Saturday, October 20, 2007

Zogis

I have often heard of, and indeed seen, many—examples of "fundamentalist" types taking elements of their belief or practice rather too literally, but I must say this is the first time I've seen yoginah being quite so overly literal:

Zogis
शवआसन—śavāsana, the "corpse" posture (Photo: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)


It's "Zombie Yoga"; more images and examples of which may be found on Flickr under that tag.

My only question: Is this intended for the health conscious or spiritually-minded zombie—or just an example of kitschy marketers ("The event was sponsored by Skyhorse Publishing to promote The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead")? Perhaps someone misunderstood "viral marketing"?

Monday, October 1, 2007

The Gloom that Came to (va)sárnap*—the study of a song

(*: With apologies to HPL. Vasárnap is the Hungarian for "Sunday".)

Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to have my player create a playlist of all the tracks I had containing the word "Sunday" in their title. Two discoveries emerged from this: 1) it doesn't make for the most "uplifting" of playlists; 2) I have many more versions of "Gloomy Sunday" than I realized. For the curious, the playlist:



Mark Lanegan, "Ugly Sunday"

Heather Nova, "Gloomy Sunday"

Johnny Cash, "Sunday Morning Coming Down"

Sarah McLachlan, "Gloomy Sunday" (live)

Broken Poets, "One Sunday"

Serge Gainsbourg, "Gloomy Sunday"

Colin Meloy, "Every Day is like Sunday" (Morrissey cover)

Lydia Lunch, "Gloomy Sunday"

Nick Cave, "Sunday's Slave"

Diamanda Galás, "Gloomy Sunday"

Juliana Hatfield, "Some Rainy Sunday"

Sinéad O'Connor, "Gloomy Sunday"

Mark Lanegan, "Little Bit of Rain"

Vlado Kreslin, "Gloomy Sunday"

Nick Cave, "Ain't gonna Rain Anymore"

Paul Whiteman, "Gloomy Sunday"

Tom Waits, "A Little Rain"

Kronos Quartet, "Gloomy Sunday"

Bess Rogers, "Sunday"

Björk, "Gloomy Sunday"

Morphine, "Sundayafternoonweightlessness"

Billie Holiday, "Gloomy Sunday"

Steven Stapleton and David Tibet, "Mothering Sunday (Legion Legion)"


[Yes, the observant among you will have noticed three tracks have been slipped in which don't include Sunday in the title. I had more "Gloomy Sunday" tracks than I had of the others, and not wanting to stack them together one after the other, I pulled a couple of other tracks out to pad out the list; though, trying to remain thematic, the additional tracks' theme spins off from the rain motif of the Hatfield track.]

Listening to that put me on a course contemplating the song and its (unfortunate) history. The original lyrics, you may notice, have nothing to do with Sunday, written instead as "Vége a világnak" ("The world has ended") by Rezsô Seress following a devastating breakup with his partner. They were originally as follows:

Osz van és peregnek a sárgult levelek
Meghalt a földön az emberi szeretet
Bánatos könnyekkel zokog az öszi szél
Szívem már új tavaszt nem vár és nem remél
Hiába sírok és hiába szenvedek
Szívtelen rosszak és kapzsik az emberek...

Meghalt a szeretet!

Vége a világnak, vége a reménynek
Városok pusztulnak, srapnelek zenélnek
Emberek vérétol piros a tarka rét
Halottak fekszenek az úton szerteszét
Még egyszer elmondom csendben az imámat:
Uram, az emberek gyarlók és hibáznak...

Vége a világnak!

— Seress, 1933.

It's Fall and fall the yellowed leaves
as love leaves earth, all dead.
As wailing, weep the Autumn winds,
my heart expects no Spring again.
But to no avail my misery,
and my tears go all in vain,
as people are heartless,
greedy and fucked...

Love has died!

The world is finished, ended all expectation
as cities are crushed and shrapnel sings,
red-speckling the meadows with human blood.
The dead in abundance litter the streets
yet in silence I will offer this humble prayer:
    "Lord, people are weak, they make mistakes..."

The world has ended!

(me, 07/09/30; corrections welcomed)

The couple would later reunite, though only briefly before she committed suicide, leaving behind a two word note: "Szomorú Vasárnap", "Gloomy Sunday". (Though that's the popularized title, "szomorú" can represent a broad range of meanings in English, from a simpler melancholy to despair and hopelessness.) A friend of Seress', the poet László Jávor, went on to write a verse under that title which matched the rhythm and music of the first, and it is his text which has formed the basis of most English versions of the song. Originally:

Szomorú vasárnap száz fehér virággal
Vártalak kedvesem templomi imával
Álmokat kergeto vasárnap délelott
Bánatom hintaja nélküled visszajött
Azóta szomorú mindig a vasárnap
Könny csak az italom kenyerem a bánat...

Szomorú vasárnap

Utolsó vasárnap kedvesem gyere el
Pap is lesz, koporsó, ravatal, gyászlepel
Akkor is virág vár, virág és—koporsó
Virágos fák alatt utam az utolsó
Nyitva lesz szemem hogy még egyszer lássalak
Ne félj a szememtol holtan is áldalak...

Utolsó vasárnap

—Jávor

On a dismal Sunday, with what white flowers
I waited, my dear, praying for you,
chasing my dreams. That Sunday morning
my sorrows and coach returned without you.
And every Sunday since is sadness—
with but tears to drink and feeding on heartache.

Dreadful Sunday.

This final Sunday, my darling, come away;
the cleric will come with coffin, bier and winding-sheet.
There will be flowers for you then, flowers—and a coffin.
    "Under flowering trees, I leave the last time.
    My eyes will open for one last little look—
    Don't fear them, even in death I am blessing you...

    that last Sunday."

(me, 07/10/01; as above, feel free to correct)

Typically, in the English editions these lyrics were modified to be more "positive"/"happy ending"-ish (the origin of pop music, according to Diamanda Galás), thus the "third" verse that will be familiar to most who know the song, the passage that reinterprets—and thus renders innocuous—the whole song as if it had been but a dream.

Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless
Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless
Little white flowers will never awaken you
Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you
Angels have no thought of ever returning you
Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?

Gloomy Sunday

Gloomy is Sunday, with shadows I spend it all
My heart and I have decided to end it all
Soon there'll be candles and prayers that are sad I know
Let them not weep let them know that I'm glad to go
Death is no dream for in death I'm caressing you
With the last breath of my soul I'll be blessing you

Gloomy Sunday

    Dreaming, I was only dreaming
    I wake and I find you asleep in the deep of my heart, here
    Darling, I hope that my dream never haunted you
    My heart is telling you how much I wanted you

    Gloomy Sunday

In the several versions that appear in the above playlist, all but two use that text (though Lunch rightfully omits the fraudulent third verse). The English exception being (naturally) Diamanda Galás who chose to perform the more uncommon (though more faithful) translation of Desmond Carter:

Sadly one Sunday, I waited and waited
with flowers in my arms, for the grief I'd created.
I waited 'til dreams, like my heart, were all broken,
the flowers were all dead and the words were unspoken.
The grief that I knew was beyond all consoling,
the beat of my heart was a bell that was tolling...

saddest of Sundays.

Then came the Sunday when you came to find me—
they brought me to church and I left you behind me.
My eyes would not see one I wanted to love me...
    "The earth and the flowers are forever above me—
    the bell tolled for me and the wind whispered, 'Never!'
    but you I have loved and I'll bless you forever...

    last of all Sundays."

The other exception is Serge Gainsbourg, who performed the Marèze / Gonda French translation of Jávor's text, which is also thankfully* free of the English "happy ending", though Gainsbourg does sing the second verse twice to match the three verse structure. [*: No, of course I don't mean "thanfully" in that it has an unhappy ending, only thankfully in that it tries to be faithful to the source, instead of interpolating a verse that entirely changes the meaning and nature of the work.]

Sombre Dimanche, les bras tout chargés de fleurs
Je suis entré dans notre chambre le coeur las
Car je savais déjà que tu ne viendrais pas
Et j'ai chanté des mots d'amour et de douleur
Je suis resté tout seul et j'ai pleuré tout bas
En écoutant hurler la plainte des frimas

Sombre Dimanche

Je mourrai un dimanche où j'aurai trop souffert
Alors tu reviendras, mais je serai parti
Des cierges brûleront comme un ardent espoir
Et pour toi, sans effort, mes yeux seront ouverts
N'aie pas peur, mon amour, s'ils ne peuvent te voir
Ils te diront que je t'aimais plus que ma vie

Sombre Dimanche

Though she varies her lyrics slightly here from those used in the recording on my playlist, I was still delighted to find that someone's uploaded a video of Diamanda performing the piece:

As for Seress, he would go on to commit suicide by hurling himself from a window of his apartment on January 11, 1968; he was 68.

Friday, September 21, 2007

"The figo for thee!": Humanity's favorite finger, 4000 years and going strong

[Extracted from a letter to a friend]

But now, as they say, for something completely different. Clicking on that link to your dreams tag, I ran across quite a few that I don't recall having read before—one of these days, I'm going to have to go back and read from the beginning: I seem to have missed quite a lot during my '04-'05 absence—but while I haven't had a chance to read all of them, one in particular did stand out to me. Not the dream part, so much, but the comment about the Bird in the ancient world. This, as my perverse nature would have it, is something I've investigated in the past, so I thought I'd close with a little ramble on the same. Hopefully it will lend itself more to humor than annoyance!

Beginning, as I so often do, in the Bible, there's a line in Isaiah 58:9 that, though some modern translations (like, sadly, the JPS Tanakh) render it as a "menacing hand", Jerome translated "digitum extendere", and some have interpreted that extended finger to be the same "shameful" sign seemingly known throughout the world and history. Jerome himself, in one of the letters to Marcella (27), makes a remark about causing "everyone to point at me the finger of scorn" (admittedly, I'm using that popular translation for effect; literally, he only wrote "cunctorum digitis notor", which could just as easily mean he was being pointed out or talked about around town—though the context of both his letter and the City would support that they probably were giving him the gesture [and that Jerome goes on just a couple of sentences later to begin quoting Horace and referring to his "two-legged asses" (bipedes asellos), suggests, at least to me, that it's likely what he had in mind]). A browse through the literature will turn up several references to the digitus impudicus, digitus infamis, digitus lasciuus or digitus tribadis, among others. Juvenal, the tenth satire, lines 51–53 read "ridebat curas nec non et gaudia uolgi, | interdum et lacrimas, cum Fortunæ ipse minaci | mandaret laqueum mediumque ostenderet unguem."—"He would laugh at the cares and pleasures of the crowd, sometimes even at their tears, while for himself he gave ill-Fortune a noose and the finger." Martial opens II.28 with "rideto multum qui te, Sextille, cinædum | dixerit et digitum porrigito medium." ("Heartily mock who calls you catamite, Sextillus, and give them the finger.") Suetonius claimed that Augustus expelled the entertainer Pylades when the latter flipped off a heckler, and there's a tale in Gestures (Morris) that says Caligula got a kick out of making people kiss his digitus lasciuus. But these lads are far from the oldest references. The Greeks have a specific verb for giving the finger, σκιμᾱλίζω, which (who else) Aristophanes enjoyed (it appears in "Peace", alongside Hermes remarking on flatulence, for example). There's also the incident in "Clouds", between Strepsiades and Socrates, ll. 645–656 or so, where Socrates is trying to educate him on the matter of metre, and having mentioned the dactyl, is interrupted thus by Strep., "The dactyl? By god, I know that one!" (κατὰ δάκτυλον; νὴ τὸν Δί', ἀλλ' οἶδ'.) Soc., "Tell me, then." (εἰπὲ δή.) Strep., "What else but this? [showing a finger, Greek dactyl] | On the other hand, I've used this one [showing another] since a boy." (τίς ἄλλος ἀντὶ τουτουὶ τοῦ δακτύλου; | πρὸ τοῦ μέν, ἔτ' ἐμοῦ παιδὸς ὄντος, οὑτοσί.) Soc., "You're a stupid bore!" (ἀγρεῖος εἶ καὶ σκαιός.) [Oddly, given the terms used, Socrates could just as easily be calling him a left-handed farmer—I suppose that gives us an idea of what the Greeks thought of sinister rustics.] But going back to our Isaian passage, while it seems the thing to avoid even the hint of "vulgar" meaning in a "holy" passage, the language would seem to support it, and it's not unknown—the same word used here for "finger" is attested in Middle Hebrew, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic, Ge'ez, Akkadian and possibly others: there's an old Babylonian passage even, including an occurrence in the Hammurapi code, úbanum eliša itariṣma (ú-ba-nu-um e-li-ša it-ta-ri-iṣ-ma), meaning to point or extend the finger in an insulting or accusatory way, with sexual connotations from the extant examples (in the Law Code it seems to have been an accusation of adultery), where úbanum is considered to be related to the Hebrew term used in Isaiah (אצבע). Apparently the Egyptians (from the Hebrew telling) thought this was equivalent to sending a plague of lice, since Exodus 8:19 has the pharaoh's magicians declaring "This is the finger of God!"

Thankfully, he'd mellowed out rather a lot by the time he gave Jesus the bird at his baptism.

You're right, I think, that it does sound like a great topic for a class. For the humanities, maybe, you could do a bit on The Role of Gestures in the Ancient World, and use it as an excuse to let the students know how you feel about them.

I imagine it would become an immensely popular thing—for instructors if not for students!

For sourceworks, de Jorio's Gesture in Classical Antiquity (HB or paper) touches on it (along with many other gestures, from friendly to foul), including citing another bit of Martial [VI:70, "ostendit digitum, sed impudicum"]; Corbeill's Gesture in Ancient Rome also touches on it, often conjoined to the ficus, where it can both be taken as a threat or insult as well as a means of warding off the evil eye ("fuck you, evil eye!"?) or chasing off unclean spirits ("a figo for thee, satan!"—alternatively, "PISTOL: Art thou his friend? HENRY V: And his kinsman too. PISTOL: The figo for thee, then! HENRY V: I thank you: God be with you!", Henry V, Act IV, scene I.) In Daniel Matt's edition of the Zohar (volumes I, II, III, IV, V), he discusses how tradition holds that when Moses raised his hands to defeat the Amalekites in Ex. 17.8-16, he was actually giving them the finger—"Take that, Amalekites!" If so, given that he held up his hand in that fashion, according to the passage, the whole day till the sun went down, even, after tiring, having Aaron and Hur hold up his arm for him, and given that the place was, on that account, named YHWH nissi, or the banner, or sign, of YHWH, does that mean that the YHWH nissi is actually the Finger, not the magen Dawid? That would be some national flag, wouldn't it?

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Bibliotecaphilia

Lento en mi sombra, la penumbra hueca
exploro con el báculo indeciso,
yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso
bajo la especie de una biblioteca.

—Jorge Luis Borges, "Poema de los dones"

Imported from VOX due to its closing.

Friday, December 8, 2006

Vox Hunt: By My Favorite Artist

Show us something by your favorite artist.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) was, in my opinion, a brilliant painter, and a rather good sculptor, of the orientalist style. While I don't know that I can be said to have a single "favorite" artist, he is certainly one of those I most admire. Perhaps you may see why, seeing a few samples here of his work.

The Bacchante

"The Bacchante", oil on canvas, roughly 18 5/8 inches across (47.5 cm); currently in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France.

Markos Botsaris

"Markos Botsaris", oil on canvas from 1874, measured 27 1/2 x 21 1/4 inches (70 x 54 cm), but unfortunately, this gem is lost today.

Portrait of a Lady

"Portrait of a Lady". Oil on canvas, from sometime between 1866-1870. 21 1/4 x 14 1/8 inches (54 x 36 cm), in a private collection. I've always been fascinated by the detail and level of quality in the apparent texture of the dress, esp. in the lower and lower-left portion.

The Teaser of the Narghile

"The Teaser of the Narghile" aka "The Pipelighter". C. 1898, oil on canvas; 21 3/8 x 25 7/8 inches (54.6 x 66cm); currently in a private collection.

Imported from VOX due to its closing.

Sunday, October 1, 2006

QotD: Strike up the Band

Do you play any musical instruments?

Several, to varying degrees of competence. Bass guitar, fingerstyle acoustic guitar, psaltery, banjo, mandolin, violin, piano/keyboards, recorder, random and varied other things. Also create my own instruments in cSound and play and write for those.

Imported from VOX due to its closing.

Friday, September 22, 2006

QotD: This is when I'm at my Best

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

By nature I prefer the night and, given the opportunity and the option, I'd certainly prefer to sleep by day and wake by night. These days, however, I tend to be awake most of both. Ordinarily I do my best work by night (it's why my music appears under the name of "Agrypnia"), but present obligations require a great deal of work by day.

Imported from VOX due to its closing.