تابوتِ ﻓﻴﻪ سکینہ

From one to all

aide-mémoire II

aide-mémoire

LYCOPHRON, Alexandra

LYCOPHRON of Chalcis was a Greek poet and scholar of the Library of Alexandria who flourished in the C3rd BC. His cryptic poem, the Alexandra, tells the stories of the heroes of the Trojan War in the riddling, prophetic words of the Trojan princess Cassandra.

ALEXANDRA, TRANSLATED BY A. W. MAIR
The speaker is a slave appointed to watch Cassandra and report her prophecies. He addresses Priam.

[1] ALL will I tell truly that thou askest from the utter beginning, and if the tale be prolonged, forgive me, master. For not quietly as of old did the maiden loose the varied voice of her oracles, but poured forth a weird confused cry, and uttered wild words from her bay-chewing mouth, imitating the speech of the dark Sphinx. Thereof what in heart and memory I hold, hear thou, O King, and, pondering with wise mind, wind and pursue the obscure paths of her riddles, whereso a clear track guides by a straight way through things wrapped in darkness. And I, cutting the utter bounding thread, will trace her paths of devious speech, striking the starting-point like winged runner.

Continued at http://www.theoi.com/Text/LycophronAlexandra.html

Greek Bucolic Poets

THE PATTERN POEMS are ancient Greek poems composed in the "bucolic" tradition with verses designed to form a specific shape (such as a pipe, an egg, wings, altar, etc.) and with complimentary theme. The few surviving examples of the genre date mainly from the Hellenistic era (C3rd to 2nd BC) and are preserved in a section of the Greek Anthology of texts.

Since the structure of these poems is completely lost in translation, I have included the Greek texts here to illustrate the form. Several of the works are also mythological riddles along the lines of Lycophron's Alexandra.

SIMIAS II. THE WINGS

This poem seems to have been inscribed on the wings of a statue – perhaps a votive statue – representing Love as a bearded child. The metre is the same as that of the Axe with the difference that the lines are to be read in the usual order. The poem also differs from the Axe in making no reference, except by its shape, to the wings of Love. Moreover it contains no hint of dedication. (Anthology XV, 24.)

Behold the ruler of the deep-bosomed Earth, the turner upside-down of the Son of Acmon,1 and have no fear that so little a person should have so plentiful a crop of beard to his chin. For I was born when Necessity bare rule, and all creatures, moved they in Air or in Chaos, were kept though her dismal governance far apart. Swift-flying son of Cypris and war-lord Ares – I am not that at all; for by no force came I into rule, but by gentle-willed persuasion, and yet all alike, Earth, deep Sea, and brazen Heaven, bowed to my behest, and I took to myself their old sceptre and made me a judge among gods.

1. "Son of Acmon" : Heaven.

Palatine Apollo

Tetraktys

The name Pythagoras comes from: "pithia", Apollo's temple, and, "agoras", the [people's] place.

Xu Bing: 'Book from The Sky'

Institution: The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Materials: Mixed media installation / Hand-printed books and scrolls printed from blocks inscribed with ''false'' characters.

An installation that took Xu Bing over four years to complete, A Book from The Sky is comprised of printed volumes and scrolls containing four thousand ''false'' Chinese characters invented by the artist and then painstakingly hand-cut onto wooden printing blocks.

Vetula

Before Christianisation, in traditional pagan European culture it was believed that the spirit of the "corn" (in modern American English, "corn" would be "grain") lived amongst the crop, and that the harvest made it effectively homeless. J.G. Frazer devotes chapters in The Golden Bough to "Corn-Mother and Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe" (chs. 45-48) and adduces European folkloric examples collected in great abundance by W. Mannhardt. Among the customs attached to the last sheaf of the harvest were hollow shapes fashioned from the last sheaf of wheat or other cereal crops. The corn spirit would then spend the winter in this home until the "corn dolly" was ploughed into the first furrow of the new season. "Dolly" may be a corruption of "idol" or may have come from the Greek word 'eidolon' (that which represents something else as does the word 'idol').

Hoe's One Cylinder Printing Press

Valentine's Day Workshop

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