«Kaddisch» par Ravel dans les miroirs hermeneutiques. Un miroir sonore infini de l’hebraïque «alas»

"We are proposing to situate Maurice Ravel in a refined poetic aesthetic. Our desire is to offer an original philosophical and musicological perspective on Kaddisch, because, personally, this composition determines us to reflect on what is “beyond” Being. We note that there is a particular Hebraic stylistic continuity at the time, and in this sense we also remember Joseph Achron, on the distinguished Hebrew Melody, op. 33. More than that, Yehudi Menuhin devoted himself playing both the composition of Achron and this special composition by Maurice Ravel on the violin. Maurice Ravel composed a part for the liturgical ceremony entitled Kaddish, and critics claim that he did not introduce this song as a novelty, because the composition already existed in the Hebrew tradition. However, behind that, we try to defend Ravel by observing what are the aesthetic-compositional novelties introduced in this beautiful song. Being a mystical song of a man who mourns death but, at the same time, weeps on infinite love, Kaddisch still let us to find various interpretations, whether it is a liturgical text or sheet music. Advancing with the observations along this paper, in the final part of the paper, we made a comparison between Maurice Ravel and Leonard Bernstein’s perspective on Kaddisch. Keywords: “Kaddisch (Kaddish)”; Maurice Ravel; Leonard Bernstein; Alexander Veprik; Yehudi Menuhin; violin’s aesthetic; metaphysical sadness; sacredness; mournfulness; mourning; the Hebrew-ʻalasʼ; the Portuguese ʻalémʼ. "

Understanding Fanny

Though there has been recent interest in how Jane Austen’s faith influenced her novels, scholars have generally looked to her reading in philosophy and sermons, her spiritual expression, or her Anglicanism, and have neglected the more direct influence of the Bible. Yet judging from Austen’s lifelong church attendance and her reading of the Book of Common Prayer, we can conclude that she would have heard the Psalms read entirely through once every month of her forty-one years. This paper explores the resemblance between the psalmists and Fanny Price in terms of their shared experience of exile, their patterns of lament and reminder, their long wait for deliverance, and their final homecoming. Comparing Fanny Price’s character to the psalmists recasts her as a heroine in the Hebrew tradition, offering a new understanding of her passivity and suggesting that her author was more influenced by scriptural patterns than has been heretofore understood.

“Ynclinando la oreja del mi entendimiento”. Simbología mística en Arboleda de los enfermos de Teresa de Cartagena

Arboleda de los enfermos is a religious treaty written in the middle of 15th century by Teresa de Cartagena, a nun from Burgos, after her hearing loss. In her treaty, Teresa de Cartagena attemps to show to those who also suffer from an illnes a way to heal their souls. The text presents some characteristics of mystic Spanish literature, as it exposes the comprehension process of an inner reality in wich the soul needs to follow a crucial path of suffering. This paper analizes the symbolism in the treaty, from the Scholem and Lotman’s perspectives about the symbol as a vehicle of tradition and mystical experience, to later explain the relationship between symbols of the Christian and Jewish traditions presented on the text. Teresa de Cartagena could have known this second tradition due to the Jewish converso origins of her family, in wich her grandfather, the ex rabine Pablo de Santa María, and her uncle Alfonso de Cartagena were counted, both prominet humanist and educated in Hebrew tradition.

Pneuma

Pneuma, ‘spirit’, derives from the Greek verb pneo, which indicates blowing or breathing. Since breathing is necessary for life and consciousness, pneuma came to denote not only wind and breath but various vital functions, including sensation and thought, and was understood by some philosophers as a cosmological principle. It became especially important in Stoicism, which explained the world in terms of matter and the rational structure exhibited in all its forms; this is established by rhythmical variations in the tonos or ‘tension’ of the pneuma. In Hebrew tradition, where Greek was used, pneuma stood for life, consciousness, and for invisible conscious agents, angels or demons. In Christian thought it denotes divine inspiration, in particular the Holy Spirit acknowledged as a divine Person. At John 4:24 it is used, unusually, to describe God himself.