Literature in Egypt
Of all the fields, of civilization literature
figured high. Ancient Egypt was the source of great works written on papyrus or
on the walls of temples, tombs, pyramids, obelisks, portraits and monuments.
These works of art succeeded for many centuries. Over time many changes took
place; many governments and civilizations, vanished and others appeared, but
the ideals of the ancient Egyptian literature persisted even in our age.
Besides, ancient Egyptian literature formed central elements in folkloric works
of many nations. This shows how elevated ancient Egyptians moral and literary
perceptions were, even before divine religions were revealed or even before the
world knew great literary masterpieces.
Ancient Egyptian literature rose and grew
in the bosom of religious beliefs, but it quickly evolved to deal with man’s
ordinary day-to-day life. Literary works occupied a distinguished position in
the ancient Egyptian thought and civilization. The ancient Egyptians viewed
literature as a source of spiritual nourishment and a unique way to elevate
style of expression. Refined literary style was a source of pride for the
writer and appreciation and enjoyment for the reader.
Influence on world literature
In ancient Egyptian literature, there is a story
dating back to the Middle Kingdom (2022 BC-1850 BC). This era witnessed a great
number of writers and thinkers who left behind a number of works of art
reflecting the elevated status of thinking and culture in ancient Egypt. The
story is entitled “The Sailor and the Wonder Island”. It narrates the story of
an ancient Egyptian sailor whose ship was wrecked with all on board drowned. As
the only survivor, he lives on an isolated island, finds a treasure, returns
home and the mysterious island sinks deep into the sea immediately after his
departure.
Cinderella in ancient Egyptian
literatur
Cinderella's story with the same central themes
appears in abundance in the folkloric and literary works of many nations all
over world. The most famous writers who tackled the story were the German Grim
brothers.
Cinderella's story with the same central themes
can be traced in some literary works appearing on the ancient Egyptian papyri
in different names and styles.
The first reference of this story dates
back to the era of the fourth Dynasty in the 26th Century BC. Then, a copy of
this story, dating back to the Modern Kingdom between 16th and12th centuries
BC., was found. This copy contains a detailed description of the humiliation
and torture inflicted on Cinderella by her step-mother. Another papyrus dating
FAMOUS POET AND POETRY
To Whom Should A Speak Today ?
By: T.
Eric Peet
To whom should I
speak today?
Brothers are
evil;
The friends of
today love not.
To
whom should I speak today?
Heart
are covetous;
Every
man plundereth the goods of his fellow.
To
whom should I speak today?
The
peaceful man is in evil case;
God
is cast aside everywhere.
Sumerian literature
The Sumerian
language remained in official and literary use in the Akkadian
and Babylonian empires, even after the spoken
language disappeared from the population; literacy was widespread, and the
Sumerian texts that students copied heavily influenced later Babylonian literature.
Sumerian literature has not been handed down to
us directly, rather it has been rediscovered through archaeology.
Nevertheless, the Akkadians
and Babylonians
borrowed much from the Sumerian literary heritage, and spread these traditions
throughout the Middle East, influencing much of the literature that followed in
this region.
THE
SUMERIAN WRITERS
In the year 1472, a short time before Columbus
discovered America, a certain Venetian, by the name of Josaphat Barbaro,
traveling through Persia, crossed the hills near Shiraz and saw something which
puzzled him. The hills of Shiraz were covered with old temples which had been
cut into the rock of the mountainside. The ancient worshippers had disappeared
centuries before and the temples were in a state of great decay. But clearly
visible upon their walls, Barbara noticed long legends written in a curious
script which looked like a series of scratches made by a sharp nail.
When he returned he mentioned his discovery to
his fellow-townsmen, but just then the Turks were threatening Europe with an
invasion and people were too busy to bother about a new and unknown alphabet,
somewhere in the heart of western Asia. The Persian inscriptions therefore were
promptly forgotten.
Two and a half centuries later, a noble young
Roman by the name of Pietro della Valle visited the same hillsides of Shiraz
which Barbaro had passed two hundred years before. He, too, was puzzled by the
strange inscriptions on the ruins and being a painstaking young fellow, he
copied them carefully and sent his report together with some remarks about the
trip to a friend of his, Doctor Schipano, who practiced medicine in Naples and
who besides took an interest in matters of learning.
Schipano copied the funny little figures and
brought them to the attention of other scientific men. Unfortunately Europe was
again occupied with other matters.
The terrible wars between the Protestants and
Catholics had broken out and people were busily killing those who disagreed
with them upon certain points of a religious nature.
Another century was to pass before the study of
the wedge-shaped inscriptions could be taken up seriously.
The eighteenth century--a delightful age for
people of an active and curious mind--loved scientific puzzles. Therefore when
King Frederick V of Denmark asked for men of learning to join an expedition
which he was going to send to western Asia, he found no end of volunteers. His
expedition, which left Copenhagen in 1761, lasted six years. During this period
all of the members died except one, by the name of Karsten Niebuhr, who had
begun life as a German peasant and could stand greater hardships than the
professors who had spent their days amidst the stuffy books of their libraries.
This Niebuhr, who was a surveyor by profession,
was a young man who deserves our admiration.
He continued his voyage all alone until he
reached the ruins of Persepolis where he spent a month copying every
inscription that was to be found upon the walls of the ruined palaces and
temples.
After his return to Denmark he published his
discoveries for the benefit of the scientific world and seriously tried to read
some meaning into his own texts.
He was not successful.
But this does not astonish us when we understand
the difficulties which he was obliged to solve.
When Champollion tackled the ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphics he was able to make his studies from little pictures.
The writing of Persepolis did not show any
pictures at all.
They consisted of v-shaped figures that were
repeated endlessly and suggested nothing at all to the European eye.
Nowadays, when the puzzle has been solved we know
that the original script of the Sumerians had been a picture-language, quite as
much as that of the Egyptians.
But whereas the Egyptians at a very early date
had discovered the papyrus plant and had been able to paint their images upon a
smooth surface, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia had been forced to carve their
words into the hard rock of a mountain side or into a soft brick of clay.
Driven
by necessity they had gradually simplified the original pictures until they
devised a system of more than five hundred different letter-combinations which
were necessary for their needs.
Let me give you a few examples. In the beginning,
a star, when drawn with a nail into a brick looked as follows.
But after a time the star shape was discarded as
being too cumbersome and the figure was given this shape.
After a while the meaning of "heaven"
was added to that of "star," and the picture was simplified in this
way which made it still
more of a puzzle.
In the same way an ox changed from into
A fish changed from into The sun, which
was originally a plain circle, became and if we were
using the Sumerian script today we would make an look like this
You will understand how difficult it was to guess
at the meaning of these figures but the patient labors of a German schoolmaster
by the name of Grotefend was at last rewarded and thirty years after the first
publication of Niebuhr's texts and three centuries after the first discovery of
the wedge-formed pictures, four letters had been deciphered.
These four letters were the D, the A, the R and
the Sh.
They formed the name of Darheush the King, whom
we call Darius.
Then occurred one of those events which were only
possible in those happy days before the telegraph-wire and the mail-steamer had
turned the entire world into one large city.
While patient European professors were burning
the midnight candles in their attempt to solve the new Asiatic mystery, young
Henry Rawlinson was serving his time as a cadet of the British East Indian
Company.
He used his spare hours to learn Persian and when
the Shah of Persia asked the English government for the loan of a few officers
to train his native army, Rawlinson was ordered to go to Teheran. He travelled
all over Persia and one day he happened to visit the village of Behistun. The
Persians called it Bagistana which means the "dwellingplace of the
Gods."
Centuries before the main road from Mesopotamia
to Iran (the early home of the Persians) had run through this village and the
Persian King Darius had used the steep walls of the high cliffs to tell all the
world what a great man he was.
High above the roadside he had engraved an
account of his glorious deeds.
The inscription had been made in the Persian
language, in Babylonian and in the dialect of the city of Susa. To make the
story plain to those who could not read at all, a fine piece of sculpture had
been added showing the King of Persia placing his triumphant foot upon the body
of Gaumata, the usurper who had tried to steal the throne away from the
legitimate rulers. For good measure a dozen followers of Gaumata had been
added. They stood in the background. Their hands were tied and they were to be
executed in a few moments.
The picture and the three texts were several
hundred feet above the road but Rawlinson scaled the walls of the rock at great
danger to life and limb and copied the entire text.
His discovery was of the greatest importance. The
Rock of Behistun became as famous as the Stone of Rosetta and Rawlinson shared
the honors of deciphering the old nail-writing with Grotefend.
Although they had never seen each other or heard
each other's names, the German schoolmaster and the British officer worked
together for a common purpose as all good scientific men should do.
Their copies of the old text were reprinted in
every land and by the middle of the nineteenth century, the cuneiform language
(so called because the letters were wedge-shaped and "cuneus" is the
Latin name for wedge) had given up its secrets. Another human mystery had been
solved.
But
about the people who had invented this clever way of writing, we have never
been able to learn very much.
They were a white race and they were called the
Sumerians.
They lived in a land which we call Shomer and
which they themselves called Kengi, which means the "country of the
reeds" and which shows us that they had dwelt among the marshy parts of
the Mesopotamian valley. Originally the Sumerians had been mountaineers, but
the fertile fields had tempted them away from the hills. But while they had
left their ancient homes amidst the peaks of western Asia they had not given up
their old habits and one of these is of particular interest to us.
Living amidst the peaks of western Asia, they had
worshipped their Gods upon altars erected on the tops of rocks. In their new
home, among the flat plains, there were no such rocks and it was impossible to
construct their shrines in the old fashion. The Sumerians did not like this.
All Asiatic people have a deep respect for
tradition and the Sumerian tradition demanded that an altar be plainly visible
for miles around.
To overcome this difficulty and keep their peace
with the Gods of their Fathers, the Sumerians had built a number of low towers
(resembling little hills) on the top of which they had lighted their sacred
fires in honor of the old divinities.
When the Jews visited the town of Bab-Illi (which
we call Babylon) many centuries after the last of the Sumerians had died, they
had been much impressed by the strange-looking towers which stood high amidst
the green fields of Mesopotamia. The Tower of Babel of which we hear so much in
the Old Testament was nothing but the ruin of an artificial peak, built
hundreds of years before by a band of devout Sumerians. It was a curious
contraption.
The Sumerians had not known how to construct
stairs.
They had surrounded their tower with a sloping
gallery which slowly carried people from the bottom to the top.
A few years ago it was found necessary to build a
new railroad station in the heart of New York City in such a way that thousands
of travelers could be brought from the lower to the higher levels at the same
moment.
PERSIAN
LITERATURE
Persian literature spans two and a half
millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources
has been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as
reigions of Central
Asia where the Persian
language has been the national language through history. For instance,
Rumi, one of Persia's best-loved poets, born in Balkh, wrote in Persian, and
lived in Konya then the capital of the Seljuks. The Ghaznavids
conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as
their court language. There is thus Persian literature from areas that are now
part of Afghanistan and other parts of Central Asia. Not all this literature is
written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians in other
languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included.
Described by some as one of the great literatures
of mankind, the Persian literature has its roots in surviving works in Old
Persian or Middle Persian dating back as far as 522 BCE, the date of the
earliest surviving Achaemenid
inscription, the Behistun
Inscription. The bulk of the surviving Persian literature, however, comes from
the times following the Islamic conquest of Persia circa 650 CE. After the Abbasids
came to power (750 CE), the Persians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the
Islamic empire and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. Persians wrote
both in Persian and Arabic; Persian predominated in later literary circles.
Persian poets such as Sa'di,
Hafiz , Rumi
and Omar
Khayyam are well known in the world and have influenced the literature of
many countries.
Very few literary works survived from ancient
Persia. This is partly due to the destruction of the library at Persepolis.
Most of what remains consists of the royal inscriptions of Achaemenid kings,
particularly Darius IXerxes. Zoroastrian
writings mainly were destroyed in the Islamic conquest of Persia. The Parsis
who fled to India, however, took with them some of the books of the Zoroastrian canon,
including some of the Avesta and ancient commentaries (Zend) thereof. Some
works of Sassanid
geography and travel also survived albeit in Arabic translations.
(522–486 BC) and his son
No single text devoted to literary criticism has survived from pre-Islamic Persia. However,
some essays in Pahlavi such as "Ayin-e name
nebeshtan" (Principles of Writing Book) and "Bab-e
edteda’I-ye" (Kalileh o Demneh) have been considered as literary criticism
(Zarrinkoub, 1959). Some researchers have quoted the Sho'ubiyye as
asserting that the pre-Islamic Persians had books on eloquence, such as 'Karvand'. No trace remains of such books.
There are some indications that some among the Persian elite were familiar with
Greek rhetoric and literary criticism (Zarrinkoub, 1947).
WRITER AND
WRITING
BY: Omar
Khayyam
Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.
Before the phantom of False morning died,
Me thought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
"When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside?"
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted - "Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more."
ARABIC LITERATURE
is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers
in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for
literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette,
and implies politeness, culture and enrichment.
Arabic literature emerged in the 5th century with
only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Qur'an, widely
regarded as the finest piece of literature work in the Arabic
language, would have the greatest lasting effect on Arabic
culture and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, but has remained vibrant to
the present day, with poets and prose-writers across the Arab world achieving
increasing success.
is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers
in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for
literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette,
and implies politeness, culture and enrichment.
Arabic literature emerged in the 5th century with
only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Qur'an, widely
regarded as the finest piece of literature work in the Arabic
language, would have the greatest lasting effect on Arabic
culture and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, but has remained vibrant to
the present day, with poets and prose-writers across the Arab world achieving
increasing success.
Arab Poet and Poetry
The Prophet
Kahilig Gilbran
“Then said Almitra,” Speak
to us of Love.”
And he raised his head and
look upon
The people and there fell a
stillness upon
them. And with great voice
he said:
When love beckons to you,
follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wing enfold you
to him,
Though the world hidden
among his
Pinions may wound you.
INDIAN LITERATURE
The Indian literary tradition is primarily one of verse and is
also essentially oral. The earliest works were composed to be sung or recited
and were so transmitted for many generations before being written down. As a
result, the earliest records of a text may be later by several centuries than
the conjectured date of its composition. Furthermore, perhaps because so much
Indian literature is either religious or a reworking of familiar stories from
the Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and theMahabharata,
and the mythological writings known as Puranas, the authors
often remain anonymous. Biographical details of the lives of most of the
earlier Indian writers exist only in much later stories and legends.
In medieval Indian literature the earliest works in many of the languages
were sectarian, designed to advance or to celebrate some unorthodox regional
belief. Examples are the Caryapadas in Bengali,Tantric
verses of the 12th century, and the Lilacaritra (circa 1280),
in Marathi. In Kannada (Kanarese) from the 10th century, and later in Gujarati
from the 13th century, the first truly indigenous works are Jain romances;
ostensibly the lives of Jain saints, these are actually popular tales based on
Sanskrit and Pali themes. Other example was in Rajasthani of the bardic tales
of chivalry and heroic resistance to the first Muslim invasions - such as the
12th-century epic poem Prithiraja-raso by Chand Bardai of
Lahore.
Most important of all for later Indian literature were the first
traces in the vernacular languages of the northern Indian cults of Krishna and
of Rama. Included are the 12th-century poems by Jaydev, called the Gitagovinda (The
Cowherd's Song); and about 1400, a group of religious love poems written in
Maithili (eastern Hindi of Bihar) by the poet Vidyapati were a seminal
influence on the cult of Radha-Krishna in Bengal.
Other Themes
In medieval Indian literature the earliest works in many of the
languages were sectarian, designed to advance or to celebrate some unorthodox
regional belief. Examples are the Caryapadas in Bengali,Tantric
verses of the 12th century, and the Lilacaritra (circa 1280),
in Marathi. In Kannada (Kanarese) from the 10th century, and later in Gujarati
from the 13th century, the first truly indigenous works are Jain romances;
ostensibly the lives of Jain saints, these are actually popular tales based on
Sanskrit and Pali themes. Other example was in Rajasthani of the bardic tales
of chivalry and heroic resistance to the first Muslim invasions - such as the
12th-century epic poem Prithiraja-raso by Chand Bardai of
Lahore.
Most important of all for later Indian literature were the first
traces in the vernacular languages of the northern Indian cults of Krishna and
of Rama. Included are the 12th-century poems by Jaydev, called the Gitagovinda (The
Cowherd's Song); and about 1400, a group of religious love poems written in
Maithili (eastern Hindi of Bihar) by the poet Vidyapati were a seminal
influence on the cult of Radha-Krishna in Bengal.
The Bhakti Tradition
The full flowering of the Radha-Krishna cult, under the Hindu
mystics Chaitanya in Bengal and Vallabhacharya at Mathura, involved bhakti
(a personal devotion to a god). Although earlier traces of this attitude
are found in the work of the Tamil Alvars (mystics who wrote ecstatic hymns to
Vishnu between the 7th and 10th centuries), a later surge of bhakti flooded
every channel of Indian intellectual and religious life beginning in the late
15th century. Bhakti was also addressed to Rama (an avatar of
Vishnu), most notably in the Avadhi (eastern Hindi) works of Tulsi Das; hisRamcharitmanas (Lake
of the Acts of Rama, 1574-77; trans. 1952) has become the authoritative. The
early gurus or founders of the Sikh religion, especially Nanak and Arjun,
composed bhakti hymns to their concepts of deity. These are
the first written documents in Punjabi (Panjabi) and form part of theAdi
Granth (First, or Original, Book), the sacred scripture of the Sikhs, which was first compiled by Arjun in 1604.
In the 16th century, the Rajaasthani princess and poet Mira Bai
addressed her bhakti lyric verse to Krishna, as did the
Gujarati poet Narsimh Mehta.
Traditional Material
In the 16th century, Jagannath Das wrote an Oriya version of the Bhagavata and
Tuncattu Eruttacchan, the so-called father of Malayalam literature, wrote
recensions of traditional literature. Added, in the 18th century, was a
deliberate imitation of Sanskritic forms and vocabulary by pandits.
In 18th-century evolved Assamese and Marathi prose chronicles, ballads, and
folk drama involving much dance and song.
The Tamil Tradition
The only Indian writings that incontestably predate the influence
of classical Sanskrit are those in the Tamil language. Anthologies of secular
lyrics on the themes of love and war, together with the grammatical-stylistic
work Tolkappiyam (Old Composition), are thought to be very
ancient. Later, between the 6th and 9th centuries, Tamil sectarian devotional
poems were composed, often claimed as the first examples of the Indian bhakti tradition.
At some indeterminate date between the 2nd and 5th centuries, two long Tamil
verse romances (sometimes called epics) were written: Cilappatikaram(The
Jeweled Anklet) by Ilanko Atikal, which has been translated into English (1939
and 1965); and its sequel Manimekalai (The Girdle of Gems), a
Buddhist work by Cattanar.
Linguistic and Cultural Influences
Much traditional Indian literature is derived in theme and form
not only from Sanskrit literature but from the Buddhist and Jain texts
written in the Pali language and the other Prakrits (medieval dialects of
Sanskrit). This applies to literature in the Dravidian languages of the south
as well as to literature in the Indo-Iranian languages of the north. Invasions
of Persians and Turks, beginning in the 14th century, resulted in the influence
of Persian and Islamic culture in Urdu, although important Islamic strands can
be found in other literatures as well, especially those written in Bengali,
Gujarati, and Kashmiri. After 1817, entirely new literary values were
established that remain dominant today.
The Urdu poets almost always wrote in Persian forms, using the
ghazal for love poetry in addition to an Islamic form of bhakti, the masnavi for
narrative verse, and the marsiya for elegies. Urdu then gained
use as a literary language in Delhi and Lucknow. The ghazals of Mir and Ghalib
mark the highest achievement of Urdu lyric verse. The Urdu poets were mostly
sophisticated, urban artists, but some adopted the idiom of folk poetry, as is
typical of the verses in Punjabi, Pushtu, Sindhi or other regional languages.
Regional Literature
Literary activities burst forth with the playwright Bharata’s (200 BC) Natya
Shastra, the Bible of dramatic criticism. The earliest plays were soon
overshadowed by Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, a heroic play, a model for ages. While
Shudraka’s Mrichchhakatika, was a play of the social class.
Bhavabhuti (circa 700AD) was another well-known figure, his best being Malatimadhava and Uttaramacharita (based
on Ramayana).
The great Sanskrit poems are five – Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa and
Kumarasambhava, Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi (550AD), Sishupalavadha of Magha (7th
century AD) and Naishadhiyacharita of Sriharsha (12th century AD). All of them
draw from the Mahabharata. Shorter poems of great depth were composed on a
single theme like love, morality, detachment and sometimes of grave matters.
The earliest and best collections of such verses called Muktakas are those of
Bhartrihari and Amaruka.
Much of the early prose work in Sanskrit has not survived. Of the
remaining, some of the best are Vasavadatta of Subandhu, Kadambari and
Harshacharita of Bana (7th century AD) and Dasakumaracharita of Dandin (7th
century AD). The Panchatantra and Hitopadesha are collections of wit and wisdom
in the Indian style, teaching polity and proper conduct through animal fables
and aphorisms.
With a glorious life of over 3000 years, Sanskrit continues to be
a living language even today, bobbing up during Hindu ceremonies when mantras
(ritual verses) are chanted. And though restricted, it’s still a medium of
literary expression, but ‘great works’ have long stopped being written.
Rabindranath Tagore
Born: May 7, 1861
Died: August 7, 1941
Achievements: Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to became
Nobel laureate when he won Nobel Prize for his collection of poems, Gitanjali,
in 1913; awarded knighthood by the British King George V; established
Viswabharati University; two songs from his Rabindrasangit canon are now the
national anthems of India and Bangladesh
Rabindranath Tagore was an icon of Indian
culture. He was a poet, philosopher, musician, writer, and educationist.
Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to became Nobel laureate when he won
Nobel Prize for his collection of poems, Gitanjali, in 1913. He was popularly
called as Gurudev and his songs were popularly known as Rabindrasangeet. Two
songs from his Rabindrasangit canon are now the national anthems of India and
Bangladesh: the Jana Gana Mana and the Amar Shonar Bangla.
Rabindranath Tagore
was born on May 7, 1861 in a wealthy Brahmin family in Calcutta. He was the
ninth son of Debendranath and Sarada Devi. His grandfather Dwarkanath Tagore
was a rich landlord and social reformer. Rabindra Nath Tagore had his initial
education in Oriental Seminary School. But he did not like the conventional
education and started studying at home under several teachers. After undergoing
his upanayan (coming-of-age) rite at the age of eleven, Tagore and his father
left Calcutta in 1873 to tour India for several months, visiting his father's
Santiniketan estate and Amritsar before reaching the Himalayan hill station of
Dalhousie. There, Tagore read biographies, studied history, astronomy, modern
science, and Sanskrit, and examined the classical poetry of Kalidasa.
HEBREW LITERATURE
The range of pre-modern, secular
Hebrew literature is limited. From the late biblical period on, Hebrew was not a spoken language, and
it was used primarily in religious contexts. An exception to this rule was the
Hebrew literature that flourished in Spain, Provence, and Italy between the
10th and 14th centuries. Poets such as Samuel HaNagid, Judah HaLevi, and Immanuel of Rome wrote secular
verse in addition to their many religious and liturgical poems. Prose fiction
was much less common, though Abraham ben Samuel ha-Levi ibn Hasdai's Ben
ha-Melek ve-ha-Nazir--a work based on an Arabic version of a classic Indian
story about the life of Buddha--is one interesting example.
Modern Hebrew literature--though mostly didactic in
nature--began appearing in the late 18th century, in journals affiliated with
the Haskalah or Jewish enlightenment.
However, in places where the Haskalah was most
"successful"--like Germany--assimilation was rampant, and Hebrew
writing virtually disappeared. Indeed, the only people suited to develop Hebrew
literature were those who had learned the language through traditional Torah study, men who had spent time inyeshivot or
seminaries. These figures were overwhelmingly situated in Eastern Europe, and
thus, modern Hebrew literature was born in cities like Vilna, Warsaw, and
Odessa.
From the beginning, the prospects
for modern Hebrew literature--particularly prose--were bleak. Could a non-spoken language reflect communal experiences?
There were logistical problems as well. The first writers of modern Hebrew literature
primarily used biblical Hebrew, but biblical Hebrew was not suited to modern
literary needs. Its vocabulary was archaic and its syntax clumsy. Shalom Yakov
Abramowitz--better known by the name of his famous protagonist Mendele Mokher Seforim (Mendele the Book
Seller)--took monumental steps in trying to solve these problems. Instead of
restricting himself to biblical Hebrew, Seforim relied heavily on the Hebrew
of rabbinic literature, particularly the Mishnah(redacted c. 200 CE). Rabbinic
literature discusses the minutiae of everyday life, and thus it provided him
with an extensive lexicon.
The end of the 19th century saw the
emergence of the first masters of Hebrew literature: Seforim, Yoseph Hayim
Brenner, the poets Hayim Nahman Bialik and Saul
Tchernichovsky, the more experimental writer Uri Nissan Gnessin, and the
fantastical Shmuel Yosef Agnon. At the same time, Zionism was advancing its dream of a
new Hebrew culture in Palestine with thedeveloping modern Hebrew language at its core, and these writers
received encouragement and inspiration from this movement.
The first wave of Hebrew literature written in Palestine was
heavily Zionistic. The poets of this time, such as
Avraham Shlonsky, Yitzhak Lamdan, and U.Z. Greenberg, wrote about the Jewish
pioneers and their relationship to the land of Israel. This ideological writing
continued into the early years of the State. Novelists such as Moshe Shamir
wrote realist fiction about the struggles and triumphs of the Sabra, the new
Jew.
The so-called New Wave of Israeli fiction began in the late 1950s.
Writers such as Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, and Aharon Appelfeld, drifted from
the realist, Zionist tradition of early Israeli literature. They were heavily
influenced by the surrealism of writers like Agnon and Franz Kafka. They also began to question many
of the nationalistic leanings of the Generation of 1948, as the earlier writers
were known (1948 being the year of Israeli independence). Tired from the War of Independence, the Sinai campaign, and ultimately the wars of 1967
and 1973, they voiced their concerns about
Zionism and Israel's attitude toward its Arab neighbors.
Hebrew literature has continued to
build upon surrealist and experimental trends. David Grossman's See Under: Love (1986) is perhaps the greatest
Israeli novel to be written in recent decades. Grossman's novel is made up of
four long chapters, each written in a different style. Though Amalia
Kahana-Carmon was one of the most important writers of the New Wave, fiction by
Israeli women truly flourished in 1980s and 1990s with writers such as Yehudit
Katzir and Orly Castel-Bloom. Israeli literature has also taken a multicultural
turn of late. Key to the Garden: New Israeli
Writing, a
volume edited by Ammiel Alcalay and published in 1996, brings together
literature written by Israelis from Levant, Iran, India, and the Arab world.
JAPANESE LITERATURE
Early Japanese literature
was heavily influenced by Shamanism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The early
literature, which began as an oral tradition, depicted a love of nature and man
and held that man was a part of nature. Good was rewarded and evil was punished
and values like loyalty to the King, filial piety, respect for one's elders,
true friendship and chastity were emphasized.
Cast
no dirt into the well that gives you water. Even if the sky falls on you, there
is a hole that you can escape from. The deeper the waters are, the more still
they run. A turtle travels only when it sticks its neck out. Even a fish
wouldn't get into trouble if it kept its mouth shut.
Aikido
,
a strictly Japanese martial art, embodies the three concepts that comprise its
name: Ai, meaning harmony; Ki, meaning the spirit, or source of energy; and Do,
meaning the "Way." Together they signify the way in which one can
attain harmony with one's spirit. Aikido has deep religious undertones, which
make it a way of life. In the words of its founder, Aikido is "the way of
the love of mankind."
No one knows exactly where the Japanese came from or who they
are. It is believed that the humanoid - human-like creatures - appeared about
two and half million years ago and that the humans as we know today, homo
sapiens sapiens, came into being some 35,000 years ago. Although the oldest
known writings - written language - date back only 5,000 years at best, we can
'read' our history by studying fossils, our DNA, geological data, cosmological
data, our language, and so on, and from these records, we can determine the
origin, or rather the prehistoric history, of theJapanese race.
Japanese
are
classified as the Mongoloid (the 'yellow' race) along with Chinese, Korean, Native
Americans, Mongols, Eskimos, and so on. The Yellow race makes up 33%
of the world population. The Caucasoid (the "white" race), including
the Australian aborigines, Arabs,
Indians, Polynesians, and so on, accounts for 59% of the world population,
while the Negroid (the 'black'
race) accounts for only 8%. It is believed the Negroid and Caucasoid
are more closely related than the Mongoloid, which gave rise to the regionalism
hypothesis whereby the Mongoloid has evolved from homo erectus while the
Negroid and the Caucasoid have evolved from a common ancestor homo antecessor.
The character 'Yi', as shown above, was originally meant for barbarians in the
east, but later expanded to be more an inclusive word to mean aliens. The big
Japanese school of thought, touched on in prehistory section, claimed that the
Japanese were
true descendants of the Dongyi [Dong-yi] people. Hence, the identities of Japanese had
changed dramatically during the course of history. As one reader speculated,
"modern-day Japanese" might very well
have "appropriated their (Dongyi) history and myths". Charcoal
remains of 2000-year-old rice in western Japan pointed to China's Yantze Delta
as the origin. DNA studies conducted on human remains excavated in Shandong Peninsula
suggested southern and northern points of origin for Jormon and Yayoi Japanese.
On basis of various historical records and modern technology analysis, I would
speculate that early Japanese culture was very much
connected with eastern China as a result of nascent human migration from south
to north and ii) that Tungusic invasions from Manchuria gradually overtook the
early Continental traits. In both cases, Tungusic or continental, Japaneses
shared inseparable relations with the Chinese.
AMERICAN LITERATURE
Is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry
of the United States and Theater
in the United States. During
its early history, America was a series of British colonies on the eastern
coast of the present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition
begins as linked to the broader tradition of English
literature. However, unique
American characteristics and the breadth of its production usually now cause it
to be considered a separate path and tradition.
First American Novel
It was in
the late 18th and early 19th centuries that the nation’s first novels were
published. These fictions were too lengthy to be printed as manuscript or public
reading. Publishers took a chance on these works in hopes they would become
steady sellers and need to be reprinted. This was a good bet as literacy rates
soared in this period among both men and women. The first American novel is William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy published in 1791. It
depicts a tragic love story between siblings who fell in love without knowing
they were related. This epistolary novel belongs to the Sentimental novel
tradition, as do the two following.
In the next
decade important women writers also published novels. Susanna Rowson is best known
for her novel, Charlotte: A
Tale of Truth, published in London in 1791. In 1794 the novel was reissued in
Philadelphia under the title, Charlotte Temple. Charlotte Temple is a seduction tale, written in the third person, which
warns against listening to the voice of love and counsels resistance. In
addition to this best selling novel, she wrote nine novels, six theatrical
works, two collections of poetry, six textbooks, and countless songs.Reaching
more than a million and a half readers over a century and a half, Charlotte Temple was the biggest seller of the 19th
century before Stowe’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin. Although Rowson
was extremely popular in her time and is often acknowledged in accounts of the
development of the early American novel, Charlotte
Temple is often criticized as
a sentimental novel of seduction.
Hannah
Webster Foster’s The Coquette:
Or, the History of Eliza Wharton was
published in 1797 and was also extremely popular.Told from Foster’s point of
view and based on the real life of Eliza Whitman, this epistolary novel is
about a woman who is seduced and abandoned. Eliza is a "coquette" who
is courted by two very different men: a clergyman who offers her the comfort
and regularity of domestic life, and a noted libertine. She fails to choose
between them and finds herself single when both men get married. She eventually
yields to the artful libertine and gives birth to an illegitimate stillborn
child at an inn. The Coquette is praised for its demonstration of
this era’s contradictory ideals of womanhood.Both The Coquette and Charlotte
Temple are novels that treat
the right of women to live as equals as the new democratic experiment. These
novels are of the Sentimental genre, characterized by overindulgence in
emotion, an invitation to listen to the voice of reason against misleading
passions, as well as an optimistic overemphasis on the essential goodness of
humanity. Sentimentalism is often thought to be a reaction against the
Calvinistic belief in the depravity of human nature. While many of these novels were
popular, the economic infrastructure of the time did not allow these writers to
make a living through their writing alone.
The first
author to be able to support himself through the income generated by his
publications alone was Washington Irving. He
completed his first major book in 1809 entitled A History of New-York from the
Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty.Charles Brockden Brown is another early American novelist, publishing Wieland in 1798, Ormond in 1799, and Edgar Huntly in 1799.
These
novels are of the Gothic genre. Of the Picturesque genre, Hugh Henry Brackenridge published Modern
Chivalry in 1792-1815; Tabitha Gilman Tenney wrote Female
Quixotism: Exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventure of
Dorcasina Sheldon in 1801;
Charlotte Lennox wrote The
Female Quixote in 1752, and
Royall Tyler wrote The
Algerine Captive in 1797.
Other
notable authors include William Gilmore Simms, who wrote Martin
Faber in 1833, Guy Rivers in 1834, and The Yemassee in 1835. Lydia Maria Child wrote Hobomokin 1824 and The Rebels in 1825. John Neal wrote Logan, A Family History in 1822, Rachel Dyer in 1828, and The Down-Eaters in 1833. Catherine Maria Sedgwick wrote A
New England Tale in 1822, Redwood in 1824, Hope Leslie in 1827, and The Linwoods in 1835. James Kirke Paulding wrote The
Lion of the West in 1830, The Dutchman’s Fireside in 1831, and Westward Ho! in 1832. Robert Montgomery Bird wrote Calavar in 1834 Niguel Miller and Tacoya
Hughes and Nick of the Woods in 1837. James Fenimore Cooper was also a notable author best known for his novel, The Last of the Mohicans written in 1826.
-THE END-
,
this is a week long celebration in honor of the Patron Saint Sto. Nino,
which culminates on the 3rd Sunday of January. It is the ultimate
jubilating, titillating, stimulating, riotous, and frenetic aboriginal
street dancing to the early primitive tempo and pulse of drums, participated
in by different tribes in their full battle regalia as they crowd the
principal streets of Kalibo rejoicing breathlessly to their religious vows.
,
this is a week long celebration in honor of the Patron Saint Sto. Nino,
which culminates on the 3rd Sunday of January. It is the ultimate
jubilating, titillating, stimulating, riotous, and frenetic aboriginal
street dancing to the early primitive tempo and pulse of drums, participated
in by different tribes in their full battle regalia as they crowd the
principal streets of Kalibo rejoicing breathlessly to their religious vows.
