The Deep Zoo

Начало книги

In the tradition of Islam, the first word that was revealed to Mohammed was Igrá (Read!). The world is a translation of the divine, and its manifestation. To write a text is to propose a reading of the world and to reveal its potencies. Writing is reading and reading a way back to the initial impulse. Both are acts of revelation.

The Ottoman calligraphers delighted in creating mazes of embellishments in which the text was secreted like a treasure. The text needed to be deciphered and the task proved the worthiness of the reader. These calligraphers' mazes remind us that if the text is the mirror of an exorbitant, mutable universe, it is playful too. The maze places the text within an intimate space, very like a garden, where the text hides, then reveals itself; perhaps it could be said such a text is irresistible. Writes Gaston Bachelard: “All the spaces of intimacy are designated by an attraction” (Poetics of Space).

Читать дальше →