Book 18 - Bruce Chatwin "The Songlines"
May. 2nd, 2012 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveBruce Chatwin "The Songlines" (Picador)
The Australian Aboriginal songlines, or dreaming tracks, are a fascinating part of a mythology that, after reading this book, I only partly understand. They are geographic paths of stories which cut across Australia in different directions from end to end, marking, within the story, every significant natural landmark. A person who knew the songlines would learn the stories about places he or she would probably never see, and then he would pass these on through a complicated cultural system. Later, someone otherwise unfamiliar with these areas could use the songs as map, maybe to find waterholes, and, essentially, as an information source. The songs were kept constant on some level even as the language dialects changed. So, two people from different parts of Australia would know the same songs. Further, there is a larger mythology behind and around the songs, and a whole cultural system that they are an integral part of…at least that’s what I got from Bruce Chatwin.
Chatwin visited Australia in order to gain a more intimate understanding of the songlines. With some help, he wandered through central Australia interviewing various people he came across. However, he wasn’t simply out to learn and report about this mythology. His explorations were a means to end, a part of an ongoing search he had obsessively set himself on. Early in the book Chatwin mentions a manuscript that he had written on nomads. He burned the manuscript, but kept the notes. Now, in Australia, he is continuing along the same themes, observing, for example, the similarities between these Aboriginal Songlines and the Homeric epics. He postulates that the ancient Greek mythologies are the remains a similar type of mythological atlas.
Perhaps it’s in the book somewhere, but I didn’t read closely enough to gather exactly what Chatwin is looking for. At one point he gets stuck, partially by choice, in a tiny isolated village, and goes through his notebooks and this book either explodes or dissolves in to a list of notes on nomadism and, in general, on some search for some kind of deep understanding of humanity. He later wanders back to the Songlines, but a conclusion is elusive.
I fell in love with the idea of Chatwin’s pursuit, and with his intense sincerity. Of course, this is a work of fiction (or “a truth and a half”, as Chatwin’s biographer Nicholas Shakespeare put it), which, at least for me, leaves element of confusion. Also, I was left with a sense of incompleteness and of needing, and wanting, to go back here again to try to understand Chatwin and his notes better..as it is a bit like Montaigne's Essays , discursive and open ended notes.. This was a memorable read, and one which I would like to upgrade to a hardback or Folio edition.
The Australian Aboriginal songlines, or dreaming tracks, are a fascinating part of a mythology that, after reading this book, I only partly understand. They are geographic paths of stories which cut across Australia in different directions from end to end, marking, within the story, every significant natural landmark. A person who knew the songlines would learn the stories about places he or she would probably never see, and then he would pass these on through a complicated cultural system. Later, someone otherwise unfamiliar with these areas could use the songs as map, maybe to find waterholes, and, essentially, as an information source. The songs were kept constant on some level even as the language dialects changed. So, two people from different parts of Australia would know the same songs. Further, there is a larger mythology behind and around the songs, and a whole cultural system that they are an integral part of…at least that’s what I got from Bruce Chatwin.
Chatwin visited Australia in order to gain a more intimate understanding of the songlines. With some help, he wandered through central Australia interviewing various people he came across. However, he wasn’t simply out to learn and report about this mythology. His explorations were a means to end, a part of an ongoing search he had obsessively set himself on. Early in the book Chatwin mentions a manuscript that he had written on nomads. He burned the manuscript, but kept the notes. Now, in Australia, he is continuing along the same themes, observing, for example, the similarities between these Aboriginal Songlines and the Homeric epics. He postulates that the ancient Greek mythologies are the remains a similar type of mythological atlas.
Perhaps it’s in the book somewhere, but I didn’t read closely enough to gather exactly what Chatwin is looking for. At one point he gets stuck, partially by choice, in a tiny isolated village, and goes through his notebooks and this book either explodes or dissolves in to a list of notes on nomadism and, in general, on some search for some kind of deep understanding of humanity. He later wanders back to the Songlines, but a conclusion is elusive.
I fell in love with the idea of Chatwin’s pursuit, and with his intense sincerity. Of course, this is a work of fiction (or “a truth and a half”, as Chatwin’s biographer Nicholas Shakespeare put it), which, at least for me, leaves element of confusion. Also, I was left with a sense of incompleteness and of needing, and wanting, to go back here again to try to understand Chatwin and his notes better..as it is a bit like Montaigne's Essays , discursive and open ended notes.. This was a memorable read, and one which I would like to upgrade to a hardback or Folio edition.
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