Monat: April 2020

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„The Day of Easter“ by Dionysios Solomos (A PaschalPoem)

Greece’s National poet DionysiosSolomos (1798–1857) was born on theGreek island of Zakynthos, to an elderlycount and his teenaged housekeeper.Solomos was educated in Italy, wherehe studied law and literature, but onreturning to Greece he relearnedGreek, and decided to write in demotic,or common modern, Greek. He gainedfame early on with his ‘Hymn to Liberty’(1823), a 158‐quatrain poem – the firsttwo stanzas are sung as the GreekNational Anthem.

The poem Η HμέρατηςΛαμπρής or TheDay of Easter is most famous from ascene from the award-winning film „EternityAnd A Day“, by Theodoros Angelopoulos(1998). In the movie Alexandros (Bruno Ganz)and the boy (Achilleas Skevis) are on a bus rideand encounter the Greek poet DionysiosSolomos (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), who recitesverses from his poem Η HμέρατηςΛαμπρής.Some consider this scene part of one of thegreatest scenes in all cinema.

Η ημέρα της Λαμπρής, ∆ιονυσιος Σολωμος

Καθαρότατον ήλιο επρομηνούσε
της αυγής το δροσάτο ύστερο αστέρι,
σύγνεφο, καταχνιά, δεν απερνούσε
τ‘ ουρανού σε κανένα από τα μέρη,
και από εκεί κινημένο αργοφυσούσε
τόσο γλυκό στο πρόσωπο τ‘ αέρι,
που λες και λέει μες της καρδιάς τα φύλλα
«γλυκειά η ζωή κι ο θάνατος μαυρίλα».

Χριστός ανέστη! Νέοι, γέροι και κόραις
όλοι, μικροί, μεγάλοι ετοιμασθήτε,
μέσα στις εκκλησιές τες δαφνοφόραις
με το φως της χαράς συμμαζωχθήτε,
ανοίξατε αγκαλιές ειρηνοφόραις
ομπροστά στους Αγίους, και φιληθείτε,
φιληθείτε γλυκά χείλη με χείλη,
πέστε Χριστός ανέστη, εχθροί και φίλοι.

Δάφναις εις κάθε πλάκα έχουν οι τάφοι,
και βρέφη ωραία στην αγκαλιά οι μαννάδες,
γλυκόφωνα, κοιτώντας ταις ζωγραφι-
σμέναις εικόνες, ψάλλουνε οι ψαλτάδες,
λάμπει το ασήμι, λάμπει το χρυσάφι
από το φως που χύνουνε οι λαμπάδες,
κάθε πρόσωπο λάμπει απ‘ τ‘ αγιοκέρι,
οπού κρατούνε οι Χριστιανοί στο χέρι.

The Day of Easter, by Dionysios Solomos

The last cool star of dawn was
foretelling the brightest sunshine;
no cloud, no drift of mist was travelling
across any part of the sky.
Coming from there, the breeze
blew so sweetly across the face,
so gently, that it seemed
to whisper to the depths of the heart:
‘Life is sweet and death is darkness.’

‘Christ is Risen!’ Young and old, maidens,
everyone, little and great, prepare!
Inside the laurel-covered churches,
gather in the light of joy!
Open your arms and with them offer peace,
that the icons of the saints may see.
Embrace and kiss other sweetly, lip on lip,
let friend and foe proclaim, ‘Christ is Risen!’

Laurels are placed on every tomb,
beautiful babes are held in mothers’ arms,
the choristers sing sweetly
as they come before the icons.
Bright is the silver, bright is the gold,
under the light of the Easter candles.
Each face alights before the holy candles,
that Christians bear in hand.

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Dirk Helbing, Professor für Computational Social Science an der ETH Zürich, spricht über die Ära der Digitalisierung und die Herausforderung, deren Möglichkeiten zum Vorteil der Zivilgesellschaft zu nutzen.

Dirk Helbing im Interview mit Manuela Lenzen, Februar 2020

https://www.wiko-berlin.de/wikothek/koepfe-und-ideen/issue/15/das-kalte-paradies/

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This storm will pass. But the choices we make now could change our lives for years to come

© Graziano Panfili

Yuval Noah Harari March 20, 2020, Financial Times

https://www.ft.com/content/19d90308-6858-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

Humankind is now facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture. We must act quickly and decisively. We should also take into account the long-term consequences of our actions. When choosing between alternatives, we should ask ourselves not only how to overcome the immediate threat, but also what kind of world we will inhabit once the storm passes. Yes, the storm will pass, humankind will survive, most of us will still be alive — but we will inhabit a different world. 

Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. But these aren’t normal times. 

In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity. (…)

Hier der Link für die deutsche Übersetzung: https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/coronavirus-yuval-noah-harari-ueber-die-welt-nach-der-pandemie-ld.1547988?mktcid=smch&mktcval=fbpost_2020-03-23&fbclid=IwAR2i9P88EWIqLiYWzBN0p4AFFRwlzuOAL9VdkE6oPzwTw0lF-nZpXpLesYI

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https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/12/19/best-books-2019/

By Maria Popova

Long ago, when the present and the living appealed to me more, I endeavored to compile “best of” reading lists at the close of each year. Even then, those were inherently incomplete and subjective reflections of one person’s particular tastes, but at least my scope of contemporary reading was wide enough to narrow down such a selection.

In recent years, these subjective tastes have taken me further and further into the past, deeper and deeper into the common record of wisdom recorded decades, centuries, millennia ago, drawn from the most timeless recesses of the human heart and mind. Outside the year’s loveliest children’s books — a stratum of literature with which I still actively and ardently engage — I now nurse no illusion of having an even remotely adequate sieve for the “best” of what is published each passing year, given that I read so very little of it (and given, too, that this particular year I birthed the first book of my own — itself the product of a long immersion in the past). But of the books I did read in 2019, these are the ones that will stay with me for life.