Reply#12: The Official STRAVINSKY RELIC Thread

[Mister Sharpe]

Super cool, Snipes!  A link with the master.

[pjme]

From Robert Craft's "Dialogues and diary":

April 1.
Hong Kong. The airport. A travel agent conducts us to the Kowloon ferry and, across the water, in Hong Kong, to the Repulse Bay Hotel. As the boat moves, a BBC voice on a loudspeaker warns us not to smoke. The warning, repeated in Chinese, lasts ten times as long and swoops up and down a whole xylophone of inflection. Among the foot passengers are coolies who slough their shoulder poles and baskets to the deck, and boys who go from car to car peddling Wrigley's gum. The Repulse Bay Hotel might have been built by the Canadian Pacific Railroad for a Chinese settlement in Saskatchewan. We sit by a stained-glass peacock, in the restaurant, then move to a terrace with a view of the jade sea, the purple sampans, and the sugar-loaf islands. The food is deliberately British, and the waiters are obliged to inquire three times whether we want "fiss" before we realize they mean fish: "You want eat egg first or fiss?" According to I.S., the salon du thé orchestra has "made a Rossini overture sound like 'Chopsticks "
April 2.
At William McGee's in Gloucester Road, fifteen tailors take turns speaking to us through the English of one young boy. The McGees are Shanghai Chinese, he says, and they do not understand the Mandarin and Cantonese dialects that are most common in Hong Kong. He also says that though few boys of his age are able to do brush calligraphy, the older generation has not relaxed its contempt of penmanship. But, according to him, the majority of Hong Kong Chinese cannot write at all or remember enough characters to be able to read a newspaper. Being unable to pronounce an R, he says "foul dollas," but he means "four dollars," not "filthy lucre." I.S. wonders why his English is so monotone, "since he singsongs his own language." I.S. asks him the Chinese for good-bye, and he says, " 'Bye-bye' is all we know." As the tailors measure and fit us, he translates a stream of excited questions about life on "stateside." We hail three rickshas from a queue and bump alongside buses, trolleys, cars, people—Chinese, Indians, British civil servants, tourists, beggars, porters with yokes, women with head loads. Our runners are barefoot, and they carry towels in their belts to mop perspiration. From a pier, we watch a junk unload crates marked "Made in Japan/' A man, woman, and seven children live on this small vessel, and it is an ark of domestic animals as well. Hong Kong at sunset is concealed in mist. We go to bed with the hoot of harboring boats in our ears.
April 4.
At the resettlement buildings in Kowloon—concrete barracks housing half a million refugees—children swarm around us but turn superstitiously from V.'s camera. We are detained in the principal street first by a funeral and then by a wedding, the former with white, the latter with red flowers. Through the glass windows of the silver-plated hearse, six men can be seen sitting around the coffin. They wear Americanstyle business suits but Chinese headdress. We drive to Shatin at noon and eat on a terrace overlooking the valley of the Kowloon-Canton railroad. Farther inland are pagodas, temples, walled cities. Today is Chinese All Souls' Day, and the road is filled with processions. According to Buddhist ritual, the dead are exhumed after seven years—les beaux restes—and reburied in blue urns. Their first place of burial is then marked by something that looks like a concrete armchair, and a large former burial ground is a whole assembly of armchair cenotaphs. They—the beaux restes —are then reburied in blue urns. At Taipo, the driver promises to show us a "model poetry farm." I.S. says he expects to see "a group of aspiring Chinese poets attending a lecture by Ste- phen Spender," but the driver was simply unable to pro- nounce the "L" in poultry. At the border of the People's Republic, old women come to be photographed, demanding "one Melican dolla, please" for the service. They wear loose black trousers, high-collared jackets slit at the sides, lampshade hats. One of them has a bicycle with a pig in a cage fixed to the handlebars. We return to Kowloon by way of Castle Peak, where black-sailed junks fill the bay.

No entry for april 3rd!! (Igor and Vera were probably wondering what to do with those beautiful flowers...while picking up their new suits on Gloucester Road ).

Anyway, on april 5th, the party flies to Japan.

https://archive.org/details/dialoguesanddiar00stra

[snyprrr]

From Robert Craft's "Dialogues and diary":

April 1.
Hong Kong. The airport. A travel agent conducts us to the Kowloon ferry and, across the water, in Hong Kong, to the Repulse Bay Hotel. As the boat moves, a BBC voice on a loudspeaker warns us not to smoke. The warning, repeated in Chinese, lasts ten times as long and swoops up and down a whole xylophone of inflection. Among the foot passengers are coolies who slough their shoulder poles and baskets to the deck, and boys who go from car to car peddling Wrigley's gum. The Repulse Bay Hotel might have been built by the Canadian Pacific Railroad for a Chinese settlement in Saskatchewan. We sit by a stained-glass peacock, in the restaurant, then move to a terrace with a view of the jade sea, the purple sampans, and the sugar-loaf islands. The food is deliberately British, and the waiters are obliged to inquire three times whether we want "fiss" before we realize they mean fish: "You want eat egg first or fiss?" According to I.S., the salon du thé orchestra has "made a Rossini overture sound like 'Chopsticks "
April 2.
At William McGee's in Gloucester Road, fifteen tailors take turns speaking to us through the English of one young boy. The McGees are Shanghai Chinese, he says, and they do not understand the Mandarin and Cantonese dialects that are most common in Hong Kong. He also says that though few boys of his age are able to do brush calligraphy, the older generation has not relaxed its contempt of penmanship. But, according to him, the majority of Hong Kong Chinese cannot write at all or remember enough characters to be able to read a newspaper. Being unable to pronounce an R, he says "foul dollas," but he means "four dollars," not "filthy lucre." I.S. wonders why his English is so monotone, "since he singsongs his own language." I.S. asks him the Chinese for good-bye, and he says, " 'Bye-bye' is all we know." As the tailors measure and fit us, he translates a stream of excited questions about life on "stateside." We hail three rickshas from a queue and bump alongside buses, trolleys, cars, people—Chinese, Indians, British civil servants, tourists, beggars, porters with yokes, women with head loads. Our runners are barefoot, and they carry towels in their belts to mop perspiration. From a pier, we watch a junk unload crates marked "Made in Japan/' A man, woman, and seven children live on this small vessel, and it is an ark of domestic animals as well. Hong Kong at sunset is concealed in mist. We go to bed with the hoot of harboring boats in our ears.
April 4.
At the resettlement buildings in Kowloon—concrete barracks housing half a million refugees—children swarm around us but turn superstitiously from V.'s camera. We are detained in the principal street first by a funeral and then by a wedding, the former with white, the latter with red flowers. Through the glass windows of the silver-plated hearse, six men can be seen sitting around the coffin. They wear Americanstyle business suits but Chinese headdress. We drive to Shatin at noon and eat on a terrace overlooking the valley of the Kowloon-Canton railroad. Farther inland are pagodas, temples, walled cities. Today is Chinese All Souls' Day, and the road is filled with processions. According to Buddhist ritual, the dead are exhumed after seven years—les beaux restes—and reburied in blue urns. Their first place of burial is then marked by something that looks like a concrete armchair, and a large former burial ground is a whole assembly of armchair cenotaphs. They—the beaux restes —are then reburied in blue urns. At Taipo, the driver promises to show us a "model poetry farm." I.S. says he expects to see "a group of aspiring Chinese poets attending a lecture by Ste- phen Spender," but the driver was simply unable to pro- nounce the "L" in poultry. At the border of the People's Republic, old women come to be photographed, demanding "one Melican dolla, please" for the service. They wear loose black trousers, high-collared jackets slit at the sides, lampshade hats. One of them has a bicycle with a pig in a cage fixed to the handlebars. We return to Kowloon by way of Castle Peak, where black-sailed junks fill the bay.

No entry for april 3rd!! (Igor and Vera were probably wondering what to do with those beautiful flowers...while picking up their new suits on Gloucester Road ).

Anyway, on april 5th, the party flies to Japan.

https://archive.org/details/dialoguesanddiar00stra

wow- I suppose they had a very busy day on the 3rd, with no time for Craft to journal. "Don't forget to write Klaus a note for the flowers," Vera probably tells Igor? (I know, silly)


Yea, this is some heady stuff- soooo cool you got that!! thx


Something tells me it's going to be more difficult finding an attractive young lady (around THESE parts) who will be equally as impressed - lol, I'm still trying to find an angle here

Seems quite clear it is a Stravinsky signature. A nice surprise.

Yea, when we matched them up we looked at each other with that "woooaaah"- it IS refreshing, isn't it, when things really are what you think they initially are- disappointment is for the birds...here, FINALLY, something was what it said it was!

Still curious how much it might fetch... just curious... that other one went for almost $4000 (look up "stravinsky memorabilia")...

Good going Snyprrr, I'm impressed! 

hey, I didn't do nuthin but buyBuyBUY!! (which is, errr, my GMG duty, no???lol)... oy vey

But, now I'm the only here who knows what it feels like to run their finger over... gasp... "The Greatest Composer of the 20th Century"'s signature... but... y'know, the more you know about him, he really does seem like a cool cat/nice polite man/old fashioned yet up to date- I almost feel as though I can speak to him through the air...

but, Craft has a writing style that draws you in, too...


ahhhh... yea, I'm'a basking


ACTUALLY, THIS IS MORE LIKE A GIFT TO THE GMG FAMILY-

Super cool, Snipes!  A link with the master.

I'm taking messages!... or, you can just go televangelist style and put your hands on the screen... and believe!! 0:)

[zamyrabyrd]

Can I buy CD's from the same place, you know, like recordings of Maria Callas?
I WANT AUTOGRAPHS, TOO!
Anyway, putting my jealousy aside, nice going and congratulations.
You have a magic touch, man.
If I put now my hands on the computer screen...

ZB

[Karl Henning]

I felt that!

[zamyrabyrd]

I felt that!

I try to be honest about my feelings...