GRGR(16): The Aqyn's song

[Jeremy Osner]

rj wrote:

> I think by transcribing it the spiritual message and opportunity for
> personal fulfilment of it are lost

Well... Ok, I can agree with that. Most of my limited knowledge of the
transition from oral tradition to written text comes from Bernard Knox's
excellent introduction to Robert Fagles' translation of the Iliad. So I'm
going to move away for a moment from Kazakh folk poetry of which I have no
knowledge and talk about prehistoric Greek folk poetry, of which I also have
no knowledge. See, let's postulate that Homer's Iliad does not have the
spiritual message and opportunity for personal fulfilment that were in the
pre-Homeric oral tradition.

I still want to read the Iliad!

I am fallen, I was born into a society of the written word -- at least allow
me what gleanings I can salvage from the Ancients.

>
> It is so ironic and so tragic for Tchitcherine that this is exactly what
> he is doing with the aqyn's song

Is it? I sort of think Tchitcherine realizes, if unwillingly, that he is
serving the System here. The sentence, "Tchitcherine understands, abruptly,
that soon someone will come and begin to write some of these down in the New
Turkic Alphabet he had helped frame . . . and this is how they will be lost,"
I get the impression here that T. recognizes his own role, and then the line
"'In stenography,' replies T., his g a little glottal," it's subtle but I
think that carries the self-recognition across into the recording of the
Aqyn's song. -- Because why drop that little not about the glottal g in
stenography, except to highlight how the alphabet issues are weighing on T's
mind?

Does anyone have any speculation as to (a) what the Kirghiz light is, (b) how
T. heard about it, (c) why he wants to see it?

Thanks,
Jeremy
just back from seeing Sweet and Lowdown, in which Emmet Ray says he don't want
to record because (approximately) "what's the use of putting all this work
into beautiful music if your just going to record it so everyone can copy it?"
-- Somehow seems germane to the present discussion.


--
The right-hand, still untasted part of the novel, which,
during our delectable reading, we would lightly feel,
mechanically testing whether there were still plenty
left (and our fingers were always gladdened by the
placid, faithful thickness) has suddenly, for no reason
at all, become quite meager: a few minutes of quick
reading, already downhill, and -- O horrible!

Invitation to a Beheading
Vladimir Nabokov
http://www.readin.com/books/invitationbeheading/