Romanian Fiction Then and Now
TUE, March 8, 7:30 pm
Dimitrie Cantemir
THE HIEROGLYPHIC HISTORY (Istoria ieroglifica)
Written in the early 1700's in Constantinople, THE HIEROGLYPHIC HISTORY is a dense allegorical novel describing the Byzantine struggle between two realms of power. Labyrinthine in structure, this baroque novel is interspersed with twelve exemplary tales and envisages a world governed by hunger and the constant battle for either survival or the satiation of greed.
Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723), Prince of Moldavia, was not only one of the greatest writers in the Romanian language, but also a multifaceted historian and thinker of European stature. His earliest philosophical treatise, written in Greek and Romanian, is The Divan or the Disputation of the Wiseman with the World or the Soul’s Judgement of the Body (Divanul sau gâlceava înţeleptului cu lumea sau Giudeţul sufletului cu trupul), Jassy, 1698. Cantemir was fluent in Arabic, Turkish and Persian. He wrote a musical treatise in Turkish, which expounds the theory of Turkish music using a system of notation he himself invented, and contains three hundred and sixty notated melodies composed in accordance with the classical repertoire of oriental music.
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March 2011
