The Island of the Day Before

Italian writer and literary critic Umberto Eco's historical third novel, The Island of the Day Before (1994), is about a man stranded alone on a ship. Across the water from him, within sight, is an island that, he suspects, lays just on the other side of the International Date Line. However, as he is unable to swim, he remains on the boat. The novel, which takes the form of his diaries, records his recollections as he reminisces over the series of events that have brought him to this point. The Island of the Day Before notably alludes to Eco's previous novels, and in fact, makes a reference to one of the central plot points in The Name of the Rose, his first novel.

Roberto della Griva, a seventeenth-century nobleman, is the heir of a minor noble house located in the duchy of Milan. As a child, he witnessed his father die in a battle at Casale. Mild-mannered, bookish, and rather delicate overall, he is rather lucky in his ability to attract mentors. Through the flashbacks that comprise much of the novel, he reveals several interesting tidbits about himself – how, for instance, he learned philosophy from the remarkably forward-looking French nobleman Saint-Sauvin. Or how Cyrano de Bergerac taught him how to write love letters, which he puts to good use wooing his beloved but untouchable Lilia. Roberto's from-afar, unrequited love for Lilia spans the novel, which discloses many of his poems and love letters.

As for how Roberto came to be aboard the ship Amaryllis, the short version is that he is a spy in exile – an Italian-born French spy on an English ship. In Eco's literary version of the seventeenth century, Holland, France, and England vie to be the first to discover the secret of longitude, a measure that will give the discovering nation the naval precision to rout the others. As it turns out, a doctor on the Amaryllis, Dr. Byrd, has discovered something similar. By using the alchemical Powder of Sympathy he can, through quite gruesome means, tell time and location relative to a far fixed point. However, before the doctor can fine-tune his experiment to render the ultimate form of navigation, a shipwreck destroys his gear – along with everything else on the Amaryllis. The sole survivor, Roberto, who cannot swim, floats his way to a nearby abandoned ship, the Daphne, which has been left stranded somewhere near the Islands of Solomon.



The Daphne is located just a small distance from a mysterious island. Its presence taunts Roberto. Though, eventually, he does manage to learn to tread water, he is still unable to reach the island, because the island exists across the line separating yesterday from today. He cannot reach it because the laws of time prevent him from crossing that line (hence the novel's title). Understanding that the island is impossible to reach, Roberto comforts himself with his memories and the exploration of his new ship home. He finds many exotic clocks on the ship, many tempting casks of eau de vie, and a menagerie of caged animals, whose chorus of squawking and singing provides the background music for Roberto's adventures aboard the ship. He also, less expectedly, finds a priest named Father Wanderdrossel, hidden away in a secret compartment. Father Wanderdrossel comes to take on a mentor role with Roberto. Like Roberto, he is unable to swim, but he devises a sort of diving apparatus that lets him walk underwater. He sets off to walk the seafloor towards the island. He never returns.

As the novel progresses, Roberto's recollections of his past become increasingly paranoid and delusional. He invents an evil twin brother, Ferrante, whom he begins to suspect has been responsible for all that has gone wrong in his life – it was all, in fact, the result of Ferrante's machinations. Perhaps Ferrante was even the one who committed the crime for which Roberto was exiled. The Island of the Day Before ends equivocally, with Roberto apparently still and forever stranded at the boundary between today and tomorrow.

The Island of the Day Before has divided critics over its obsession with ideas and general intellectualism. Eco's capacious learning and ability to explain philosophical and scientific ideas with apt and vivid metaphors is undisputed, but in some ways, these abstract elements of his novel are the most vibrant, while many of the actual characters – notably the protagonist – seem unconvincing and flat.