Umberto Eco (
January 5, 1932 – February 19, 2016) was an Italian novelist, literary critic,
philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. His best known work is the 1980 novel Il Nome
della Rosa (The Name of the Rose)
Eco also wrote
academic texts, children's books, and essays, and edited and translated into
Italian books from French. He was the founder of the Department of Media
Studies at the University of the Republic of San Marino, president of the
Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities at the University of Bologna, member
of the Accademia dei Lincei, and an honorary fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford.
“Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him ... These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame.”― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
