Songs from Two Continents E-Book

Moris Farhi

• Herausgeber: Saqi Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 34

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Songs from Two Continents is a paean on 'dualities'. Here, Europe and Asia entwine, life and death stalk each other, nationalities fuse and Good and Evil wrestle relentlessly to give meaning to existence. Like such pathfinders as N?zim Hikmet and Orhan Veli before him, Moris Farhi adheres to the ethos of Turkish folk poetry - that poetry should be the pure distillation of emotions. From carnal desire to tender love, from rapture to sorrow and from mysticism to mundanity, he endeavours to expose, in the raw, the essence of our sensibilities. Imbued with the Levantine spirit, Moris Farhi enquires into such themes with his irrepressible sensual verve and passionate intelligence - whether in maturity or in the rambunctious years of youth.

Leseprobe

Moris Farhi

Songs from Two Continents

Poems

SAQI

eISBN: 978-0-86356-876-3

Copyright © Moris Farhi, 2011 and 2012

First published in 2011 by Saqi BooksThis eBook edition published 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

SAQI

26 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5RHwww.saqibooks.com

TO NINA

You are at my side

wherever you are!

Contents

Foreword by Talât Sait Halman

Paths to God

On strawberry beds

Claridges, London

Luck

Rebel

A hungry queue

Auld lang syne

Profanity

The libertine’s song

Istanbul under the rain

Tiredness

Victual

Renunciation

About death – I

Revenge

Ultimatum

Redemption

Forget traditions

Thirst

The dowser

Saturnalia

Leaving Istanbul

Mother

Chinese whispers

Royal guest

About death – II

About death – III

About death – IV

Partings

There were days

Seed

Journey’s start

Armoured men

Letters to Asher

First Commandment

After Auschwitz

Time of the rodents

Ties of blood

Historiography

I need Eros by my side

Manku Yupanqui

A vision

You do not want us to die unsalted

Ballad of the immigrant

The dead mother

Odysseus

For Tony

Miracle woman

Letter from Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Chechnya, Darfur ...

For Nina

Linguacide

Tomorrow

Farewell gift

Finally

Acknowledgements

Foreword

by Talât Sait Halman

Moris Farhi is a master-poet of sublime love and its erotic eruptions. He revels in the excitements offered by a compelling woman – or womanhood – but is so enamoured by the seductiveness of lyrical language that balladry could be taken as his first love. Farhi is “the Henry Miller of poetry”. His is the wisdom of sensuality.

As a virtuoso of the English language, Farhi is a marvel. Like Vladimir Nabokov, he excels in the fourth language he has mastered. He was born into a Jewish family in Ankara, Turkey, where he was initially exposed to Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), Turkish and French. He began to learn English as a teenager at Istanbul’s Robert College, the oldest American educational institution outside the USA. His training at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1954 to 1956 helped him to adopt English as his literary vehicle. Today, one wonders how a latecomer can achieve such an impeccable style in his fourth language.

After a brief stint as an actor and a successful career writing for television, he embraced fiction, a dedication that earned him acclaim in the UK and many other countries. His six impressive novels – The Pleasure of Your Death (1972), The Last of Days (1983), Journey through the Wilderness (1989), Children of the Rainbow (1999), Young Turk (2004), and A Designated Man (2009) – along with international awards, fortified his literary reputation.

Farhi’s fiction, which spans diverse cultures and countries in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, depicts the trials and tribulations of individuals beset by hostile forces, yet brave enough to withstand and prevail. Young Turk, consisting of thirteen tales that evoke his native Turkey, unfurls dramatic events and touching human episodes at a time when the Turks were providing a haven for European Jews whose lives had been jeopardized by the Nazis. In Children of the Rainbow, Farhi deals both with the Nazi policy of extermination of the Roma and the prevailing demonization and persecution directed at them today. Journey through the Wilderness is a masterfully blended account of the South America’s realities and mythology. A Designated Man