The Epic of Kings. Dr
Charles Melville, a lecturer of the
University of Cambridge is compiling a list of all the world’s handwritten and
illustrated versions of the
Shahnameh, the
masterpiece of Iranian poet
Ferdowsi. “In the first step, I began to search libraries and museums in Iran, Turkey, the United States, India, and a number of European countries. After finding the sources, I traveled to the countries to study the versions that I had found in my search”.
Ferdowsi's epic poem
(English translation here) has 62 Stories, 990 Chapters, and contains 60,000 rhyming couplets -- making it more than seven times the length of Homer's
Iliad.
posted by matteo
on Apr 11, 2005 -
6 comments
Here is the story of Hsuan Tsang / A Buddhist monk, he went from Xian to southern India / And back--on horseback, on camel-back, on elephant-back, and on foot. / Ten thousand miles... / Mountains and deserts, / In search of the Truth...
Traversing rivers and deserts, scaling mountains and
passing through desolate lands with no traces of human habitation,
7th century Chinese monk
Hsuan Tsang made his journey in 627 AD from Changan to India for religious purposes.
His detailed travel journal is believed to be among the
earliest reliable sources of information about distant countries whose terrain and customs had been known, at that time, in only the sketchiest way.
He travelled over land mostly on foot and horseback
along the Silk Road, west towards India. The Buddhist scholar’s pilgrimage (627-645 AD) contributed enormously to the cultural flow between East and West Asia. His "Hsi Yu Ki" or "
Records of the Western World" is considered the most valuable book source for the study of ancient Indian history and culture. Italian explorer
Marco Polo, whose
travel writings fired the imagination of Europeans for centuries, was believed
to have used Hsuan Tsang’s travelogue as a guide during his travels in the 13th century. More than 1,300 years after Hsuan Tsang’s
historical journey, Taiwanese magazine
Rhythms Monthly embarked on
a project to retrace Hsuan Tsang’s 19-year pilgrimage through a road that,
today, belongs to 11 different countries.
more inside
posted by matteo
on Nov 30, 2004 -
20 comments
With our shipwrecked hearts. Ninety years ago
Dino Campana, impoverished and outcast
poet self-published his book
Canti Orfici (.pdf file) ("
Orphic Songs", mastefully
translated into English by
poet Charles Wright). The birth of the book wasn't marred only by Campana's mental illness (soon afterwards, he was committed to a mental institution). Initially, the "Orphic Songs" were submitted for possible publication to the poet/
painter Ardengo Soffici, who promptly
lost the manuscript. Campana spent the next six months reconstructing the book from memory. Finally in 1914, with the help of a local printer of religious tracts, he self-published a first edition of around 500, selling only 44. Campana attempted, with marginal success, to sell the remainder of his portion of the run (the printer had taken half the books as partial printing payment) himself at cafes in Florence.
He is now remembered as one of Italy's greatest, most imaginative poets (with
biographies ,
award-
winning movies about his troubled life and his dangerous, scandalous
love affair with fellow writer
Sibilla Aleramo.
(more inside)
posted by matteo
on Sep 14, 2004 -
11 comments
Her name was Courage & is written Olga "Olga"
(.pdf file in main link) is
Olga Rudge,
violinist, first promoter of the
Vivaldi Renaissance, and longtime companion of the
poet Ezra Pound.
Pound maintained a complicated and
delicate balance between the two most significant women in his life, Olga and his wife
Dorothy Shakespear (who, among other things, was
the daughter of Yeats's mistress).
‘‘Paris is where EP and OR met, and everything in my life happened,’’ Olga (listen to her voice
here) said later of the chance encounter with
Ezra at
20, rue Jacob, in the salon of
Natalie Barney. They were together for
fifty years, through the
dark-night years of
Pound's madness (arrested in 1945 for
treason, deemed unable to stand trial and sent to an American mental institution, he once suggested to the UPI bureau chief in Rome
that the United States trade Guam for some sound films of Japanese Noh plays, asked Truman many times to make him Ambadassor to Japan or Moscow;
Guy Davenport reports dining with him one evening and all Ez said was "gnocchi"), until
the poet's death in 1972.
She lived on for another quarter century, turning up at conferences of
Pound scholars --as far afield as Hailey,
Idaho, Pound's birthplace, where she gave a
lecture in the local movie theater. "Write about Pound", she told publishers who asked her to write her autobiography.
(more inside, with Cantos)
posted by matteo
on Jul 8, 2004 -
15 comments
The poet of nightfall Twentyfive years ago,
film director
Nicholas Ray died in New York. Like
Jacques Tati and
Samuel Fuller, Ray
did a lot of living before he ever
got around to filmmaking: he was of part of
Frank Lloyd Wright's
Taliesin Fellowship, a devotee of southern
folk music, an avant-garde theatre director. He had made
Rebel Without a Cause and survived
James Dean, and the title of the film seemed to dramatise his terrible, self-destructive battles with Hollywood. His films (
They Live By Night,
In a Lonely Place,
On Dangerous Ground,
Johnny Guitar,
The Savage Innocents,
King of Kings) were in love with
imprisoned life, but the dark edge of mourning was always there, too. He was idolised by the young
Cahiers du
Cinema critics who would become the directors of the New Wave.
François Truffaut once noted: "There are no Ray films that do not have a scene at the
close of day; he is the poet of nightfall, and of course everything is permitted in Hollywood except poetry." Contrasting Ray and Howard Hawks, he added: "But anyone who rejects either should never go to the movies again, never see any more films".
Jean-Luc Godard offered another sweeping panegyric: "There was theatre (
Griffith), poetry (
Murnau), painting (
Rossellini), dance (
Eisenstein), music (
Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And
cinema is Nicholas Ray. These days,
lucky Chicagoans can admire one of Ray's greatest works,
Bitter Victory -- the film about the dangerous games men play with macho self-images...
(more inside)
posted by matteo
on Jun 18, 2004 -
16 comments
"Whadyawant, motherf*ck?" These are the first words
Charles Bukowski speaks in
John Dullaghan's
documentary about the
poet and
novelist,
famous for his writing and infamous for his
drinking and
brawling and
screwing. The audience member might respond, "To hear your story,
Hank, that's what I want."
The movie opens with friends (Sean Penn, Harry Dean Stanton, Bono) and colleagues and lovers and fans
recounting the myth; theirs are stories of blades pulled on the maitre d' of the swanky
Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, of dangling dicks revealed in public, of
a drunk who'd just as soon crack his bottle over your head than share its contents.
(more inside)
posted by matteo
on May 28, 2004 -
26 comments
