Holy Grail of Tongues

Umberto Eco (1932–2016), esteemed Italian medievalist, cultural critic, philosopher, novelist, and semiotician, delivered the inaugural Finzi-Contini Lecture at Yale. He was known for his breadth of knowledge and erudition in a variety of disciplines, from medieval literature to chaos theory. As a novelist, he wrote the worldwide bestsellers The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. He was Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna, where he helped establish Italy’s first degree in Drama, Art, and Music Studies (DAMS). Eco later founded the Communication Sciences program, which he personally directed in its early years, and the Advanced School of Humanistic Studies, which he directed until his death.

In his Finzi-Contini Lecture, Umberto Eco explored the longstanding quest for a perfect language capable of precisely conveying the essence of all things. Eco recounted various attempts throughout European history to identify or create such a language, using examples from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century Britain. While the notion of an ideal language has fascinated philosophers, theologians, mystics, and others for at least two millennia, Eco argued that this “holy grail of tongues” is unattainable due to the inherent inconsistencies and complexities of real languages.