Name of the Rose
Stephen P. Guthrie
The recent discussion about Name of the Rose prompted me to finally
read it (I've been meaning to for a long while).
Good book, but I want to understand the significance of the title.
The last sentence of the book is in latin:
stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus
As far as I can understand the first part of this means something like
that which was formerly named a rose,...
I can't get the rest of it. Anyone care to enlighten me?
Stephen P. Guthrie
The recent discussion about Name of the Rose prompted me to finally
read it (I've been meaning to for a long while).
Good book, but I want to understand the significance of the title.
stat rosa pristina nomine, nomine nuda tenemus.
Creative Business Decisions
"There stands a rose bereft of name; we grasp at the bare name."
It's a reference to all kinds of things, not least Mallarme's "rose
missing from every bouquet." It also refers to the difference between
things and their names.
Roger Lustig (Q2...@PUCC.BITNET Q2...@pucc.princeton.edu)
Disclaimer: "That is not my dog."
D.A. Hosek
>The last sentence of the book is in latin:
>stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus
>As far as I can understand the first part of this means something like
>that which was formerly named a rose,...
>I can't get the rest of it. Anyone care to enlighten me?
Well, your guess is pretty far off...
The sentence reads:
Yesterday's rose stands with its name, we comprehend names [to be] empty.
-dh
I wish our
mail program
wasn't picky
about line counts
--
D.A. Hosek | Internet: DHO...@HMCVAX.CLAREMONT.EDU
| Bitnet: DHO...@HMCVAX.BITNET
| Phone: 714-920-0655
(I used to be a Mudder, but I got better)
Tzung I Lin
>read it (I've been meaning to for a long while).
>Good book, but I want to understand the significance of the title.
I don't know what the latin sentence means, but I remember I read it somewhere
in an interview where the journalist asked Eco what's the meaning of the title,
and the jouralist seems to get an impression (or maybe Eco gave him/her the
hint) that a philosopher once said that once the name of a rose is there,
the rose exists even if it never did. Which corresponds to the book very well
since Eco is trying to tell us through the reasoning of Brother William that
the thing itself is not important, what is important is the meaning, the
symbolic representation! There perhaps was never a book written by the great
philosopher (I couldn't spell the name) that discusses laugh, but Eco wrote it
to symbolize something that we should learn : to laugh at the truth, the only
truth. The intellectuals were born ( or trained ) to after the truth, which
ever that might be, not to obey or believe whole-heartly some only truth.
Hence whether there was a book discusses laughter is not important, what mattersis that Eco wrote a book, Name_of_The_Rose_, which tell us always after the
truth, keep a distance from what you've been after, and what tragedy
it might bring when there is a single TRUTH in people's belief.
Well, this is only interpretation from my viewpoint, others might have their
own. But that's the best thing about diversity : no single true meaning.
Tzung-I
tz...@cs.ucla.edu
D.A. Hosek
>In article <1989Nov2.2...@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, s...@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Stephen P. Guthrie) writes:
Some Latin
>>stat rosa pristina nomine, nomine nuda tenemus.
Translated as:
>"There stands a rose bereft of name; we grasp at the bare name."
No, pristina (which modifies rosa) does not mean bereft of, it means "former",
"yesterday's", things along those lines.
In the second part of the sentence, "nuda" must be a neuter plural accusative
(the other options being neuter plural nominative modifying the subject, "we",
and I certainly hope we aren't neuter (Latin considers mixed gender groups of
people to be masculine, thus it's college alumni, not alumna), feminine
singular nominative, which won't work because the verb is 1st person _plural_,
or feminine singular ablative, which could almost work, but "nomen, nominis"
is neuter (nomine, incidentally is an ablative singular). I messed up on the
second part of the sentence on my previous translation. I had said something
along the lines of "we understand names [to be] naked" because for some reason
I had thought the quote said nominA rather than nominE; the correct
translation is "we grasp naked things with a name".
-dh
Beryl Logan
| There perhaps was never a book written by the great |philosopher (I
couldn't spell the name) that discusses laugh, but Eco wrote it
| The great philosopher is Aristotle - and indeed, no, he never did
write a book on laughter. - on many other things, yes, he wrote on
botany, e.g., but not on laughter.
Glenn R. Stone
Reply-To: gs...@prism.gatech.EDU (Glenn R. Stone)
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: when necessary
Keywords:
In article <28...@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> dho...@jarthur.UUCP
(D.A. Hosek) writes:
>In article <10...@pucc.Princeton.EDU> Q2...@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes:
>>In article <1989Nov2.2...@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, s...@Neon.Stanford.EDU
(Stephen P. Guthrie) writes:
>Some Latin
>>>stat rosa pristina nomine, nomine nuda tenemus.
Waitaminit, that's not right, at least from my copy, which says,
"stat rosa pristina nominE, nominA nuda tenemus." [emphasis mine]
>Translated as:
>>"There stands a rose bereft of name; we grasp at the bare name."
>No, pristina (which modifies rosa) does not mean bereft of, it means "former",
This is right <user hastily consulting latin dictionary>.
Ergo, ( :)
"There stands (that which was called) a rose,..."
which rather means the same thing, in the end, i.e. we attach entirely
too much value to little details like names.
Hum. Good enough to put in a .signature file.
Glenn Stone <cca...@prism.gatech.edu> CCASTGS@GITNVE2 ..!gatech!pyr!ccastgs
Box 30372, Atlanta, GA 30332
"Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus." -Eco, _The Name of the Rose_
Dorothy Heydt
>
>| The great philosopher is Aristotle - and indeed, no, he never did
>write a book on laughter.
Would you believe _half_ a book?
The work in question is Aristotle's _Poetics,_ which he wrote in two
sections--one on tragedy, the other on comedy. Like vast quantities
of Greek literature, we lost it after the fall of Rome. The tragedy
section did survive and was rediscovered in the Renaissance, but the
section on comedy is (for all anybody knows to the contrary) lost for
ever, like Berosius's History of the World, like the missing books of
Livy's Roman history, like most of the works of Sappho, Aeschylus,
huge chunks of Sophocles, Ennius, .... *sigh*
If I recall correctly, Eco's reconstruction of Aristotle's theory on
comedy was that like tragedy it had a cathartic function and was good
for you.
I can't think of anything funny right now so I shall go listen to some
nice calm Bach.
Creative Business Decisions
Right, but he wrote a _Poetics_. This deals with tragedy to a great
extent; in it, he raises the issue of comedy at one point, and says
that it will be discussed below, in the second part. We know of no
text that corresponds to that second part; the existence of this text
is the "MacGuffin" of _Name of the Rose_.
Darren Bush
>...lost for
>ever, like Berosius's History of the World, like the missing books of
>Livy's Roman history, like most of the works of Sappho, Aeschylus,
>huge chunks of Sophocles, Ennius, .... *sigh*
Sigh indeed.
I have been known to get weird in museums, libraries, and other places
where antiquities are archived. My wife laughs at me, but the worst
episode was in the Rare Book Room at the University of Wisconsin, whrer I
held an illuminated, real live palimpsest of a part of Dante's Divine Comedy (a
little bit of "heaven" on earth (groan)). I bawled like a baby. But then,
I am entitled, since I spent more time with Dante than with people one year
of my life.
I cried when the library was burning down around William of Baskerville. I
could see on his face (or maybe I projected it there :-) a look of total
frustration and pain, like watching his "friends" burn up around him.
I bet you cried too, Dorothy.
Sorry to take advantage of the captive audience. I'll go back to my dinner
now.
>I can't think of anything funny right now so I shall go listen to some
>nice calm Bach.
Try Schubert's Violin Quartets. Even more soothing than Bach. Really.
- Darren S. Bush | "Can you imagine the
- bu...@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu | level of a mind that
University of Rochester Department of Psychology | watches wrestling?"
Disclaimer: Groucho:Karl::Darren:George | -Frederick
Robert Firth
>| The great philosopher is Aristotle - and indeed, no, he never did
>write a book on laughter. - on many other things, yes, he wrote on
>botany, e.g., but not on laughter.
Well, he wrote on Comedy, in his Poetics, but unfortunately what
he wrote hasn't survived. Supposedly, one of the things burned
in the Name of the Rose was the last surviving complete copy.
[The relationship between comedy and laughter is another thing, of course]