stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus

As people rush to cede their cognition to a technology that is literally setting our world on fire, I note that Fahrenheit 451 was published on this date in 1953:

"You weren't there, you didn't see," he said. "There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing."

"She was simple-minded."

"She was as rational as you and I, more so perhaps, and we burned her."

"That's water under the bridge."

"No, not water; fire. You ever seen a burned house? It smoulders for days. Well, this fire'll last me the rest of my life. God! I've been trying to put it out, in my mind, all night. I'm crazy with trying."

And speaking of burning books, I recently completed my quasi-regular re-read (and multiple re-watches) of The Name of the Rose, which is of a piece:

“It seemed to me, as I read this page, that I had read some of these words before, and some phrases that are almost the same, which I have seen elsewhere, return to my mind. It seems to me, indeed, that this page speaks of something there has been talk about during these past days. . . . But I cannot recall what. I must think it over. Perhaps I’ll have to read other books.” 

“Why? To know what one book says you must read others?” 

“At times this can be so. Often books speak of other books. Often a harmless book is like a seed that will blossom into a dangerous book, or it is the other way around: it is the sweet fruit of a bitter stem. In reading Albert, couldn’t I learn what Thomas might have said? Or in reading Thomas, know what Averroës said?” 

“True,” I said, amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.

In conclusion: goose-stepping morons should try reading books instead of burning them. 

Selah.

PS - The woman in the first pic is Bee Duffell, who appears in both Fahrenheit 451 and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  I have been known to mix her up with Zelda Rubinstein.