美国国家公共电台 NPR Quran Exhibition Shines A Light On The Holy Books' Dedicated Artists

Quran Exhibition Shines A Light On The Holy Books' Dedicated¹ Artists

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0005:01repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser² to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: 

A Washington, D.C., museum is showing a collection of books. Actually, it's many handmade copies of one book, the Quran, the holy book of Islam. The centuries-old Qurans are on display at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery near the Washington Monument. When we arrived, the curator, Massumeh Farhad, gestured toward a book with pages several feet wide.

MASSUMEH FARHAD: That book actually weighs 150 pounds.

INSKEEP: It lay open in a glass case under a spotlight³.

Let's go have a look. This is huge.

Years ago, this gallery featured a display of old bibles. Now, it has gathered more than 50 Qurans that were made in countries across North Africa and Asia. We approached the giant pages of the first book covered with Arabic script in gold and black ink.

Somebody spent time on this.

FARHAD: Somebody spend a lot of time, probably years, to complete this manuscript.

INSKEEP: Can I just say also the cover of this 150-pound book is the thickness of a board that could be like the seat of a chair almost? And even the pages seem amazingly thick.

FARHAD: Yes. The story of this manuscript, just given the size, tells you a great deal about it. I mean, clearly this was not a manuscript that could have been taken out every day for private reading. This was a manuscript that was intended for public display.

INSKEEP: It was made in the late 1500s. This museum display is not about the words of the Quran, a text that is both revered⁴ and reviled⁵, first written 1,400 years ago and still at the center of intense political debate today. The exhibit is more about the people, long dead people, some of them ordinary, some powerful, who laboriously⁶ copied these Qurans letter by letter.

As we walk to the next thing, what do they teach you that you wouldn't get from the plain words on a paperback⁷ copy of this?

FARHAD: I think it's the sort of absolute mastery and art history of the individual who has put it together.

INSKEEP: Sometimes the name of that individual is known. One manuscript was written out by a politician, a vizier, or prime minister, of the Ottoman Empire centuries ago in Istanbul. He was called Ferhad Pasha.

FARHAD: And you wrote the Quran sort of as a sign of piety⁸.

INSKEEP: I have a picture now of a prime minister of a fairly large and powerful empire doing this in his spare time, like, to relax, doing a little calligraphy⁹.

FARHAD: That's absolutely true.

INSKEEP: Or maybe saying don't bother me with affairs of state right now. I'm writing.

FARHAD: That's true. That's probably - I mean - and in order to copy something like this, it would've taken a long time. It requires a lot of concentration to copy even a smaller copy of the Quran.

INSKEEP: Some of the handmade Qurans feature decorations that make the pages seem as elaborate as a Persian rug. Because every page is one of a kind, Massumeh Farhad flipped¹¹ through them all.

FARHAD: I have to admit, the sheer act was a meditative¹² act to go through the manuscripts, and you notice things that, you know, nobody else had noticed. For instance, human fallibility because God is infallible but humans aren't. So there are instances where the calligrapher¹³ omitted a verse, but then they always found a way around.

INSKEEP: What do you mean found a way around it? Like, drew a little line and said I omitted something here? What'd they do?

FARHAD: Well, actually, you know, they just put a little asterisk¹⁴ where the verse actually fits in, so...

INSKEEP: (Laughter).

FARHAD: And it happens over and over again.

INSKEEP: Which we could see when we descended¹⁵ the stairs to another room.

Oh, look at these huge pages. We're, like, 20 feet above them here, and you can look down on them.

A few feet from those huge pages is one of the Qurans with a missing verse. It reminds me of when I wrote an assignment in school and left out part of the answer and had to squeeze it into the margins¹⁶.

FARHAD: On the third line, there is a little - oh, do you see? It's like an eyelash.

INSKEEP: That mark is the asterisk telling you to look for the extra verse over on the edge of the page.

FARHAD: He just forgot one, whether he was listening to a recitation, whether he lost his concentration, something has happened.

INSKEEP: Stood up, went to dinner and came back again.

FARHAD: Exactly. But this is the way that he dealt with it.

INSKEEP: And that's common to find things like that.

FARHAD: You find it. There was another one where there was a wrong word clearly, and the calligrapher has covered it with gold.

INSKEEP: (Laughter).

FARHAD: So it's the gold Wite-Out.

INSKEEP: These copies of the Quran at the Sackler Gallery in Washington are like little peepholes allowing us to peer back into the lives of people we never knew.

FARHAD: What this exhibition does is bring in the human element, bring in the care and the attention and the humility¹⁷ and humanity that is really reflected in these works.

INSKEEP: So when you flip¹⁰ open that book, are you flipping¹⁸ back through the past?

FARHAD: Yes. And it's - every page is absolutely breathtaking.

INSKEEP: Massumeh Farhad says each book is an artifact of a religion but also of one human life.

1 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

2 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

3 spotlight   

n.公众注意的中心，聚光灯，探照灯，视听，注意，醒目

参考例句：

• This week the spotlight is on the world of fashion.本周引人瞩目的是时装界。
• The spotlight followed her round the stage.聚光灯的光圈随着她在舞台上转。

4 revered   

v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of institutions revered and respected in earlier times have become Aunt Sally for the present generation. 一些早年受到尊崇的惯例，现在已经成了这代人嘲弄的对象了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Chinese revered corn as a gift from heaven. 中国人将谷物奉为上天的恩赐。 来自辞典例句

5 reviled   

v.辱骂，痛斥( revile的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The tramp reviled the man who drove him off. 流浪汉辱骂那位赶他走开的人。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The old man reviled against corruption. 那老人痛斥了贪污舞弊。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 laboriously   

adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地

参考例句：

• She is tracing laboriously now. 她正在费力地写。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She is laboriously copying out an old manuscript. 她正在费劲地抄出一份旧的手稿。 来自辞典例句

7 paperback   

n.平装本，简装本

参考例句：

• A paperback edition is now available at bookshops.平装本现在在书店可以买到。
• Many books that are out of print are reissued in paperback form.许多绝版的书籍又以平装本形式重新出现。

8 piety   

n.虔诚，虔敬

参考例句：

• They were drawn to the church not by piety but by curiosity.他们去教堂不是出于虔诚而是出于好奇。
• Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness.经验使我们看到虔诚与善意之间有着巨大的区别。

9 calligraphy   

n.书法

参考例句：

• At the calligraphy competition,people asked him to write a few characters.书法比赛会上，人们请他留字。
• His calligraphy is vigorous and forceful.他的书法苍劲有力。

10 flip   

vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的

参考例句：

• I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
• Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。

11 flipped   

轻弹( flip的过去式和过去分词 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥

参考例句：

• The plane flipped and crashed. 飞机猛地翻转，撞毁了。
• The carter flipped at the horse with his whip. 赶大车的人扬鞭朝着马轻轻地抽打。

12 meditative   

adj.沉思的，冥想的

参考例句：

• A stupid fellow is talkative;a wise man is meditative.蠢人饶舌，智者思虑。
• Music can induce a meditative state in the listener.音乐能够引导倾听者沉思。

13 calligrapher   

n.书法家

参考例句：

• People would ask, then, how come a young calligrapher should choose to marry a cold-drink peddler? 以后人家会说——年轻的书法家，怎么找一个卖冷饮的？ 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译
• Wang Xizhi was a great calligrapher in ancient Chiina. 王羲之是中国古代一位伟大的书法家。

14 asterisk   

n.星号，星标

参考例句：

• The asterisk refers the reader to a footnote.星号是让读者参看脚注。
• He added an asterisk to the first page.他在第一页上加了个星号。

15 descended   

a.为...后裔的，出身于...的

参考例句：

• A mood of melancholy descended on us. 一种悲伤的情绪袭上我们的心头。
• The path descended the hill in a series of zigzags. 小路呈连续的之字形顺着山坡蜿蜒而下。

16 margins   

边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数

参考例句：

• They have always had to make do with relatively small profit margins. 他们不得不经常设法应付较少的利润额。
• To create more space between the navigation items, add left and right margins to the links. 在每个项目间留更多的空隙，加左或者右的margins来定义链接。

17 humility   

n.谦逊，谦恭

参考例句：

• Humility often gains more than pride.谦逊往往比骄傲收益更多。
• His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility.他的声音还是那么温和，甚至有点谦卑。

18 flipping   

讨厌之极的

参考例句：

• I hate this flipping hotel! 我讨厌这个该死的旅馆！
• Don't go flipping your lid. 别发火。