scholarly journals The Conference of the Birds

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 145-147
Author(s):  
Chad G. Lingwood
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
French Translation ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Literal Translation ◽  
Mystical Literature ◽  
Islamic Civilization

In medieval Islamic civilization, poetry was widely acknowledged to be themost intimate vessel for conveying Sufism’s hidden truths. The spiritualstates and stations traversed by adepts along an ascending path to the realityof God’s unity largely defies simple descriptions into ordinary prose oreveryday language. The subtleties necessary to evocatively describe a spiritualjourney that is, by its very essence, ineffable, necessitates a linguisticmedium that could at once reveal secrets of inner contemplation and mysticalperception while simultaneously concealing such information from the“uninitiated” behind the exoteric understanding of the same work of literature.Persian poetry, with its unique capacity for metaphorical symbolism,puns, and paradoxes, thus emerged by the seventh/thirteenth century as anunparalleled vehicle for expressing the mystical experience.The most dramatic expression in all of Persian mystical literature of thisspiritual journey is the allegorical poem Mantiq al-Tair (best translated as“The Speech of the Birds”) by Farid al-Din `Attar (d. 627/1229), whichrecounts the initiatory voyage of a group of birds through seven valleys tothe palace of the mythical king-bird Simurgh, symbol of the Divine,enthroned atop the cosmic mountain Qaf.In addition to the book currently under review, `Attar’s masterpieceinspired other renditions into English, including an abbreviated and freelyreworked edition by Edward FitzGerald, The Bird-parliament (1903); R. P.Masani’s prose translation of half the original poem’s 4,600 lines, TheConference of the Birds (1924); the incomplete prose version by C. S. Nott,The Conference of the Birds (1954), which was prepared from Garcin deTassy’s nineteenth-century French translation, Le Langage des oiseaux, and,as such, is obscured by an intervening third language; Afkham Darbandi andDick Davis’ Penguin Classics edition The Conference of the Birds (1984),which represents the poem’s first complete English translation (minus theinvocation and epilogue), is based on the oldest extant manuscripts, and isskillfully rendered into heroic couplets pleasingly faithful to the letter andspirit of `Attar’s allegory; and Peter Avery’s determinedly literal translation,The Speech of the Birds (1998), whose 560-page opus includes 120 pages ofenriching endnotes on `Attar’s use of Qur’anic imagery and the hadith ...

Adam Zalužanský’s “De sexu plantarum” (1592): an early pioneering chapter on plant sexuality

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Funk
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
History Of Botany ◽  
Main Work ◽  
Botanical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time

In the history of botany, Adam Zalužanský (d. 1613), a Bohemian physician, apothecary, botanist and professor at the University of Prague, is a little-known personality. Linnaeus's first biographers, for example, only knew Zalužanský from hearsay and suspected he was a native of Poland. This ignorance still pervades botanical history. Zalužanský is mentioned only peripherally or not at all. As late as the nineteenth century, a researcher would be unaware that Zalužanský’s main work Methodi herbariae libri tres actually existed in two editions from two different publishers (1592, Prague; 1604, Frankfurt). This paper introduces the life and work of Zalužanský. Special attention is paid to the chapter “De sexu plantarum” of Zalužanský’s Methodus, in which, more than one hundred years before the well-known De sexu plantarum epistola of R. J. Camerarius, the sexuality of plants is suggested. Additionally, for the first time, an English translation of Zalužanský’s chapter on plant sexuality is provided.

Delhi in Transition, 1821 and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
English Translation ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
The Times ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

Commissioned by the English East India Company to write about contemporary nineteenth-century Delhi, Mirza Sangin Beg walked around the city to capture its highly fascinating urban and suburban extravaganza. Laced with epigraphy and fascinating anecdotes, the city as ‘lived experience’ has an overwhelming presence in his work, Sair-ul Manazil. Sair-ul Manazil dominates the historiography of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century compositions on Delhi in Persian and Urdu, and remains unparalleled in its architecture and detailed content. It deals with the habitations of people, bazars, professions and professionals, places of worship and revelry, and issues of contestation. Over fifty typologies of structures and several institutions that find resonance in the Persian and Ottoman Empires can also be gleaned from Sair-ul Manazil. Interestingly, Beg made no attempt to ‘monumentalize’ buildings; instead, he explored them as spaces reflective of the sociocultural milieu of the times. Delhi in Transition is the first comprehensive English translation of Beg’s work, which was originally published in Persian. It is the only translation to compare the four known versions of Sair-ul Manazil, including the original manuscript located in Berlin, which is being consulted for the first time. It has an exhaustive introduction and extensive notes, along with the use of varied styles in the book to indicate the multiple sources of the text, contextualize Beg’s work for the reader and engage him with the debate concerning the different variants of this unique and eclectic work.

scholarly journals Tyconius’ Apocalypse Commentary, Its Reconstruction, and Its Significance for Augustine’s Doctrine of the Two Cities

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 513-532
Author(s):  
Johannes van Oort
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
English Translation ◽  
French Translation ◽  
Two Cities

Abstract The present article deals with Roger Gryson’s reconstruction of Tyconius’ lost Commentary on the Apocalypse (CCL 107A), his subsequent French translation of this reconstructed Commentary (CCT 10), and the English translation Tyconius, Exposition of the Apocalypse by Francis Gumerlock, with long introduction and ample notes by David Robinson (FoC 134). After having reviewed the strenghths and weaknesses of each of these publications, the article concludes with a discussion of the significance of Tyconius’ Commentary for the question of the origin of Augustine’s two civitates doctrine.

scholarly journals Translating The Disaster of Mourice Blanchot Between Ann Smock and Azzedine Chentouf

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Soufiane Laachiri
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
English Translation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Arabic Translation ◽  
Literal Translation ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Other Hand

The present article attempts to present a succinct and circumspect comparison between two different translations for Mourice Blanchot’s book « L’écriture du désastre ».The first translation was performed by Ann Smock in 1995 and was from French into English, while the other translation was skillfully produced by Azzedine Chentouf from French into Arabic in 2018. The contrast in attitudes and translational fertilization has provided us with ample opportunities to study, reflect on, and rethink the nexus of  Blanchot’s philosophy from different linguistic perspectives. However, in our attempt to formulate our judgments on the English and Arabic versions of the book, we can judge by an escapable logic and with analytical evidence that the English translation entitled « The writing of the disaster » has intensified the hold of a literal translation that makes the chances of being close to the original meaning of the source text depressingly small. Chentouf’s translation, on the other hand, remains profoundly meaningful; it is capable of going down into the marrow of  Blanchot’s thought to assert understanding of his intellectual complexities. In brief, despite the triviality of the advanced examples, we are certain that Azzedine Chentouf, through his Arabic translation, knows the hard philosophical portrait of Mourice Blanchot in its inclusiveness. Therefore, it is no surprise that every choice he makes in this translation explains his tremendous efforts as a philosopher first before being ranked as a translator.

On the Foundations of Dahlhaus’s Foundations

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-229
Author(s):  
Tobias Robert Klein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Music History ◽  
Political Music ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Structural History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theoretical Reflection

In the foreword to his Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (1977), translated into English as Foundations of Music History (1983), Carl Dahlhaus names three reasons for writing the book: the lack of theoretical reflection in his own field; the problem of mediation between methodological maxims and their political implications; and the difficulties he encountered while preparing his history of nineteenth-century music. Each of the three reasons can now be understood more precisely and historically contextualized in light of recently uncovered letters and notes. Dahlhaus’s methodological critiques of political music as conceptually distinct from aesthetically autonomous works—contrary to a popular claim by Anne Shreffler (2003)—were directed mainly at the “Western left.” Moreover, in the 1980s this controversy became intertwined with historiographical questions regarding the concept of “event” that was reinforced in publications by the “Gruppe Poetik und Hermeneutik.” A postscript discusses the English translation of the book and the concept of “structural history” in late Dahlhaus.

The Folk Song Project at the Confluence of Music and Nationalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip V. Bohlman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South America ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
World Music ◽  
Musical Thought

Published in six folios during 1778 and 1779, Herder’s Volkslieder (Folk songs) has been one of the most influential works in modern intellectual history, even though it has never before appeared in English translation. The Volkslieder not only became the first collection of world music—songs came not only from many regions of Europe, but also from Africa, the Mediterranean, and South America—but also served as the source for European composers throughout the nineteenth century. Aesthetics, ethnography, and literary and cultural history converge to transform modern musical thought. Part one of the chapter contains translations from Herder’s own introductions to the songs, and part two contains twenty-four songs that represent the paradigm shift inspired by this monumental work on folk song.

Ireland: Realm of the Four Masters

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rowley-Conwy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Irish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Manuscripts ◽  
To Come ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Or History

On 9 January 1843, Richard Griffith addressed the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) about some antiquities found in the River Shannon. The river was being dredged to render it navigable, and the artefacts were discovered during the deepening of the old ford at Keelogue. Griffith was the chairman of the Commissioners carrying out the work, and his expertise was in engineering rather than ancient history. He stated that the finds came from a layer of gravel; in its upper part were many bronze swords and spears, while a foot lower were numerous stone axes. Due to the rapidity of the river’s flow there was very little aggradation, so despite the small gap the bronze objects were substantially later than the stone ones. The river formed the border between the ancient kingdoms of Connaught and Leinster. The objects had apparently been lost in two battles for the ford that had taken place at widely differing dates; stressing that he was no expert himself, Mr Griffith wondered whether ancient Irish history might contain records of battles at this spot (Griffith 1844). This was probably the earliest non-funerary stratigraphic support for the Three Age System ever published, but it did not signal the acceptance of the Three Age System. Just as telling as Griffith’s stratigraphic observation was his immediate recourse to ancient history for an explanation; for, as we shall see, ancient history provided the dominant framework for the ancient Irish past until the end of the nineteenth century. The Irish had far more early manuscript sources than the Scots or the English, although wars and invasions had reduced them; the Welsh scholar Edward Lhwyd wrote from Sligo on 12 March 1700 to his colleague Henry Rowlands that ‘the Irish have many more ancient manuscripts than we in Wales; but since the late revolutions they are much lessened. I now and then pick up some very old parchment manuscripts; but they are hard to come by, and they that do anything understand them, value them as their lives’ (in Rowlands 1766: 315). In the seventeenth century various Irish scholars brought together the historical accounts available to them. Geoffrey Keating (Seathrú n Céitinn, in Irish) wrote the influential Foras Feasa ar Éirinn or ‘History of Ireland’ in c.1634, and an English translation was printed in 1723 (Waddell 2005).

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