The names of the rose(s)
My
friend Rusiru Kalpagee Chitrasena has started a Facebook group called
Poth Kiyavana Aya or ‘Those who read books’. Yesterday he had posted a
comment about Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose,’ one of my favourite
novels. I had read it many years ago and had duly misplaced two copies
in the process of moving around (and down?) in the world.
The first lines of the Prologue or at least the idea contained
therein had made for many contemplative hours. I asked him to type it
out for me. He not only did that, but emailed me a e-version of the
book.
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. This was beginning with God and the duty of every faithful
monk would be to repeat every day with chanting humility the one
never-changing event whose incontrovertible truth can be asserted. But
we see now through a glass darkly, and the truth, before it is revealed
to all, face to face, we see in fragments (alas, how illegible) in the
error of the world, so we must spell out its faithful signals even when
they seem obscure to us and as if amalgamated with a will wholly bent on
evil.”
Christian fraternity
The Name of the Rose is a story set in those terrible times when
fixation about the true word or the true interpretation of the word not
only caused schisms in the Christian fraternity of Europe but generated
much violence, as ‘fixation’ generally begets.
I resist the temptation to elaborate on context for I am sure it
would take something off the joy of reading and discovery if indeed
anyone reading this looks for the book which by the way is far more
compelling than the film by the same name.
One of the fundamental sources of human error, I believe, is the
easily forgotten truth that the sum total of human knowledge is but a
grain of sand compared with the universe that is our ignorance. The
knowledge of an individual is again but a grain of sand compared with
the universe that is the sum total of human knowledge. We are not only
frail, both as a collective and as individuals, but are terribly prone
to error.
We know things, yes. We know which side to expect the sun to rise
from tomorrow morning. We know our heads would hurt if we banged them
against walls. We know we can swiftly end all dreams and realities of
the ant that is tracing irritation upon our arms. Things like that. The
mystery of life or the truth of the universe or whatever way you want to
capture those intangible things which we feel must be out there
somewhere but cannot put a finger on, will, fortunately or
unfortunately, remain elusive, if not for all then for most.
I do not believe in God, but I like to think there is a ‘Word’. i.e.
a dharma that governs all things.
Whatever we like to call it, there is no denying that we are hardly
equipped with the instruments capable of seeing it, and more
importantly, of reading what we see to any degree of accuracy. Our human
limitations inhibit the proverbial 360-degree vision sweep necessary (as
some might say) to obtain ‘Full Picture’. It can be argued that it is
not such ‘sweep’ that yields the Word/World but an acute understanding
of self. Either way (or in some ‘way’ that falls somewhere between or
even include these seeming extremes) we are hampered by ‘fragment’.
We have always had to ‘see through a glass darkly’ and ‘in fragment’.
Our frailties include both ignorance and arrogance and even our
humility and courage, when they provoke us to feel, think and act, do
not provide insulation from these detracting elements of being. We
observe signal, read as best we can or even perniciously given our
inabilities and flaws, we see clarity in the obscure because we have
eyes that can gloss over much and minds that will us to do so, and we
amalgamate these in ways that either indicate the limits of our
reasoning powers or the parameters of our prejudices.
Reading material
Now, a few hours after I read the lines Rusiru had typed out and
several pages of the e-version, I find myself transported from Europe to
South Asia, from a story of a Benedictine monk to a discourse on the
matter of free inquiry delivered to the Jatilas by a world-renouncing
and world-affirming prince who understood the dilemma that Eco explores
in ‘The Name of the Rose’ and offered a pathway to clarity. The Kalama
Sutra.
I knew about the Kalama Sutra, or the Buddha’s ‘Charter on Free
Inquiry’, and had read it years before I read Eco, but cannot really say
that I internalized its logic and worth until after I read ‘The Name of
the Rose’.
I am going to read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose again. With a
fresh and ancient lens. I just want to note that a book becomes new each
time it is read, and therefore we are never starved of reading material
if we have just one. That’s my comment to Rusiru and his Facebook group
too, by the way.
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