Umberto Eco will celebrate his eightieth birthday

Alessandria/Praha - Currently, Umberto Eco is one of the most famous writers in the world, but before 1980 he was known only to literary scholars. A renowned semiotician, esteemed medieval theorist, author of the literary manifesto of postmodernism The Open Work, philosophical polyhistorian, and Italian university professor gained fame with his very first novel The Name of the Rose (1980), which, due to its mix of semiotics, biblical analysis, medieval studies, and detective plot, is considered a precursor to mysterious thrillers. Eco's sixth novel, Prague Cemetery, is now one of the best-selling books worldwide. On Thursday, January 5th, Eco will turn eighty.
    The success of the Prague novel by the Piedmontese native surprised him. "I was quite unhappy about that book, to tell the truth; of my six novels, I wrote this one with the least enjoyment," he said recently. The title is somewhat misleading, or perhaps indicative of Eco's interest in various conspiracy theories, plagiarisms, and forgeries, which he warns against and ironically critiques with great erudition.
    Prague appears in the novel only in connection with the famous Old Town Jewish Cemetery, which is said to have played an important role in the formation of the most well-known anti-Semitic myth, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But only literarily: the forgotten German writer of the 19th century Hermann Goedsche, who wrote under the pseudonym John Retcliffe, placed a completely fabricated scene of a supposed meeting of rabbis planning world domination on this cemetery in his book Biarritz from 1868. This scene later inspired the Protocols.
    Eco himself has been to Prague twice, first in the August days of 1968 (a mention of the then occupation appeared on the first page of the novel The Name of the Rose) and for the second time in October 2000 when he received the Vision 97 Foundation Prize in Prague.
    The author of scientific studies, children's books, and essays has always said that the novel is a continuation of scientific and cultural-historical lessons or essays through narrative means; his favorite author is, after all, Alexandre Dumas. He became most famous for the gripping medieval detective story The Name of the Rose, which presents a mystery worthy of the greatest masters of the detective genre against the backdrop of ideological disputes among the medieval clergy. The 1980 book sold about 11 million copies, and Eco received several awards for it, and a famous film was made based on the book. Eco began writing this work full of hints and allegories in March 1978, when he allegedly lamented that he felt like a poisoned monk.
    The next novel was an ironic analysis of various conspiracy theories Foucault's Pendulum, followed by The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, and Prague Cemetery.
    Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria, northern Italy; his father came from a family of 13 children and went through three war conflicts in his life. Umberto's fate was reportedly shaped by tales of the origin of the family surname Eco. It was traditionally said among relatives that Umberto's grandfather received the surname as an orphan from the Italian authorities and that it is actually an acronym of the Latin ex caelis oblatus, meaning "gift from heaven."
    He graduated in 1954 from the University of Turin with a thesis on Thomas Aquinas, which was published two years later in an expanded form as his first publication titled The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas. His second book, Art and Beauty in Medieval Aesthetics, placed him among the most significant theorists of the medieval period.
    After graduating from university, Eco worked as an editor of cultural programs for the public television channel RAI, where he first got close to the world of media and pop culture. He later described their functioning and mutual relationships in essays about mass culture Skeptics and Consolers.
    A key moment for Eco's future writing career was his meeting with Group 63, a gathering of avant-garde painters, musicians, and writers. In addition to his university work, Eco also wrote as a columnist for the monthly Il Verri, a magazine dedicated to linguistic experiments. He later wrote for several other periodicals, and his columns are known to Czech readers, titled Notes on Matchbox Labels. Other notable academic works include Theory of Semiotics, History of Beauty, and History of Ugliness.
    In 1962, Eco published a literary manifesto of postmodernism, the essay The Open Work, in which he argued that meaning does not reside in the text itself or in the reader alone, but only and exclusively in their mutual confrontation.
    Throughout his life, Eco did not give up his career as a university educator, teaching at universities in Turin, Milan, and Bologna.
    In 1962, he married German teacher Renata Ramge, with whom he has two children; his daughter is an architect and his son is a publishing editor.