BOOK:Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio,Aiora Press
One of the books that we stand out for exciting moments these beautiful Summer Days and Nights is Pu Songling’s “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio” by Aiora Press. The same book is the steppingstone for the Greek artist Lizzie Calligas, to create a series of 50 works that are on presentation at the Lemoni bookstore.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Lizzie Calligas Archive
This coexistence is not at all accidental, since the artist loves Pu Songling and reads his stories for many years. It is a creative coexistence that has a common path and course… Pu Songling (5/6/1640-25/2/1715) was born into a merchant family from Zichuan and lived in the “Era of sufferings” as describes China’s transition from Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) also known as the Manchu conquest of China. At the age of 18, he received the Xiucai degree in the Chinese imperial examinations, so he failed to obtain a government post and spent most of his life working as a private tutor for a local family, collecting the stories that were later published in “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio” in 1740. Pu’s impressive collection of 431 tales of the unusual and supernatural was largely completed by 1679, though he added stories to the manuscript as late as 1707. His stories that were born in the isolation of his studio and through his need to create and experience a parallel world, are completely fantastic, or based on reality, with an intermediate, hybrid character. Pu Songling didn’t make the life of the famous and powerful government official that appear to be his prospect as a young man, it was not until he was 71 that he was awarded the Gongsheng degree for his achievement in literature rather than for passing the Imperial examinations. Although Pu lived and died as an obscure provincial schoolteacher, his work gained fame when it was first printed some 50 years after his death, inspiring many imitations and creating a new vogue for classical stories. “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio” has been translated in almost every language and is one of the most exciting and fascinating works to bring the foreigner into contact with Classical Chinese Culture, through Literature, which is the kind of logos that weaves with the most beautiful and fascinating way the puzzles of a society, with facts that sometimes are true and sometimes plausible, through imagination and fantasy, the fluctuations of emotions, and the psychological and social implications that unfolding as murals of eras and situations, creating their anthropogeography,
The 50 excellent artworks created by Lizzie Calligas, on occasion of “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio”, are on show at Lemoni bookstore and it is worth for those who find themselves in Athens at that time to enjoy a very interesting exhibition and publication in a special and favorite bookstore.
Info: Lemoni bookstore, Irakleidon 22, Thisio, Athens from 8/6 to 31/7/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:30-21:30, Sat 10:30-19:00
