• 600th(?) anniversary - "The Soul of the Great Bell"

    From Lenona@1:229/2 to All on Monday, November 23, 2020 09:35:15
    From: lenona321@yahoo.com

    Lafcadio Hearn famously retold the story of tragic filial piety in 1887 - or earlier. (It appears in his book Some Chinese Ghosts.)

    Trouble is, people seem to disagree on just when in the early 15th century the bell was made - never mind what time of year it was!

    https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.loa.org/images/pdf/Hearn_Great_Bell.pdf

    It's five pages long. Other versions say the girl's name is "Ko-Ai" - and from what I can see, "Ko-Ngai" is a Thai name, so maybe "Ko-Ai" WOULD make more sense.

    I first saw a tamed-down version of it in the children's international collection The Sunken City (it used the term "a maiden of pure heart"). Later, Margaret Hodges retold it as The Voice of the Great Bell, and the Chinese-born Caldecott Medalist Ed
    Young illustrated it.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)
  • From Lenona@1:229/2 to All on Monday, November 23, 2020 10:02:57
    From: lenona321@yahoo.com

    Hodges retold the story in 1989.

    More on Hearn's version:

    https://theartofculturalvivisection.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/the-soul-of-the-great-bell-by-lafcadio-hearn/

    Note the paragraph near the end, which includes the following:

    "For me, Hearn’s tale is a horror story. The original tale might not have been, but that detail of the..."

    And this, presumably, is a photo of the bell itself.

    http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2016/06/the-soul-of-great-bell.html


    Lenona.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)