Melodic dreamscapes to follow the path of the heart

Amazon.com: A serene, gently atmospheric, and cohesive package, The Emerald Way may be, end to end, the most satisfying of the eight recordings released so far by the husband-and-wife team of Pamela and Randy Copus, known as 2002. The pair specialize in creating pillow-soft, melodic dreamscapes that could be fairly termed Enya-lite. What gives The Emerald Way its particular appeal is the duo’s willingness to probe a little deeper into the cosmos, giving this disc a boost over This Moment Now, 2002’s previous release, which at times is too dainty for its own good. Stardusted selections here such as “Soul Doors,” “Timeless,” and the title track exhibit yearning, searching qualities that seem capable of elevating the spirit as well as soothing it, which seems to be the duo’s usual aspiration. This is not serious space music, of course. Rather, it is a gentle-on-the-ear mix of keyboards, guitar, strings, flute, pennywhistle, and female voicings intended to evoke a heart-lifting state of calm–soundtrack-like music suited for relaxed moments when you’re mentally rolling the closing credits on a benign daydream. –Terry Wood

Album Description:Inspired by a tale from Sri Aurobindo, this album is about choosing to follow the path of the heart. Soulful flutes, silky guitar and piano tell the story, accompanied by lush strings, harp and chimes blending into 2002’s signature sound, renowned for comfort and deep relaxation. The Emerald Way Posted on November 21st, 2006 at 10:31 pm by andreas

Sonorous effusions of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri

YOUR OWN DIVIDED FACE - Discomfort with the either/or lies at the heart of Jejuri TELLING TALES AMIT CHAUDHURI This is the introduction to the New York Review of Books Classics reissue of Jejuri. amitchaudhuri@hotmail.com

A generation of Indian poets in English (A.K. Ramanujan, Mehrotra, Kolatkar) had turned to the idiosyncratic language, and the capacity for eye-level attentiveness, of American poetry to create yet another mongrel Indian diction — to reorder familiar experience, and to fashion a demotic that escaped the echoes of both Queen’s English and the sonorous effusions of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri and the poorly-translated but ubiquitous Gitanjali of Tagore; to bypass, as it were, the expectations that terms like ‘English literature’ and ‘Indian culture’ raised...

I’ve said that in the larger unfolding story of the independent nation, writing poetry in English was a minor, marginal and occasionally controversial activity. This remained so in spite of Nissim Ezekiel’s attempts to invest the enterprise with seriousness, to stir Anglophone readers as well as writers in the vernaculars, both of whom were busy with more important projects, to see it as something more than, at best, a genteel and harmless preoccupation; at worst, as a waste of time, even a betrayal. Ezekiel defied this combination of indifference and moral and nationalistic chauvinism with a critical puritanism, and had a small measure of success. But marginal endeavours have their own excitements, disappointments, and dangers.

Shelley was not an evolutionary being but a being of a higher plane

Re: The Death of Man or Post-Humanism 101 by RY Deshpande

on Mon 20 Nov 2006 08:43 PM PST Profile Permanent Link

We have a letter from Sri Aurobindo about Shelley, the British romantic poet. When Amal asked him if Harindranath Chattopadhaya was the reincarnation of Shelley, he replied: “I imagine Shelley was not an evolutionary being but a being of a higher plane assisting the evolution.” Could that not be the reason also for his suffering here in a very poignant way?—“I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed.” It is said that at the beginning of the Indian independence movement, about a hundred years ago, special souls had come down to participate in it. Sri Aurobindo has spoken about the necessity of India’s freedom for his spiritual work. Are these not connected with it?

Sri Aurobindo's Exposition on the Nature of Poetry

by Dr. Nithyanantha Bhat

Journal of Sukrtindra Oriental Research Institute

Half - yearly Research Journal - Vol. 7, No. 2, April 2006

[MLBD Newletter Nov '06]

Merleau Ponty comes closer to the truth of language

Code and the pentecostal condition by Rich on Fri 17 Nov 2006 10:53 AM PST Permanent Link (since any attempt at a cross-epochal, hermeneutics founded upon The Future Poetry must begin with a consideration of language, so here again is chapter 1) Disappearances
chapter 1 (code and the pentecostal condition) by Richard Carlson

In contrast to Derrida who argues that both oral and written language are the same Abrams argues: “Derrida does not notice some of the most glaring differences between alphabetic and non-alphabetic modes of thought differences that make themselves evident in our experience to the animate earth. While Derrida assimilates all language to writing (l'ecriture) my approach has been largely the reverse, to show all discourse, even written discourse such as this is implicitly sensorial and bodily, and hence remains bound like a sensing world that is never exclusively human. (Abram 1987 p 289)

Abram claims phenomenologist Merleau Ponty comes closer to the truth of language and phenomena as he explored the mystery between the rules of language la langue and its creative expression la parole. In the following passage he describes and how Merleau Ponty's perspective diverges from Saussure and Derrida.

“Sassure's distinction between the structure of language and the activity of speech is ultimately under mind by Merleau-Ponty who blended the two dimensions (langua, parole) back together into a single ever evolving matrix. While individual speech acts are surely guided by the structural lattice of language, the lattice is nothing other than a sedimented result of previous acts of speech, and will itself be altered by the very activity it now guides. Language is not a fixed or ideal form but an evolving medium we collectively inhabit, a vast topological matrix in which speaking bodies are generative sites, vortices where the matrix itself is continually being spun out of the silence of sensorial experience.

What Merleau Ponty retains from Saussure is his notion of any language as an interdependent, web like system of relations. But since our expressive bodies are for Merleau Ponty necessary parts of this system -since the web of language is for him a carnal medium woven from the depths of our perceptual world that is relational and web like in character, and hence that the organic , interconnected matrix of sensorial reality itself. Ultimately it is not human language that is primary , but rather the sensuous , perceptual life-world, whose wild, participatory logic ramifies itself in language”.. (Abram 1997 p84)

Sound Wizard Audio Design and Consultancy of Auroville

Wednesday, November 15, 2006 A.M Studio - See What's Inside

A.R. Rahman launches his new studio in 2005. The 3,000 square-foot recording studio in Chennai, India renamed A.M. Studios (pictured) is the most comprehensive and equipped with latest technology in Asia. It took nearly three years to complete. Acoustic design and architectural plans for the studios were conceived by Studio 440 Architecture & Acoustics in Hollywood, Calif. Sound Wizard Audio Design and Consultancy of Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India, provided project management and acoustical consulting. Equipment for the studios was specified and supplied by Daxco Digital of Singapore. A local architectural and construction firm in Chennai did the construction work. Posted by arrahmanfan at 7:33 AM

The musical communities of Pondicherry and Auroville

Jalshaghar Tuesday, November 14, 2006 The Dawn of a Dream

The musical communities of Pondicherry and Auroville with their diverse range of musicians from differing backgrounds have always lent themselves to great possibilities of linking musical styles and cultures. The word “fusion” that has long been used to describe music that unites in this way, has however often lead to misrepresentation, since it is rare that music from different cultures can be convincingly fused together. Jalshaghar aims to move away from this notion, allowing the genres of both Indian classical and Jazz to run side by side and transport their music on parallel tracks rather than an attempt to merge them together. In this project accomplished musicians from both fields have come together, the result of which is a blend of each players individual style and sound, combined with the inspiration and ideas drawn from the other musicians around them. posted by Matt AV @ 8:28 PM

New forms of epics will continue to be written

Epic Poetry by Maria Claudia Faverio

The real goal of the epic, from Homer to Spenser over Vergil and Dante, has been to help man understand the past (which in epic poetry, as we have stated, includes "what might have happened") through the deeds of a hero representing the fate of his community in order to better shape the future. In the West, the "Iliad", "Odyssey", and "Nibelungenlied", and in the East, the "Mahabharata", "Ramayana", and "Shahnama" are often cited as outstanding examples of the epic genre. To these we have to add Vergil's "Aeneid", Lucan's "Pharsalia", and Statius's "Thebaid". The first recorded epic is the Sumerian "Gilgamesh", while the longest is the "Tibetan Epic" of King Gesar, composed of roughly 20 volumes and more than one million verses.1

It is also appropriate at this stage to mention some of the translations of the greatest epics, as they constitute works of art in themselves, like Douglas's "Aeneid", Harington's "Ariosto", Fairfax's "Tasso", Chapman's "Homer", Sylvester's "Du Bartas", and Pope's "Iliad". It is thanks to them that we can read the greatest epics of the past, although of course a translation will never be like the original...

"Beowulf", written in alliterative measure, represents about 10% of the extant corpus of Old English poetry. It has 3,182 lines in a single manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A XV) and is considered the masterpiece of Old English literature. It was most probably written between 700 and 750 (but only printed in 1815) by a Christian poet (Beowulf himself was a pagan, but in a Christian setting, as Grendel and Grendel's mother are described as the kin of Cain in a Germanic warrior society, thus mixing Christian and pagan elements) and describes events of the 6th century...

"Paradise Lost" is an epic poem of extraordinary organization and power of imagination, not lacking a touch of irony too, written in blank verse5 (a very unconventional decision for an epic work, as rhyme was the standard for this kind of dignified poetry, as established by the great continental epic writers6) and recounting the story of the fall of Satan and the subsequent temptation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden "“ another innovative act giving up the traditional heroic theme for a more "human" story, as Adam and Eve are represented in all their humanity, a little bit like the French impressionist painters had shifted from officialdom and war to scenes of ordinary life, and Shakespeare from the traditional historical play to a kind of play where ordinary people are the real protagonists...

The eighteenth century also witnessed the creation of two great works belonging to the traditional epic, as traditions are always hard to die: Pope's "Iliad" and Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Pope's translation of the "Iliad" is the result of six years of hard work, although Pope confessed that his work was nothing compared to Homer's, whom he admired with quasi-religious reverence...

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the idea of the epic and its zeal had almost perished. The few attempts at an epic work were unsuccessful, like Crabbe's, an impossibility of attainment of which he was fully conscious. The old mystical idea of the epic itself didn't exist any more in the nineteenth century, as new forces and interests were gaining ground...

The twentieth century has also produced some significant poetry works of epic scope, like "Savitri" by Aurobindo Ghose, "The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel" by Nikos Kazantzakis, "Paterson" by William Carlos Williams, to name just a few, as well as new kinds of modern epics like "The Prelude" by William Wordsworth (a long lyric biographical poem), "Der Ring der Nibelungen" by Richard Wagner (an opera), "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, and "The Cantos" by Ezra Pound.

To conclude, I would like to remark that with different objectives and styles, new forms of epics will continue to be written also in the twenty-first century, as we are witnessing in the works of the proponents of "Expansive Poetry", an umbrella term coined by Frederick Feirstein for a new kind of long poetry started in the 1980s and characterized by strong narrative and dramatic elements. Labels: history, Maria Claudia Faverio, poetry

The underworld stories

Descent to the Underworld: Networked Creative Collaboration

Nora Barry March 2, 2006
I chose the Descent story as the project backbone, because the story of a journey to the underworld appears in every culture, as does a story of creation. In the underworld stories, a lover or child dies, or is kidnapped by a ruler of the underworld. The bereaved person then goes in search of the loved one, wandering the world until he or she finds the entrance to the underworld, gets past the guardian and confronts/overcome the underworld king. Frequently there is one final challenge on the ascent, which many do not pass. The underworld stories most familiar to Western Culture are “Demeter and Persephone” and “Orpheus and Eurydice”. Other versions include the Nordic “Baldur”, the Egyptian “Isis”, the Indian “Savitri” and the American Indian, “Blue Jay”.

All of the students and faculty were sent copies of the different tales, and asked to work with their partner school in developing their own interpretation of the story. For the game itself, we chose the “Orpheus” motif, though we did not disclose that to the students. Ironically, they all chose the “Orpheus” storyline, right down to the gender roles (in the game we designed an option to rescue a man or a woman). While most of them had probably not seen Cocteau’s movie version, “Orphee”, it could be that this was the narrative most familiar to all of them, because it the Underworld narrative motif is found in a number of video games. Or maybe Jung was more right than we know.

Oriya theatre festival

Annapurna Theatre to stage a marathon drama festival Friday, October 27, 2006 Source: The Pioneer

Cuttack: Annapurna Theatre (B Group), Cuttack, is going to stage a marathon drama festival consisting of six plays on October 29. These plays will be staged one after another without any break or screen drop and by the same number of artists. This epoch making venture will be first in the history of theatre. Nowhere in the world such marathon drama festival has been staged till date, said Himanshu Parija (Chandi), noted director of Ollywood and a former theatre actor at a Press conference on Wednesday.

The plays, which have been staged in the last six months have been directed by Umesh Dash (Tania). Each drama consists of 13 actors, two actresses and two child artistes (one boy and one girl). The drama festival will begin at 5 pm and will continue till midnight. This adventurous mission of Annapurna Theatre has been intimated to the office of Limca Book Of Records and response from their side is awaited said, Jugaprakash Kanungo, president of the theatre. The dramas to be staged in this festival are Baimana Ho, Eti Eka Jugara, Daktar Babu, Asha -The Family Pension; Mahapap- Murder in the Dark and Kataka- End is the Beginning. A medical team along with an ambulance will remain alert for any contingency arising on the day. Inspite of adversity and financial scarcity the organisers have not dithered from their path.

Their belief is not unfounded as it is the theatre, which gives the initial grooming in acting and actors from this stage later have made it big in Ollywood and television said, Umesh Dash the director. The 17 actors who are participating in this unique venture are Sandip Pani, Kabula Mohanty, Dillip Choubey, Hemant Dash, Sunil Nayak, Yogesh Acharjya, Saroj Samal, Kailash Kar, D Prakash Rao, Tapan Samal, Ajay, Amar, Rajesh women actress are Sasmita Singh and Angurbala Nayak. The two child artists are Kanha and Nikita.

We are a noisy species

Greeting Chitra Raman Thursday, October 19, 2006: I know what you are thinking. Who needs another blog? Not you. As you read this, your mind is a scrolling marquee of things to do next, truncated conversation fragments, leapfrogging ideas, an obsessively recurrent tune. With a slight movement of your finger, you can launch yourself back into the noiseless din of intersecting URLs. Perhaps what we all need is a space where we can take a break from listening to what we hear, and start listening to what we know. This is my place to do just that.

We are a noisy species. We crave validation and agreement. And so, we prefer the company of like-minded people. I am no different; but as I prepare to pour my ideas into the void, I prepare myself also to welcome all fellow travelers, whether kind or critical. So get up and pour yourself your favorite beverage, and stay awhile. I cannot promise to always deliver a spa experience; but I do promise to try not to bore you. Posted by Chitra at 12:50 PM 10 comments

Without any affectation or sense of alienation

I.K. Sharma seeks to present O.P. Bhatnagar as “a critic with a rare generosity of understanding,” to quote Prema Nandakumar (from her letter to him). In the first essay, Bhatnagar convinces us that poets such as Toru Dutt, Aru Dutt, Romesh Chander Dutt and Manmohan Ghose wrote with Indian history and culture wedded into their medium. Tagore and Sri Aurobindo were keen about their poetic content rather than the medium, and without any affectation or sense of alienation, “exile or worked-up nostalgia for the country or language or loss of identity” noticed in Nissim Ezekiel, R. Parthasarathy or A.K. Ramanujan. Poets such as Kamala Das, I.K. Sharma, Narsingh Srivastava and Jayanta Mahapatra write with a sense of “participation in the creative act” rather than demonstration of “western attitudes”, mode or style of expression. posted by R.K.SINGH: INDIAN ENGLISH POET at 11:39 PM

Right and Wrong

In his forthcoming book, "Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong" (Ecco), and in other recent papers, Hauser suggests we may have a moral "faculty" in our brains that acts as a sort of in-house philosopher-parsing situations quickly, before emotion or conscious reason come into play. Hauser compares this faculty to the mental quality that allows human beings to acquire and use language naturally and effortlessly.

It's a suggestive analogy, inviting questions about just how far the similarities run. Is human morality, like language, largely universal (gratuitous killing is bad) but with plenty of room for local variation (in some cultures, killing your daughter if she loses her virginity before marriage is not considered gratuitous)? Is it easy for children to adapt to these local differences, depending on where and how they are raised, but difficult for adults-just as it's hard to learn French at 40?

Whether the analogy to language is "airtight" or "useful because it allows you to ask good questions" is an open issue, Hauser says. But scholars think the answers to these questions are of more than academic interest. "My hope is that by better understanding how we think," Greene writes on his personal website, "we can teach ourselves to think better." Christopher Shea's column appears biweekly in Ideas. E-mail critical.faculties@verizon.net Globe Newspaper Company

Great Poems to Teach

Compiled by the Teachers & Writers Collaborative, this list contains 341 poems submitted by teachers who participated in a workshop organized by TWC. Selected for participation by C. K. Williams, teachers applying to the workshop were asked to supply a list of poems which they had successfully taught in high school English and Language Arts classrooms. Poems on Poets.org
Maya Angelou "Alone" "Still I Rise"
Matthew Arnold "Dover Beach"
W. H. Auden "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" "The Unknown Citizen"
Elizabeth Bishop "Filling Station"
William Blake "The Chimney-Sweeper" "The Lamb"> "A Poison Tree"> --> "The Tyger"
David Bottoms "Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump"
Anne Bradstree "The Author to Her Book"
Joseph Brodsky "Odysseus to Telemachus"
Rupert Brooke "The Great Lover"
Gwendolyn Brooks "The Bean Eaters" "the sonnet-ballad" "We Real Cool"
Elizabeth Barrett Browning "How Do I Love Thee?" "My Letters! all dead paper. . . (Sonnet XXVIII)"
Robert Browning "My Last Duchess" "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"
Lewis Carroll "Jabberwocky"
Siv Cedering "Hands"
Lucille Clifton "homage to my hips (audio only)" "miss rosie" "wishes for sons"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Kubla Khan" "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Hart Crane "To Brooklyn Bridge"
E. E. Cummings "anyone lived in a pretty how town" "Chansons Innocentes: I"
"i sing of Olaf glad and big"
"maggie and milly and molly and may"
"my father moved through dooms of love"
"Spring is like a perhaps hand"
Emily Dickinson "Because I could not stop for Death (712)" "Fame is a fickle food (1659)" "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)" "I heard a Fly buzz (465)" "I taste a liquor never brewed" "I'm Nobody! Who are you? (260)" "There's a certain Slant of light (258)" "To make a prairie (1755)"
John Donne "The Baite"
Denise Duhamel "Buying Stock"
Paul Laurence Dunbar "Sympathy" "We Wear the Mask"
Robert Duncan "Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow"
Ralph Waldo Emerson "The Snow Storm"
Robert Frost "Birches" "Home Burial" "Mending Wall" "The Road Not Taken"
Tess Gallagher "Red Poppy"
Thom Gunn "The Man with Night Sweats"
John Haines "If the Owl Calls Again"
Thomas Hardy "The Darkling Thrush"
George Herbert "The Collar"
Oliver Wendell Holmes "The Chambered Nautilus"
Gerard Manley Hopkins "God's Grandeur" "Pied Beauty" "Spring and Fall: To a young child"
Langston Hughes "Dream Variation" "Dreams" "I, Too, Sing America"
James Weldon Johnson "The Creation" "Go Down, Death"
John Keats "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" "Ode on a Grecian Urn" "To Autumn"
Etheridge Knight "The Idea of Ancestry"
Maxine Kumin "Purgatory" "Woodchucks"
Stanley Kunitz "The Portrait"
Edward Lear "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat"
Denise Levertov "The Secret"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Paul Revere's Ride"
Robert Lowell "For the Union Dead"
Archibald MacLeish "Ars Poetica" "You, Andrew Marvell"
Andrew Marvell "To His Coy Mistress"
Edgar Lee Masters "Lucinda Matlock"
Claude McKay "The Tropics of New York"
Sandra McPherson "Poppies"
Edna St. Vincent Millay "Renascence" "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)"

John Milton "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent"
Marianne Moore "Poetry"
Edgar Allan Poe "Annabel Lee" "The Bells" "Eldorado"
Ezra Pound "In a Station of the Metro" "The River-Merchant's Wife"
Edwin Arlington Robinson "Miniver Cheevy" "Richard Cory"
Carl Sandburg "Fog"
Robert W. Service "The Cremation of Sam McGee"
William Shakespeare "All the World's a Stage" "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)" "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18)"
Percy Bysshe Shelley "Ozymandias"
Charles Simic "Eyes Fastened With Pins" "Watermelons"
Stevie Smith "Not Waving but Drowning"
Gary Snyder "Four Poems for Robin"
May Swenson "Water Picture"
Lord Alfred Tennyson "The Lady of Shalott"
Dylan Thomas "Do not go gentle into that good night"
César Vallejo "To My Brother Miguel in memoriam"
Walt Whitman "I Hear America Singing" "Mannahatta" "O Captain! My Captain!" "Song of Myself, I, II, VI & LII" "To You" "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer"
William Carlos Williams "The Red Wheelbarrow" "Spring and All" "This Is Just To Say"
William Wordsworth "The Daffodils" "My Heart Leaps Up" "We Are Seven" "The world is too much with us; late and soon"
W. B. Yeats "Easter 1916" "Leda and the Swan" "The Second Coming"

Long afterwards - it wells up again from the depths

In a general and almost absolute way, if you truly wish to profit from these readings, as from all of Sri Aurobindo's writings, the best method is this: having gathered your consciousness and focused your attention on what you are reading, you must establish a minimum of mental tranquillity - the best thing would be to obtain perfect silence - and achieve a state of immobility of the mind, immobility of the brain, I might say, so that the attention becomes as still and immobile as a mirror, like the surface of absolutely still water. Then what one has read passes through the surface and penetrates deep into the being where it is received with a minimum of distortion. Afterwards - sometimes long afterwards - it wells up again from the depths and manifests in the brain with its full power of comprehension, not as knowledge acquired from outside, but as a light one carried within. In this way the faculty of understanding is at its highest, whereas if, while you read, the mind remains agitated and tries to understand at once what it is reading, you lose more than three-quarters of the force, the knowledge and the truth contained in the words. And if you are able to refrain from asking questions until this process of absorption and inner awakening is completed, well, then you will find that you have far fewer questions to ask because you will have a better understanding of what you have read.- The Mother [CWMCE, 10:7] posted by deepti 1:05 AM Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Psychic poetry

Thursday, September 14, 2006 ART AND POETRY: Art and poetry can be the media though they are not adequate. But one who attains the supermind does not sit down to write philosophy about it. That is just like using poetry to teach grammar, so as to take all poetry out of it. Even when supermind finds expression it would carry its meaning only to the man who knows; as the Veda puts it, " Words of the seer which reveal their mystery only to the seer". One can`t express the whole supramental truth, but something of it can come through.

There are different types of poetry. That is to say, poetry there may be and yet the the psychic element in it may not be strong. Vedic poetry is on the plane of intuitional vision. There is rhythm, force and other elements of poetry in it, but the psychic element is not so prominent. It is from a plane much higher than the mental. It has got its own depth - but psychic poetry differs from it in its depth and feeling. (After Sri Aurobindo ; Evening Talks : - 3rd edition -1982) posted by Phani Basu at 6:47 AM

Building blocks of my mind, my heroes

It was in 1994 at Trivandrum, the capital city of my state, that a cultural organization named Soorya celebrated the hundredth year of the birth of cinema. In the city’s biggest theatre rented, they screened world classic films for fifteen consecutive days. Each day, exactly at 7.58 A.M., Soorya’s logo would appear on the screen. At about 12 P.M., the screening would end. Thus, fifteen days. Seven films each day. A total of one hundred and five films.

These fifteen days, almost literally, I lived in the theatre. I ate and slept in the too short intervals, inside the theatre. Went to my lodge after 12in the night and returned before 8 next morning, to take my seat. Thus, I saw all the one hundred and five classics. But that of course didn’t change my life. It had already been changed. Even two years before that event, cinema had mesmerized and captivated me. A perpetual seizure. I wandered along the length and breadth of kerala for years, seeing classics screened by various film societies.

It was the same with literature. I just shut in my room and read for months and months and chewed up pages. Thus I read all of Doestoyevsky. All of Victor Hugo. All of Kazantzakis. Amos Oz. Carpentier. Kafka. Mann. Kawabata. Amado. Rulfo. Marquiz. Fuentis. Llosa. Bulgakov. Anand. Cortazar…And visited art galleries. Sat in meditation before opened pages of books of painting. Caravaggio. Velazquez. Dali. Brughel. El-Greco. Munch. Chirico. Rousseau. Manet. Renoir…It was the most fruitful years of mine…I found myself reflecting in the mirrors of art. And I loved being myself. Those years formed me…and what I try here is to make a list of films, books and other art forms that for the rest of my life energized me and decided my destiny.
***
My Most Favorite Films: Sacrifice, Ivan’s Childhood, Stalker (Tarkovsky), Seventh Seal, Cries and Whispers, Silence (Bergman), Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni), The Passion Of Joan of Arc (Carl Dreyer), Colour of Pomegranates, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Pandjanov), Journey Through The body, In the name of the son, Diapason (Jorge Polaco) The Sleeping Man (Kohei Oguri) Aguirre, the wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo (Herzog), The Hungarian Rhapsody, Silence and Cry (Miklos Jansco), Theorem (Pasolini), Nazarin, The discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Bunuel), The Tree of life (Farhad Mehranfir), Gabbeh (Mohsen Makmalbaf), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene), Spring, summer, fall, winter…and Spring (Kim Ki-Duk)

If I have to choose just ten from the above, I will choose: Sacrifice, Stalker, Seventh Seal, Cries and Whispers, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Journey Through The body, The Sleeping Man, Theorem, Aguirre, the wrath of God & Red Desert.

If I have to choose just seven from the above, I will choose: Sacrifice, Stalker, Seventh Seal, Cries and Whispers, Aguirre, the wrath of God, Journey Through The body & The Sleeping Man.

If I have to choose just five from the above, I will choose: Sacrifice, Stalker, Seventh Seal, Cries and Whispers, & The Sleeping Man.

If I have to choose just three from the above, I will choose: Sacrifice, Stalker, & Seventh Seal.

If I have to choose just one from the above, I will choose: Sacrifice

The strangest film from the above series: In the name of the son by Jorge Polaco.

My Most Favorite dialogue from a film: “I will remember this moment. This silence. This dusk. This pot full of wild strawberries. This milk. Your faces in twilight. Sleeping Michael. Jof with the tambourine. I will remember all we have discussed. And I will keep this memory like this bowl filled to the brim with milk. That would be a good sign-it’s enough for me”

(Antonious Bloc, the Knight in the film Seventh Seal, says this to Mia and Jones, the gypsy performers. Sitting on a meadow, the knight is relishing the wild strawberries and the bowl of milk presented to him by Mia and Jones. He says the above, holding the bowl of milk in his hand. Then he departs with his chessboard for his final play with Death.)

The film that made me burst into tears: Cries and Whispers.

The most curious films I have seen: Luna Papa (Baktiar Khudojnazron-Austria), & Bird people in china. (Takashi Miike)

The most poignant film I have seen: Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray)

My Most Favorite Short Film: Ithaca (Phylis Katrapani-The film is based on the poem by Kawafy, with the same title. I remember, after seeing the film, having met Phylis and congratulated her, more than 10 years ago when she came to a film festival at Cochin, Kerala. After some years, I also met her mother, Gonul Donmez. If they, or somebody personally know any of them see this blog, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.)

My Most Favorite Documentary: Glass (Bert Hanstra.)

My Most Favorite Novels: One Hundred years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance (Robert Pirzig), White Hotel (D.M.Thomas), On Heroes and Tombs (Ernesto Sabato), Aarogyaniketanam (Tharashankar Banerjy), Terra Nostra (Carlos Fuentes) The house of sleeping Beauties (Kawabata) Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann), Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky), Govardhante Yaathrakal (Anand), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera.), Les Miserable, The Hunchback of Notre Dam (Victor Hugo),

If I have to choose just five from the above, I will choose: One Hundred years of Solitude, Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance, Terra Nostra, White Hotel & On Heroes and Tombs.

If I have to choose just three from the above, I will choose: One Hundred years of Solitude, White Hotel & Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance.

If I have to choose just two from the above, I will choose: One Hundred years of Solitude & Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance.

If I have to choose just one from the above, I will choose: One Hundred years of Solitude.

My Most Favorite short stories: The third Bank of the river (Juao Guimares Rosa), The Cinnamon Shops (Bruno Schulz), The Fall of the House of Usher (Edgar Alan Poe.)

The following stories are from my language, Malayalam: Chithrasalabhangalude Kappal, Athbutha Samasya (The ship of butterflies, The wondrous Riddle by Thomas Joseph), Aarkkariyaam? (Who Knows? By Paul Zacharia), Pakshiyude Manam (Scent of the bird by Madhavikkutty), Panthrandam Manikkoor (The Twelfth hour by V.P.Sivakumar), Naalamathe Aani ( The fourth Nail-by Anand),My Most Favorite Single Poem: Sunstone ( Octavio Paz)My Most Favorite Poetry series: Duino Elegies (Rilke)

My Most Favorite Lengthy Poem: Odyssey a Modern Sequel (Kazantzakis)My Most Favorite Autobiography: Report to Greco (Kazantzakis)

Other Books I love the Most: All Books by Osho Rajneesh, Tao of Physics (Fritzjof Kapra), Freedom from the Known (Jidhu Krishnamoorthy), Jnaneshwary (A descriptive commentary on Bhagavat Gita written by Sage Jnaneshwar of the 16th century.) The Sleepwalkers (A detailed historical sketch of man’s changing vision of the universe, lives of cosmologists from Babylonians to Newton, by Arthur Koestler), Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Autobiography of Carl Jung), The Story of San Michele (Autobiography of Axel Munthe), The Occult (A detailed study of the arcane knowledge; cabbalists and others, by Colin Wilson ) The Land that Never Was (Early explorations into the Arctic, by Vasily Passetsky), The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (About the secret continuation of the lineage of Christ up to the modern era, detailing the mysteries shrouding Knights Templar and other secret organizations, by Mike Beigent & Richard Leigh),) Admiral of the Ocean Sea (About the life and Times of Christopher Columbus, by Samuel Eliot Morison ), Einstein; The life and Times (Ronald W.Clark), The signs of the gods, Chariot of the gods, In search of ancient Gods (Eric Von Daniken.)

My Most Favorite Geographical Explorer: Thor Heyerdahl.My Most Favorite Painters: Dali, Chirico, Velazquez, El-greco & Rousseau.My Most Favorite Fashion Photographer: Patric Demarchelier.

My Most Favorite Landscape art: Running Fence (Christo).

My Most Favorite Subjects Other Than Art: Science, Semitic literature and History, Ancient history, Upanishads, Cosmology, Psychology & Anthropology. (As it could be well imagined, I have a deep knowledge in none.)

My Heroes: Bergman, Tarkovsky, Dali, Marquez, & Einstein.

My Torch Light Upon Life and Its Eternal Philosophic Enigmas: Osho Rajneesh.

posted by a j muhammed shafeer @ 11:59 PM 0 comments Friday, September 01, 2006

A critical study of Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri

Savitri: A Spiritual Epic

Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1984, pages 164.

(A critical study of Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri). R.K.SINGH

MEMORIES UNMEMORIED by RAM KRISHNA SINGH

A short collection of poems, all untitled, but read like part of a long poem, with a variety of themes and structure. Berhampur: Poetry Time Publications, 1988

Tabla bols

Dhe-te-Dha-a-n-Dha-a-n-Dha. Ab aaye sam par. Hi. I'm saattvic. That's my name. My complete name. No surname. But more on that later. Maybe in another post. As of now, let me tell you a little about 'Dhe-te-Dha-a-n-Dha-a-n-Dha'. They're tabla bols. I play the tabla. Have been doing so for 11 years. I love it. Some others love it too, but that's ok. Dhe-te-Dha-a-n-Dha-a-n-Dha is a piece we use to arive at the 'sam' (pronounced sum). Is this confusing you? ok.

There are three types of people. Those who know indian classical music. Those who don't care. And those who do care but don't know. Hope you're the third type. Let me start over.Hindustani classical music (there is another indian classical form - carnatic. but if i say indian classical, take it to mean hindustani classical) is primarily for soloists. Sometimes you get duets. But usually just one artist. Most times this artist is either a vocalist or an instrumentalist (sometimes he is a percussionist, ie he plays the tabla or the pakhawaj or some other percussion instrument, but more on that later). A tabla player always accompanies vocalists and instrumentalists. His basic function is to keep the beat. Most times a tanpura plays in the background to provide the base note. Vocalists are also accompanied by a harmonium or sarangi for support.

A vocalist or instrumentalist plays with notes. These notes are represented by symbols. Westerners will be familiar with 'do, re, me, fa, so, la, ti'. Indians have this as 'sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni'. They're the same notes, they just have different symbols. 'do' and 'sa' are the same note. so are 'me' and 'ga'. Funnily enough, the second note is 're' in both styles of notation.It follows that most of what a vocalist or instrumentalist plays can be captured on paper as a string of notes. The idea of the musician coming up with something first and then it being captured on paper is the exact opposite of the western tradition.

There a composer composes everything and an orchestra plays it. Here, most music is based on improvisation. The musician comes up with the piece based usually on a raag and within the raag, a bandish. A raag is a collection of notes. Raag Bhopali is 'sa-re-ga-pa-dha-sa, sa-dha-pa-ga-re-sa'. The ascent is called the aaroh and the descent is called the avaroh. A bandish is a composition within the raag, usually lasting one or two beat cycles (more on beat cycles later). This bandish then forms the base for all the improvisations. Well, I'll go into the details of a classical music performance in some other post.

The accompanying percussion instrument in hindustani classical is usually the tabla or pakhawaj, depending on the style of the main musician. His job is to maintain the beat cycle and improvise in tandem with the main artist within that beat cycle. A beat cycle is of utmost importance to hindustani music. All bandishes are set to a cycle of beats. The most common is a cycle of 16 beats called teentaal. This cycle repeats itself, and so all work in that piece has to adhere to the 16 beat cycle. The first beat in a cycle is called the sam. Most bandishes have a distinct point of emphasis and a definite sense of marking a partition between cycles at the sam. Most improvisations finish at the sam, or lead into the bandish, which provides emphasis at the sam.

Now, just like the doings of vocalists and instrumentalists can be captured in writing through various combinations of sa, re, ga, etc., percussion can, too, be caught on paper. What we do is, verbally imitate the each sound produced be the percussion instrument (as there is no scope for notes) and use that verbal imitation as the symbok for that sound. For example, if I stroke the outer rim of the tabla with my index finger, keeping the tip of the ring finger on the tabla for support while keeping all other fingers off, the resultant sound sounds like 'ta'. If at the same time, I stroke the baiyaa (the tabla is composed of two drums - one called the tabla and the other the baiyaa. the baiyaa basically provides the bass while most of the work is done on the tabla), the resultant sound sounds like 'dha'. So, most of what a tabla player does can be recorded on paper too.

Now back to Dhe-te-Dha-a-n-Dha-a-n-Dha. Now, this is a string of sounds produced by the tabla. This particular string is a small piece used at the end of a beat cycle to arrive at the sam. So, that was one bit of me - my tabla. Expect some musically inclined posts in the future. posted by Saattvic at 3:46 PM 1 comments Just a bit of me

Fakir Mohan Senapati

Chandrahas Choudhury: That’s just because I read quite widely, and think everyone should as well - unsystematic reading is one of life’s great delights. Also, in India, there’s not a great deal of attention given by the newspapers to books from around the world - most newspapers only have one page for books in a week. I find I have a great deal to say but nowhere to say it, so that I put all that onto my weblog.

I now have a great deal more traffic from the US and the UK than I used to, so I feel that in some small way I help to bring writers from around the world to the attention of Indian readers, and Indian writers to the attention of readers from around the world. (This may only be in my imagination, but even illusions are vital motivating forces for work.

In fact, blogging itself is based upon the illusion that one will one day become rich and famous out of doing work for free, mostly for people who have nothing better to do than sit around surfing the Web). Fakir Mohan Senapati, for example, or Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyay - these are Indian writers whose work is easily the equal of anything in world literature. And Etgar Keret, or Osip Mandelstam - why shouldn’t more Indian readers be reminded of their work? Chandrahas, 1:14 PM email this to a friend permalink (2) comments

Mahabharata in 3 minutes

Maggi Lidchi-Grassi's three novels, presented below, form a trilogy, imaginatively retelling the familiar story of the Mahabharata from a particular dramatic perspective. She uses the person of Arjuna and his inner development as the lens through which to view and understand the compelling personalities of this epic, the events leading to the battle of Kurukshetra, the great story of that fight to cleanse the earth of adharma and the effects of the struggle on its main protagonists, and their adventures that follow after the end of the war. Arjuna's story is the crucible through which the reader comes to understand how we are moulded into our own divinity.

The Battle of Kurukshetra
- Maggi Lidchi-Grassi Publisher: Writers Workshop, CalcuttaBinding: Hard CoverPages: 394Price: Rs 500
The first volume in the author's trilogy version of the Mahabharata, this novel is a subjective interpretation and retelling of the events leading to the great battle of Kurukshetra, the dramatic and psychological centrepiece of India's monumental epic. Using first person narratives, the story is told in turns by Ashwatthama and Arjuna, who come to stand on opposite sides of the battlefield, but whose interwoven lives and shared history bring an intense existential focus to the lines of war drawn up by the dictates of dharma. The book is a study of their characters and how they affect and are affected by the flow of events in the Mahabharata.

The Legs of the Tortoise
- Maggi Lidchi-Grassi Publisher: Writers Workshop, CalcuttaBinding: Hard CoverPages: 392Price: Rs 600
This second volume in the Mahabharata trilogy resumes the story from the moment of Arjuna's anguish prior to the start of the battle of Kurukshetra and follows his evolution during the course of the epic battle, to Indraprastha after the war, and through the Ashwamedha campaign. The sentiments and conflicts of the main protagonists as developed in the novel are based on encounters, incidents and speeches from Veda-Vyasa's Mahabharata, but the author's treatment of the story has been greatly influenced by the writings of Sri Aurobindo from Essays on the Gita, The Secret of the Vedas, and Hymns to the Mystic Fire.

The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata
- Maggi Lidchi-Grassi ISBN: 81-7595-864-2Publisher: Writers Workshop, CalcuttaBinding: Hard CoverPages: 300Price: Rs 700
In this third volume of her trilogy, as in the previous two, it is through Arjuna's experiences that the author develops the central themes of her interpretation of the Mahabharata: surrender and sacrifice. Arjuna the great warrior, the beloved friend of Krishna, the favoured disciple of Drona, the best-loved of Draupadi, Arjuna the epic hero is revealed also to the reader as Arjuna the man. We follow him through all the events of this final part of the story as he comes at last to understand Krishna's teaching and becomes a hero of the highest order: a man who finally knows his true self and fulfills his spiritual destiny. SABDA SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY 605 002 INDIA

The many faces of Chau

The tribal belt where the tribals and other common people perform Chau dances is distributed into three adjoining states, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, after the dissolution of the princely states in 1950. The three forms of Chau are named after the district or village where they are performed, i.e. the Purulia Chau of Bengal, the Seraikella Chau of Bihar and the Mayurbhanj Chau of Orissa. Surprisingly the earlier writers have exercised considerably to understand the origin of the word Chau and to ascertain its classical origin as also they have tried to establish the origin of the word Chau from Sanskrit root word ''Chaya'', while others have tried to justify its martial base and the derivation of the word by suggesting that the word Chau is derived from the local dialect meaning an army camp.

However, they have overlooked the outcries of the performers or the drummers during performance. Particularly in Purulia, the singer drummer often rushes to the new characters "by shouting "cho... cho...cho..." with excitement, before they enter into the arena. By doing this he infuses the same enthusiasm in the dancer. During the course of the performance also such excitement and outburst of joy are expressed by the singers and other members of orchestra. Similarly this author heard the same utterances by the hunters who assemble at a particular hill top during the annual hunting expeditions on the full moon day in the month of May. While chasing the game exclaim they exclaim "cho... cho...cho..." (A broader pronunciation of Chau), in order to fright the animals or invoke the spirit of animal for easier gain of the game. Most likely it is this word associated with the natives' earliest hunting occupation that is now associated with their dances to express joy and excitement...

A generic name usually points to the root character of the class it denotes. The character, even after any degree of evolvement, remains an integral part of the class either overtly or as an underlying base. And if various styles of dances known as chhau are analyzed, it is found that they all have martial strains. The word 'chhau', now obsolete, means to attack stealthily. The basic steps and gaits of Seraikelaa and Mayurbhanj styles of chhau not only are practiced holding a sword and a shield, the rudimentary dance are known as ruk-maar-naaclia (meaning the dance of attack and defense) in Mayurbhanj and phari-khandaa-khela (meaning the play with the sword and shield) in Seraikelaa. In Asanapaat, a village in Orissa one can find a dance called paaikaali, that is unmistakably the mother of chhau because the leg extensions are exactly like that of chhau and they perform a kind of attack and defense dance almost like ruk-maar-naacha. The musical instruments used in paaikaali are exactly the same as those of chhau.

In Orissa the soldiers were being called paaika-s. Therefore, chhau in its origin was unmistakably a weapon-dance or a war dance. Even the use of masks in Seraikelaa Chhau and Purulia Chhau, and in their less evolved folk versions, does not disprove the assumption, but rather strengthens it. Otto Bihalji-merin in his Mask of the World writes, "A mask dance is often preliminary for war. The dancers portray in pantomime the actions they plan, sneaking up to the enemy, javelin throwing, close combat and finally victory. This serves as a magic spell, as physical exercise, as spiritual preparation, and at the same time as conquest of fear through the anticipation of victory. The helmets of classical antiquity were also masks of fear and magical protection. Greek helmets had fixed visors with eyeholes. During the bloody gladiatorial combats in the Roman arenas the swordsman (hoplomachus) confronted with the net man (retiarius) wore a helmet a wire-netting visor to protect his face."

Chhau then in its formative period in a primitive culture was not only a war dance but also a ritual meant for spiritual preparation, and at the same time as the conquest of conquest of fear, through the anticipation of victory. May be because of this, the religious associations and rituals connected with the three styles of evolved chhau have so many similarities. Another very significant similarity among the three styles is that the dances as well as the rituals connected with them culminates in a festival on the last day of the lunar month of Chaitra, corresponding to April 12th. The deities worshipped in the religious rituals are Shiva and Shakti. This leads us to believe that the tantric cult has greatly influenced chhau during its formative period. NIC Purulia District Centre

From the heart of the seer and from the distant home of the Truth

Sri Aurobindo

It will be more fruitful to take the main substance of the matter for which the body of Mr. Cousins' criticism gives a good material. Taking the impression it creates for a starting-point and the trend of English poetry for our main text, but casting our view farther back into the past, we may try to sound what the future has to give us through the medium of the poetic mind and its power for creation and interpretation. The issues of recent activity are still doubtful and it would be rash to make any confident prediction; but there is one possibility which this book strongly suggests and which it is at least interesting and may be fruitful to search and consider.

That possibility is the discovery of a closer approximation to what we might call the mantra in poetry that rhythmic speech which, as the Veda puts it, rises at once from the heart of the seer and from the distant home of the Truth, — the discovery of the word, the divine movement, the form of thought proper to the reality which, as Mr. Cousins excellently says,

"lies in the apprehension of a something stable behind the instability of word and deed, something that is reflection of the fundamental passion of humanity for something beyond itself, something that is a dim foreshadowing of the divine urge which is prompting all creation to unfold itself and to rise out of its limitations towards its Godlike possibilities".

Poetry in the past has done that in moments of supreme elevation; in the future there seems to be some chance of its making it a more conscious aim and steadfast endeavour. Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Future Poetry Volume-9 > Introductory Page – 7

The Plays of Sri Aurobindo

PERSEUS THE DELIVERER was originally published in serial form in the weekly Bande Mataram, Calcutta, 1907. Subsequently it was included in Collected Poems and Plays of Sri Aurobindo, published in 1942, with the exception of two scenes which were not available at that time. The missing scenes (Act II, Scenes 2 & 3) were later found and included in the 1955 edition.

VASAVADUTTA exists in several versions, not all of them complete. What seems to be the last complete version has this note at the end: "Revised and recopied between April 8th and April 17th, 1916." An earlier version has a similar entry at the end: "Copied Nov. 2, 1915—written between 18th and 30th October 1915. Completed 30th October. Revised in April 1916. Pondicherry." The first edition of VASAVADUTTA was published in 1957. It was reprinted in 1965.

RODOGUNE belongs to the end of the Baroda period. It is dated February 1906, just before Sri Aurobindo left Baroda for Bengal. It was first published in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1958, and also issued in book-form in the same year.

ERIC was written in Pondicherry in 1912 or 1913. Several drafts were made of some of its acts and each carries its own later corrections. One is not always sure which corrections were the last to be made. The text published now is more or less a combination of two or more drafts wherever it was thought that the author's purposes would be served better by this arrangement. Alternatives, however, have been given in the footnotes. ERIC was first published in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1960, and also issued in book-form in the same year.

The VIZIERS OF BASSORA is one of the early works of Sri Aurobindo on a major scale. Written in Baroda, it has a curioushistory attached to it. Sri Aurobindo seems to have had especial fondness for this early creation of his. He particularly mentioned it in the Introduction to Collected Poems and Plays as one of the two works, lost—the other being a translation of Kalidasa's Meghaduta (Cloud-Messenger). By a strange turn of destiny the drama was recovered from theGovernment Archives in 1951 along with other manuscripts which had been exhibits in the Alipore Conspiracy Case. This play was published in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1959, and also issued in book-form in the same year.

PRINCE OF EDUR was written, as noted in the manuscript, in1907, that is to say, in the very thick of Sri Aurobindo's political activity. It is not complete as it has only three acts and not five. THE PRINCE OF MATHURA, available as a fragment and printedhere for the first time, is a different version of the same theme. PRINCE OF EDUR was first published in Sri Aurobindo MandirAnnual, 1961.

THE MAID IN THE MILL and THE HOUSE OP BRUT are both in-complete and belong to Sri Aurobindo's early Baroda period. They were printed in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1962, for the first time.

Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Collected Plays Part-I Volume-6 > Bibliographic Note-06 > Collected Plays Part-II Volume-07 > Bibliographical Note