A footnote

to emptyness.

无名，天地之始
The nameless is the beginning of the sky and earth.
Dao de jing 1.

A Japanese painter was commissioned by an American to paint him a picture. The picture has been made. In its lower corner a little bird sat on the branch of a cherry tree. The whole upper part of the painting was empty. The American examined the image with an unhappy face, and he asked the painter to paint something else on it as well, for it looks so empty. The Japanese refused to do so. When he was called to account, he explained that if he painted all the surface, the bird would have no room to fly.

Huang Shen (1687-1771), ink drawing. Shanghai Museum.

Lai Da (late 16th century), ink drawing. Shanghai Museum

Yuan Shangtong (1570-1661), Jackdaws, ink drawing. Nanjing Museum

He also would like to fly.
Chang Si (active between 1156 and 1161), roll painting. Beijing Palace Museum

Hossein Alizadeh: Horizon, setar solo from the CD Birds (پرنده ها),c2006

Ars poetica

Xu Futong: 月 (Luna), caligrafía

我爱亨利摩爾的雕塑，尤其沉迷於雕塑中的孔。
Amo las estatuas de Henry Moore, especialmente el vacío que hay en medio de ellas.
(Gu Gan: 現代書法三步 (Los tres grados de la caligrafía moderna), Beijing 1990)

Repasando otra vez la traducción húngara del libro de Lin Yutang dimos con un poema de Xin Qiji que nos gusta mucho y del que no puede decirse que haya sido nunca traducido al húngaro. En todo caso, esta versión suena así (añadimos una traducción española literal):

Ifjú napjaimban Csak vidámságban volt részem, De szerettem fölmenni a padlásra, De szerettem fölmenni a padlásra, Hogy bánatot színlelő dalt írjak. Azóta volt részem A bánat keserű ízében, És szót nem találok, És szót nem találok, Csak ezt: „Mily aranyos őszi óra.”

En los días de mi juventud Yo solo era partidario de la felicidad. Cuánto me gustaba subir al ático Cuánto me gustaba subir al ático Así escribiría una canción afectando pena. Desde entonces he participado Del amargo sabor de la pena Y no encuentro palabras Y no encuentro palabras Solo esto: «Qué hora dorada del otoño»

Esta traducción, con su falta de precisión y errores de lectura, y especialmente con sus injustificadas adherencias sentimentales demuestra claramente por qué toda la tradición de traducciones poéticas del chino al húngaro (y podría añadir algunas a otras lenguas), deudoras del fin-de-siècle, son un completo error.

Gu Gan: 绕 (rizo)

El poema chino es como un cuchillo. Preciso y agudo. Sus palabras son simples y encajadas casi a la fuerza. Son como los marcos del vacío en que consiste la esencia del poema y de la imagen chinos.

En consecuencia, en la Casa de la Poesía China optamos por traducir, primero, en una pequeña ventana emergente, una por una, cada palabra del verso para que cualquier lector comprenda claramente estos marcos; a continuación incluimos una transcripción romanizada que permite percibir el ritmo; y luego una traducción explícitamente cruda y literal. Al final, el lector podrá ensamblar el poema por sí mismo.

Invitamos a comprobar nuestro método aquí, con este poema de Xing Qiji traducido carácter a carácter y con su transcripción. Abajo damos solo la precisa versión al español.

De joven no sabía el gusto de la pena, subía a la torre. Subía a la torre, a cantar una pena fingida.

Mas hoy sé bien el gusto de la pena, y ya no quiero contarlo. Ya no quiero contarlo, solo decir qué hermoso, el frío otoño.

Gu Gan: 露 (rocío)

Xing Qiji en este poema utiliza un juego de palabras –más bien un «juego de caracteres»– tan fino que no lo podemos traducir, apenas explicarlo. Sin embargo, este juego es la clave no solo del poema sino de la poesía china en general.

Las dos partes acaban con dos palabras similares, chóu y qiū (chjou y chyou). La final qiū 秋 de la segunda parte, formada con las imágenes de la oreja 禾 y el fuego 火 significa ‘otoño’, la estación en que se quema el rastrojo. En el último 愁 chóu de la primera parte encontramos el mismo 秋 ‘otoño’, pero sobre el signo del corazón y de los sentimientos 心 con lo que significa ‘pena’, «otoño en el corazón».

La poesía clásica de la dinastía Tang se esforzó en evitar esta palabra demasiado «lírica». El gran diccionario de la poesía Tang solo incluye dos apariciones. Sin embargo, el ci, el género poético popular del período Song que imitaba las canciones tradicionales, explotaba con frecuencia el sonido y la similaridad «etimológica» de las dos palabras, como vemos en Li Yu entre los poemas que hemos traducido.

Esta obra, muy conocida en su momento, está incorporada en las palabras de Xin Qiji cuando dice que en su juventud quería escribir sobre el «otoño de su corazón» –pero ¡cuán lejos estaba entonces de tener realmente el otoño en su corazón, y ahora sí que lo tenía!– ; ya hemos apuntado la razón en una nota previa – había alcanzado el punto en que ya no quería describir «el otoño del corazón» sino exclusivamente «el otoño» contemplado con toda la claridad de su frío y belleza pero omitiendo cualquier intervención sentimental 心.

Y si el poeta –junto con lo mejor de la poesía china– ha alcanzado y defiende esta restricción, por qué el traductor vuelve atrás y tiene que colarnos de contrabando e impunemente sus propias efusiones.

Wang Xuezhong: 白花齊放 (que se abran cien flores)

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Ars poetica

Xu Futong: 月 (Moon), calligraphy

我爱亨利摩爾的雕塑，尤其沉迷於雕塑中的孔。
I love the statues of Henry Moore, especially the emptyness in the middle of them.
(Gu Gan: 現代書法三步 (The three steps of modern calligraphy), Beijing 1990)

While skimming through again the book of Lin Yutang, I found a poem by Xin Qiji which I love so much and about which I did not know that it had been translated into Hungarian. The Hungarian version sounds like this, in the original and in a verbatim English translation:

Ifjú napjaimban Csak vidámságban volt részem, De szerettem fölmenni a padlásra, De szerettem fölmenni a padlásra, Hogy bánatot színlelő dalt írjak. Azóta volt részem A bánat keserű ízében, És szót nem találok, És szót nem találok, Csak ezt: „Mily aranyos őszi óra.”

In my young days I only partook in happiness. How much I loved to go up the attic How much I loved to go up the attic So that I would write a song affecting sorrow. Since then I have partaken In the bitter taste of sorrow And I can find no words And I can find no words Only this: “What a golden autumn hour!”

This translation with its lack of precision and misunderstandings, and especially with its unjustified sentimental additions displays well why the whole Hungarian (but I could also substitute it with some other languages as well) tradition of Chinese poetic translation, rooted in the fin-de-siècle, is an absolute mistake.

Gu Gan: 绕 (Coiling)

The Chinese poem is like a knife. Sharp and precise. The words of the Chinese poem are simple and detached almost by force. They are only frames for that vast emptiness which is the very essence of the Chinese poem in the same way as it is of the Chinese image.

This is why we also proceed in the Casa de la Poesía China by translating first in a small popup window one by one each word of the verse, so that every reader would clearly understand these frames; then including a Romanized transcription so that everyone would also feel the rhythm; and then offering an explicitly verbatim, almost raw translation. Then everyone has to assemble the poem for him- or herself.

You are recommended to check there this poem of Xing Qiji by character and in transcription. Here I copy from there only the precise Spanish translation (then retranslating it into English).

De joven no sabía el gusto de la pena, subía a la torre. Subía a la torre, a cantar una pena fingida. Mas hoy sé bien el gusto de la pena, y ya no quiero contarlo. Ya no quiero contarlo, solo decir qué hermoso, el frío otoño.

When young, I did not know the taste of sorrow. I went up the tower. I went up the tower to write a poem on pretended sorrow. By now I’ve completely tasted sorrow, but already I do not want to speak about it. I do not want to speak about it, I only say: what a beautiful, cold autumn.

Gu Gan: 露 (Dew)

Xing Qiji in this poem uses such a fine play of words – or rather “play of characters” – that we can not translate, only explain. However, this play is the key not only to this poem, but to the Chinese poem in general.

The two parts end in two similar words, chóu and qiū (ch’ou and chou). The final qiū 秋 of the second part, composed of the images of an ear 禾 and of the fire 火 means ‘autumn’, the season of the stubble-field burning. In the final 愁 chóu of the first part we find this same 秋 ‘autumn’, but standing above the sign of the heart and of the feelings 心 and thus meaning ‘sorrow’, “autumn in the heart”.

The classical poetry of the Tang period made an effort to avoid this too “lyrical” word. The great dictionary of the Tang poetry only includes two occurrences of it. However, the popular poetic genre of the Song period, the ci that imited folk songs, often exploited the sounding and “etymologic” similarity of the two words, as we also find it in Li Yu among the poems translated by us.

This play, well known in his age, is reversed by Xin Qiji when he says that in the years of his youth he wanted to write about “the autumn in his heart” – but how far he was at that time from really having autum in his heart! And by the time he had it – we have already hinted at the reason in our previous note – he already reached the point where he did not want to describe “the autumn in the heart”, but only “the autumn” which he already saw clearly with all its beauty and coldness, and with the omission of all the frills of sentiments 心.

And if he – and the best of the Chinese poetry – reached the point of omitting them, then why does the translator want to smuggle back, intrusively and at any cost, his own ones?

Wang Xuezhong: 白花齊放 (Let a hundred flowers bloom)

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Cabras, lagartos, conejos y la Historia de la Humanidad

El día en que Wang Wei, después de dos veranos, decide volver a Cabrera, el cielo de agosto, siempre deslumbrante, amanece con una tenue gasa de nubes. Durante todo el año, Cabrera aparece y se vela, se muestra un día y se oculta otro. Para quien la contempla desde el campanario de Ses Salines, las arenas de S’Avall o el puertecito de S’Estanyol, en la proa del sur de Mallorca, es una silueta definida y clara o, alternativamente, un manchón de bruma que se diluyera en el aire. Ni demasiado cerca como para una visita facilona, ni tan lejos que exija la reverencia de una expedición. Esta madrugada Wang Wei la ve nítida pero entre un cielo y un mar con veladuras grises.


A media mañana, llegando a Cabrera, ha vuelto la luz dura y calcárea. Wang Wei sosiega los ojos en el mar y, como siempre al acercarse allí, no puede evitar pensar no tanto en la naturaleza, a la que está consagrada hoy la isla y sus aguas, sino en la historia (id a este catálogo de los yacimientos arqueológicos; solo en noviembre pasado se sacaron a luz los restos del monasterio bizantino y de las cabañas de los atormentados prisioneros franceses). Wang Wei tiene ahora ante los ojos un trozo de tierra que la historia ha cruzado con toda su fuerza –y a veces con la violencia más cruda– y, sin embargo, no se ve apenas nada más que la tierra misma, los pinos, las sabinas, las rocas, el polvo, la soledad de un mar azul y de un cielo rabiosamente puro. Wang Wei nota el sabor de la sal en los labios.


Wang Wei ha leído este verano varios libros de gente vinculada a Cabrera. Parece que desde hace poco algunos han decidido hablar de su vida allá. Primero leyó la biografía de Francisca Sunyer, que Wang Wei recomienda vivamente, Viure a Cabrera: una illa feta a mida (Palma: Editorial Moll, 1993); y la semana pasada el último libro que acaba de aparecer, políticamente mucho más beligerante y con testimonios que aún hoy pueden resultar dolorosos: Joan Rigo, Els de Cabrera (1936-1946): el testimoni de Jeroni Bonet "De Cabrera" (Palma: Documenta Balear, 2008).

Batiendo habas en 1968

Pero en la abundante bibliografía anterior sobre la isla había alguna cosa divertida. Por ejemplo, Joaquín M. Bover escribió: Cabrera. Sucesos de su historia que tienen relación con la de Francia (Palma: Felipe Guasp, 1847). Este Joaquín María Bover y Rosselló (Caballero de la Ínclita Orden de Jerusalén en la Veneranda lengua de Aragón, entre los Arcades de Roma Cleandro Lirceo, Individuo de la Real Academia de la Historia... y un montón de cosas más con las que gustaba adornar su nombre) seguramente quiso con este libro dar cauce a una sensación similar a la que atenaza a Wang Wei cuando se acerca al subarchipiélago. Pero se le fue la mano. Leyendo el opúsculo, casi emociona ver al bueno de Bover descubriendo el Mediterráneo; es decir, su Mediterráneo particular e insólito. Con los poquísimos datos históricos que manejaba (y no se preocupó en buscar demasiado) puso en pie un estudio fabuloso describiendo la isla poco menos que como la cuna de la civilización occidental.

—¡Pobre Cabrera!, exclama Wang Wei. Menos mal que al poco de publicarse esta obra un grupo de amigos de buen humor decidieron poner las cosas en su sitio con una obra de contraataque que es una lástima que casi nadie conozca. José María Quadrado (en la foto), junto con sus amigos Guillermo Forteza, José Rocaberti de Dameto, Tomás Aguiló y Antonio Montis, Marqués de la Bastida, que se reunían cada martes en casa de don José Quint Zaforteza y Togores en maledicente tertulia, se animaron a superar a Bover en su propio terreno y escribieron el agudo librito: Historia de la Dragonera en sus relaciones con la civilización europea (Palma: Imprenta de don Esteban Trías, 1848). Todo un despliegue de erudición bombástica e ingenio desatado, así como de uso masivo de aquella inconfundible verbosidad decimonónica, campanuda, sometida aquí a doble hervor. Si Cabrera es la cuna de la civilización, Dragonera, menor y menos favorecida en la realidad, es en la pluma de estos amigos la cifra misma del Universo entero. Wang Wei piensa que esta obra merece algo más de atención. Sobre todo porque contiene buenas dosis de antídoto contra los abusos del historicismo nacionalista. Y las pullas contra Bover, todo hay que decirlo, a veces costaban caras. Por ejemplo, el editor de la publicación antiboveriana El tío Tararira fue condenado en 1849 «a 24 meses de destierro de la Ciudad de Palma y radio de 5 leguas de la misma, a la multa de 100 duros, a la suspensión de todo cargo o derecho político durante el tiempo de la condena, y a las costas procesales y gastos ocasionados por el juicio» (lo dice, muy contento, el propio Bover en su Diccionario bibliográfico de las publicaciones periódicas de las Baleares, Palma: Imp. de V. de Villalonga, 1862).

Muchos han tenido esta sensación inquietante en Cabrera. Vedlo en el reportaje que, por estas mismas fechas del año pasado hizo el escritor Juan Cruz visitando Cabrera de la mano del historiador Carlos Garrido. Ved como no se trata de aquel «el horror» pronunciado por Kurtz en El corazón de las tinieblas, sino de «el yuyu», quizá más doméstico pero igualmente difícil de definir.

Y no consiguió ahuyentar este «yuyu» (Wang Wei piensa que, al contrario, lo aumentó) el proyecto jamás realizado de urbanizar la isla en los años 40 del siglo pasado. Este sorprendente texto, un gran documento de civilización, está en el celler hoy rehabilitado como pequeño museo desde donde está tomada la foto de más abajo (nunca se llegó tampoco a explotar la viña en serio):

Terrenos en venta a plazos para edificar chalets, los hay construidos desde 10.000 pesetas- con 300 metros de terreno.
No hay policía, ni guardia civil [no puedo leer esto, pero debe ser una adversativa del tipo «aunque»] ¡Ay del delincuente! Es transportado por una bala de cañón a la Isla de Mallorca, donde sus despojos palpitantes son enterrados sin dilación. Tampoco hay pompas fúnebres, ni nada que entristezca nuestro ánimo – Un cementerio alegre y coquetón bien orientado permite asegurarse un reposo eterno con vistas al mar con la más sobria placidez. R.I.P.
El intelectual, el filósofo, el científico, el artista en todas sus manifestaciones, son [serán] junto con el hastiado del mundo y sus boatos, los futuros habitantes de esta isla sin igual.

Para completar el recorrido por la densa historia de las islas que rodean a Mallorca, Wang Wei guarda en la retina las imágenes de esta otra: es la Conejera, en la cadena de islotes que jalonan el canal entre Mallorca y Cabrera. Como todo el mundo sabe, a mediados del siglo III a. de C. nació en ella nada menos que Aníbal, el cartaginés, hijo de Amílcar y de una mujer íbera. En la isla había algo de agua dulce y para una nave en tránsito siempre era mejor aprovisionarse allí que arriesgarse a recibir la pedrada de un hondero en las costas mallorquinas. Wang Wei piensa proponer a Pei Di escribir juntos la Historia Universal de Conejera para acabar de aclarar este y otros puntos que no pueden permanecer más tiempo ignorados.

Library opening

A while ago we discovered in the figure of King David, lifting his goblet for blessing in the 14th-century Catalan Haggadah, the owner of the codex Dávid Kaufmann, who expressed in an apocryphal “Psalm of David” his joy of the acquisition of the most ancient – 10th century Palestinian – manuscript of the Mishnah. This is why we chose that image as the emblem of the electronic library of the Kaufmann Codices. But we prefer to see the great collector of ancient Hebrew books also in another symbol of King David, in the lion of Judah who is just stowing away in safety a recent gorgeous finding from the competition in the marginal decoration of a 13th-century Mishneh Torah.

On – very rare – occasions, however, even Dávid Kaufmann was let down by his good luck. It was a close shave that one of the most important Jewish manuscript findings, the one hundred and forty thousand fragments that had been accumulated for a thousand years in the genizah of the synagogue of Cairo, did not get to him – and then, through him, to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – but to the University of Cambridge. Through his network of agents covering all the Mediterraneum, Kaufmann had learned about this material, even more important than the scrolls of the Dead Sea, much earlier than the fantastic Scottish twin sisters, Agnes and Margaret Smith, scholars of many Biblical languages and discoverers of several manuscripts, who in 1896 discovered the collection following the traces of some fragments found on the Cairo market, and then bought it in its entirety. However, at this time Kaufmann was already bargaining over the material, and in 1894 he even received a sample of five hundred pieces of it. Today only this much is in the possession of the Academy. Nevertheless, he bore the news of the Cambridge purchase like a man, and later he even remarked that the manuscripts are in a better place there. What’s more, he also participated in their scholarly description. Incidentally, it is interesting that the family of Salomon Dov Goitein who published the complete material in six volumes, came from the same Moravian town of Kojetein like that of Kaufmann. This aroused our curiosity in this town, whose subsisting Medieval Jewish quartier we will soon visit and report about it.

The Kaufmann Collection, including six hundred codices and more than a thousand printed books besides the genizah fragments, is even so among the most important ones in the world, and we in Studiolum are proud to be the first to publish it on the internet, on behalf of the Oriental Collection of the Hungarian Academy. We have just completed the first version of the electronic library – or rather bookshelf yet – containing the five most important codices of the collection: the above mentioned 10th-century Palestinian Mishnah, the starting point of all Mishnah editions, the French Mishneh Torah of 1296, the summary of Jewish law in four volumes, two Southern Germanian Mahzor from the age of Dante with all the prayers of the year, and the most beautiful piece of the collection, the lavishly illustrated 14th-century Catalonian Haggadah, the ritual of the Passover night. But, scanned from a black and white microfilm, we will also include one of the most painful losses of the collection, the 15th-century Renaissance codex of the Siddur of Pesaro, stolen in the ’80s together with some other books on an Israelian order. Since the Academy managed to claim back in court one of the stolen books from an auction of Israel, this codex is latent somewhere together with the rest.

Until the official presentation in November the library will receive some final touches, we will include a bibliography and an iconographic index, some additions and corrections, or maybe even more codices. However, the readers of our blog can enter already now by presenting a copy of this entry. Go ahead, go ahead, come in, look around, and make your bettering comments.

Muska

Muska is a Russian cat to the core. Even in her happiest moments she can sit with such a contemptuously offended face like Russian students do in their first semester at a Western university, and in the dawn of the outbreak of the South Ossetian war she, contrary to her habit, tangled up the blanket to such extent that no Georgian tank could break through it.

Each time Lena visited Budapest, she fed Kata with promises of procuring her a Russian cat. “Russian cats are not like these here. Russian cats are tigers.” She showed us the photo of Jóshka whose name she had composed with a Russian diminutive suffix from the Hungarian word “jó” (‘good’) learned at her first visit, and only later she learned that at us this is a human name, Kata’s father is also called like this, and then she felt guilty. Jóshka was a tiger, with a lynx’s build and with a tail like a banner. From that time on Kata kept dreaming with Russian cats.


We arrived to Veliki Rostov on the North in the period of the white nights in order to introduce the computer catalog in the Kremlin. After the destruction of Kiev in the Middle Ages, this little town was the capital of Russia for a while, and in its fortress – at that time, at the beginning of the ’90s made inaccessible by refuse dumps and deep puddles – there are seven brilliant cathedrals standing, all of them museums now. We worked on the computers in a vaulted room of the former bishop’s castle for a week each day until nine or ten o’clock in the night, then we climbed up to the knights’ hall, where the table was already laid with mushroom, zakuski, cranberry, vodka. Enchanting and ingenious toasts went around, and the favorite soldier’s song of my grandfather from WWI, “There come the Russians with a hundred thousand people” made an absolute hit. Around two o’clock we set out to visit the ruined abbey along the river, and Sergey explained the Finno-Ugric origin of the place-names of the region all the way long.

On the Yaroslavl market there was no cat in that week. Finally Grisha and Zhena offered the one they had left only so that there would be someone to suck the milk of the mother cat. She did not even fulfill her first month. To the veterinarian one had to cross the upper stream of the Volga, the river washed the end of his garden. “Put her in your pocket”, he said. “Until I get the passport for her, she will kitten herself.”

“What names do they usually give to cats here?” Lena did not know that the habitual cat’s name “Muska” means “Russian” in old Hungarian. The rest of our Russian friends do not know it either, and when they hear the name, they immediately begin to call her by diminutives like “Musa” and “Musyusa”. But Muska knew what this name obliged her to, and she bore up heroically the six hours long travel by bus to Moscow, through spoiled countrysides and ruined villages, where we did not see one single cultivated garden along three hundred kilometers. She came out every hour, and I fed her from a German nurser bought in a first class pet shop in Yaroslavl, supported by the experiences of my teenager years made with hedgehog kids, young fawns and recently hatched grass snakes. By the time we reached Moscow she adopted me as her matyushka, and I have remained that up to the present day.


We missed the plane. We were out there in early dawn, two hours before the departure, but the multi-step security control was so long that we were already refused to go to check-in. “I was here already four hours earlier”, the uniformed woman said with full conscience of her importance. “Stay here for a thousand years more”, I said. “Gdye vash nachalnik?” (Where is your boss?)

Russian bureaucracy is human-faced. German bureaucrats hide behind rules to reject you, while the remnants of their human being is filled with a good feeling on having got their everyday human sacrifice again. In Italy, probably due to the Roman law that had pervaded their blood, you can squeeze out of them any rational request with reference to the rights due to every person, of course only if you speak Italian, for this is what makes you a person in the sense of the same Roman law. I have already convinced with irrefutable arguments the director of the head post office in Rome to go to the office on Easter Monday and to give me out my money that had arrived on Good Friday. In Russia, however, you speak with them as a Christian with a Christian, like someone who came to beg for a little salt, and if you ask it decently then they will certainly give you, even if they have to borrow it from someone else. Russian bureaucrats, to my experience, always borrow from someone else, but the permanent overstepping of their authority absolutely does not bother either them or their clients, or even their superiors to whom it is worth to have recourse in dubious cases.

So, along the pearl string of gdye vash nachalnik, (“where’s your boss?”) we finally arrived to the chief commander of the airport who was touched by the complaint of a Westerner in Russian language – at the beginning of the ’90s this was still a cure for many wounds –, and while he was scribbling something on our ticket, he told that we can leave with the afternoon charter flight.

That flight was not displayed anywhere, but everyone nodded eagerly at the sight of the ticket. However, at the gate several brawny chaps blocked the way with hand detectors. We circulated nervously up and down the airport, in devout prayers. We knew that if they found Musa, they made short work of her. Finally we were called by name, so that we could not but go. However, at the gate, in the place of the mountains of muscle there was only the stewardess waiting for us, wringing her hands. “Hurry on, we are late.”


The front part of the tiny little plane was filled with silent Chinese businessmen, while the back part with drunken Russian businessmen, and we were put in the puffer zone between both. The latter – I’m sorry for the stereotyped image, but it was like this in fact – brought several cases of excellent vodka on the border, and the whole staff of the plane made frequent raids on them, perhaps except for the pilot, but it is also possible that he was taken of it in his cabin. In the meantime Muska came out as well, perhaps to say farewell to matyushka Rossiya. The Chinese greeted her in an ecstasy of delight. Only later we saw in the Chinese TV that at that time it was still so unusual to keep pets in China that in the second half of the ’90s the CCTV4 broadcasted daily educational films for rich Chinese on how to caress cats.

By the time we got to the airport of Budapest, the back section reached such a volume that even the Hungarian passport controllers came out from their cabins. “Ah, are you that?” they relaxed. “Go, go.” – and they entered the country by skipping the passport control. My red-skinned passport was controlled in spite of my Russian face, perhaps because I was suspiciously sober. The controllers were also a bit surprised what we had been doing in that plane, but nevertheless they let us in to our homeland without much fuss.

In this moment Muska was seized with disquiet. Until then she slept under the pullover of Kata, so she was politely let through everywhere as a pregnant mother. Now, however, she crept from her belly to her back, and then she started to climb up, and by when we arrived to the customs, she almost came forward by meowing her own death warrant. Perhaps the customs officer even noticed her sticking out the head from the neck of Kata, but he probably considered impossible what he saw, and kept sitting with poker face as we passed by. Then Musa abruptly plopped back, gathering strength to jump in the taxi driver’s neck from the back seat later.

When at home we let her out in the garden for the first time, she hesitated for a moment, and then all of a sudden run up on the forty meters high poplar tree.

Los molinos de Dios

Ha pasado algún tiempo desde que la edición húngara de GEO Magazine, en aras de una altruista difusión popular de la sabiduría –ya saben: lo que importa no es quién escribe, «basta con que la narración no se aparte un punto de la verdad»– ofreció un ejemplar ejercicio de corta-y-pega en su artículo sobre Aurel Stein, el gran explorador húngaro de la Ruta de la Seda, a partir de las imágenes y textos del web que preparamos en Studiolum sobre el fondo que el propio Stein legó a la Colección Oriental de la Academia Húngara de Ciencias. Omitieron cuidadosamente el nombre de Studiolum y el de la Academia, quizá para evitarnos cargar con los errores de bulto que cometieron en su artículo.

En el transcurso de dos meses, dos cartas del Jefe de la Colección (de tono muy educado) y luego otras dos del Director de la Biblioteca (un poco más encendidas) se enviaron infructuosamente al registro de entrada de la versión húngara de la revista, seguramente algo similar a la imagen de arriba. Las cartas solo pedían al equivalente de la señora de la foto que en el siguiente número de GEO fueran tan amables de publicar el nombre de la Biblioteca donde se guarda el único archivo gráfico relevante de Stein.

Pero todos tenemos un jefe. Y fue desde la sede principal de GEO en Hamburgo donde, tras un breve silencio estupefacto al oír la historia, acabaron tomando cartas en el asunto. A la mañana siguiente, llegó la respuesta del editor jefe de la edición húngara.

La causa de esta incómoda situación no puede explicarse apelando al inminente cierre de la publicación de la revista, por tanto no puedo ni excusarlo.

No, por Dios. La revista ha tenido dos cierres de redacción desde la primera carta. Qué desastre de acto de contrición.

La edición de agosto de la revista acaba de llegar a los quioscos. Una nota al final de las cartas dice:

Para reparar nuestra falta, corregimos ahora esta información: Colección Oriental de la Biblioteca de la Academia Húngara de Ciencias. La web de esta institución es: http://dunhuang.mtak.hu

La página principal de la institución es, en realidad, http://www.mtak.hu, mientras que la dirección de arriba es justamente la de las páginas de Stein. Esto remata definitivamente lo innecesario de leer el artículo de GEO: mucho mejor es ir en su lugar a las páginas originales (en inglés y español), ya que GEO ha sido tan gentil de publicar su dirección de internet. Pronto aparecerá, además, una edición ampliada con el material completo de la exposición fotográfica de Hong-Kong que abarca toda la vida de Aurel Stein.

La fuente de la ilustración que encabeza esta entrada es la edición de agosto de 2008 de la versión húngara de GEO Magazine.

Borders

I’m translating the essay of Igor Kopytoff for a Hungarian journal: The cultural biography of things: commodization as a process. A really good, reasoned anthropological analysis on how things become commodities or, on the contrary, how they lose their commodity character for a given culture.

One of his important propositions is that modern Western culture – on the basis of Judeo-Christian and Classical traditions – draws a sharp conceptual distinction between persons and things, and considers only the latter category as commodizable. True, actually persons too have been made commodities in the history of modern Western culture, but the cultural force of this distinction is attested exactly by the fact that slavery has always presented an intellectual and moral problem for the West, in contrast to every other culture.

Kopytoff illustrates this peculiarity of Western approach with an unexpected example, the culturally different relations to abortion:

The cultural clash over abortion was phrased by both sides in terms of the precise location of the line that divides persons from things and the point at which “personhood” begins. For both anti-abortion and pro-abortion forces agree on the point: that “things” but not “persons” can be aborted. (…) In terms of underlying conceptions, both sides here stand together in striking cultural contrast to the Japanese. The latter have few misgivings about abortion but acknowledge the personhood of aborted children, giving them the special status of misogo, lost souls, and commemorating them by special shrines.

This cross-cultural comparison makes me wonder how the Chinese regard this. On the one hand we know that traditional Chinese culture also considered the fetus somehow as a person. The monograph by Bai Limin, Shaping the Ideal Child: Children and Their Primers in Late Imperial China (2005) describes how great importance was attributed to “foetal education” in traditional Chinese thought, and we read the same in the analysis by Rosie Roberts (2005) on Lu Xing’er’s The Sun is Not Out Today (1991), the key novel on Chinese abortion. On the other hand, it seems that – in contrast to the Japanese – after the abortion they deny any ritual relation with and last honors to the fetus that are due to the dead in Chinese culture. They regard it as a kind of raw material, just like the bodies of those executed and died in labor camps, as it was highlighted by the scandals around Bodies the Exhibition.

The Guardian covers the use of aborted Chinese embryos for medical preparations and beauty products. That hospital staff consume and sell them as tonifying and beautifying food was reported in detail in the April 12, 1995 edition of Hong Kong-based Eastern Express from the hospital of Shenzhen (the article that was originally published only in print is fully quoted on a number of sites, although its authenticity has been questioned), and here you can check an illustrated report in Chinese about the practice allegedly widespread in Guangdong (for the strong-nerved only). The fetus was already mentioned among the materia medica of Chinese traditional medicine in the monumental classical medical encyclopedia Bencao gangmu (1587) by Li Shizhen, and when I asked my Chinese doctor friend about it, he just laconically answered “it is rich in nutritive content”.

What is the reason of this contradiction? Perhaps traditional approach was different, and it was only transformed by sixty years of obligatory materialism? It is possible. Or perhaps one is considered as an actual person only after the rite of reception – the cutting of the foetal hair one month after the birth –, and he or she can be deprived of this status at any time with the sentence of the community or of the superiors, as it is attested by a large number of remembrances on the period of the Cultural Revolution? This is also possible. In any case, I will try to make inquiries with my Chinese friends.

But it is also possible that the explanation is rooted in the universalistic thought of Chinese culture, in the world view formulated like this by my friend in the first phrase of his manual of traditional Chinese medicine, translated by me into Hungarian:

Traditional Chinese medicine considers mankind and each person as an organic part of a larger whole, the complete universe. We are ruled by the same laws governing the whole nature: we are companions of the stars, the planets, the animals, the trees, the ocean and the earth.

And if we are part of such a universal system, and we are separated not by sharp borders, but only by gradual differences from the gods on the one hand and from the animals on the other, then the treatment due to various persons also moves on a large scale between the god-like emperor and the animal-like lowest human categories. Of course, in this view the term “animal” is absolutely not derogatory, just like the term “human” does not involve any dignity, for these are not dichotomous and contrasting concepts as in the West, but only grades that follow each other. In such a system a man does not possess an inherent “dignity” arising from his human existence like the Greeks, the Stoics or the Christians say, a dignity that does not depend on his actual place in the hierarchy and of which neither poverty nor defencelesness can deprive him, but only a “face” (面 miàn) that is attributed to him exclusively from his place on this scale, and that he can at any time “lose”, “increase”, “get” or “give”.

I think it is the fascination of this formidable ladder that prevents the Chinese from thinking in equal relations rather than subordination and superiority. (Our friends have made enormous and very honest efforts for twenty years to understand the essence of Western “friendship”, but thus far they have only arrived to a concept of “alternating super- and subordination”.) And this is why all their life is focused on getting higher on this ladder, thus obtaining a “greater face”, the only source of their self-esteem.

“Such was the glory of being a mandarin official. Whenever he went out, a gong sounded announcing his coming, and yamen servants cleared the way, brushing the passers-by away like so much dirt. The yamen servants had always been invested with part of their master’s power and glory. What though they accidentally maimed or killed a man or two! The yamen servants’ only worry was that they might come across another train belonging to an official of higher rank, which would dampen their “fire” a little, or that they might unknowingly kill or maim a man who belonged to that higher official’s household. Then they would cry, “I ought to die! I ought to die!” and actually they might be handed over to the higher official for whatever punishment that official deemed fit, including flogging and imprisonment, law or no law.” (Lin Yutang: My country and my people)

Mills of God

It was already a long while ago that the Hungarian edition of the GEO Magazine, in the sign of altruistic popular instruction – the point is not who wrote it, only that it should be true – cut and paste their article about the great Hungarian discoverer of the Silk Road Aurel Stein from the images and text of the site prepared by Studiolum about the legacy of Stein preserved in the Oriental Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. They have only omitted the name of Studiolum and of the Academy, perhaps in order we should not be charged with the superficiality and gross misunderstandings of the article.

In the course of two months, two letters from the Head of the Collection (in a very polite tone) and then two more from the Director of the Library (somewhat more irritated) finished in some registrar’s office similar to the above one at the Magazine, although they only asked of the local equivalent of this lady to be so kind to publish subsequently, in the next edition the name of the Library where the uniquely valuable archive photos of Stein are preserved.

But everyone has a boss, and in the Hamburg mother editorial office of GEO, after a moment of stunned silence, they promised immediate action. In the next morning a reply arrived from the editor in chief of the Hungarian edition.

The emergence of this uncomfortable situation cannot be excused by any reference to the imminent deadline of the magazine, therefore I do not even apologize.

No, no, for God’s sake. The more so as the magazine has seen even two deadlines since the first letter. I do not even wish it to my enemy.

The August edition of the magazine has just arrived to the newspaper stands. The disclaimer at the end of the letters of the correspondents ends like this:

In order to remedy our fault, now we correct this oversight: Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The homepage of the institution is: http://dunhuang.mtak.hu.

The homepage of the institution is in the reality http://www.mtak.hu, while the above address belongs to the Stein site. This illustrates well why it is not worth to read the article of the GEO. Read the Stein pages instead (in English and in Spanish) if already GEO was so kind to publish the address. Soon an enlarged edition will come out as well, with the complete material of the Hongkong photo exhibition embracing the whole life of Aurel Stein.

The source of the illustration of our post is the August 2008 edition of the Hungarian version of the GEO Magazine.

StuffIt Deluxe

Mallorca is a tiny island. One has to economize on place. Data must be compressed. And as Mallorca is also a tradition-bound island, an ancient Punic island, Hannibal was born here and the Balearic slingers cleaned the field before the war elephants, therefore the CD compression has been done with Punic stone ram heads since time immemorial. Only now was an innovation introduced by Wang Wei who is well versed in the great world. He already uses black basalt cobblestone for compression from Prague, from the pavement of the road in front of Faust’s house. The efficiency of compression is supported on this wall by the historical weight of Archbishop Despuig’s map of Mallorca, and on the facing wall by the aesthetic weight of Joan Miró’s painting dedicated to Wang Wei. Not to this Wang Wei however, but to his father, it is him with whom they were friends.

The way of the tea

The Western Lake of Hangzhou, about which Zhang Dai wrote his novel The Search of the Western Lake in Dreams

With a teapot, a Chinese is happy wherever he is.
(Lin Yutang)

Yesterday, in search of the citation of Lin Yutang, I have browsed through the My country and my people after twenty years again. Again I enjoyed its pleasant, conversational style, and I was impressed again by his easiness in translating into the language of Western culture – of course into the language of bygone pre-war culture, which itself requires translation already – his own Chinese world. But I also needed these twenty years to realize that those samples of Chinese literature, art and history he seems to quote so randomly, as if they came to his mind by pure chance, are in the reality carefully chosen by him, thus offering in the middle of easy talking a representative reader of Chinese culture.

When he for example intends to illustrate the importance of tea for the Chinese, he quotes the most famous tea story from the greatest author of the Ming period, from the Dreams and remembrances on Tao An by Zhang Dai (1597-1689). The story is so beautiful that I also have to quote it. Perhaps it will give inspiration to my brother Gyuri to the continuation of his recently opened tea blog of The Lover of the Two Shengs.

Chou Molung often spoke to me in enthusiastic terms about the tea of Min Wenshui. In September of a certain year [1638], I came to his town, and when I arrived, I called on him at Peach Leaves Ferry. It was already afternoon, and Wenshui was not at home. He came back late and I found him to be an old man. We had just opened our conversation when he rose suddenly and said that he had left his stick somewhere and went out again. I was determined not to miss this chance of having a talk with him, so I waited. After a long while, Wenshui came back, when it was already night, and he stared at me, saying, “Are you still here? What do you want to see me for?” I said, “I have heard about your name so long, and am determined to have a drink with you to-day before I go!” Wenshui was pleased, and then he rose to prepare the tea himself. In a wonderfully short time it was ready. Then he led me into a room, where everything was neat and tidy, and I saw over ten kinds of Chingch’i pots and Hsüanyao and Ch’engyao teacups, which were all very rare and precious. Under the lamplight, I saw that the colour of the tea was not distinguishable from that of the cup, but a wonderful fragrance assailed my nostrils, and I felt ever so happy. “What is this tea?” I asked. “Langwan,” Wenshui replied. I tasted it again and said, “Now don’t deceive me. The method of preparation is Langwan, but the tea-leaves are not Langwan.” “What is it then?” asked Wenshui smilingly. I tasted it again and said, “Why is it so much like Lochieh tea?” Wenshui was quite struck by my answer and said, “Marvellous! Marvellous!” “What water is it?” I asked. “Huich’üan,” he said. “Don’t try to make fun of me,” I said again. “How can Huich’üan water be carried here over a long distance, and after the shaking on the way still retain its keenness?” So Wenshui said, “I shan’t try to deceive you any longer. When I take Huich’üan water, I dig a well, and wait at night until the new current comes, and then take it up. I put a lot of mountain rocks at the bottom of the jar, and during the voyage I permit only sailing with the wind, but no rowing. Hence the water still keeps its edge. This water is therefore better even than ordinary Huich’üan water, not to speak of water from other springs.” Again he said, “Marvellous! Marvellous!” and before he had finished his sentence, he went out again. Soon he came back with another pot, and asked me to taste it. I said, “Its fragrance is strong, and its flavour is very mild. This must be spring tea, while the one we just had must be autumn tea.” Then Wenshui burst into laughter and said, “I am a man of seventy, and yet have never met a tea connoisseur like you.” After that, we remained fast friends.

Zhang Dai saw the decline of the Ming dynasty and also lived its destruction (1644), in the course of which he himself lost all his property. During the remaining thirty and some years of his life spent at the Western Lake of Hangzhou he recreated this lost life and world from his memories and dreams in his monumental stream of a family saga, two hundred and fifty years before Proust. It is strange that those great figures of ancient Chinese literature whom we consider the most modern, often created their masterpieces during such destruction between two periods, like Li Yu, the last Tang emperor who was executed in captivity, or Xin Qiji, the brilliant general of the last Song emperor who, before retiring to become a hermit, had to see the terrified imperial court driven to the south of the Jangce signing a humiliating peace with the barbarians defeated by him, a peace that swept off all the result of his victories. This modernity and dreamlikeness of Zhang Dai is emphasized in his recent biography by Jonathan Spence, who has a good sense to put a finger on such themes. In his successful previous book he depicts for example the “palace of memory” used by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci to demonstrate the science of European mnemotechnics to the exceptionally educated emperor Kangxi (whose biography was also composed by Spence). In The question of Hu he reconstructs in the form of a fictive diary the life of the Chinese servant of another Jesuit who, upon his arrival to Europe in 1722 lost his reason at the sight of the totally different culture, while in the Gods Chinese Son he presents the New Jerusalem founded by the Taiping Rebellion that mixed Catholicism with Chinese popular religion. I also want to write on these books later.

Prizes

The first of August will enter in red letters into the chronicles of Río Wang. First we received an undeservedly great laudation of Kinga on the blog A vajszínű árnyalat. for our recent post on the photos of Ahmad Shah. Then Cielo (who apparently animates a great gardening life in California) wrote that on the basis of Kata’s photos and descriptions on the web, she awarded to our garden the flattering title “Garden of the Month”, and she would present it on the blog Gardens of the Month created for the purpose (with an embarrassing non-marked quotation at the end of the second paragraph: I’m not sure whether the readers will recognize that the lines beginning with This grove… are a description by Tacitus on the holy groves of the Germans from his Germania). For us it was very interesting to see how someone else looks at this garden, how she chooses from the images and the texts and how she composes her own mosaic. And whoever is also curious of how we look at it, he should have a look at the album of garden photos and gardening blog of Kata as well.

The little prince

In the Objects found section of the blog A vajszínű árnyalat. we have found this postcard, portraying Crown Prince Ahmad Mirza one year before his ascendence to the throne of Persia on July 16, 1909 as Ahmad Qajar Shah, the last ruler in his dynasty. The date of the postmark is March 1911, but this is only ante quem. In the collection of Darius Kadivar we find the other side of the card as well – happy times when it was enough to write for an address as few as “to Mr. Seid Rahim in Tehran” – bearing, oddly enough, another stamp and postmark with a three months earlier date. But this is just an ante quem as well. The quo is printed with Eastern Arabic numbers immediately under the image: ۱۳۲۶ that is 1326, indicating the period between February 4, 1908 and January 22, 1909 according to the Islamic calendar. During the reign of Ahmad Shah, just like in all times since the acceptance of Islam, this was the official calendar. Only after his overthrow in 1925 was it officially changed by Reza Pahlavi – at odds with the clergy and in favor of the country’s ancient roots – for that Persian calendar of Zoroastrian origin, also polished by Omar Khayyam, which counted in solar instead of lunar years the time that had passed since the hijra, thus setting back by forty years the calendar of the country. By when the number of the years could have made up for the loss, his son Mohammed Reza Shah also translated the starting point of the calendar at the year of the foundation of the ancient Persian Empire, so that the pro-Shah emigration even today writes 2567. After the Islamic Revolution – who knows why – they did not return to the Islamic calendar, only the starting point of the Persian calendar in vigor was set again to the year of the Hijra. It is an odd impression to read in the date of the Islamic newspapers, above the name of Allah, the names of the twelve Zoroastrian archangels with which the Persian calendar marks the twelve months – or, more precisely, the twelve zodiacal signs.

The Crown Prince – here to the left already shahinshah, King of the Kings – on these pictures looks with that infinitely melancholic glance into a world accessible only to him, which is the attribute of a nation fatigued under the burden of twenty-five centuries of a highly refined civilization. Of a nation whose very verbal infinitives serve, in an unparalleled way, to express the past time, so that they have to create a separate stem to express the present. This characteristic melancholy is felt everywhere among Persians. And it is not just the consequence of the current political situation, not that “hopelessness that rules the heart of every young Iranian” as The Labyrinth writes, or as the letter quoted by him puts it: “in our 20s and 30s we are already old and will become older still.” For in the non-Persian regions of the country, among the energetic Kurds, in the Armenian quarter of Isfahan, or in Tabriz inhabited by the lively Torkis, Azeri Turks, there is no trace of this melancholy which, on the other hand, was already noted a hundred and fifty years ago by the great Hungarian orientalist Ármin Vámbéry arriving from Turkey to Persia. And this same melancholy radiates from the poems of Khayyam, Rumi or Hafez. And even the predecessor of Ahmad Shah, King Xerxes, while inspecting his army that surpassed any other in number before the great campaign of his life

pronounced himself a happy man, and after that he fell to weeping. Artabanos, having observed that Xerxes wept, asked him: “O king, how far different from one another are the things which thou hast done now and a short while before now! for having pronounced thyself a happy man, thou art now shedding tears.” He said: “Yea, for after I had reckoned up, it came into my mind to feel pity at the thought how brief was the whole life of man, seeing that of these multitudes not one will be alive when a hundred years have gone by.” (Herodotus, Histories, 7.46)

But Ahmad Shah – described by his contemporaries as “an extremely intelligent young man, highly educated, with a wide knowledge of both Eastern and Western culture, and well read in history, politics, and economic theory” – had even more reasons for melancholy. In Persia the Russian imperialists on the north and the English to the south had been competing with each other for a century in seizing the resources of the country, until in the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 they divided Persia in spheres of interest, obstructing any development since the times of the shah’s great-grandfather, inciting to anti-government riots the tribes making up almost a quarter of Persia’s population, and extracting exclusive concession on the Iranian oil discovered in 1908. In this vacuum since the 1870’s the most bewildering adventurers, fools and agents had been appropriating the political and cultural stage, preparing the way to the so-called Constitutional Revolution between 1905 and 1911, during which the father of the shah was forced to abdicate, and Ahmad “ascended weeping to the throne”. In the following three years he put on thirty kilos. During his reign the English, “for safety’s sake”, occupy and in the WWI use as a hinterland the country that had previously declared its neutrality, contributing to the great famine of 1918-19 which killed a tenth of the population, and then, at the sight of the gradual development of parlamentarian democracy, they convinced the illiterate general of the only efficient Persian military force, the Persian Cossacks, to seize the power, taking advantage of the absence of the shah who in 1925 traveled to France to the funerals of his father. The general establishes his dictatorship in the service of the English interests under the self-created name Reza Pahlavi Shah. Ahmad Shah dies five years later, at the age of thirty-two in Paris.


In the best summary of twentieth-century Persian history, in his less than hundred pages long The Shahinshah, Ryszard Kapuściński portrays the reign of Reza Pahlavi and of Mohammed Reza by narrating about a dozen of photos, from the illiterate Cossack sergeant accompanying a prisoner to his son escaping from the revolution at the airport. I have always been fascinated by this narrative, not only because of the sharp eye and precise style of Kapuściński, but also because of the ingenuity of the method. However, since I have made better acquaintance of old Persian photos, although my appreciation of Kapuściński has not decreased, nevertheless I see better how much these photos offer themselves to such an analysis. In Persia, before the arrival of photography, there was hardly any tradition of the portrait, thus the early photos do not mirror those centuries-old, detailed and inconscious rules of composition and closedness that have been pointed out even in the photos of Hungarian peasants by Ernő Kunt. These photos possess some kind of a magic spontaneity, by which they promise to tell something more, deeper and more personal about their subjects than contemporary Western photographies do.

The grandfather of Ahmad Shah, Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar (1896-1907)

The children of Ahmad Shah

The figure of Ahmad Shah still represents the end of the real Persian imperial rule for many Persians, and even the monarchist emigration is divided between the Qajar party and the Pahlavi party. Essays, a romantic film (Homayun Shahnavaz’s Shah-e kamoush [The silent shah], 2005), and even a separate blog is dedicated to his memory, several families keep at home one of his official ruler’s portraits, and his image, accompanied by the symbol of the Empire, the shir o khorsid, also pops up in the Persepolis of his distant descendant Marjane Satrapi, the second best summary of twentieth-century Persian history.

Front-page of the Illustrated London News not much before
the English, in order to save the world peace threatened
by Persia, in 1915 occupied the country
(or: nothing new under the sun)

Ahmad Shah. Behind him, wearing a cloak, General Reza Khan, shortly before his takeover