The Art of G. I. Gurdjieff: An Introduction and English-Language Bibliography, With Notes on his Music and Movements

A 2004 introduction and annotated English-language bibliography by J. Walter Driscoll, the compiler behind the Gurdjieff Bibliography project, surveying Gurdjieff's own writings alongside his music and Movements. It opens with the All and Everything series — Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Meetings with Remarkable Men, and Life is Real Only Then, When 'I Am' — quoting Gurdjieff's stated aim for each volume and explaining how the Anglicised name 'George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff' emerged by transliteration from the original Giorgios Giorgiades. A substantial portion is devoted to Beelzebub's Tales: its framing as an intergalactic voyage aboard the transspace ship Karnak on which Beelzebub instructs his grandson Hassein, its status as an early science-fiction narrative used as a vehicle for Gurdjieff's cosmology and psychology, and Gurdjieff's own advice that only on a third reading should the reader try to fathom its gist. Driscoll also documents the book's unusually convoluted composition and translation history — Gurdjieff's dictations to Olga de Hartmann beginning in December 1924, Thomas de Hartmann's interlinear rendering from the Russian, Bernard Metz's grammatical corrections, A. R. Orage's polishing into articulate English, and the later French and German editions under Jeanne de Salzmann and Louise March — drawing on memoirs by de Hartmann, March, and James Moore. Useful as a reference and orientation guide for anyone approaching the Gurdjieff literature.