ops

Donnerstag, 28. Januar 2010

musik auf Städte


Wortes uber Städte

As cabras e o modo como se aproximam de um fio de erva podem preencher todo o cérebro de uma pessoa inteligente, mesmo que tal facto se passe às sete da tarde. A Natureza não abana com os nossos sustos, a não ser a parte da natureza que o nosso corpo representa.
Uma cabra a pastar, uma vaca a pastar, um boi a pastar, uma ovelha a pastar. E ainda as ervas, e o leve vento que passa por elas. Muitas coisas acontecem na natureza. Com tanta erva e animal a pastar, para quê procurar diversão nas cidades?

im: Gonçalo M. Tavares, Biblioteca, Campo das Letras

Dienstag, 26. Januar 2010

seitens der Städte, Berlin,

seitens der Städte, Berlin, Fritz von Unruh

BERLIN 2008 Foto:G.Ludovice
Max Reinhardt Unruh in 1912, estreou o drama de Unruh "Offizier" no Deutsches Theatre de Berlim.

Fritz von Unruh
(May 10, 1885 - November 28, 1970)
Was a German Expressionist dramatist, poet, and novelist.
Unruh was born in
Koblenz, Germany. A general's son, he was an officer in the German army until 1912, when he left to pursue his writing career.
Two of his earliest important works, the play Offiziere ("Officers"; 1911) and the poem Vor der Entscheidung ("Before the Decision"; 1914) established his anti-war beliefs and his belief that the social order must be based not on authority, but on the integrity and responsibility of the individual towards humanity.
Unruh's works were anti-militaristic and called for world peace and brotherhood. Some of his more notable works include Der Opfergang ("Way of Sacrifice"), a powerful anti-war piece written during the siege of Verdun and published in 1919, Ein Geschlecht ("A Family"; 1916) and its sequel Platz (1920), and Heinrich von Andernach (1925).

Originally from a noble family very close to the Kaiser, he enlisted in 1914. He wrote a few patriotic poems at the beginning of the war. But gradually, influenced by his experiences, his work took an increasingly distinctly pacifist turn.
When in 1916 the Kronprinz, whom he knew personally, commissioned him for a description of the battle of Verdun, he responded to the order with an expressionist novel entitled Opfergang (The Way of Sacrifice, translated into French in 1923 under the title Verdun), judged to be "unpublishable" by the military authorities. Indeed, the work would not be published until 1919. Unruh is not a unique case. Probably because the defensive rhetoric that accompanied the war in all the warring countries was the most difficult to sustain in Germany - German soldiers were fighting on foreign soil - literary pacifism emerged in a more aggressive and bigger way than in the opposite camp.
Unruh was a staunch opponent of the Nazi Party and wrote several works warning of the consequences of Nazi dictatorship, Bonaparte (1927), Berlin in Monte Carlo (1931), and Zero (1932). He left Germany for France in 1932, later immigrating to the United States. He finally returned to Germany in 1962 and died in the town of Dietz at age 85.
im:wikipedia

Montag, 25. Januar 2010

Samstag, 23. Januar 2010

Freitag, 22. Januar 2010

Oberflächengrammatik

Gramática de Superfície

London 2009 foto:G.Ludovice

seitens der Städte.. LONDON: William Wordsworth

LONDON 2009
Foto:G.Ludovice
William Wordsworth

London 1802

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness.

We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life's common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet the heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

William Wordsworth (Cockermouth, 7 de abril de 1770Rydal Mount, 23 de abril de 1850) foi o maior poeta romântico inglês que, ao lado de Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ajudou a lançar o romantismo na literatura inglesa com a publicação conjunta, em 1798, das Lyrical Ballads (“Baladas Líricas”).
O segundo dos cinco filhos de John Wordsworth e Ann Cookson, William nasceu em Cockermouth, em Cumberland, no Lake District, noroeste da Inglaterra. Sua irmã, a poetisa Dorothy Wordsworth, nasceu no ano seguinte, e os dois foram batizados juntos. Os outros irmãos eram Richard, o mais velho, que se tornaria advogado; John, nascido após Dorothy, que se tornaria poeta e apreciador da natureza, tal como os irmãos, e que morreu em 1809, no naufrágio de um navio onde apenas o capitão se salvou; e Christopher, o mais novo, que se tornaria um acadêmico.
O pai de William era um representante legal de “James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale” e, devido suas conexões, vivia em uma espaçosa mansão de uma pequena cidade. William, assim como seus irmãos, tinha pouco envolvimento com seu pai, e permaneceu distante dele até sua morte, em 1783
.
O pai, apesar de raramente presente, ensinou poesia ao filho, inclusive Milton, William Shakespeare e Edmund Spenser; além disso, confiou ao filho sua própria biblioteca.
Algumas vezes, William passava um tempo com os parentes de sua mãe, em
Penrith, Cumberland, onde era influenciado pelos pântanos e paisagens, assim como pelo tratamento rude de seus parentes, em especial os avós e tio, cujas hostilidades o amarguraram a ponto de pensar em suicídio.
Após a morte de sua mãe, em 1778, o pai o mandou para "Hawkshead Grammar School", e Dorothy foi morar com parentes em
Yorkshire; ela e William não se encontraram pelos próximos nove anos. Antes de Hawkshead, William estudara em Cockermount e Penrith, onde conheceu os Hutchinsons, incluindo Mary, que se tornaria sua esposa.


Wordsworth estreou-se na literatura em 1787, quando publicou um soneto no The European Magazine. No mesmo ano começou a estudar em Cambridge e formou-se em Artes em 1791. Voltou a Hawkshead em suas duas primeiras férias de verão, as quais passava fazendo passeios, caminhadas pela natureza. Entre os anos de 1790 e 1792, viajou através da Europa, visitando os Alpes, França, Suíça e Itália.
Em 1791, William converteu-se ao ideal
revolucionário francês, entrando para movimentos republicanos. Apaixonou-se por uma francesa, Annette Vallon, que em 1792 lhe deu uma filha, Caroline. No ano seguinte, devido tensões entre o seu país e a França, voltou à Inglaterra, e não pôde ver sua esposa e filha durante muitos anos. Nesse período se apaixonou por Mrs. Gannon. Com a Paz de Amiens William pôde ir à França novamente, em 1802, e juntamente com a irmã Dorothy visitou Annette e Caroline. Em 1835, Wordsworth dá a Annette e Caroline o dinheiro para sua sobrevivência.
Wordsworth, Dorothy e Coleridge viajaram para a Alemanha em 1798. Enquanto Coleridge era intelectualmente estimulado, em Wordsworth a viagem produzia nostalgia. Durante o inverno de 1798–1799, Wordsworth morou com Dorothy em Goslar, e começou a trabalhar numa autobiografia mais tarde intitulada The Prelude.
Escreveu uma série de poemas hoje famosos, incluindo "The Lucy poems". Posteriormente, ele e sua irmã voltaram para a Inglaterra, para Dove Cottage, em Grasmere, no Lake District, perto do poeta Robert Southey. Wordsworth, Coleridge e Southey começam a ser conhecidos como os "Lake Poets". Após esse período, muitos de seus poemas usam como tema a morte, o sofrimento, a separação e a mágoa. Wordsworth se reconverteria, lentamente, a convicções políticas conservadoras e ao anglicanismo.
Em 1802, após ter visitado Annette Vallon e a filha Caroline, na França, William Lowther debita 4000 libras em nome do pai de Wordsworth, em pagamento por sua ajuda[6]Após esse ano, Wordsworth casou com Mary Hutchinson e, no ano seguinte, Mary, tem a primeira de cinco crianças:
John Wordsworth (18 de junho de 1803 - 1875). Casada quatro vezes:
Isabella Curwen (m. 1848) teve 6 filhos: Jane, Henry, William, John, Charles e Edward.
Helen Ross (m. 1854).
Mary Ann Dolan (m. após 1858), teve uma filha, Dora (n.1858).
Mary Gamble.
Dora Wordsworth (16 de agosto de 1804 – 9 de julho de 1847). Casada com Edward Quillinan
Thomas Wordsworth (15 de junho de 1806 – 1 de dezembro de 1812).
Catherine Wordsworth (6 de setembro de 1808 – 4 de junho de 1812).
William "Willy" Wordsworth (12 de maio de 1810 - 1883). Casado com Fanny Graham, teve 4 filhos: Mary Louisa, William, Reginald, Gordon.


Wordsworth em 1798, na época em que começou The Prelude.
Ao voltar à Inglaterra, em 1793, William recebeu uma herança e publicou, em 1798, juntamente com Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (Baladas Líricas), as quais foram republicadas em 1800, assinalando o início do romantismo na Inglaterra.
Em 1795 William encontrara
Samuel Taylor Coleridge em Somerset; os dois poetas e Dorothy, em 1797, foram para "Alfoxton House", Somerset, a algumas milhas da casa de Coleridge, em Nether Stowey. Juntos, Wordsworth e Coleridge, com algumas intermediações de Dorothy, produziram Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Um dos mais famosos poemas de Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey", foi publicado nessa obra, junto com "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", de Coleridge. A segunda edição, publicada em 1800, cita apenas Wordsworth como autor, e inclui um prefácio para os poemas.

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

No prefácio das “Lyrical Ballads”, que é chamado o “manifesto” do romantismo inglês, Wordsworth chama seu poema de “experimental”, e declara guerra à artificialidade da poesia inglesa do século XVIII, defendendo o uso da linguagem coloquial, da valorização do cotidiano e da simplicidade.
Este prefácio é considerado a obra central do início da literatura romântica. Uma quarta e última edição das “Lyrical Ballads” foi publicada em 1805.
Wordsworth teve planos, durante muitos anos, de escrever um longo poema filosófico em 3 partes, que pretendia chamar The Recluse.
Entre 1798–1799 fez um poema autobiográfico, ao qual nunca deu nome, mas que é chamado "Poem to Coleridge", que serviria de apêndice para The Recluse. Em 1804, ele começou a expandir a autobiografia, e em 1805 a completou, mas recusou a publicá-lo até que completasse The Recluse.
Em 1807, seu Poems in Two Volumes foi publicado, incluindo "
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". Dois de seus filhos, Thomas e Catherine, morreram em 1812. Sua família, incluindo Dorothy, mudou-se para Rydal Mount, Ambleside em 1813, onde ele viveu pelo resto da vida[4].
Em 1814 Wordsworth publicou
The Excursion como a segunda das três partes de The Recluse. Ele não completara, ainda, a primeira e a terceira partes, e nunca as completou.

To A Butterfly

STAY near me-

-do not take thy flight!

A little longer stay in sight!

Much converse do I find in thee,

Historian of my infancy!

Float near me; do not yet depart!

Dead times revive in thee:

Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!

A solemn image to my heart,

My father's family!
Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,

The time, when, in our childish plays,

My sister Emmeline ..

Together chased the butterfly!

A very hunter did I rush

Upon the prey:-

-with leaps and springsI followed on from brake to bush;

But she, God love her, feared to brush

The dust from off its wings

A origem do devotamento filosófico de Wordsworth está articulada em The Prelude e cada trabalho curto seu, como "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey", por exemplo, tem sido alvo de muito debate.
Enquanto alguns supõem que a filosofia de Wordsworth era derivada de Coleridge, mais recentemente tem sido aventado que as ideias dele tiveram início alguns anos antes, e a amizade com Coleridge começou em 1790.
Durante o ideal revolucionário, na Paris de 1792, aos 22 anos, Wordsworth teve conhecimento do misterioso viajante John "Walking" Stewart (1747–1822)[8], que estava chegando ao fim da peregrinação de 33 anos que teve início em Madras, India, percorrendo a Pérsia e Arábia, atravessando a África e a Europa, e através dos EUA. Nessa época, Stewart tinha publicado um ambicioso trabalho de filosofia materialista intitulado The Apocalypse of Nature (London, 1791), do qual muitos dos sentimentos filosóficos de Wordsworth receberam influência.
Alguns críticos modernos
Predefinição:Who reconhecem um declínio no trabalho de Worsworth, começando por volta de 1810, talvez decorrente mais de uma mudança de estilo de vida e de crenças.

The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us;

late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;It moves us not.-

-Great God! I'd rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.


Em seguida da morte de seu amigo, o pintor William Green, em 1823, Wordsworth restabelece relações com Coleridge, com o qual havia se desentendido. Os dois se reconciliam em 1828, quando vão a Rhineland juntos. Dorothy adoece seriamente em 1829, ficando inválida para o resto da vida.
Wordsworth recebeu um título honorário de “Doctor of Civil Law”, em 1838, da Durham University, e a mesma honoraria da Oxford University no próximo ano[4]. Em 1842 o governo lhe dá uma pensão anual. Com a morte, em 1843, de Robert Southey, Wordsworth torna-se “Poet Laureate”. Quando sua filha Dora more, em 1847, sua produção literária começa a declinar.
William Wordsworth morreu de um agravamento de pleurisia em 23 de abril de 1850, e foi velado na igreja St. Oswald, em Grasmere. Sua viúva Mary publicou seu longo poema autobiográfico "poem to Coleridge" como The Prelude alguns meses após sua morte.


Obras principais
"
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems" (1798) (“Baladas líricas”)
"Simon Lee"
"We are Seven"
"Lines Written in Early Spring"
"Expostulation and Reply"
"The Tables Turned"
"The Thorn"
"Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
"Strange fits of passion have I known
"She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways"
"Three years she grew"
"A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal"
"I travelled among unknown men"
"
Lucy Gray"
"The Two April Mornings"
"Nutting"
"The Ruined Cottage"
"Michael"
"The Kitten At Play"
Poems, in Two Volumes (
1807). Dessa obra constam Ode: Intimations of Immortality[10] ("Indícios de Imortalidade a Partir de Reminiscências da Primeira Infância") e Ode to Duty (Ode ao Dever). Constam ainda da obra uma série de sonetos, entre os quais o famoso The world is too much with us ("O mundo Está Demais Conosco"), um protesto contra o materialismo da industrialização.
"Resolution and Independence"
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud". Também conhecido como "Daffodils"
"My Heart Leaps Up"
"The Solitary Reaper"
"Elegiac Stanzas"
"Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
"London, 1802"
"The world is too much with us"
"
The Excursion" (1814) (“A Excursão”) – poema didático.
"The River Duddon", 1820 (O Rio Duddan).
"Ecclesiastical Sonnets", 1822 (Sonetos Eclesiásticos) – coleção de 102 sonetos em homenagem à
Igreja Anglicana, entre eles o Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (No Interior da Capela do King’s College, Cambridge), exaltando a arquitetura gótica.
"
The Prelude" (1850) (“O Prelúdio”, feito entre 1799 e 1805, mas publicado postumamente

The Tables Turned
Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;

Or surely you'll grow double:Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?
The sun above the mountain's head,

A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:

Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music! on my life,

There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!

He, too, is no mean preacher:Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,

Our minds and hearts to bless-

-Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,

Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:-

-We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

im:wikipedia

Donnerstag, 21. Januar 2010

musik auf Städte

Porque hoy eres libre de todo !! Por eso uno se muere.. HASTA SIEMPRE

Wortes uber Städte

A seiscentos quilómetros, comprimo os olhos com a pressão com que se embate quando se não pensa na queda e ela verticalmente acontece como sendo algo que se não pode desfazer como se faz às coisas com pontas.
A seiscentos quilómetros dou um último beijo nos teus sonhos sem que o notes, sem que os possas levar. Ficarei com algo deles numa das minhas mãos ocupada em dar a mão, se partires.
Partiste!

Para Julian

Mittwoch, 20. Januar 2010

musik auf Städte

Para Julian, mi guerrero cubano que ha muerto hoy en Madrid, lejos de su Guantanamera... HASTA SIEMPRE

Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma
Y antes de morirme quiero cantar mis versos del alma
Com los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi surte hechar
El arroyo de la sierra me complace mas que el mar

Mi verso es de un verde claro
y de un camino encendido
Mi verso es un ciervo herido
que busca en el monte amparo...

Dienstag, 19. Januar 2010

Oberflächengrammatik

LONDON 2009
Foto:G.Ludovice

Montag, 18. Januar 2010

musik auf Städte



Say Hei..

seitens der Städte, London, Thomas Carlyle

LONDON 2009
Foto:G.Ludovice
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (
Ecclefechan, 4 de dezembro de 1795Londres, 5 de fevereiro de 1881) foi um escritor, historiador e ensaísta escocês.
Educado para ser pastor protestante, estudou na Universidade de Edimburgo. Em 1817, ao ler De l' Allemagne, de Mme. de Staël, ficou fortemente impressionado pela literatura e filosofia alemãs, dedicando-se ao estudo da língua para ler os autores no original. Traduziu Wiljelm Meister de Goethe e escreveu uma Vida de Schiller, além de uma história da literatura alemã, que deixou inacabada.
A miséria de qualquer espécie, não é a causa, é o efeito da imoralidade.

A publicação de Sartor Redartus, romance bastante original, não despertou grande atenção, enquanto que a História da Revolução Francesa, publicada algum tempo depois, marcou o início de seu imenso prestígio como escritor. Considerada sua obra-prima, é também considerada um importante marco na historiografia romântica. Por essa época também escreveu: Chartism, de 1839 e Past and Present, de 1843.

Toda a grandeza é inconsciente ou ela é pequena e nula.

A grande lei da cultura é esta: deixar que cada um se torne tudo aquilo para que foi criado capaz de ser.

Sua idéia de que a
história pode ser interpretada através da vida dos heróis e dos chefes serviu-lhe de base para uma série de obras importantes: Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (Cartas e discursos de Oliver Cromwell), de 1845; Life of John Sterling (Vida de John Sterling), de 1851; History of Frederic II of Prussia (Vida de Frederico II da Prússia), que escreveu entre 1858-65.
O culto ao heroísmo existe, existiu e existirá para sempre na consciência da humanidade.

Nunca se ouviu dizer que filho valente tivera nascido de pai temeroso.
i


Em 1865 Carlyle foi nomeado reitor da Universidade de Edimburgo e ali recebeu a notícia da morte de sua esposa. Escreveu então Reminiscences (Reminiscências), em 1883 e Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (Memórias de Jane Welsh Carlyle).

A verdadeira universidade de hoje é uma colectânea de livros.
im:wikipedia

seitens der Städte, O mundo de Sofia

Sonntag, 17. Januar 2010

musik auf Städte

seitens der Städte, MADRID Jorge Luis Borges

MADRID Atocha 1982
Foto:G.Ludovice

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (Buenos Aires, 24 de Agosto de 1899Genebra, 4 de Junho de 1986) foi um escritor, poeta, tradutor, crítico e ensaísta argentino mundialmente conhecido por seus contos e histórias curtas. Ele nasceu, depois de morrer, porque ele viu, que seu sonho era próspero. E nunca mais voltou.
Segundo um estudo de Antonio Andrade, Jorge Luis Borges tem
ascendência portuguesa: o bisavô de Borges, Francisco, teria nascido em Portugal em 1770 e vivido na localidade de Torre de Moncorvo, situada no Norte de Portugal, antes de emigrar para a Argentina, onde teria casado com Cármen Lafinur.




Jorge Luis Borges nasceu em
Buenos Aires, capital da Argentina, filho do advogado Jorge Guillermo Borges e de Leonor Acevedo Haedo. Aos sete anos de idade já teria revelado ao pai que seria escritor. Aos nove, escreve seu primeiro conto, "La visera fatal", inspirado em um episódio de Dom Quixote.
Em 1914, muda-se, com os pais, para a Europa, morando inicialmente em Genebra, na Suíça, onde conclui seus estudos, e depois em Espanha.
Em 1921, retorna a Buenos Aires, onde participa ativamente da efervescente vida cultural da cidade.


Em 1923, publica seu primeiro livro de poemas, "Fervor de Buenos Aires". Iniciava-se, assim, uma das mais brilhantes carreiras literárias do século XX. Borges morreu em Genebra, onde está sepultado, por opção pessoal.
Borges foi um ávido leitor de
enciclopédias. Em uma memorável palestra sobre O Livro em 1978, Borges comenta a felicidade em ganhar a enciclopédia alemã Enzyklopadie Brockhaus, edição de 1966. Lamenta não poder ver as letras góticas nem os mapas e ilustrações, entrentanto sente uma relação amistosa com os livros. Sua preferida era a IX edição da Britânica, como disse em uma das inúmeras entrevistas que deu.



Sua obra se destaca por abordar temáticas como filosofia (e seus desdobramentos matemáticos), metafísica, mitologia e teologia, em narrativas fantásticas onde figuram os "delírios do racional" (Bioy Casares), expressos em labirintos lógicos e jogos de espelhos. Ao mesmo tempo, Borges também abordou a cultura dos Pampas argentinos, em contos como O morto, "Homem da esquina rosada" e "O sul".


Lida com campanhas militares históricas, como a guerra argentina contra os índios durante a presidência, entre outros, do escritor Domingo Faustino Sarmiento; trata-as, porém, como pano de fundo para criações fictícias, como em História do Guerreiro e da Cativa. E rende homenagem à literatura pregressa de seu país em contos em que se apropria do mitológico Martín Fierro: Biografia de Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874) e "O fim".


Entre seus contos mais conhecidos e comentados podemos citar A Biblioteca de Babel, O Jardim de Veredas que se Bifurcam, "Pierre Menard, autor do Quixote" (para muitos a pedra angular de sua literatura) e Funes, o Memorioso, todos do livro Ficções (1944) - além de "O Zahir", "A escrita do Deus" e O Aleph (que dá seu nome ao livro de que consta, publicado em 1949). A partir da década de 50, afetado pela progresiva cegueira, Borges passou a se dedicar a poesia, produzindo obras notáveis como "A cifra" (1981), "Atlas" (um esboço de geografia fantástica, 1984) e "Os conjurados" (1985), sua última obra.
Também produziu prosa ("Outras inquisições", ensaios, 1952; "O livro de areia", contos, 1975), notando-se o claro influxo da cegueira.




Uma oração
Minha boca pronunciou e pronunciará, milhares de vezes e nos dois idiomas que me são íntimos, o pai-nosso, mas só em parte o entendo. Hoje de manhã, dia primeiro de julho de 1969, quero tentar uma oração que seja pessoal, não herdada. Sei que se trata de uma tarefa que exige uma sinceridade mais que humana. É evidente, em primeiro lugar, que me está vedado pedir. Pedir que não anoiteçam meus olhos seria loucura; sei de milhares de pessoas que vêem e que não são particularmente felizes, justas ou sábias. O processo do tempo é uma trama de efeitos e causas, de sorte que pedir qualquer mercê, por ínfima que seja, é pedir que se rompa um elo dessa trama de ferro, é pedir que já se tenha rompido. Ninguém merece tal milagre. Não posso suplicar que meus erros me sejam perdoados; o perdão é um ato alheio e só eu posso salvar-me. O perdão purifica o ofendido, não o ofensor, a quem quase não afeta. A liberdade de meu arbítrio é talvez ilusória, mas posso dar ou sonhar que dou. Posso dar a coragem, que não tenho; posso dar a esperança, que não está em mim; posso ensinar a vontade de aprender o que pouco sei ou entrevejo. Quero ser lembrado menos como poeta que como amigo; que alguém repita uma cadência de Dunbar ou de Frost ou do homem que viu à meia-noite a árvore que sangra, a Cruz, e pense que pela primeira vez a ouviu de meus lábios. O restante não me importa; espero que o esquecimento não demore. Desconhecemos os desígnios do universo, mas sabemos que raciocinar com lucidez e agir com justiça é ajudar esses desígnios, que não nos serão revelados.Quero morrer completamente; quero morrer com este companheiro, meu corpo.

O poema acima foi extraído do livro "Elogio da Sombra", Editora Globo - Porto Alegre, 2001, pág. 75 (tradução: Carlos Nejar e Alfredo Jacques; revisão da tradução: Maria Carolina de Araújo e Jorge Schwartz).
im:wikipedia//releituras

Donnerstag, 14. Januar 2010

musik auf Städte

seitens der Städte, WIEN

Viena- A cidade da Valsa

Uma vez Hugo von Hofmannsthal escreveu:"A Áustria se tornou primeiro "grande ou fascinante" pela sua música e desse forma conquistou o mundo".

Nesse clima cresce a arte de fazer poesia austríaca como uma criação própria,como uma criação que veio do povo como também dos seus maiores representantes,o poeta Grillparzer.
Muitos escritores da Áustria viam na segunda guerra mundial assim como seus colegas alemães,que a única saída nesse período estava na emigração.
Muitos escritores austríacos foram forçados por motivos políticos à deixar o próprio país.Robert Musil,Joseph Roth ,Stefan Zweig e Elias Canetti acabaram seus grandes romances no exílio.
Não apenas pelo facismo,mas também depois da segunda guerra mundial a Áustria se ajustou com os fatos políticos.
Na Áustria o trauma do regime nacional socialista e a questão da culpa na participação da guerra se resolveu mais rápidamente,sem problemas como na Alemanha .
Mas muitos autores austríacos mesmo assim publicavam primeiramente na República federativa da Alemanha,onde seus trabalhos daí,muito mais cêdo do que na própria Áustria, eram criticados e discutidos.
Para fazermos uma consideração melhor da literatura austríaca,deve-se primeiramente compreender ou sempre fazer uma ligação dela com a história e literatura alemã.Como capital da República federativa austríaca e da maior cidade universitária.
Viena é a cidade mais apropriada para falarmos dela. Pelo seu "glamour"por ser uma cidade rica em eventos, ela acolhe um número imenso de casas de hospedagens e locais .A mais são os lugares,espaços para descançar ou relaxar, onde não só têem pessoas da cidade.Lá se pode encontrar gente do mundo todo.
Viena é à cidade do reino e residência da capital no rio Donau pode com isso oferecer muitas coisas mais.
Famosa pela sua cultura,lá se encontra também a vida moderna com todas as suas comodidades, que uma pessoa desejaria para si.Mozart, Beethoven,o rei da Valsa Johann Strauß, Grillparzer,o Goethe austríaco e a cultura do final do século deram a cidade uma característica peculiar.
Nos variados Teatros (Teatro do cidadão, teatro acadêmico,o teatro em Josefstadt, teatro de Viena,teatro do povo,popular,teatro de Raimund) e os lugares de prazeres músicas (Ópera do Estado,a filarmônica vienense, Sinfônica de viena,ópera popular,casa de concertos) realizam-se recitais de nível internacional .
A cultura não se desenrola apenas lá.
A cultura das casas de café,as cafeterias também são mundialmente tão conhecidas assim como os bares que ficam perto de bosques,no cinturão verde,que circunda Viena, com suas canções vienenses e bons vinhos.

seitens der Städte, Wien, Joseph Roth

WIEN 2008
Photo: G. Ludovice

Joseph Roth
He was a writer Austrian. Moses Joseph Roth was born in 1894 in BrodyAt the end of Austro-Hungarian. Of Jewish origin, was a journalist and writer.
He studied at the University of Vienna and participated in WWIEssentially as a journalist.
After the war, he traveled throughout Europe. It was a great chronicler of the Republic of Weimar - Times of crisis that preceded the rise of Nazism in Germany.
In articles Berlin, Roth notes the spectacle of the old Prussian capital, stormed the refugee buses and skyscrapers, becoming the epicenter of the cruel history of Europe that would follow.

"Until feeling of honor is narcotic- "

"There nobility without generosity, There is the thirst for revenge without vulgarity.

Nostalgia critic Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was already a novelist known in German-speaking world and a famous journalist Job when it launched in 1930.
The work of this writer born in Brody, then in the Austro-Hungarian Galicia, now Ukraine, turns, especially to the irreversible changes that has affected the world of origin to the 1 st World War The size of this cataclysm is something that we , overshadowed by the even greater catastrophe that was the 2nd World War, we lost sight of.
But the war that marked the end of the Habsburg Empire was perceived by Roth and his contemporaries, as the end of the world whose citizens have become irreversibly exiles - even in homes where they were born. This is because the paradigms of society that were created became, the traditions were lost, the Europe of wars incited his swim in the fever of progress and individualism, and so buried what remained of the medieval conception of the world, static, in which supposed that the different social strata corresponded to a cosmic order, and therefore should be perpetuated, identical over time.
Stranger to this new world, Roth has spent most of their literature to a nostalgic recollection of that universe grounded in ancient certainties and formalized in an order that was lost with the ashes of the Empire, and the criticism, bitterly ironic, the folly of Europe the metropolises of the 20th century. The memory of Roth and his desire unachievable back to the lost world became a sort of old-utopia, which he contrasted the march Increasingly terrible history, which he conceived as a counterpoint to the bewilderment of his own time.
In this universe, disappeared and idealized, two competing traditions to human life and society as a transcendent meaning: on the one hand, the culture of Austria-Hungary, embodied in voluntary and austere Kaiser Franz Joseph, on the other, the Jewish tradition of the East Parliament, that Roth knew very well at home with his mother and his grandparents.
This dual universe appears to be lost as a home which had become impossible to return, while the world he lived in exile seemed meaningless, built "barracks and camps, even with the most modern comforts. This incurable Weltschmerz was nourished the work of one of the most interesting representatives of German literature of wars, and the same irremediable pain of the world led him to alcoholism, despair, and premature death in the hospital for the poor in Paris. Maybe it was good as well: how Roth refused to leave Europe , had lived longer, would probably turn into a gas chamber.
In Job, which was a huge literary success immediately translated into all European languages, and also for the Portuguese, now a forgotten issue of Martins, 1943, this contrast between two worlds is built on the trajectory of a poor family of Russian Jews, who emigrated from the village they live miserable for the United States.
Roth, remember, never traveled to America, but the United States were, in their imagination - indeed, in many of his contemporaries, also born within the Habsburg monarchy, and Egon Erwin Kisch and Franz Kafka - the embodiment of the distorted human and social deprivation: a flattened universe, where the symbolic and spiritual dimension wrecked, dissolving into a definitive petty materialism, the endless struggle for satisfaction of needs, which are increasing as the heads of Hydra.
Job therefore is the most Jewish of Roth's books, in which the assimilation of the Singer family to the reality of modern American is the greatest of all disasters: in his miserable village, victimized by the Cossacks as much by poverty, the exiled Singer, who dreamed, according to the tradition of the Jewish diaspora, with the coming of the Messiah and the miraculous return to their ancestral lands now under the absorbent character of extroversion total of American society, they become strangers even to own skin.
Divided into two parts, the book reproduces, in a modern perspective, the traditional topic of Jewish mystical thought, namely, the concept of Galut or Jewish exile to represent modernity as the top in this condition reaches a climax. Mixing social criticism and nostalgia, Roth does not, however, the romance-thesis: his narrative to this interpretation, but is much more than that. It is a treasure of German prose of the 20th century, whose stripped-down style and polish brims with irony as much as feeling. In phrases reminiscent of the brief nature of the sacred texts of Judaism, and extremely brief descriptions that go so far with the precision of an arrow, he deals with the look of amazement that is the privilege of foreigners and exiles, the paradoxes of their reality contemporary: the apparent freedom and slavery real, the illusory wealth and real misery, poverty and the apparent distortion of all values.
It is a great opportunity to learn more about this author, who spent decades forgotten, especially outside Germany, and in recent years has been experiencing an amazing posthumous glory in the Anglo-Saxon world, and now between us. Luis S. Krausz, Doctor of Literature and Culture Judaicapela University of São Paulo, is the author of Rituals Crepuscular: Joseph Roth and the Austro-Jewish Nostalgia (Edusp, 2008)

In 1932 publishes masterpiece Radetzky march.
Your life becomes Increasingly difficult to deliver to the alcohol and ends up dying in ParisIn 1939.
im: wikipedia

Mittwoch, 13. Januar 2010

musik auf Städte,

seitens der Städte.. LONDON: Gurdjiieff

LONDON 2009
Foto:G.Ludovice
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Russian: Георгий Иванович Гурджиев) (January 13, 1866? – October 29, 1949) was a Greek-Armenian mystic and spiritual teacher
He called his discipline "The Work"(connoting "work on oneself") according to Gurdjieff's principles and instructions, or (originally) the "Fourth Way". At one point he described his teaching as "esoteric Christianity".


At different times in his life Gurdjieff formed and closed various schools around the world which followed his teachings. He claimed that the teachings he brought to the West from his own experiences and early travels expressed the truth found in ancient religions and wisdom teachings relating to self-awareness in people's daily lives and humanity's place in the universe. One could express the essence of his teachings in the title of his third series of writings: Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', while his complete series of books goes under the name "All and Everything".



Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol (now Gyumri), Armenia, Russia Empire to a Pontic Greek father and an Armenian mother. The exact date of his birth remains unknown (conjectures range from 1866 to 1877). Some authors (like Moore) argue persuasively for 1866, others (like Patterson) for 1872; a passport gave a birth-date of November 28, 1877. Gurdjieff grew up in Kars and traveled to many parts of the world (such as Central Asia, Egypt and Rome) before returning to Russia in 1912; about which he later said, ' Begin in Russia, end in Russia.' 2005 may mark the end of a preparatory period, as the Work has reestablished itself in its birthplace, Russia.
The only account of Gurdjieff's early life before he appeared in
Moscow in 1912 appears in his text Meetings with Remarkable Men. This text, however, cannot be read as straightforward autobiography.[6] It was in the pre-1912 period that Gurdjieff went on his apocryphal voyage outlined in Meetings with Remarkable Men where he comes upon a map of "pre-sand Egypt" which leads him to study with an esoteric group, the Sarmoung Brotherhood.




From 1913 to 1949 the chronology appears to stand on the much firmer ground afforded by primary documents, independent witness, cross-reference, and reasonable inference.
On New Year's Day in 1912 Gurdjieff arrived in Moscow and attracted his first students. In the same year he married Julia Ostrowska in St Petersburg. In 1914 Gurdjieff advertised his ballet, The Struggle of the Magicians, and supervised his pupils' writing of the sketch "Glimpses of Truth".




In 1915 Gurdjieff accepted P. D. Ouspensky as a pupil, while in 1916 he accepted the composer Thomas de Hartmann and his wife Olga as students. At this time he had about thirty pupils.
In the midst of revolutionary upheaval in Russia he left
Petrograd in 1917 to return to his family home in Alexandropol. During the Bolshevik Revolution Gurdjieff set up temporary study-communities in Essentuki in the Caucasus, then in Tuapse, Maikop, Sochi and Poti, all on the Black Sea coast of southern Russia, where he worked intensively with many of his Russian pupils.



In 1918, Ouspensky separated from Gurdjieff and four months later Gurdjieff's eldest sister and her family reached him in Essentuki as refugees, informing him that Turks had shot his father in Alexandropol on 15 May during the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. As Essentuki became more and more threatened by civil war, Gurdjieff put out a fabricated newspaper story announcing his forthcoming "scientific expedition" to Mount Induc. Posing as a scientist, Gurdjieff left Essentuki with fourteen companions (excluding Gurdjieff's family and Ouspensky). They traveled by train to Maikop, where hostilities delayed them for three weeks. In spring 1919 Gurdjieff met the artist Alexandre Salzmann and his wife Jeanne and accepted them as pupils. Assisted by Jeanne Salzmann, Gurdjieff gave the first public demonstration of his Sacred Dances (Movements at the Tbilisi Opera House, 22 June).
In the autumn of 1919, Gurdjieff and his closest pupils moved to Tbilisi, formerly known as Tiflis. There Gurdjieff's wife, Julia Ostrowska, Mr and Mrs Stjoernval, Mr and Mrs de Hartmann and Mr and Mrs de Salzmann gathered a lot of the fundamentals of his teaching. Gurdjieff himself concentrated on his still unstaged ballet, The Struggle of the Magicians; Thomas de Hartmann (who had made his debut years ago before the Czar of All Russia) worked on the music for the ballet; and Olga Iovonovna Lazovich Milanoff Hinzenberg (who years later would wed the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright) practiced the ballet dances.

There, in 1919, he established the first Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. He was thought to be greatly influenced by Nikolai Marr, a Georgian archaeologist and historian. [citation?] In late May 1920, when political conditions in Georgia changed and the old order was crumbling, they walked by foot to Batumi on the Black Sea coast and then Istanbul. There Gurdjieff rented an apartment on Koumbaradji Street in Péra and later at 13 Abdullatif Yemeneci Sokak near the Galata Tower.[9] The apartment is near the tekke (monastery) of the Mevlevi Order of Sufis (founded by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi), where Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Thomas de Hartmann experienced the sema ceremony of The Whirling Dervishes. In Istanbul Gurdjieff also met Captain John G. Bennett, the then head of British Military Intelligence in Constantinople. Later, Bennett would become a follower of Gurdjieff and of Ouspensky.




In August 1921 and 1922, Gurdjieff traveled around western Europe, lecturing and giving demonstrations of his work in various cities such as Berlin and London and capturing the allegiance of Ouspensky's many prominent pupils (notably the editor A. R. Orage). After he lost a civil action to acquire Hellerau possession in Britain, Gurdjieff established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man south of Paris at the Prieuré des Basses Loges in Fontainebleau-Avon near the famous Château de Fontainebleau. Gurdjieff acquired notoriety as "the man who killed Katherine Mansfield" after Katherine Mansfield died there of tuberculosis under his care on 9 January 1923.



Reading further, James Moore convincingly shows however that Katherine Mansfield knew she was soon to die and Gurdjieff made her last days happy and fulfilling; for this he received the calumny of the press.
Starting in 1924 Gurdjieff made visits to North America, where he eventually took over the pupils taught previously by A.R. Orage.


In 1924, while driving alone from Paris to Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff had a near-fatal
car-accident. Nursed by his wife and mother, he made a slow and painful recovery — against medical expectation. Still convalescent, he formally "disbanded" his Institute on 26 August (in fact he dispersed only his less-dedicated pupils), and began writing All and Everything.
In 1925 Gurdjieff's wife contracted
cancer; she died in June 1926 in spite of radiotherapy and Gurdjieff's magnetic treatments which due his near death was unable to fully implement. Ouspensky attended her funeral. According to Fritz Peters, Gurdjieff was in New York from November 1925 to the spring of 1926 and he succeeded in raising over $1,000,000.
In 1935 Gurdjieff stopped writing All and Everything, having completed the first two parts of the trilogy but having only started on the Third Series (published under the title Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am').
In Paris, Gurdjieff lived at 6 Rue des Colonels-Rénard, where he continued to teach throughout
World War II.
Gurdjieff died on October 29, 1949 at the American Hospital in
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. His funeral took place at the St. Alexandre Nevsky Russian Orthodox Cathedral at 12 Rue Daru, Paris. He is buried in the cemetery at Fontainebleau-Avon.



Gurdjieff claimed that people cannot perceive reality, as they are not conscious of themselves, but live in a state of a hypnotic "waking sleep".
"Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies."
Gurdjieff taught that each person perceived things from a completely subjective perspective. Gurdjieff stated that maleficent events such as wars and so on could not possibly take place if people were more awake. He asserted that people in their typical state function as unconscious automatons, but that a man can wake up and experience life more fully.


In his early lectures Gurdjieff described his approach to self-development as the Fourth Way. In contrast to teachings that emphasize the development of the body, mind, or emotions separately, Gurdjieff's exercises claimed to work on all three at the same time to promote comprehensive and balanced inner development. In parallel with with other spiritual traditions, Gurdjieff taught that one must expend considerable effort to effect the transformation that leads to awakening. The effort that one puts into practice Gurdjieff referred to as "The Work" or "Work on oneself".

According to Gurdjieff, "...Working on oneself is not so difficult as wishing to work, taking the decision." Though Gurdjieff never put major significance on the term "Fourth Way" and never used the term in his writings, his pupil P.D. Ouspensky from 1924 to 1947 made the term and its use central to his own teaching of Gurdjieff's ideas. After Ouspensky's death, his students published a book titled The Fourth Way based on his lectures.
Gurdjieff's teaching addressed the question of humanity's place in the universe and the importance of developing latent potentialities — regarded as our natural endowment as human beings but rarely brought to fruition. He taught that higher levels of consciousness, higher bodies,
[19] inner growth and development are real possibilities that nonetheless require conscious work to achieve.[20]
In his teaching Gurdjieff gave a distinct meaning to various ancient texts such as the Bible and many religious prayers. He claimed that those texts possess a very different meaning than what is commonly attributed to them. "Sleep not"; "Awake, for you know not the hour"; and "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within" are examples of biblical statements which point to a psychological teaching whose essence has been forgotten.



Gurdjieff taught people how to increase and focus their attention and energy in various ways and to minimize daydreaming and absentmindedness. According to his teaching, this inner development in oneself is the beginning of a possible further process of change, the aim of which is to transform people into what Gurdjieff believed they ought to be.[
Distrusting "morality", which he describes as varying from culture to culture, often contradictory and superficial, Gurdjieff greatly stressed the importance of conscience. This he regarded as the same in all people, buried in their subconsciousness, thus both sheltered from damage by how people live and inaccessible without "work on oneself".
To provide conditions in which inner attention could be exercised more intensively, Gurdjieff also taught his pupils "sacred dances" or "movements", later known as the
Gurdjieff movements, which they performed together as a group. He also left a body of music, inspired by what he heard in visits to remote monasteries and other places, written for piano in collaboration with one of his pupils, Thomas de Hartmann. Gurdjieff also used various exercises, such as the "Stop" exercise, to prompt self-observation in his students. Other shocks to help awaken his pupils from constant day-dreaming were always possible at any moment.



Gurdjieff transmitted his ideas through a number of different methods and materials, including meetings, music, movements (sacred dance), writings, lectures, and innovative forms of group work. He was not consistent in his use of these materials through his lifetime; for example, six years in Paris were devoted primarily to writing, while composition of music and movement centered around a few distinct periods. In Russia he was described as keeping his teaching confined to a small circle, while in Paris and North America he gave numerous public demonstrations.

Gurdjieff felt that the traditional methods of self-knowledge—those of the fakir, monk, and yogi (acquired, respectively, through pain, devotion, and study) -- were inadequate on their own. These three can be understood as a metaphor for work on the body, emotions and the intellect separately.
"Gurdjieff's teachings were transmitted thruough special conditions and through special forms leading to consciousness: Group Work, physical labor, crafts, ideas exchanges, arts, music, movement, dance, adventures in nature..., enabled the unrealized individual to transcend the mechanical, acted-upon self and ascend from mere personality to self-actualizing essence."
[25]
[edit] Music
The Gurdjieff music divides into three distinct periods. The first period is the early music, including music from the ballet Struggle of the Magicians and music for early Movements, dating to the years around 1918.
The second period music, for which Gurdjieff arguably became best known, written in collaboration with Russian composer
Thomas de Hartmann, is described[by whom?] as the Gurdjieff-de Hartmann music. Dating to the mid 1920s, it offers a rich repertory with roots in Caucasian and Central Asian folk and religious music, Russian Orthodox liturgical music, and other sources. This music was often first heard, and even composed, in the salon at the Prieure. Since the publication of four volumes of this piano repertory by Schott, recently completed, there has been a wealth of new recordings, including orchestral versions of music prepared by Gurdjieff and de Hartmann for the Movements demonstrations of 1923-24.
The last musical period is the improvised harmonium music which often followed the dinners Gurdjieff held in his Paris apartment during the Occupation and immediate post-war years, to his death in 1949. A virtually encyclopedic recording of surviving tapes of Gurdjieff improvising on the harmonium was recently published.
In all, Gurdjieff in collaboration with de Hartmann composed some 200 pieces.




Whirling dervish
Movements, or sacred dances, constitute an integral part of the Gurdjieff Work. Gurdjieff sometimes referred to himself as a "teacher of dancing," and gained initial public notice for his attempts to put on a ballet in Moscow called "Struggle of the Magicians."
Films of Movements demonstrations are occasionally shown for
private viewing by the Gurdjieff Foundations, and one is shown in a scene in the Peter Brook movie Meetings with Remarkable Men.
Gurdjieff taught that group efforts both enhance and surpass individual efforts preparing them to practice a new psychology of evolution. To accomplish this he needed to constantly innovate and create new alarm clocks to awaken his sleeping students as Jesus did 1900 years before. Students regularly met with group leaders; both separately and in group meetings, and came together for "work periods" where intensive conscious labor, connected with the forms mentioned above. Work in the kitchen was a special task and sometimes elaborate meals were prepared. This food was the the lowest of the three being foods, food, air and impressions. Air and impressions being even more important, special exercises were given for them.
According to Gurdjieff, the work of Schools of the Fourth Way never remains the same for long. In some cases, this has led to a break between student and teacher as is the case of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. The outward appearance of the School and the group work can change according to the circumstances. However, the inner individual expression such as the practice of self-remembering with self-observation and the non-expression of negative emotions, always remains the same and could never change for that is the guarantee of ultimate self-development.

A follower of Gurdjieff, former American Fabrics magazine publisher William C. Segal, tells of periods of hard labor around the clock which in the Gurdjieff System are known as "super-efforts". According to Gurdjieff, only super-efforts count in the Work.

In 1948 and 1949, Segal was sporadically in contact with Gurdjieff who had been the teacher of avant-garde lesbian Jane Heap. In 1951, at 26, Peter Brook became a pupil of Heap in London and Segal published Gentry catering to a superior audience.
As Segal would write in the poem Silence Clarity, "... It is through the body that sits here/ that I go to my true nature." A voice at the borders of silence would conclude, "... It is through the mind that stands still/ that I experience my true nature."

Gurdjieff wrote and approved for publication three volumes of his written work under the title All and Everything.
The first volume, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, is a lengthy allegorical work that recounts the explanations of Beelzebub to his grandson concerning the beings of the planet Earth. Intended to be a teaching tool, Gurdjieff wemt to great lengths in order to increase the effort needed to read and understand the book.

The second volume, Meetings with Remarkable Men, was written in a very easily understood manner, and purports to be an autobiography of his early years, but also contains many allegorical statements. His final volume left intentionally unfinished shows the Masters hand, Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', contains a fragment of an autobiographical description of later years, as well as transcripts of some lectures.
As Gurdjieff explained to Ouspensky ... "for exact understanding exact language is necessary."
In his first series of writings, Gurdjieff explains how difficult it is to choose an ordinary language to convey his thoughts exactly. He continues..."the Russian language is like the English...both these languages are like the dish which is called in Moscow 'Solianka', and into which everything goes except you and me..." In spite of the difficulties, he goes on to develop a special vocabulary of a new language all of it his own. He uses these new words particularly in the first series of his writings. However, in The Herald of Coming Good, he uses one particular word for the first time which does not appear in any of his other writings: ..." Tzvarnoharno...leads to the destruction of both him that tries to achieve something for general human welfare and of all that he has already accomplished to this end."


According to Gurdjieff, King Solomon himself coined this particular word; as such, it seems to be a key to understanding the legend of Hiram Abiff.

Opinions on Gurdjieff's writings and activities are divided. Sympathizers regard him as a charismatic master who brought new knowledge into Western culture, a psychology and cosmology that enable insights beyond those provided by established science.

Critics assert he was simply a charlatan with a large ego and a constant need for self-glorification.

Gurdjieff is said to have had a strong influence on many modern mystics, artists, writers, and thinkers, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Keith Jarrett, Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Fripp, Jacob Needleman, John Shirley, Dennis Lewis, Peter Brook, Kate Bush, P. L. Travers, Robert S de Ropp, Walter Inglis Anderson,Jean Toomer, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Louis Pauwels, James Moore and Abdullah Isa Neil Dougan. Gurdjieff's notable personal students include Jeanne de Salzmann, Willem Nyland, Lord Pentland (Henry John Sinclair), P. D. Ouspensky, Olga de Hartmann, Thomas de Hartmann, Jane Heap, John G. Bennett, Alfred Richard Orage, Maurice Nicoll, Lanza del Vasto, George and Helen Adie and Katherine Mansfield.



Outwardly , at the first glance, this exercise is simple. For instance, you see, I sit here in my usual posture. I am dividing my attention. But no one can see this inner process. I divide my atten...
Outwardly , at the first glance, this exercise is simple. For instance, you see, I sit here in my usual posture. I am dividing my attention. But no one can see this inner process. I divide my attention consciously into two parts. With one part I now sense, feel and constate simultaneously with one conscious concentration. Now I breathe. I feel that something happening to the air that I breath in. Part of it goes in, part goes out, and a part remains. My organism, that is my lungs, take a part, then a part leaves and a part remains. I feel what is happening in my lungs. When I breath in, part of the air is assimilated and I feel its flow all over the body. It goes everywhere. I keep my attention fixed; I feel, I sense how this air is being assimilated in me and how It flows in my presence. It is not necessary to find out where it goes, it just flows in my presence.One part of my attention is occupied with this - breathing, assimilating and flowing of the air. Already my mental associations are very weak. I notice them sometimes, by the way, because part of my attention is free, and is able to notice mental associations.Now I will concentrate the ether half of my attention on my mind. my head brain. I feel that in my head-brain something arises from the total of the flow of associations there. I don't know what is taking place there, but there is something, and with my half attention I notice this very thin something arise, so small, so light, so thin, that nobody feel it the first few times, not until constant practice gives the feeling. I know this subjectively because I have practised it. I feel , I sense, l constate, that something arises in my head-brain. All the time, of course, the other half of my attention is occupied with the breathing process. Even while speaking, this exercise is being automatically done. Now I direct my attention to help this something in my brain to flow towards my solar plexus. What arises in the brain is not important. What is important is that the something that arises there should flow into the solar plexus. Now I feel how it flows. My attention is fully occupied and I don't see any more associations All my attention is occupied pied with feeling, sensing, and assimilating the flow of air, and also with this arising in my head-brain.This flow of assimilated air, and this something which arises in my head brain, I specially, consciously, with my wish, concentrate to let it flow into my solar plexus. Now, by the way I feel and constate that I breathe, I assimilate and that this flow goes to the solar plexus. And all the time the flow from the air I breathe and the flow from my head-associations go to the solar plexus although they issue from different sources.For me personally, at the same time, I feel very strongly that I AM. I feel that I AM ten times stronger. My "I" takes in this food more intensely, but for you, at the present moment, do not do this exercise in order to be stronger. For you this exercise is only a preparation to have an "I" and so that you should constate the two sources from which this "I" can arise. For me it gives food to my "I". It makes it stronger, so that now I am not "tail of donkey". I AM.But you can not yet use this exercise to make yourself stronger; you must first learn and constate the two sources from which this possibility can arise, to have a real " I" - from air and from mentation, even automatic mentation; and then , when you will have practised this exercise a great deal, you may be able to have possibilities for real active mentation. And then with real active mentation, the I" can become stronger.Enough. I stop and let these processes proceed in me automatically. Now, without titillation without philosophizing and manipulation, try to understand the total of all this and formulate it according to your subjective understanding, according to whatever kind of idiot you are. Then do [it].

The Italian composer and singer Franco Battiato was sometime inspired by Gurdieff's work, for example in his song Cerco un centro di gravita permanente that is one of most popular modern Italian pop songs. Aleister Crowley visited his Institute at least once. Gurdjieff called Crowley 'dirty,' and wanted him to leave the institute. Privately Crowley praised Gurdjieff's work, though with some reservations. During WWI, Algernon Blackwood took up spying while reporting to John Buchan, author of The Thirty Nine Steps. After the war, during the Roaring Twenties, Blackwood studied with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
However one regards Gurdjieff's teaching, or Gurdjieff personally, he appears to have given new life and practical form to ancient teachings of both East and West. For example, the Socratic/Platonic emphasis on "the examined life" recurs in Gurdjieff's teaching as the practice of self-observation. His teachings about self-discipline and restraint reflect Stoic teachings. The Hindu/Buddhist notion of attachment recurs in Gurdjieff's teaching as the concept of identification. Similarly, his cosmology can be "read" against ancient and esoteric sources, respectively Neoplatonic and such a source as Robert Fludd's treatment of macrocosmic musical structures.
American psychological culture has seized on one of Gurdjieff's inovations, the
enneagram. For many students of the Gurdjieff tradition the enneagram remains a "koan," challenging and never fully explicated. Lord Pentland allowed very limited use of this symbol. There have been many attempts to trace the origins of the enneagram; some similarites to other figures have been found, but it seems that Gurdjieff was the sole revealer of this esoteric symbol to the world and only he knew the true source. Many imitators have attempted to use the enneagram symbol as the basis for personality analysis, for example in the Enneagram of Personality, developed by Oscar Ichazo,Claudio Naranjo, Helen Palmer, and others, and in that application it is not related to Gurdjieff's teaching or to his explanations of the enneagram.
The science-fiction and horror novelist
John Shirley has written an introductory work on Gurdjieff for Penguin/Tarcher, Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas.

Gurdjieff had influenced the formation of many groups after his death, all of which still function today and follow his ideas.
The Gurdjieff Foundation, the largest organization directly influenced by the ideas of Gurdjieff, was organized by Jeanne de Salzmann during the early 1950s, and led by her in cooperation with other direct pupils. The main four branches of the Foundation are The Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, The London-based Gurdjieff Society, the Institut Gurdjieff (Paris), and the network of foundations in South America founded by the late Natalie de Etievan, daughter of Jeanne de Salzmann.

Connected to these four foundations are numerous smaller groups around the world, collected under the umbrella of the International Association of Gurdjieff Foundations. The president of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York was Lord Pentland, who retained this position until his death. And was then led by Paul Reynard, a painter and Master of Gurdjieff Movements. As of 2009[update] Frank R. Sinclair, author of Without Benefit of Clergy, presides. A group in India is led by Ravi Ravindra who was a student under Mme De Salzmann and Dr. Welch.

Various pupils of Gurdjieff and his direct students have formed other groups. Willem Nyland, one of Gurdjieff's closest students and an original founder and trustee of The Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, left to form his own groups in the early 1960s.

Jane Heap was sent to London by Gurdjieff, where she led groups until her death in 1964. Louise Goepfert March, who became a pupil of Gurdjieff's in 1929, started her own groups in 1957 and founded the Rochester Folk Art Guild in the Finger Lakes region of New York State; her efforts were closely linked to the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York. There are also independent groups which were formed and led by [[John G. Bennett and Mrs. Staveley.
In 2005 Alan Francis after co-founding the Gurdjieff Foundation in Oregon formed the as yet unaffilated Russian Center for Gurdjieff Studies in Moscow.
Gurdjieff student Lord Pentland connects the Gurdjieff group-work with the later rise of
encounter groups. Groups also often meet to prepare for demonstrations or performances to which the public is invited.

Criticism by Louis Pauwels among others
of Gurdjieff's system largely focuses on his insistence on seeing people as "asleep" in a state closely resembling "hypnotic sleep". Gurdjieff said, even specifically at times, that a pious, good, and moral man was no more "spiritually developed" than any other person; they are all equally "asleep".
In spite of Henry Miller's personally positive attitude towards Gurdjieff for not considering himself holy like other masters of wisdom, after writing a brief introduction to Fritz Peters' book Boyhood with Gurdjieff he goes on to explain that man is not meant to lead a "harmonious life", as Gurdjieff claimed in naming his institute.

A primary criticism of Gurdjieff's work points out that it attaches no value to almost everything that comprises the life of an average man. According to Gurdjieff, everything an "average man" possesses, accomplishes, does, and feels is completely accidental and without any initiative. A common everyday ordinary man is born a machine and dies a machine without any chance whatsoever of being anything else.
This belief seems to runs counter the Judeo-Christian tradition that man is a living soul.
In his most elaborate writing, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (see bibliography), Gurdjieff records his reverence for the founders of the mainstream religions of East and West and his contempt (by and large) for what successive generations of believers have made of those religious teachings. His ironical discussions of "orthodoxhydooraki" and "heterodoxhydooraki" — orthodox fools and heterodox fools, from the Russian word durak (fool) — position him as a critic of religious distortion and, in turn, as a target for criticism from some within those traditions. Gurdjieff has been interpreted by some, Ouspensky among others, to have had a total disregard for the value of mainstream religion, philanthropic work and the value of doing right or wrong in general.

Gurdjieff's former students as detractors argue, despite his seeming total lack of pretension to any kind of "guru holiness", that the many anecdotes of his sometimes unconventional behavior display the unsavory and impure character of a man who was a cynical manipulator of his followers.
Gurdjieff's own pupils wrestled to understand him. For example, in a written exchange between Luc Dietrich and Henri Tracol dating to 1943: "L.D.: How do you know that Gurdjieff wishes you well? H.T.: I feel sometimes how little I interest him--and how strongly he takes an interest in me. By that I measure the strength of an intentional feeling."

Louis Pauwels wrote Monsieur Gurdjieff (first edition published in Paris France in 1954 by Editions du Seuil).
In an interview, he said of the Gurdjieff work: "... After two years of exercises which both enlightened and burned me, I found myself in a hospital bed with a thrombosed central vein in my left eye and weighing ninety-nine pounds...Horrible anguish and abysses opened up for me. But it was my fault."
Pauwels claims Karl Haushofer, the father of geopolitics whose protegee was Deputy Reich Führer Rudolf Hess, as one of the real "seekers after truth" described by Gurdjieff. According to Rom Landau, a journalist in the 1930s, as reported to him by Achmed Abdullah: at the beginning of the 20th century, Gurdjieff was a Russian secret agent in Tibet who went by the name of "Hambro Akuan Dorzhieff" (i.e. Agvan Dorjiev), chief tutor to the Dalai Lama.

However, reports have it that Dorzhieff went to live in the Buddhist temple erected in St. Petersburg and after the revolution, he was imprisoned by Stalin. Jack Webb conjectures that Gurdjieff may have been Dorzhieff's assistant Ushe Narzunoff (i.e. Ovshe Norzunov) but this is untenable.
Colin Wilson writes about "...Gurdjieff's reputation for seducing his female students. (In Providence Rhode Island, in 1960, a man was pointed out to me as one of Gurdjieff's illegitimate children. The professor who told me this also assured me that Gurdjieff had left many children around America)."

Frank R. Sinclair, president of the Gurdjieff Foundation in New York, identifies Michele de Salzmann as Jeanne de Salzmann's son by Gurdjieff.[50] Dushka Howarth, the daughter of one of Gurdjieff's early Movements instructors Jessmin Howarth, and a few others are described as children of Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff vs Crowley
According to Alex Owen, Gurdjieff "...was often referred to by his followers as a magician, and the powerful effect of his hypnotic presence is reminiscent of
Aleister Crowley in his prime. Although Gurdjieff despised Crowley, both men were undeniably occult Masters in a similar mold."

Whitall Perry writes that "...there is just the possibility that the two men had some business in common that escaped the notice of the others present."
Samael Aun Weor writes more directly in The Juratena Mountain of how Francisco A. Propato (a graduate of La Sorbonne and Spanish translator of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam) declares "Beelzebub" Gurdjieff a Black Magician.
Though Aun Weor himself only ever speaks of Gurdjieff in positive terms but not so when it comes down to discuss Kundalini or when Gurdjieff writes, "...Concerning sexual desire ...If a youth but once gratify this lust before reaching adulthood, then the same would happen to him as happened to the historical Essau...But when the youth is grown up, then he can do whatever he likes..."
"...As far as I know, the only occult resort of recent times which surpassed Gurdjieff's in madness was the infamous monastery established near Cefalu, in Sicily, by the fabulous British occultist, Aleister Crowley."[



Gurdjieff vs Rasputin
"...Rom Landau was one of the first to compare Gurdjieff to
Rasputin. Describing a meeting with Gurdjieff, he explains: 'I had been specially careful not to look at Gurdjieff and not to allow him to look into my eyes...'"
Time magazine once described Gurdjieff as "a remarkable blend of P.T. Barnum, Rasputin, Freud, Groucho Marx and everybody's grandfather."

Gurdjieff's funeral
With so much to be discussed, about Gurdjieff and his teaching, other views abound which were either generated by Gurdjieff himself or his followers. For example, during the Russian period Gurdjieff spoke with respect of the obyvatel, the simple householder or salt-of-the-earth peasant, who lives by traditional values and slowly develops himself. Much later, in Paris, he gave encouragement and financial help to a multitude of people who were hard up for one reason or another. His Paris flat had, people say, one of the world's worst art collections, consisting of pieces purchased from indigent artists as a cover for providing them with funds without humiliating them.
Diogenes, the ancient Greek Cynic philosopher whom Gurdjieff resembles, once said of himself that like the chorus master, he set the note a little high so that the chorus would hit the right note. For his pupils and in his writings, Gurdjieff set the note "a little high" as a goal and inspiration, while in his personal conduct he was generous to "the average man." Many such people attended his funeral at the Russian cathedral, rue Daru. Gurdjieff's pupils did not know them.




Books
The Herald of Coming Good by G. I. Gurdjieff (1933, 1971, 1988)
All and Everything trilogy:
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson by G. I. Gurdjieff (1950)
Meetings with Remarkable Men by G. I. Gurdjieff (1963)
Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am' by G. I. Gurdjieff (1974)
Views from the Real World gathered talks of G. I. Gurdjieff by his pupil Olga de Hartmann(1973)
Books about Gurdjieff and The Fourth Way
The Unknowable Gurdjieff,
Margaret Anderson, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1962, ISBN 0-7100-7656-8
Gurdjieff: A Very Great Enigma by J. G. Bennett, 1969
Gurdjieff: Making a New World by J. G. Bennett 1973,
ISBN 0-06-090474-7
Idiots in Paris by J. G. Bennett and E. Bennett, 1980
Becoming Conscious with G.I. Gurdjieff, Solanges Claustres, Eureka Editions, 2005
Mount Analogue by
René Daumal 1st edition in French, 1952; English, 1974
The Fellowship: The Untold Story of
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, 2006, (includes especially extensive documentation on "the strong influence the occultist Georgi Gurdjieff had on Wright and especially his wife Oglivanna."[61])
Gurdjieff Unveiled by
Seymour Ginsburg, 2005
Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff by
Thomas and Olga de Hartmann, 1964, Revised 1983 and 1992
IT'S UP TO OURSELVES, A Mother, A Daughter and Gurdjieff, a Shared Memoir and Family Photoalbum by Jessmin and Dushka Howarth, Gurdjieff Heritage Society, 2009,
ISBN 978-0-9791926-0-9
Undiscovered Country by Kathryn Hulme, 1966
The Oragean Version by C. Daly King, 1951
The Gurdjieff Years 1929-1949: Recollections of Louise March by Annabeth McCorkle
Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky by
Maurice Nicoll, 1952, 1955, 1972, 1980, (6 volumes)
Teachings of Gurdjieff - The Journey of a Pupil by C. S. Nott, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1961
On Love by
A. R. Orage, 1974
Psychological Exercises by A. R. Orage 1976
In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky, 1949 (numerous editions)
The Fourth Way by P. D. Ouspensky, 1957
The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution by P. D. Ouspensky, 1978
Eating The "I": An Account of The Fourth Way: The Way of Transformation in Ordinary Life,
William Patrick Patterson, 1992
Ladies of the Rope: Gurdjieff's Special Left Bank Women's Group,
William Patrick Patterson 1999
Struggle of the Magicians: Exploring the Teacher-Student Relationship,
William Patrick Patterson 1996
Taking with the Left Hand: Enneagram Craze, The Fellowship of Friends, and the Mouravieff Phenomenon,
William Patrick Patterson, 1998
Voices in the Dark: Esoteric, Occult & Secular Voices in Nazi-Occupied Paris 1940-44,
William Patrick Patterson, 2001
Spiritual Survival in a Radically Changing World-Time,
William Patrick Patterson, 2009
Boyhood with Gurdjieff by Fritz Peters, 1964
Gurdjieff Remembered by Fritz Peters, 1965
The Gurdjieff Work by Kathleen Speeth
ISBN 0-87477-492-6
Gurdjieff: An Introduction To His Life and Ideas by John Shirley, 2004, ISBN 1-58542-287-8
Gurdjieff: A Master in Life, Tcheslaw Tchekhovitch, Dolmen Meadow Editions, Toronto, 2006
Toward Awakening by Jean Vaysse, 1980
Gurdjieff: An Approach to his Ideas, Michel Waldberg, 1981,
ISBN 0-7100-0811-2
A Study of Gurdjieff's Teaching, Kenneth Walker, 1957
Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts, Sophia Wellbeloved, Routledge, London and N.Y., 2003,
ISBN 0-415-24898-1
Gurdjieff, Astrology and Beelzebub's Tales, Sophia Wellbeloved, Solar Bound Press, N.Y., 2002
The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff,
Colin Wilson, 1980
Who Are You Monsieur Gurdjieff?, René Zuber 1980
Monsieur Gurdjieff, Louis Pauwels, France, 1954.
[62]
"Ouspensky, Gurdjieff et les Fragments d'un Enseignement inconnu", by Boris Mouravieff, in Revue Mensuelle Internationale "Synthèses", N°138, Bruxelles, novembre 1957.
"Ecrits sur Ouspensky, Gurdjieff et sur la Tradition ésotérique chrétienne", Inédit, Dervy Poche, Paris, September 2008.
Gurdjieff Seeker of the Truth, Kathleen Speeth, Ira Friedlander, 1980,
ISBN 0-06-090693-6
Comprehensive biographies
Gurdjieff: Making a New World posthumous work by John G. Bennett, 1973, Harper,
ISBN 0-06-060778-5
The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers by James Webb, 1980, Putnam Publishing. ISBN 0-399-11465-3
Gurdjieff: The anatomy of a Myth by James Moore, 1991, ISBN 1-86204-606-9
Gurdjieff's America: Mediating the Miraculous by Paul Beekman Taylor, 2004, Lighthouse Editions, ISBN 1904998003. Reissued as Gurdjieff's Invention of America 2007, Eureka Editions.
G. I. Gurdjieff: A New Life by Paul Beekman Taylor, 2008, Eureka Editions,
ISBN 978-90-72395-57-3
Videos and DVDs about Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way
Gurdjieff's Legacy: Establishing The Teaching in the West, 1924-1949 Part III
Gurdjieff's Mission: Introducing The Teaching to the West, 1912-1924 Part II
Gurdjieff in Egypt: The Origin of Esoteric Knowledge Part I
Meetings with Remarkable Men, Peter Brook, 1979
Tribute to G. I. Gurdjieff
Some moments with Mr. Gurdjieff and others, France 1949
Hitler, Stalin and Gurdjiev. Running time appr. 44 minutes. Russia, 2006.
Music
G.I. Gurdjieff Sacred Hymns, by
Keith Jarrett, ECM, 1980
Seekers of the Truth: The Complete Piano Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann, Volume One, by
Cecil Lytle, Celestial Harmonies, 1992
Reading of a Sacred Book: The Complete Piano Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann, Volume Two, by
Cecil Lytle, Celestial Harmonies, 1992
Words for a Hymn to the Sun: The Complete Piano Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann, Volume Three, by
Cecil Lytle, Celestial Harmonies, 1992
Gurdjieff's Music for the Movements, by
Wim van Dullemen, Channel Classics, 1999
Thomas de Hartmann: Music for Gurdjieff's '39 Series' , by
Wim van Dullemen, Channel Classics, 2001
Chants, Hymns and Dances, by
Anja Lechner and Vassilis Tsabropoulos, ECM, 2004
Melos, by
Anja Lechner, Vassilis Tsabropoulos and U.T. Gandhi, ECM, 2008
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