Today I look at a novel
from Italian author Umberto Eco – The Prague Cemetery is a
historical fiction that spans central Europe for much of the 19th
century. It's told from three different perspectives: an Italian
captain named Simonini; a priest named Abbe Dalla Piccola; and an
unnamed narrator who pieces together a story from the combined
writing of Simonini and the abbe.
I was drawn to this book
because it's promise of continent-wide conspiracies intrigued me, as
well as it's 19th century setting. Seeing monumental
events in recent history like the violence of the Paris Commune and
the Dreyfus Affair was one of my favourite aspects of this book.
However, on the whole I was extremely disappointed in The Prague
Cemetery. It gets off to an intriguing start as we're given three
seperate narrators (two of whom very clearly have split-personality
disorder), which made me wonder if this was going to be some sort of
surrealist text where you can't entirely trust what you're reading.
The more I read though,
the less invested I became, and I was soon simply reading the story
out of a sense of obligation, not genuine interest.
One of The Prague
Cemetery's biggest flaws is this: it has no real characters. What
it has are ciphers who exist to push the plot forward. Making matters
worse is that nearly all of these characters are interchangeable.
Nearly every character is either a scheming revolutionary, a scheming
politician, a scheming civil servant, a scheming cleric, or a
combination of the above. The one exception is the satanist Diana,
and that's only because she exists to be a puppet of the main
characters' whims. Instead of a cast of characters, we're given a
conveyor belt of equally manipulative, devious and morally sterile
people.
I soon began to forget
the names of the various bureaucrats and employers Simonini
encounters throughout his career, because all of them are equally
faceless. Not to mention all of them have more or less the same
ambitions and practices – namely to manipulate public opinion to
serve their own interests.
Which brings me on to
another big issue I have with this book: all of these characters are
terrible people. Not only are they bland, stereotypical manipulators,
but just about everyone is a colossal bigot. Anti-Semitism is the
main focus of the book – I lost count of the amount of times
someone goes off on a rant about how the Jews are conspiring to
overthrow western civilization – but there's also plenty of
misogyny, anti-Catholicism and racism to
remind you of how loathsome all these characters are.
But Anti-Semitism is the
main subject here. There are two variations: the rabid, fanatical
anti-Semitism of the likes of Eduoard Drumont (whose appearance late
in the story might have been a nasty shock if I hadn't long stopped
caring), or else the empty cynicism of the likes of Simonini.
Repeatedly in the story, Simonini forges material he claims to prove
an internationalist Zionist plot (originating from a cemetery in
Prague, where the book gets its name from) is taking place. His
employers often know his “evidence” is fabricated, or else lifted
wholesale from popular literature, but they publish it anyway to give
the common people of Europe a scapegoat to distract them from the
real forces controlling their lives.
This is one aspect of the
story that gave me some interest – the idea that politicians and
spin doctors openly lie to people to serve their own ends. But again,
all of these characters are so shallow and interchangeable that it's
hard for me to get invested. It's as if someone wanted to make a
novel out of Yes Minister or The Thick of It, but
forgot to give its characters flaws and nuances that make them
relatable to the audience.
Something else that's
sorely missing from this novel is an actual argument. You'd think a
story that delves so far into a particularly ugly side of human
history would have something of substance to say, or perhaps try to
explain why people judge certain communities for being “Other”.
It's a topic that's sadly as relevant in Europe today with the
hostile response Middle Eastern refugees are facing. But for all it's
posturing, The Prague Cemetery doesn't seem to have anything
to add to the discussion of prejudice than “Man, prejudice sucks”.
It gives a dangerously
simplistic portrayal of how prejudice works in the first place. Since
every character in this book seems inherently awful, it gives the
impression that bigotry can only exist if generated by inherently
awful people. Writing about ordinary and sympathetic people who hold
prejudices shows how insidious prejudice is, and might help readers
to recognise it in themselves. Repeating the term “Final Solution”
over and over does not help anyone better understand why the people
of Germany attempted to annihilate several entire races in the 1940s.
Finally, I don't really
get what the point of the multiple narratives was, or the
split-personality. Seriously, nothing comes of it. It's clear from
the start that Simonini and Dalla Piccola are the same person. Eco
inserts gaps into their memories, meaning that both personalities
have to write to jog the other half's memory. Why Eco didn't simply
have a first or third-person narrative all the way through is beyond
me.
If I can say anything
good about this story, it's that the prose (translated by Richard
Dixon) is nice enough, though Eco does like to go off on tangents a
fair bit. The act of reading the book may have been a repetitive,
often tedious experience, but at least it wasn't excruciating.
Could I recommend The
Prague Cemetery? Not really. Not as a historical fiction, or a
character study, or a commentary on prejudice, or a spy story, or a
satire. Pretty much everything here has been done better.
Just watch Zootropolis
instead.
