Quote

Stopgaps do belong to the internal economy of the form, since the Whole requires them, even if only in a subordinate position ... The stopgap Luigi Paryson's 'zeppa' accepts its own banality, because without the speed that the banal allows up, it would slow up a passage that is crucial for the outcome of the work and its interpretation.

Umberto Eco

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Umberto Eco
Age: 84 †
Born: 1932
Born: January 5
Died: 2016
Died: February 19
Essayist
Historian
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Medievalist
Novelist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Semiotician
Translator
Lissändria
Umberto Ecco
Umberto Eccounstino
Humberto Eco
Dedalus
Umberto Eko
Oumperto Eko
Eco Umberto
U. Eco
Belong
Outcome
Since
Slow
Passages
Literature
Requires
Internals
Banal
Form
Speed
Internal
Banality
Without
Poetry
Outcomes
Subordinate
Whole
Accepting
Interpretation
Subordinates
Even
Position
Crucial
Accepts
Work
Allows
Passage
Would
Economy

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Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: You have to learn the rhythms of respiration - acquire the pace. Otherwise you stop right away.
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Not bad, not bad at all, Diotallevi said. To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.
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For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - le suggérer, voilà le rêve!).
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My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth.
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The wise man does not discriminate he gathers all the shreds of light, from wherever they may come.
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Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.
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To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on your bed, even if there is a blackout.
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Hypotyposis is the rhetorical effect by which words succeed in rendering a visual scene.
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Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used to tell at all.
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I'm always fascinated by losers. Also, in my Foucault's Pendulum, the main characters, who are in a way losers, they are more interesting than the winners.
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He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating.
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I have a good memory. But I would be interested in memory even if I had a bad memory, because I believe that memory is our soul. If we lose our memory completely, we are without a soul.
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It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
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I love the secrecy of writing fiction. When I write a novel, I don't tell anybody what I'm doing. I'm living in my private world. And it's a great sensation.
Umberto Eco
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Love is wiser than wisdom.
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Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.
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Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.
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All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.
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In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace.
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Simple mechanisms do not love.
Umberto Eco