Sunday 25 August 2013

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT


Image via Maptia.

"The relationship between words and their meaning is a fascinating one", specially when we come across a concept that truly cannot be properly explained between cultures, like the popular Brazilian 'saudade' or Milan Kundera's 'lítost'. Inspired by 'Through The Language Glass', a book by Guy Deutscher that argues that our mother tongues shape our experiences of the world, Maptia did a beautiful job illustrating 11 of those untranslatable words. Have a look here.


Photo: Jorge Luis Borges photographed by Vasco Szinetar via Vasco Szinetar's Blog.


The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges was born on August 24th, 1899 (¡feliz cumpleaños!), so there was some articles and blog posts  celebrating his wonderful stories and imagination. Explore, a Brain Pickings project edited by Maria Popova in partnership with Noodle, features a fragment of an imagined old Chinese Enciclopaedia named Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge created by Jorge Luis Borges in his 1942 short story The Analytical Language of John Wilkins. According to that animals are classified as  follows:

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies.

Check Explore, a very nice project; check Venezuelan photographer Vasco Szinetar's work, he is famous for his mirror portraits; and if you haven't yet, read Borges, it's good for the mind and the soul.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.