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 Solomon and Raul Jaak Jõerüüt, Writer Book Solomon's Song of Songs by Raul Meel | |
| However rich a human might be, however materially constricted the corner of the world where a person spends the days of their life, however often during his lifetime he would have pretended to be a different person even to himself, however skillful his acting before the public in the drama of life, yet there is no heart without an undying desire for something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. In the heart of a convict, a millionaire, a president, a general, a pirate, a tribal chief, a long-distance driver, a whore. This SOMETHING else is sometimes embodied in the one single word, which can be found in all languages. Perhaps this word may be King. Maybe Heaven. Or God. The Universe. Love. A Child. Hope. Solomon, the KING of Israel, is the man credited with a book in the Bible that we call the Song of Songs. It is to LOVE that this song is devoted. To love, which is like the UNIVERSE, like HEAVEN. As long as people on earth are concerned with this text, HOPE persists that the world will not turn irrevocably into a SUPERMARKET. Estonian artist of international renown and the author of numerous TEXTS, Raul Meel, has poured the almost three-thousand-year-old Song of Songs into his mould, and this has resulted in a book (a number of books in fact) about which I can say just the single word: IMPRESSIVE. For his exhibition in the fine arts library at the University of Ghent, Belgium, designed by Henry van de Velde, for an exhibition which opened on 20 April and closed on 28 May, he wrote, drew and performed, together with other visual poetry and sound poetry works, the virtual books of Solomon’s Song of Songs in ten languages: Dutch, French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Russian and Estonian. On the agenda now is the last one in the series: a book in Latvian. Of all these, only the book in English has been printed and bound; the one hundred copies of this rare edition have been numbered. (The Embassy of Estonia in Latvia gave one copy as a gift to the Latvian National Museum of Art, but another was donated to the National Library of Latvia.) In Raul Meel’s synthesis, the text pictures in Solomon’s books have been selected by Raul himself, and by the translators advising him, from those translations of the Bible which have been adjudged to be the most poetic. When comparing the books, we see that each translator has understood and imagined, as well as translated, the original text rather differently. But that was how the books evolved, in which we encounter a unique work in various languages – each page has acquired its own artistic form. Each page is in a sense a graphic sheet, a work of art. The unification of age-old and world-famous Hebrew original text(s) with congenial contemporary art and poetry is an achievement, the roots and branches of which reach both into the cultures of various nations, as well as into world culture, the fine arts, literature, religion and modern technologies. My emotional experiences of reading and observation are of course subjective, just like the capacity for perception of any individual is personal. I am speaking here about the English edition. I truly do feel this book as something impressive. I feel it as the ONE WHOLE. As a person of flesh and blood, Solomon and Raul, even though the two are separated by a time period of some three thousand years. But the passion with which they both perceive the world is equally potent. Raul Meel started writing his lettrist poems in the 1960s, and this occupation easily transformed into modern graphic art which rapidly spread into the world. For me this is not only a matter-of-fact page in the history of art, because I was an eye witness. I remember. Now I see one of Raul’s periodic steps along the neverending staircase of art. I am examining this thick, rare book and cannot stop admiring how natural it seems. As a person who has read, looked through or leafed through thousands of books in my life, I testify: this is a special work. Let us not go into lengthy, too tempting deliberations about what actually is the PRINCIPAL THEME of the book. Because every solid volume should have a theme. This could be LOVE, because thus Solomon had decided. But it could as well be ART, for Solomon met one Estonian artist. The principal theme may also be BEAUTY. But we would not be mistaken if we said that the book mainly speaks of two people, about Solomon and Raul, although neither of them is mentioned in the text, not once. Yet the book speaks of them. Because so terrifyingly mysterious is the network of mutual links among people, their mutual connections, so strangely rich is the gallery of meetings and partings, harmonies and incompatibilities. Yes, Raul and Solomon are a good match. If they lived in one and the same city, they most probably would be friends, be¬cause they would have much to talk about. This book, as Raul is now presenting it to us, this age-old text in its original form is beautiful. On this occasion, the word MUST be used! But it is at the same time happy and sad. The never ending red-black shadows of the words and lines in the book, as if according to Raul’s intentions, glide, flow, jump, freeze, move, grow, split, expand and contract; all those repetitions and echoes which are also LIFE ITSELF. For all our works are the echo of something, a reflection of some thing, a shadow of something. Or a reflection, a shadow, an echo of somebody. And these shadows, echoes and reflections are at the same time both a joyful brightener and a sad diffusion. Both a joyful lightheartedness and a sad reflection. The numerous plans for life that usually inhabit us, all at the same time, never leave us. Nothing in life is of a single dimension, single-level, dull. We are reflected in others, and others reflect in us. Raul has been impressively successful in achieving unification of the verbal and the visual. That the visual perfection, completeness, refinement, infiniteness as is usual for Raul (and against the background of all those intricate secrets, as is usual for Raul), that all this embraces Solomon’s book is, on the one hand, natural and to be expected, and on the other hand, surprising and gladdening. Had I devoted my life until now to the study of art, then obviously for the rest of my life the lion’s share of time I would spend on studying all RAUL’S TWELVE PORTRAITS OF SOLOMON, layer by layer. /Translator into English: Sarmīte Lietuviete/ | |
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