Umberto Eco

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a writer and an academic. His most famous book, The Name of the Rose, was made into a successful film starring Sean Connery. The author, however, is hardly a populist. For the last twenty-five years he's been professor of semiotics at Bologna University, and his output was mainly academic before he turned to novel writing at the age of nearly fifty.

Presenter0:51

He's written two other fictional works, Foucault's Pendulum and, most recently, The Island of the Day Before. These and his journalistic writings in his native Italy have earned him the title of the most famous intellectual in the world. He is Umberto Echo. It's an extravagant title, Umberto, the world's most famous intellectual. Do you like it? Is it a title you enjoy?

Presenter1:15

But do you like it, and do you do you enjoy being called such a thing?

Umberto Eco1:19

Not particularly because uh fame uh doesn't mean merit.

Presenter1:23

But do you enjoy your fame?

Umberto Eco1:25

If you mean that I enjoy to be read

Umberto Eco1:29

All over the world? Yes, otherwise why one should?

Umberto Eco1:34

Right.

Umberto Eco1:36

If you mean to be recognized as a no, I don't. I would prefer to have a more private life. But in a sense, uh my my books are my children.

Umberto Eco1:46

So I have to work for my books and if I I have to pay a certain price in losing my privacy, that is done for my books.

Presenter1:55

But also uh I know you've written in one of your newspaper columns, you wrote once about how many hours a day you had left for your your own things, like conversation, shopping or sex. I mean, I think it came down to about an hour a day, which is

Umberto Eco2:03

Yeah.

Umberto Eco2:05

Shopping.

Umberto Eco2:08

It's a heavy problem.

Presenter2:09

It's a heavy price.

Umberto Eco2:11

Yes, fortunately I made my two kids before.

Presenter2:17

But is it true that after the success of The Name of the Rose, you actually went back into academic life and you said, look, can we not talk about it again? Can it not be mentioned?

Umberto Eco2:26

I succeeded in it. In my university nobody mentions my novels. There is a sort of uh silent agreement.

Umberto Eco2:35

Probably most of them read my novels and I'm happy of that.

Presenter2:39

But I'm sure they want to ask you about your novels. They want to be helped in their interpretation of them.

Presenter2:45

They're very careful with Professor Echo, are they, at Bologna University? They know how to treat him. We offer you a a kind of escape here, but I'm afraid it's only an imaginary one, because we send you to a desert island. I presume, from everything you said, you really would rather like the idea.

Umberto Eco3:00

But uh now having written a book about a desert island, I feel at home.

Presenter3:05

Tell me about your music. Tell me the first record that you'd play when you got there.

Umberto Eco3:09

I want to to start with As Time Goes By a song by Duli Wilson in Casablanca. Um one of them that when watching Casablanca are able to anticipate uh every line.

Speaker 43:24

You must remember this.

Speaker 43:27

A kiss is just a kiss.

Speaker 43:30

A sigh is just a sigh.

Speaker 43:36

The fundamental things apply

Presenter3:41

As time goes by

Presenter3:45

As Time Goes By from Casablanca sung by Dooley Wilson.

Presenter3:49

Umberto Echo, the Name of the Rose, has sold fifteen million copies, I think, worldwide. It's been translated into thirty two languages. It's been incredibly successful. Many people have tried to explain why it's been so successful. What's your explanation?

Umberto Eco4:03

There are at least fifteen millions upon five billions people in the world that are tired by

Umberto Eco4:12

Easy messages.

Umberto Eco4:14

Everything is made too easy, computers, T V, radio They want something challenging.

Presenter4:21

But it's a sort of test for yourself. Did you just sit down one day and think I've written twenty academic tomes? I'm sure I could write a bestseller. Let's have a go.

Umberto Eco4:28

A friend of mine who worked for a weekly magazine came to me and said I got an idea uh to ask uh various people in politics, in academia and so on to write a short uh criminal story and to publish one per week in our magazine.

Umberto Eco4:48

And I said, No, no, I have no time. Um I th I think uh I I cannot write the stories because I am unable to write the dialogues. And and then I suddenly say, If I had to write uh the text of story would take place in a medieval monastery and it would uh be five hundred pages long. And she said, No, it's not what I am looking for. Stop. I went home.

Umberto Eco5:15

And I and I said, Why not?

Presenter5:17

Hmm.

Presenter5:18

But it is a a difficult novel, as you've said. It does require a lot of work on the part of the reader, and that's not least because a lot of your academic work is reflected in it, semiotics being being your subject.

Presenter5:30

Are you saying that you couldn't have written a novel for pure entertainment?

Umberto Eco5:36

It entertained me.

Umberto Eco5:39

And I think that the readers smell that.

Umberto Eco5:45

It's the same as my relationship with dogs.

Umberto Eco5:50

Even when I was a kid they were telling me, No, beware of that doggo, because it's very bad and ferocious.

Umberto Eco6:00

And I had no fear. I went there and the dog understood that I loved it.

Umberto Eco6:06

And so

Umberto Eco6:07

He was very, very friendly with me. The readers are like dogs. They understand that you felt at your ease in writing this book and you enjoyed it. They take part in your enjoyment.

Presenter6:19

Have you felt as much at ease since, writing novels?

Umberto Eco6:23

Yes, yes, yes. To write uh a novel for me is a great uh secret uh pleasure. That's why they last uh so long, eight years and six years. I wouldn't like to finish them because the real the real enjoyment is to write them. One once they are finished.

Umberto Eco6:40

They belong to somebody else and I feel orphan.

Presenter6:43

And you lose your secret life. Yes, that's. Tell me about record number two.

Umberto Eco6:49

Well, uh as number two something more.

Umberto Eco6:52

serious according to the the the official standards, um the first movement of Chopin's piano sonata number two in B flat opus thirty five.

Presenter7:04

Why do you like it? Uh

Umberto Eco7:05

It was probably the first uh classic uh composition I I heard.

Umberto Eco7:12

It was immediately after the war. I was sixteen. At the time in my native city, Alexandria, there were no concert halls.

Umberto Eco7:21

And so, by chance, maybe,

Umberto Eco7:23

I discovered that the radio was broadcasting classical music. That was the door I entered to live in the in the musical uh universe.

Presenter8:33

Part of Chopin's piano sonata number two in B-flat minor, opus thirty five, played by Ivo Pogarellich.

Presenter8:40

Let's talk about the circumstances of your childhood, your home and your parents and so on. I gather your parents worked for a company that made iron bathtubs, is that right?

Umberto Eco8:49

Yeah, more m more or less. It was a petty bourgeoisie family. Normal childhood.

Umberto Eco8:55

With two experiences that were in any case unique. First, to live under a dictatorship.

Umberto Eco9:05

to be raised in the worship of uh war and heroism. That's why I became a pacifist.

Presenter9:12

You would have been what you were born in 1932, so you were a boy during

Umberto Eco9:15

You were boy Julia. And then the war.

Presenter9:20

Yeah.

Umberto Eco9:20

And not so much the war in the city with uh the with the the first uh bombing before we escaped. My father remained to work in the city and we escaped in the countryside.

Umberto Eco9:33

I we had an uncle and an aunt living uh living there.

Umberto Eco9:38

But it was the wrong choice because that was the center of the partisan war.

Umberto Eco9:46

So I spent my years between eleven and

Umberto Eco9:51

thirteen. With people shooting around.

Presenter9:54

Well this was the partisans, was it? This was the partisans

Umberto Eco9:56

Partisan and uh fascist. Yes. But it it was guerrilla.

Presenter10:01

I read that you were a member of the Mussolini Youth Movement, are you?

Umberto Eco10:04

As everybody mandatorily in Italy.

Presenter10:07

What did that entail? What did you have to do?

Umberto Eco10:09

It meant that every Saturday we were put in uniform and we marched pre military.

Umberto Eco10:16

Did you enjoy it?

Umberto Eco10:18

But uh at that age, yes, to sing an uh an anthem or to march and to have a uniform seems in my early years I wanted to become a soldier until forty-three. Then the war became something very serious. Then I discovered at the fall of fascism that there was something else around. I smelled the the smell of freedom and of democracy.

Presenter10:44

Of course your your parents they were were um I think you've written they were the first generation to wear a hat and tie. They were kind of working class, made good. Obviously none of them had ever been to university.

Umberto Eco10:53

Yes, uh my parents were the first generation of their kind to have a tie and a hat and not they were white and not blue colours.

Presenter11:02

And were they aware that the young Umberto had brains?

Umberto Eco11:08

I was a successful boy in the school. I was

Umberto Eco11:12

one of the good ones and then

Umberto Eco11:15

In my adolescence I organized the shows and things, so I I was already

Umberto Eco11:21

a public figure in my in my small environment.

Presenter11:24

But did they enjoy it? Did they enjoy having this bright boy? Or or did it worry them a bit, perhaps? No.

Umberto Eco11:26

Joy Ha

Umberto Eco11:30

they enjoyed. So I have only half a remorse in my in my life because my father, uh when I was then eighteen,

Umberto Eco11:40

was not so happy that I made the philosophy at the university. The ideal of uh middle bourgeois idea uh was to have a a lawyer in in the family. He died maybe too early in sixty five and so he didn't know that uh

Umberto Eco11:57

I I have

Umberto Eco11:59

an acceptable uh career.

Umberto Eco12:01

But when my second book was published, The Open Work, it was reviewed on the main newspaper of Italy by an important it was the poet Eugenio Montale, and he was he was very proud. And I think that for him it was enough to understand that um I was doing well.

Presenter12:22

Record number three.

Umberto Eco12:24

Something from the Drei Grossen opera, opera, the three penny opera text by Bertol Brecht, okay, but music of a Kurt Weil, that I consider one of the greatest contemporary composers.

Speaker 412:41

Da Istnoon einer Schohn der Zaat an Zelve, Der Metzke eunt Alle, and Kelve, Der Frechter, Hund der Schlimmster, Hoor and Tribe, Weh Kochin Ap der Alle Abkocht.

Speaker 412:58

Viver.

Speaker 413:00

Das Frachnichtoper Vellerist Berreit, Dasist Well.

Presenter13:11

Otter Lempe singing the ballada von desexuelle in Hurrischkeit from Courtwauer's Thropny Opera.

Presenter13:17

You said, Umberto Ecco, that you always intended to be an academic, and yet immediately after leaving Turin University you joined Rye, the Itali's Italy's state owned uh television. Why did you do that? I mean, you made programmes.

Umberto Eco13:30

No.

Umberto Eco13:32

I had the idea that to start an academic life

Umberto Eco13:36

I had to be a wealthy person.

Umberto Eco13:39

And I I wasn't. So I had to find a a job

Presenter13:42

You needed the money, basically. I mean you couldn't afford to be an idea.

Umberto Eco13:43

And I wanted to be independent uh also. And so I went to Milan and I started those three, four years of of uh T V experience. At that time the radio and T V building was the the crossroad of I met there Stravinsky, uh Bertold Brecht, I met my friend musicians Luciano Berrio, Pierre Boulez, Stockhausen, and I entered the the world of uh noie musique. I met uh actors and actresses and even young actresses. It was an exciting uh an exciting moment.

Presenter14:22

Actually you I think you spent about five years in television, didn't you? And then you diversified into publishing, into this academic life that that you yearned for, and into journalism, which is roughly what you still do really, isn't it? All three. But tell me more about the journalism, because i it's through the newspaper columns, certainly in the beginning, that you made your name in Italy. Opinion pieces you've written.

Umberto Eco14:46

critique de mer in French analysis of everyday behaviour of society and some mass media

Presenter14:52

Of manners.

Presenter14:56

Yeah.

Presenter14:57

But you've also written some very light-hearted pieces. I mean, I've read pieces of yours about what how to use your electric nose hair cutter or how to deal with a taxi driver. Why do you need to do it? Your time is so valuable, you say. Why do you want to write these fairly superficial opinion pieces?

Umberto Eco15:11

I do want

Umberto Eco15:12

It's fully super

Umberto Eco15:13

This is an interesting question. I wouldn't say very superficial. Sometimes in a short article, you can get also.

Umberto Eco15:21

An interesting

Umberto Eco15:22

idea. Uh second is a way to be in touch with uh with readership.

Presenter15:27

Are you saying that it's the communication with people that's important to you, that you that you don't feel that you should keep yourself as an academic authority?

Umberto Eco15:31

Yes, that's important.

Umberto Eco15:36

Yes, it's a way to not to stay in a ivory tower.

Presenter15:39

Is it more than that? Is it almost do you feel a a duty of an academic to communicate?

Umberto Eco15:46

Yes, there are a lot of people who work at the university and they don't like to teach.

Umberto Eco15:53

I like to teach.

Umberto Eco15:54

If I make an effort to understand something, immediately after I feel the impulse to tell somebody else what I what I learned. Other otherwise there is no pleasure in in learning.

Umberto Eco16:06

So I think this is the real impulse.

Presenter16:08

Record number four.

Umberto Eco16:10

Bach's Goldberg variations.

Umberto Eco16:14

I am a modest uh recorder player and I play back frequently and I love it. Uh the Goldberg variations are are a perfect merging of musical complexity and of complete uh friendliness for the listener. You you can abandon yourself and follow them without any effort.

Presenter17:35

One of Bach's Goldberg variations, number twenty two, played by Andrei Gavrilov.

Presenter17:41

So you're now Professor of Semiotics at Bologna University, a chair which was created for you and and by you, as it were. Semiotics, I read, is the study of the signs and symbols by which we communicate. What does that include? What what kinds of signs beyond the written word and art?

Umberto Eco17:59

We communicate through gestures. Not only the deaf mute, but even common people communicate by gestures. We communicate by movement of our face. We communicate through our architecture, through through objects.

Presenter18:15

To our close.

Umberto Eco18:16

Crowds obviously, obviously.

Presenter18:17

So it's everything. Everything is important.

Umberto Eco18:18

Everything with everything. And uh obviously this is black and clear and maybe

Umberto Eco18:25

The trivial.

Umberto Eco18:27

The problem is, is there a unified approach that can explain with the same uh intellectual instruments those various ways of

Umberto Eco18:36

of communicating.

Presenter18:37

Your lectures, I understand, are very popular.

Umberto Eco18:39

My lectures at the university are very well attended, but not very popular. They are very, very difficult.

Presenter18:48

Well, as far as I understand it, and I've never attended one, you you you can analyze a an advert for Coca-Cola one minute or a a pair of blue jeans and similar at the same time you can discuss Donatella's David or

Umberto Eco19:00

I did it in my youth.

Umberto Eco19:02

Now there is a lot of young people doing it better than me.

Presenter19:05

But just to try and get a basic understanding of what you're saying, what you're saying is that all of these things deserve analysis, that when we are presented with a pile of bricks in an art gallery or a woman asleep in a glass box,

Presenter19:20

That this is truly deserving of the same analysis as what we would consider to be a great work of art.

Umberto Eco19:26

This doesn't mean that they are the same thing. This means that they must and can be seriously analyzed in the same way.

Umberto Eco19:36

You have the intellectual duty to analyze in the same way a poem by Homer,

Umberto Eco19:42

and the words of a very popular song. This doesn't mean that they are the same thing. On the contrary, I think that a good analysis can prove why Homer is more important or greater or not than than a popular song.

Presenter19:56

So are you say is semiotics as simple as to say approach everything with an open mind?

Umberto Eco20:03

No.

Umberto Eco20:04

To approach everything is used in order to communicate.

Umberto Eco20:08

I can approach with an open mind a chemistry or something.

Umberto Eco20:13

Sant is a form of uh contemporary philosophy.

Umberto Eco20:18

And I don't think that uh it can be dealt with uh so easily, so easily in a short uh

Presenter20:22

But he's

Umberto Eco20:26

A conversation. I'm used to say that since I have written many books on that.

Umberto Eco20:32

If I was able to tell it in few words, I would have sent a telegram instead of writing all those books.

Presenter20:40

Next record.

Umberto Eco20:41

In the early seventies I went for the first time in Buenos Aires and I discovered the real tango.

Umberto Eco20:49

And you know that uh the great uh hero of Tango is Gardel, who died, I don't remember, in the thirties and still in Argentina is worship.

Umberto Eco21:00

And I would try Porna Cabetha, one of the great tangos sung by Gardell.

Speaker 421:22

Oh, you'll not forbate her.

Speaker 421:26

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 421:30

Tim por taperdereme, milveces la vida para quebivir.

Presenter21:37

Carlos Gardell singing the tango Pur Una Cabesa.

Presenter21:41

Um Umberto Echo, Salman Rushdie, as I'm sure you know, um condemned your second novel, Foucault's Pendulum, as higher bullshit. But it it wasn't a total insult, as I read it. He reckoned he knew that you were writing bullshit, that you were playing with us, that you were inventing junk fiction for fun.

Umberto Eco22:00

We met in Paris because I was former a member of the Academie Universelle de Culture in Paris and I I introduced myself saying I am the bullshit. Well and we became good friends.

Presenter22:17

But but did you tell him that that was not true, or or would you admit that it is true?

Umberto Eco22:22

I

Umberto Eco22:23

I think that a gentleman must never argue with his critics. I think that an author that uh argues with his critics is vulgar and impolite. When you make uh uh so-called uh creative writing, poems and novels, if you write a philosophical book, on the contrary, you have the right and the duty to to defend it and to argue about it, because if you write a philosophical book and somebody makes a given criticism of it, you are adding rational arguments uh to support your thesis. It is like if you were writing additional pages of your book.

Umberto Eco23:05

With a novel, you cannot write additional pages of your book, so you have not the right to do this.

Presenter23:11

But nevertheless, you must care what people think about it and what they say about it. Did you have a a kind of

Umberto Eco23:16

That's a different matter. That's a different matter. Everybody likes to be loved.

Presenter23:16

Desire to defend it.

Umberto Eco23:21

But that's a different matter. When you write a book, you know that you abandon your message in a bottle and somebody can like it, somebody can dislike, and you cannot go around the world to kill those who who don't don't like your book.

Presenter23:22

Well, so why didn't you tell someone?

Presenter23:37

But as you say, in an ideal world your book would be liked, but you also think that we the readers should work quite hard. You said that earlier on.

Presenter23:48

You do nevertheless make

Presenter23:50

make it quite difficult for us. I mean, you opened up Foucault's Pendulum with a huge unattributed quotation in Hebrew that, you know, was very difficult to clamber past.

Umberto Eco23:59

That was done on purpose. That's the the way I like to write. I like to involve my reader in a sort of challenge.

Presenter24:08

But a lot of people perhaps are intimidated by that challenge. I mean, perhaps it takes someone of the stature of Salman Rushdie to have the kind of literary confidence to call your bluff, actually, and say, isn't this a load of bullshit?

Umberto Eco24:22

Okay, is that right?

Presenter24:26

Don't you want to defend it?

Umberto Eco24:27

I cannot.

Umberto Eco24:29

Moreover, consider that today Balzac or Dickens or Standal or Tolstoy cannot defend themselves. They are dead. So you have to behave as you were dead.

Umberto Eco24:42

Behave as if you were dead.

Umberto Eco24:47

Behind your work, Joy said as the God of the creation curing his fingernails.

Presenter24:55

Tell me about your sixth record.

Umberto Eco24:57

The author is Jakob Faneik.

Umberto Eco25:01

A Flemish Dutch flutist of the

Umberto Eco25:05

Cathedral of Utrecht.

Umberto Eco25:07

uh born at the end of the sixteenth century, but um

Umberto Eco25:12

working practically in the seventeenth century,

Umberto Eco25:15

who produced a three volume corpus, the the Fluten Lust Hof, which is a masterpiece of the flute music. I play them, and they are for C recorder. And it has become one of the characters of my new novel.

Umberto Eco25:35

because my protagonist, Roberto de la Grieve, at a certain point meets in the in the in the Dutch cathedral a blind uh flutist, and the two ships uh of my novel are called Daphne and Amarilis. And Daphne and Amarillis are the two pieces uh f by Faneik I like uh more. So I would like to listen to the the first uh part of uh Daphne.

Presenter26:56

Jakob van Eyck's Daphne the Most Beautiful Maiden played by Frantz Bruggen. This third novel, The Island of the Day Before, it's something of a Robinson Crusoe story.

Umberto Eco27:06

Well put upside down or something.

Presenter27:08

Quite, because he's on the boat on Daphne.

Umberto Eco27:10

And it can't get to the island.

Presenter27:15

And he can't get to the island qu'cause he can't swim.

Umberto Eco27:17

He can swim.

Presenter27:18

Can you swim? I you can, I take it.

Umberto Eco27:20

Yes, yes, but I it took me a lot of time uh to to to try to not to swim in order to imagine uh his movements. I found uh a late seventeenth century book that taught how to how to swim, and since this art was practically unknown at that time, the instructions uh it gives are

Umberto Eco27:40

Crazy. So I followed those intra instructions and they sat down.

Presenter27:46

Where where do you write in the main? I read that you have a private chapel in the hills above Rimini, and you sit in your chapel.

Umberto Eco27:52

Well, it's it was an older chapel that now became my my study, yes.

Presenter27:58

And do you need silence, or do you play this this music that you love so much while you write?

Umberto Eco28:04

It it depends. Sometime I need a musical background.

Umberto Eco28:08

Sometime not. Sometimes you you write in a hotel room on the train, sometimes you are peacefully sitting in your studio and you you don't you you

Presenter28:20

Yeah.

Umberto Eco28:20

Yeah. Good luck.

Presenter28:20

Right. Tell me about record number seven.

Umberto Eco28:22

The second movement of uh Beethoven's uh symphony number seven. I am particularly fond of that.

Umberto Eco28:31

Because in those my young ears

Umberto Eco28:35

I remember that one evening

Umberto Eco28:37

at the Conservatory of Torino.

Umberto Eco28:42

I didn't find any any place, so I was obliged to sit uh

Umberto Eco28:46

up there on a step.

Umberto Eco28:51

I was alone.

Umberto Eco28:53

So may be prepared to muse and

Umberto Eco28:58

At the second movement

Umberto Eco29:01

In a way I I cried.

Umberto Eco29:04

And it reminds me uh that uh intense uh musical experience.

Presenter30:09

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, played by the Philemonia Orchestra of La Scala, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.

Presenter30:17

Are you a survivor, Umberto Echo? Will you manage to keep yourself alive on this island?

Umberto Eco30:23

I hope it is not an uh Antarctic uh island, but a South Seas island with coconuts.

Umberto Eco30:31

And easy fish to fish.

Presenter30:35

But would you not perhaps, you know, wither away for lack of company? You're obviously gregarious. You obviously, as you said, like to communicate.

Umberto Eco30:43

I like solid.

Umberto Eco30:44

I like very much to be alone. Maybe because my life obliges me so frequently to interact with other people, but uh I am looking more and more for moments of uh solitude. So perhaps I could stand it.

Presenter31:00

What do you think you'd fear, Ma?

Umberto Eco31:01

Yeah.

Umberto Eco31:02

as anybody else suffering and probably if in the island I got some disease without aspirin and without any anything else probably it would be a bad

Umberto Eco31:13

A bad moment, but uh I try to interpret herbs and weeds uh to see if

Umberto Eco31:21

if I rediscover the the great wisdom.

Presenter31:25

But eventually you'd try to escape, would you?

Umberto Eco31:28

Since I like very much to swim and even to float for for, if possible, for hours uh thinking that that would be an ideal uh situation, and it would be free.

Umberto Eco31:41

A solitude can be a a form of freedom.

Presenter31:46

Last record.

Umberto Eco31:48

Well, this is the part of the final act of Mozart's Don Giovanni when the commander uh arrives.

Umberto Eco31:57

All the areas of Don Giovanni became so popular because they are easy to sing. This one.

Umberto Eco32:05

Can

Umberto Eco32:06

The melodical line, it's so difficult that you can listen at it for years and never be well except you are a professional and you sing it professionally is of such a difficulty, wants to render this sudden apparition of death, of the of the infernal of the infernal power, something that escapes a human comprehension, and that it escapes also the human musical comprehension. So I think it's a terrible passage. It's uh i it makes me thrill every time I I I hear it.

Speaker 433:00

Make sure

Umberto Eco33:04

Facebook.

Speaker 433:15

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 433:20

At last we are not this world.

Speaker 433:28

Everyone's a

Speaker 433:31

Yeah.

Speaker 433:34

Love for love.

Speaker 433:37

I spoke.

Speaker 433:39

A Lord is lost.

Presenter33:43

Part of the final act of Mozart's Don Giovanni with Robert Hull, Laszlo Polgar, Thomas Hempsen, and the Royal Concert Gabbar Orchestra of Amsterdam, conducted by Nicholas Arnoncourt.

Presenter33:54

If we decided that you could only take one of those eight records, Umberto Echo, which one would it be?

Umberto Eco34:01

Probably the one that

Umberto Eco34:03

Can last indefinitely in the Goldberg's variations.

Presenter34:09

And already waiting for you are the complete works of Shakespeare. They're already on your island. And the Bible is there, too. What single book in addition would you like?

Umberto Eco34:18

The New York Phone Book

Presenter34:20

Bye.

Umberto Eco34:21

contains all the names of the world, and there you can imagine

Umberto Eco34:25

an infinite series of stories with infinite characters and is the only way to be active on that island. Every other book could be finished in a while. That is is a sort of humane hypertext.

Presenter34:41

And then beyond that you're allowed one luxury, and and the luxury can't be of any practical use at all.

Umberto Eco34:46

Can I have a laptop, a computer?

Presenter34:49

Yes.

Umberto Eco34:50

What?

Umberto Eco34:51

Uh

Presenter34:51

But

Umberto Eco34:52

Uh

Presenter34:52

Of computers.

Umberto Eco34:53

No, but with the phone book uh to give me inspiration and the computer I can write uh stories uh when I don't swim. And that would be a way to stand uh the solitude uh for a long time.

Presenter35:06

And you're happy, therefore, to leave behind the cigarette, are you? Despite the pile in the ashtray.

Umberto Eco35:10

That would be the the the chance uh this uh shipwreck to quit smoking.

Presenter35:17

Umberto Ecker, I wish you luck. Thank you very much indeed for letting us see your desert island discs.

Speaker 335:29

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.