{"id":1168,"date":"2015-11-27T13:11:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T18:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2015-11-27T13:11:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T18:11:59","slug":"umberto-eco-the-list-is-the-origin-of-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/2015\/1168\/quotes\/umberto-eco-the-list-is-the-origin-of-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Umberto Eco: The list is the origin of culture&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #1a1a1a;\">The list is the origin of culture. It\u2019s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order \u2014 not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart\u2019s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists \u2014 the shopping list, the will, the menu \u2014 that are also cultural achievements in their own right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We have always been fascinated by infinite space, by the endless stars and by galaxies upon galaxies. How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn&#8217;t have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see. Lovers are in the same position. They experience a deficiency of language, a lack of words to express their feelings. But do lovers ever stop trying to do so? They create lists: Your eyes are so beautiful, and so is your mouth, and your collarbone \u2026 One could go into great detail.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/zeitgeist\/spiegel-interview-with-umberto-eco-we-like-lists-because-we-don-t-want-to-die-a-659577.html\">SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco<\/a>: &#8216;We Like Lists Because We Don&#8217;t Want to Die&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The list is the origin of culture. It\u2019s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order \u2014 not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, <a href='http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/2015\/1168\/quotes\/umberto-eco-the-list-is-the-origin-of-culture\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[300],"class_list":["post-1168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotes","tag-on-lists-and-list-making","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1169,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions\/1169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}