If there is one continuous theme that has prevailed throughout the course of ENG 2800, it's been the struggle of storytelling. We've gone through some very different means of storytelling. We've gone from the word of mouth (Gilgamesh), to semi-song like (Shakuntala), to plays without original manuscripts (Othello), poems (although first, also based solely on word of mouth, Sir Gawain & The Green Knight) and even personal accounts and diary entries (The Pillow Book). Which is why when I spotted this tablet depicting the Battle of Til Tuba at the Met, I remember yet another means of story telling/ accounting/ recording that I had learned over the years in my Global History classes. Tablets are the ancestors of modern day illustrated books. It was written when literacy was limited and a symbol of social status. It was written when the ancestors of modern-day alphabets hadn't even been conceived, but the Egyptians had developed hieroglyphs based on pictographs and the Sumerians had developed cuneiform, a primitive alphabet system which looked like right angles rotated at different axes. Thinking about this brought me back to the spring of 2015 when I was deciding on whether to take 2800 or 2850 for my final English requirement ever. I remembered why I chose 2800 over 2850. For modern day writers it's easy to throw words that they didn't have to coin for the first time ever or to have to wonder how they would be able to pass on their ideas to someone else, while still earning credit. This is hard to put into words for me, ironically, despite the amount of words at my diposal, however the ancient texts that we read had a certain beauty in the way they were written and the real struggle that shines through every word. Each word that the writers chose weighed equally, but heavy. For this reason, I find it unreasonable, if not impossible, to ever compare any text from over the past few months to any contemporary piece of literature that I've had the pleasure to read. I mean, it's just not the same to have $1 trillion handed to you versus earning every dollar of that trillion. Neither's better, but one's a more better story to listen to than the other.
On my recent visit to the MoMA AKA the Museum of Modern Art I came across this oil painting (with sequins) by Gino Severini named the Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal.
At the very first glance, I could tell that the painting had a story to tell in just the way the painting happened in a circle and there seems to be intricate details that from far away look like a mess, but upon a closer look seemed to be crucial details in the painting, from both an artistic point-of-view as well as that of an observer.
The first story that I related to the picture was Shakuntala was for a variety of reasons like: colors, concept, shape, and complexity. The colors in the painting reminded me of Shakuntala because of the variety. I imagine the play to be of many colors that mimic the variety of emotion in the play. The colors also denote the colorful life of King Dushyanta in the palace because it is luxurious and it also mimics Shakuntala's life in the middle of the forest. The concept of the intermingling of the various parts of the painting show how many stories overlapped in Shakuntala- Shakuntala's, Dushyanta's, Shakuntala's biological father's, etc. This is also why the intricacy of the painting was interesting. It was just like the minute details in the story that were crucial to the story.
