Friday, October 30, 2015
José Valverde at Amazon (23)
José Valverde at
Amazon (23)
WHAT’VE YOU DONE, HARRY?
QU’AS-TU FAIT, HARRY ?
A BILINGUAL EDITION IN OUR FOUNDING PAST
José VALVERDE, translation Jacques
COULARDEAU
Even when fully written a play is still and always
remains a project. Only its performance after working with the actors during
the rehearsals brings out the proper music with its tempos and its colors,
because for me theater is first of all a musical genre, a concerto whose
instruments, the actors, are not defined beforehand. This assertion might
surprise those who will note the play is very realistically inspired by
unluckily real events. And nothing is final? Actors change but audiences do
too, and the weather outside as seen in our inner time. A play only exists
during the short length of time of the performance. Only those who would try to
produce this “dramatic project”, the director and the actors could give a
temporarily more final version of it with or without my active support. Another
version exists in French with four extra characters, historical characters who
are here referred to without being present (Please ask for it if interested).
The play takes place in
the Oval Office at the White House, Washington, on August 6, 1945, that is on
the day of the dropping of the first atom bomb on Japan. The names and official
functions of the main characters are real but their declarations are entirely
fictitious as imagined by the author, though quite believable. Major Patricia
Hinsmith is entirely fictional.
La
pièce se déroule dans le salon ovale de la Maison Blanche à Washington le 6
Août 1945, c'est-à-dire le jour du lancement de la première bombe atomique sur
le Japon. Elle commence au moment de l’envol du B29 depuis l’ile américaine de
Tinian avec la bombe dans sa soute. Les
noms et les fonctions officielles des principaux personnages sont authentiques
mais leurs paroles sont de la pure imagination de l’auteur tout en étant
vraisemblables. Le Major HINSMITH est imaginaire. Les évènements et les
discussions qui ont eu lieu à la Maison Blanche sont à peu près connus mais ils
se sont déroulés pendant au moins une semaine. J’ai souhaité contracté le
temps, le lieu et l’action. De manière à donner aux évènements relatés
authentiques la dimension d’une tragédie classique qui implique unité de lieu,
unité de temps, unité d’action. Il s’agit de théâtre !
Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; Amazon.fr; and all other Amazon stores.
KDP Edition
File Size: 1030
KB
Print Length: 129
pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Editions
La Dondaine; 1st edition (July 10, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon
Digital Services, Inc.
Language: French and English
ASIN: B00LPP3C2M
PRICE: US$10.05, EUR 7.39, ¥ 995, IndR 375.00, …
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:31 PM
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Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Arrêtons les barbares qui veulent que les auteurs crèvent la dalle ouverte comme aux temps romantiques
LETTRE OUVERTE DES
AUTEURS EUROPÉENS DU LIVRE
LETTRE
OUVERTE DES AUTEURS EUROPÉENS DU LIVRE AUX INSTANCES EUROPÉENNES
(22 octobre 2015)
Protégez
les auteurs, préservez le droit d’auteur !
Disons-le franchement : nous, les auteurs du livre, ne comprenons pas
votre insistance à vouloir à tout prix « réformer » le droit d’auteur
en Europe.
La Commission européenne se trompe de cible quand elle s’en prend au droit
d’auteur pour favoriser l’émergence d’un « marché unique numérique »,
alors que le droit d’auteur est la condition sine qua non de la création des œuvres.
L’affaiblir, ce serait tarir la source du marché du livre numérique avant même
qu’il ne prenne véritablement son essor. Un droit d’auteur affaibli, c’est une
littérature appauvrie.
Le droit d’auteur n’est pas un obstacle à la circulation des œuvres. La
cession de nos droits permet à nos œuvres d’être diffusées dans tous les pays
et traduites dans toutes les langues. S’il existe des freins à la diffusion,
ils sont économiques, technologiques, fiscaux, et c’est bien plutôt aux
monopoles, aux formats propriétaires, à la fraude fiscale, qu’il faut
s’attaquer !
Le Parlement européen, en adoptant une version largement amendée du rapport
de Julia Reda, a réaffirmé haut et fort l’importance de préserver le droit
d’auteur et le fragile équilibre économique des filières de la création. Hélas,
dans le même temps, il a imprudemment laissé la porte ouverte à de nombreuses
exceptions au droit d’auteur – des exceptions qui pourraient être créées,
élargies, rendues obligatoires, harmonisées par la Commission, au mépris
parfois des solutions nationales qui ont déjà permis de répondre aux besoins
des lecteurs et des autres utilisateurs.
En quoi la multiplication des exceptions au droit d’auteur
favorisera-t-elle la création ? À partir de combien d’exceptions (archivage,
prêt numérique, enseignement, recherche, fouille de texte et de données, œuvres
transformatives, œuvres indisponibles, œuvres orphelines…), l’exception
devient-elle la règle et le droit d’auteur l’exception ?
Parce qu’il nous confère des droits économiques et un droit moral sur notre
œuvre, le droit d’auteur est essentiel pour nous.
Il est le socle sur lequel s’est bâtie notre littérature européenne ;
il est source de richesse économique pour nos pays et, par là même, source
d’emplois ; il est la garantie du financement de la création et de la
pérennité de l’ensemble de la chaîne du livre ; il est le fondement de nos
rémunérations. En nous permettant de récolter les fruits de notre travail, il
garantit notre liberté et notre indépendance. Nous ne voulons ni revenir au
temps du mécénat, ni vivre d’éventuelles subventions publiques, mais bien de
l’exploitation de nos œuvres. Ecrire est un métier, ce n’est pas un
passe-temps.
Le droit d’auteur a permis la démocratisation du livre au cours des siècles
derniers, et c’est lui encore qui, demain, permettra le développement de la
création numérique et sa diffusion auprès du plus grand nombre. Hérité du
passé, le droit d’auteur est un outil moderne, compatible avec l’utilisation
des nouvelles technologies.
Il faut cesser d’opposer les auteurs aux lecteurs. La littérature n’existerait
pas sans les premiers, elle n’a pas de sens sans les seconds. Les auteurs sont
foncièrement et résolument ouverts aux changements et aux évolutions du monde
dans lequel ils vivent. Ils défendent plus haut et plus fort que n’importe qui
le droit à la liberté d’opinion, à la liberté d’expression et à la liberté de
création. Ils sont favorables au partage des idées et du savoir, c’est leur
raison d’être. Ils sont lecteurs avant d’être auteurs.
Nous, auteurs du livre européens, demandons à l’Europe de renoncer à
étendre le périmètre des exceptions au droit d’auteur ou à les multiplier.
L’assurance d’une quelconque « compensation » ne saurait remplacer
les revenus tirés de l’exploitation commerciale des œuvres, alors même que les
auteurs sont déjà victimes d’une précarité matérielle croissante. Nous
demandons à l’Europe de lutter contre la tentation d'un illusoire « tout
gratuit », dont les seuls bénéficiaires seront les grandes plates-formes
de diffusion et autres fournisseurs de contenus. Nous lui demandons de nous
aider à obtenir un meilleur partage de la valeur sur le livre, notamment dans
l'univers numérique, d’interdire les clauses abusives dans les contrats et de
combattre efficacement le piratage de nos œuvres.
La liberté des créateurs et la vitalité de la culture européenne dépendent
aussi de vous.
Premiers signataires :
Lidia Jorge, Valentine Goby, Yannis Kiourtsakis, Pierre Lemaitre, Erri de Luca,
Robert Mc Liam Wilson, Eirikur Örn Norddahl, Marie Sellier
Signataire 1772
|
#38 Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Ma contribution, Signataire
#1772
2015-10-28 17:08
Il est nécessaire de
cesser de jouer au tout gratuit. Tous les spécialistes de l'économie
numérique actuelle signalent l'importance de bien reconnaître la valeur
ajoutée incorporée dans tout "produit" raison de plus une œuvre, et
surtout de voir que cette valeur ajoutée doit intégrer la propriété
intellectuelle comme une dimension essentielle. Voire par exemple l'ouvrage
collectif de 2015 "Reinventing the Company in the Digital Age"
diffusé par Open Mind et téléchargeable, justement gratuitement, bien
qu'aussi achetable chez tous les vendeurs en version papier.
En fait au niveau
économique la distribution de services par abonnement forfaitaire (téléphone,
accès internet, et maintenant avec les tablettes et autres ordinateurs
transportables les logiciels de base, le calcul des industriels est bien que
cette forme de paiement en droit d'utilisation limité dans le temps mais
renouvelable est bien plus profitable que la vente du produit. Il y a des
milliers d'exemples, de toutes les boîtes Livebox, freebox et les autres, à
l'accès à la presse par abonnement électronique.
Mais jamais il n'est
question de gratuité.
La question qui se pose
alors pour les auteurs est que la valeur ajoutée portée par leurs œuvres soit
reconnue et que sa rémunération soit à la fois proportionnelle à la diffusion
et recalculée en fonction des coûts de production et de distribution/circulation
réduits dans des proportions monumentales, et même gigantesques.
Dr
Jacques Coulardeau
,
|
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:50 PM
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Monday, October 26, 2015
Qui se ressemblent trop ennuient
FRANCESCO-CAVALLI-AMORE-INNAMORATO
- 2015-10-26
Vous ne serez pas vraiment déçu par le CD. Deux sopranos extrêmement
proches l’une de l’autre et une suite d’arias d’un compositeur principal, Francesco Cavalli et quatre pièces
de deux compositeurs supplémentaires.
Les voix sont parfaites mais tellement semblables qu’on ne les distingue
plus et les arias étant coupés de leur contexte musical et dramatique
apparaissent comme des exercices plus qu’ayant une dynamique qui les dépasse.
Mais il n’y a aucune aspérité à laquelle se rattacher pour avoir une quelconque
dynamique.
Si vous aimez les arias de sopranos totalement coupés de leur contexte vous
serez très satisfaits car ici on touche à la perfection. On n’en approche pas.
On l’atteint. Si vous préférez le dramatique, la dynamique tragique ou même
amoureuse des opéras vous serez frustrés. Si vous aimez la diversité des voix
vous serez frustrés à nouveau.
Mon opinion est donc mitigée.
Par contre le DVD qui atteint tout autant la perfection et qui est presque
deux fois aussi long donne une rétrospective du travail de L’Arpeggiata depuis
15 ans. Là vous n’avez pas plus de construction dramatique et de dynamisme
tragique puisque ce sont à nouveau des arias qui se succèdent. Mais vous avez deux
éléments qui sortent avec fureur et puissance ;
D’une part la variété des voix car dans cette rétrospective de nombreuses
voix sont associées, mises les unes après les autres. Je regretterai cependant que
le luxueux livret n’en donne pas la liste. Mais soit dit en passant on a la
photo des musiciens et des deux sopranos, mais ces photos ne sont pas
identifiées : c’est comme un album de photos de famille Pour revenir au
DVD on a tout au plus la liste des compositeurs et des titres, mais pas des
chanteurs. Cela est frustrant car c’est bien gentil de donner ces indications
sur l’écran mais si on veut simplement savoir, garder en mémoire qui chante
quoi, il faut prendre des notes comme un journaliste au concert.
En plus, et là ce travail devient fascinant les genres sont absolument
antagonistes, différents, conflictuant de musique traditionnelle à musique
d’opéra, les genres, les tons, les colorations, les tempos, les rendus en un
mot sont tous si différents que c’est un vrai enchantement même si les pièces
isolées perdent leur dimension dramatique. Cela crée une dynamique qui ne
montre pas vraiment le progrès de la formation car il y a longtemps qu’ils ont
atteint la perfection et que leur progrès est dans l’ouverture à de nouveaux
genres, de nouveaux styles. Et là le DVD, en images en plus, est de loin
époustouflant.
Mais il semble surprenant que ce soit le DVD de bonus qui emporte mon
enthousiasme, même si j’ai la plupart de ces enregistrements en CD. Il y a
entre autres Jaroussky qui fait la fête en Amérique en ce moment, enfin presque
puisqu’il tourne à Toulouse « Niobe, Regina di Teba » d'Agostino Steffani créé au Festival de Musique Ancienne de
Boston il y a déjà quelque temps.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 9:15 AM
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Sunday, October 25, 2015
Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (22)
A CONTRADICTORY BACKDROP FOR C.S. LEWIS
MARTYRDOM VERSUS
EUGENISM
Dr Jacques
COULARDEAU
UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LILLE
FACULTÉ DES LETTRES ET DES SCIENCES HUMAINES
Colloque C.S. LEWIS - 2-3
juin 2011
C.S. LEWIS & THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA
BBC REWRITING AND ADAPTATIONS
RADIO AND TV
And other films
Dr Jacques
COULARDEAU
All Amazon reviews of CS
Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles
and various adaptations for
TV and the cinema
A CONTRADICTORY BACKDROP FOR
C.S. LEWIS
MARTYRDOM VERSUS EUGENISM
I would like to say from the very start that I will only
consider The Chronicles of Narnia
in their seven volumes (1950-1956), and the four BBC adaptations. So I will not
consider the various cinema adaptations and the other works by C.S. Lewis
(1898-1963).The second thing I want to be
very clear about is that I am not going to psychoanalyze neither the
author nor The Chronicles.
It would be interesting to do so from a certain point of view. This is not mine
here.
I will concentrate on the political and ideological model that can
be found in The Chronicles. But I want to be clear
about one thing before starting. For me children’s literature is just as mature
as any other form and type of literature and it deserves to be analyzed exactly
the same way as any other fiction. We do not have to suspend our disbelief but
as C.S. Lewis says himself: “You cannot know, you can only believe or not.”
And I have chosen to believe what C.S. Lewis tells us, no matter how
creative and imaginative it may be. I will
start with the background I have chosen, i.e. T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) and H.G.
Wells(1866-1946).T.S. Eliot,
particularly in his play Murder in the Cathedral (1935) deals with the
question of martyrdom when a church official is confronted to an attempt
at limiting the church’s freedom from the state or any other institution.
This vision of martyrdom became a real backdrop for C.S. Lewis because of the play at the end of the 1930s in
the Canterbury Festival, then the film at the beginning of the 1950s and
finally the opera by Pizzetti in Italian and in German (for Karajan) at the beginning
of the 1960s, too late for The Chronicles.
H.G. Wells defends a eugenic vision of the
world and he is a backdrop for C.S. Lewis because of the vast and lasting success of his early novels like The Time Machine (1895) or The Invisible Man (1897) at the end of
the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century and
because of his commitment to eugenics all his life in many writings, in film
with his 1936 Things to Come by Alexander
Korda and William Cameron Menzies in which he envisaged the
end of the world we know by a universal war in 1940 and the rebuilding of a
truly human society.
The Time
Machine was
adapted a first time by George Pal in 1960, an adaptation that may have come
across to C.S. Lewis though too late for The Chronicles. Of course the second
adaptation by Simon Wells in 2002 does not
have to be considered, though the great-grandson of the author corrects part of
the eugenics of his great-grandfather.
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:13 PM
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Cry on John Dowland, Cry on that English Renaissance, death in the egg!
DAMIEN GUILLON – ERIC BELLOCQ – JOHN DOWLAND – LOVE SONGS –
2009
This field of love songs,
madrigals or other Renaissance forms in England is an enormous well arrayed
and furnished jungle of archives and music pieces that have been explored all
around and all along. The English, thanks to the university choirs have been
able to continue with the century-old tradition of all male choirs and thus to
cultivate and develop countertenors of all sorts since no women could take part
and children were out at this level. The most famous English countertenor is
Alfred Deller in the second half of the 20th century. I remember
hearing him in concert in 1964 or 65
in Bordeaux.
Another world opened up then. And since then I had been opened by this rare new
discovery.
Damien Guillon is the perfect
countertenor for these songs that were never performed by castratos, at least
they did not have to be since the countertenor tradition was very strong with
Purcell himself one century later being a countertenor. Thanks god at times
humanity is able to keep some old traditions that are kept not because they are
traditions but because they are good, unforgettable, beautiful.
Shakespeare used and overused
such voices since he could not have women on the stage. But the songs chosen
here correspond very well to the main tradition of the 16th and 17th
centuries in England.
The six wives of Henry VIII, the successive changes from Catholicism to
Anglicanism then back to Catholicism and finally back to Anglicanism soon to be
replaced by Puritanism to finally go back to clean and clear Anglicanism with
the Glorious Revolution that instated though the full ban for a while of all
things and people Catholic. The secret passages in the great halls, mansions
and family seats of the nobility were far from being forgotten and made useless
to hide the clandestine catholic priests or the catholic members of the
families. Today these secret passages are overused in series and films.
The tone of the songs here that
are from more than one composer as announced on the sleeves are all very languorous
and sad as if in that time love was always associated to drama and tragedy. It
is true the theater of the time was full of such sad events, the killing and
death of all members of all these doomed love affairs. Think of Ophelia and
Juliet and their male lovers. That’s a choice but we must keep in mind that
madrigals and other pieces that were not destined to go on a stage could be
sung by women and thus have lighter themes, more danceful, joyful, pleasureful.
But keep in mind there were then no women’s universities and women were hardly
educated beyond basics and their early teenage. Look at Shakespeare again.
Juliet was supposed to be married at fourteen at the latest and her education
is never alluded to whereas Romeo and Mercutio, Tybalt and all the boys were
officially students of some type or other.
Damien Guillon doubles up this
very sad music of his, these songs of languor and unrequitedness with Eric
Bellocq’s luth music that is just a lugubrious, funeral, tenebrous descent into
the hell of all scales. It is marvelous, beautiful but we are dealing here with
the beauty of introspective love that expects and waits for the coming of the
main lover of all men, death of course, and yet that’s so ambiguous since Death
is a male in the English and Germanic tradition. In other words Death, the
lover of all men, is a castrating lover that leaves these men impotent, frigid,
dead in one word.
The full unity of the music of
this CD makes it exceptional. It is a dirge, a mortal and in some way morbid
descent to the underworld of love, to the seventh hell of love’s pains and
pangs. And you have to enjoy all that torture and suffering because that’s part
of man’s fate, I mean the fate of all males, to suffer for the love they experience
for the lady they will never be able to approach, touch, kiss or even look at
except at a vast distance. I feel that in these troubled centuries in England the
famous courteous love of the Middle Ages in the Arthurian tradition has turned
somewhat sour and has become a Tenebrae à la Charpentier. “I sing, Fie fie on
love, Fie fie on love, it is a foolish thing,” sings Damien Guillon in one of
the more vivacious songs “A shepherd in a shade”. Even the poor lover of Cynthia
can only tell that Cynthia is nothing but a nest for cuckoos, which leaves
little to the lover himself.
The question about that art has
to do with what is typical of England
since 1215 and the Magna Carta. In 1215, and that had been going on for a long
time in the form of a rivalry between nobility and church on one side and the
king on the other side. It is the fiorst document in Europe
that actually sets in writing some rights for some women and children,
precisely widows and orphans in noble families. It is thus the beginning of a
rather long quest and conquest of freedom for women and Elizabeth I played an
enormous role along that long line, though the Stuarts and the Puritans will
bring or try to bring many things down.
A perfect rendition of this
period when the Canterbury Tales were forgotten and the sad side of things of
love or anything else were cultivated. We seem to forget that in Shakespeare
you always have some farcical at times farcical-looking scenes in the most
tragic and dramatic situations, but at the same time we always had some tragic
or tragic-looking scenes in the most farcical of all comedies. Ben Jonson as
for that is a genius, how he brings the tragedy of Puritanism and of man’s
vanity in simple joyful and lustful fests like “Bartholomew Fair” or “The Silent
Woman,” the former with the hanging and quartering of some condemned bloke on
the day before the Fair on the same ground, in the middle of the fair to start
afterwards, and the latter with the pangs and dangers of gender orientation for
the great pleasure of the audience and the full chastisement of the vain
husband.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 3:14 AM
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Saturday, October 24, 2015
Countertenors are superb in J.S. Bach
JOHANN SEBASTIAN
BACH – CAMIEN GUILLON – LE BANQUET CÉLESTE – STRASBOURG 2011
We will never end discovering the
phenomenal possibilities of high-pitched male voices, be they countertenors,
altos or male sopranos. This CD is typical at that level. Damien Guillon has
the range of a mezzo soprano but with the male harmonics and he is easy and
sounds full and warm in the lower range just as much as in the higher range,
which I have always found kind of problematic with a female mezzo soprano.
But a countertenor has an
extraordinary expressivity because he is a man and he can give to his voice
some tones a woman wouldn’t be able to reach. In Cantata BMW 170 it is typical
how the sadness of the sinner, the resignation and yet the desire to get over
that fate of being a sinner like all men are trying to emerge from some kind of
bleak tone meaning there might be no hope, no way out and yet in the end it
reaches some faith, some hope in Jesus and in Jesus’ promise that he will be
forgiven if he strives and tries hard to get over his sins. Damien Guillon very
easily expresses this double dimension from resignation in the absence or
impossibility of hope, and yet to that hope he finds in Jesus, in his faith, in
his conviction that he will be saved in spite of being a human sinner. There is
in this cantata such a feeling that after all we can only strive and have the
best life we can but it is all in Jesus and in how we will be judged or deemed.
There is nothing we can do about the end. Just resignation, striving and faith
and there might be a way out. Damien Guillon just has the voice for this way of
thinking and seeing life, a very protestant way indeed. Damien Guillon can even
be poignant about it from time to time.
In Cantata BMW 35 we have a new
chapter of that triple dilemma of man, both body and mind, confronted to God
and God’s predestination of humanity, since he knows everything that was, that
is and that will be, a God that reverberates in your soul. The opening Concerto
is so strongly optimistic that we are there in full communion with the heavens
and the angels of God. Dance we must, sing we must and believe we must. We are
confronted to perfection, and the three levels of the organ are just all
playing and singing in some kind of tempo unison. But the meaning of this
cantata is in one Greek word directly imported from Jesus’ Aramaic preaching.
“Ephphatha” he said, and “Be opened” he meant, the Greek form of an Aramaic word uttered by Christ when
healing the man who was deaf and dumb. « Mark 7: 33-35: 33 After he took him
aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he
spit and touched the man's tongue. 34 He looked up to
heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, ""Ephphatha!"" 35 At this, the
man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
» And this time the meaning is simple: faith is the belief that by letting God
pour his light in us we will be saved, we will be spared the suffering of
sinning; Deep hope, deep trust in God’s perfect creation and management of his
creation and thus of us. Amazing enough Damien Guillon with his male
countertenor voice expresses that feeling, that empathy with God, if we can
imagine having any empathy with God, as if it came from deep in us, from the
deepest and most somber side of our soul and mind. It is the pure child in us,
the virginal boy in us that is speaking through Damien Guillon’s voice. We can
only project ourselves in his voice, in his song, in his faith, in his belief
and we are in touch with Jesus and God. We are saved. We can go out in the
world and miracles will happen provided we remain opened by the call of Jesus.
The organ, a modern organ in Strasbourg’s Église
Réformée du Bouclier, is pure in sound and rich in many effects. It is played
in a modern building too a building that has no vault or domes, that has no
Romanesque or even gothic architecture. It is plain, undecorated, with a very
square volume with very vertical and horizontal lines, what I could call a
perpendicular space. The sound of the organ is thus pure and clear but it has
no resonance coming from the building. That makes the sound nearly cold,
distant but it is very effective when three registers are competing to lead the
whole piece. And I must say these organ pieces are perfect for it and Johann
Sebastian Bach was an expert on that kind of work. He has three pitch levels,
the lower pitch, the middle pitch and the higher pitch and in the Trio Sonata
in D minor we have that constant competition and the possible alliance of two levels
against the third one. But what more Bach plays on the tempos of the three
registers. The lower one is slower, the middle one is just peaceful and quiet
and the top one has the tendency to be fast and even energetically galloping or
flying and dancing at high speed to some birdlike singing or music. This triple
conversation is interesting indeed. Does it have a meaning? I am not sure but
it does evoke emotions in the ears and heart of the listener. Each register
moves in us some feelings and empathy as if we could hear the deep voice of our
body, the serious voice of our mind and the mesmerizingly fast voices of our
soul and angels. The body, the mind and heavens all in the same composition at
the same time! This organ music is the full voice of man in its three
dimensions and the result is never sure, never won before being fought for,
strived for, gained with Jesus’ help and the conviction that we can be saved if
we believe. I must say Maude Gratton, the organist, is quite convincingly able
to play on these three levels, three voices, three beings in us and in the
organ.
In Fantasia and Fugue in G minor
the organ starts its triple game again and this time the three registers do not
really try to find some unison. They are really trying to compete generally two
against one, most of the time the lower register and the higher register are
uniting against the middle one that fights quite hard to take over and take
off. The music is absolutely beautiful but we have to understand it had a
spiritual meaning for Johann Sebastian Bach, a spiritual meaning we maybe do
not share any more. And yet let yourself be opened by this music to the deep
spirituality in it and you will feel deep in you some pangs of body impulses
with the lower register, some reasonable and sensible mental language telling
you what you must do, what you must pacify in you, your impulses, to just have
a human life, and yet the higher register will come back and will try to get
you up into the air, into the sky, to heavens, with angels and miracles if you
can follow their tempo and their speed. High up in these heavens you have the
trance of Jesus revisited and fully received because you have been opened. And
then you feel your impulses fighting to take over, your mind fighting to
control them and your soul if you want fighting to get you off the ground, to
get you in full supernatural meditation.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 3:19 PM
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Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (42)
TIM BURTON – SEVENTEEN FILMS
A VOYAGE TO EREWHYNA INSTEAD OF EREWHON
Dr Jacques Coulardeau
Abstract:
The only question we may ask when watching so many
films by one film maker covering a thirty year period is about the existential
meaning of the whole set.
First let me tell you I do not give a damn about the film maker’s personality
or personal data. That he had a bad or good youth with a father who was loving
or terrifying;, and a mother who was evanescent or over powering is of no
concern to me though we could say hat the virtual “author” of these films
obviously has an existential problematic relation with life and death.
He will, I guess, excuse his morbidity, his cultish liking of death, his
depressive black humor by saying he is a Halloween author. That would be short
indeed. That would neglect the audience. The public, and mostly children when
the films are not restricted or are Walt Disney films, are bombarded with
gruesome juicy corpses in any state of decay, with frightening scaring
traumatizing supernatural beings from the other side of life: vampires,
werewolves, ghosts, witches and so many other curse-throwers and curse-catchers
as if cursing your neighbors was nothing but a game of baseball.
But in the end does Tim Burton have a vision of society that could be explained
to anyone? I am afraid not. In the name of extreme black somber humor he
criticizes, vandalizes and victimizes anything and anyone supposedly sacred in
this society, except mind you anything really religious. In other words these
horror or suspense stories are the stories of a very faithful choirboy, or
choirgirl if they could have girls in that function, who has never been able to
take his robes down, probably because that is his only vestment, clothing and
he is nude and prudish underneath. In other words these stories, be they
morbid, humorous or simply gruesome, are nothing but the expression of his
total nudity under his superficial existential circumstantial diapers. He hides
behind such ugly stories and tries – at times fails – to make people laugh at
his funeral corpselike mind. [...]
Research Interests:
Discussion
Can
there be any sense in this farcical grotesque pastiche showered onto the
innocently perverse world? Tim Burton turns the whole world into a funeral
parlor. And even Alice
in Wonderland becomes under his fingers a story of death, of dying, of getting
their heads off not with laughter but with an axe. Doesn’t he know that such
obsessive references could become traumatic for some children who would
experience all that as a symbolical castration? In fact he knows and he must
think that these boys and girls who will lose their phalluses (because
even girls have phalluses according to Jacques Lacan) in contact with such
stories definitely deserve that loss because they have no stamina, no courage,
no daring crazy enterprising sense of adventure. If they do not like his
stories – must he think – let them get to C.S. Lewis instead of Lewis Carroll
Burton. So enjoy hunting the Snark in these pages and you might find a truffle
here and there if you have the nose for such nice black tubers, but are they
tubers really?
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:12 AM
0 comments
Friday, October 23, 2015
A remake of a copycat film
TIM BURTON – FRANKENWEENIE – 2012
This is an absolute pastiche
copied up from no matter how many films and books, you won’t be able to trace
them all from Stephen King to Mary Shelly, to you know whom better than I.
But it is a festive big laughing
competition against all basic beliefs of parents about the education of their
darling children, especially when they, the parents, are at work and the children
at home and the latter understood myriads
of years ago how to by-pass the “security” on the TV and computer. They are able
hours on top of hours to view all the nasty shows they can find and imagine.
For them parents science like
technology are dirty words and unbearable subjects that have to be kept away
from the children’s ears and from the dinner table, when there is a family dinner,
once every blue moon. For them parents a science fair, festival, competition,
fest or carnival only has one aim and goal: to learn how to be badder than bad
and produce both Viagra and ecstasy. You children know the type of pills your
parents or you parents are buying on the Internet. Is it from Amazon or from
Alibaba? Maybe only from the corner store, well the chap that is standing ,in
front of the corner store. How old is he by the way?
This farce is absolutely
successful and in black and white, or something close, which is better than you
could have imagine. Don’t you play with electricity, Benjamin Franklin would
say. You may burn your fingers and roast your tonsils. When I say your tonsils
you know what I mean.
Of course the film has no depth
whatsoever and does not pretend to have any. The only point is that it is funny
ah ah and nothing else. Enjoy it and play with death as if it were your
nightmare friend in the science class of your dear high school. And do not forget
the science teacher is necessarily a bomb maker, a heroin refiner, a mental
pervert, a serial killer and eventually a religious fundamentalist.
Have a good day with Walt Disney
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:12 PM
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Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (41)
THE MAYAS-LANGUAGE & DICTIONARY-QUAI
BRANLY MUSEUM & MUSIC
1. JOHN MONTGOMERY
– DICTIONARY OF MAYA HIEROGLYPHS – 2002 - SECOND PRINTING 2006
2. JOHN MONTGOMERY
– HOW TO READ MAYA HIEROGLYPHS – 2002
3.
MUSEE DU QUAI BRANLY –
MUSIQUES ET CHANTS – MAYAS – LES AMERINDIENS, PEUPLES MAYA, TOTOMAQUE, CORA –
MEXIQUE – FREMEAUX ASSOCIES, 2014
4. MUSÉE DU QUAI BRANLY – MAYAS, RÉVÉLATIONS D’UN TEMPS SANS
FIN – 2014
I am here finding
elements that can be connected to many other systems in the world, both
languages and rituals. Maya as a language is not an isolate. The point is that
the written system is so complex and the calendar calculations are so
complicated that we cannot consider they appeared like that, ready to be used
in about 1000 BCE and certainly not later.
These systems must have
required many millennia to be invented and refined, just like Mayan
architecture and Mayan technology capable of producing a durable material medium for their language and
stories.
It is the same thing
with corn that had to be completely genetically modified to become what we know
it is that CANNOT reproduce without a human hand to get the grains out of the
husk. And we could speak of their ritualistic beverages that are so complicated
that they look like some fine art perfume produced by today's chemical
laboratories.
I think here that the
Mayan culture, the Aztec culture, the Toltec culture, the Inca culture could
not have evolved from a population coming along with the Clovis migration. If
it took 5,000 years for the Sumerians to devise their writing system which is
child's play when compared to the Mayan system, I believe these Homo Sapiens
must have arrived in the Americas
before the Ice Age and certainly not late after it. To devise this writing
system when the language would have stabilized enough, not to speak of the
calendars, the Mayans must have needed at least 15,000 years, probably more.
Except of course if you
consider language is a gift from extraterrestrials or angels and gods, which is
not within my frame of mind.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:14 PM
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Maya is a key to the arrival of Homo Sapiens in the Americas: Nothing to do with Clovis
JOHN MONTGOMERY – DICTIONARY OF MAYA HIEROGLYPHS – 2002 - SECOND
PRINTING 2006
This is an indispensable tool if
you want to start penetrating the Maya language. Yet you will get very
frustrated because the list of T numbers is not full, because the simple
alphabetical order does not satisfy your curiosity and particularly if you re
using the dictionary intensively. Maya is using hieroglyphs as a writing
system. Some of these hieroglyphs are representing actual objects, people,
animals. They are real images standing thus for the names of those things,
animals or persons, a full word. Maya must have been at one time using a fully
and purely hieroglyphic writing system in which each word had its image. But it
is highly improbable it remained like that very long because a writing system
is always invented in a language that has been in existence for quite a while,
that has been stabilized in its oral use. Writing is a practice that in a way
ossifies a language and that language has to be already stable to accept to be
ossified.
When we compare the successive
states of this language in its written form we find out that Maya is mostly
advancing towards a syllabic writing system, meaning that the hieroglyphs
either were simplified or simple hieroglyphs were invented to stand for
syllables, and probably the first syllable of the words they were standing for.
This is a standard procedure even in alphabetical writing systems like
Phoenician, Greek, runic (Germanic) and Ogham (Celtic), and I guess many
others. This writing system is based on a syllabary and some syllables can be
reduced to one vowel like the “u” third person anaphoric or cataphoric personal
pronoun. And that is just what is missing in this dictionary: a systematic
listing of the hieroglyphs that represent single syllables used as prefix or
affix of any sort since the writing system can use an affix, before (prefix),
over (superfix), after (postfix) or under (subfix) the block that is then
generally called a glyph that can be a complex phrase containing several words,
or that can be the syllabic writing of one particular word. These affixes
should have been set in one section so that visually they could easily be scanned
to find the one you would be looking for. In this dictionary you cannot have
that overview of all affixes.
Such an overview is available in “
A Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs numbered by
J. Eric S. Thompson” (http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/thompson/index.html)
but under their T numbers only and not their phonetic equivalents. To find this
visual presentation under the phonetic equivalents we have to go to
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mayan.htm,
but this time you will only have the syllabary and that will not give you the
words and how they may be composed since phonetic writing is a little bit
tricky: a syllable starting with the last consonant of a word is added to the
other syllables to specify this final consonant and its vowel then is not
pronounced. A syllable consonant-vowel can be used to actually give the
inverted order vowel-consonant. The basic vowels can be syllables on their own.
And the most difficult element is that these syllables can be words of their
own with real meanings. This by the way might be a sign of an agglutinative
language, these affixes being derived from semantically meaningful lexical
units. We must also see that these previously meaningful semantic units may
have evolved into simple affixes that no longer have any semantic meaning
beyond their functional roles. Some of these affixes are yet meaningful like
“u” that refers to the third person and thus is a cataphoric or anaphoric
pronoun, since this “u” is used to mean a genitive of some sort
(possession or attribution) for the
following noun as well as the person (third singular) of the following verb, or
even at times the verbalizing 3
rd person pronoun in front of what is
generally considered as a preposition turning it into some kind of positioning
verbal copula. This seems to indicate the great autonomy of this affix and thus
to indicate this language is not agglutinative because this affix is not a
simple agglutinative functional affix but a semantic unit of its own that can
be used with various elements. It sounds a lot more like a synthetic language.
The
sections of this dictionary called indices, two bilingual ones English-Maya and
Spanish-Maya and one monolingual Maya only, will be great help for you but they
are only indices and not bilingual dictionaries: they only refer to what is in
the main section of the dictionary. You will find cacao, beans, corn (maize)
and (maybe) tobacco but not tomato or pumpkin/squash. The sacred plants of
American Indians were tobacco, corn, beans and squash, and tomato and many
other plants were Mexican by origin. Maybe these words have not been found yet
carved or written, but that’s what a dictionary should tell me and the non
mention of such words does not mean that they have not been found: they are
plainly not included in this dictionary.
Some of
the subject indices will be useful for numbers, days, verbs, etc, including
phonetic signs, in other words the affixes I was speaking of, though on a wider
basis, but not visually so that we cannot use this listing to decipher a glyph:
we have to get into the dictionary to look for the visual glyph corresponding
to the phonetic transcription.
The dictionary is also “old” for
Maya and it should integrate new elements every single year since Maya is in the
process of being deciphered and the dictionary was first published in 2002. But
then you would have to go to other resources like those you find on the
FAMSI.org site and particularly the 2012 “
Maya Hieroglyphics Study Guide Compiled by
Inga Calvin,” http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/calvin/glyph_guide.pdf.
This guide gives you a few tables of the five basic vowels crossed horizontally
with all the consonants set vertically. Then the words are presented collected
under semantic or syntactic sections like numbers, verbal inflectional endings,
various verbs in full verbal phrases at times corresponding to more than one
glyph, ergative pronouns, prepositions, warfare, animals, titles, etc. But this
time the T numbers are not given which is a shortcoming since these T numbers
are often used by other scholars.
This dictionary then is a useful
tool but it will make you lose some time because it will be hard for you to
remember the T number, phonetic value and visual glyph of every single affix or
semantic, syntactic and lexical element.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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This is a
dictionary and you cannot expect more than it proposes. It is organized in
alphabetical order but based on the phonetic transcriptions of the glyphs. Note
they use two phonetic transcriptions: Ch’olan and Yucatec.
The glottalized consonants (consonants followed by a glottal stop marked in the
transcription with an apostrophe) follow the non-glottalized consonants in the
alphabetical order. Thus CH’ comes after CH.
But the great advantage is that you can really understand the composition of
the glyphs thanks to the transcriptions first but also because you will find
the various components in the dictionary as such. The writing system is thus a
composite writing system since the glyphs are composed of various glyphs
associated to build new words. We are dealing here with the morphology of the
compound words and many Mayan words are compounds.
It also gives you the various categories and declension or conjugation elements
of the words. Hence you have nouns, verbs, adjectives. Nominal phrases are
often treated as one glyph composed of various elements showing that the syntax
of the nominal phrase is treated as if it were morphology. And we have the same
thing for verbal phrases. That seems to show this language is developing on the
basis of the second articulation of human language, though it seems to be
developing the first steps towards the realization of the third articulation
which implies declensions and later prepositions to express nominal cases, and
conjugations for the verbs.
To specify that language more we will enter the details of the description of
its syntax. Since it is a Native American language we know today it comes from Siberia where two vast families of languages, and ethnic
groups, cohabited. DNA has confirmed these dual origins. On one hand the agglutinative
languages of the Turkic family mostly settled in Central Asia, South West
Siberia (Urals for example), Asia Minor and the whole of Europe before the last
ice age up to the arrival of Indo-Europeans in Europe
a few thousand years after the ice age. On the other hand the Sino-Tibetan
family us composed of isolating languages.
Most of Native American languages are thus mapped on one pattern or the other.
Further studies have to be made to check if the two affiliations are strictly
respected or if some languages actually merged the characteristics of both
families. The Turkic family is third articulation, whereas the Sino-Tibetan
family is second articulation.
I will then have to come back to the subject after more studies.
This dictionary has many indices at the end and these indices transform the
dictionary into a multilingual and a practical tool. Three languages are
concerned first with the Mayan Index, the English Index and the Spanish Index.
Then you have the Index of Visual Elements and then a collection of Subject
Indices: Numbers, Days, Months, Long Count, Phonetic signs, Verbs/Verbal
Phrases, pronouns, adjectives. T-numbers.
Per se this dictionary cannot teach you the language, but it is an
indispensible tool for learning that language.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
JOHN MONTGOMERY – HOW TO READ MAYA HIEROGLYPHS – 2002
This book by John Montgomery is
irreplaceable though already slightly old in its field. It will not be enough
for you to understand everything, but it will be a starting point. The first
thing you will understand is that the numerical system of the Mayas is not
decimal since it is not based on ten but it is based on twenty. The point is
though that these Mayas had invented what we call zero in our decimal system
without understanding that zero is not a number of its own. There is no year
zero for instance when -1 BCE is finished we shift directly to +1 BCE. Zero is
the threshold point between -1 and +1. Thus the first decimal group, the first
TEN years is not from 0 to 9 but from 1 to 10. Zero is not a number in itself but
the sign of the completion of a group of ten elements, enabling us to start a
second group of ten, and so on. The decimal system enables us to cross under
the unit that is divided in the same way into ten elements, which creates full
continuity from the count of units to the subdivision of a unit into tenths and
then hundredths and then thousandths of that unit.
The Mayas invented a completion
sign for a group of twenty standing for the twentieth element of that group. So
they count from 1 to 19 and then have this sign of completion for 20. Then they
can start a new group of twenty and they can multiply this group of twenty and
once again have twenty such groups to make the next level of the counting
system: 20 then 20x20 = 400, then 400x20 = 8,000, etc. We don’t have any notion
about them having invented a way to count under the unit itself, hence to
divide it into twenty particles and then 400 and then 8,000. They do not seem
to have a dividing vigesimal system. They only seem to have a multiplying
vigesimal system. So the role of this completion symbol for a group of twenty
items has not yet been understood as the limit between plus and minus, or the
threshold enabling us to get under the unit itself. Any presentation that sets
this completion symbol before unit 1 is mistaken. It is the last element of a
group of 20. It is twenty and as such the last element of the group that
triggers the beginning of another group. And this book is quite mistaken in its
presentation.
Page 59 he gives the numbers in
their symbolic variants and twenty is not even provided. In fact it is but called
zero, which is a mistake, though the symbolic hieroglyphic representation for
one is a finger showing clearly they counted on their fingers at first, which
all human beings must have done at one time. But these symbolic variants are
not associated to the phonetic equivalent so that we gave the bars and dots,
the English numbers up to nineteen and not the Maya phonetic transcriptions of
the symbols. Page 59 he gives the same numbers with the head variants but this
time from 1 to 19 with the phonetic transcriptions and nothing at all for
twenty. He does not seem to have understood this essential value of 20 as the
completion of a set, group, slice of numbers. In the same way he does not
really understand that this vigesimal system in its bars and dots version has
several stages of mental development: five with one bar for the first time here
and then used for the next numbers up to nine; ten with two bars used for the
next numbers up to fourteen; and finally fifteen with three bars used for the
next numbers up to nineteen. Then if he had given that progression he would
have understood that twenty was the completion of that group or set and not zero,
the last step before climbing to the next twenty. In fact the use of twenty as
a base for counting sheep for instance in the Middle Ages was commonly used in Europe and each group of twenty was indented onto a
counting stick. It is in fact the very principle of an abacus, though the
abacus seems to work on a decimal base, but it could work on any base. Pascal’s
counting machine was decimal and used the very same principle: the tenth dent on
one dented wheel turned one dent onto the higher wheel. This system was still used
in the registering cash desks of the 1960s before digital counting machines or
calculator.
In the same way he does not explain
why as for the names of these numbers there is a full continuity in original
names up to 9. Then 10 introduces a /la-/ prefix followed by the name of one,
hence /la-jun/. Then for 11 it is a fully new name not connected to one (/jun/)
at all. And then for 12 we use the ten prefix /la-/ and a root that is totally
original in the series, and finally from 13 up to 19 we use the number for 3 to
9 followed by the name of the number 10 (/lajun/), thus producing 16 =
wak-lajun from 6 = wak. It is quite obvious here they used the base five and
hesitated a lot from ten to twelve when they invented their numbering system.
In fact they used their hands first which makes five and ten and then like in
numerous systems in the world (English pennies up to their decimalization in
the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher, oysters and eggs in Europe and probably in
other places, and nails were still sold by the gross, 12x12 = 144, and are
maybe still sold like that for big ones) 5 fingers + 5 fingers + 2 hands = 12,
and later they relapsed into the five-ten base probably by introducing the toes
and that leads to twenty (remember the twenty base for the shilling up to its
decimalization by Margaret Thatcher that got rid of the shilling altogether).
It is surprising John Montgomery did not see that. It is a very common
problematic in all counting systems in the world.
The second element that will
irritate you to the utmost, though it is a very good pedagogical means (yet not
meant as such by the author) since it forces you to use the dictionary all the
time: very often the various elements of a glyph (or writing block) are not
properly identified. Either the transcription is given for the whole block and
not specified as for the elements in the block corresponding to the elements in
the transcription mostly specified by the author with dashes. Or the various
glyphic elements are actually identified phonetically as the various elements
of the transcription but the T numbers are not provided, which makes it
difficult to use the dictionary then because the various affixes can have many
glyphic realizations and we do not always know which one is concerned because
of the great variations on the real glyphic realizations. At times too in that
line a vowel is attached to its preceding consonant though it should be
attached to the following consonant, or vice versa. Finding then the real
glyphic realization is not that easy. Or, third possible trap, he does give us
the T number composition of the particular word, but since his dictionary does
not have the full list of T numbers you are lost in a jungle: you cannot find
the glyph corresponding to this particular T number.
You end up for some simple
affixes turning all the page and screening all the glyphs in order to find the
proper one in the dictionary and then have the T number of it. In other words
it is done for beginners as he constantly repeat, but for obstinate and
persistent beginners who will spend hours on one page of this supposedly simple
manual. I would personally have organized this manual differently and have
systematically identified the glyphs or glyphic elements with the visual
realization, the phonetic transcription and the T number with a dictionary
giving first all the affixes in alphabetical order of their transcriptions and
with their real names when they have one, the meaning of the glyph that it
still is or from which it is derived, and the semantic or syntactic value it
has in the language. Too often in the manual but also in the dictionary of the
same author these affixes, and at times simple fully autonomous glyphs, are
just specified as being vowel or phonetic sign, and yet some after this
“phonetic sign” specification are provided with one or several semantic meanings
and no explanation is given about using the moon sign in four different though
similar or connected forms as the “phonetic sign” of /ja/. If in its use in the
composition of glyphs it retains its “moon sign” value, how does it do it, and
then the language is agglutinative. If it has lost all its “moon sign” value in
its phonetic use then the language is synthetic. Maybe we can’t answer such a
question but it HAS TO BE ASKED.
I will make only one more remark.
It is quite obvious this language is ergative in many ways. But is it purely
ergative or something else. The fact, and Montgomery
is not the only one to say so, there is a passive suffix is surprising since
the reversal of an ergative sentence by a “passive” suffix would produce an
active sentence. When we know this passive suffix is used with the verb meaning
‘to die’ which is normally intransitive meaning that the “subject” is also the
element that carries the ergative value, its passivization seems to imply that
this ergative “subject” is not only the theme of the action but the real agent
of it as if the sentence was a transitive sentence like “X dies (a real good
death)” becoming “(a real good death) is died by X” and X is the agent of that
death, of his own death. The cultural value of such a structure frequently
found in the various inscriptions considered by Montgomery is extremely
far-reaching and it goes the same way as all he said about “letting blood” or
“blood letting” or “self-mutilating/scarifying one’s own penis in order to shed
blood” leading to the understanding that the prisoners so often represented on
the temples were supposed to die in and by shedding as much blood as possible
as slowly as possible in as long a time as possible. This leads me to another
question: is the language the result of the blood letting practices or are the
blood letting practices the result of the language? Since my idea about any
language is that it is produced, invented, developed by human beings and human
communities from the very start in Africa, I believe Homo Sapiens was
practicing blood rituals very early in his history (meaning when he started
emerging 250,000 years ago) as a way to communicate with the spiritual forces he
could not completely identify, as a way to bring the community together in
ritual suffering or painful rituals all turning around blood, or sperm, or
urine, or water. In Maya the four of them are connected in many words meaning
dripping, shedding, letting flow.
And that is universal. In the
same way as /ja’/ means water constructed on the vowel /a/ and then connected
to blood, urine, water and sperm in /ch’a/ which then develops into /ch’ul/
meaning the soul in connection with blood, and then the ritualistic
scarification of the penis to shed blood gets to its full meaning. In Sumerian
in the same way the word /a/ means equally water or any fluid, hence sperm and
even father as well as the irrigation canals running at the top of the levees
protecting and defining the fields, hence the property of the master of this
field, hence his house and household rendered by /en/ or /in/ with /e/ meaning
the temple. In the same way blood rituals existed in Sumer dedicated to the
goddess Inanna, unification of /in/ the estate, the master and water as the
base of the master’s power and authority, and Nanna, the God of the moon who is
the father of Inanna: the blood rituals were centered on a castrating knife
used by the priestess of Inanna to impose respect for the goddess to reluctant
men who became slaves in the temple. The same way as /ja/ water is quite close
to /ja’/ the moon in Maya. This universality as Joseph Greenberg would say of
the sound /a/ meaning water is all the more important here if we see on many
glyphs the representation of blood and blood letting as a chain of drops and we
find these in /a/ or /aj/ T228 and 229, masculine, agentive pronoun third
person also used as an agentive prefix which is not necessarily agentive but is
personal like in the case given by Montmgomery: /aj naab/ meaning /he of water/,
and yet it is the second person pronoun of the ergative set when it marks the
subject of the verb. This second person is necessarily the theme of the
speaker’s utterance, hence the non agentive person in the communicative act,
and yet the subject of the ergative verb meaning it is in-between being the
originator of the action and the receiver of the same action. He is there
dealing with something that has to do with the soul, the ritual of blood letting,
the self-submission to it in order to serve the community and to save himself
by communicating with the gods.
In this language we have a lot
more than Montgomery
says. This language was spoken for many thousand years before it was written
and the writing system that we can follow in its evolution must have taken
millennia to become fully developed and significant, and it must have develop
slowly along with the architectural ability and the technology to provide
surfaces where to write it, material media without which the written medium
will never reach people several thousand years later. The Sumerian writing
system took at least 5,000 years to emerge and it was rather simple when
compared with the extreme intricacies of this written system. But saying that
means that these Mayas are the descendants of people who must have arrived in
the Americas a long time
before the Clovis hypothesis that is maybe valid for northern American Indians
but does not work for the highly sophisticated civilizations of Mesoamerica and
Southern America. We have to come to another
hypothesis that gave these people at least 15,000 years or more to devise their
architecture, language and writing system, not to speak of their religions and
of the cultivation of their god Maize, often know as Corn or Atole, T278, Tnn,
T630, T630v and a few others all standing for /sa/.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 9:05 AM
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