The Anatomy of a Myth: a Biography
1 Gurdjieff The Secondary Literature: A Selective Bibliography J. Walter Driscoll On January 13, 1949, George Gurdjieff was in New York City and announced his decision to publish Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. This was a complete departure from the practice he had followed for almost four decades, of expounding his ideas orally and circulating his writings privately. He died on October 29 of that year, barely a week after receiving the publisher’s proofs for Beelzebub’s Tales. Biographers date his birth between 1866 and 1877 in Alexandropol, which is now Gyumri (Gumry), in the Republic of Georgia. Few historical facts about Gurdjieff’s life are certain until he was probably in his forties and emerged in Moscow about 1912. His father was Greek, his mother Armenian. He grew up in this war-torn frontier area of the Caucasus, which for millennia has seen a parade of conquerors; Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Turks, and latest the Russians. The Caucasus has long been a melting pot of cultures, religions and races from the East and West. Gurdjieff: the 2ndary Literature—Copyright ã2004 J. Walter Driscoll—www.Gurdjieff-Bibliography.com 2 In his autobiographical Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff describes how he was deeply influenced by his father’s fund of songs, poems and legends from ancient wisdom-traditions. Gurdjieff’s father preserved this oral tradition as an ashokh or storyteller and troubadour. Privately educated for both medicine and the Eastern Orthodox priesthood, but equally interested in science and technical specialisation, Gurdjieff found that neither conventional religion nor orthodox scientific knowledge answered his ‘irresistible urge’ to understand the meaning and purpose of life and satisfy his questions about the world, the human psyche, and death.
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