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They made a miniseries out of The Name of the Rose, some of which I watched last night.
John Turturro was cast as William of Baskerville, and you know, Turturro’s much more like the William of Baskerville of the novel than Sean Connery was, being gaunt and hollow-eyed and hawk-eyed. And he’s not bad except he’s not Sean Connery who, despite being all wrong for the part, was completely riveting in the 1980 movie.
The plot elements in The Name of the Rose are infinitely dreamlike: the traveler from an impossibly foreign land; the abbey without a name; the library laid out like a labyrinth.
(I have dreams about that citadel of wisdom all the time, except in my dreams it’s always the Brooklyn Museum.)
###
When I saw the movie in 1980, I also read the novel, and I have to say, the novel went straight over my head. I suppose because the theme of the novel was semiotics, which is a discipline I’ve never been able to wrap my head around.
Yeah, yeah, yeah: Semiotics is the study of how meanings are derived from signs. I get that intellectually. But I am utterly incapable of stripping interpretation from signs or symbols; I can’t view them in the abstract.
The process is easier, I suppose, when I look at how semiotics functions in the biological realm. For example, a pheromone is a sign, but it’s also a collection of peptides; its function as a signal of sexual arousal is fairly easy to separate out from its molecular essence.
I can’t do that at all within the realm of human communication.
If I look at an image of a man hanging on a tree, I immediately see all the stories associated with that image—the Hanged Man, the Golden Bough, Christ; I can’t separate signs from their universe of meanings; interpretation is always an immediate given—which is why I would never be a good scientist. But also why I’m a good storyteller, I suppose.
###
Just before I went to bed, I slipped out for a few minutes to stare at the sky. No light pollution here in the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley!
Orion (which is one of only two constellations I can confidently identify) was spread across the heavens.
Once upon a time, it seems I could identify the individual pulsating stars in the Pleiades that dangle from his belt. But not anymore.
What does that mean?
In two weeks, Saturn and Jupiter move into conjunction in the sign of Aquarius. The cojoined star will be very bright, Star of Bethlehem-ish bright: It will dominate the sky.
What does that mean?
John Turturro was cast as William of Baskerville, and you know, Turturro’s much more like the William of Baskerville of the novel than Sean Connery was, being gaunt and hollow-eyed and hawk-eyed. And he’s not bad except he’s not Sean Connery who, despite being all wrong for the part, was completely riveting in the 1980 movie.
The plot elements in The Name of the Rose are infinitely dreamlike: the traveler from an impossibly foreign land; the abbey without a name; the library laid out like a labyrinth.
(I have dreams about that citadel of wisdom all the time, except in my dreams it’s always the Brooklyn Museum.)
###
When I saw the movie in 1980, I also read the novel, and I have to say, the novel went straight over my head. I suppose because the theme of the novel was semiotics, which is a discipline I’ve never been able to wrap my head around.
Yeah, yeah, yeah: Semiotics is the study of how meanings are derived from signs. I get that intellectually. But I am utterly incapable of stripping interpretation from signs or symbols; I can’t view them in the abstract.
The process is easier, I suppose, when I look at how semiotics functions in the biological realm. For example, a pheromone is a sign, but it’s also a collection of peptides; its function as a signal of sexual arousal is fairly easy to separate out from its molecular essence.
I can’t do that at all within the realm of human communication.
If I look at an image of a man hanging on a tree, I immediately see all the stories associated with that image—the Hanged Man, the Golden Bough, Christ; I can’t separate signs from their universe of meanings; interpretation is always an immediate given—which is why I would never be a good scientist. But also why I’m a good storyteller, I suppose.
###
Just before I went to bed, I slipped out for a few minutes to stare at the sky. No light pollution here in the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley!
Orion (which is one of only two constellations I can confidently identify) was spread across the heavens.
Once upon a time, it seems I could identify the individual pulsating stars in the Pleiades that dangle from his belt. But not anymore.
What does that mean?
In two weeks, Saturn and Jupiter move into conjunction in the sign of Aquarius. The cojoined star will be very bright, Star of Bethlehem-ish bright: It will dominate the sky.
What does that mean?
