Been reading
Umberto Eco's new book The Prague Cemetery. It's a rambling
tour through the various revolutions in 19th Century
Europe complete with Machiavellian plotting, backstabbing and murder,
Jewish conspiracy theories, racism and ethnocentricity, occultist
societies and just Eco's inimitable breath of trivia cum learned
intellectual mumbo jumbo and grandstanding in general. Not as tight
and well developed as my favorites: The Name of the Rose and
Foucault's Pendulum, it tends to meander and be difficult to
follow the anti-hero from one nefarious assignment to the next, let alone the
confusion of his apparent “split personality”. Perhaps all will
become clear by the end of the novel. Eco can be demanding.
My aim isn't to
review this book, however, it is about Prague cemeteries and their
possible connection
to Eco's title. I have “discovered”, so far, two cemeteries in
Prague: one Christian at Vyšehrad
Castle (no charge to enter), which is where composers Dvorak and
Smetana are buried; and the other the Jewish Cemetery in the Josefov
(old Jewish quarter) section of Prague (sadly, not free). There are
guided tours through the sites of the Josefov which includes some
synagogues and the old cemetery, but for now at least we chose to
just walk around and look from the outside.
Eco's
Prague Cemetery is the old Jewish cemetery. I'm only about halfway
through the novel and have so far seen only one reference to the
cemetery of the title. I might consider springing a few kronas for
the tour if more details about the cemetery emerge in the novel. I
did take a few photos of some of the synagogues in the quarter—one
of them the oldest synagogue in Europe.
 |
Jewish Cemetery is on the left,
but you can't see it |
 |
| the oldest synagogue in Europe |
 |
| unobtrusive entrance to oldest synagogue |
 |
| Spanish Synagogue (Franz Kafka statue) |
 |
| private Maisel Synagogue |
 |
| golem restaurant - nest to Maisel Synagogue |
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