The following text is a tribute to the orient. Edward Said, the author of “Orientalism” and acclaimed classical music director Daniel Barenboim founded the West-Eastern Diwan Orchestra that premiered its work with their rendition of Beethoven’s symphonies. The East West orchestra is a cross-cultural project which aims at bringing musicians together and achieve high standards of music – some excerpts of an interview with Daniel Baremboim will feature here soon. “A unique an inspirational orchestral union under the leadership or Daniel Barenboim and the Palestinian cultural studies expert Edward Said”. The name of the website refers to Goethe “Oriental Divan”, Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany and lived in Weimar – his works centred around a classical humanism.
I thought that it should be right that radioevropa brought an accessible text close to the subject, discussions with oriental acquaintances - from a Lebanese professor to a kebap seller in Vienna, from Fenerbace wannabes to Bosnian nurses, all said that Europe's oriental contribution is often overseen and taken for granted. Above all, we are facing troubled times with conflicts of all sorts that an idealistic attempt to show that there is no high culture or no low culture. – I was very lucky in my search. I was looking for something that would be easy to understand but not too silly, a style that hits the right chord to our readers: I would like to introduce you to the translation of a text by German radio presenter Herman Mostar. This is an allegorical tale based on Friedrich Schiller about a slave from the orient who brings culture to the Holy Roman Empire in the 12th century. Mostar who has done work with radio Suedwestfunk in Stuttgart (Schiller’s hometown) calls the character Malechsala the forgotten ancestor. Of course, Mostar criticizes slavery and racism by saying that Melachsala was never married by those who had taken her work - it strangely echoes the plight of catalogue brides and servants - so the story works at two levels. I had to edit some of the material as the story is far longer.
As for illustrations – well – I think that I have just the ticket – illustrations will be in by say End of October, as this article was planned in a spontaneous way. We had to have an allegory and I had to feature this odd book because it has been modestly standing in my Bohemian library for most of my life. I think Hermann Mostar, real name Gerhardt Herrmann has led an extraordinary life with a fondness for the Balkans (Mostar, his chosen name is a town in Bosnia Herzegowina), so in my opinion none else but this witty and courageous writer and traveller to paint an allegory of the Orient.
“Indeed since the invasions destroyed Roman culture and with it the culture of the roses, there hadn’t been any roses in this place. You send for rose seeds from your homeland (between Bulgaria and Damaskus) and planted them. Soon they bloom red by the ugly castle walls. This is your first victory, Malechsala: thanks to you, the perfume is on our women. And because of that you are granted some privileges: You are allowed to clean your fingernails – and yet few imitate you… Even at the court of King Louis XIV of France, good old Liselotte of Palatina stood out because the black under her fingernails was missing – Fi donc, she had removed it!
But back to you, Malechsala – you come out of the bath smelling of roses, you greet your lord and master… during the day, you have to work.
What kind of work? Cooking? Goodness gracious me! What do you want to cook in this kitchen? There aren’t any spices apart from salt and honey. You have to help yourself and you know how to help yourself. Now that the rose bush has become an entire garden, the first since Roman times, so now you grow a small spice garden – the first of its kind. How our flowers bear names that come from your homeland! Arabic and Anglo-Saxon words like Rose and Tulip – even the chestnut (castanie) that you brought from the town of Kastana – and now you name the spices. You brought quitte pear, cardamom, thyme… when I bite into a Bergamot pear then I know that you were the first to plant it because “Bergamot” comes from “Beg Armudy” – the pear of the Beg, and still to our days, the Bergamot trees stand in Bosnia, the noblest pear trees in the garden of the rich Beg.
And one day, I see you, Malechsala sweeten the food with cane sugar… The Arabic word for cane or pipe is “can” and to our days that word appears to describe everything that has a pipe: canal, cannon, canula… And now that you brought the spices, you can spice up and thicken our broths. You lovely little Saracen! You brought us the sauce. And since you brought sugar, you bring new forms of baking and sweet drinks – the words cake and punsch are oriental.
But enough about what you gave us to eat, there is one and only work that is assigned to women: weaving with the spindle. But this is too crude for your dainty fingers, so you take out a needle and show ravishing arabesques and motives made of threat and linen. You teach embroidery to the our women and you present us with the Gobelins. (the Gobelins originated from Lyons, France which was the main town for silk imports that came from the Orient and Asia, the silk road.).
And then you get tired, you want to play. Ach! But we only invented bowling. So you take out a board with daintily carved figures: chess. (from Persia, now Iran, just like the carpets which we also import from Afghanistan, Mongolia and China).
Who will be surprised that Malechsala, now getting bold also catered for arts and social life? Still during the meal, she began to stage short, pretty pieces of music between the dishes “intermezzi” – and this is how the musical intermezzo came about. Our string instruments violin, viola, cello, bass developed from her rebab (also mention of the old the gambe violin, I think, ed). … Unfortunately, it has been proven that we barbarians didn’t dance because of cult or fertility rites, nor for mating purposes but because we had to keep our awkward bodies warms in those stone cold, humid and drafty castle halls. And this is why our oldest dances are lots of jumping about (!!, ed) – Malechsala brought in the graceful pace, turn, rhythm – she taught the barbaric bears male and female the grace of the body, and now we all danced out of love. In fact, we didn’t dance any more because of the cold as Malechsala, more used to hotter climates, introduced better heating systems (Turkish) and as she did not like sitting on hard crude benches, she imported the first cushions.”
I am not quite sure if everything he says is accurate, notably the bits about dancing and the musical instruments, however, it is important to be aware that no culture is an island, in fact, the only country that tried to live in complete isolation was Albania in the 20th century, I hope that this humorous essay will challenge Europe to admit its multicultural heritage instead of sanctifying its cultural superiority. Without exotic visitors we would be very limited in our choices and yet, to those who fear a threat of getting swamped by foreign-ness, maybe they should read “story of the calendar” which shows how the universal calendar was the result of combined efforts from all sorts of cultures. As the East-West Diwan Orchestra proves, you can do so with high critical acclaim!
On an academical note the university of Berlin are hosting their promotion for understanding of east-west cultures, you can find their website at
University of Berlin
Goethe about Hafis, a poet from Shiraz the City of roses
Hafis' Dichterzí±žíµ¬ sie bezeichnen
Ausgemachte Wahrheit unauslíºŽí³¨lich;
Aber hie und da auch Kleinigkeiten
Auߥrhalb der Grenze des Gesetzes.
Willst du sicher gehn, so muß´ du wissen
Schlangengift und Theriah zu sondern –
Doch der reinen Wollust edler Handlung
Sich mit frohem Mut zu í±Šíµ²lassen
Und vor solcher, der nur ew'ge Pein folgt,
Mit besonnenem Sinn sich zu verwahren,
Ist gewiß das Beste, um nicht zu fehlen.
Dieses schrieb der arme Ebusuud,
Gott verzeih' ihm seine Sí±ºí´¥n alle!
Goethe – Fernoestlicher Diwan
Impossible for me to translate this lofty style right on the brink – dear folks –, so I don my Mostar style to summarize it as follows: think the language of Shakespeare and the content of this that poor Ebusuud said to follow the truth and avoid being poisoned by snakes and that god forgive all his sins.
I leave you with a proverb:
Das Beste was man vom Reisen nach Hause bringt, ist die heile Haut
The best thing to bring home from a journey is the safe skin.
Persian Proverb quoted by Quellen Persischer Weisheit
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Wednesday 18 - Friday 20 February 2004, 8pm
ARABIAN NIGHT
The ICA and PDG Theatre Company present a fantastic new production of
award-winning playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig's Arabian Night,
directed by up and coming director Diego de Brea, and fresh from Lubijana in
Slovenia - Europe's current hotbed of the cultural avant garde.
Schimmelpfennig: ‘one of the biggest names on the German new writing
scene’ - The Stage
‘[A] sheer feast for the imagination’ The Stage
‘…Makes one keen to see what on earth Schimmelfennig will come up
with next’ British Theatre Guide
‘Shocks and fascinates with its intensity and suspense’ Radio Koper
‘Fantastic’ Primorske Novice
Arabian Night leads us into the lives, dreams and fantasies of five
multiracial inhabitants of an inner-city residential building, including
one who is trapped in a brandy bottle. The author paints a hot summer
night in which magic, fairytale and fantasies are intertwined with the
brutal reality of urban living.
Kav, your post reminds me of orientalism :
Unlike the Americans, the French and British--less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portugese, Italians, and Swiss--have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western Experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet none of this Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. . . .
It will be clear to the reader...that by Orientalism I mean several things, all of them, in my opinion, interdependent. The most readily accepted designation for Orientalism is an academic one, and indeed the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient--and this applies whether the persion is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist--either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she says or does is Orientalism. . . .
Related to this academic tradition, whose fortunes, transmigrations, specializations, and transmissions are in part the subject of this study, is a more general meaning for Orientalism. Orientalism is a style of thought based upon ontological and epistemological distinction made between "the Orient" and (most of the time) "the Occident." Thus a very large mass of writers, among who are poet, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, "mind," destiny, and so on. . . . the phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient . . despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a "real" Orientalism.
Edward Said, Quoted by "Nutshell" from Turkey - her website: ...
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