#theadelphiproject

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Mythic languages

We modern people have special difficulties here because we have abandoned the mythic language of earlier traditions, a language that resonated with the deeper mental structures of human beings according to their hereditary conditioning. Our own language is scientific, that is to say, based on sensory experience and abstract generalizations — the latter being a function of the mind, which is relatively the same in all human beings, unconditioned by innate forces of feeling and instinct and therefore unresponsive to the truth and power which these innate forces embody.  

So much about this project, for me, comes back to language and translation. How does meaning get expressed in the language we choose to express it in, and what happens as the writing and ideas move from language to language.

Re-reading The Life of Milarepa this morning, the above passage is in the introduction by Lobsang P. Lhalungpha. It brings me back to why I am continually trying to pull many of the concepts in these books back into Sanskrit; this idea that there is a language, and a sound, which inscribes a different pathway to knowledge, and that one needs more than what we have, such as English, in order to arrive at lands unknown.

Of course most of these writings have never been in Sanskrit or Pali or Aramaic, but I find that I want to pull the structures back into what they would have been before they became what they are, to see what the underlying possibilities would have been, in a different time and place.

Is it possible that those writings which most resonate to us have a protolanguage structure, unknown to the author, that would have embodied something mythic and magical, that because of this possible past, it circumvents the mind and travels to the meaning?

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Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004), 1930 

I like to see what the authors look like, when they were young. 

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The cover for #647, Sciascia’s Fine del carbinieri a cavallo, is by Alberto Savinio, called Atlantide, from 1930-31. It feels like Loch Ness Lego, to me. 

It's in a private collection, which makes this even more interesting. Whose, Mr Calasso? Whose collection? Alberto Savinio is also an author published by Adelphi, in the Biblioteca and the Piccola series, among others. 23 books, to date. He composed operas. He painted. (De Chirico is his brother.)

Who was this man? I'll get to that later, in my growing social graphs, he is a fascinating center of many nets. Actually, I should map him on my wall, it’s such a lovely image. 

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The cover for book #557 by Leonardo Sciascia, Il fuoco nel mare.  The image is by Giuseppe Modica, called Palatino, it is from 2007. Sicilian, it seems, from Trapani, and his work is lovely. I particularly like his grids of windows and floors.

I wonder how his work and his existence fits into the fabric of Adelphi. I don't know, except to say that when I map the cover artists over time, some one in that organization has a fabulous eye both for what Will Become and for the connection between cover and text.

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I want to make a documentary entitled Becoming Calasso, about my search for history and meaning in the Biblioteca Adelphi catalog #thingsithinkaboutwhenishouldbesleeping #theadelphiproject http://ift.tt/2aFoJpU

ive known for a while. been taking some video and keeping a pretty rigorous (paper) diary. just decided to toss it into the world today. I can see the history as i read the books. pretty intense. but the visuals just make sense. and they are gorgeous.

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Somedays this project makes me all kinds of odd and I fear I don't speak enough to other humans HOWEVER it is also the most amazing thing I have ever worked on. I finally put an essay up on the WHY. It's on Medium. Link in my bio (and here though it won't link here. : http://bit.ly/2aZaleZ) Love to hear your thoughts!

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This is a book I've been re-reading for many years. (In storage I have an entire box of books on colour. suddenly my heart...i want them all here now). Every book on The List so far has some relationship to the sacred and the divine, so I pick this up from time to time, knowing a pattern will arise, which continues to tie one past to another past, and, as I hope, to the future. There is a note in one of my notebooks which says, "what is the purpose of memory? to see the future." what is the purpose of colour? http://ift.tt/2agZk35