Bajoran literature has a long, rich history. One of the most interesting periods was what’s known as “The second age of memoirs.”
In the first province of Bajor about eight hundred years ago, there was an age of sudden prosperity. The popular style of art then was somewhat wild, full of overlapping forms and energetic zigzag lines. Memoirs were written in a controlled chaotic style, with scenes jumping from mind to mind and time to time, often with exaggeration of key events to better show their emotional resonance. This was known as the “first age of memoirs”.
Two hundred years later, memoirs had fallen out of style, but had a surge of popularity. The second age of memoirs was characterized by a split between the memoirs of rural and urban Bajorans. Rural Bajorans, particularly Vedeks in remote monasteries, valued the new most popular style of art. Calm geometric shapes, symmetry, and order have been the main characteristics of Bajoran art since that time. Rural memoirs followed clear patterns, focusing more on reflection than events. They included brief passages of poetry and prophecy as markers of the beginnings, middles, and ends of sections.
Urban memoir-writers tended to reject rural minimalism, going back to the first age style of memoirs, exaggerating the wildness and ferocity of the first age of memoirs. Although the urban style of the second age of memoirs can be quite crass, there are some gems, like the joint memoir of Jidi Koku and her sister, Imor. The Jidi sisters’ memoir’s title is “Invasion”; it was published 527 years ago and still is much discussed.
