Gurdjieff's Second Series of Writings read by Anthony Blake
Refugees in Alexandropol
"To furnish the material required for a new creation and to prove its soundness and good quality"
He announced it as in three books, but there are eleven chapters including the Introduction and the Material Question, or nine devoted to 'remarkable men'. There are named eleven remarkable men (including Vitvitskaia and Soloviev) or twelve if one includes the dog Philos.
My recording of Gurdjieff's Second Series of writings is far from perfect, done at different times under varying conditions, and some mistakes of pronunciation, tempo and phrasing remain even after the tracks have been assiduously edited by my son, David. Please do not expect a smooth listen. I did think of adding an 'errata' track for corrections of my mispronounciations of Russian and Polish words but was too lazy. It is worthwhile finding out the proper pronounciation, which is now easily possible through the web.
The ruined Armenian city of Ani, now in Turkey.
The recording is just under thirteen hours long, on a single (CD) disk in MP3 format. There are 14 tracks, as follows.
Introduction
My Father
My First Tutor
Bogachevsky
Mr X or Captain Pogossian
Abram Yelov
Prince Yuri Lubovedsky
Vitvitskaia
Soloviev
Death of Soloviev
Ekim Bey
Piotr Karpenko
Professor Skridlov
The Material Question
I have separated Chapter 7 Prince Yuri Lubovedsky into four parts, following the sub-headings that Gurdjieff used. In the same spirit I could have separated out the early part of the Soloviev section which deals with G's 'remarkable dog' Philos. The story of Philos is pretty much in the very middle of the book and is amusing to think this reflects G's saying 'bury the dog deeper'! In fact, Philos was the name of the dog G had with him at the Prieure as described by Fritz Peters in his Boyhood with Gurdjieff.
There is much of Gurdjieff's music that speaks of the regions in which he travelled and the people he met.
An example is The Song of the Aisors. Also notable is the series Journey to Inaccesible Places. It is recommended that you listen to some of this music before playing my recordings. There are now many recordings of the music easily available. Of particular relevance might be the piece For Professor Skridlov.
