E said:
[...]
Gurdjieff's way of thinking might be closer to his mother tongue, which might be closer to your mother tongue than to English. I hope this post doesn't sound Greek, no pun intended.
Has anyone else experienced this? It really is difficult to describe and I'm struggling to think of an example.
It also helped my reading of Beelzebub's Tales to be familiar with more than one language.
There are some thoughts on which language Beelzebub’s Tales were written in:
The text of Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson emerged over a period of time as the result of a set of processes which are closer to the oral tradition of story-telling than to the contemporary notion of a writer sitting down to write his text from beginning to end. Although we do not have an exact record of the many steps through which the Tales came into being we do know that there there were a variety of languages, translations, alterations in response to readings, and a continual process of translation, not only from from other languages into English, but also re-translations from English back into other languages, (some of these processes are mentioned in the notes below). Thus there cannot be said to have been any 'original' version of the Tales from which the final English language version sprung.
I am grateful to Paul Beekman Taylor who gave me much additional information about the processes that led to the 1950 published version of the Tales and which I have incorporated in what follows. Gurdjieff wrote brief notes from which he gave extended dictations, so even if we had the notes they would not give an 'original' text. He destroyed all the notes. Olga de Hartmann says that she took down all of the Tales from Gurdjieff in Russian, but there is no evidence for this and there is evidence to the contrary. Gurdjieff also dictated to Lilly Galumnian in Armenian. When Gurdjieff was in cafes writing notes from which to dictate, he wrote in several different languages, and he never minded mixing languages together.
[...]
And less detailed:
_http://www.gurdjieff.org/beelzebub.htm said:
Originally written in Russian and Armenian, it has twice been translated into English:
This page also mentions a number of reviews and commentaries.
To assist the reading there is a guide:
_http://www.traditionalstudiespress.com/GuideAndIndex.html said:
Guide and Index to “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson”, 2nd edition
The Guide and Index is a reference work which is invaluable for any intensive study of Gurdjieff’s major published work. This second edition of the Guide and Index has been revised and expanded so that it can also be used with either the original 1950 edition of Beelzebub’s Tales or with the 1992 edition (currently out-of-print) which is a revised translation with entirely different page numbers. The Guide and Index can be used with any reprint of the 1950 edition including the currently available 1999 Penguin/Arkana paperback. The Guide and Index also includes:
• the original Russian spelling for all of Gurdjieff’s
uniquely created words
• a suggested pronunciation for these and other words
• editorial notes on words from Eastern cultures and languages which may be unfamiliar to the average Western reader
It is not so cheap though, 60 $ plus shipping.
There is a CD pronunciation guide to the difficult words: _http://www.traditionalstudiespress.com/Pronunciation.html and a Russian version of Beelzebub’s Tales: _http://www.traditionalstudiespress.com/BeelzebubsTalesCD_RU.html
It appears these people take if for granted that the ''uniquely created words'' were all in Russian, but what if Sophia Wellbeloved is right in what she is saying about the 'original language' of Beelzebub's Tales. Not knowing at the time of reading about this controversy over the original language, my limited Russian actually did help.
Other notes about the book: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beelzebub%27s_Tales_to_His_Grandson
Laura said:
I just want ya'll to know that everything isn't exactly for everybody. Some things are easier for one person to read and difficult for another. That's why I wrote the Wave and brought in so many different things and repeated stuff. I would write one chapter, then I get ten emails from people who didn't quite get it. So, I would dig some more, and come at it in a different way.
[…]
and I understand what Gurjdieff was trying to do, but with the Cs explaining a lot of things that are very similar to what Gurdjieff was writing about, I just don't think I need to agonize over it.
[…]
Indeed, and if one compares the impact of reading the Secret History of the World, the Wave Series, the High Strangeness book with the aims that G. put before himself as a writer, those aims appear to be well covered by Laura:
G. I. Gurdjieff in the introduction to Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson/An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man about the means and purposes of the “All and Everything” series said:
[…]
All written according to entirely new principles of logical reasoning and strictly directed towards the solution of the following three cardinal problems:
FIRST SERIES: To destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and feeling of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the world.
SECOND SERIES: To acquaint the reader with the material required for a new creation and to prove the soundness and good quality of it.
THIRD SERIES: To assist the arising, in the mentation and in the feelings of the reader, of a veritable, non-fantastic representation not of that illusory world which he now perceives, but of the world existing in reality.
And in his last series he writes:
G. I.Gurdjieff in “Life is Real Only When ‘I Am’” page 26 said:
[…]until this time the aim of my inner world had been concentrated only on my one unconquerable desire to investigate from all sides, and to understand, the exact significance and purpose of the life of man.
Gurdjieff in “Life is Real Only When ‘I Am’” page 27 said:
This other newly arisen aim of my inner world was summed up in this: that I must discover, at all costs, some manner or means for destroying in people the predilection for suggestibility which causes them to fall easily under the influence of “mass hypnosis”
This does not mean that I do not think it is good to read Beelzebub’s Tales, it was for me. And how was that? Before beginning the first read and not knowing or having any study aid, I went through the book and wrote ALL Beelzebub’s odd terms down, so as not to become irritated, frustrated or upset by encountering them later on. Then I began reading, while making notes of the terms that interested me, sort of like creating an index, to see how G. evolved his ideas. I kept on developing this throughout the three reads as my interest grew, which of course slowed the reading tremendously, since a term I skipped the first time would interest me the second time and then I would be going back to see where I had first seen it etc. After reading Beelzebub’s Tales three times there are many things and concepts I still do not understand. To be fully understood, I guess they need above all more Being within.
This question of Being also means for me that there will be people, who have never read or heard Beelzebub from cover to cover, but who nevertheless will grasp its essence better than others who have read it a number of times.
When Gurdjieff insisted on people reading three times he had in mind:
G. I. Gurdjieff in the Friendly Advice from Beelzebub's Tales said:
[...]Only then will you be able to count upon forming your own impartial judgment, proper to yourself alone, on my writings. And only then can my hope be actualized that according to your understanding you will obtain the specific benefit for yourself which I anticipate, and which I wish for you with all my being.
From this I gather that everything else equal, if one puts more work into the book the book can give more to the reader. And does that not also hold for a good many other books, whether on mathematics, physics, linguistics, history, psychology, religion, ethics, philosophy, art or fiction? And what if one read the SHOTW or The Wave three times?
When Laura writes “that everything isn't exactly for everybody”, this goes, in my honest opinion, for other books on the reading list as well. Having most of them, I know some of them are and will be read much less intensively than Beelzebub’s Tales, while there will be books I shall need for further understanding and clarification, which are not on the list.
That's really funny. I'm finding it incredibly difficult to get through, though I do notice that there are some quite funny parts. I was beginning to think I had some kind of undisclosed learning disability. I started on it about 3-4 weeks ago and I'm at about page 200. I was really feeling conflicted about my lack of progress but I figure I'll get through it when I get through it. In the meanwhile there's lots of other sources I can benefit from as well.
