Sunday, August 05, 2007

contemporary forms of beauty

Thunder Perfect Mind fragrance - Prada's first ever TV commercial

www.pradaparfums.com/woman/

via iBLOG

wiki facts:

The Thunder, Perfect Mind is a poem discovered among the Gnostic manuscripts at Nag Hammadi in 1945.

Anne McGuire writes: "Thunder, Perfect Mind exists only in the Coptic version found at Nag Hammadi (NHC VI,2:13,1-21,32). The author, date, and place of composition are unknown, but a cultural milieu like that of second- or third-century Alexandria is plausible. In any case, it is clear that the text was originally composed in Greek well before 350 C.E., the approximate date of the Coptic manuscript."

The original language of the poem was Greek, though only a Coptic version survives in the Nag Hammadi library; the manuscript resides in the Cairo Coptic museum.


Though the poem is a recent addition to our literature, it has already had an effect on contemporary culture. Excerpts from the poem were used by Toni Morrison as epigraphs to her novels, Jazz and Paradise. Umberto Eco includes a portion of it in the introduction to chapter 50 of Foucault's Pendulum; and Larry Lawson and Levi Lee use about a dozen lines in their play, Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening with the Illuminati).

A 2005 film by Jordan Scott (the daughter of Ridley Scott) depicts a woman moving through various urban scenes (such as a nightclub, the back of a taxi, and around Potsdamer Platz in Berlin), while a recitation from the poem is read in as a form of narrative commentary. A shortened version of the film was used in a Prada advertisement, to promote the launch of the fashion house's first perfume.

An April 17, 1998 episode titled "Anamnesis" from the second season of the Millennium (TV series) dealt with Mary Magdalene and quoted some of "Thunder Perfect Mind."

The poem has been used as inspiration for an album by the apocalyptic folk band Current 93 and industrial music band Nurse With Wound. Excerpts from the text are spoken in the song "I Am" by the band Tulku on the album A Universe to Come. The group NiƱo has a song "Dialogue of the Saviour" reciting Thunder Perfect Mind in a counterpoint dialogue with gnostic sayings of Jesus.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I am the bride and the bride-groom":))
Jos palaria!

Anda said...

"For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,
and the one who fashions you on the outside
is the one who shaped the inside of you."
greetz from Carnac! ;)