Within a Sky Full of Earth

S. Lázaro | Ilustrador Peter Suart apresenta “The Master and Margarita” na Bloom
O bem só existe porque o mal anda por aí. Considerado um livro dos demónios, “The Master and Margarita” é a obra-prima de Mikhail Bulgakov. Peter Suart, artista britânico com fortes ligações a Hong Kong, vem hoje a Macau explicar porque é que o escritor do início do século passado é incontornável. E falar das razões que o levaram a ilustrar as palavras do russo maldito.


O encontro com a obra de Bulgakov aconteceu há já alguns anos. Peter Suart identificou-se com a abordagem do mundo feita pelo escritor e dramaturgo russo, um mal-amado de Estaline. Gostou do tom – da ironia e do sentido de humor. Um dia, o artista britânico multifacetado que cresceu em Hong Kong recebeu uma proposta de uma editora de Londres: ilustrar “The Master and Margarita”, obra-prima de Mikhail Bulgakov. No processo, encontrou semelhanças com a sua própria forma de encarar o mundo. E de o passar para o papel.
“É a obra-prima de Bulgakov e tem uma história muito peculiar: em parte, diz respeito a um escritor que não consegue ver o seu livro publicado”, resume Peter Suart ao Hoje Macau. “E é isso que acontece ao livro de Bulgakov, que foi publicado apenas depois de o escritor ter morrido. Há um curioso eco entre o livro e a vida, o que é muito interessante.”
Esta coincidência (ou não) entre a criação e o criador é importante, porque a obra representa uma “vitória” de Bulgakov. Não em vida, já na morte. O livro foi amaldiçoado, à semelhança do seu autor. “The Master and Margarita” começou a ser redigido em 1928. Dois anos depois, o autor queimou o primeiro manuscrito, quando uma outra obra sua foi interdita. Em 1935 voltou a dedicar-se à construção das personagens. Diz-se que Margarita foi influenciada pela sua terceira mulher, com quem tinha casado três anos antes, e que acaba por desempenhar um papel fundamental para que o livro seja concluído. Seguiram-se mais duas versões – partes da final foram ditadas por Bulgakov à mulher.
O mestre morreu sem que tenha tido tempo para concluir a obra. Margarita fez o resto. Só em 1989 é que a Rússia publicou o livro na sua versão integral, sem quaisquer censuras.

Do Yin e do Yang

Oitenta anos depois de ter começado a ser escrita, “The Master and Margarita” continua a ser uma obra que incomoda. Pelos temas que aborda, intemporais e transversais – o bem e o mal, a inocência e a culpa, o racional e o irracional, a ilusão e a verdade. Jerusalém consta da obra e Moscovo também.
A Peter Suart agrada-lhe particularmente a visão de Bulgakov em relação a Jesus, na medida em que o entende como ser não divino. “Em parte, foi por isso que gostei tanto do livro. A descrição que faz do dia da morte de Jesus é muito convincente - e eu sou uma pessoa sem fé. Bulgakov apresenta Jesus enquanto um homem com um contexto muito especial, o que vai de encontro àquilo que penso.” Sobre certos domínios da vida do escritor não se sabe muito e o ilustrador não tem a certeza de que Bulgakov fosse totalmente alheio a convicções de índole religiosa. “Os pais tinham fé. A posição dele não é explícita neste âmbito. Mas, por aquilo que se vê no livro, é muito clara a representação de Jesus como um ser humano.”
O artista tem noção de que se trata de uma “questão muito sensível”, esta da materialização do filho de Deus. Por isso, garante “respeito” na abordagem que vai fazer hoje à tarde, na Livraria Bloom, no Albergue de São Lázaro. “No entanto, não vou deixar de dizer o que penso. E eu considero que é muito importante sermos capazes de falar abertamente sobre estes assuntos”, defende.
A dicotomia entre o bem e o mal são temas que não podem escapar a uma abordagem sobre “The Master and Margarita”. “É um dos problemas mais antigos. Há um parágrafo neste livro em que se defende que não pode haver o bem sem que exista o mal. É o conceito de yin e yang – não podemos ter um sem o outro.” O ilustrador concorda com esta perspectiva, mas acrescenta que, “na vida, tenta-se minimizar a existência do mal”.
Peter Suart lembra que estes conceitos nem sempre foram bem interpretados por quem lê Bulgakov. “A forma como encarou este tema deve ser entendida como uma metáfora, como uma forma de pensar o mundo, não como uma verdade literal.” As leituras feitas sobre o demónio ultrapassam Estaline e a sua época. Há menos de dois anos, o museu baptizado com o nome do escritor, em Moscovo, foi vandalizado por fanáticos que alegaram que “The Master and Margarita” é obra do diabo.
“Bulgakov não condena a figura do diabo no seu livro. A forma como escreve sobre ele é muito invulgar – é uma figura com charme, civilizada. Mas isto não significa que o mal seja bom. É apenas algo enigmático.” Por isso - e pela fidelidade das imagens às palavras – o ilustrador também não sataniza o diabo. “Não há uma posição moral directa no conjunto de ilustrações.”

O livro que pede para ser ilustrado

Suart, autor das narrativas dos seus livros desenhados, explica que não foi difícil ilustrar “The Master and Margarita”. É um escritor “fantástico e com um grande sentido de humor”. E acrescenta que “tem uma escrita muito visual e a narrativa é muito completa – é um livro que pede, ele próprio, para ser ilustrado.” E já o foi muitas vezes, com outras interpretações que não a do artista britânico. O que diminui, de algum modo, a responsabilidade final do ilustrador.
Até que ponto as imagens, de leitura mais imediata do que as palavras, condicionam o leitor? “Há várias versões do livro. Claro que se as pessoas lerem aquela que ilustrei primeiro, o peso das minhas imagens será maior. Mas, quando se pensa no processo editorial desta obra, a minha versão é apenas uma entre muitas, pelo que a minha responsabilidade não é assim tão grande”, esclarece, ressalvando que, “fundamentalmente, a ilustração tem um dever para com o leitor”. Peter Suart fez “muita pesquisa sobre o livro” para chegar à conclusão de que deveria associar as imagens às estações da Via Sacra.
O ilustrador conta ainda que, embora tenha começado a escrever os seus livros antes de ler Bulgakov, algumas das suas ideias estão no trabalho do escritor russo. Talvez seja a transversalidade das ideias. Suart não se afasta do escritor da Rússia de Estaline no que diz respeito “à natureza de Jesus e Maria”.
Peter Suart nasceu na Jamaica e cresceu em Hong Kong. Partiu para o Reino Unido para estudar. Em 1985, regressou à então colónia britânica para trabalhar enquanto artista plástico, músico, escritor e actor, mas em 1999 voltou para Inglaterra. É autor de uma série de livros ilustrados, “The Tik and Tok Adventures”. Fala fluentemente cantonês. A palestra de hoje, com início marcado para as 18h00, será feita em língua inglesa.
[POR ISABEL CASTRO NO HOJE MACAU]

APPLY FOR CREATIVE WRITING SESSION WITH XU XI.
[LIMITED AVAILABILITY • CHECK POST BELLOW]

It happened last year in March, the month we started this website, Peter visited us to present his first comic book, The Black Book of Falling. It was at the tiny Bloom Red, where at the time we still had space to squeeze everybody in. Now books conquered all of it. But we have Bloom Yellow and the beautiful venue at Albergue. It was a joy to have meet Peter and to listen to him last year. Will be a pleasure to have him with us again for a great event on one of the eternal books: "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov.
[DON'T MISS IT! IT'S TOMORROW AT BLOOM YELLOW, FROM 6PM ON.]

Book Presentation
Liu Heung Shing at Bloom Yellow in Macau for the book launch of "China: Portrait of a Country"
August 03, 2008 • Bloom Yellow, Albergue - Calçada da Igreja de S. Lázaro, 8, Macau

Celebrate the launch of China, Portrait of a Country at Bloom Yellow, located in the lovely Albergue, a hidden paradise within the city! Pulitzer-winning photojournalist Liu Heung Shing presents his new book with never before seen pictures and music from each decade between 1949 - 2008.

Begins at 6:00pm
• MORE EVENTS ON CHINA: PORTRAIT OF A COUNTRY HERE
[DOWNLOAD INVITATION]

Due to limited seating availability you have to sign in for our special event this coming Saturday at Bloom Yellow. It's the Creative Writing Session with Hong Kong writer, Xu Xi, that will go from 3 to 5 pm. We have already some requests, so if you are interested just drop us an email now or send an SMS to +853 66800024 stating your name and contact. That's all! Hurry up, you cannot miss this one.

XU XI is the author of seven books of fiction & essays, and editor of three anthologies of Hong Kong literature in English. A Chinese-Indonesian native of Hong Kong, the city was home until her mid-twenties, after which she led a peripatetic existence around Europe, America and Asia. She now inhabits the flight path connecting New York, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
The New York TImes named her a pioneer writer from Asia in English and the Voice of America featured her on their Chinese TV documentary series "Cultural Odyssey." Singapore’s Business Times dubs her passion "Asia as it is today – gritty, modern and confused." According to reviewers, her work explains "the paradox that is Hong Kong" that avoids "the sex and drug and triad stereotypes... portraying the city more accurately and realistically for it." Her "new and innovative diasporic global language" is "uncluttered" and "arrestingly poignant." She is "an alchemist of observation" whose sensibility is "generous and compassionate."
Awards include an O. Henry prize story, shortlist for the inaugural MAN Asian Literary Award, Cohen Award from PLOUGHSHARES for best story, a NYFA fiction fellowship, the South China Morning Post story contest winner, among others. She has also been writer-in-residence at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, Kulturhuset USF in Norway, the Jack Kerouac Project of Orlando and the Anderson Center in Minnesota. SUNY Plattsburgh, where she earned her BA, accorded her their distinguished alumni award in 2004.
For eighteen years, the author had a second career in international marketing and management with various multinationals. In 1998, she finally surrendered completely to the writing life. She holds a MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and teaches on the MFA in writing prose faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier.
In 2009, she will be the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Iowa's nonfiction program.
[MORE AT: XU XI OFFICIAL SITE]

XU XI CREATIVE SESSION • FREE ADMISSION • LIMITED AVAILABILITY • APPLY NOW!

From all the magazines that arrived to Bloom Yellow in our new quest, icon was one of those that stood out from the rest. Clean and beautifully designed, it's one of the world's finest architecture and design magazines, with a whole content to keep an eye on. Every month there are interviews with the most exciting architects and designers in the world, insights to the best new buildings, analyses to the most interesting new cultural movements and technologies, and reviews on an eclectic range of exhibitions, books, products and films.
Magnificent and accessible, rigorous and insightful, icon shows you exactly what's happening in architecture and design today, and what it means for the future.
Since the first issue in 2003 they've won a dozen awards, including magazine of the year (twice), best architectural journalist and best critic at the International Building Press awards, and best designed business-to-business magazine and best use of typography at the Magazine Design Awards. If we could sell a lot icon's every month we were doing a very good action and Macau, for sure, would be a better place to live. So please come and get it. Order and subscribe it! Indulge yourself!
We have started with the August issue, the 062 edition of icon, it comes with a colourful cover hand-stained by Fernando Brizio. Inside, the Portuguese designer talks about his work and his debt to Buster Keaton. Also profiled this issue is Junya Ishigami, widely tipped as the next big thing in Japanese architecture and a young master of post-SANAA minimalism. And icon explores Dominique Perrault’s Ewha Womans University in Seoul, a glass-and-steel chasm dressed up as a hill.
Meanwhile, has design photography lost touch with reality? Computer rendering and photo retouching have become so prevalent that some designers no longer want their products to look real – they ask them why. In news, there’s new work from Álvaro Siza, Zaha Hadid, Jurgen Bey and Tom Dixon, and Andrea Branzi talks about the crisis in architecture. In review, there’s psychosis at the Hayward, a musical building in New York and an expensive piece of gadgetry in a pint glass.
Is that enough for a magazine?
MORE AT icon'S WEBSITE

A TALK BY PETER SUART
Mikhail Bulgakov started writing The Master and Margarita in 1928. The first version of the novel was destroyed (according to Bulgakov, burned in a stove) in March 1930 when he was notified that his play The Cabal of Hypocrites was banned. The work was restarted in 1931 and in 1935 Bulgakov attended the Spring Festival at Spaso House, a party said to have inspired the masked ball of the novel. The second draft was completed in 1936 by which point all the major plot lines of the final version were in place. The third draft was finished in 1937. Bulgakov continued to polish the work with the aid of his wife, but was forced to stop work on the fourth version four weeks before his death in 1940. The work was completed by his wife during 1940–1941 and she tried endlessly to publish it.
A censored version (12% of the text removed and still more changed) of the book was first published in a Moscow magazine.The text of all the omitted and changed parts, with indications of the places of modification, was published on a samizdat basis. In 1967 the publisher Posev (Frankfurt) printed a version produced with the aid of these inserts. In Russia, the first complete version, prepared by Anna Saakyants, was published by Khudozhestvennaya Literatura in 1973, based on the version of the beginning of 1940 proofread by the publisher. This version remained the canonical edition until 1989, when the last and complete version was prepared by literature expert Lidiya Yanovskaya based on all available manuscripts.
The Mikhail Bulgakov Museum in Moscow was vandalized on December, 2006, allegedly by a religious fanatic who denounced The Master and Margarita as being satanic propaganda.

In 2007 Peter Suart illustrated the book for The Folio Society in London, and it is from this work that this talk as sprung. Peter will show his illustrations for the book and discuss Bulgakov’s vision of Jesus as a non-divine seer; Faust, Science and the whirlpool of good and evil; The life and work of Bulgakov.
The session will close with a look at the presence of some of these ideas in Peter Suart own series of illustrated books, the Tik and Tok adventures, published by MCCM Creations. That's how we will get the spell that could have change the whole human History if published in its time.
[CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ZOOM IN OR DOWNLOAD THE POSTER HERE]

The Master and Margarita, a Talk by Peter Suart
BLOOM YELLOW • ALBERGUE • ST. LAZARUS CHURCH BOULEVARD • JULY 23 • WEDNESDAY • 18:00

Peter Suart will be in Macau at Bloom Yellow, on the 23rd of July, for a Talk about Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Base on this book, written under the censorship of Stalin's regime between 1928 until the night of the author's death in 1940, when he dictated his latest notes to his wife, and only published in its full version after the Perestroika in 1991, the presentation by Peter Suart will lead to different subjects through religion to science and to creative power under the jug of dictatorship. And how this amalgam of different tensions builded the vision of his own expression through art. Peter Suart lives in the countryside in England where the nature empowers a life full of things to tell.
[SEE OUR FULL SCHEDULE HERE]

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
MILAN KUNDERA

Samizdat was the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media in Soviet-bloc countries. Copies were made a few at a time, and those who received a copy would be expected to make more copies. This was often done by handwriting or typing. This grassroots practice to evade officially imposed censorship was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials.

I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and [may] get imprisoned for it.
Samizdat definition by Vladimir Bukovsky

Essentially, the samizdat copies of text, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita or Václav Havel's writing The Power of the Powerless, were passed among friends. The techniques to reproduce the forbidden literature and periodicals varied from making several copies of the content using carbon paper, either by hand or on a typewriter, to printing the books on semi-professional printing presses in larger quantities. Before glasnost, the practice was dangerous, since copy machines, printing presses and even typewriters in offices were under control of the First Departments (KGB outposts): for all of them reference printouts were stored for identification purposes.
Etymologically, the word "samizdat" is made out of "sam" ("self, by oneself") and (Russian: shortened "izdat"izdatel'stvo, "publishing house"), thus, self published. The term was coined as a pun by Russian poet Nikolai Glazkov in the 1940s, who typed copies of his poems indicating "Samsebyaizdat" ("Myself by Myself Publishers") on the front page in an analogy with the names of Soviet official publishing houses, such as Politizdat or Detizdat ("literature for children").
[SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]

Pinga água por todo o lado. Ele levanta a cabeça para ver a chuva que cai sobre o alpendre. No pátio, no exterior, estão dispostas peças de máquinas agrícolas e uma charrua desmontada que já não serve. Dois cães mostram-lhe os dentes. Volta a entrar em casa. O tecto é muito alto, de alto a baixo a divisão está cheia de fardos de palha. No centro deste celeiro sombrio, uma mesa de cozinha comprida à volta da qual está sentado um grupo de raparigas, cada uma com uma expressão diferente no rosto, e nos olhos, nariz, pestanas, faces, cantos da boca, orelhas, restos de farinha. Amassam a massa entre as mãos cantando, mergulhadas numa profunda tristeza. Na frente de uma jovem esbelta de longas tranças, está pousado, em frente de um espelho, um candeeiro a óleo protegido por uma bandeira. Uma camarada desfez-lhe as tranças e penteia-lhe o cabelo. Ele aproxima-se institivamente do espelho e vê a tesoura cortar os cabelos compridos. Ouve os cães a ladrar.
GAO XINGJIAN em UMA CANA DE PESCA PARA O MEU AVÔ

“Uma Cana de Pesca para o meu Avô” é uma colectânea de seis contos de Gao Xingjian, escritor chinês Nobel da Literatura.
A vida é uma coisa estranha. Composta por fragmentos, momentos, lembranças, pessoas conhecidas e desconhecidas, tocamo-la mas raramente a compreendemos. Mas para quê compreendê-la? Por que não observá-la e contar as suas histórias? As histórias da vida. É assim este livro que já vai na sua 10a. edição e que faz parte do Plano Nacional de Leitura português. Os contos variam entre o lirismo e o absurdo (foi com a publicação de peças de teatro inspiradas em Becket que Gao Xingiian se afirmou), e neles são visíveis os sinais de exílio e perseguição, as alusões aos tempos terríveis por que os chineses passaram. Mas há também um sinal de esperança e crença na “bondade do coração humano”: “tudo isso pertence ao passado. Temos de aprender a esquecer”. Este livro não tem regras. Estas histórias não têm importância. Não existem por aqui heróis. Nem anti-heróis. Este livro contém beleza. Estes são alguns dos atributos que fazem de “Uma Cana de Pesca para o meu Avô” um objecto literário peculiar.

SOBRE O AUTOR
Gao Xingjian nascido na China Oriental em 1940, perseguido pelo regime, enviado para um “campo de reeducação” durante a revolução cultural e exilado em Paris desde 1987. Romancista, pintor, dramaturgo, encenador, crítico literário e poeta. As suas peças de teatro são interpretadas em todo o mundo e as suas tintas-da-china circulam nos quatros do planeta. O seu magistral romance, A Montanha da Alma, já publicado neta mesma colecção, teve, aquando da sua publicação em França em 1995, um excelente acolhimento, tanto por parte da crítica como dos leitores, Gao Xingjian recebeu no ano 2000 o Prémio Nobel da Literatura pelo conjunto da sua obra.

Uma Cana de Pesca para o meu Avô, de Gao Xingjian • CONTOS • DOM QUIXOTE

CARLOS PICASSINOS DE VOLTA?
Segundo apurou o JTM, Carlos Picassinos, actualmente em Barcelona, mas ainda ao serviço do Hoje Macau, poderá estar de regresso ao território e ao mesmo periódico onde exercia a função de jornalista até há uns meses, mas, desta feita, para o cargo de editor executivo.
Confrontado com o possível regresso do jornalista, que se destacou na área da cultura, o director do Hoje Macau, Carlos Morais José, preferiu abster-se de comentários, ainda que tenha reconhecido ao JTM ter-se encontrado recentemente com Carlos Picassinos na cidade espanhola.
Carlos Morais José frisou, porém, que o Hoje Macau continua em fase de consolidação desde que se fundiu com o suplemento do “Tai Chung Pou” e que, portanto, possivelmente só em Setembro é que estará “sedimentado” por completo. Por agora, o projecto Hoje Macau continua “pujante”, sublinhou.
[NO JTM DE ONTEM]

Sátira política, fantástica e lírica, "Margarita e o Mestre" esteve proibida na URSS durante quase 30 anos. Uma obra-prima do romance do século XX

Mikhail Bulgakov escreveu "Margarita e o Mestre" em segredo, ao longo de onze anos, entre 1929 e 1940, numa Moscovo em que as suas peças eram insultadas (e depois proibidas) pela crítica oficial mais diligente, e os seus amigos iam desaparecendo, exilados ou executados - aquilo a que se veio a chamar terror estalinista.
Enquanto escrevia, noite após noite, Bulgakov sabia que ia morrer, como o seu pai morrera, de uma doença hereditária dos rins. Previu mesmo o ano em que morreria, 1939. Falhou por meses. Morreu, de facto, a 10 de Março de 1940, ainda não tinha cumprido 49 anos.
Duas semanas antes, já cego, e sem poder sair da cama, ditou as últimas emendas ao romance a Elena Sergueievna Shilovskaia, sua terceira mulher - a Margarita do livro, a sua Margarita. Tinham-se conhecido em 1929, casaram-se três anos depois, foram inseparáveis até ao fim.
Com uma fé inabalável no futuro, ela guardou tudo o que ele foi escrevendo, obras (manuscritas, banidas) e cartas. E depois da morte de Bulgakov passou quase 30 anos a lutar pela publicação de "Margarita e o Mestre". Em 1966, o romance veio pela primeira vez à luz, na revista "Moskva", com passagens censuradas. Só no início dos anos 70 foi publicado em livro. Elena morreu, pouco depois.
Aclamado como uma obra-prima um pouco por todo o mundo, quando as primeiras traduções começaram a ser publicadas, "Margarita e o Mestre" continuou, no entanto, sujeito a uma circulação restrita na URSS da Guerra Fria. Tornou-se um romance de culto genuinamente popular, passado de mão em mão, pago a peso de ouro no mercado negro. Só com a perestroika - a que se seguiu, em 1991, o centenário do nascimento de Bulgakov - foi oficialmente "reabilitado". Lido hoje, permanece dificilmente classificável, livre e absoluto, portanto.
Sátira política das misérias do aparelho estalinista, com seu séquito de siglas, funcionários, delatores, trafulhas e mentirosos de meia-tijela, que escondem divisas estrangeiras nas canalizações da casa-de-banho e se esgadanham por mais uma salinha, mais um metro quadrado nos apartamentos comunitários? Romance fantástico que convoca o diabo, com sua corte de saltimbancos, para semear o caos na capital da revolução, e retoma o mito de Fausto no feminino, fazendo de Margarita rainha-anfitriã de um grande baile satânico? História de um amor além da morte, ferozmente lírico e nunca sentimental, o de Mestre e Margarita? Fábula metafísica, que evoca Cristo e Pilatos no lugar vazio deixado pela erradicação oficial do bem e do mal?
"Margarita e o Mestre" será tudo isto e o que cada leitor quiser, ainda. Escrito em segredo, e proibido tantos anos, é uma prova de que toda a arte é íntegra ou não será. Ou de que - como diz o diabo de Bulgakov - "os manuscritos não ardem".
[ALEXANDRA LUCAS COELHO / PÚBLICO]

"Margarita e o Mestre", de Mikhail Bulgakov • RELÓGIO D'ÁGUA

BULGAKOV COUNTDOWN #2
«One day, two members of the reigning literary elite meet in a park to discuss problems with the subject matter of one of their poems - it's not atheistic enough, says the elder, and thus not worthy of publishing (this being Soviet Russia, under Stalin's rule). No sooner is the question (and denial) of the devil raised, than the two are greeting by a tall, dark stranger who appears out of the blue and proceeds to describe how one of them will die. And, albeit under fantastic circumstances, it comes true.
Pretty soon, the stranger and his motley troupe - a clownish bloke with a broken pince-nez, a fang-toothed redheaded goul, and a large, talking black cat who walks on his hind legs - occupy a townhouse in the centre of Moscow from which they direct a chaotic spell over the city. Anyone it seems who gets in their way - usually members of the cultural privileged classes - either vanishes, winds up in the sanatorium, or is vanquished to another part of the country.
Who are they? What are they doing? All of this is unravelled (and exploded) the further into the book one reads. We meet the eponymous Master, a discouraged writer whose seminal work on Pontius Pilate is lain to waste by the bureaucratic tendrils of the sycophantic literary scene, and his faithful lover, Margarita - a married woman who would do anything to be free of her chains and reunited with him.
The Master and Margarita is a wild, throw-the-rulebook-out-the-door tale which manages to weave outrageous satire with eloquent speculation on morality. Bulgakov's novel confidently navigates between deft, fantastic comedy and touching, emotional drama - without one disregarding the power of the other. Written under the tyrannical reign of Stalin from 1929 until Bulgakov's death in 1940, it is both a response to the madness of that period and a triumphant individual statement.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who is looking for something fantastic and unpredictable to consume them. It is truly a book that can be read and re-read numerous times, with each pass being as fulfilling as the next.»
Text by Matt Cahill • Toronto • Canada
[ABOVE THE PENGUIN VERSION SHOWING THE PAINTING "An Englishman in Moscow" BY Kazimir Malevich]

Don't miss these cuts from a documentary on Philip Roth. It came to us from The Elegant Variation by Mark Sarvas. We keep an eye on him every day. The last of The Elegant Variation is highlighted on the right-side bar of Bloomland in Head On.
[YES, DON'T MISS IT!]

The 4th edition of the Pocket Films Festival has taken place at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, from June 13 - 15, 2008. 140 films made with mobile telephones were presented on the cinema screen, and 150 mobile videos were presented on mobile telephone screens. One hundred of filmmakers, artists, producers, from all over the world including international guests such as Isabella Rossellini, Stephen Dwoskin, and Masaki Fujihata, presented their works in the field of mobile video creation. More than 7,000 spectators visited the festival experiencing a myriad of propositions this year: films presented on multiple screen sizes, the possibility to “Take home” with them video creations designed for wireless diffusion, mobile filmmaking workshops and video-walks throughout the center of Paris.
The jury members, headed by the graphic novel artist and filmmaker Enki Bilal, have chosen The Champion, by the portuguese Rui Avelans Coelho. It's an extraordinary 1 minute 'documentary'. No words needed to describe it. Just see it here and clap your hands.
The 1st prize was 1,500 € and a 3G+ mobile telephone, which he really needed. ;-)
[FROM HERE WE SEND OUR BEST WISHES TO RUI]

A morte de cada homem ou mulher significa a morte de uma tradição, de algum conhecimento sobre rituais sagrados detido por ninguém mais. A informação que está contida nas minhas imagens deve ser adquirida de uma vez por todas, ou a oportunidade estará perdida para sempre.

Durante mais de trinta anos, o fotógrafo Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) percorreu a América do Norte de ponta a ponta. O seu objectivo era registar os vestígios da vida tradicional indígena que se encontravam em progressiva extinção em toda a América do Norte, gravando-os em imagens e palavras. Curtis tornou-se assim um dos nomes de maior relevância no registo e recuperação da cultura dos indígenas, uma técnica que aprendeu por experiência própria por entre as suas sessões fotográficas. Iniciando a sua pesquisa em 1900, criando por si uma máquina fotográfica especial, Curtis aprendeu a utilizar métodos de investigação científica, acreditando sobretudo na fotoetnografia como importante fonte de preservação histórica e obcecado por uma missão superior abraçou essa ideia realizando-a durante toda a sua vida. O resultado tornou-se monumental com a publicação da enciclopédia "The North American Indian". No final este empreendimento compreendia vinte volumes de texto escrito, acompanhado por vinte álbuns com mais de 2000 ilustrações. Nenhum outro fotógrafo criou tamanha obra sobre o mesmo tema, que continha na altura mais de 40 mil fotografias. É Curtis, mais do que nenhum outro, que no fundo moldou de maneira crucial a nossa concepção dos índios americanos. Este grandioso livro mostra as suas imagens mais impressionantes e os detalhes de uma vida que o levou não só pelas pradarias mas também para o meio dos filmes realizados nos estúdios de Hollywood.

SOBRE O AUTOR
Hans Christian Adam estudou Psicologia, História de Arte e Comunicação em Göttingen e em Viena. Como especialista em história pictórica, publicou variados artigos e livros sobre o tema, incluindo títulos sobre viagens e fotografia de guerra.

Edward S. Curtis, de Hans Christian Adam • TASCHEN • VERSÃO PORTUGUESA • NA BLOOM

Não é o ângulo recto que me atrai
nem a linha recta, dura, inflexível,
criada pelo homem.
O que me atrai é a curva livre e sensual,
a curva que encontro nas montanhas
do meu país,
no curso sinuoso dos seus rios,
nas ondas do mar,
no corpo da mulher preferida.
De curvas é feito todo o universo,
o universo curvo de Einstein.

Neste livro, apesar da liberdade plástica, total, que procuro praticar, vocês, meus irmãos portugueses, vão encontrar muita influência da sua velha arquitectura colonial, tão repetida em meu país. Refiro-me às velhas casas de fazenda, senhoriais, todas caiadas de branco, com largas varandas a protegerem e ampliarem os espaços interiores. E, mais ainda, as belas igrejas barrocas nascidas com vocês aí em Portugal. O resto é a minha arquitectura, os longos anos que passei debruçado na prancheta, mas sempre encontrando tempo para sentir a vida, a família, os amigos, este mundo que precisamos melhorar. Tudo isto que, para mim, é mais importante que a arquitectura.
Meu Sósia vem de longe, de outros continentes, de tempos tão distantes que deles só os livros podem lembrar. Mas vem também de áreas mais próximas, vem de Maricá onde nasceram meus avós. Quer ocupar-se de coisas em demasia. Desenhar, fazer esculturas e literatura. Procuro contê-lo, fazendo autocrítica, ouvindo os amigos, lendo muito. Mas ele insiste. Diz que a arquitectura deve estar ligada a todos os assuntos da cultura e lembra como afirmativas de Heidegger e Malraux me foram úteis na defesa de meus projectos. Tudo o que faço tem sua participação e com ele divido o que vocês acharem de bom ou ruim neste livro.
[Oscar Niemeyer]

Oscar Niemeyer, agora com 100 anos de idade, é unanimemente considerado um dos maiores vultos de sempre da arquitectura mundial, tendo assinado projectos como a cidade de Brasília, ou a sede das Nações Unidas em Nova Iorque assim como muitas, muitas outras obras de indiscutível valor, espalhadas pelas mais diversas cidades do Mundo.
Este Livro tem a finalidade de expor de maneira mais clara, mas sempre poética, sob os mais diversos ângulos em que ela se compõe - o Arquitecto, o Artista, o Escritor, o Criador, o Cidadão, o Amigo - a personalidade de Oscar Niemeyer. O seu caminho, as pessoas que marcaram presença na sua vida, as coisas que lhe interessam.

Meu Sósia e Eu, de Oscar Niemeyer • CAMPO DAS LETRAS

July 23rd - Wednesday - 18.00
The Master and Margarita - The Passion, Faust and Mikhail Bulgakov
A Talk by Peter Suart

The Russian writer and dramatist Mikhail Bulgakov died in Moscow in 1940. His masterwork novel. The Master and Margarita, first appeared in a Moscow journal in the 60's. It later went on to achieve cult status around the world.
In 2007 Peter Suart illustrated the book for The Folio Society in London, and it is from this work that this talk as sprung. Peter will show his illustrations for the book and discuss the following subjects:
• Bulgakov’s vision of Jesus as a non-divine seer;
• Faust, Science and the whirlpool of good and evil;
• The life and work of Bulgakov.

Peter will close with a look at the presence of some of these ideas in his own series of illustrated books, the Tik and Tok adventures, published by MCCM Creations.

PETER SUART, born in Jamaica, was raised in Hong Kong and schooled in England. In 1985 he returned to Hong Kong to work as an artist, musician, writer and theatrical performer. Since 1999 he has lived in England. He is a zealous sportsman.
[In English / Limited seating]

In collaboration with MCCM Creations • Supported by the British Council
Image frontispiece of the Folio Society's The Master and Margarita

July 26th - Saturday
The City as a Subject for Literary Expression
Talk + Creative Writing Session by Hong Kong writer Xu Xi
[15.00-17.00 Workshop / 18.00 Talk]

Focused on urban, congested life, Xu Xi, a Chinese-Indonesian native of Hong Kong, writes from within, zooming in on her own life in the city and its vanishing culture and sensibility. This surreal example of post-modernity transformed into a 21st Century Communist Chinese city informs her latest book, Evanescent Isles: From My City-Village, a collection of personal essays.

XU XI (pronounced “Shoe-See”), is one of Asia’s leading English language writers. Author of seven books of fiction & essays, and editor of three anthologies of Hong Kong literature in English. THE NEW YORK TIME named her a pioneer writer from Asia in English. Awards include an O. Henry prize story, shortlist for the inaugural MAN Asian Literary Award, Cohen Award from PLOUGHSHARES for best story, a NYFA fiction fellowship, the South China Morning Post story contest winner, among others. Her work is taught, broadcast and anthologized internationally. Her language is described as “uncluttered” and “arrestingly poignant.” She is, above all, uncompromising.
[APPLY NOW FOR THE CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP - LIMITED AVAILABILITY]

Co-organized by the Department of English of the University of Macau.
MORE INFO AT: www.xuxiwriter.com
PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Hilton

July 27th - Sunday - 20.00
The Box in Bloom

In 1987 Peter Suart and Kung Chi Shing formed THE BOX, a theatrical music ensemble, and the duo presented concerts and music theatre works alone and in collaboration with visual artists, choreographers, theatre folk and musicians in Hong Kong and Taiwan. For their 20th anniversary, they play Bluebeard at the Kwai Tsing Theatre in Hong Kong

First time in Macau together, Peter Suart and Kung Chi Shing, a classical music professor, will perform a selection of material from their twenty-year history; Suart on voice (sung and spoken), keyboard and percussion, and Kung Chi Shing on violin and flute. The music is dark, bizarre and lyrical.
Words in English.

Supported by the British Council
PHOTO from 2008 show: the box, side fourteen — bluebeard CREDIT: Liu Wai Tong

July 29th - 18.00
Mighty Tuesday #1
Nine Lives, The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China, by Karen Smith
Book Presentation with the Author / Updated Edition by Timezone 8 • Mar 2008

Nine Lives introduces nine artists and their personal histories and views on China today. Karen Smith‘s highly accessible introduction to an emerging art scene in a society unknown to most of us makes good reading not only for art-world insiders, but for anyone curious about recent history and its effect on the booming Chinese society.

In the early 1990s, the idea of contemporary art in China simply did not compute to a foreign audience. But in 1993, ten contemporary Chinese artists debuted at the 48th Venice Biennale. They were immediately hailed as progenitors of a Chinese „avant-garde." Their brightly colored, Pop Art-inspired paintings played with socialist motifs, parodied Mao, and gave a visual expression to the feelings of disaffected Chinese youth. They were everything western audiences expected of contemporary art from the People‘s Republic of China. But a number of critics were rather guarded in their opinions. The emergence of a market for their art transformed the lives of these avant-garde pioneers from rags to riches, from outcast to hero, from social pariah to cutting-edge cool in a Chinese society adapting to a new era. They did not change but China has changed. The ideology they once had to fight now propagates a cultural climate of laissez-faire that is tantamount to encouragement. Nine Lives paints a compelling picture of artists working beyond the pale of official culture, who started a new cultural revolution that is sweeping China today.

Karen Smith was born in Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. She graduated from Wimbledon Art School in Fine Art. In 1988, she moved to Asia curious to explore its practically unchartered art scene. She calls Beijing her home, where she lives since 1992, and is one of the foremost authorities on China’s contemporary art scene, both in China and abroad. Karen Smith also curates exhibitions, including The Real Thing, Tate Liverpool, 2007, and Chinese Photography and Video, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, amongst others. She is also on the advisory board of Three Shadows Photography Art Center in Beijing.

The author will show the works of Wang Guangyi, Geng Jianyi, Fang Lijun, Gu Dexin, Li Shan, Zhang Xiaogang, Xu Bing, Zhang Peili, and Wang Jianwei.

Timezone 8 Limited is a Hong Kong based publisher, distributor and retailer of books on contemporary art, architecture, photography and design.
In collaboration with Asia Publishers Service • HONG KONG

August 2nd - Saturday (time to be announced)
One Couple Two Cultures: 81 Western-Chinese Couples Talk about Love and Marriage • A presentation by the Author, Dan Waters
NEW POCKET SIZE EDITION BY MCCM CREATIONS

There are those who believe a Western-Chinese marriage is no different, say, to a blond marrying a red-head, although there are others who are more cautious and say that two sometimes antagonistic cultures inevitably add heat to the mix and an added dimension to marriage. There are also opposing views and beliefs having been raised on different codes of conduct and varying lifestyles. After marriage what sort of lifestyles do such couples lead? There can be compatibility and communication problems, not just with each other, but also with in-laws and partners' friends. What cuisines do they prefer? How do they raise their Eurasian children?
While a certain amount has been written about Blacks married to Whites, and Whites to Pakistani, and so on, next to nothing has been written about Westerners married to Chinese. Researched and written by Dr Dan Waters, who can claim approaching half a century of actual experience in such a marriage, is the best person to research the subject of mixed marriages.
One Couple Two Cultures is based on original research of eighty-one couples involving among others Chinese from the People's Republic of China and Caucasians of different nationalities. Examples included in this book are of both successful and not-so-successful unions.

Dan Waters was born in 1920 in Norwich, England, a city of pubs and churches. 'There's a pub for every day of the year and a church for every week'. He's now 88 year old and a whole life of experience. Dan and his Hong Kong Chinese wife, Vera Chan, were married on the Queen's Birthday in 1960, and they have lived together in Hong Kong ever since.

THE PUBLISHER
Since going into book publishing in 2001, the aspirations of MCCM Creations in books have not changed: a wish to bring to you original and inspiring books from creators who share a passion in books as well as having a strong desire to explore new concepts and visualise their experiences, stories and perception in their medium of preference - words, images, sound etc… who often take them across boundaries of illustration, visual art, design, architecture, photography, culture, socio-culture, and literature. Their titles have ‘crossover’ appeals to different age groups and interest groups. MCCM is owned by Mary Chan.
Event Co-Organized by MCCM Creations

August 3rd - Sunday - 18.00
China: Portrait of a Country A book launching presented by Pulitzer-winning photojournalist Liu Heung Shing

China: Portrait of a Country is a landmark on the history of publishing. Initially a book on photography it brings the whole history of a country from the past 60 years to a vivid and close-up form. After a research that took more than 4 years, Liu Heung Shing shows the work of 88 Chinese photographers who gave their perception along the extraordinary hardship that makes way to the humanistic course of this immense country. A document that will make its own life on the standards of gradual change and a monument on the passion of photography. When China opens the curtain at the summer Olympics in 2008 and the world’s focus falls upon Beijing, these images will serve to map out the remarkable road the Chinese have traveled to rejoin the rest of the world and the process by which China navigated the path from periphery to a central position in the world.

Liu Heung Shing’s journalistic involvement with China runs parallel with the development of the People’s Republic. Following the 1979 China-U.S. diplomatic normalization, Liu was Time Magazine’s first photojournalist based in Beijing. His first story was on the death of Mao Zedong. He has worked as a foreign correspondent for the The Associated Press in Beijing (1979-1983), Los Angeles (1983-85), New Delhi (19851-89), Seoul (1989-1990) and Moscow (1990-1993). Liu is the author of China After Mao (Penguin 1982), and USSR: Collapse of an Empire(Associated Press 1992). In 1992 he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography on the coverage of the Soviet Union, and in 2005 French Photomagazine named Liu Heung Shing one of the 100 most influential figures in contemporary photography.

THE PUBLISHER
TASCHEN is an art book publisher founded in 1980 in Germany. Taschen has been a noteworthy force in making lesser-seen art available to mainstream bookstores. Bringing this art into broader public view, by publishing potentially controversial volumes alongside its more mainstream books of comics reprints, art photography, painting, design, fashion,advertising history, film, and architecture. TASCHEN's mission is to choose the most interesting, important, and pertinent subjects within a delectable range of disciplines, to make beautiful, unique and high-quality books.
Co-Organized by TASCHEN • Hong Kong

All the events will take place at Bloom Yellow and its boundaries at Albergue, previously know as The Old Ladies House, a complex for Arts and Creativity in Macau.
SUPPORTED by BAMBU SOCIEDADE DE ARTES LIMITADA
ALBERGUE - CALÇADA DA IGREJA DE SÃO LÁZARO, 8 - MACAU

Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India, which took place at midnight on 15 August 1947. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, a telepath with a nasal defect, who is born at the exact moment that India becomes independent. Saleem Sinai's life then parallels the changing fortunes of the country after independence.
The technique of magical realism finds liberal expression throughout the novel and is crucial to constructing the parallel to the country's history. It has thus been compared to One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
The narrative framework of Midnight's Children consists of a tale - comprising his life story - which Saleem Sinai recounts orally to his wife-to-be Padma. This self-referential narrative recalls indigenous Indian culture, particularly the similarly orally recounted Arabian Nights. The events in Rushdie's text also parallel the magical nature of the narratives recounted in the Arabian Nights, or his journey in the 'basket of invisibility'
The novel is also an expression of the author's own childhood, his affection for the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) in those times, and the tumultuous variety of the Indian subcontinent. Recognised for its remarkably flexible and innovative use of the English language, with a liberal mix of native Indian languages, this novel represents a departure from conventional Indian English writing. Compressing Indian cultural history Midnight's Children chronological entwines characters from India's cultural history with characters from Western culture, and the devices that they signify - Indian culture, religion and storytelling, Western drama and cinema - are presented in Rushdie's text with postcolonial Indian history to examine both the effect of these indigenous and non-indigenous cultures on the Indian mind and in the light of Indian independence.
The foundations of religious authority are a central concern in the novel. As with Judaism and Protestant Christianity, Islam's authority resides in scripture and rests on the belief that its words come directly from God (Allah). Saleem Sinai, the novel's narrator, seems to want to appropriate some of the Islamic tradition's authority while at the same time questioning its legitimacy. Comparing himself to Muhammad, the vessel through whom the Quran is believed to have been dictated by Allah, Saleem claims to have heard "a headful of gabbling tongues", and, though he was initially perplexed and "struggled, alone, to understand what had happened." Saleem points to his (and Rushdie's) desire to unsettle some of the easy dichotomies that individual people as well as entire cultures use to make sense of themselves.
[SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]

LINDESAY IRVINE ON THE GUARDIAN
Rushdie Best of the Bookers

For the second time, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie has been judged the best ever winner of the Booker prize. The Best of Booker award, which has been announced at the London literature festival this afternoon, marks the prize's 40th anniversary. A similar contest - the Booker of Bookers - was held in 1993 to coincide with its 25th birthday, and came to the same conclusion.
Rushdie is currently in Chicago, promoting his latest novel The Enchantress of Florence, and appeared at the ceremony via videomessage. "I have to say this is just a marvellous moment for me and for Midnight's Children ... I'm slightly lost for words which usually I'm not," he said. The recently knighted author's sons Zafar and Milan accepted the trophy, which is the award's only immediate reward (although considerable additional sales can be confidently expected to follow). "I think there's something rather wonderful about my real children accepting a prize for my imaginary children," said Rushdie.
Midnight's Children is a teeming fable of postcolonial India, told in magical-realist fashion by a telepathic hero born at the stroke of midnight on the day the country became independent. First published in 1981, it was met with little immediate excitement. It was an unexpected winner, but went on to garner critical and popular acclaim around the world. The novel's popularity, very unusually for a literary award, is what has secured the prize, having been picked from the shortlist by an online public vote that drew just over 7,800 votes. The shortlist itself was selected by a panel of judges - the biographer, novelist and critic Victoria Glendinning; writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, and John Mullan, professor of English at University College London.
As well as securing a welcome boost for Rushdie and the other shortlisted authors, John Mullan argued that the honour was a different kind of accolade to the annual award because of its longer view.
"The Booker is usually a marker of 'this year's thing'," he said. "The contenders for the Best of Booker stretched back almost half a century. It means that we were able to look at books that seem likely to endure because of their inherent qualities, as opposed to 'catching the zeitgeist'."
The Booker - which aims to reward the best novel in English by a writer from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth - has established itself as this country's most influential literary honour. But Mullan was more cautious about whether this award amounts to being declared the very best English novel of the last 40 years.
"The annual Booker winners weren't necessarily the best novels published that year," he explained. "One or two novelists have won for novels which weren't their best."
Glendinning, who chaired the panel, said that "the readers have spoken - in their thousands. And we do believe that they have made the right choice." But her comments fell a little short of the enthusiasm for Midnight's Children on the Booker website, where one voter wrote that "maybe only Shakespeare can top this sort of genius".

AUDIO: Salman Rushdie talks to Stuart Jeffries
BLOG: They picked the right winner
IN PICTURES: The life of Salman Rushdie
REVIEW: Read the original Guardian review (PDF)
EXCERPT: Read an extract from Midnight's Children

When we moved to Bloom Yellow at Albergue we came with a purpose. The mission to bring authors and writers close to the public and get them together with the readers. If not in flesh in every ways possible just to create the flux of their words to the fountain where one could drink them. We started at our open day with a session about Salman Rushdie and his last novel, The Enchantress of Florence, we invited one side and the other, the ones who would tell and the ones who would listen, and we believe, as it happened with us, that both sides took something new when they left. That's one piece of our engine that starts running. One step of the ladder we want to climb. And ahead we want to take you with us.
For now we want to tell - and it's nothing really new as it happened two days ago - that our author of the month at Bloom Yellow, Salman Rushdie, won the Best of Booker prizes. The Booker Prize is a literary award given each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland. The winner is generally assured of international renown and success.
Midnight's Children, by Rushdie, won this prize in 1981. In 1993 was chosen again as the best novel to win the award in the first 25 years of its existence, it was named the Booker of Bookers Prize. On 8 of July, on a poll who brought readers from across the world, the same title was chosen as the Best of Booker. And so, after 27 years of its publication, Midnight's Children, gains another boost of its own genuine life.
That's it. At Bloom July is our crash test month. We have different things prepared and on wheels and we will tell them right away. Be there and stay tuned.

RELATED LINKS:
• BOOKER PRIZE'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE
• LIST OF BOOKER PRIZE WINNERS
• MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN ON WIKI
[PHOTO © BLOOMLAND.CN FEATURING VICENZO OUR NEIGHBOUR AT ALBERGUE]