[...]s denote a process not only of uncovering, but of discovery as well (theatrical curtains pulled back to reveal the true subject
to place the viewer in (an atrium-like building)
monumental inscription
the explorer writes his observation into his
textual proclamation of the author's faith
Olearius's translation of the sufi lore collected by the celebrated Persian poet Sa'di, in a condensed visual form, (acknowledged later by Goethe) with the help of Hakwirdi
Brancaforte
-Golestan (“valley of roses”) written soon after the bloodbath is therefore a document of its time composed by a man of reason who always stresses the practical
-blending personal experience, humorous insights, and aphorisms (of an ethical/didactic nature)
-Muhammadian like the manner of Virgil
religious relativism in Olearius's orientalism
-he is also a forerunner to the comparative religious studies (when he uses the word “Gott/God” rather than the name “Allah”)
-manipulating Hakwirdi's voice in the propagandistic confrontation between the great religions
‘other's blindness’
(in Persianischer Rosenthal the entire)
“Die Persianer” in Olearius is an ambiguous term, it could stand for either Sa'di or the text of the Golestan, or Hakwirdi, but this “Persians” is to be “let inside, wearing a German coat,” Olearius's body is charged with teaching “the Persian to speak German” (
other translations of Golestan
taut and well-translated epigrams
end-rhyme poems
a ‘treasury’ of rhetorical and poetical motifs
a voluminous index of sayings
-
(clever and)
practical advice for individuals (members of the bourgeois, merchants) who wanted to climb the social ladder and learn
Golestan was considered a rich sourch of (such) “oriental wisdom”
(why Olearius is so into Sa'di's Golestan
(frontispiece
relation to the soverign in Sa'di
in Golestan, the tales speak of the love or affection between a man and a young male. however, in the introduction to his translation, Olearius notes that he has subsituted the term “girl, lover, person, or human being” for “youth,” so that it will not offend young people who read the book
Olearius normalizes the discourse (of sufi) for fear of offending the sensibilities of his reading public
angelic piety
Englische Frömmigkeit
the lionskin story
lion symbolizing the element of fire as well as purification
astrological relationship between lion and sun, in the image of Mithras, entwined by snake, symbolizing the path of the sun
mithraic influences survived into the islamic era as well, and became even more prevalent with the safavid dynasty
cosmic imagery and forms of address
the persian sun/lion symbol becomes intelligible for a european audience, when it is represented as a symbol of royalty
the lionskin, in Olearius's title, Persianischer Rosenthal
the animal's interior surface contains the writing, which provides the information about Persian society
Finn and Jake (given to wanderlust and creative risk) in Adventure Time
(this tradition goes back to Hercules, trophy, skin of the beast,)
“slain and flayed, exposed to the European audience, the lion/skin serves as a background on which the German author inscribes the story
...superfluity of details mannered and cluttered with unread decorative motifs set in an unreadable space
‘stretched-out animal skin with the head in the top center’
lion
Olearius's choice of lionskin
deictic
the rigor mortis of the body
the dramatic pose of the Persian husband
the curtain-like skin
the “emblematic corpse” on a “stage”
to serve as ‘exemplum’ tamsil
bellicosity (amade be jang
less obviously, from standard geographical texts of the Islamic world. yet with its emphasis on direct observation and critical objectivity, the map also points the way toward the more exacting “scientific” standards of the Enlightenment.
maps are cultural artifacts
Persia
a map
maps are [...]