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Oct 9, 2022 15 tweets 5 min read Read on X
15 of the most beautiful short poems you (might) have never read, from across the world and throughout history...

Starting with the Persian master Rumi, writing 800 years ago:
2. Enheduanna isn't just the oldest named poet in history; she's the oldest known writer.

She was a high priestess in the Sumerian city of Ur in about 2100 BC, and this is from her hymn to Inanna, the goddess of fertility, love, and war:
3. Sappho was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from the island of Lesbos, regarded as one of the greatest poets of Antiquity and sometimes called the Tenth Muse.

All we have left of her work are incomplete, tantalising fragments:
4. Another of Greece's great lyric poets was Pindar, who wrote "victory odes" for the winners of the Panhellenic Games.
5. Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known as Horace, was a Roman poet of the Augustan Age.

His Odes are often considered the finest of all Latin lyric poetry, and ranks alongside Virgil and Ovid as the greatest Roman poets.
6. Kalidasa, who lived in the 5th century A.D., is regarded as the greatest Ancient Indian poet.
7. Caedmon, who looked after animals at Whitby Abbey in the 7th century A.D., is the first named English poet.
8. Li Bai was (alongside his friend Du Fu) the greatest poet of the Tang Dynasty, a Golden Age in Medieval China.
9. Dante is most famous for his masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, but as a young man he was also a composer of shorter poems, especially on the theme of love.
10. Ah Bam is the name attributed to the author of The Songs of Dzitbalché, a collection of Ancient Mayan poetry compiled in the 15th century.
11. Matsuo Basho, who travelled throughout Edo period Japan writing poetry, is regarded as the master of the haiku.
12. Sayyid Abdallah was a poet and scholar who lived in the Lamu Archipelago and composed Swahili poetry in Arabic script during the 18th and 19th centuries.
13. Percy Bysshe Shelley, along with Lord Byron and John Keats, was one of the foremost poets of the Romantic Age. He drowned at just 29 years old.
14. Edward Thomas was a writer and poet who fought and died in the First World War, in 1917.
15. Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet, writer, critic, essayist, and all-round enigma. He had at least 75 alter-egos and remains one of the most unique and fascinating literary figures of all time.

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More from @culturaltutor

Nov 5
A short history of purple: Image
The best place to begin is with the word itself.

The English word purple descends from the Latin "purpura", which also meant "purple-dyed" rather than just referring to the colour.

Purpura came from the older Greek word "porphyra", which had the same meaning.
Now, porphyra referred to a very specific purple dye produced by treating the secretions of a snail called the spiny dye-murex.

Thousands of these snails — which are only found in certain parts of the Mediterranean — had to be harvested to make even a small amount of this dye. Image
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Oct 31
Some of the strangest and most frightening paintings ever made:

1. The Dog by Francisco Goya (1823) Image
2. Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas by Otto Dix (1924)

The First World War was filled with horrors previously unknown, and few artists captured them more vividly than Otto Dix.

These, and his other portrayals of warfare in the trenches, are nightmarish. Image
3. The Heavy Basket by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, from The Thirty-Six Ghosts (1892)

A wonderfully strange, deeply unnerving example of yūrei-zu, a subgenre of Japanese art dedicated to depicting the ghosts and peculiar creatures of folklore. Image
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Oct 29
555 years ago today Erasmus was born.

You've probably heard his name before — but who was Erasmus and why does he matter?

This is the story of history's greatest educator... Image
The first thing to know about Erasmus is that he was born in 1469 and died in 1536.

So his life coincided with one of the most turbulent and influential periods in history: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the rise of the printing press...

And Erasmus was involved in it all. Image
Erasmus was born in Gouda, the Netherlands, and by the age of 14 both his parents had died.

His guardians, who couldn't be bothered to raise the child themselves, sent him to a monastery.

In 1492 he was ordained as a priest, though books interested him much more than preaching. Image
Read 24 tweets
Oct 24
This is Borobudur in Indonesia, one of the world's most important and mysterious buildings.

Why? Because it's the largest Buddhist temple ever built — and it was also abandoned for nearly one thousand years... Image
First, who built Borobudur?

It was constructed in the 9th century AD under the relatively mysterious Shailendra Dynasty, which ruled the island of Java at that time.

The Shailendras built dozens of Buddhist temples in central Java, and Borobudur was their grandest. Image
But the Shailendras left Java for Sumatra and by the 11th century Borobudur had fallen from use.

Thereafter it was covered by volcanic ash and consumed by the jungle.

Other than references to a mysterious temple hidden in the forests of Java, Borobudur disappeared from history. Image
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Oct 17
A short guide to Neoclassical Architecture... Image
The story begins over two thousand years ago with the architecture of Greece and (later) Rome.

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Classical Architecture. Image
What defined Classical Architecture?

Many things, but the most important are round arches, symmetry, extremely specific rules about proportion, and the famous "Classical Orders" — five kinds of column with their own rules for size and decoration.

From Greece it spread to Rome. Image
Read 24 tweets
Oct 14
This window is over 400 years old.

It's the perfect example of a "jali", an intricately carved stone window common in Indian Architecture.

And it's just one of the many things that make Indian Architecture so special... Image
The term "Indian Architecture" is impossibly broad — it covers thousands of years, dozens of styles, and countless wonders, from the Hawa Mahal to Kirti Stambha.

But, as a basic introduction, there are certain design methods and types of building that can be mentioned. Image
Beginning with the jali — as stated, a finely carved screen made of stone.

Jalis are both decorative and functional.

Decorative for the obvious reason of their intricate patterns, whether floral or geometric, like these at the 16th century Sidi Saiyyed Mosque in Ahmedabad: Image
Read 25 tweets

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