Chinese Painting and Thought - A Different Perspective ...

In one of my last visits to "Shakespeare and Company" bookstore in Paris (I wrote about it here before), a small, inconspicuous book, almost by chance, found itself in my hands. "Existence. A Story" by David Hinton. David is a poet and renown translator of Chinese poetry. The book sheds light on the experiences that are so often ignored by our proud (yet frequently blind) Western tradition... What is amazing for me, is that on the deepest level, as you could find in my previous post about Kabbalah, it is not that bad - we also have some amazing traditions touching the essence of everything ... But, for some reasons, that awareness of existence is much more prevalent in Chinese thought and art than in ours ...

As it was before with Kabbalah and the Journey to Lhasa, this post will contain the most interesting quotes I find in it during my everyday early morning reading ...

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"We turn to the empty darkness of pure awareness, which is all that remains after this practice of forgetfulness, and we inhabit the expansive space of that darkness"

"That clarity is a beginning place, and almost as soon as this empty gaze into the nature of things reveals existence vast and deep, it reveals something else no less wondrous and unimaginable: there is no distinction awareness and the expansive presence of existence. They are whole, a single existential tissue, which is to say that existence-tissue is our most fundamental self."

"(...) the pictographic nature of Chinese means that words share the nature of things as living phenomena. (...) This suggest a very different concept of time. We in modern West inhabit time as a metaphysical dimension, a river of future flowing through present and into the past. This grand metaphysical assumption about the world structures our immediate experience, but it is purely imaginal, and it creates a strange schism between us and the vast tissue of transformation that is reality. As inhabitants of this linear time, we are located outside of existence. But there is no trace of such dimension in empirical reality. (...) and 'time' is nothing other than the movement of change itself, an ongoing generative moment in which every thing (noun) is alive (verb) and pregnant with transformation."

LANGUAGE

"In the modern West, linguistic thought is experienced in a mimetic sense, as a stable and changeless medium by which a transcendental soul represents objective reality. This sense of language assumes language did not evolve out of natural process, but that language is instead a kind of transcendental realm that somehow came into existence independently of natural process."

"The history of language in China reveals that language was not experienced as a mimetic separation by ancients (...) They recognized language as an organic system evolved by the existence-tissue describing and explaining itself. In the cultural myth, language begins in China with the hexagrams of the I Ching, such as the first two, Heaven and Earth:

These hexagrams embody the two fundamental elements of the Cosmos: yin and yang, female and male, whose dynamic interaction produces the cosmological process of change"

"Here we encounter the tantalizing fact that to translate a Chinese poem into English is to fundamentally misrepresent it, because the mimetic function of English, with its distancing, is exactly what a Chinese poem is meant to undo"

ELUSION

"Existence decorates itself with identity and meaning, just as it decorates itself with mountain ridgelines and sea-mist, cities and rainbows. And yet (how can it be?), as soon as existence begins to know itself, it is lost to itself. Existence rustles. It wants to know itself; and in the end, it cannot. It can only elude itself"

TAO

'Tao also means "to say"'

"A Tao called Tao isn't the perennial Tao.

A name that names isn't the perennial name."

"(...) the might be translated 'A Tao that can be described/explained is not the perennial Tao"

THE FIRST REVELATION

"From this attention to thought's movement comes meditation's first revelation: that we are, as a matter of observable fact, separate from our thoughts and memories. That is, we are not the center of identity we assume ourselves to be in our day-to-day lives, that center of identity defining us fundamentally outside the existence-tissue. Instead, we are the empty awareness ('empty mind') that watches identity rehearsing itself in thoughts and memories relentlessly coming and going."

"(...) mind refers not to the abstract analytical faculty that we normally associate with that word. Instead it refers to the empty awareness that Stone-Waves encountered in meditation, that we encountered before opening our eyes here in the beginning"

PRESENCE AND ABSENCE

"In perennial Absence you see mystery,

and in perennial Presence you see appearance
(Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching)

Presence is simply the empirical universe: the ten thousand things in constant transformation, existence vast and deep, everything and everywhere. And Absence is the generative void from which this ever-changing realm of Presence perpetually emerges. (...)

In this mirror-deep empty mind, the ancients experienced perception as nothing less than Absence itself mirroring Presence"

FEMALE COSMOLOGY

"Lao Tzu often employs female terminology to describe the elemental contours of Absence, the dark and mysterious source of all appearance: 'mother of all beneath heaven', 'nurturing mother,' 'dark female-enigma'. This female cosmology feels very primal, and probably dates from the earliest levels of human culture, levels when the existence-tissue first began decorating itself with celebration and meaning"

COSMOLOGY AND CONSCIOUSNESS

"In Ch'an meditation, that cosmology is revealed as the very structure of consciousness, for meditation allows you to watch thought emerge from a generative emptiness, follow its dynamic evolution, and finally return back into that emptiness.(...)

This is a return to the elemental mystery of creation; and at the same time, it reveals consciousness as an integral part of the cosmological tissue: thought, memory, identity, all moving with the same dynamic energy as the Cosmos itself"

POETRY

"Poetry was sometimes referred to as "poetry-Ch'an." Although made of words, it is at its most profound level a spiritual practice opening consciousness to an immediate experience of the existence-tissue that precedes thought and language. (...) And poetry is the language's most distilled expression."

CHINESE GRAMMAR

"As we have seen, this grammar is minimal in the extreme, leaving a great deal of open space in the poem: all words can function as any part of speech, subjects and pronouns are often missing, verbs have no tense, function words (conjunctions, prepositions, articles, etc.) are rare, there is no punctuation, etc. This open space feels like an extension of the open space that surrounds the poem, and together they are a single tissue of emptiness: Absence, the source-tissue. (...) In this poetry participates in that more primal experience of time as an ongoing generative moment, which also defines the texture of the poem, for the wide-open grammar and absence of verb tenses creates a sense that the events of a poem occur in a kind of boundless present."

CALLIGRAPHY

"The practice of calligraphy is similar to the practice of meditation. It changes our relation to language, the medium of identity; and finally, it reweaves identity into the existence-tissue"

ANCIENT PAINTINGS

"When the ancients looked at a painting with mirror-deep mind, they rehearsed empty awareness here in the beginning, (...). As they gazed mirror-deep into a painting, they felt within consciousness both the blank field of Absence and dynamic Presence emerging from that field, its forms chosen not arbitrarily or to portray a particular landscape, but for the resonance they open in X, its empty mind and full heart."

CHINESE INSPIRATION

"The COSMOLOGY of Absence and Presence structures everything in ancient China. It defines the physical structure of the Cosmos, with the empirical world emerging from a generative emptiness; the compositional structure of calligraphy and painting, with their forms emerging from that same emptiness and vanishing back into it; the structure of language and poetry, with their empty grammar and pictographic words emerging at the empty source of things, the ideograms themselves nestled around the empty space within them, the structure of consciousness, in which thought emerges from a generative emptiness and returns to vanish there; and finally, it structures perception, where empty mind mirrors empirical reality"

"So the concepts of Absence and Presence might almost be translated: 'formless' and 'form', for they are just two different ways of seeing the existence-tissue"

THE DARK ENIGMA IN TAO TE CHING POEM

"In perennial Absence you see mystery,

and in perennial Presence you see appearance.

Though the two are one and the same,

once they arise, they differ in name.

One and the same they're called dark-enigma,

dark-enigma deep within dark-enigma,

gateway of all mystery."

"Dark-enigma is a return to consciousness prior to language and the utilitarian differentiation of things we need for survival (...) As soon as you conceptualize it, name it even with this first name, dark-enigma, that immediacy and wholeness is lost"

THE ANOTHER NAME

"There is another name for Absence and Presence recognized as a single entity, a concept that emphasizes its nature as a living tissue: Ch'i:

"This is experience at a very primal level in this cosmology, revealing that empty consciousness is not emptiness, but an ethereal configuration of:

"

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(And with this quote I'm ending the relation from this amazing little book...
Mirek@Lodz)

Orhan Pamuk's great novel — „My Name is Red”

I start this review of the acclaimed Orhan’s Pamuk novel „My name is Red” in a specific climate. As I indicated in my harbinger of this review, when I was reading the novel, I could not put away all my recollections and feelings related to Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”.  So just after I finished great Pamuk’s  novel  and even before writing this review, I switched my MP3 player to equally  famous Umberto Eco’s book. That gives me another opportunity to ponder over the cultural differences between the European culture I was born to, and the Eastern, now by-gone culture of Ottoman Empire, that has some reflection in today’s Turkish culture, and with more general outlook — in Islamic culture.

However, before exploring the analogy deeper (what I probably postpone to another post) I will try to tell something about „My name is Red” itself.
The novel takes place in Istambul at the end of XVI century.  It introduces its readers into a world of miniaturists and painters devoted to book illustrations. At the outset, this is extremely interesting – as we well know, painting in Islam is quite restricted – even a depiction of any human form is a kind of idolatry and is forbidden.  This is why Islamic cultures developed more in directions of calligraphy, illumination of manuscripts, miniature painting, painting on ceramics and extremely flowery rugs and carpets creation.

The novel’s  intriguing plot throws us into the world of late Ottoman empire, under the rule of Sultan Murat III, who  purportedly, ordered an extended and rich set of illustrations, apparently borrowing from Venitian style of painting, to the book (Thousands Years of Hagira) which was to be offered to some European envoys as an expression of Ottoman or, more precisely — his own, pride. However, amid strong opposition from fundamentalists of the era, he did that in secrecy and commissioned the task to a specific workshop of talented miniaturists and illuminators. Partially because of another wave of pride and competition among them, partially because of the restrained love affairs and desires of the young people, and most importantly because of the influence of fundamentalists – the mysterious murders start to shadow the peaceful work of the illuminators.  And this face of the book — the numerous plots, almost criminal-like tension and great dramatizing is extremely well designed and rendered in words.  Let me however not reveal anything from these plots because I do not want to spoil the readers’ future impressions.  Anyway, let me only say shortly that the mystery about the identity of the main murderer is not revealed almost to the end of the novel. Yet when the conundrum is finally solved, it is of a very specific climate of surprise. Contrary to our today’s literary experiences it is almost non-surprising, we could probably conclude the truth well in the mid of reading – yet – just because of the fantastic way Pamuk intertwines the plot – it becomes a true crescendo of the book.

There is also a beautiful love story. The love from the first sight, yet almost tragic and almost unfulfilled, it finally finds fulfillment in a way perhaps different than its actors expectations, and a bit different to our expectations as readers. And that makes it even more beautiful. As its frequent references to the story of „Hüsrev and Shirin”  by Persian poet Nizami …

Beyond all these features, the book has also many philosophical connotations. We are exposed to specific way Muslims in Ottoman Empire pondered about God and human soul, the afterlife, the reward and punishment. I wanted to stress a thought that, to me, was probably the most important. It is a consideration about books and painting. First and foremost, it shows the incredible role of writing, books and libraries in the development of Islamic culture. But it also shows, that just after armies, their soldiers and all the military power, the books were assumed to have equal power. Pamuk recalls an attack on a city where, after the massacre of its inhabitants, the books were the next victims ...

We are exposed to the numerous deep thoughts that decorate the action packed pages, like:

„Painting is the silence of thought and a music of sight”

„I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.”

„Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.”

„A letter doesn't communicate by words alone. A letter, just like a book, can be read by smelling it, touching it and fondling it. Thereby, intelligent folk will say, 'Go on then, read what the letter tells you!' whereas the dull-witted will say, 'Go on then, read what he's written!”

„What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.”

„Where there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.”

The ideas about painting („… the farthest one can go in illustrating; it is seeing what appears out of Allah’s own blackness”) are also thought provoking.  And the parts of the narration were we discover that the true essence of painting can be discovered only by blind painter.  That parts of the book were very deep – and one could not avoid an analogy to Beethoven who was almost deaf when composed some of his masterpieces.  And the mystical self-blinding of some of the book heroes in  the critical events of the plot…

Pamuk explores the European influence on Islamic art, the opposition and admiration of it. In fact the attempt to apply European style of painting into Islamic illustrations becomes one of the key controversies among the characters of the novel. Rich parallels shed some light on wider context of the cultural connections between East and West,  their evolution in the Middle Ages and the tolerant approach of religious Muslims of the age  („Unto Allah belong the East and the West”)

I guess it is worth mentioning how beautiful and unusual writing instruments are used by Pamuk.  For example there is a chapter were the narrator is a tree or a horse or a coin… And the chapters with have such unusual narrators, play an important role in this amazing book…

Finally, if you let yourself to live with this amazing book for a considerable amount of time, you start to feel the climate of the time it describes… And when you compare that feeling to the feeling we Europeans experience while reading  „The Name of the Rose” or  “The Book of Abraham” (Marek Helter) on the another – we lose our pride and typical conviction of the superiority of our culture over the ancient cultures of Judaism or Islam…

„My Name is Red” is a monumental book, the book that will stay with you long after you flopped the last page of it, or, as was in my case, when you switched your AudioBook off for a long time after it…

Finished in Woodbridge, UK.

My Name Is Red — The Mysteries of Books, Illustrations, Islam and Love ...

This short note is not a review yet.
Contrary to my hopes, I could not find time to catch up with the growing pile of unreviewed book....
Maybe soon...

But I cannot withhold myself from telling you how fantastic is Orhan Pamuk's "My Name Is Red" novel.
It touches so many important matters — the Islamic philosophy and religion, importance of books and paintings, reaction to European influence upon Ottoman culture....

Deeply immersed in Islamic tradition, it reminds me about "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco... As the later was related to the importance of books to medival Christian/European culture, so the former was to Islamic culture of Ottoman Emipre...

I only hope I will find time soon to tell you more about it....

"Painting is the silence of thought and a music of sight"

I still did not become warmer after freezing effect of 12 months of hard work on my blogging....
Yet I read. And this reading gives me peace and deep thought. "My name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk.

How deep are stories about the best illustrators and miniaturists that excelled to the highest levele only when turned blind ... When you paint while being blind - it's like Allah himself would paint...

The book of course, has much more in it...

Keep listening while biking and jogging in the Pomerania....

Crime and Punishment in Musée d'Orsay

Books and music are not all acts of culture that I admire ...

During one of my last trips to Paris I visited Musée d'Orsay. This museum is one of the best art museum in Europe, and its collections of impressionists are just superb.

However, that time I was able to see the special exhibition „Crime and punishment”. It was an incredible collection of mostly paintings that addressed the theme of crime, death and penalties.

Starting with depiction of the forefather of all criminals —Cain, we go through the history of art with the focus on the dark side of human race. We can witness how the reaction of artists varied in time of Enlightenment, Romanticism, Positivism and Surrealism.

We could witness how the nascent press devoted it columns to crime (Le Petit Journal) , we could see the modern ideas for prisons (Panopticon), and contemplate upon artistic debate over death penalty...

One of the objects on the display was the real guillotine, dressed in a vail ...

The exhibition was depressing ... but it was still worth to see.

Swan Thieves - When a word is the paintbrush and a book is the easel ...

Elizabeth Kostova's second famous book (after Historian) is about obsession and time...
Well, it is also about art and love and about many more matters.
However in my review I want to focus on the two former themes of the book.
It is very recent book (release date was January 12, 2010) .

The plot describes a famous fictional artist Robert Olivier. After an violent attempt to slash a painting in National Gallery of Art he has been hospitalized. His psychiatrist, himself a painter becomes deeply involved in Olivier case. As the patient refuses to speak, his therapist goes deep into his life, visits and talks to his former wife and gets into relation with his former girlfriend. Soon he discovers that his patient is obsessed by beautiful women, Beatrice, late XIX century impressionist painter. When the psychiatrist discovers the truth about her and about her troubled life, and in some sense explains the roots of his `patient's obsession - that finally brings relieve to Robert Olivier and he seems to be healed.

The true theme of the book is the power of obsession that, in some circumstances, can completely overwhelm human's life. Obsession, that transcends the time and space.
Robert Olivier falls in love with the person who is no longer alive. His expression of the love is the painting. He paints the women who lived in XIX century France, and for some reason did not became famous, even thought she full deserved it. I would like to find the better word than obsession, as it has some pejorative connotations. Maybe just Passion?

When we look deeper into ourselves we quite often find such passions, although maybe of different magnitude or kind. In this context, she was worth the love lasting more than century...

Olivier, in his sketches and paintings, brings her back to life. Her beauty is almost surreal or maybe even hyper-real. When he discovers more and more about her past, he reveals the secrets that still exist, secrets frozen in her letters, in her uncovered paintings. The past time is no longer past, the events, the emotions and deeds find realistic existence in Olivier's passion... It seems to me that Kostova believes, as I do, in the specific concept of time, I once described after reading Vonnegut's "Slaughter House 5".

There is small disappointment at the very end of the novel. It is in authors description of unnaturaly fast Robert's healing and recovery. It is unconvincing and quite flat and I must say that to some extent, the climax of this otherwise beautiful and enchanting book, is lost...

Swan Thieves review harbinger

I picked up "Swan Thieves" mainly because I wanted a good relaxing story. It was a good and relaxing story. But it was far more...

During the regular day of week I can't have enough time to write a full review - it will wait till the weekend.

But - I could not resist telling you that this is another great novel worth reading !!!
Kostova is another fantastic story teller...