every time i pick up a work by umberto eco, i always think surely he's going to miss this time around, and i will be disillusioned but my god, my god, umberto eco does it again! always! every time!

there is so much here: the world, the universe, void, God's laughter, and everything in between. how astounding it is that eco has made such a compelling psychological portrait of a 17th century nobleman and had him be so real, so human, so much like flesh-and-blood that it is as if i have summoned up a spectre of a an actual person by reading these pages! roberto della griva's woes are universal; his concerns, eternal. his existential crisis is essentially the existential crisis. amidst all our petty trials and tribulations that we think are mountains, underneath all the insecure airs we put on ourselves, the question roberto della griva poses is essentially the Eternal Question—and how could i not immediately sympathise? how could i not find myself so very much obsessed with this narrative, which is really our narrative, meaning: yours, mine, everyone's?

here, the story is so specific; but in the specific is the universal, and in the universal is the specific—and in both is nothing, everything, and i am so utterly amazed at how eco manages to pull this off mystically, intellectually, rigorously, scientifically, philosophically, and so on and so forth, ad finitum until one realises that it's all the same, one way or another, and we're all just looking for certitude any way we can in this world.

this is incredible stuff, and i cannot help but feel a little bit more blessed that i have managed to exist in a world that i can read the words of this absolutely brilliant italian semiotician, knowing as i do now that, this search for meaning being eternal, one is never as alone as one might think.