the labyrinth
Every library should have a secret room that guards a long-lost text. I hate what the movie did to Umberto Eco’s creation, because its labyrinthine nature was much more beautifully demonstrated by the Latin quotes that graced every arched doorway. To navigate by means of endless amounts of string may have been easier to show, but was rather anticlimactic:
The room, as I said, had seven walls, but only four of them had an opening, a passage flanked by two little columns set in the wall; the opening was fairly wide, surmounted by a round-headed arch. Against the blind walls stood huge cases, laden with books neatly arranged. Each case bore a scroll with a number, and so did each individual shelf; obviously the same numbers we had seen in the catalogue. In the midst of the room was a table, also covered with books. On all the volumes lay a fairly light coat of dust, sign that the books were cleaned with some frequency. Nor was their dirt of any kind on the floor. Above one of the archways, a big scroll, painted on the wall, bore the words “Apocalypsis Iesu Christi.” It did not seem faded, even thought the lettering was ancient. We noticed afterward, also in the other rooms, that these scrolls were actually carved in the stone, cut fairly deeply, and the depressions had subsequently been filled with color, as painters do in frescoing churches.
-Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
