#belles lettres

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photography: Ralph Eugene Meatyard

* * * *

"My voice, the voices of your breath, your hand of satin and olive, my eyelid wounded by the moon, your laughter lost in the wind."

— Juana de Ibarbourou, from Collected Poems; “My Voice, Your Voice,”

[Belles-lettres]

[sefaradweb]

Modern Ladino Culture

🇪🇸 El libro "Modern Ladino Culture: Press, Belles Lettres, and Theater in the Late Ottoman Empire" de Olga Borovaya, finalista de los National Jewish Book Awards en 2011, es el primero en examinar como un fenómeno unificado tres géneros de la producción cultural ladina: la prensa, la literatura de ficción y el teatro. Borovaya identifica estos géneros como importaciones de Occidente que se arraigaron entre los sefardíes otomanos a principios del siglo XX y se desarrollaron dentro del contexto cultural local, centrándose en las comunidades de Salónica, Esmirna y Estambul. La autora considera crucial abordar la cultura impresa ladina como un fenómeno único para entender el movimiento cultural de la época y su importancia en la historia sefardí. Analiza la evolución de los tres géneros, comenzando con la prensa, seguida de la literatura de ficción, y finalmente el teatro, destacando el papel significativo de las escuelas de la Alianza en la expansión de la cultura ladina. Borovaya también explora el fenómeno de la "reescritura" de novelas europeas occidentales, que luego se serializaban en la prensa ladina. Con notas detalladas y un índice, Borovaya presenta un análisis exhaustivo y accesible de un conjunto de materiales raros, proporcionando una valiosa contribución al estudio de la cultura sefardí.

🇺🇸 The book "Modern Ladino Culture: Press, Belles Lettres, and Theater in the Late Ottoman Empire" by Olga Borovaya, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards in 2011, is the first to examine three genres of Ladino cultural production as a unified phenomenon: the press, fiction literature, and theater. Borovaya identifies these genres as imports from the West that took root among Ottoman Sephardim at the beginning of the 20th century and developed within the local cultural context, focusing on the communities of Salonica, Izmir, and Istanbul. The author considers it crucial to approach Ladino print culture as a single phenomenon to understand the cultural movement of the time and its importance in Sephardi history. She analyzes the evolution of the three genres, starting with the press, followed by fiction literature, and finally theater, highlighting the significant role of the Alliance schools in the expansion of Ladino culture. Borovaya also explores the phenomenon of "rewriting" Western European novels, which were then serialized in the Ladino press. With detailed notes and an index, Borovaya presents a comprehensive and accessible analysis of a rare collection of materials, providing a valuable contribution to the study of Sephardi culture.

[apollogie]

APR 14 2023

I notice I am always looking for excuses to distract myself. Either by looking for things to purchase that I know I never really will, or by mindlessly scrolling on social media, or looking for things to "organize" and rearrange on my phone, or staring and looking at and rereading something multiple times just to relive the first moment I happened upon it. Sometimes, I simply sit in one uncomfortable position for an unbearable amount of time just waiting for something to happen. Waiting for myself to complete a task, or telling myself I can reposition once I finish this one last thing that I end up doing in actuality because I get caught up in another one last thing. Hell, I'm even doing it right now. "I'll lie down and get comfy in my bed after I finish this thought." But this thought never finishes—and isn't that precisely my problem? There is never a last thought because they cascade in torrential downpour and the only means of escape is by way of terminal dehydration. My back aches in this contorted posture I have both subjected myself to and desperately wish to be freed from. Is this enough? Am I missing something? Is there more? What if I just wait a little longer to see? There has to be something I'm missing again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and I will stop now and I'm sorry but I lied again and again and again because I had to make sure everything was perfect.

[rotschopf-thedrow]

@cr-noble-writes This is for you ^^

I think people who criticize “meaningless fluff,” “pointless angst,” and other similar styles of fan-writings, have forgotten about something called aestheticism. Art for art’s sake. Not every piece of art or writing must have some deeper meaning. Some things exist to be merely be observed or felt- not to teach a lesson or do what some think “real” literature should. 

So if you’re writing a 50K coffee shop!AU with nothing but fun shenanigans and fluff, don’t let anyone tell you it’s meaningless or pointless. The point of it is for it to be enjoyed and observed as it is. It doesn’t have to have some deep and poignant societal/political undertone or lesson for it to be a worthy piece of literature. 

A lot of popular authors have created writings which can be categorized as art for art’s sake and have contributed to aestheticism. So you are in good company.

[lady-belleslettres]

[chimshasha]

A poem by Ibn al-Rumi (896 AD)

She is in my embrace but my soul desires her still. Is there closeness

beyond embrace?

I kiss her mouth that my fever might end, but my mad thirst only grows.

The lovesickness in me is not of the kind healed by kisses.

Nothing, it seems, can cure my heart’s thirst except to see our souls

mingle.

[francepittoresque]

18 décembre 1799 : mort du mathématicien Jean-Étienne Montucla ➽ http://bit.ly/Jean-Etienne-Montucla Forçant le respect du milieu scientifique avec la publication, en 1758, du premier volume de son « Histoire des mathématiques », Jean-Étienne Montucla suit parallèlement une autre carrière en occupant des fonctions publiques de l’ordre le plus élevé, la Révolution entraînant sa ruine

[classif-onto-epistem-aesthetic]

(Éditions Les Belles Lettres)

[dixvinsblog]

Les belles expressions françaises : Au pied de la lettre

Autrement dit : à la lettre ; littéralement ; dans le sens strict des mots ; en n’en faisant aucune interprétation ; scrupuleusement ; au premier degré ; sans chercher à comprendre ; au sens strict ; au sens littéral du terme. Point barre, pas de fantaisie, ni d’interprétation on fait ce qu’on dit scrupuleusement, au premier degré, sans chercher à comprendre. Origine Cette expression existe…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photography: Laura Makabresku

* * * * 

"[…] for nothing you have ever encountered is quite so uneven and unsteady as this heart of mine." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, tr. David Constantine

[Belles-lettres]

[alessandroiiidimacedonia]

Out soon: "Alexandre le Grand en syriaque. Maître des lieux, des savoirs et des temps" by Muriel Debié

Good day everyone, I’m Elena and thanks to be here on Alessandro III di Macedonia! Today we say goodbye to 2023 and say hello to a 2024 in the name of our Alexander the Great! To end on a high note, I’d like to point out this unmissable book for the most passionate: Alexandre le Grand en syriaque Maître des lieux, des savoirs et des temps Traductions, introductions et commentaires de Muriel…

[apollogie]

Sometimes when I write, I'm not even quite sure myself what the words on the page are supposed to mean.

I don't mean for them to be well-thought metaphors, contemplative tragedy, prosaic elegy, but the words come anyway, and I don’t know why.

Sometimes I like to think that this is my soul. It tells me what I cannot know. What I forbid myself from knowing. So I allow myself to be the conduit for myself on the occasion where I capture these fleeting essences with the tip of my mind, messy and unrefined,

a chaotic soup of beans and peas and bone and broth that simmers over the stove top my father left on, and my mother chided him for.

I wanted to add a dash of you to the pot: a subtle milquetoast spice of naivete to dull the blade I whet on the page. My cauldron takes no cooking implements, no ladle to call its own, so I drink us with the knife I kept to impress you and lost when my parents discovered I'd been scraping it against Teflon.

Teflon causes cancer, you know.

I don't, really, but I believe it anyways. I believe it because I was told to, and I assume it's true because why wouldn't it be? We consume the poison which nourishes us by one hand and draws us closer to the grave by the other.

I broil your sinewy flesh and wet it in the thickening brew. I can no longer separate the mixture from what it once was. It begins to coagulate. I wonder if my clumsy hands scratched the pot as I served myself our dinner for two.

I want you to partake in my body and the borscht our viscera has rendered inedible. The recipe I never learnt was to be insoluble. Eat your food while it's still warm—I'm sure you know that by now—but you slide to fit the shape of smooth plastic.

And I'm cold now, but it's okay; I'll feel the warmth of your dark tunnels and walls and fit the shape of smooth plastic. I thought I would be happy when you finally indulged my communion even if it had grown old and stale. But I'm cold now, and it's no longer okay.

I don't know if any of this makes sense and I don't know if it ever will. I don't know if you will ever understand how your odour has dissolved into each spoonful I bail into my mouth. Do you understand what I mean when I say that I will never get your taste off of my tongue?

Teflon flakes in every bite until my body corrodes. The switchboard of each sensuous bud fades and your flavour softens against my palate. Maybe one day you will no longer be an acquired taste but—ah! I ran out from the pot.

I hope you don't mind leftovers because it is all that we have wrought.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

Amo: volo ut sis.” (I love you: I want you to be.)

— Martin Heidegger, quoting Augustine, in a letter to Hannah Arendt, 1925

"This mere existence, that is, all that which is mysteriously given to us by birth and which includes the shape of our bodies and the talents of our minds, can be adequately dealt with only by the unpredictable hazards of friendship and sympathy, or by the great and incalculable grace of love, which says with Augustine, ‘Volo ut sis (I want you to be),’ without being able to give any particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation.

— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

[Belles-lettres]

230726 - Toshihiko Okuya

[lady-belleslettres]

Moment of Clarity

[kirkodiletears]

This used to be a part of a post, but I decided to make it into a separate one, because it speaks of crusual things for understanding SVSSS, it's plot and it's characters.

As I found out recently, there's a huge misunderstanding going on in the English-speaking segment, probably dew to an English translation of SVSSS (only a speculation, I myself never had this problem, although I read in several other languages as well, so I can compare) concerning the fact whether or not PIDW was originally planned by Airplane as a yaoi with bingqiu as an OTP. (Spoiler: yes, it was). Some readers are mislead by two quotes, that they take as a contradictory, which in truth, they are NOT.

The first one is from a Chapter "The story begins". It is the last chapter of the novel, after this the extras start. And this particular chapter is a culmination: this is where the truth is reveled. Like in a detective story, where we finally find out, who the killer is. This meant to become a real "bomb", that makes a reader go WOOOW!!! And this is THE KEY for understanding the whole story: the plot and the characters, especially Luo Bing-mei (and Luo Bing-ge). And it speaks about the original INTENTIONS of the Airplane, that he betrayed in order to please the crowd and that came true in the universe of the System. (original scrapped outline(c))

The second quote, from the extras, on the other hand speaks of an EXISTING PIDW, (original outline(c)), that he actually wrote, but never finished, because he died and woke up in the Universe of the System. And it gives us a glimpse into the way he planned to finish it.

The first quote, from the final chapter:

Shen Qingqiu looked him up and down. “You don’t look crushed at all after all this foolish messing around ended up completely changing your own novel.”

Shang Qinghua said, “You can’t say it like that ah. Maybe you think it’s just all foolish messing around that isn’t worth a damn, but for Bing-ge, your foolish messing around is probably the meaning of this entire world.”

... holy s***, Great God Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky was able to say something like that?!

Shen Qingqiu was terrified. “F***. You didn’t turn back into the original character, did you?”

Shang Qinghua said seriously, “Don’t be like that. I’m also a young person with literary ideals. Of course, I have my own reflections and emotions.”

Shen Qingqiu laughed coldly. “What literary ideals? How come all I saw in the original work was shameless fanservice?” Not to mention his hand speed that could produce ten thousand words a day, and the courage to even occasionally explode with twenty thousand. If he didn’t have such equipment, there was no way 《Proud Immortal Demon Way》 would have been able to hold out before it was serialized!

Shang Qinghua spread his hands. “You think that I always wrote shameless content that lacked any integrity from the very start? I’ve also written belles-lettres4 before, but they were all unpopular, so I had no choice but to go down a path that catered to the masses. It must be said that writing novels is a very lonely undertaking. Rather than writing a stallion male protagonist who’ll be stereotypical in the end, it’s more in line with my philosophy for writing to create the current Bing-ge━this kind of weirdo male protagonist whose character is a bit more complicated, has contradictions and conflicts, and has a rough destiny.”

Shen Qingqiu concluded, “So, your philosophy for writing is to write about gay guys?”

Shang Qinghua: “Do you look down upon gay male protagonists? Works of art and artists all like to create gay guys. Belles-lettres favors gays, do you know that?”

He waved his arms wildly and passionately. “Cucumber Bro, if the System hadn’t chosen you, this faithful die-hard reader, perhaps the plot wouldn’t have deviated so thoroughly, thoroughly to the point that it deviated all the way back to my original scrapped outline. Even though the me back in reality━who couldn’t endure the loneliness and was under financial pressure━chose to finish writing 《Proud Immortal Demon Way》 according to other people’s preferences and what they found cool... now, all thanks to you, essentially everything that I wanted to write has already unfolded in front of my eyes. Cucumber Bro!”

He patted Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders with deep sentiment and solemnity. “You... are the chosen one; as for my career, I have no more regrets!”

... why did it sound like the System and this world were both products of Shang Qinghua’s resentment over scrapping that outline and going with what was mainstream?

Shen Qingqiu, who shamefully became this kind of “chosen one”: “Who’s your faithful die-hard reader?”

Shang Qinghua waved his hand and one-sidedly declared his victory. “I’m not going to talk to you; you’re an anti-fan.”

Shen Qingqiu was about to say, “I’m only an anti, not a fan!” when he suddenly heard Shang Qinghua starting crooning something like, “Emotions are warm, kindness hard to bear, lips moving together, desires turning the evening to the next morning, never resting from dawn to dusk.” The crucial point was that melody, which sounded extremely familiar to the point that it made Shen Qingqiu’s hands and teeth itch. He pointed at him and said, “Shang Qinghua, what are you singing?”

Shang Qinghua continued to croon. “The warmth of emotions makes gratitude hard to bear. Lips to lips, locked in a kiss. Let this night linger ‘til tomorrow’s dawn. Day after day, night after night; never to end. Will tomorrow be another today? When ‘til Zheng Yang reaches its zenith? As Zheng Yang ascends, the voice of Autumn stirs. A sheathless Xiu Ya, a spurt of cold nectar. Tragic pleas amidst choked sobs, thus in vain; for he rises again5...”

Shen Qingqiu was in disbelief. “F*** you—why don’t you just try and sing another line?”

Shang Qinghua said, “Great Lord Shen, why aren’t you listening to what I’m saying? You must never go around casually f***ing people. Bing-ge will go crazy. I’m telling you, this Resentment of Chunshan is equivalent to Shi Ba Mo6. You two are the legendary national homos, do you understand? I have no problems with you shutting me up, but ultimately it’s useless. You can’t possibly make all the countless people in the world shut up...” (NB, Ch 81)

The second quote, from the extras:

【 Basic completion of Proud Immortal Demon Way’s original outline achieved (slight deviation in romance plotline); objective complete. Retrieving function to return to original world; download complete. Activate Return Home sequence? 】 Basic completion of the original outline? That he agreed with. All the holes that needed to be filled had been filled. But this “slight deviation of romance plot” wasn’t quite right. Bing-ge was now fully gay; how could you say that was a “slight deviation”? Ah, fine, fine, in fact, in his original outline, Bing-ge hadn’t even had a romance plotline; he had been doomed to fade away, alone and unaging forever. If you insisted on adding a romance plotline, all right, that was whatever, so putting aside all the System’s rambling…this meant he could return to his original world?! (Seven Seas, Ch. 26)

Basic completion of the original outline and filling it's plotholes - THIS is what's talked about in this quote! Not the scrapped original outline!

The English translation, which I only read recently, in my opinion is not very clear, in comparison to, for example, Russian translations, and not just the most popular version by Псой и Сысой, for ex: there are more than one, and they all pretty much nailed it. 感情线 used in original (that's what, apparently, caused the doubts for some reason, in spite that the quote itself absolutely clearly speaks of 《Proud Immortal Demon Way》’s original outline, the one big "error of a novel", that needed to be redressed, and not the scrapped original outline that never saw the daylight) itself refers to a "romantic plotline". So the author himself tells you, that his original Bing-ge had none. But how come? Why is that? Bing-ge, as we know, has got a huge harem, he for sure cannot be the case of dying alone without love!.. Or can he? Apparently, this is exactly his fate - no love. And the Airplane, the way he planned the original scrapped outline, knows better than anyone else - there's, well, none. The Protagonist's harem is nothing to do with romance whatsoever (see the quote below from the forum as an example, what the readers of PIDW themselves think of the relationship between Bing-ge and his harem). It all has to do with protagonists coolness and power and getting everything, including all the women, because he is super powerful and he is the center of that universe. It's about power, it's about lust, it's about influence and control, and showing, who the real boss is. But not love or romance. PIDW is not a romantic novel in a slightest: its a third rate pornography and a ode to toxic masculinity, so distasteful and disgusting, that the resentment of it's author with his own creation was powerful enough to create the whole new universe (The System) just to correct it! And this particular quote speaks of Bing-ge not having ANY SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIP, LOVE. Псой и Сысой for translating 感情线 in this particular case use much more explicit and profound "заслуживающие упоминания эмоциональные привязанности" ("the emotional connections worth mentioning"), rather than abstract "romantic plotline". Because the only significant person in his life pushed Bing-ge away. (And we know, who that person is, thanks to the System Universe - his shizhun.) Romance has nothing to do with the amount of partners he fucks - they are not of any romantic or emotional significance for Bing-ge. This is how his relationship with the harem is described by the PIDW reader's forum in the novel:

"Airplane really doesn’t know how to write romance plotlines, best if he just doesn’t. I feel like Luo Binghe doesn’t have feelings for any of his wives, he just wants to use them. And I can’t see any of those women with real moving emotion for him. "(NB, Ch. 73)

So - no romance for Bing-ge in PIDW, the Airplane didn't grant him this privilege and happiness. And yes - the ending for the tyrant he's become in PIDW is not happy in a slightest.

So, binqui did not appear out of nowhere, and yes - it has always been there from a beginning, in the core of everything. Implied. This is not only canon: it is the exact essence of it, the base, the foundation, which explaines everything that happens in the novel and even beyond - in PIDW, where the mighty protagonist that has everything, except the only one thing he really needs - the love of his shizun - is doomed to an eternal unhappiness and loneliness.

[mask131]

The missing Arthurian knight - rediscovered in 2019

Well the title is a slight lie - the missing knight wasn't rediscovered in 2019, it was earlier than that, but he didn't became public until 2019.

So what's this "missing knight" about? Well as the title says. There was a knight part of the Arthurian myth, and he had been missing ever since the Middle-Ages, and he was only recently rediscovered.

Or rather, to be exact - there was an Arthurian novel centered around a knight that existed and was a famous and well-known part of the Arthurian literature in the Middle-Ages, but that completely disappeared, and was forgotten by culture (as much popular culture as the scholarly one). Until very recently.

This rediscovered novel has been a hot topic of all Arthuriana fans in Europe for a few years now - and yet I do not see much talk about this onto this website, despite Tumblr being a big place for Arthurian fans?

So I will correct this by doing a series of posts about the subject. And this post will be the first one, the introduction post presenting to you "Ségurant, le chevalier au dragon" ; "Segurant, the knight of the dragon". A French medieval novel part of the Arthurian literature (hence the "chevalier au X" title structure - like Lancelot, the knight of the cart or Yvain the knight of the lion from Chrétien de Troyes), the reason this story was forgotten by all medievalist and literary scholars is - long story short - because it never existed in any full manuscript (at least none that survived to this day). It was a complete story yes, with even variations apparently, but that was cut into pieces and fragments inserted into various other manuscripts and texts (most notably various "Merlin's Prophecies").

The novel and the Knight of the Dragon were rediscovered through the work of Emanuele Arioli, who rediscovered a fragment of the story while looking at an old manuscript of a Merlin Prophecies, and then went on the hunt for the other fragments and pieces scattered around Europe, until he finally could compile the full story, that he then published in 2019, at the Belles Lettres publishing house, in 2019.

Arioli reconstructed the text, and translated it in both modern French and Italian for scholarly and professional editions (aka Honoré Champion in France, a reference for universities)...

... But also for a more "all public, found in all libraries" edition - the famous 2019 edition at Les Belles Lettres.

And not only that, but he also participated to both a comic book adaptation with Emiliano Tanzillo...

... and an adaptation as an illustrated children novel!

Finally, just a few weeks, the Franco-German channel Arte released a documentary about the reconstitution and content of this missing novel called "Le Chevalier au dragon: Le roman disparu de la Table Ronde". (The Knight of the Dragon - The missing novel of the Round Table). The full documentary is on Youtube in French for those that speak the language, here. And in German here for those who speak German.

Unfortunately there is no English version of the documentary that I know of, nor any English publications of the actual text - just French and Italian. But hey, I'll try to palliate to that by doing some English-speaking posts about this whole business!