Reflection on Umberto Eco’s Library of the World

When the film opened with Umberto Eco walking slowly through his library, surrounded by more than 30,000 books, I felt something stir inside me. His library is, quite honestly, my dream library. The way the camera moved through the endless rows of books felt almost like watching time itself, layer by layer and century by century. Eco’s library felt like a living organism and a space for remembering and a pulse of thought and time. 

Rewatching the film again at my own pace, taking notes and pausing throughout, I realized how much of what we’ve been learning in this course came to life in Eco’s words and character. As he said early in the film, “a library is both a symbol and a reality of universal memory” (2:01). That line stayed with me because it shows exactly what the film explores, the library as an extension of the human mind and a living memory system that binds matter, meaning, and mediation together.

Books as Media & Memory

The film presents the library as a medium of memory and through it, Eco shows how matter and meaning are inseparable. Eco’s son says, “It’s a living thing, not an archive, not a traditionally organized library” (44:14), and that description stayed with me because it reframed what a library could be. In Eco’s eyes, every book is both an object and an idea, a kind of container of thought that only becomes alive when touched, opened, and read.

I think this connects to Stiegler, from the chapter on memory in Critical Terms for Media Studies, where he explains that “human memory is originally exteriorized, which means it is technical from the start” (p. 67). He calls this process epiphylogenesis, the way we evolve “by means other than life,” through the tools, marks, and traces we create (p. 65). In other words, memory has always existed partly outside of us. Eco’s library, in that sense, becomes an externalized form of what Stiegler calls hypomnesis, meaning “recollection through externalized memory” (p. 67), sort of a living system of technical memory that carries human thought across generations.

Eco, in the film, categorizes memory into three kinds: vegetal, organic, and mineral. He explains that books represent vegetal memory because they are literally made of living matter: “books are made out of trees and anciently from papyrus” (9:40). The paper, ink, and bindings store traces of human experience the same way trees store rings of time. Books, then, are one of humanity’s earliest forms of technical memory, bridging nature and culture and body and medium. In a sense, when Eco walks through his library, he’s walking through a forest of preserved thought, each book a leaf in the great tree of human memory. That’s a library of the world.

Mediation, Knowledge, & the Human Mind

Eco’s intellectual life thrives through mediation. He believed that “to be curious intellectually means to be alive” (40:59). That line really stood out to me because it shows how Eco lived with a kind of restless curiosity that never stopped questioning or exploring. For him, thinking is an ongoing process of understanding. 

“I feel I had a full and long childhood because I stole somebody else’s memories,” he says, describing how reading allowed him to experience countless lives (33:46). This made me think about how books become mediators of experience, carrying us into other people’s memories, stories, and worlds. He also rejected the hierarchy between “important” and “unimportant” texts: “The life you conquer with reading does not discriminate between great literature and entertainment” (34:09). I think this aligns with Mitchell and Hansen’s idea of media as “environment for living—for thinking, perceiving, sensing, feeling” (p. xii). Reading, to Eco, was a way of living through mediation itself.

And this reminded me of Turkle’s ideas in Evocative Objects, where she writes that “everyday objects become part of our inner life: how we use them to extend the reach of our sympathies by bringing the world within” (p. 307). His library feels alive because I think it mirrors the structure of a human mind. It’s associative, layered, and full of contradictions. It very much resists the linear order and embraces the chaos of curiosity.

Silence, Information & the Loss of Meaning in Today’s World

One of the most thought-provoking parts of the film was when Eco talked about silence. He said, “You cannot find God where there is noise. God reveals himself only in silence” (1:15:00). That line felt timeless but also so relevant to the kind of world we live in today, one that is constantly oversaturated with distractions.

At some point in the film, an interviewer asked Eco if he didn’t own a cellphone, and Eco said, “Yes, but it’s always out… I don’t want to receive messages, and I don’t want to send messages! This world is loaded with messages, and even each of them says nothing!” (48:10). I actually laughed listetning to that but the more I thought about it, the more profound it became. I don’t think Eco is anti-technology but he was critiquing the modern condition of constant noise, essentially that is communication without depth and meaning.

He warns that “the risk is losing our memory on account of an overload of artificial memory,” because when everything is available instantly, nothing stays long enough to matter. “Clicking a button, you can get a bibliography of 10,000 titles. A bibliography like that is worthless. You can just throw it away. Once you went to the library and found three books, you would read them, and you would learn something” (26:10). 

In the film, there was a sign that read: “In a library, silence is both a duty and a necessity” (31:51). I think that really summed up Eco’s entire philosophy. Silence, for Eco, is so sacred, it’s almost a form of preservation. It’s the condition for memory, reflection and meaning to survive. In a world overflowing with noise and distraction, Eco’s library felt like an act of resistance and a reminder that real understanding is born from the quiet, slow process of thought.

Why this Film Matters, Now

This film matters especially now because it reminds us what it means to think slowly in a world that never stops moving. In an age of instant access and algorithmic noise, Eco’s library feels almost radical and a sanctuary of slowness, silence and curiosity. His philosophy challenges the illusion that more information equals more knowledge, showing instead that depth is actually what sustains understanding.

Eco’s philosophy pushes back against the digital condition in which technology’s promise of infinite access leads to the loss of knowledge itself. His insistence on silence and reflection feels like an act of intellectual resistance.

I think we were asked to watch this film because it turns the media theories we’ve been studying so far into something we can see and feel. Eco’s closing words were so important: “There’s no truth or creativity in an earthquake, only in a silent search” (1:15:25). I think it means we should slow down, remember, and think again.

References

Eco, U. (2022). Umberto Eco: A Library of the World [Film]. Directed by Davide Ferrario.

Cinecittà. Mitchell, W. J. T., & Hansen, M. B. N. (Eds.). (2010). Critical terms for media studies. University of Chicago Press.

Stiegler, B. (2010). Memory. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), Critical terms for media studies (pp. 64–87). University of Chicago Press.

Turkle, S. (Ed.). (2007). Evocative objects: Things we think with. MIT Press.

Photo Credits

Daily Sabah. (2021, February 22). A library of all libraries. Daily Sabah. https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/a-library-of-all-libraries

Screenshot from the film (31:51).

By Maryam Abusamak