A forgery, Masons, Jesuits, political gameplays, secret rituals, psychology and history seen from the angle of the oddest and absurdity - these are things on the surface layer of Umberto Eco's latest novel.
It happened that the latest novel by Umberto Eco caused very severe reactions, far over its literary merit, but because of things that, while related to the literature lie outside its structural tissue. This is very curious because it illustrates precisely one of the author's main topics through the years - the connections between imaginary and real, their overflow and the effect of this interaction on the processes of both private and public life. Since the famous first one "The Name of the Rose" author explores those invisible and too volatile relations between the world and what people think and imagine about the world. Fictional is so important to the characters of Eco, to their existence, that sometimes the readers (and the characters themselves, as well) are surprised by its resulting effects. In Medieval Christian scholastics ("The Name of the Rose"), in personal memories ("The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana") or in secret reports-mystifications of the intelligence services ("The Prague Cemetery") imagination has such a dramatic effect on human existence that is able to change completely and even reverse in opposite direction things from which is considered logical and normal. Eco nicely shows that the logic, this overweening achievement of Western civilization, often doesn't goes by the most direct route, but use the most meandering paths, so in the history of society 2+2 equals to 5 or 3 in most cases. The protagonist of "The Prague Cemetery" Simone Simonini is a skilled forger, anti-Semite. He is one of the few completely fictional characters in this novel, which is overcrowded by historical figures (to
mention just Garibaldi, Dumas and Freud). However, the author intends and implemented meticulously to observe phenomena, not individuals. Eco describes some of the most characteristic phenomena of the second half of the 19th century in a extremely odd lights, true to his taste for the strange in history and society.The history occurs to be a fictional narrative too, subservient to consequential and to occasional interventions, as well, of people out of the spotlight. In the center of the plot stands writing and distribution of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", the forged document purporting to reveal a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Its author Simone Simonini have edited and rewrote it several times over decades to provide It for the needs of the secret services of the opposing governments, political and religious organizations working in the field of conspiracy. In contacts with them Simoninini (and the reader too) realizes that what is visible is not always to do with the true state of affairs and behind reasons always other reasons lie hidden and so on to infinity. In this world everything is relative too, always approximate and uncertain. The only way to adapt and survive is materialistic cynicism that Simonini has as the basis of his life philosophy (this makes him repulsive to most of the readers and to the reviewers, which I personally find a bit unprofessional). Even the protagonist, who in full consciousness creates fake documents describing non-existing mystical, secret meetings at which the fate of the entire world is designed and governed, is surprised to figure out that in his personal, inner life the mysterious and the unexplained take some huge place. He gradually realizes that he have lived most of his life in a split personality and a lot of important steps was not committed as Simone Simonini, but as Abbot Della Picolla. Umberto Eco is targeting deceptive role of personal and collective memory that is under control of chance more than to any reason. Memory loss, fictional memories, mystified narratives of written documents and rumors where behind the meanings of words stand another meanings and intentions build an uncertain world that, strangely, is much too closer to what we call fiction (and literature) rather than what we consider for actual human existence. Take this book, take on the mask of a reader and let's go to the masquerade called post-modern literature!