Project Vision 21

Recently, on one of those afternoons when I wander aimlessly through the radio dial looking for something interesting to listen to in the car on my way home, I came across a conversation about The Name of the Rose, the well-known book by Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco. Once I got home, I could not resist the impulse to look for the book and reread it.

Clearly, this column is not the place to analyze that renowned work. At the same time, however, it is also clear that every text written by Eco is an invitation to think. In fact, perhaps it would be better to say that it is an invitation to rethink what one believed, perhaps mistakenly, had already been thought through. For that reason, I will say nothing about the novel. Each person should read it for themselves.

In my case, rereading it first led me to think about how much written material from antiquity has been lost, unfortunately for us, and about the irreparable impact that loss has on our understanding of that past and even of our present. The loss is immense and incalculable, although there is always hope that something may be recovered.

One clear example of finding an ancient text once believed to be lost is the case of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered between 1947 and 1956, although several decades passed before they were translated and published. Another example is the Herculaneum Scrolls, papyri carbonized in the year 79 by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that can now be read thanks to new technologies.

This led me to think that perhaps, as the novel suggests, ancient texts, potentially full of wisdom, may still exist but remain inaccessible because of different circumstances. Sometimes they are simply waiting for someone to read them. Other times, someone decides to keep them inaccessible, as apparently happened, intentionally or not, with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Another possibility then arises, one that Eco explores masterfully in his novel: that the text is available, even if only to a few, but that the text becomes “poisonous” to those who read it, even without their realizing, until it is already too late, that page after page they are being poisoned.

In that context, another reflection came to mind: it seems that we live among the ruins and crumbs of the wisdom and knowledge of antiquity. Perhaps, then, when we believe we are discovering something, we are only rediscovering it. Perhaps we have lost so much of the past that we have been forced to abandon our futures.

Be that as it may, it is undeniable that much of what has been lost is unrecoverable, and that not everything that has endured to our time has become accessible, whether for valid reasons or because of less transparent circumstances. One can only dream about the contents of Aristotle’s Comedy or the five books of Papias.

Meanwhile, I will continue wandering through the radio dial with renewed hope that, every so often, something interesting will surprise me.