Borges' Library

Signorelli Notes

Books

Freud’s Trip to Orvieto, by Nicholas Fox Weber

With a barely suppressed grin, Nicholas Fox Weber believes the homoerotic imagery was to blame and this witty, art-savvy project meanders in all manner of delightful directions to build the case.

Seen from Behind: Perspectives on the Male Body and Renaissance Art
by Patricia Lee Rubin

Luca Signorelli --written in 1899 (to enjoy how different art history was back then)
by Maud Cruttwell

The Renaissance Antichrist: Luca Signorelli's Orvieto Frescoes
by Jonathan B. Riess

How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World
by Creighton E. Gilbert

Jo Walton's novel, Lent.

Luca Signorelli: The San Brizio Chapel, Orvieto
by Jonathan B. Riess

Confessions of the Antichrist (A Novel)
by Addison Hodges Hart

The Etruscans
by Lucy Shipley

Dante's Journey to Polyphony
by Francesco Ciabattoni

Mark O’Connell’s Notes from an Apocalypse

Articles

Forgetting Signorelli: Monstrous Visions of the Resurrection of the Dead ,  MARGARET E. OWENS Source: American Imago, Vol. 61, No. 1, Picturing Freud (Spring 2004), pp. 7-33 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable Download Signorelli

Canadian professor of English literature Margaret E Owens has the most convincing theory I have ever read about the gorgeous bodies found in the work of Signorelli and Michelangelo. For example, below is one of the most famous images from the fresco cycle, The Resurrection of the Dead. Notice something peculiar about the bodies (peculiar to our 2020 eyes?) In Signorelli's day, theologians and artists were struggling with this notion of being resurrected. At what age will one's body be restored? Will you be ten or twenty? Or maybe the age at which you died? If you had an amputated leg would your original leg be restored at the time of resurrection? If you had died of the Pox would you be pox-free? Scar-free? You get it. The Christian concept of the resurrected individual BODY is quite different from concepts of eternal life found in Judaism or the ancient Greek tradition. It was Saint Augustine who hit on the brilliant idea that we will all --okay, not all of us-- be reunited with our bodies at the age of thirty. Augustine chose this age, of course, because this was around the age Christ died.

Owens suggests --and I agree- that this is the reason being the gorgeous bodies transitioning back from skeletons to the perfection of youth. It was a direct statement concerning heretical skepticism about bodily resurrection--as the dreaded Cathars were known to have questioned, not only heaven and hell, but the return of our bodies. She gets this from Riess above.

 

Fuentes

I’m really interested in comparing Signorelli's frescoes to Bosch's heavenly delight. I found it so jarring that Fuentes imagined the Orvieto frescoes flying off the walls in the cathedral in Orvieto and landing as paintings in El Escorial where Philip II proceeded to gaze on them and obsess on them just like he did the Bosch triptych. I was puzzled because Philip II and the Bosch triptych is a case of fact being better than fiction--or so I thought?? But how to improve on the Triptych? But the more I am reading, the more inspired and fascinating I am finding this idea of the genius that is Carlos Fuentes. 

On Rereading

 

In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books, Larry McMurtry wonders whether reversal of fortune can be a spur to rereading. He says, "Where once one had read for adventure, now one rereads for the safety of the unvarying text." Every year, I make it a point to re-read one book from my youth.

In trying to re-experience books I read when I was young, I can't help but wonder:.Have I changed? Has the book changed? 

I only started doing this after joining the first bookclub of my life. Taking a dislike to many of the contemporary novels written by women that we read, I questioned whether I even liked "women's literature." I started remembering my love of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West; also Rumer Godden and Penelope Fitzgerald... this was a very exciting remembrance for me since the previous two and a half decades had seen me reading mainly Japanese literature and Chinese histories. 

It's strange how this pandemic has me longing for my past--in just the way McMurtry suggests. So far, I've re-read Death of Venice as well as the Buddha of Infinite Light. 

Death in Venice was particularly interesting to re-read since not only had I changed, but so had the book!

Yes, there is a new translation!

As Michael Cunningham says in the introduction to the new translation, All novels are translations, even in their original languages. Reading is always an act of both interpretation and translation. He says:

For a handful of the greatest writers, Thomas Mann among them, the process of translation continues even further. Occasionally a book like Death in Venice speaks so enduringly to readers that it is translated not once but again, and sometimes again and again. This is as it should be. It respects the fundamental nature of literature as a mutable and ever-unresolved business involving writers’ and readers’ ongoing attempts to get to the heart of the matter, to complete that which can never be completed. A great book is probably, by definition, too complex and layered, too intricately alive, to be translated once and for all.

I was really bowled over by the new translation and I completely agree with Cunningham that it presents the case of Aschenbach in a far more sympathetic light. The old penguin version focused on the decay... I hate to bring up the worst book I ever read, Dyer's Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi [Spit, Spit], but Dyer could only have written his book based on the old translation which over-focused on how the pursuit of beauty leads to corruption.. rot and death. Hence Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.

In the old days (aka when I was young), the world was really anti-beauty. It was thought of as something superficial. So, I think the slant of the translation was inevitable. This had been on my mind after reading Dyer's book [Spit, Spit]. I wondered if the German was quite that hard on Aschenbach. Well, lo and behold, this new translation shows that some adjustments really did need to be made.

As Cunningham says: This Aschenbach felt larger, and at least a little bit more profound. This Mann seemed to say, via Aschenbach, that if the alternative is to age gracefully, to gray and wither quietly, untroubled by absurd or perverse passions—if the other option is to shuffle offstage without attracting undue notice—it might in fact be better to do ourselves up like dandies, to discard our precious dignity, to worship what we know we cannot have right up until the moment of our demise.

Wonderful experience reading the new translation and hats off to Cunningham for writing that fabulous introduction!

The Buddha of Infinite Light was also a flash from the past. 

Re-read after thirty years!
This was one of the first books I read when I arrived in Japan thirty years ago. I had a beautiful copy of the book published by Shambhala that I had bought in Berkeley and brought with me in my suitcase. Maybe it's the same now-- but back then most Americans thought that Japan was the land of Zen Buddhists. I know there are Zen believers there, but I met very few. Like my husband, the majority of Buddhists I met were shin Buddhists. The most popular form being Pure Land. That is maybe why I always think of Pure Land Buddhism when I think of Japanese Buddhism--and this book is a wonderful introduction to the subject.

It was originally given as a series of talks in the 1950s and so is very easy to follow and he makes a lot of interesting comparisons to Christianity that are illuminating (at least they were to me way back then).

Like many people, I associate Suzuki with the negative baggage of nationalism. I also think of him as a teacher of Zen to westerners. But then there is this book, and re-reading it, I have to say I think it does a great job--maybe the best I've ever read?-- of distinguishing between jiriki (自力, one's own strength) versus  tariki (他力 meaning "other power", "outside help") are two terms in Japanese Buddhist schools that classify how one becomes spiritually enlightened. Jiriki is commonly practiced in Zen Buddhism. In Pure Land Buddhism, tariki often refers to the power of Amitābha Buddha.

He also explains the concept of faith in Buddhism very well.. and I have to take my hat off to him since I don't believe he was a practitioner, being trained in Zen.

Somehow re-reading is one of the best forms of remembering, not just who we were but how we tended to think about things... it illuminates an approach to life, youthful predilections... dreams..? It is different from the Book to take to a desert island... for me that is definitely the Quixote. And perhaps Karamazov. Now that is a book I want to re-read... 

Favorite novel of 2015: Relic Master

Favorite Novel of 2016: Laurus

Favorite novel of 2017: Galileo's Dream

Other Favorite novel of 2017: Carrere's The Kingdom

More on communal activities: Heaven and Hell in Modena

The Pregnant Madonna

Jorie Graham wrote an unforgettable poem about the madonna as well, called "San Sepolchro."

The poet “places” the Madonna in San Sepolchro; despite the fact that it is really located down the road in Monterchi (not far from the painter's birth city of San Sepolchro, but Monterchi was the town where his mother was born).

Graham must have been unable to resist the image of San Sepolchro–being named after the Holy Sepulcher….the ending of the story.

And so the poet beckons you in…..

“Come in, I will take you to see God being born…”

Here is the poem:

In this blue light
I can take you there,
snow having made me
a world of bone
seen through to. This
is my house,

my section of Etruscan
wall, my neighbor’s
lemontrees, and, just below
the lower church,
the airplane factory.
A rooster

crows all day from mist
outside the walls.
There’s milk on the air,
ice on the oily
lemonskins. How clean
the mind is,

holy grave. It is this girl
by Piero
della Francesca, unbuttoning
her blue dress,
her mantle of weather,
to go into

labor. Come, we can go in.
It is before
the birth of god. No one
has risen yet
to the museums, to the assembly
line—bodies

and wings—to the open air
market. This is
what the living do: go in.
It’s a long way.
And the dress keeps opening
from eternity

to privacy, quickening.
Inside, at the heart,
is tragedy, the present moment
forever stillborn,
but going in, each breath
is a button

coming undone, something terribly
nimble-fingered
finding all of the stops.

It was the great Soviet film maker Andrei Tarkovsky who perhaps made her most famous of all. Having traveled hundreds of miles across Italy to see this particular work of art, the Madonna del Parto appears prominently in his masterpiece, Nostalghia.

In this fascinating article about Tarkovsky's use of the Madonna in his film, the author James Macgillivray, begins by describing the history of the fresco– from its removal from the 13th century Romanesque church, where it was originally installed around 1460, to being left as part of the remaining chapel when the majority of the nave was destroyed to create a cemetery in the late 18th century.Macgillivray is painstaking in explaining the way the painting was utterly removed from its context as part of a church, with much of the original architectural frame being lost along the way. It's quite an interesting story –albeit one that has occurred over and over. Apparently, when Tarkovsky first saw the Madonna in 1979, the picture was being prepared for its eventual removal to a museum–to be cut off forever from its religious and ritualistic context. The Madonna had a long history of veneration by women in the village who were trying to conceive babies. Maybe, suggests Macgillivray, this is why the filmmaker decided to use a very different location some 80 miles away for his 1982 film. It was a better site to replicate the original setting for the Madonna, says Macgillevray. That is, Tarkovsky wanted to put the picture back in what he imagined was its original context.

 

 

Top Reads of 2019

 

讀萬卷書，行萬里路

There is a wonderful Chinese saying that, traveling 10,000 miles is better than reading 10,000 books. In 2014, Michelle Obama mentioned these words, by Dong Qichang, on a visit to Peking University, to encourage young people there to get out and see the world. But, of course, you can also "see" the world in books. 

Artist Zhang Hongtu interpreted the saying differently. For according to Zhang: 
Dong Qichang said that to make a painting, one must “travel ten thousand miles, read ten thousand books.” That is to suggest that to attain wisdom, both books and travel are necessary. I prefer this interpretation since, if I had to choose one over the other, I would certainly choose books.

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2019: Inspired by Susan Orlean's wonderful description of her fond memory of the piles and piles of library books of her childhood; those stacks of checked-out books forming totem poles of the narratives she had visited-- I continued doing less scattered reading and reading around themes: this year, there were five big totem poles: The Perfect Library, Leonardo da Vinci, Venice, Natural Wine, and Borneo! 

Also there was a slight detour into Descartes, poetry and castrati music!

Ok, drum roll....

2019 Top Reads: 

#1 Top Read of the year: Robert Macfarlane's Understory

Best in Fiction: A homage to the Quixote, Salman Rushdie's new novel, Quichotte was his best in years. In January 2020, a review I wrote about the novel apeared in the Dublin Review of Books. Very happy about that. Don Quixote will always be my Novel to Cross a Desert With.  

Also, Pine Islands by Marion. Poschmann

Best in Non-Fiction: Titian: The Last Days, by Mark Hudson.  I wrote about Titian's Pieta at Vox Nova at Patheos. (Runner Up for best non-fiction is The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt 

Most Beautiful Book: Flora Magnifica: The Art of Flowers in Four Seasons, by Makoto Azuma

Biggest Surprise Discovery: Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night & American Gods, by Neil Gaiman 

Most Thought-Provoking and World Changing: The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, by Lawrence Osborne. This book completely changed my way of understanding wine. In particular, I finally understood why I have never been a fan of California wines--especially those made in the "international style." This book stimulated me to go on reading about natural wines and European terroir. I loved this wine masters series as well. So far, we only watched Italy--but we are planning to move on to France next year. This is a New world for me, indeedy!

 Also world changing was Miraculous Encounters: Pontormo from Drawing to Painting. This is an absolutely gorgeous Getty Publications catalog for the exhibition held at the museum in early 2019.

Best Science: It's hard to believe, but I didn't read any science at all this year--except one book on exoplanets. But I did read a lot of science fiction. Does that count? And one of the SF books I read, The Three Body Problem, was absolutely fantastic! In a post Searching for Exoplanets with Columbus at 3 Quarks Daily-- I wrote about three others SF books with surprising religious themes: the beautifully written The Book of Strange New Things and the two books by Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Children of God. These three last ones having a fascinating religious theme. Details in Searching for Exoplanets with Columbus

Best Re-Read: "Take my camel, dear,' said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."  One of my all-time favorite novels; Towers of Trebizond. We re-read it for my bookclub--but ladies did not like it, which is puzzling since I think it is a wonder of the world.

In 2020, I would love to re-read Dorothy Dunnett's the House of Niccolò series. And my favorite book from 2017, The Kingdom!

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The First Stack: The Perfect Library

In January, I wrote a very personal essay over at 3 Quarks Daily about my experience leaving my books behind in Japan, and how wonderful it has been re-building my lost library with Chris here in Pasadena. The essay began when a friend of mine learned that I had never read Alberto Manguel’s Library at Night. Manguel was a friend of Borges and one of the world's greatest lovers of books. My friend insisted I go straight home and order the book! Which I did. I have read several of his other books as well. I am a huge fan of his writing and his The Library at Night is my biggest surprise discovery of 2019--since how could I have not known about Manguel? The Perfect Library was my favorite essay of the year--and definitely the most personal thing I wrote in 2019.  I wrote one more personal essay in 2019, called Tokyo Blossoms. I ended up taking my first-ever creative writing class --online at UCLA Extension. It was on the personal essay--I enjoyed it beyond belief! Next quarter, I am taking a beginning short story class and an intermediate level narrative nonfiction class. This tower was a very small stack of books, hardly a tower at all--but included, Packing up my Library, Piano Shop on the Left Bank, and Phantoms on the Bookshelves (would like to re-read this one).

 

The Second Stack: Leonardo

The big art news of 2019 was the sale of a newly discovered Leonardo. I told the tangled tale of the discovery and sale of the picture in a post at 3 Quarks Daily, called On the Trail of Leonardo. As I write this, the painting is MIA. It is not being included in the Leonardo "exhibition of a lifetime" going on now at the Louvre. And, I think it speaks volumes that Salvator Mundi was sold in Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale. Why? Because that is where people spend the big bucks. 

Anyway, as we were going back to Milan, I read quite a few more books, starting by re-reading the Ross King book on the Last Supper. I wrote about my "out of body" experience in front of the last supper in this post at 3 Quarks in 2016, called Eyes Swimming with Tears (James Elkins has a new book out, by the way). My favorite books on Leonardo are in my notes here. This year, the great new reads were (all Monumental books!): Living with Leonardo: Fifty Years of Sanity and Insanity in the Art World and Beyond, by Martin Kemp; Isaacson's new biography on the painter, and most recently: The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting
by Ben Lewis. Highly recommend all these books!

Small Stack #1 Castrati Music and the Whitsun Festival 2019

I am a big fan of Baroque music and love the counter-tenor voice. So I was delighted to learn that Cecilia Bartoli, who has served as the artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival since 2012, was dedicating this year’s four day festival to the music of the castrati. I became even more interested in going when I learned that for the first time since 1735, audiences would be able to listen to and compare Alcina by Handel back to back with his fierce competitor Porpora’s Polifemo, originally performed in London by Farinelli at the competing theater company that was giving Handel such a terrible headache. Handel was a difficult man at times. A huge row with the castrato superstar Senisino had caused a breakaway group from Handel’s company, forming the Opera for the Nobility. Senisino was joined on stage under Porpora’s artistic direction by Farinelli and these two opera companies–Handel’s and Porpora’s–would set London on fire; with one woman uttering the famous words, One God, one Farinelli… 

After re-watching the movie Farinelli --which was shown at the arts theater in Pasadena in honor of the Festival, I read two novels about the castrati : one by Anne Rice, which I didn't like and one by the Dutch novelist and musician Margriet de Moor. I also read a great history called the World of the Castrati by Patrick Barbier. There is a ton of details in my essay, Gender-Bending Rock Stars: Counter-Tenors, Castrati And The Wild And Crazy Baroque.

 

The Third Stack: Venice

For me, the highlight of 2019 was traveling to Venice. We were in Italy for six weeks. We spent a week in Orvieto looking at the Signorelli frescoes. We also retraced our footsteps on the Piero della Francesca pilgrimage. We spent almost a week in Milan... but it was our nine days in Venice that stands out. I am only going to list the books I read on Venice, because--in fact-- I am still reading and haven't started writing about it. We traveled there to see Titian's Transfiguration. But --so sad to say--it was under conservation. Great excuse to go back! But we did make a kind of Titian pilgrimage, staying in the quarter where we lived and breaking down in tears in front of his last painting in the Academia. That work, the Pieta, made a great impression on us--in great part because of a fabulous book we read by Mark Hudson, called Titian's Last Days. It was my favorite non-fiction of the year.  I wrote this about my experience on Vox Nova at Patheos. We traveled for Titian but returned in love with Tintoretto. 

Also on Titian: Titian: His Life, by Sheila Hale; The Titian Committee, by Iain Pears; Titian: Lady in White, by Andreas Henning (Norton Simon Museum Exhibition Catalog)

On Carpaccio: Ciao, Carpaccio!: An Infatuation, by Jan Morris [Re-read twice and it's still out to read again!}; Carpaccio: Major Pictorial Cycles, by Stefania Mason

My reading so far: Venice Is a Fish: A Sensual Guide, by Tiziano Scarpa (and Dream of Venice in Black and White): If Venice Dies, by Salvatore Settis, Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice, by Erica Jong [worst book of 2019]; A Fury in the Words: Love and Embarrassment in Shakespeare's Venice, by Harry Berger Jr.;Venice and Its Jews: 500 Years Since the Founding of the Ghetto, by Lenore Rosenberg; The Horses of St Mark's: A Story of Triumph in Byzantium, Paris and Venice, by Charles Freeman [FANTASTIC!!! GOING TO RE-READ]; The Science of Saving Venice, by Caroline Fletcher; The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt (runner up for best in non-fiction!) Also fascinating: Venice: Extraordinary Maintenance, by Gianfranco Pertot 

Fantastic Cookbook:Venice: Four Seasons of Home Cooking, by Russell Norman. Also FUN: Brunetti's Cookbook, by Roberta Pianaro, Donna Leon

Post about wine and Venice coming up next week at 3QD.

 

Small Stack #2: Poetry

Very happy to have more translations of the Chieko Poems published in Transference, Western Michigan University's journal of poetry translation. There was a lot of great stuff this issue. Here is a link to the translations.

Here is the entire issue.

University of Iowa's journal of literary translations EXCHANGES published some of my translations earlier this year 

I was struck this autumn that I sometimes don't understand the difference between very lyrical prose and poetry... in Kotaro's poem, it is free form--and yet his are perfect poems. What makes them so, though? So, I watched a masterclass online given by Billy Collins on the craft of poetry, and I just loved it. I feel learning something about the art can help so much as a reader and lover of poetry. Following this up I read The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice, by Tony Hoagland. Sally recommended Looking for Dragon Smoke, by Bly--which I am looking forward to reading early in 2020, along with two other books by Hinton, I have. Read Hunger Mountain by David Hinton, and am now very curious about his work. 

Fourth Stack: Natural Wines

Lawrence Osbourne, in his book, The Wet and the Dry, writes movingly about Dionysus; reminding us that the poet Pindar compared the god of the vine to that of "the pure light of high summer." That is the kind of wine (wine light) I want to drink--especially in summer-- a wine that embodies the pure light and sunshine of the season. So far, that means the volcanic babies of Sicily (Long live Arianna Occhipinti!) and the glorious amphora whites from Georgia. We loved this wine from Baia's Wine (Baia, like Arianna is a young and very talented and amazing wine maker!) "liquid honeysuckle and thyme--" without the overwhelming sulphur of the Sicilian COS amphora either. Lingering sunlight and perfume... sunny and cheerful wine.

Venissa, too, if we can afford another bottle someday... 

All those lesser known grapes that are not on the road usually traveled, the legendary dorona grape, the Tsitska, Krakhuna, and Tsolikouri from Georgia; the zibbibo in Sicily and waiting in great anticipation to try the Hamdani, Jandali, and Dabouki white grapes from the Holy Land. Always love Cassis. Definitely recommend: Tasting the Past, by Kevin Begos.

For sunshine reds, so far, the only light summer red we have had is the 100% sangiovese from il Borro and the COS "pithos" fermented in an amphora from nero d'avola and frappato grapes. (nero d'avola is one of my favorite red grapes).

I guess most people around here have a favorite Feynman quote. Mine is from his famous discourse on wine-- an aside during one of his lectures at Caltech, where he said that "Life is fermentation."

For years, I thought that "life is translation." That was my motto--typical translator-- 

Not anymore though. Now, life is fermentation. For sure! 

Osbourne goes on to explain that the ancient Egyptians, like the Cretans, designated the rising of the star Sirius in high summer (July) with fermentation. And this to them suggested the life force (fermentation and intoxication, life from decay...) 

And in the Amber Revolution, Simon Woolf off-handedly mentions that the huge amphora (qvevri) were sometimes used at the end of life, in death, cut to allow for a body in burial.... like in Borneo).

Favorite of the bunch: The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, by Lawrence Osbourne

Others: 

Lawrence Osbourne's The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey 

Simon Woolf's Amber Revolution

Alice Feiring's
For the Love of Wine: My Odyssey Through the World's Most Ancient Wine Culture

Kevin Begos' wonderful Tasting the Past: The Science of Flavor and the Search for the Origins of Wine

 

Small Stack #3 Descartes

In Spring this year, I had the chance to revisit Descartes and his mind-body duality in a class held at the Huntington Library, in Pasadena. Taught by Descartes scholar Gideon Manning, we spent six weeks reading Descartes and having fruitful conversations about the philosopher’s work. Maybe Descartes is better read when one is in mid-life? Because I found Meditations to be much more appealing compared to when I first read the work thirty some years ago. Recommended reading: Russell Shorto’s Descartes’ Bones (I loved this one and plan to re-read it) and AC Grayling’s The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind.

 

Fifth Stack: Borneo

I took my first-ever writing class this autumn and one of the prompts was to write about a place you have never been. I really enjoyed doing that and wrote about my favorite place I have never been: Borneo! It was great fun to re-read old classics like Gavin Young's, In Search of Conrad and Eric Hansen’s travel classic, Stranger in the Forest. I also re-visited Lorne and Lawrence Blair's Ring of Fire films. I met Lorne Blair in Ubud not long before his tragic death. Anyway, this walk down imaginary memory lane led me to discover a writer, I had never heard of before: Carl Hoffman (who wrote the best seller, Savage Harvest and his new double biography called The Last Wild Men of Borneo about Bruno Manser and American tribal art dealer Michael Palmieri. He is a fantastic writer and those books really were riveting! I also picked up The Wasting of Borneo, by Alex Shoumatoff. I am a long time fan of his work and this book was very sad...

Palm oil is a funny thing. This oil that we never knew we needed thirty years ago is now in everything. From shampoo and toothpaste to every snack known to man-- It is nearly impossible to avoid. Shoumatoff says he is down to a drop a week in toothpaste and shampoo... I don't think I use any—but will go check my shampoo bottle (nope, I’m good). But it is really hard to avoid the stuff, since it is in everything... And so the destruction continues. After the forests are cleared, monocrop oil palms are planted, and this habitat destruction has pushed the island's animals to the brink of extinction--including our cousins, the orangutans.

How can we continue with this destruction?

 

Looking Forward

First: My favorite writer William Dalrymple's new one on the East India Co.,  Anarchy. Hard to believe it is taking me this long to get to it! My first project will be to finish my reading on Signorelli and Freud. I have a stack of books and am really looking forward to getting into those. I would also like to finish my "walk down memory" lane, reading what little there is on Ladakh and the murals at Alchi. Hoping to visit China for 6 weeks this summer so will turn to China after that... I haven't flown across the Pacific since leaving Japan. I hope we make it work. 

Also reading now into 2020, the Shadow King. There is so much to say about this magnificent novel. 

 

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Final must mention: Overstory, by Richard Powers 

A review I wrote about the book The Power of Nunchi will appear in the Kyoto Journal in 2020. 

My 2018 reads were written up in in 2019 in two blog posts at 3 Quarks: Do Octopuses Have Souls? I only read one of those books from that post in 2019--but it was fantastic: Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy, by Evan Thompson. And: A Symphony Of Vanishing Sounds (The Insect Apocalypse).

 

a poem to cross a desert with (採菊東籬下)

David Hinton, in his wonderful book Hunger Mountain talks about what great teachers mountains can be; how they were believed to dramatically manifest the vast forces and generative powers of the cosmos. Hence, they were perfect places for sages to dwell. Thatch Hut was particularly renown. Now a world heritage site, I did a translation about Zhangjiajie National Park about ten years ago for a Japanese documentary. Of course, it featured the famous poem, written by one of the legendary sages of Thatch Mountain: Tao Yuanming (also known as, Tao Qian 陶潛).

I fell so in love with that poem.

Especially the famous line  採菊東籬下-- Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence. It is a popular subject for the seals of gentlemen retiring as the phrase alone, I think, sums up perfectly the serenity achieved by a life of cultivation and at the end of the hero's journey. Here is my translation below:

 

飲酒詩　　　　　陶淵明
結盧在人境　而無車馬喧
問君何能爾　心遠地自偏
採菊東籬下　悠然見南山
山氣日夕佳　飛鳥相與還
此還有真意　欲辨已忘言

Drinking Wine (#5)–Tao Yuanming
I’ve built my house where others dwell
And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses
You ask me how this is possible– (And so I say):
When the heart is far, one is transported
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern fence
And serenely I gaze at the southern mountains
At dusk, the mountain air is good
Flocks of flying birds are returning home
In this, there is a great truth
But wanting to explain it, I forget the words (my trans）

 

But now look at Hinton's:

Drinking Wine

 

I live here in this busy village without

all that racket horses and carts stir up

 

and you wonder how that could ever be.

Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself

 

a distant place. Picking chrysanthemums

at my eastern fence, I see South Mountain

 

far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight

Going home. All this means something.

 

Something absolute: whenever I start

to explain it, I forget words altogether

 

Okay, I much prefer mine--though I think my southern mountains is a mistranslation probably. Also it is fantastic the way he retained those symmetrical stanzas.

Regarding the second stanza, the forth line in mine, Hinton says this:

"To understand Thatch Hut Mountain is to take on the nature of the mountain, to live outside the human realm of words and concepts, like those in these chapters, outside even the self to which the name refers. This was a spiritual practice for the ancients, a practice that was ideally cultivated whereever one happened to be, including noisy towns and cities--as in the poem. 

 

++

Looking back at this old blog post, I re-read this poem which someone there shared--feels so long ago:

. . .The wild twister pulls me out
How to return to that mid-field
It should be south, but then north
Saying east, but no, west
Drifting drifting, where should I land
... Quick death and again living
Flutter-float around Eight swamps
In succession passing Five Mountains
Flowing, turning, no constant place:
Who knows my hurt?
The wish to be mid forest grass
Autumn: by wild-fires burned
Annihilation: is there no pain?
The wish for root connection"

from Alas by Ts'ao Chih
trans. Eric Sackheim

 

On Flowers

I just finished a wonder celebration of flowers by Amy Merrick, called: On Flowers: Lessons from an Accidental Florist.

I loved reading about how she longed for Japan--and even felt homesick for this place--to which she had never been. But looking at her arrangements, they were such perfect expressions of Japanese tea flowers (茶花 chabana). My tea teacher was much more well known as an ikebana teacher and she specialized in chabana. I loved her arrangements every week adorning the tokonoma in the tea room.... always dewy and arranged so naturally to appear just as they would in a meadow--out in nature. Like me, she is also drawn to English gardens-- Sissinghurst, which is my favorite garden in the world. 

One more thing that is wonderful about her book, she encourages us to "forage."

In japan, we always did that! Like "maple leaf hunting" (紅葉狩り）.. in Japan, there are things you are meant to appreciate from a distance and there are other things which you need to gather and bring home... I purchased a tiny pair of Japanese scissors to keep in my walking bag for foraging (My neighbors should love that!) Really, in LA, everything now is private property... it is so sad. I press flowers regularly and always have fresh flowers at home.. but I think it is time really to learn how to garden. 

(Today is the first day of winter 立冬 according to the ancient calendar, when The First Camellia Blossoms) 

perfect summer wines

Today at the farmer's market was more peaches, white nectarines, tiny plums, and apricots--maybe the last refuge of the truly seasonal in America? These summer fruits are the only food I really can't find at other times of year. 

But it wasn't just peaches. There were colorful carrots, and heirloom tomatoes (not as many tomatoes as I would have expected, though); there were the most perfumed herbs-- basil, thyme, rosemary, mint (the one's we tried growing this year are inedible!) I wonder if fish is seasonal here? Today was Alaskan salmon, halibut and swordfish--and the most staggeringly huge scallops, which I didn't dare get.

And dahlias.... the flower man calls them "his tequilas" and if you don't buy three armfuls for $20, he complains that he won't have enough money for tequila... he says, that some of his customers don't like his jokes...!!

Dahlias were named after a Swedish botanist who "discovered" them in Mexico, where they had been cultivated--thank you very much-- by Aztecs since the beginning of time. They were eventually brought back to Europe by Spanish explorers, where my book says they did not take Europe by storm--except that I once read that they did indeed take Europe by storm. It was in the book about tulips, I think, where I read that dahlias became high fashion after the tulip bubble burst and French ladies went mad for them--paying enormous prices and wearing them in their décolletage like diamond necklaces!

They are also the national flower of Mexico and remind me of my sister!

In Japan, it was so easy to follow the seasons since in Tochigi people base their menus around them. For summer, is eel! But also shaved ice, cold noodles, ayu (fish), watermelon, and the much loved (by my son) ramune drink! Sake is--of course-- served cold.

Thinking of sake, my mind turned to wine--were the seasonal wines? I guess Rosé is a famous summery wine. I much prefer Cassis.... but for me the most summery wine of all are the Etna Biancos--New York times article here! I love the volcanic quality--reminds me of the sulphur hot springs up above Nikko where we used to go. Maybe because we always did that in summer --and the smell of the sulphur overwhelmed--or maybe because walking in Volcanoes National Park (my second favorite national park), where it smolders sulphur, it is always hot and humid.... for whatever reason, I associate volcanic smells with summertime.  

Who would make wine near a volcano anyway, right?

The first time I had an Etna Bianco was in Italy. It was a glass of Occhipinti wine (SP68 bianco Arianna Occhipinti) which I was served as part of a tasting menu at Massimo Bottura's famous Osteria Francescana in Modena (at that time considered the best restaurant in the world). Arianna's wines were not terribly expensive, and I fell totally in love. It was the first time I have ever been bowled over by wine --and I guess that Sicilian bianco really was my "first." I also love her reds --and think she is totally awesome! (I love it with Pesto Trapanese) 

I was recently intrigued to learn about amphora wines, though.

Not only are these natural wines harkening back to the original manner of creating wine--dating back thousands of years in Georgia--homeland of wine and great opera singers! But that Italians and Oregonians to name a few had also taken up the trend of amphora wine--and in Sicily none other than Arianna's famous uncle, Giusto Occhipinti, was involved in a successful amphora wine project at his vineyard COS. (O=Occhipinti).

Did you know that Georgian wines are still primarily made in amphorae? Not a barrel around!

I once read that the invention of pottery extended human life by a decade.

Think about it. A decade! How many inventions can be said to have had that kind of impact on human life?

I am reading a fantastic book about Georgian wine (Armenia and Georgia are places I long to visit!) called For the Love of Wine, by Alice Feiring. Also really interesting is a book, called Tasting the Past, by Kevin Begos, about a very quixotic journey into a glass of wine the author once tasted in Jordan. Unable to get it off his mind, he traveled back in time along the ancient wine routes (read Georgia!) to figure out what it was. 

If Amarone is the perfect Christmas wine (That is what I think anyway), then these refreshing and really unique amber amphora beauties (join the amber revolution) are perfect for summer. In fact, I am wondering how the COS amphora white might go with Japanese style eel... hmmm...?

Heaven and Hell in Modena (2016 3QD)

Simon Woolf's Amber Revolution: How the World Learned to Love Orange Wine

Kevin Begos' Tasting the Past: The Science of Flavor and the Search for the Origins of Wine

Alive Feirling's For the Love of Wine: My Odyssey through the World's Most Ancient Wine Culture

100 Flowers and Tulipmania

 

The Three Body Problem

“Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem