367:. Simonini is ordered to destroy some heavily guarded documents in Nievo's possession. He befriends Nievo to gain his confidence - but the papers are too closely guarded. The only way Simonini can think of is to blow up the ship on which Nievo is sailing - sending the papers, Nievo himself and dozens of others to the deep. Simonini develops an elaborate scheme to smuggle aboard a deranged malcontent with a box of explosives, and bribes a sailor to take part in the scheme, knowing that they would both be killed along with everybody else on the boat. Simonini then stabs to death an accomplice on land who had provided the explosive, to silence him.
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not a matter of patriotism, but of hatred of exploitive landlords and oppressive
Neapolitan officials. Garibaldi himself has no interest in social revolution, and instead sides with the Sicilian landlords against the rioting peasants. The Kingdom of Piedmont cautiously supports the unification of Italy but is worried that Garibaldi's fame might eclipse that of their king,
538:, refining and extending many earlier fabrications supposedly documenting a conspiratorial meeting for world domination which was said to have taken place at the Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague (in fact, the earliest such document which Simonini wrote, back in his Italian days, depicted the conspirators as Jesuits rather than Jews).
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speaks with certainty of the fact that this book would eventually lead to the extermination of the Jews - though it would happen after his lifetime and he would not have to do it himself. Such explicit anticipations of the Nazi-led
Holocaust are an obvious anachronism, consciously and deliberately put in by Eco.
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as a spy to report on
Garibaldi's movements after he has taken possession of the Island. While on this mission, Simonini discovers that, contrary to circulating rumours, Garibaldi's Thousand are students, independent artisans, and professionals, not peasants. The support given by Sicilian peasants is
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Simonini works long hours on his life story, falling asleep through exhaustion or an excess of wine. Each time he wakes he discovers that someone has been adding notes to his diary, a mysterious Abbé Dalla
Piccola, who seems to know far too much about Simonini's life. Dalla Piccola has his own story
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In several passages, various 19th
Century antisemites use the term "Final Solution" as referring to the total extermination of all Jews, and also use the infamous term "Arbeit Macht Frei" which would appear on the gate of Auschwitz. After completing The Protocols of The Elders of Zion, Simonini
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However, Simonini's secret service employers are far from pleased - he has gone too far and greatly exceeded his brief, and the affair arouses suspicion and makes the government of the new United Italy look bad. Fortunately for
Simonini, his employers are not as ruthless as he is himself. Rather
283:, but he says behind them all were the Jews. Since he does not attend public school, Simonini is educated by Jesuits brought into his home at the behest of his grandfather. One such priest, Father Bergamaschi (a fictionalized portrait of the Italian Jesuit novelist
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Most of the novel is in the form of a diary written by Simone
Simonini in 1897. He wakes up one morning to find he has lost his memory and suspects something terrible has happened. A few years earlier, at his regular eating place,
325:, betraying to the police a group of radical students who were his drinking buddies. In exchange, the secret service helps him betray his employer who gets thrown into prison where he soon dies, and take over his business.
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and instructions on how to use it - whereupon his diary is abruptly cut off. Presumably, Simonini blew himself up, though the omniscient narrator appearing in other parts of the book remains silent on this.
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All of this earns him enough to pay the bills and to indulge his passion for fine food, but he wants to retire on a decent pension. He hatches a plan to forge what will one day become the infamous
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According to Eco, "the characters of this novel are not imaginary. Except the main character, they all lived in reality, including his grandfather, author of the
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as a means of overcoming traumatic experiences. Simonini decides to write down all he can remember in the form of a diary, in the hope of regaining his memory.
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After this document is handed over to representatives of the Czar's Secret Police, they pressure
Simonini to place a bomb in the newly dug tunnel of the
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On
Giovanni Battista Simonini, see Reinhard Markner: "Giovanni Battista Simonini: Shards from the Disputed Life of an Italian Anti-Semite", in:
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and disagreeable character in all the history of literature (and is the only fictional character in the novel). He was born in
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he enjoys reading of intrigues and conspiracies, and aspires to emulate these fictions in his own life.
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in 1830. His mother died while he was still a child and his father was killed in 1848 fighting for a
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plots, and other events whose accuracy can't ever be authenticated, but that serve as fodder for
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secret service who decide his skills might be useful to them. His first big coup is to act as an
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The main character is Simone
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A cura di Marina Ciccarini, Nicoletta Marcialis e Giorgio Ziffer. Firenze 2014, pp. 311-319
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The nineteenth century was full of monstrous and mysterious events: the mysterious death of
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Umberto Eco's Cemetery of Prague best-selling book in Italy, Spain and Argentina
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Interview with Paul Holdengräber, New York Public Library: 8 November 2011
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and endless intrigue spun by the secret police of different countries,
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which gave rise to all modern anti-Semitism". Eco goes on to say:
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This article is about the Umberto Eco book. For the cemetery, see
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Research paper on The Prague Cemetery from University of Zululand
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The peak of Simonini's career is composing what would become
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Kesarevo Kesarju. Scritti in onore di Cesare G. De Michelis.
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in 2012, it has been described as Eco's best novel since
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The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu
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