There is no rose

I finished The Name of the Rose and wanted to start over again. It has everything the soul could possibly want: northern Italy, fantastic monasteries, monastic murders, underground passages, fog, secret libraries, rafts of manuscripts, a riot of languages, codes, maps, labyrinths, herbalists, unicorns, hunchbacks, traps, fires, poisons, Gregorian chant, crypts, clues drawn from handwriting, ox’s hearts, midnight trysts, dreams, doodles, heresies, allusions, anachronisms, and fried cheese.

It is strange to admit how close my world is to the one in the book. When I moved here I pretended I was embarking on a monastic life, enfolded in the protective robe of the Church. I would dedicate my days to her service, walking the pretty halls of the church building and plying my trade in a humble office. I would do the closest available thing to illuminating manuscripts: edit the church’s newsletter and supply decorative graphics to promote her events. In fact, my newsletter archives would be a parochial equivalent of the chronicles of Bede.

It’s turned out to be a satisfactory life for me. I feel tolerated, even appreciated, at work and free to pursue my solitary interests at home. I understand that the romantic expectations I have described in the previous paragraph will raise many questions for some readers, like the opening of a novel that is certain to depict the starry-eyed main character’s fall from innocence. What about the nasty church politics that anyone working for the church must inevitably face?

First of all, I am not that starry-eyed. I would rather affirm what is good and leave the nasty fights to the people who care about that kind of thing. For now church politics is a responsibility I am grateful not to have to engage in. I have brushed against it from time to time and find that the battles in my denomination today are ludicrously similar to the politics described in Adso and William’s delightful conversation about heresy.

“The trouble is,” I said, “I can no longer distinguish the accidental difference among Waldensians, Catharists, the poor of Lyons, the Umiliati, the Beghards, Joachimites, Patrines, Apostles, Poor Lombards, Arnoldists, Williamites, Followers of the Free Spirit, and Lucierines. What am I to do?”

This book is both wonderful and vexing because I believe the author delights in confusion and complexity. Innocence, knowledge, faith, skepticism, love, lust, sensation, cogitation, laughter, devotion, experience, reason... Everything important is taken and turned around in the hand and deeply felt and playfully examined. Both the naive Adso and his rational master are innocent in different ways, and the ending of the story is... what can I say without giving it away... powerful.

Here is an example of the interactions between the two that fill the book with its special joy. Adso and William escape the labyrinth and see the stars at the end of one long night.

“How beautiful the world is, and how ugly labyrinths are,” I said, relieved.

“How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths,” my master replied.

Maybe it says something about me that I adored the book, despite or because of its stubborn refusal to assign a final meaning to anything.