A great advantage of the Poemas del Río Wang in comparison to thematic blogs is that everyone can decide which genre he or she prefers to regard it. We do not know much about this – although we are curious of it –, and only rarely we get to know that someone reads it primarily for its Russian or Persian topics, for the posts on old prints and manuscripts or for the translations of poems. Petya, who is already considered our habitué, had been admittedly attracted by the travel reports. When some weeks ago he went for the first time to Istanbul, he also collected ideas from Río Wang, and after coming home he shared with us the following photos. Thanks a lot. It is good to see in how many ways people look at this city that we love so much.
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Atlantis
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Books, exhibitions, music, film
Brave old world
Caucasus
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Get to know the
Images of the East
Lightwriting
Lwów/Lemberg
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Message on the wall
The Museum of Propaganda
Odessa
Paper Museum
Persian letters
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16 comentarios:
Wonderful pictures, thank you, Petya!
Un aviso interesado: ¿me ayudan con un nombre para el nuevo miembro de nuestra familia?
I need some help to name the newest member of our family. Please come visit my blog and make a choice by seeing the pictures.
www.melioralatent.blogspot.com
It is my honour to publish my and my friends' photos on this blog; the Yediküle pics were made by my mate Balázs.
Thanks for your interest in them. :)
I normally only read Poemas del Río Wang for the articles about Yorkshire, but these are great pictures for me, I've never been to Istanbul. Actually, I think this is close to the kind of thing I like best about Poemas del Río Wang. It is perfect reading for those who are curious about the world: my favourites are the articles about central and eastern Europe and Turkey and Argentina that are presented beautifully and usually have a story or some unusual snippet of historical information. In a nutshell, there's nowhere else I could find out that crocodiles have been hanging from ceilings all over Europe for centuries.
Turkey reminds me that I would like to recommend a very amusing book I just read, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, by a Turkish American writer called Elif Batuman. It is really a series of essays; there's a conference she attends at Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's estate, something about Samarkand and a lot about the Uzbek language and people.
Petya, great pictures! Is that your mate Balázs sitting next to the young Kemal Ataturk? I particularly liked the grave stones and the dogs on the lawn, but they are all beautiful and interesting.
I think I'm going to try to take my daughter there this summer.
I want to read the book AJP recommends, it looks really interesting.
His daughter is lucky, isn't she? Don't you need a chaperon to "guide" her on that trip? I'm free!
No tendría que estar escribiendo esto, hoy empieza un congreso en la ciudad de La Plata y todavía no imprimí mi ponencia (que leo hoy, jajaja o debería llorar...)
I'll take pictures, but they wont be as interesting as Petya's (blame the subject, not the photographer...)
Thanks for this -- I love Istanbul, and I'll probably never get there again, so it's great to see such good pictures of it.
@ Megkoronáz:
No, that is actually my cousin Attila; there were eight of us on this trip so there are many more chances to guess. :)
Though Balázs is not on any of these pictures but I still thought I should acknowledge his contribution; that's what I would expect from others I guess.
Oh, and thanks for all the beautiful compliments; I never would've thought these pics are THAT good. :)
Well they are. They're a very good walk around.
Thanks for the recommendation, Megkoronáz. I will try to find the book. I guess it can be similar in style and themes to Wladimir Kaminer’s Küche totalitär (here I found a digitized copy).
Thank you very much for telling about your way to Río Wang. As the blog has started as an exchange of impressions with Mallorca-based Wang Wei, giving news about the East for the West has always been an important thread in it. The fact that the posts are symmetrically written also in Hungarian makes this task quite difficult, for in this way the topics have to be new and interesting also for local readers. In compensation, the censorship of local public is also a warranty for their trustworthiness.
I find that Megkoronáz A.J.P.'s definition--"It is perfect reading for those who are curious about the world"--wonderfully fits my own delight in Poemas del Río Wang.
Yo leo Río Wang por prescripción médica. ¿O era al revés y lo tenía prohibido?
Muchísimas gracias, Jesús. If this is so, then the reason is probably my own curiosity about the world that urges me to compose and exhibit this little private cabinet of curiosités.
Julia: ¿acaso querías decir proscripción? :)
I'm not sure if the two books are that similar, although there may be similarities. The author of this one is an academic who is writing about her study of Russian literature, and she does it at times in a kind of humourous way (I think it's quite unusual for anyone to see the funny -- even absurd -- side of their own field of study and lifestyle). But there is a fair amount of serious observation about literature and the lives of Russian writers. It's definitely not restricted to Soviet literature either; the author must have been about ten when the Berlin wall fell and sees that era as history.
I'm sorry, Julia, she wants to go to Venice instead. I've nothing against Venice, but I've never been to Istanbul.
Prescripción / proscripción... tomato tomato, let's call the whole thing off!
Venice! now I'm remembering A Room with a View... Oh, how I loved that film!! (and afterwards, the book)
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