HOPE OF ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. Musical-poetical research by Asya Lazar ARDOVA
Listen to the soundtrack “Hope of All the Ends of the Earth” (English folk song, Jewish folk song, Bartók, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tagor, Farnaby, Addinsell, Paderevsky, Latin American music, tango “The Gypsy”) performed by Asya Lazar ARDOVA (piano) on the page ardSOUND of ardisonata.net
Hope that is not coming true for a long time, tortures one’s heart, while realized dream is like a tree of life.
Proverbs of Solomon
Where’s that king without his land?
Where’s that water without the sand?
The landless king is a gambling card,
The sandless water is a tear most hard.
Jewish Love Riddle
My article about the Hope is actually an imprint (gestalt, as Freud’s disciple Karl Jung used to call it) of this state of mind, its possible iridescent trace from outside, or simultaneously a receiver inside the human soul able to accept such waves. My imprint is one of not many possible ones, also worth to be studied in different combinations as emotional phenomena, generating and feeding the state of mind, called the Hope, so necessary for future existence of the earth and noosphere. Hence there appeared the title «Hope of all the ends of the Earth». This allegoric appeal is widely used in Bible (Solomon, Virgin Mary). These are the first words of the orthodox Russian prayer to the icon of Mother of God, called “Assuage My Sorrows” as canonical translation goes.
ASSUAGE MY SORROWS
Although the orthodox, but this is European imploring of a human being – to diminish everything bad, to prevent the attacks of misfortune, like for a example of the Poles, who have unbearable necessity to renew their temples – said Heinrich Heine once.
This is the strong connection with the church to be most vital for Poles, and the majority of them fulfill church directives all the year long. It was mentioned in the journal Euroviza, while the famous Polish producer Krzysztof Zanussi describes the Polish character as follows:
“We watch other nations, trying to imitate them, choosing most suitable ones. Meanwhile, the Polish culture has strong Latin roots. We’ve accepted Roman thinking…
DISPEL MY EXPECTATIONS
The other purport “Dispel My Expectations” is close to and Chinese strategy of giving in for to acquire might – this is full refusal of any hopes, preconceptions, love and hatred, pity and fear.
The Chinese strikes by his patience, considers the gymnast Huang Xu. Chinaman may prefer food, most ugly for Europeans. Meanwhile, he works hard without holidays and rest.Whatever misfortunate happens in his life, he doesn’t feel upset; doing his everyday hard work persistently, while his face expresses something strange, mystic, as if from Buddah’s statues, located in temples and monasteries. Chinese women are as courageous as their men. Pain, suffering and other cataclysms are experienced by them not less bravely, than by the men.
The state of nirvana in the Indian culture is also the mind set free of sufferings and struggles, like sometimes at Rabindranat Tagor,
who was compared to his elder contemporary Percy Bysshe Shelley, but translated to Indian. I have tried to make my own translation of Tagor’s poem. Here is the “Toy Boat” translated by Asya Ardova
My toy boat of paper
According to my whims
Carries my playthings,—
The passed years dreams.
And when it moors to you,
Before the dawn hour still,
Do take it to your mind
According to your will…
QUENCH MY EXHAUSTION
The lit candle is not hidden under the vase, thus it shines to everybody in the house.
Gospel of Matthew
The third purport is from Old Testament “Quench My Exhaustion”, when king David sings in Byron’s verses “I tell thee, ministrel, I must weep, or else this heavy heart will burst, for it hath been in sorrow nursed and ached in sleepless silence long, and now ‘tis doomed to know the worst, and break at once, or yield to song.” But never did they yield, Job, Samson, rabbi Akiba, Bar Kohba, John the Baptist, Jesus…. Their hope was in individual freedom, they were craving for the truth about the universe to make it better.
I would have define it as Biblical — this desperate character of this courage of Olga Berggolts and of all those, who tried to survive in blockaded Leningrad, when being condemned, but suffering for to make the cold-blooded executor be exhausted together with his victim.
Olga Berggolts is the Russian poetess, living in the 20th century, having imbibed multi-coloured atmosphere of her mutinous age. Due to Olga Berggolts the world knew about the Leningrad Blockade. She described life and scale of emotions — from unaccountable fear to heroic paths and dreams of heart. The sense of hope was close to her. She compares it with freedom, space and speed. Here is the poem by Olga Berggolts, translated by Asya Ardova:
Alone again and going somewhere,
My way is far and sweet, and most strange,
My heart is burnt with freedom and with care,
And cold whistling train’s lit.
I seem to meet my dream and blazing green years,
Where does it happen, shall I learn?
The same blue sunset, stirring nightmares,
And tender star, whose rays are never stern.
That star! She was the same, but long ago,
Like tiny guiding torch aside the rails.
She flew before me on the way of glow
Competing with the train as she sails
.
REJOICE MY HEART, or HUMOR FOR HARDENED and HUMIDITY FOR DESERT
Totalitarian regimes cause moral degeneracy, for fear is a bad counselor. No consolation in dogmatic Muslim traditions, interest to science is suffocated, and only obedience is in favour. And it’s no matter, that treachery flourishes, because flattery is a good mask for treachery. That was the situation, when Omar Khayam managed to make wonderful and most useful discoveries in different spheres of nature and philosophy. He did not stay for a long time at sultans’ courts, escaping from their tyranny; he once was called a hedonist for like the ancient Greek Epicure, he denied pain and tortures, but was making for enlightened mind and humanistic relations.
Omar Khayam, the medieval Persian scientist and philosopher of the 11th -12th centuries, once happened to save from desperation the English poet Edward Fitzgerald, contemporary of Dickens, Dumas and Chopin. It was the collection verses (rubayat), the archeological rarity, but it contained true human wisdom, that was not complicated either with religious, or with scientific elements. Omar Khayam was widely and with pleasure translated to Russian, being most necessary for intelligentsia of the Soviet Union as the kind of airway to mind relaxation, animating everything pressed with foolishness and absurdity.
Something from Omar Khayam interpreted in English by Asya Ardova:
- Do not stop anything leaving you and do not reject anything coming to you. Then good fortune will find you.
- When people gossip about you, it means your individuality is rich enough not only for yourself, but also for others. People fill their lives with your personality.
True! My service to Heaven was not very good,
True! I won’t reduce all my sins, if I could,
Do not cry over the past, for it was and it vapoured,
Do not cry over the future, for it’s misty, though more favoured…
Oh Heaven, the zone of my poor existence,
Tears of sinners are waves of the sea splashing distance.
Paradise is repose for efforts in vain,
Hellish flame — just the gleam of extinguishing pain.
Pictures used in the article
1. Salvator Rosa. Prodigal Son
2. A. Mucha. Some are Expecting Jackpot in Monte-Carlo
3. Ch. van de Stappen. Mysterious Sphinx
4. M. Denis. Women Near the River
5. A. Mucha. Nature Herself
6. L. Majorelle. Lamp
7. J. Toorop. Desire and Satisfaction
8. O. Pochtenny, ancient cameo