Book Description
Traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Ghengis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars, themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry.
Customer Reviews:
FASCINATING AND LITTLE-KNOWN HISTORY.......2007-02-05
Arthur Koestler tackled an obscure but potentially explosive topic in this little book about the Khazars, a people who lived in the area between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea in the decades before 1000 AD. Their story make fascinating reading, as the author delves into the limited number of sources that mention them. They wielded great influence in the world of their time, which - as in the present - included conflict between different religious groups. There were Muslims, Jews and Christians who lived in the vicinity and the Khazars were tolerant of all. But the Khazar leaders, who originally had a traditional religion from their nomadic roots, were interested in the three major religions. Folklore has it that they called together the wise men of each religion and asked about its beliefs and practices. When they found that both the Muslims and Christians honored the Jewish God and that the Jewish religion was the oldest, they decided to adopt Judaism. The Khazars became Jews.
It is the contention of this book that these Khazar Jews are the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe who were persecuted by Hitler and who eventually founded the modern state of Israel. These Ashkenazi Jews, according to this theory, are not a Semitic people, as are the Sephardic Jews. They do not descend from "God's chosen people," but rather from the nomadic tribes of the Caucasus. The Khazar empire disappeared in the years following the first millennium, wiped out by the Mongol tribes, who formed an alliance with Byzantium. The Khazars and their control of trade routes became irrelevant after that and many migrated to what is now Poland, Hungary and Germany and founded "shetls" - small villages, where they continued to practice the Jewish religion and contributed to the culture of Eastern Europe.
You can argue whether these Khazar Jews were "true Jews" but there clearly were Jews from the Diaspora living in the Khazar territory at the time of their conversion, and it seems clear that the Khazar Jews were a mixture. Koestler discusses the high rate of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews throughout all historic periods. Oddly enough, intermarriage slowed only when Jews were forced to live in ghettoes, with limited contact with non-Jews. There were also many births resulting from rape of Jewish women during the years of brutal pogroms. So all Jews are of mixed origins.
It appears to me that Koestler did not write this meticulously researched book to support anti-Jewish or anti-Israel sentiment. He was simply interested in the origin of the Jewish people and felt that the history of the Khazars was little-known and had possibly been suppressed. His later chapters deal with the perception of ethnicity ("I can always tell a Jew when I see one."). He says culture, not genes, produces characteristics of a people. Some people claim they can always tell an American, even though Americans descend from a melting pot. His contention is that ethnicity is largely nonsense and it is the language and culture and shared values that make "a people." He makes the point that Israelis are a people, since they now share a country, a language and a culture. Although some Israelis may believe that "God gave this land to me," that is not what gives Israel the right to exist. The country was legally constituted by the united Nations and is today a country of people who mainly identify themselves as Jewish. Does it really matter who their ancestors were?
The Thirteenth Tribe.......2007-01-10
Since this book was written and researched by none other than the head of the History Department of the Univercity of Tel Aviv it is a extremely revealing and therefore a must read for seekers of truth. Enver Khorasanee
Ignorance Survives.......2007-01-07
I have little problem with the main outlines of Koestler's thesis--however much I might quibble with some of the details. I am comfortable with the idea that the gene pool of modern Ashkenazy Jewry results largely from a melding of Jews from Western Europe (refugees from the Middle East) and Khazars who converted to Judaism, of whatever variety. Modern DNA studies propose that the Ashkenazy genetic material is about 40% of Middle East origin. To the extent that such genetic research is accurate, that leaves about 60% to be filled by Khazar, Germanic and Slavic inheritance. People do intermarry. The Jewish people have always absorbed from the neighboring population. Even Moses had a non-Jewish wife.
My purpose in this review is to point out the absurdity of the review posted last September by [Space Intelligences "Space Intelligences"]. Not enough that he apparently beliees in space aliens, but he writes that Iranians are Semites. Any high school student who ever looked into a decent encyclopedia should know better. The Persians, and many of their neighbors, are NOT Semites. They are Indo-Europeans.
Such glaring violation of established fact should indicate the value of the whole. As always, the discriminating reader must beware.
Interesting, but facts may not be completely accurate.......2006-11-21
I read this book when it came out in the '70's and again, just a short time
ago. In the interim, I have read other writers on this subject, from more
recent research, and finds. If you are interested in the Khazars, their
conversion to Judiasm at the end of the 7th or beginning of the 8th century,
this is an excellent first primar. I find the story rudely interupted by
footnotes and bibliographical notations. The main story is absolutly true
and facinating. Some of the side bars may or may not be completely accurate.
I definitely recommend this book as an initial survey of the subject of the
Jews of Khazaria from the late 7th century to their decline in the 11th century.
Still a must for anyone interested in Judaism, despite recent genetic research.......2006-11-08
This book is dated but is still a masterpiece also because the subject matter is
(fortunately) presented in a popularised, non academic fashion. I highly recommend
it to anyone interested in getting closer to the truth regarding the origin of the
vast majority of 'Jews' in the world today. These issues are however politically
sensitive and this inevitably results in controversy.
The commonly available theory of the origin of the Ashkenazis, or East-European
Jews, is the Renanian Theory (see e.g. Wikipedia). Namely, the Ashkenazis would
descend from refugees of Crusade- and Black-Death-time persecutions of 'authentic'
Jews from western Germany who sought a new life in faraway Poland. However, this
theory does not hold to antropomorphic considerations, considerations of numbers
of refugees and size of ensuing communities in the East and, most importantly,
to a lingustic analysis of the ashkenazi Yiddish language (which points rather
to a Southeast-Germany, Slavic and Turkik origin of that idiom). The standard
theory also does not explain most of the peculiar customs and surnames of the
Ashkenazis and their historical and economical development in continuous conflict
with the populace of the host countries.
Koestler, following an earlier proposal by Hugo von Kutschera (1910) - but also
in accordance with Jewish Encyclopedia pre-1917 articles - rekindles the Khazar
Theory of the ashkenazi origins in this book. Potential readers can follow the
existent reviews to learn about the details, so it suffices to state that
according to this theory the bulk of the Ashkenazis would be the descendants of
a turkik tribe (the medieval Khazars) who at the end of the first millenium held
an important (and little mentioned) empire in Southern Russia and converted en
masse to (rabbinic) Judaism for political and commercial convenience. The empire
was however ephimeral and further invasions, both from the early Russians and
from newcomer turko-mongol tribes from Central Asia, swept the jewish Khazars
away from history (some scholars say BECAUSE of their conversion to Judaism).
But did the new converts really disappear? Koestler proposes not, that these
people in fact eventually turned into the Ashkenazis of Poland-Lithuania, Hungary,
the Ukraine, Russia and even of Germany and Austria. Later, these 'Jews' moved
to France, England, the USA, Israel, the world over. So, are the great majority
of Jews really akin to the people of the Bible?
Opponents of the Khazar Theory claim the jewish Khazars disappeared from history
due to the onslaught of kievian Rus' and of tribes from the East: Pechenegs,
Kumans (Kipchaks) and Mongols. Strange, because cartographers of Venice Polo
Family's travels to Central Asia report a 'Gazaria' and a 'Cumania' in existence
around 1250 after the mongol invasions. The Pope's envoy to the mongol court,
Giovanni da Piano Carpini, reported encountering a jewish tribe among the
constellation of peoples associated with the Mongols. Genoese traders knew the
Crimea peninsula with the name 'Gaziria' well into the 1350s. Indeed, the last
jewish Khazars left the Crimea (Krym in Russian) as Karaim during imperial
russian control of the region. As others have pointed out, the geographic
contours of the jewish Pale of Settelments under russian imperial rule overlap
significantly the contours of the reduced khazarian province after the Mongols
(Gazaria). So what is more natural than these jewish Gaziri turning into the
Ashkenazis? That is the shocking thesis of the vonKutschera-Koestler theory.
Indeed, why only the jewish Khazars ought to have disappeared? All of their
imperial confederate peoples still live on: the Magyars turned into the
Hungarians (taking with them the judaic Kabars); the Bulghars turned into the
(danubian) Bulgarians and the Volga Bulghars (now Bashkiri, Chuvashi, ...); the
Kumans turned into Kipchaki in the East and then Cumani (Kun) in the West
(playing a role in the formation of modern Romania and Hungary). Take the Alans
(also allied to the Khazars): have they also disappeared? They turned into the
Alamanni (a mixture of Alans and germanic southwestern tribes), into the modern
Catalans (Goth-Alans) and survive the ancient 'As' people (as known to the
Persians) in loco as modern Ossetians. Likewise, the Khazars did not disappear.
Koestler explains: they were divided into Ak-Khazars (more sedentary casts)
and Kara-Khazars (more nomadic ones, warrior casts). The first converted and
eventually turned into the Ashkenazis, the second group remained nomadic.
Together with other nomadic groups from the Kipchaks and the Bulghars they
eventually formed those former mercenaries of the steppes called Kazakhi in
Russian: the Cossacks! These accepted slavic fugitives from medieval serfdom
in their midst and thus turned orthodox christian, becoming the scourge of the
Ashkenazis many times over and - peculiarly - staunch supporters of the Tzars.
The steppes of Eurasia are the strangest place on Earth and reserve us peculiar
surprises, so why not jewish Turks? As the reader will learn, some of the Kipchak
and some of the Seljuk Turks also converted to Judaism in former times, forming
a base for Jews in Romania and in modern Turkey.
More recent objections to the Khazar Theory come from modern genetic research,
as some reviewers have rebuked. They jump to rushed conclusions. As some
experts have remarked, sample populations in these studies were small and not
randomly selected, and thus the results may not be statistically significant.
We may never know what percentages of 'semitic blood' and of 'turanic blood'
the Ashkenazis do carry, and the question is ill-founded since we shall never
be able to genetically test vastly mixed populations that moved their settlement
regions sometimes many times over. Indeed one should test not only Ashkenazis,
Sephardis and their host populations, but also true accepted descendants of the
Khazar, Kuman and Seljuk Turks. Until this is done, these genetic studies are
meaningless even when their statistical basis is improved. Not surprisingly the
conclusions of these studies are simplistic and in clear contradiction with each
other: first the 'few founding middle-eastern fathers' scenario, then a
'communities formed by unions between Jewish men and local women' scenario, more
recently the 4-women (!) scenario: 'the Ashkenazi population as descended
matrilineally from just four women, likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool
originating in the Near East in the first and second centuries CE'. It's hard to
believe such hasty conclusions drawn from studies on statistically restricted
(and ethnically selected) population samples. Has the genetic approach been tested
on accepted, uncontroversial situations?
The Khazar Theory is important and very well described in Koestler's book. It's
important not only in the context of Israel's founding myths (which however
Koestler duly considers), but as a unique key to understanding Eastern Europe's
(and the world's) medieval and modern history.
Book Description
Richter examines a wide range of primary documents to survey the responses of the peoples of the Iroquois League—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras—to the challenges of the European colonialization of North America. He demonstrates that by the early eighteenth century a series of creative adaptations in politics and diplomacy allowed the peoples of the Longhouse to preserve their cultural autonomy in a land now dominated by foreign powers.
Customer Reviews:
Very useful work on the Iroquois Confederacy.......2007-02-14
I've found this book to be both insightful and easy to understand. Though this is a well researched and referenced academic text it is accessible to the average reader, assuming an interest in the subject matter.
The Iroquois were a centerpiece of North American colonial life and I would highly suggest this book for those interested in History or Anthropology, as Dr. Richter takes broad approach to his analysis and documents cultural practices and history of interest to many disciplines.
The Masterpiece.......2000-06-28
Daniel Richter, in this astonishing book, does an excellent job explaining social, political and economical aspects of the Iroquois people with strong evidence. This book is a resutl of a big reserach and Richter's dedication to the subject. I would recommend this book not only to students who need to take Native American History, but also to anyone who is interested in learning about the Iroquoi's life and their impacts on the French, the England, and the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries. Even though i am not a native speaker, i really enjoyed reading this book because of Richter's plain English.
Average customer rating:
- A Profound Story
- Lost Tribes... and the Power of Myth
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Lost Tribes and Promised Lands: The Origins of American Racism
Ronald Sanders
Manufacturer: Perennial
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From Babylon to Timbuktu: A History of the Ancient Black Races Including the Black Hebrews
ASIN: 0060974494 |
Customer Reviews:
A Profound Story.......2004-01-13
Crucial to the understanding of contemporary American social-culture, and supplementary and cleansing, perhaps, for those concientiously trying to address our society's incongruities. Sanders' allows himself the freedom to reference and elaborate on (and better yet storytell) obscure or arcane information without abandoning the requisite of factual historical development; a technique fitting for an enterprise as delicate as sourcing racism as we know it. Speculative and never presumptuious, he weaves especial elements of recent western history around a mundane ambition that seeks a certain truth. Inspired but controlled, and by no means requiring a kind of academic expertise to read--a book with insights of lasting implication.
Lost Tribes... and the Power of Myth.......2002-10-16
I read this book twenty years ago when it first came out but its impact was so profound that it left an indelible mark. Every American should read this. The part about the Mayflower and the charter myth of the New Canaan, wherein genocide is made out to be a commandment from God, has shaped U.S. foreign policy ever since. This book, if read in conjunction with Jonathan Kozol's work "The night is dark and i'm far from home", Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States", and the book in French, "L'Entaille Rouge" should rouse everyone in the U.S. from their deep slumber and help them understand something crucial: the New Canaan myth, which found expression in the genocide of the Indians, has shaped their national psyche. The U.S. was born as a haven for the Puritans, and the Puritans were anything but "nice", in fact, to borrow a phrase from the current Puritan in the White House, they were evil. Indulge in a little psychoanalysis and face the dark side in your national character... read this book!
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From Tribes to Nation: The Making of France 500-1799
James B. Collins
Manufacturer: Wadsworth Publishing
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The Portable Enlightenment Reader (The Viking Portable Library)
ASIN: 0155002570 |
Book Description
A SURVEY OF FRENCH HISTORY is the only textbook on the history of France to cover the period from Clovis through the French Revolution. This narrative survey of French history features an integration of social, cultural, economic, and political history.
Customer Reviews:
EVERY GOD FEARING REDBLOODED AMERICAN MALE MUST READ THIS BOOK!.......2006-04-28
Tiresome tripe that conflates speculation into bland pronouncements that toe the middle line. Obviously written more for the sake of tenure, and the latent pro-Indian jingoism is offset by pseudo-moderating sympathy for the European point of view in order to avoid being pigeonholed as a left-wing wacko and thus jeapordizing the bourgeois comforts of an academic career for the life of a vagrant revolutionary. Reeks of academia and the utter perversion of meaningful intellectual values for the careerism of the self-serving specialist talking tongues to his fellow guild members -DRUNKARDS ALL (too much firewater with bongwater chasers)
That said, the HARDback edition is excellent: bold, cutting, incisive, like eating a York Peppermint Patty while pleasuring ones' self during the upside down parts of a roller coaster ride in a racist theme park! I have always believed that men should feel commfortable expressing the slightest bit of latent homosexuality in oder to find themselves initiated into homosexual cults, where they will be forced to experiment against their will with physically intrusive explorations of their true feelings. This book is entirely consistent with that process. Just look at the jockstrap the guy is wearing on the cover! A landscape of peace indeed! More like a Hand scraping a piece....a piece of bootie!
good read, great analysis.......2000-10-18
Having read a lot of the literature on the Iroquois, i find this one of the more interesting reads. Dennis explores the Iroquois attempt to construct a system of peace. More importantly, Dennis explores the different meanings that the Iroquois, Dutuch and French placed on events and how these meanings affected their understanding of those events and their actions. History is presented as a confused cultural clash, where the participants are often scratching their heads in bewilderment, rather that the cold blooded, purposeful application of power. Dennis also presents a strong discussion of the origins of the Iroquois and the Iroquois Confederacy.
His analysis of Samuel de Champlain's first encounter with the Iroquois is specifically interesting. In that analysis, he shows how the Native Americans were following a carefully scripted form of warfare that Champlain could not comprehend though he could document it. To the Iroquois and the Algonquins, war meant something very different than what it meant to Champlain. Champlain's actions will have the long term effect of changing how the Iroquois fight wars and, therefore, their culture.
The book does have its weaknesses though. The Iroquois were a matrilineal society, yet this does not figure significantly into the analysis or discussion. I think that it was only significantly discussed when Dennis was discussing French nuns and their effect on the Frenchh-Iroquois relationships. Many authors have argued that women played a very important role in Iroquois society and its relationships with others, but we find little of that discussion here. Perhaps, a more significant exploration of the matrilineal nature of the society and how that affected the internal political dynamics may have enriched both the book and the analysis.
However, i would still recommend this book. It tells an interesting story, will enlighten most and cause many to ponder.
Book Description
In this richly descriptive and haunting narrative, Caryl Phillips chronicles a journey through modern-day Europe, his quest guided by a moral compass rather than a map. Seeking personal definition within the parameters of growing up black in Europe, he discovers that the natural loneliness and confusion inherent in long jorneys collides with the bigotry of the "European Tribe"-a global community of whites caught up in an unyielding, Eurocentric history.
Phillips deftly illustrates the scenes and characters he encounters, from Casablanca and Costa del Sol to Venice, Amsterdam, Oslo, and Moscow. He ultimately discovers that "Europe is blinded by her past, and does not understand the high price of her churches, art galleries, and history as the prison from which Europeans speak."
In the afterword to the Vintage edition, Phillips revisits the Europe he knew as a young man and offers fresh observations.
Customer Reviews:
Europe through the eyes of a Black Englishman.......2000-09-22
Phillips' travels, which occurred before the fall of Communism, cover Morocco, Gibralter, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Norway, and the Soviet Union.
Any travel narrative needs a 'hook' or a theme, and Phillips' is to seek out things that he can particularly relate to, as an Englishman of Black descent. He identifies with the plight of European Jews, and in other countries he highlights encounters with local Blacks. He seems to be straining for material at times, and oddly, rarely goes out of his way to seek out the local Black community, instead relying on happenstance. Yet, as he points out, the results of the Caribbean diaspora are everywhere: Even in northern Norway, he encounters another emigrant from the English-speaking Caribbean. Norway is also the occasion where the author loses his temper due to one-too-many racist incidents, and the target of his eruption is, of all things, a Norwegian customs officer. Phillips is paranoid about the revival of fascism in Europe, but perhaps that's understandable as he recounts racist slights and insults (some quite shocking to this white reader) that occur during his travels, as well as from his life in the US and UK.
My Island Man.......2000-08-08
I stumbled across "European Tribe" and decided to read it not only because it was written by someone born in my island (St.Kitts & Nevis), but because it describes places that I long to visit. Caryl Phillips uses a thought provoking style to tell of his travel around the world. As I journeyed with him I enjoyed his vivid and frank language and also his analysis of the different cultures. I also appreciate Caryl Phillips' use and revelation of historical facts and theories to tell his story. I will recommend "European Tribe" to anyone interested in a black man's expereince with various cultures of the world.
A Thoughtful Analysis of European Culture.......2000-07-24
In his narrative, The European Tribe, Caryl Phillips writes about his experiences as a black British intellectual traveling mostly in Europe. He starts in Casablanca and works his way north visiting such places as Paris, Venice, and Amsterdam, finishing up in Russia before returning to England. This book was originally written in the early eighties, so Phillips is describing some places still behind the Iron Curtain. But this edition does include an afterword written in 1999. In his rational way, Phillips comments in the afterword, "Europeans are human beings. They are subject to the same insecurities, the same inability to forgive, the same prejudices, the same disturbing nationalism, the same cruelties, as any other people" (132). This is a good travelogue, but it is also an enlightening book for people whose main reading about the black experience has been from the viewpoint of African-Americans.
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- An informative contribution to Native American studies.
- Make Love, Not War
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The Rumble of a Distant Drum: The Quapaws and Old World Newcomers, 1673-1804
Morris S. Arnold
Manufacturer: University of Arkansas Press
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ASIN: 155728590X |
Book Description
The Rumble of a Distant Drum opens in 1673 when Marquette and Jolliet sailed down the Mississippi River and found Quapaws already in residence in the Arkansas Post, where the Arkansas River flowed into the Mississippi. Here they established the first European settlement in this part of the country, thirty years before New Orleans and eighty years before St. Louis.
Morris S. Arnold draws on his many years of archival research and writing on colonial Arkansas to produce this elegant account of the cultural intersections of the French and Spanish with the native American peoples. He demonstrates that the Quapaws and the French and Spanish created a highly symbiotic society in which the two disparate peoples became connected in complex and subtle ways -- through intermarriage, trade, religious practice, and political/military alliances.
Customer Reviews:
An informative contribution to Native American studies........2000-09-08
The Rumble Of A Distant Drum is a research work on the founding, flourishing, and fall of Arkansas Post, the first European settlement (1686) in Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. Precariously perched on the banks of the lower Arkansas River, the history of the French outpost founded by Henry de Tonty presents many convincing examples of peaceful and productive coexistence and symbiotic interaction between the Quapaws and Frenchmen in five to six generations. Both culture's languages and bloods intermixed in this time span. Based on traditional archival research and also including a finely detailed interpretation of an 18th century Quapaws painted buffalo robe currently at Musee de l'Homme in Paris, The Rumble Of A Distant Drum is an elegantly written scholarly interpretive summary of Quapaw culture and history as viewed through European sources. Arnold portrays the Quapaws as rational economic actors, not stereotypic noble savages. Carefully examining all available preconceptions, Arnold posits nothing without solid foundation. He concludes that this was a biracial interrelationship of its time characterized by balance and respect despite heavy population losses (Indian) due to disease and historic racist tendencies of the Europeans. The Rumble Of A Distant Drum is a fascinating book to read as well as a great contribution to this period of Native American studies. Students of anthropology, early American art, and history of this area will be intrigued.
Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer
Make Love, Not War.......2000-07-10
Judge Arnold has once again illuminated the record on colonial history in the Louisiana Territory, specifically in Arkansas. In this work , he skillfully outlines the precarious balance between life and death at Arkansas Post, the remote French, then Spanish, then American garrision above the mouth of the Arkansas River as it enters the Mississippi.
The territorial commandant of the Post is a drop of colonial authority in vast ocean of Indians and unruly hunters and trappers. His ability to govern was primarily based on the annual "present" to the Quapaw Indians. This annual gift of needed gunpowder, blankets and, more often than not, rum, was critical to annual relations. A close second was a culture of routinue intermarriage of the French trappers and hunters and their Quapaw neighbors.
A second theme in the work revolves around the relationships between the colonial powers of England, France and Spain with the Quapaws, as well as other tribes. The Quapaws were decidedly francophiles and disliked the handoff of Louisiana to Spain. Therefore, the Spanish Governor in New Orleans continued to employee principally French commnadants for his Arkansas Post.
The Quapaws were in constant struggle against their foe, the Chickasaws, who lived across the Mississippi River. Backed by the British, the Chickasaws led frequent raids into Arkansas.
The book is well written, enlightening and entertaining for the serious academic and the history loving reader alike. It is well documented and is the result of significant research of orginal French and Spanish colonial archives.
Book Description
A bilingual collection of 55 Stephane Mallarme poems. Translated from the French by Daisy Aldan with expositions. Mallarme (1842-1898), renowned French symbolist poet, is famous for his unique approach to poetry, considered today to be brilliant.
This new bilingual collection of 55 Stephane Mallarme poems, including one of his masterpieces, "Un Coup De Des" ("A Throw of the Dice"), gives readers a fresh new perspective of Mallarme's genius. Translator Dr. Daisy Aldan discovered and fell in love with Mallarme's work when she was told that her poetry was reminiscent of his. In 1956, she translated "Un Coup De Des" into English for the first time; the result was recognition of Dr. Aldan's unparalleled deep understanding and feeling for Mallarme. Now, more than 40 years later, she has blessed us with To Purify the Words of the Tribe, with expositions, which will surely lead to a deeper comprehension of the poetry of Stephane Mallarme.
Customer Reviews:
A triumph of insight, sympathy, craft.......2005-10-03
Daisy Aldan was herself an extraordinary poet, but she was also a translator from several languages, a small-press publisher, a high school teacher (at the NYC High School of the Arts, with Harvey Fierstein and Gerard Malanga among her students), and a promoter of the poetry (and visual arts) of others, both before they were known and long after they had died.
Daisy did great service to Whitman and to Poe in her public lectures, but Mallarme was her favorite. She was a serious esotericist as well, and understood the inner meanings of his poems remarkably. Thus in translating them she did not worry at the impossible task of mirroring the surface, but went to core of his poems and brought them into English from that level. Her mother was an actress, and Daisy did not neglect the dramatic quality of Mallarme.
No translation could serve you better.
Mallarme's work can now be fully experienced in our language.......2000-06-13
Stephane Mallarme is often approached either with reverance duea god or with the disdain of ignorance. Happily, Daisy Aldan brings alifetime of study, her own opus of poetry and critical work, and a true, intimate bilingualism to a masterful translation of the major verse poems of Stephane Mallarme, TO PURIFY THE WORDS OF THE TRIBE, a book with facing French texts that contains her unsurpassed translation of "A Throw of the Dice" and illuminating expositions of each poem.
Aldan has sometimes described herself as a "former school teacher." The demystification of these often unread, misread, and misunderstood poems testify to her democratic approach as a true pedagogue and to the difficulties of Mallarme's very dense and crafted poems which are explicated with ease and generosity. The poetry of Mallarme is certainly not for a coven of priestly erudities; written during a nineteenth century of smokestacks and alienation brings the history of Western thought and symbolism into the NOW of the poet, into his life and vision.
Thanks to Daisy Aldan, Mallarme's work can now be fully experienced in our language, which is no mean feat. To carry forth his vision Mallarme had to struggle with the material sordidness of his age:
Let the dreary smokestacks ceaselessly pour smoke, and let a roving prison of soot Blot out in the horror of its dismal trains the sun dying in sulfur on the horizon
-The Sky is dead.-Towards you I hasten! Bestow, O matter, Oblivion of the cruel Ideal and of Sin Upon this martyr who comes to share the litter Where the contented herd of humans lies asleep
But he cannot succumb to the temptation to join the crowd, to escape his responsibility as a poet:
Where flee in this futile and perverse revolt? I am haunted! The Azure! The Azure! The Azure!
Aldan, to her credit, serves Mallarme by using her own poetic craft sparingly. In no way does she recreate the poems. Nor does Aldan aim to complicate matters by working out rhyme schemes that, in the end, would be extraneous and fail to do justice to the text. Mallarme is, perhaps the most concise and replete of poets and to be faithful to his content in an aesthetically satisfying way needs no rhyme or foot counting, a la francais. Aldan knows, well, when to stop.
"The Tomb of Edgar Poe" is an example of a perfectly clear translation without the distractions of second hand versification. Aldan has the capacity to keep very close to the original and the skill to move from one language to the other with the ease and rhythmic nuance that her talent as a poet makes possible:
Just as eternity transforms him at last unto Himself The Poet rouses with a naked sword, His age terrified at not having discerned That death was triumphant in that strange voice
They, like a Hydra; vile spasm on hearing the angel Once give a purer meaning to the words of the tribe Loudly proclaimed the sorcery drunk In the dishonored flow of some foul brew...
The famously difficult "Le Vierge, le Vivace et le Bel Aujourd'hui" also illustrates this capacity:
Will virginal, vibrant and beautiful today shatter with a blow of its rapturous wing this solid lost lake where beneath the frost haunts the transparent glacier of unrealized flights!
When Aldan paraphrases stanzas of this poem in the section devoted to exposition, she eschews brilliant interpretation and "the art of criticism." Her aim is simple: to make the poems comprehensible to the reading public. And she succeeds.
The book concludes with the innovative "A Throw of the Dice." Andre Gide called this "the most untranslatable poem in any language," but Daisy Aldan's translation, published in the fifties, was highly acclaimed and brought her fame in the French community. She was called a "Mallarmiste par excellence."
"The Throw of the Dice," a poem originally written on music paper, has varying typeface and the lines of the poem read from one page to the next, across the inner spine. Each type section (caps, italics, tiny print etc.) can be read as a separate poem but when everything is read as a whole, it is the main poem. Each page is, also, an ideogram, with visual appeal...sky, sea, bird, etc. In this poem Mallarme attempted an evolution of consciousness and the freeing of Mankind, which was his mission. Daisy Aldan assures that we experience this...
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Red Strangers: The White Tribe of Kenya
C. S. Nicholls
Manufacturer: Timewell Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Africa
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Kenya
| Africa
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20th Century
| World
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General
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ASIN: 1857252063 |
Book Description
Kenya's forgotten history from its inception to independence in 1963.
Customer Reviews:
I give it a C-.......2007-04-03
This is about the history of whites (mainly europeans) in Kenya, the govoernment, settler farmers, adventurers etc. The reason for giving the book low marks is because it is too anecdotal, there must be hundrends if not thousands of names mentioned thus drowning the reader in minor details that are not continued on at any other place. Had I an easy way to return it, I would in minute.
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Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923
Steven E. Aschheim
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Asia
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| Afghanistan
| Armenia
| Bangladesh
| Belarus
| Bhutan
| Brunei
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| Central Asia
| China
| Far East
| General
| Georgia
| Hong Kong
| India
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| Laos
| Malaysia
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| Mauritius
| Mongolia
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ASIN: 0299091147 |
Book Description
"Steven Aschheim has written an enormously rich and stimulating study. . . Perhaps the most definitive current work on German Jewish culture since the Enlightenment."-David Biale, Studies in Contemporary Jewry
"A major contribution to the understanding of modern European Jewry [that] will establish itself as a . . . standard work on its subject."-Peter Pulzer, Slavonic Review
"It is rare when one can read a work of scholarship as well conceived and written as this book. The author has addressed an important topic for students of the Holocaust and modern Germany."-Michael W. Rubinoff, German Studies Review
Brothers and Strangers traces the history of German Jewish attitudes, policies, and stereotypical images toward Eastern European Jews, demonstrating the ways in which the historic rupture between Eastern and Western Jewry developed as a function of modernism and its imperatives. By the 1880s, most German Jews had inherited and used such negative images to symbolize rejection of their own ghetto past and to emphasize the contrast between modern "enlightened" Jewry and its "half-Asian" counterpart. Moreover, stereotypes of the ghetto and the Eastern Jew figured prominently in the growth and disposition of German anti-Semitism. Not everyone shared these negative preconceptions, however, and over the years a competing post-liberal image emerged of the Ostjude as cultural hero. Brothers and Strangers examines the genesis, development, and consequences of these changing forces in their often complex cultural, political, and intellectual contexts.
Books:
- The Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through: Changing School Supervisory Practice One Teacher at a Time
- The Ultimate Gift (The Ultimate Series #1)
- The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook : 250 No-Fail Recipes for Pilafs, Risottos, Polenta, Chilis, Soups, Porridges, Puddings and More, from Start to Finish in Your Rice Cooker
- The Unknown God: Searching for Spiritual Fulfillment
- Thong on Fire: An Urban Erotic Tale
- Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics
- TRUE PROFESSIONALISM : The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career
- U.S. Presidents and Foreign Policy: From 1789 to the Present
- Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir
- 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death & Life
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