Solomon’s Song of Songs

Concretism is not destructive. It’s somewhat childish even. It retains playfulness and interest. Regardless of the reaction individual poet-concretists’ works evoke in both conservatively and avant-garde inclined audiences, concrete poetry itself has secured a firm place as a laboratory for creative exploration, expanding and deepening our notions of visual reception of text. How word-cards structurally correspond to a non-verbal “territory” has recently interested philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, linguists, psychologists, biologists and cyberneticists. This issue has also begun to interest sociology. Source: Raul Meel. Poeesia ja kujutava kunsti vahel. Nähtavate luuletuste koolkond, konkretism. Noorus 1970.

Raul Meel

When I read books by others, I often find that what I finally consider important in the writer’s organised text is a simple sentence of a few words; and it does not matter whether I read diagonally, in haste, or carefully from cover to cover. Occasionally I am left not with a few words, but with a shadow of my eagerness to read. Another time I leaf through a book slowly, observing and trying to capture the different shapes of its openness, the images of the text pictures of its pages, the shapes of the letters of the alphabet printed on paper. Sometimes I can hear the sounds and words of the book in my imagination, or the live flow of the truly resounding text… 

Raul Meel

 

Solomon’s Song of Songs, one of the four books of the Holy Bible, is attributed to Solomon, King of Israel (ca. 965-926 BC), often referred to as “the wisest person”. The theme of this poem is love “before shame entered the world, before Adam and Eve,” as stated by Estonian cleric, essayist, translator Vello Salo. Raul Meel synthesised the text of Solomon’s Song of Songs, drawing from the NIV Bible and other translations. The introductory and explanatory texts were translated into English by Tiina Randviir and Richard Adang.

Meel’s book Solomon’s Song of Songs (2010, print-run 100) is part of Herzog August Bibliothek’s collection in Wolfenbüttel in Germany and has been recognised as one of the most original and beautiful books in the world.