A Fading Voice at Twilight

The Last Will & Testament of Umberto Eco
by Jesse Russell

On February 19, 2016, Umberto Eco, one of the most influential modern European intellectuals, died in Milan, Italy, his body laid to rest in a simple wooden coffin during a "nonreligious funeral" in Sforza Castle. The sprawling and gloomy castle, once home to Ludovico Sforza, one of the greatest podestas of the Milanese Renaissance, is now a museum of Italian art and culture. It was a fitting place for the funeral of Eco, who spent his life lovingly guarding the crumbling treasures of Europe.

Eco was famous for his novels, his semiotic writings, and, seemingly contradictorily, his leftist politics—the sight of the portly . . .

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Jesse Russell is Assistant Professor of English at Georgia Southwestern State University. He has published on literary theory, semiotics, and politics, and is at work on a book that explores Neo-Platonic magic in the work of Edmund Spenser. He is a Roman Catholic.

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