The Lascaux Notebooks – Philip Terry (Paperback / Soft Cover)

The first ever collection in English of Ice Age Poetry, drawn from the cave drawings and inscriptions at Lascaux, unpacking their meaning and resonance in the 21st Century.

This newest Carcanet Classic collects the oldest poetry ?yet discovered, as written down or runed in the Ice Age ?in Lascaux and other caves in the Dordogne, and now ?translated ?tentatively ?into English for the first time. The ?translation is at two removes, from French versions by the ?mysterious linguistic genius Jean-Luc Champerret, and then ?from the striking originals that retain such a sense of early ?human presence. Philip Terry mediates between the French ?and those hitherto inscrutable originals. ?Jean-Luc Champerret’s unique contribution to world ?literature is in his interpretation of the cave signs. And Philip ?Terry’s contribution is to have discovered and rendered ?this seminal, hitherto unsuspected work into English. The ?translated poems are experiments, as the drawings may have
been to the original cave poets composing them as image ?and sound. While archaeologists maintain that these signs ?are uninterpretable, Champerret assigns them meanings byanalogy, then ?in an inspired act of creative reading ?inserts ?them into the frequent 3 x 3 grids to be found at Lascaux. ?The results ?revelation of Ice-Age poetry ?are startling. Terry ?provides context, sign-grids, and translations. He is adept at ?bringing up close poetry from languages and scripts remote ?in time.

Author: Philip Terry
Format: Paperback / Soft Cover
Pages: 388
Size: Not Specified
Weight: Not Specified