Jorge Luis Borges Picks 33 of His Favorite Books to Start His Famous Library of Babel

in Literature | December 9th, 2015

“Jorge Luis Borges 1951, by Grete Stern.” Licensed under Pub­lic Domain via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.

Over the years the rec­om­men­da­tion robots of Ama­zon and oth­er online ser­vices seem to be usurp­ing the role of the librar­i­an. I do not know if this is ulti­mate­ly good or bad—we may see in the future arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent librar­i­ans emerge from the web, per­son­al lit­er­ary assis­tants with impec­ca­ble taste and sen­si­tiv­i­ty. But at present, I find some­thing lack­ing in online cura­tion cul­ti­vat­ed by algo­rithms. (I have a sim­i­lar nos­tal­gia for the bygone video store clerk.) Yes, cus­tomers who bought this book also bought oth­ers I might like, but what, tell me, would a gen­uine read­er rec­om­mend?

A read­er, say, like that arch read­er Jorge Luis Borges, “one of the most well read men in his­to­ry,” writes Grant Munroe at The Rum­pus. Part of the thrill of dis­cov­er­ing Borges resides in dis­cov­er­ing all of the books he loved, both real and imag­i­nary. The author always points to his sources. Borges, after all, “pre­sent­ed the genius of Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote [a sto­ry about writ­ing as scrupu­lous­ly faith­ful rewrit­ing] by first care­ful­ly enu­mer­at­ing each book found in Menard’s per­son­al library.” Borges him­self, some read­ers may know, wrote the bulk of the short sto­ries for which he’s known while work­ing at a library in Buenos Aires, a job he described in his 1970 essay “Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Notes” as “nine sol­id years of unhap­pi­ness.”

Although he dis­liked the bureau­crat­ic bore­dom of library work, Borges was bet­ter suit­ed than per­haps any­one for a cura­to­r­i­al role. Giv­en this rep­u­ta­tion, Borges was asked more than once to select his favorite nov­els and sto­ries for pub­lished antholo­gies. One such mul­ti-vol­ume project, titled Per­son­al Library, saw Borges select­ing 74 titles for an Argen­tine pub­lish­er between 1985 and his death in 1988. In anoth­er, Borges chose “a list of authors,” Mon­roe writes, “whose works were select­ed to fill 33 vol­umes in The Library of Babel, a 1979 Span­ish lan­guage anthol­o­gy of fan­tas­tic lit­er­a­ture edit­ed by Borges, named after his ear­li­er sto­ry by the same name.”

Mon­roe tracked down all of the titles Borges chose for the eclec­tic anthol­o­gy, “a fun, bril­liant, poly­glot col­lec­tion” that includes a great many of the author’s peren­ni­al favorites, many of which you’ll rec­og­nize from their men­tions in his fic­tion and essays. Below, we repro­duce Mon­roe’s recon­struc­tion of the 33 Library of Babel vol­umes, with links to those works avail­able free online. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many of these sto­ries are not avail­able in trans­la­tion. Oth­ers, such as those of Leon Bloy, have just become avail­able in Eng­lish since Mon­roe’s 2009 arti­cle. Thanks to his dili­gence, we can enjoy hav­ing Jorge Luis Borges as our per­son­al librar­i­an.

The Library of Babel

(Note: The titles of all sto­ries cur­rent­ly with­out a prop­er trans­la­tion into Eng­lish have been left in their orig­i­nal lan­guage.)

(Also note:  All sto­ries marked with [c] are still pro­tect­ed by US copy­right law.  Only res­i­dents of the UK and Aus­tralia can legal­ly click on the hyper­link pro­vid­ed.)

  1. Jack Lon­don, The Con­cen­tric Deaths

“The Min­ions of Midas”
“The Shad­ow and the Flash”
“Lost Face”
“The House of Mapuhi”
“The Law of Life”

  1. Jorge Luis Borges, August 26, 1983

(All but the last three arti­cles are avail­able in Penguin’s Borges: The Col­lect­ed Fic­tions.)

“August 26, 1983″
“The Rose of Per­acel­sus”
“Blue Tigers”
“Shakespeare’s Mem­o­ry”
An Inter­view with Borges, with Maria Esther Vasquez
A Chronol­o­gy of J.L. Borges’ Life, from Siru­ela Mag­a­zine
The Ruler and Labyrinth: An Approx­i­ma­tion of J.L Borges’ Bib­li­og­ra­phy, by Fer­nan­dez Fer­rer

  1. Gus­tav Meyrink, Car­di­nal Napel­lus[ii]

“Der Kar­di­nal Napel­lus”
“J.H. Obere­its Besuch bei den Zeit­egeln”
“Der Vier Mond­brüder”

  1. Léon Bloy, Dis­agree­able Tales 

[All avail­able in a trans­la­tion pub­lished just this year]

“La Taie d’Argent”
“Les Cap­tifs de Longjumeau”
“Une Idée Médiocre”
“Une Mar­tyre”
“La Plus Belle Trou­vaille de Caïn”
“On n’est pas Par­fait”
“La Reli­gion de M. Pleur”
“Ter­ri­ble Châ­ti­ment d’un Den­tiste”
“La Tisane”
“Tout Ce Que Tu Voudras!”
“La Dernière Cuite”
“Le Vieux de la Mai­son”

  1. Gio­van­ni Pap­i­ni, The Mir­ror That Fled

“Il Giorno Non Resti­tu­ito”
“Due Immag­i­ni in una Vas­ca”
“Lo Spec­chio che Fugge”
“Sto­ria Com­ple­ta­mente Assur­da”
“Il Men­di­cante di Ani­me”
“Una Morte Men­tale”
“Non Voglio Più Essere Ciò che Sono”
“Chi Sei?”
“Il Sui­ci­da Sos­ti­tu­to”
“L’ultima Visi­ta del Gen­tilu­o­mo Mala­to”

  1. Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime

“Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime”
“The Can­ter­ville Ghost”
“The Self­ish Giant”
“The Hap­py Prince”
“The Nightin­gale and the Rose”

  1. Vil­liers de L’Isle-Adam, El Con­vi­da­do de las Últi­mas Fes­ti­vas

(Used copies of the 1985 Oxford U. Press trans­la­tion of Cru­el Tales (the col­lec­tion in which these sto­ries are pub­lished) are avail­able online.)

“L’Aventure de Tsé-i-la”
“Le Con­vive des Dernières Fêtes”
“A Tor­ture By Hope” [trans. 1891]
“La Reine Ysabeau”
“Som­bre Réc­it Con­teur Plus Som­bre”
“L’Enjeu”
“Véra”

  1. Pedro Anto­nio de Alar­cón, El Ami­go de la Muerte

“El Ami­go de la Muerte” [or “The Strange Friend of Tito Gil”]
“The Tall Woman”

  1. Her­man Melville, Bartle­by the Scriven­er

“Bartle­by, the Scriven­er: A Sto­ry of Wall-Street”

  1. William Beck­ford, Vathek

Vathek, a novel­la.

  1. H.G. Wells, The Door in the Wall

“The Plat­tner Sto­ry”
“The Sto­ry of Late Mr. Elve­sham”
“The Crys­tal Egg”
“The Coun­try of the Blind”
“The Door in the Wall”

  1. Pu Songling, The Tiger Guest [iii]

“The Bud­dhist Priest of Ch’ang-Ch’ing”
“In the Infer­nal Regions”
“The Mag­ic Mir­ror”
“A Super­nat­ur­al Wife”
“Exam­i­na­tion for the Post of Guardian Angel”
“The Man Who Was Changed into a Crow”
“The Tiger Guest”
“Judge Lu”
“The Paint­ed Skin”
“The Stream of Cash”
“The Invis­i­ble Priest”
“The Mag­ic Path”
“The Wolf Dream”
“Dream­ing Hon­ors”
“The Tiger of Chao-Ch’ëng”
“Tak­ing Revenge”

  1. Arthur Machen, The Shin­ing Pyra­mid

“The Nov­el of the Black Seal”
“The Nov­el of the White Pow­der”
“The Shin­ing Pyra­mid”

  1. Robert Louis Steven­son, The Isle of Voic­es [iv]

“The Bot­tle Imp”
“The Isle of Voic­es”
“Thrawn Janet”
“Markheim”

  1. G.K. Chester­ton, The Eye of Apol­lo

“The Duel of Dr Hirsch”
“The Queer Feet”
“The Hon­or of Israel Gow”
“The Eye of Apol­lo”
“The Three Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse” [c]

  1. Jacques Cazotte, The Dev­il in Love

(A new trans­la­tion is avail­able from Dedalus Press of the UK.)

The Dev­il in Love, a novel­la.
“Jacquez Cazotte,” an essay by Ger­ard de Ner­val

  1. Franz Kaf­ka, The Vul­ture

(While I’ve pro­vid­ed links to online trans­la­tions, they’re some­what sus­pect; prob­a­bly bet­ter to check the Com­plete Short Sto­ries.)

“The Hunger Artist”
“First Sor­row” [or “The Trapeze Artist”]
“The Vul­ture”
“A Com­mon Con­fu­sion”
“Jack­als and Arabs”
“The Great Wall of Chi­na”
“The City Coat of Arms”
“A Report to the Acad­e­my”
“Eleven Sons”
“Prometheus”

  1. Edgar Allan Poe, The Pur­loined Let­ter

“The Pur­loined Let­ter”
“Ms. Found in a Bot­tle”
“The Facts in the Case of M. Valde­mar”
“The Man in the Crowd”
“The Pit and the Pen­du­lum”

  1. Leopol­do Lugones, The Pil­lar of Salt

(A new trans­la­tion of Lugones’ sto­ries, pub­lished by The Library of Latin Amer­i­ca, is avail­able at Powell’s.)

“The Pil­lar of Salt”
“Grand­moth­er Juli­eta”
“The Hors­es of Abdera”
“An Inex­plic­a­ble Phe­nom­e­non”
“Francesca”
“Rain of Fire: An Account of the Immo­la­tion of Gomor­ra”

  1. Rud­yard Kipling, The Wish House

(All the copy­right­ed sto­ries are from Kipling’s Deb­its and Cred­its.  They should be avail­able in any thor­ough col­lec­tion of his short fic­tion.)

“The Wish House” [c]
“A Sahib’s War”
“The Gar­den­er” [c]
“The Madon­na of the Trench­es” [c]
“The Eye of Allah” [c]

  1. The Thou­sand and One Nights, Accord­ing to Gal­land

“Abdu­la, the Blind Beg­gar” [trans. 1811]
“Alladin’s Lamp” [ibid]

  1. The Thou­sand and One Nights, Accord­ing to Bur­ton

“King Sin­bad and His Fal­con”
“The Adven­tures of Bul­ulkia”
“The City of Brass”
“Tale of the Queen and the Ser­pent”
“Tale of the Hus­band and the Par­rot”
“Tale of the Jew­ish Doc­tor”
“Tale of the Ensor­celled Prince”
“Tale of the Prince and the Ogres”
“Tale of the Wiz­ir and the Wise Duban”
“The Fish­er­man and the Genii”

  1. Hen­ry James, The Friends of the Friends

“The Friends of the Friends”
“The Abase­ment of the North­mores”
“Owen Wingrave”
“The Pri­vate Life”

  1. Voltaire, Micromegas

(A con­tem­po­rary trans­la­tion of these sto­ries is avail­able at Powell’s.)

“The Black and the White”
“The Two Con­forters”
“The His­to­ry of the Trav­els of Scara­men­ta­do”
“Mem­non the Philoso­pher”
“Micromegas”
“The Princess of Baby­lon”

  1. Charles Hin­ton, Sci­en­tif­ic Romances

“A Plane World”
“What is the Fourth Dimen­sion?”
“The Per­sian King”

  1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Great Stone Face

“Mr. Higginbotham’s Cat­a­stro­phe”
“The Great Stone Face”
“Earth’s Holo­caust”
“The Minister’s Black Veil”
“Wake­field”

  1. Lord Dun­sany, The Coun­try of Yann

“Where the Tides Ebb and Flow”
“The Sword and the Idol”
“Car­cas­sonne”
“Idle Days on the Yann”
“The Field”
“The Beg­gars”
“The Bureau d’Echange de Maux”
“A Night at an Inn”

  1. Saki, The Ret­i­cence of Lady Anne

“The Sto­ry-Teller”
“The Lum­ber Room”
“Gabriel-Ernest”
“Tober­mory”
“The Back­ground” [trans­lat­ed as “El Mar­co” (or “The Frame”)]
“The Unrest Cure”
“The Inter­lop­ers”
“Quail Seed”
“The Peace of Mowsle Bar­ton”
“The Open Win­dow”
“The Ret­i­cence of Lady Anne”
“Sred­ni Vashtar”

  1. Russ­ian Tales

“Lazarus,” Leonid Andreyev
“The Croc­o­dile,” Fydor Doesto­evsky
“The Death of Ivan Illitch,” Leo Tol­stoy

  1. Argen­tinean Tales

“El Cala­mar Opta por su Tin­ta,” Adol­fo Bioy Casares
“Yzur,” Leopol­do Leones [See above.]
“A House Tak­en Over,” Julio Cor­tazar
“La Galera,” Manuel Muji­ca Láinez
“Los Objec­tos,” Sylv­ina Decam­po
“El Pro­fe­sor de Aje­drez,” Fed­eri­co Peltzer
“Pudo Haberme Ocur­ri­do,” Manuel Pey­rou
“El Elegi­do,” Maria Esther Vasquez

  1. J.L. Borges and Adol­fo Bioy Casares, New Sto­ries of H. Bus­tos Domecq

(Avail­able at Amazon.com.)

  1. The Book of Dreams (A Col­lec­tion of Recount­ed Dreams)

List of Authors: Fran­cis­co de Queve­do y Vil­le­gas, Alexan­dra David-Néel, Alfon­so X, Alfred de Vigny, Aloy­sius Bertrand, Anto­nio Macha­do, Bern­abé Cobo, F. Sarmien­to, Eliseo Díaz, Fran­cis­co Aceve­do, François Rabelais, Franz Kaf­ka, Friedrich Niet­zsche, Gastón Padil­la, Giuseppe Ungaret­ti, Got­tfried Keller, H. Desvi­gnes Doolit­tle, Her­bert Allen Giles, Herodotus, H. Gar­ro, Horace, Ibrahim Zahim [Ibrahim Bin Adham], James G. Fraz­er, Jorge Alber­to Fer­ran­do, Jorge Luis Borges, José Fer­rater Mora, José María Eça de Queiroz, Joseph Addi­son, Juan José Arreo­la, Lewis Car­roll, Lao Tzu, Louis Aragon, Lui­gi Piran­del­lo, Luis de Gón­go­ra, Mircea Eli­ade, Moham­mad Mossadegh, Nemer ibn el Barud [no Wiki entry; see Ama­zon com­ment field], O. Hen­ry, Otto von Bis­mar­ck, Paul Grous­sac, Pla­to, Plutarch, Rab­bi Nis­sim ben Reuven, Ray­mond de Beck­er,  Roder­i­cus Bar­tius, Roy Bartholomew, Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge, Sebastián de Covar­ru­bias Oroz­co, Thorn­ton Wilder, Lucretius, Tsao Hsue Kin [Cao Xue­qin], Ward Hill Lam­on, William But­ler Yeats, Wu Cheng’en, Gio­van­ni Pap­i­ni, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Baude­laire

  1. Borges A to Z (A Com­pi­la­tion)

via The Rum­pus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Vis­it The Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Superconductor Levitating on a Möbius Strip

in Science | December 9th, 2015

We’ve seen some pret­ty cre­ative things done on a Möbius strip – like watch­ing a Bach canon get played for­wards, then back. But how about this? Above, watch Andy Marmery show a super­con­duc­tor lev­i­tat­ing on a Möbius strip made with over 2,000 mag­nets. The mag­ic is in the super­con­duct­ing mate­r­i­al, Yttri­um bar­i­um cop­per oxide, which lets the super­con­duc­tor whiz along, seem­ing­ly float­ing both above and below the track. This video comes from a video series called “Tales from the Prep Room,” cre­at­ed by The Roy­al Insti­tu­tion, “a 200 year old char­i­ty based in Lon­don ded­i­cat­ed to con­nect­ing peo­ple with the world of sci­ence through events, edu­ca­tion, and [its] Christ­mas Lec­tures.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart Explains the Space-Time Con­tin­u­um With a Music Box, Bach, and a Möbius Strip

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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Watch Groundbreaking Comic Artist Mœbius Draw His Characters in Real Time

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | December 9th, 2015

Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Mœbius, may have passed away in 2012, but he gave his many fans glimpses into his unpar­al­leled artis­tic imag­i­na­tion right up until the end. In 2010 and 2012, the Fon­da­tion Carti­er pour l’Art Con­tem­po­rain put on Mœbius-Transe-Forme, the first major exhi­bi­tion in Paris devot­ed to his work, and one that, at Mœbius’ request, explored “the theme of meta­mor­pho­sis, a leit­mo­tif that runs through­out his comics, draw­ings, and film projects” and that pre­sent­ed his work in a vari­ety of ways that even some of his most avid read­ers, used to expe­ri­enc­ing his work only on the page, would nev­er have seen before.

One such way took the form of The Danc­ing Line, a series of videos which cap­ture Mœbius draw­ing live on a graph­ic tablet, offer­ing an artist’s-eye-view into how he trans­formed a blank dig­i­tal can­vas into a win­dow on the world he spent his career cre­at­ing. Here we have three selec­tions from the series: at the top we have Mœbius fill­ing in the details on the face of Malv­ina from The Air­tight Garage.

Just above, he draws the title char­ac­ter from his even bet­ter known com­ic series Blue­ber­ry, the uncon­ven­tion­al West­ern he cre­at­ed with Jean-Michel Char­li­er. Below, you can watch the cre­ation of a piece called “Inside Mœbius” — not a self-por­trait, exact­ly, but a por­trait of the sort of artist that exists in Mœbius’ world draw­ing a por­trait of Mœbius him­self.

“Stay­ing alive for an artist means to always be in an unknown part of him­self, to be out of him­self,” Mœbius told the Los Ange­les Times in 2011. “The exhi­bi­tion in Paris, the theme was trans­for­ma­tion. Art is the big door but real life is a lot of small doors that you must pass through to cre­ate some­thing new. You don’t always need to go far.” Nobody, artist or oth­er­wise, stays alive for­ev­er, but Mœbius knew how, in the time he had, to stay as alive as pos­si­ble by con­stant­ly seek­ing out those unknown parts. The Danc­ing Line videos show us how he felt his way through that ter­ra incog­ni­ta, point­ing the way with the expan­sive body of work he left behind toward all those small doors we, too, must pass through to cre­ate some­thing new of our own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Mœbius Illus­trates Paulo Coelho’s Inspi­ra­tional Nov­el The Alchemist (1998)

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Writes a List of 16 Suggestions for African-Americans Riding Newly-Integrated Buses (1956)

in History | December 9th, 2015

Montgomery Bus Integration Suggestions

Last Tues­day, Decem­ber 1st, marked the 60th anniver­sary of Rosa Parks’ refusal to relin­quish her seat at the front of a Mont­gomery, Alaba­ma bus, and as some peo­ple point­ed out, the sto­ry many of us were told as chil­dren about Parks’ act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence was fab­ri­cat­ed. Parks was not a hum­ble, elder­ly seam­stress worn out from a long day of work, a myth author Her­bert Kohl sum­ma­rizes as “Rosa Parks the Tired.” She was a well-con­nect­ed activist and NAACP leader who had already ini­ti­at­ed actions to inte­grate local libraries. Of her gross­ly over­sim­pli­fied biog­ra­phy, Parks remarked in her mem­oirs, “I was not tired phys­i­cal­ly, or no more tired than I usu­al­ly was at the end of a work­ing day. I was not old, although some peo­ple have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giv­ing in.”

Nor was Parks the first to brave arrest for refus­ing to give up a seat at the front of the bus. That same year, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give in, and sev­en months lat­er, so did 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith. Nei­ther of their arrests, how­ev­er, had the pow­er to spark the Mont­gomery Bus Boy­cott, the action that brought nation­al atten­tion to the civ­il rights move­ment and to Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.’s lead­er­ship role. King would lat­er recall that “Mrs. Parks was ide­al for the role assigned to her by his­to­ry” because “her char­ac­ter was impec­ca­ble and her ded­i­ca­tion deep-root­ed.” King’s repeat­ed empha­sis on “char­ac­ter” through­out his direc­tion of the boy­cott and beyond often seems an awful lot like what is today dis­par­aged, with good rea­son, as “respectabil­i­ty pol­i­tics”—the notion that only those who con­form to con­ser­v­a­tive, mid­dle-class norms of dress and behav­ior deserve to be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and to have their civ­il rights respect­ed.

But this was not nec­es­sar­i­ly his point. His embrace of non­vi­o­lent resis­tance was in part a strate­gic means of pre­sent­ing the Jim Crow pow­er struc­ture with an implaca­ble unit­ed front that could not be moved to react in ways that might seem to jus­ti­fy vio­lence in the eyes of a large­ly unsym­pa­thet­ic public—to make it clear beyond any doubt who was the aggres­sor. And the vio­lence and repres­sion direct­ed at the boy­cotters was sig­nif­i­cant. They were attacked while walk­ing to work; King’s and civ­il rights leader E.D. Nixon’s hous­es were both fire­bombed; and King, Parks, and 87 oth­ers were indict­ed for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the boy­cott.

Nor did the boycott’s suc­cess in 1956 put an end to the attacks. As a site com­mem­o­rat­ing this his­to­ry sum­ma­rizes, “After the boy­cott came to a close, snipers shot into bus­es in black com­mu­ni­ties, at one point hit­ting a young black woman, Rosa Jor­dan, in the legs.” And on one sin­gle night in 1957, “four black church­es and two homes were bombed.” These acts were on the extreme end of a dai­ly series of aggres­sive con­fronta­tions and humil­i­a­tions black rid­ers faced as they board­ed the new­ly-inte­grat­ed Mont­gomery bus­es. To help those rid­ers nav­i­gate this envi­ron­ment, King pre­pared the list of guide­lines above on the week before the bus­es inte­grat­ed. You can read a full tran­script of the list below, thanks to Lists of Note, who include it in their recent book-length col­lec­tion.

King makes his agen­da clear in the intro­duc­to­ry para­graph: “If there is vio­lence in word or deed it must not be our peo­ple who com­mit it.” Some of these direc­tives encour­age great pas­siv­i­ty in the face of often extreme hos­til­i­ty. It is very dif­fi­cult for me to imag­ine respond­ing in such ways to insults or phys­i­cal attacks. And yet, the boy­cotters had already dai­ly, and calm­ly, faced death and severe injury. As white Luther­an min­is­ter Robert Graetz—whose home was also bombed—remembered lat­er, “Dr. King used to talk about the real­i­ty that some of us were going to die and that if any of us were afraid to die we real­ly shouldn’t be there.”

 

INTEGRATED BUS SUGGESTIONS

 

This is a his­toric week because seg­re­ga­tion on bus­es has now been declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. With­in a few days the Supreme Court Man­date will reach Mont­gomery and you will be re-board­ing inte­grat­ed bus­es. This places upon us all a tremen­dous respon­si­bil­i­ty of main­tain­ing, in face of what could be some unpleas­ant­ness, a calm and lov­ing dig­ni­ty befit­ting good cit­i­zens and mem­bers of our Race. If there is vio­lence in word or deed it must not be our peo­ple who com­mit it.

For your help and con­ve­nience the fol­low­ing sug­ges­tions are made. Will you read, study and mem­o­rize them so that our non-vio­lent deter­mi­na­tion may not be endan­gered. First, some gen­er­al sug­ges­tions:

1 Not all white peo­ple are opposed to inte­grat­ed bus­es. Accept good­will on the part of many.

2 The whole bus is now for the use of all Take a vacant seat.

3 Pray for guid­ance and com­mit your­self to com­plete non-vio­lence in word and action as you enter the bus.

4 Demon­strate the calm dig­ni­ty of our Mont­gomery peo­ple in your actions.

5 In all things observe ordi­nary rules of cour­tesy and good behav­ior.

6 Remem­ber that this is not a vic­to­ry for Negroes alone, but for all Mont­gomery and the South. Do not boast! Do not brag!

7 Be qui­et but friend­ly; proud, but not arro­gant; joy­ous, but not bois­ter­ous.

8 Be lov­ing enough to absorb evil and under­stand­ing enough to turn an ene­my into a friend.

Now for some spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tions:

1 The bus dri­ver is in charge of the bus and has been instruct­ed to obey the law. Assume that he will coop­er­ate in help­ing you occu­py any vacant seat.

2 Do not delib­er­ate­ly sit by a white per­son, unless there is no oth­er seat.

3 In sit­ting down by a per­son, white or col­ored, say “May I” or “Par­don me” as you sit. This is a com­mon cour­tesy.

4 If cursed, do not curse back. If pushed, do not push back. If struck, do not strike back, but evi­dence love and good­will at all times.

5 In case of an inci­dent, talk as lit­tle as pos­si­ble, and always in a qui­et tone. Do not get up from your seat! Report all seri­ous inci­dents to the bus dri­ver.

6 For the first few days try to get on the bus with a friend in whose non-vio­lence you have con­fi­dence. You can uphold one anoth­er by a glance or a prayer.

7 If anoth­er per­son is being molest­ed, do not arise to go to his defense, but pray for the oppres­sor and use moral and spir­i­tu­al force to car­ry on the strug­gle for jus­tice.

8 Accord­ing to your own abil­i­ty and per­son­al­i­ty, do not be afraid to exper­i­ment with new and cre­ative tech­niques for achiev­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and social change.

If you feel you can­not take it, walk for anoth­er week or two. We have con­fi­dence in our peo­ple. GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Tired of Giv­ing In’: The Arrest Report, Mug Shot and Fin­ger­prints of Rosa Parks (Decem­ber 1, 1955)

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

‘You Are Done’: The Chill­ing “Sui­cide Let­ter” Sent to Mar­tin Luther King by the F.B.I.

200,000 Mar­tin Luther King Papers Go Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Google Gives You a 360° View of the Performing Arts, From the Royal Shakespeare Company to the Paris Opera Ballet

in Dance, Google, Music, Theatre | December 8th, 2015

We’ve long been able to read books online. More recent­ly, the inter­net has also become a favored dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem for movies, and cer­tain­ly we’ve all heard more than enough about the effects of down­load­ing and stream­ing on the music indus­try. No new tech­nol­o­gy can quite sub­sti­tute, yet, for a vis­it to the muse­um, but as we’ve often post­ed about here, many of the muse­ums them­selves have gone ahead and made their paint­ings, sculp­tures, and oth­er arti­facts view­able in great detail online. At this point, will the expe­ri­ence of any art form at all remain unavail­able to us on the inter­net?

Not long ago, I would have named any of the per­form­ing arts, but the brains at the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute have now got around to those most liv­ing of all forms as well. The New York Times’ Michael Coop­er writes of our new­found abil­i­ty, through a series of 360-degree videos, to “stand, vir­tu­al­ly, on the stage of the Palais Gar­nier, among the dancers of the Paris Opera Bal­let,” ” jour­ney to Strat­ford-upon-Avon, where you can try to keep up with a fre­net­ic Alex Has­sell of the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny as Hen­ry V, exhort­ing his troops to go ‘once more unto the breach,’ ” or “go onstage at Carnegie Hall, where the video places you smack in the mid­dle of the Philadel­phia Orches­tra as it plays a rous­ing ‘In the Hall of the Moun­tain King.’ ”

These come as part of a vir­tu­al exhi­bi­tion involv­ing “an inno­v­a­tive assem­blage of per­form­ing arts groups” that went live ear­li­er this month at the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute’s site. The orga­ni­za­tions, now more than 60 in total, include not just the Paris Opera, the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny, and Carnegie Hall, but the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic, the Vien­na State Opera, the Amer­i­can Bal­let The­ater, the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Mag­ic, the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music, the Coun­try Music Hall of Fame, the John F. Kennedy Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera, and the Rome Opera. You can find the per­for­mances neat­ly divid­ed into cat­e­gories: Music, Opera, The­atre, Dance, and Per­for­mance Art.

Google’s blog describes some of the tech­nol­o­gy behind all this, includ­ing the 360-degree per­for­mance record­ings, the “indoor Street View imagery” of the grand venues where many of the per­for­mances hap­pen, and the “ultra-high res­o­lu­tion Gigapix­el” images avail­able for your scruti­ny. When you play the video above of the Philadel­phia Orches­tra, you can click and drag to view the per­for­mance from every pos­si­ble angle from your van­tage right there in the midst of the musi­cians. I can’t imag­ine what the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute will come up with next, but sure­ly it won’t be long before we can see things from the Black Swan’s point of view.

You can start explor­ing the 360s per­for­mances here.

via The New York Times/Google

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bal­let Dancers Do Their Hard­est Moves in Slow Motion

New Web Site, “The Opera Plat­form,” Lets You Watch La Travi­a­ta and Oth­er First-Class Operas Free Online

40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Original Portrait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Layers of da Vinci’s Masterpiece

in Art | December 8th, 2015

The BBC is get­ting ready to air a doc­u­men­tary, Secrets of the Mona Lisa, which will delve into the research of French sci­en­tist Pas­cal Cotte. Using an inno­v­a­tive imag­ing tech­nique, Cotte has man­aged to probe the paint lay­ers beneath the sur­face of da Vin­ci’s six­teenth-cen­tu­ry mas­ter­piece. And, lo and behold, he’s found hid­den paint­ings, includ­ing what he believes is an orig­i­nal, “real” por­trait of Lisa del Gio­con­do (the sub­ject of da Vin­ci’s paint­ing).

The host of the doc­u­men­tary, art his­to­ri­an Andrew Gra­ham-Dixon, announced, “I have no doubt that this is def­i­nite­ly one of the sto­ries of the cen­tu­ry.” Oth­er art his­to­ri­ans are not get­ting car­ried away. Mar­tin Kemp, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of the His­to­ry of Art at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, said in an inter­view: “They [Cot­te’s images] are inge­nious in show­ing what Leonar­do may have been think­ing about. But the idea that there is that pic­ture as it were hid­ing under­neath the sur­face is unten­able. I do not think there are these dis­crete stages which rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent por­traits. I see it as more or less a con­tin­u­ous process of evo­lu­tion. I am absolute­ly con­vinced that the Mona Lisa is Lisa.” Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, there are not dif­fer­ent por­traits on da Vin­ci’s can­vas, just stages of the same por­trait that now hangs in the Lou­vre today.

Get more back­ground on the doc­u­men­tary and Cot­te’s research here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Did Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before The Mona Lisa?

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

Mark Twain Skew­ers Great Works of Art: The­Mona Lisa (“a Smoked Had­dock!”), The Last Sup­per (“a Mourn­ful Wreck”) & More

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

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George Orwell’s 1984 Staged as an Opera: Watch Scenes from the 2005 Production in London

in Literature, Opera | December 8th, 2015

Should we have any doubt about the mal­leabil­i­ty of George Orwell’s dystopi­an 1948 nov­el 1984, we need look no fur­ther than its most recent, very loose incar­na­tion in a com­ing film titled Equals, which Vari­ety’s Peter Debruge writes “should res­onate most with the art­house-going seg­ment of the ‘Twi­light’ fan­base.” That’s not a descrip­tion that fills me with hope for a film project that might have brought us a wor­thy update of Orwell’s clas­sic, as rel­e­vant as ever in a world full of high-tech sur­veil­lance states, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-enabled post-fac­tu­al­ism, and choose-your-own creep­ing total­i­tar­i­an polit­i­cal sce­nar­ios. These are con­cerns that deserve, nay beg, for a mature cin­e­mat­ic treat­ment, and a sophis­ti­cat­ed new film adap­ta­tion of 1984 might be just the thing we need to grasp the moment. Instead, we may have to set­tle for glossy, Orwell-esque teen romance.

On the oth­er hand, we might con­sid­er what should pre­sum­ably be a sophis­ti­cat­ed treat­ment of the nov­el in a recent adap­ta­tion that pre­miered in 2005 at London’s Roy­al Opera house. Com­posed by New York Phil­har­mon­ic con­duc­tor Lorin Maazel, with a libret­to by poet and crit­ic J.D. McClatchy and Tony-award win­ning writer Thomas Mee­han, the 1984 opera would seem to offer much more than an enter­tain­ing diver­sion. The work is Maazel’s first pro­duc­tion, and he told the BBC, “I found that once I got into the mate­r­i­al I was very inspired, very moti­vat­ed, by the breadth of the sto­ry, by the chal­lenge of mak­ing this extra­or­di­nary nov­el come alive in a dif­fer­ent frame and con­text.”

As Maazel points out, and as the com­ing Equals movie exploits, the novel’s plot does indeed turn on a romance, among oth­er poten­tial­ly the­atri­cal ele­ments. Maazel says he “found with­in [it] the true stuff of opera—doomed love affair, polit­i­cal intrigue—very much like Don Car­los, or Fide­lio, or Tosca.” How suc­cess­ful were Maazel and his writ­ers at trans­lat­ing the dark polit­i­cal plot­ting of the nov­el to the bright­ly-lit stage of the Roy­al Opera? Well, you’ll notice that the “Press Arti­cles” sec­tion of the opera’s web­site is telling­ly thin, per­haps because the crit­ics were not kind to the pro­duc­tion, many call­ing it a van­i­ty project, giv­en that Maazel had financed it him­self (with a com­pa­ny called Big Broth­er Pro­duc­tions). Nonethe­less, the New York Times praised the libret­to as “an effec­tive treat­ment of George Orwell’s com­plex and icon­ic nov­el” that hon­ors Orwell’s “themes and char­ac­ters,” though they found the music in gen­er­al much less com­pelling.

Wide­spread crit­i­cal dis­par­age­ment did not seem to impact tick­et sales, how­ev­er; the per­for­mance near­ly sold out for three nights in a row. Opera hous­es every­where, strug­gling as they are to attract new audi­ences and patrons, may yet con­sid­er reviv­ing the work for its pop­u­lar­i­ty. In the mean­while, curi­ous fans of opera, the nov­el, or both, can pur­chase a DVD of the pro­duc­tion and see sev­er­al clips here. At the top of the post, hear the over­ture and below it, see the love duet of Win­ston (Simon Keenly­side) and Julia (Nan­cy Gustafson). Fur­ther down, hear audio of the hymn “All Hail Oceana,” and just above, see the production’s finale. Speak­ers of Ital­ian may find this brief tele­vi­sion seg­ment on the pro­duc­tion of inter­est as well. While nei­ther Maazel’s ambi­tious opera nor the upcom­ing, very loose com­mer­cial film adap­ta­tion seem to offer the con­tem­po­rary 1984 we need, I for one hold out hope for a treat­ment that can effec­tive­ly crys­tal­ize our fraught polit­i­cal present and Orwell’s dis­turbing­ly imag­ined future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Flannery O’Connor’s Short Story, “Revelation,” Read by Legendary Historian & Radio Host, Studs Terkel

in Literature | December 8th, 2015

flannery terkel

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Flan­nery O’Connor’s sur­gi­cal satire has the abil­i­ty to strip away the pre­ten­sions of not only those char­ac­ters we are already pre­dis­posed to dis­like, but also those with whom we may sympathize—that is, edu­cat­ed peo­ple with broad­ly human­ist views who think they see right through the self-impor­tant prej­u­dices and provin­cial­ism of peo­ple like Mrs. Hopewell in “Good Coun­try Peo­ple” or Mrs. Chest­ny in “Every­thing that Ris­es Must Con­verge.” Both sto­ries dra­ma­tize gen­er­a­tional ten­sions in the form of mother/child pairs at odds. In the for­mer, super­fi­cial, con­de­scend­ing Mrs. Hopewell and her daugh­ter Joy—a mis­er­able, grad­u­ate-edu­cat­ed amputee who prefers to call her­self Hulga—battle over their con­flict­ing moral philoso­phies, only to both be tak­en in by a devi­ous bump­kin pos­ing as a Bible sales­man.

In the lat­ter story—also the title of O’Connor’s most wide­ly read col­lec­tion, pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in 1965—a moth­er and son pair present us with two kinds of intol­er­ance. Mrs. Chest­ny is an overt big­ot whose self-impor­tance depends on her sense of her­self as a descen­dent of a proud, if decayed, South­ern aris­toc­ra­cy. Julian, her unem­ployed son, a despair­ing recent col­lege-grad with designs of becom­ing a writer but with no real prospects, thinks him­self above his mother’s ugly racism and desires noth­ing more than that she learn her les­son: “The old world is gone,” he says, “You aren’t who you think you are.” When she final­ly gets her come­up­pance at the end of the sto­ry (on the way, com­i­cal­ly, to a “reduc­ing class”) it may have come, to Julian’s dis­may, at the cost of her life. Though we are inclined to sym­pa­thize at first with the bit­ter­ly iron­ic son, as the sto­ry pro­gress­es, the nar­ra­tor reveals his moti­va­tions as hard­ly more ele­vat­ed than his mother’s hate and fear.

These are not char­ac­ters we fall in love with, but we nev­er for­get them either. Through them we come to see that none of us is who we think we are, that the human capac­i­ty for self-decep­tion is bound­less. This is the les­son com­mon to each of O’Connor’s sto­ries, one she offers anew with wit and vari­ety each time, and each time through a kind of rev­e­la­tion. Her sto­ries draw us into points of view that reveal themselves—through sud­den epipha­nies and grad­ual unfoldings—to be inad­e­quate, delud­ed, pro­found­ly lim­it­ed. And though O’Connor’s South­ern Catholic pes­simism has aston­ish­ing­ly uni­ver­sal reach, the region­al ground­ing of her sto­ries and nov­els present us with par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can ver­sions of the pet­ty mean­ness and con­ceit com­mon to the human species.

In “Rev­e­la­tion,” anoth­er sto­ry from Every­thing Ris­es Must Con­verge—read above by Studs Terkel—O’Con­nor lays bare some par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can race and class bias­es in the char­ac­ter of Mrs. Turpin, anoth­er old­er South­ern lady whose prej­u­dices are more vicious and spite­ful than both Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Chest­ny put togeth­er. The sto­ry achieves a sub­tle exam­i­na­tion of some very unsub­tle atti­tudes, and the read­ing by Terkel, in his Chica­go-accent­ed radio voice, does it jus­tice indeed. Terkel read the sto­ry on his radio show, The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, in 1965, the year of its pub­li­ca­tion and a lit­tle over a year after O’Con­nor’s death. See a com­plete tran­script of the broad­cast at the Terkel show’s Pop Up Archive. The audio above has been kind­ly enhanced for us by sound design­er Berrak Nil.

As an added treat, hear “Every­thing that Ris­es Must Con­verge” read above by Acad­e­my Award-win­ning actress Estelle Par­sons, who became known in her lat­er years for play­ing an over­bear­ing moth­er like the sto­ry’s Mrs. Chest­ny in the TV sit­com Roseanne. Despite the quaint­ness of O’Con­nor’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, we are not far at all from the world she depict­ed, giv­en the stub­born per­sis­tence of human big­otry, self­ish­ness, and blind self-regard. For more clas­sic O’Con­nor, hear the sharp-tongued writer, who died too soon of com­pli­ca­tions from her lupus at age 39, read her sto­ry “A Good Man is Hard to Find” here.

The read­ing above can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Studs Terkel Inter­views Bob Dylan, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Flan­nery O’Connor to Lit Pro­fes­sor: “My Tone Is Not Meant to Be Obnox­ious. I’m in a State of Shock”

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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