to a village near the mountains of Piedmont, where the writer’s childhood passed.
Young Umberto was distinguished by an extraordinary mind and a thirst for knowledge. Therefore, his father hoped that he would become a lawyer. But this career did not attract the young man, so after school he went to study the philosophy of the Middle Ages and literature at the University of Turin.
Studying the history of ancient manuscripts and their fakes at the university led to the fact that he became disillusioned with religion and became an atheist Umberto Eco. “Paris Cemetery”, “Name of the Rose”, “Baudolino” - in all these and other works of the author, a caustic satire slips into the institute of the church and their speculation.
After graduating in 1954, the graduate began teaching aesthetics and theory of culture at various universities. In parallel with teaching, Eco published scientific papers that allowed him to become one of the most famous scientists in his field. However, in 1980, he decided to try his hand at writing fiction. So the novel “The Name of the Rose” appeared, which brought its author greater fame than all his monographs and articles.
After the successful debut of the writer, they began to invite leading universities of the world to give lectures, thanks to which he received the title of Honorary Doctor of Science in many of them.
Recognizing that people are more interested in reading novels than in scientific folios, the writer periodically wrote them (“The Foucault Pendulum”, “The Island the Eve”, “Baudolino” and “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana”). After the release of the work “Prague Cemetery”, Umberto Eco said that he no longer plans to write, but did not keep his word and in 2015 published his latest novel “Zero Number”.
The writer died in February 2016 from pancreatic cancer. In addition to numerous fans of his work and students, he left two children. They were born by Eco by his wife, Renata Ramge, whom he married in 1961.
Umberto Eco novel, Prague Cemetery: Summary
In March 1897, Simono Simonini regains consciousness and realizes that he is suffering from memory lapses. Remembering the advice of a “doctor, either Austrian or German” (a reference to Freud), he decides to organize all his memories. However, being a spy, he cannot tell anyone about himself or confess. Therefore, he decides to keep a diary and write in it everything that happened to him.
Thanks to the records of the hero, as well as the postscript of a certain abbot, Pickall gradually begins to formulate his biography.
Raised by an anti-Semitic grandfather and Jesuits, he received a good primary education. After the death of his grandfather, fate brings Simono with a crook lawyer who teaches the young man the craft of cheating, in which Simonini excels. But his success is noticed by the secret service of Piedmont, and they hire a hero.
Fulfilling their various tasks, Simono Simonini gradually delves into the essence of political intrigues and becomes an unsurpassed master of their weaving. But "overriding" in the case of Nievo, he falls into disgrace and refers to France.
Here he is again engaged in the usual craft, but after 35 years of work, he decides to retire for a well-deserved retirement. And for this you need to crank up a profitable businessman, able to provide the hero with a decent old age. Therefore, he decides to write “Protocols”, in which he sets out all his observations about humanity, accumulated over many years.
He agrees with the Russians on the sale of this document, but he is deceived and does not pay anything, and even forced to arrange an explosion that will confirm the authenticity of the document. In preparation for this, the book ends. Its content is given only in general terms. You can learn more by reading Umberto Eco’s novel “Prague Cemetery” in paper or digital form (ePub, Mobi, FB2 or any other common e-book format).
Novel feature
Like all the works of this scholarly writer, this book has a special twist.
Outwardly, its structure is not remarkable: 27 chapters, introduction and afterword, designed in the form of a diary. But in his novel “Prague Cemetery”, Umberto Eco used only one fictional character - Simon Simonini, and all the rest, even relatives of the protagonist, were real historical figures (Sigmund Freud, Ippolito Nievo, Leo Taxil, St. Theresa of Lisieux, Julian Glinka , Peter Rachkovsky, Diana Vogan, Maurice Joli, F.M. Dostoevsky, Eugene Sue, I.S. Turgenev and others). Thanks to this technique, at some point the reader begins to doubt: is this a fictional work, or is it described in it, is it true?
The meaning of the name
This book is named after the famous landmark in Prague - the cemetery of the Jewish quarter Josefov. This place was the last refuge for almost 100,000 Jews who were buried here in the XV-XVIII centuries.
Umberto Eco chose the Prague cemetery as the name for his book, as it is believed that a secret Jewish organization, the so-called “Zion sages,” gathered here for many years. It was at the Prague Cemetery that the Protocols of the Zion of the Sages were created, which marked the beginning of the great extermination of Jews of the 20th century.
“Protocols of the Elders of Zion”: Fake or Original
This document, consisting of 25 protocols, was first published in the Russian Empire in 1903. It was presented as recordings of the main theses of secret meetings of the Zionists in Basel. The “Protocols” became the basis for the formation of the theory of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy, which is still popular today (the existence of a secret coalition of Jews and Masons to seize power over the world).
The publication of this document was akin to a bursting bomb. “Protocols” were translated into all languages of the world and published in million copies. In some countries they were banned, it only contributed to their popularity. Among those who believed in their authenticity was an expressionless artist from Germany, who became known to the world as Adolf Hitler. “Protocols” prompted him to the idea of the mass extermination of Jews, and then other races, which was one of the reasons for the beginning of the most bloody war in the history of mankind.
Immediately after the publication of the authenticity of the Protocols, they began to doubt. To date, according to the official version, this document is recognized as a fake. But so far, many reputable historians around the world believe in the authenticity of this work.
As a lover of mythical ancient books and their fakes, Eco could not help but become interested in the “Protocols”. Having carefully studied all the materials on them and made his own conclusions, the writer planned to write a monograph about this. But he realized that in the form of a work of art, his thoughts would be of more interest to readers.
Therefore, he came up with the story of the author of the Protocols, setting it out in his novel Prague Cemetery. Umberto Eco (author of this book) was able to prove in it that the sources that inspired the creator of the “Protocols” were: Alexander Dumas novel “Joseph Balsamo”, Eugene Sue’s book “Secrets of a People” and “Paris Secrets” and the pamphlet by Maurice Joli “Dialogue” in the hell of Machiavelli and Montesquieu, or the politics of Machiavelli in the 19th century. "
Real and fictional facts in the novel
In addition to the eco-invented story of falsification of the Protocols, the book gives an interpretation of several inexplicable events in world history.
First of all, it is the mysterious death of the Italian writer Ippolito Nievo, who died in a shipwreck in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Historians still do not know if it was an accident or the ship was deliberately flooded. Eco makes the perpetrator of the death of Nievo Simonini.
The death of the famous French publicist Maurice Joly, who actively criticized the activities of Napoleon III, also fell on the conscience of the protagonist of the novel “Prague Cemetery”. However, she had no political connotation. In fact, while writing the Protocols, Simono borrowed a lot from the author’s famous pamphlet. Fearing accusations of plagiarism and the fact that it casts a shadow on the veracity of the document, he kills Joly and arranges his death as suicide. The version of the violent death of the disgraced writer is more embedded in his psychological portrait than an inexplicable suicide, for which Maurice at that moment simply had no reason. By the way, it is still considered by historians. Although it is impossible to exhume and prove the correctness or falsity of this theory, since the burial place of this publicist is unknown.
Another bright crime of Simonini is participation in the fabrication of the case of the Alsatian Jew Alfred Dreyfus.
Having prepared fake documents (on the basis of which the captain was accused of espionage, demoted and exiled to Devil's Island), the protagonist unwittingly became the reason for the formation in society of the idea of Jews creating their own state.
With these hoaxes, Eco actually denies the worldwide conspiracy theory of Jews or other nations. Moreover, he persistently argues that many important historical events were the result of chance or banal greed of certain people who did not even think about the consequences of their own actions.
Anti-Semitism and Anti-Clericalism in the Novel
In this book, Eco explores the background and process of the emergence of anti-Semitism in the early XX century. Through the mouth of the protagonist, he expresses the sad truth: the Jews became "scapegoats" for humanity. Their real flaws were exaggerated to enormous proportions and new ones were attributed. So Simonini, who grew up in an atmosphere of anti-Semitism, rightly noted that, faced with living Jews, he did not find anything so terrible in them. Moreover, throughout his life he gradually comes to the conclusion that most of the existing stereotypes about them are only inventions of other people who projected their own shortcomings on them. It is ironic that the Germans, with whom Simono often had to deal, were much more annoying. But the Russians in general-cheated.
With sophisticated sarcasm, the author describes those "reliable" sources from where the hero drew information for the "Protocols." First of all, it was a theory about the desire of the Jews to gain power over the world, which his grandfather heard from the crazy impoverished Jew, Morduhai, in the Turin ghetto. The remaining elements were randomly borrowed from the composition of Joli; from a letter from Father Rodin to Father Rootan in The Secrets of the People by Eugene Xu; from the feuilletons of the naturalist writer Alphonse Tussenel; from the novel Konigsby B. Disraeli and other famous personalities. Thus, Umberto Eco is trying not only to prove the falsity of the “Protocols”, but also to demonstrate to readers that society itself was hostile to Jews, and the appearance of this book was natural.
As for religion, as already mentioned above, Eco had a rather skeptical attitude to the dogmas of the Catholic Church. He, as a specialist, knew that most of the documents (on which they are based) are either false or misrepresented. Particularly vividly depicted is the disappointment in the church of Simonini, which did not prevent him from deftly taking advantage of the clergy for his own benefit. Thus, the hero became one of the sad examples of priests hiding behind the name of Christ to achieve their goals.
Simono simonini
In the center of the plot of the novel “Prague Cemetery”, Umberto Eco placed a resourceful and completely unprincipled crook named Simono Simonini. He is half French, half Italian, born in the Italian city of Piedmont, in 1830.
His mother died when he was a baby, so his anti-Semitic grandfather was engaged in his upbringing. Therefore, the hero absorbed a negative attitude towards Jews almost with his mother’s milk. Even his name was given in honor of a saint killed by Jews. Paradoxically, in fact, Simonini was indifferent to this people. The French, Germans and Italians deserved more of his hostility.
Gifted by nature, Simono from a young age spoke fluently in 3 languages (German, French and Italian) and had a lively mind. Despite the fact that he was raised by the Jesuits, he developed a hostility towards the institution of the church. At the same time, he realized that her methods were very effective for controlling the consciousness of society.
The first sympathy of Simonini, a Jew from the ghetto, did not respond to his feelings, as a result of which he remained a virgin and became indifferent to carnal pleasures. Gourmet food was his only passion.
Simonini and Eco
Some researchers suggest that in the person of Simono Simonini, Umberto Eco came up with a version of his own biography if he was born 100 years earlier. You can draw a clear parallel: the main character of the novel “Prague Cemetery” is Umberto Eco. Facts from the writer's biography confirm this.
- The father of the writer wanted him to become a lawyer, but the writer chose a different career. Simonini is a notary public by profession.
- Eco was engaged in the study of ancient documents and the establishment of their authenticity. Simono, on the contrary, created deft fakes.
- Both the writer and his hero are outstanding and very educated people. However, one used his talents to enlighten humanity, and the other to stupefy.
- Eco and Simonini became disillusioned with religion, and each of them was aware of its important role in society.
The main "enemy" Simonini
For a long time, the hero of the novel tried to find out who the mysterious abbot Dalla Picolla was writing in his diary during his absence. Simonini recalled that he had already killed this man, however, due to a memory disorder, he could not remember this.
In fact, Picolla (attention, spoiler!) Is the alter ego of the hero himself. This second person takes over when Simono falls asleep or faints.
By leaving notes in Simonini's diary, the abbot helps Eco create a more voluminous image of the protagonist.
Reader Reviews
Reading and understanding what is happening in the book requires certain knowledge in the field of literature, history and culture of the XIX-XX centuries. Those read whose intellectual level was below the level set in the Umberto Eco novel “Prague Cemetery”; reviews about this work left negative. They mostly complained about the dryness of the story.
However, their more well-read colleagues found the book very entertaining. Moreover, it revealed some of the most interesting secrets of the XIX - XX centuries. Especially many liked how cleverly Eco wove many historical figures into the canvas of the story.
In conclusion, it is fair to admit that this book is not intended for the general reader. Her target audience is erudite intellectuals, tired of homogeneous detective novels with boring, predictable characters. Such people will truly enjoy reading the novel Prague Cemetery. Umberto Eco confused the contents of the book in the form of a labyrinth, consisting of real mysteries of history and their options for guessing them. Thus, the reader in an entertaining way can get acquainted with many scientific theories that explain them.