I still remember it when I talked to my five-year-old son about semiotics for the first time：One evening after dinner, we did our everyday reading together, and he chose Eco’s Tre Racconti, an illustrated book of three short stories. After I finished reading the first story, Bomb & General, he got confused and asked me, “What does atom in the story stand for?” Then I tried my best to explain to him what a metaphor and a symbol are, and their functions in a story.
I am not sure how much my son got from my explanation, but I believe that many Chinese young semioticians are just like my son: their journey of semiotic exploration begins with reading Eco. Eco’s works on semiotics have been translated into Chinese since late 1980’s, when the first generation of Chinese semioticians made their debut. His influence on Chinese scholars, therefore, is profound and far-reaching.
We thank Eco for his great contributions to semiotics. May he rest in Peace! Siempre imaginé que el Paradiso sería algún tipo de biblioteca.
Dear Umberto,
We owe a lot of thanks to you for wonderful contribution to semiotics. You helped found and develop interpretative semiotics, one of the most important approaches in contemporary semiotics, from which we have benefited greatly. You co-founded Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici, the influential semiotic journal which has become an important publication platform for many scholars in relevant fields.
You have been highly regarded and will be well remembered in China by the circles of semiotics and literary criticism for your insights, and by numerous other intellectuals as well for your beautiful novels and essays.
You have left us with a treasure of ideas and inspirations which stay with us as we continue the cause to which you have been so devoted. You have been working so enthusiastically and have been so productive. You have been too busy to take a rest…
Riposi in pace, Umberto. We love you.
As a new beginner of Semiotics, I have started my semiotic adventures, as many Chinese young scholars do, with reading Umberto Echo’s works. Different from other young scholars, however, my journey of semiotic exploration began with not his books on semiotics but his novel The Name of The Rose, which interested and inspired me so much. It is him who plants the seed of semiotics in me. I do want to say may him rest in peace in the heaven, however, I believe he will never stop thinking, reading and writing because his heaven may be in the sea of books. Dear Umberto, you may leave the world behind, but our world never leaves you.
An Encyclopedia has been closed, but our interpretations will never stop.
Like many Chinese semioticians, it’s eco who leads me into the universe of signs. His great thoughts are just like those most vigorous signs, whose interpretants fly across boundaries and enables them dialogical openness. Nowadays, more and more semioticians around the China are continuing to inherent and develop what he has found.
And we are grateful, since we are one of the intermediate points of the “infinite semiosis” inherited from Umberto Eco.
Rest in peace, dear Umberto.
