DESCRIPTION:
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiQTqfPBU9s Elizabeth Parcells
Shéhérazade by Maruice Ravel (1875-1937)
higher resolution version at http://www.elizabethparcells.com/animations.htm
Translation: Asia, Asia, Asia,
Old marvelous land from childhood tales
Where fantasy sleeps like an empress
In her forest filled with mystery.
Asia,
I wish to go away with the boat
Cradled this evening in the port
Mysterious and solitary
And that finally deploys her violet sails
Like an enormous bird of the night in the golden sky.
I wish to go away, toward the isles of flowers,
Listening to the sea's perverse song
Over an old, bewitching rhythm.
I wish to see Damascus and the cities of Persia,
With their light minarets in the air;
I wish to see beautiful silk turbans
On dark faces with bright teeth;
I wish to see eyes dark with love
And pupils shining with joy
In skin yellowed like oranges;
I wish to see velvet robes
And clothes with long fringes.
I wish to see pipes in mouths
Surrounded by white beards;
I wish to see harsh merchants with cross-eyed gazes,
And judges, and viziers
Who with a single movement of their crooked finger
Grants life, or death, according to their desire.
I wish to see Persia, and India, and then China,
The pot-bellied mandarins under their umbrellas,
And the princesses with dainty hands,
And the literary men who quarrel
Over poetry and over beauty;
I wish to linger in the enchanted palace,
And like a foreign traveler
Contemplate at leisure painted countrysides
On fabrics framed by fir
With a person standing in the middle of an orchard;
I wish to see smiling assassins,
The executioner who cuts an innocent neck
With his great Oriental curved blade.
I wish to see paupers and queens;
I wish to see roses and blood;
I wish to see death caused by love or even by hate.
And then returning, later
Tell my story to the dreaming and curious
Raising, like Sinbad, my old Arab cup
From time to time to my lips
To interrupt my tale with art.(Ahmed E. Ismail)