Things I've been reading, with links

[heliopausa]

Of course lots of NFE stories!  I'm a little more than half-way through read-and-reviewing, I think - of the main collection, anyway, and I'll post about that on the weekend, or just after.  And also of course I've been reading the last of the current bout of the infuriating genius Victor Hugo , who will get an entire post to himself next week sometime.  But also lots of other things, to wit:

- This story - true story report from the BBC - which seems like myth come to life - myth or ancient history: the woman who spins silk from the sea. 
"You have to be respectful to the place you live in. You are just passing by, these places are here to stay. And the sea has its own soul and you have to ask for permission to get a piece of it," she says. Her chant, which mixes ancient Sardinian dialect and Hebrew, echoes off the rocks.

- The Geography of Strabo, written a couple of millennia ago, which is a fascinating (but big) work, and I haven't gone further than his compilation of reports from about India. (That link is to the section on people - there are others about the geography and the animals).  He identifies some reports as being just fanciful travellers' tales, like the people whose ears are so big they can sleep in them, but also recounts recognisable (though obviously not exactly the same as contemporary) social customs, such as the caste system - he identifies Brahmins and Sramans as two different "philosopher" castes: ("the Brachmanes, however, enjoy fairer repute, for they are more in agreement in their dogmas").He tends to a down-toearth approach, as when he discounts stories of magic ("from conception, while in the womb, the children are under the care of learned men, who are reputed to go to the mother and the unborn child, and, ostensibly, to enchant them to a happy birth, but in truth to give prudent suggestions and advice;").  I didn't know whether this part was true or not:
"Now the care of the king's person is committed to women, who also are purchased from their fathers; and the body-guards and the rest of the military force are stationed outside the gates. And a woman who kills a king when he is drunk receives as her reward the privilege of consorting with his successor; and their children succeed to the throne.
Again, the king does not sleep in daytime; and even at night he is forced to change his bed from time to time because of the plots against him.
Among the non-military departures he makes from his palace, one is that to the courts, where he spends the whole day hearing cases... A second departure is that to the sacrifices. A third is that to a kind of Bacchic chase wherein he is surrounded by women, and, outside them, by the spear-bearers. The road is lined with ropes; and death is the penalty for anyone who passes inside the ropes to the women; and they are preceded by drum-beaters and gong-carriers. The king hunts in the fenced enclosures, shooting arrows from a platform in his chariot (two or three armed women stand beside him), and also in the unfenced hunting-grounds from an elephant; and the women ride partly in chariots, partly on horses, and partly on elephants, and they are equipped with all kinds of weapons, as they are when they go on military expeditions with the men. "

- An article by Daniel Barrenboim (whom I admire very much) on Wagner, Israel and the Palestinians.

- An article considering the shifting significance of yoga in fiction - especially fiction outside India.  Orientalism to erasure?

- Caliban upon Setebos - I read this while in pursuit of some ideas raised by blueinkedpalm on LJ about exile.  And.... oh Robert Browning!  Are you being deliberately obscure?  (No, he's not.  He's an honest man, and that's just the way he talks.)  But I really did find it so convoluted that I had to put myself in a room by myself and read it all out loud to be sure I understood it all - and unexpectedly found myself asking:
"Why not make horny eyes no thorn could prick,

Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow,

Or overscale my flesh 'neath joint and joint

Like an orc's armour?"      

Whaaaaa...?  "Like an orc's armour?"  Tolkien?  Is that you over there, cribbing ideas?

Speaking of whom, sally_maria  was recommending a LotR fanfic, which might be the next thing I launch into, when I finish the sumptuous banquet of the NFE.  Other recommendations (including for Old Major Lit) gladly accepted!

Comments

[autumnia]

I really enjoyed reading about the woman who spins silk from the sea -- I think it almost is like magic; I hope those bracelets she weaves for people help to bring them the luck they need.

[heliopausa]

Yes, it is! (almost like magic) Reading it, and seeing how one's own feelings go in exactly that direction, make it so easy to see how people seeing "ordinary" spinning and weaving for the first time thought they were a kind of magic.

(and I was just about to shut this machine down for the night when I saw that this comment had come in! :D it's a happy thought to go to bed on!)

[pulchritude]

Oh, that was a lovely article on sea silk, thanks for sharing. It reminds me of how in the Tang dynasty, we were able to make silk that was so thin that one's mole could be seen through six layers of it. Alas, the things we lose throughout history.

[heliopausa]

You're very welcome! :)
The fine silk sounds like it would drift in the air like a mist! Beautiful! Maybe the craft could be rediscovered? I wonder if the secret was the looms - or the spinning, or maybe the treatment of the silkworms?

[transposable_element]

I, too, am entranced by the story of the sea silk! I hope her daughter takes up stewardship of the tradition, although if I always wonder if people in that position resent the weight placed upon them. What if she wants to do something else with her life?

[heliopausa]

Yes, or she could teach someone who isn't her daughter - or as well as her daughter. I mean, it's been in other families, so it could be again. I can see she wouldn't want to teach someone from outside the island, or outside her tradition, but a niece, a cousin's child...? :)

I'd love to know what it says about it on the Rosetta Stone, too.