Book of Sand

Why I reimagined "LOTR" from Mordor's perspective   Kirill Yeskov explains what led him to write "The Last Ringbearer," his parallel version of Tolkien's classic  It’s unlikely that anyone will devote any serious effort to analyzing the ecosystem of a barren desert populated by train-sized predatory worms that eat excavators and sweat psychedelics: fantasy is fantasy. Not so the Middle Earth; the developed perfection of Tolkien’s world quite impels one to conduct natural history studies of it, sometimes provocatively so. This invites another comparison, however strange at first blush, between Tolkien and Yefremov. Tolkien was a practicing scientist, too, but a linguist rather than a natural scientist like Yefremov, so the foundation of professional knowledge he had used to erect Middle Earth was different. It is fairly obvious to me that the game the Oxford professor decided to play with nature began, in essence, with the creation of imaginary lang...

  "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. "           Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Masque of Pandora. "For those whom God for ruin has design'd, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind."            John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther . "Whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad." Seneca, Maxim 911 (Misattribution? Should be Publilius Syrus, see below, Lyman translation.) "When falls on Man the anger of the gods, first from his mind, they banish understanding." Lycurgus, from an oration. "Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of their senses." Euripedes, fragment of a poem. "When divine power plans evil for a man, it first injures his mind." Sophocles, Antigone. All of these were listed in Richard Powell's novel "Whom the gods would destroy" (1970) and called The Long Lineage of a Title .  ============================================= While this is often attributed ...

Historian Michael Wood returns to his first great love, the Anglo-Saxon world, to reveal the origins of our literary heritage. Focusing on Beowulf and drawing on other Anglo-Saxon classics, he traces the birth of English poetry back to the Dark Ages. Travelling across the British Isles from East Anglia to Scotland and with the help of Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, actor Julian Glover, local historians and enthusiasts, he brings the story and language of this iconic poem to life.  https://youtu.be/1C0sFXU0SLo

On Youtube (4 parts) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRD0RO4sE79wvioM3elDZSrzgsOhXPUsX SYNOPSIS Michael Wood tours the English locations important to William Shakespeare as he explores the playwright and poet's life and work.  A review "In Search of Shakespeare" is a beautifully presented historical documentary in which the always enthusiastic and energetic host/narrator Michael Wood ("In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great" "In Search of Beowulf" "In Search of The Trojan War" ) retraces the footsteps and life of the man know to us simply as the Bard. At the outset Wood dismisses any question or controversy about Shakespeare's credibility and attributions as mere conspiracy theory and then launches into a telling of the Shakespeare's biography in a sort of detective story format by rediscovering the bits and pieces of historical evidence of Shakespeare's life which exist outside his body of work.  Taking the aud...

SYNOPSIS A man, having fallen in love with the wrong woman, is sent by the sultan himself on a diplomatic mission to a distant land as an ambassador. Stopping at a Viking village port to restock on supplies, he finds himself unwittingly embroiled in a quest to banish a mysterious threat in a distant Viking land.   PLOT A cultured diplomat from Baghdad joins a band of savage warriors in time to meet an even more fearsome enemy in this historical adventure. In 922 A.D., Ibn Fadlan (Antonio Banderas) is a Muslim emissary from Baghdad en route to meet with the King of Saqaliba when he encounters a band of Vikings. While Ibn and his people are intelligent and well-mannered, the Vikings are a rowdy and sometimes unpleasant lot, with an unquenchable appetite for food, alcohol, and women. However, in time he develops an understanding and respect for the Viking warriors and is welcomed into their society by their leader, Buliwyf. However, Ibn must now join them as they return ...

This is a "real life Davinci Code," obviously meant to be, and yet it is fascinatingly good fun and exceptionally well done. SYNOPSIS This is the amazing story of Petter Amundsen, who believes he has deciphered a secret code hidden in Shakespeare’s first folio, and Dr. Robert Crumpton, a skeptical historian and Shakespeare expert. Is there truth in Amundsen’s claims? Are these codes part of something larger, secrets spanning centuries? Crumpton follows along as Amundsen reveals a coded map found in Shakespeare’s texts that may lead to one of history’s greatest treasures. Director: Jorgen Friberg Cast: Petter Amundsen, Robert Crumpton, Stanley Wells. On Youtube  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpJzi3Junuc

 Nothing Is Truer than Truth introduces Edward de Vere, A-list party boy on the continental circuit, who travels to Venice in 1575 and becomes Shakespeare. The film argues that the author's bisexuality is the reason for the pseudonym. on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Truer-Truth-Derek-Jacobi/dp/B07L42RLRC   see also The Shakespeare Mystery PBS Frontline, April 19,1989 On Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkqcLJZ9I3s&t=5s  

 Even if you're a regular visitor to London, it's probably never occurred to you to stop in to see William Shakespeare's original manuscripts at the British Museum or Library. That's just as well. There are no original manuscripts. Not so much as a couplet written in Shakespeare's own hand has been proven to exist. In fact, there's no hard evidence that Will Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon (1564-1616), revered as the greatest author in the English language, could even write a complete sentence. ( The Smithsonian Magazine, September 2006 ).

Spent a lot of time looking at the Question of Authorship of the Shakespeare plays. Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance are part of an effort to open discussion about it and have collected signature online at The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt.  There is a lot of compelling evidence that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford is the true author.  Many of his biographical elements line up very well with the specifics of many of the Shakespeare plays and sonnets. Rewatched the outstanding film Anonymous which presents a fictionalized account of the possibilities and helped conjecture why Oxford would actively avoid taking credit and why he might have hired a frontman. Introduces Ben Jonson into the story and why he and two other actors were crucial in getting the First Folio published 7 years after Will Shakspur's death. One curious thing is that Oxford's tutor Laurence Nowell was the holder/owner of the only manuscript copy of Beowulf in existence at that time. Oxford most likely w...

The "Ship of Theseus" was first introduced in Greek legend as reported by the historian, biographer, and essayist Plutarch: The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same. —  Plutarch, Life of Theseus as translated by John Dryden

Lucian of Samosata was one of the earliest novelists in Western civilization. In A True Story ( Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα ), a fictional narrative work written in prose, he parodies some of the fantastic tales told by Homer in the Odyssey and also the not-so-fantastic tales from the historian Thucydides . He anticipated modern science fiction themes including voyages to the moon and Venus, extraterrestrial life , interplanetary warfare, and artificial life, nearly two millennia before Jules Verne and H. G. Wells . The novel is often regarded as the earliest known work of science fiction. (wikipedia) --------------------------------------- At some point less than 150 years ago, it was decided that all genres of fiction had to include realism as a central pillar.  Even fantastic, speculative, science fiction needs to be grounded in reality. Either this reality or one that is internally consistent. People often remark that The Expanse is hard sci-fi because there is no FTL (reality breakin...

 I have been increasingly moving to a passive interaction principally with two or three objects; 1) Assassin's Creed - Origins 2) The Rings of Power 3) House of the Dragon, to a lesser extent The first is a long, sprawling epic adventure game, set in Egypt of 48BC, Ptolemy and Cleopatra are NPCs.  There are many things to do, that fall into several categories; main story-line, side quests, leveling up, exploring an open world, crafting. I find these kinds of games very appealing (Mad Max, AC Odyssey, AC Black Flag, GTA, Shadow over Mordor) all had these elements.  Basically an endless To Do list with a map full of icons to check off, a fully described progression tree with a known end point, (Level 99).  It is possible to maximize or optimize your character, either in basic terms, (full health bar and all of the ability points) or in sophisticated terms (gear load outs with multipliers that produce OP characters).  I tend to be satisfied with just having complet...

  England and Englishness are represented in multiple forms within J. R. R. Tolkien 's Middle-earth writings; it appears, more or less thinly disguised, in the form of the Shire and the lands close to it; in kindly characters such as Treebeard , Faramir , and Théoden ; in its industrialised state as Isengard and Mordor ; and as Anglo-Saxon England in Rohan . Lastly, and most pervasively, Englishness appears in the words and behaviour of the hobbits, both in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings . Tolkien has often been supposed to have spoken of wishing to create " a mythology for England "; though it seems he never used the actual phrase, commentators have found it appropriate as a description of much of his approach in creating Middle-earth , and the legendarium that lies behind The Silmarillion .

  Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien 's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings , and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth . The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps , and inventing languages and names as a private project to create a unique English mythology. The earliest story drafts (of The Book of Lost Tales ) are from 1916; he revised and rewrote these for most of his adult life. The Hobbit (1937), Tolkien's first published novel, was not originally part of the larger mythology but became linked to it. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (1954 and 1955) took place in the Third Age of Middle-earth , while virtually all of his earlier writing had been set in the first two ages of the world. The L...

 In 1815, Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin published the first edition of the Epic of Beowulf titled De Danorum rebus gestis secul. III & IV : Poëma Danicum dialecto Anglosaxonica in a Latin translation. Despite his lack of knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature , Grundtvig* quickly discovered a number of flaws in Thorkelin's rendering of the poems.  After his heated debate with Thorkelin, Johan Bülow (1751–1828), who had sponsored Thorkelin's work, offered to support a new translation by Grundtvig — this time into Danish. The result, Bjovulfs Drape (1820), was the first full translation of Beowulf into a modern language (previously, only selections of the poem had been translated into modern English by Sharon Turner in 1805). ========================= * N. F. S. Grundtvig , was a Danish pastor, author, poet, philosopher, historian, teacher and politician. He was one of the most influential people in Danish history, as his philosophy gave rise to a new form of natio...

  The dictionary defines reticularity as being “a pattern or arrangement of interlacing lines resembling a net.” But in the [Gilbert] Simondonian context, this “ arrangement of interlacing lines ” applies not only to technological objects (Simondon refers to “technical objects”), but to all things and objects, including the human. This “arrangement of interlacing lines” further plays out as the network of relations between objects and things and within objects and things themselves.    in Networked Nightmares: On Our Dionysian Post-Military Condition by Manabrata Guha May 6, 2010 in The Digital Dionysus: Nietzsche and the Network-centric Condition   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

Dionysus and The Bacchae, Dionysian ecstatic frenzy Dionysus : "It's a wise man's part to practise a smooth-tempered self-control."   The Dionysus in Euripides' tale is a young god, angry that his mortal family, the royal house of Cadmus , has denied him a place of honor as a deity. His mortal mother, Semele , was a mistress of Zeus; while pregnant she was killed by Hera, who was jealous of her husband's affair. When Semele died, her sisters said it was Zeus' will and accused her of lying; they also accused their father, Cadmus, of using Zeus as a coverup. Most of Semele's family refused to believe Dionysus was the son of Zeus, and the young god was spurned by his household. He traveled throughout Asia and other foreign lands, gathering a cult of female worshipers, the Maenads . At the play's start he has returned, disguised as a stranger, to take revenge on the house of Cadmus. He has also driven the women of Thebes, including his aunts...

   “So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed In serpent, inmate bad! and toward Eve Addressed his way: not with indented wave, Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear, Circular base of rising folds, that towered Fold above fold, a surging maze! his head Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant : pleasing was his shape And lovely; never since of serpent-kind Lovelier…”                          ― John Milton, Paradise Lost   Quoted in A.S. Byatt's The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: The phrase was, of course, not her own; she was, as I have said, a being of a secondary order. The phrase was John Milton’s, plucked from the air, or the circumambient language, at the height of his powers, to describe the beauty of the primordial coils of the insinuating serpent in the Par...

 This was the dream I had last night, that was so intense that I woke up with my heart pounding and horripilation. I laid in bed motionless trying to recall as much of the dream as I could, and things came and went. ============================== What was in her hand? - I feel like there was a progress in the dream over at least three instance or encounters. I recall the images presented in two of the encounters, although perhaps the images that I recall as completed objects (2) were actually the culminations of two processes, each image composed of a set of intersecting lines which at first move from structured, orderly, geometric to suggestive of disorder, to finally becoming illuminated with the confusing colors.  Were these both produced by the Patient? Was one a comparison to a known Deviant, referred to by the Analyst trying to make sense of his Patient's eroding sense of stability? I have a vague sense that at the reveal of the image, the Patient is holding something hi...

  "In the cosmo gonies of the Gnostics, the demiurges knead up a red Adam who cannot manage to stand; as rude and inept and elementary as that Adam of dust was the Adam of dream wrought from the sorcerer's nights ." (The Circular Ruins, J.L.B.)

    ARIMASPI, an ancient people in the extreme N.E. of Scythia ( q.v. ), probably the eastern Altai. All accounts of them go back to a poem by Aristeas of Proconnesus, from whom Herodotus (iii. 116, iv. 27) drew his information. They were supposed to be one-eyed (hence their Scythian name), and to steal gold from the griffins that guarded it. In art they are usually represented as richly dressed Asiatics, picturesquely grouped with their griffin foes; the subject is often described by poets from Aeschylus to Milton. They are so nearly mythical that it is impossible to insist on the usual identification with the ancestors of the Huns. Their gold was probably real, as gold still comes from the Altai.  -------------------------------------------- Illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)  The Arimaspi were described by Aristeas of Proconnesus in his lost archaic poem Arimaspea . Proconnesus is a small island in the Sea of Marmora near the mouth of...

LIMITS Of all the streets that blur into the sunset, There must be one (which, I am not sure) That I by now have walked for the last time Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws, Sets up a secret and unwavering scale For all the shadows, dreams, and forms Woven into the texture of this life. If there is a limit to all things and a measure And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness, Who will tell us to whom in this house We without knowing it have said farewell? Through the dawning window night withdraws And among the stacked books which throw Irregular shadows on the dim table, There must be one which I will never read. There is in the South more than one worn gate, With its cement urns and planted cactus, Which is already forbidden to my entry, Inaccessible, as in a lithograph. There is a door you have closed forever And some mirror is expecting you in vain; To you the crossroads seem wide open, Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janu...

  Of Griffins By Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) Illustration for Mandeville's legend* by H. J. Ford , 1899 * Sir John Mandeville wrote about them in his 14th century book of travels.   From Pseudodoxia Epidemica THAT there are griffins in nature, that is, a mixed and dubious animal, in the forepart resembling an eagle, and behind the shape of a lion, with erected ears, four feet, and a long tail, many affirm, and most, I perceive, deny not. The same is averred by Ælian, Solinus, Mela, and Herodotus—countenanced by the name sometimes found in Scripture, and was an hieroglyphic of the Egyptians.      1   Notwithstanding we find most diligent enquirers to be of a contrary assertion. For beside that Albertus and Pliny have disallowed it, the learned Aldrovandus hath, in a large discourse rejected it; Matthias Michovius, who writ of those northern parts wherein men place these griffins, hath positively concluded against it; and, if examined by...

 "La muerte y la brújula" (May 1942 Sur ) [here trans Anthony Kerrigan as "Death and the Compass"], whose detective protagonist is named Lönnrot after Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), the Finnish philologist who "created" Finnish literature through his manufacture of the Kalevala ( 1835 ; exp 1849 ) out of fragments of folk material; both Lönnrots "create" the worlds they detect, in this case Triste-le-Roy*, an enclave whose impossible geometries must be literally (and mystically) triangulated if the detective hopes to arrive there; both Lönnrots are, in a sense, Magus figures. From SFE  *Triste-le-Roy is based on the Hotel Delicias in Adrogue.

The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A.S. Byatt and Three Thousand Years of Longing Alf layla wa-layla and Scheherazade . The Clerk's Tale from Chaucer, Plutarch and Boccaccio. The Winter's Tale from Shakespeare. Florizel and Perdita. The Venus of Willendorf . Narratology . To his coy mistress by Andrew Marvell My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow;   The Rings of Power and The House of the Dragon. Kalevala , Pohjola and Sampo . The national epic poetry of Finland compiled by Elias Lönnrot . The Silmarillion . Lord Dunsany (or Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett) and The Gods of Pegana .   Dionysus and The Bacchae of Euripedes Odysseus and Circe Homer and Milton, the blind poets

 Heraclitus’ On the Universe : A man’s character is his fate.     Novalis (whose real name was Friedrich von Hardenberg), wrote of character in his unfinished 1802 poem Heinrich von Ofterdingen :      I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception. George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss, 1860): Character is destiny.   Or rather, “Character,” says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms – “Character is Destiny.”

I have crossed the Oconee River countless times, over 25 years. The Thames, at least twice each time, in three different years; 1987, 2003, and 2004. The Seine in Paris maybe 6 or 10 times in total, 3 days in 2003, The English Channel, once by ferry, (2003). The Chicago River, multiple times every week between 2016 and early 2020. Not once since then. The East River in NYC, twice a year for 5 years. (2016-2019). The Sumida in Tokyo, and maybe one or two others, perhaps twice, or three times and the Watarase River in Ashikaga, at least 30 times but all in a two week period in 2017.     These are rivers I crossed by bridge, boat or tunnel, not by plane.  

Jorge Luis Borges : The universe as chaos and existence as chance The universe as chaos The vision of the universe, in Borges, is that of a random, incomprehensible chaos, in which man struggles without the possibility of finding an order that exactly fits his nature (which he will not be able to know, of course). This monstrous and chaotic reality has been exemplified by Borges in The Library of Babel, where the universe is symbolized in an infinite library, a hexagonal building like an endless tower, which contains all the books, but whose meaning, whose final meaning escapes those who they go through it and scrutinize it anxiously. And the irrational disorder that prevails in it corresponds to that of the whole world. The architecture of the building, its mirrors, the innumerable hexagonal galleries, the infinite wells, God, who is hidden under the forms of the circle and the sphere, are also a symbol of that unattainable reality that surrounds us. Because the world is a chaos that ...

CIRCE (Gr. Κίρκη ), in Greek legend, a famous sorceress, the daughter of Helios and the ocean nymph Perse. Having murdered her husband, the prince of Colchis, she was expelled by her subjects and placed by her father on the solitary island of Aeaea on the coast of Italy. She was able by means of drugs and incantations to change human beings into the forms of wolves or lions, and with these beings her palace was surrounded. Here she was found by Odysseus and his companions; the latter she changed into swine, but the hero, protected by the herb moly ( q.v. ), which he had received from Hermes, not only forced her to restore them to their original shape, but also gained her love. For a year he relinquished himself to her endearments, and when he determined to leave, she instructed him how to sail to the land of shades which lay on the verge of the ocean stream, in order to learn his fate from the prophet Teiresias. Upon his return she also gave him directions for avoiding the dangers o...

  https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/alexandre-cabanel/fallen-angel/   Fallen Angel is an Academic   Oil on Canvas   Painting created by Alexandre Cabanel in 1847 . It lives at the Musée Fabre in France .  John Milton’s Paradise Lost had already inspired generations of artists, but Cabanel brought a unique fire to the story’s fallen angels. Five angels fall in Milton’s work: Moloch, Belial, Mulciber, Mammon and Beelzebub, and this of course is Beelzebub, better known today as Lucifer .