April 14, 2012

Giving In

I have discovered what ereaders are good for: reading erotica in public.

Actually, they're good for a myriad of reasons. I am a reluctant gadget adopter as I tend to only buy them when I have no way out anymore or, obviously, if they seem useful - which is very rare. I still don't understand why people use a GPS when on road trip holidays. The best part is when you get lost! Or why would I like to connect to the internet anywhere so I can look up something quickly rather than wonder, speculate or try to recall - it's bad enough I don't know any phone number by heart anymore.

When ereaders first came out I scoffed at the possibility of having 10000 books at my fingertips. I still do. I wish there were 10000 books I want to read but there aren't. It's like having 300 TV channels. Useless. But I ended up getting an ereader because there were a number of books on gutenberg.org I wanted to read, books which weren't available at my library and that I had no wish to own. In fact, I want to get rid of most books I own as it is - all these boxes we have to schlep around whenever we move. And I just can't read these pdf's and whatnots on a laptop screen. I find myself not attached to the idea of books as objects unless they're gorgeously bound, have beautiful pictures or are signed. Nevertheless, I don't plan on buying any books for my kindle. It's exclusively dedicated to either out of print, extremely expensive antique editions or discardable out of copyright classics - I still love bookshops and have no wish to contribute to their disappearance.

At first it was Fernando Pessoa's fault. He was into crime novels and on his personal library there are all these old fashioned books by writers nobody reads anymore - and there it was, Austin Freeman's The Eye of Osiris at Gutenberg, looking at me and begging to be read. Then it was Eric Rohmer who loved Sax Rohmer's thrillers so much as a boy that he adopted his hero's name. I definitely didn't want a Fu-Manchu adventure sitting on my shelf but I just needed to read it. And then there are all these wonderful retro science books... Centuries year old, inaccurate when not just plainly wrong, non-fiction is the best social history document there is. I've been having a grand time reading psychiatric reports from turn of the century Portugal.

Other than trash literature and faulty science, I managed to get my hands on classics of spanish and french literature I always meant to read and which I would have to order from their native countries and would have to keep even after being disappointed by them.

And lots of John Ruskin. So I can disagree with every line the man writes but not have to see his name on the bookshelf.

Anyway, I'm an addicted semi-luddite and I have no shame.

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March 30, 2012

Useless but Addictive.

What do you do when you find the French state has massive portions of their public records online? You go find birth records of writers and artists, of course.

Marcel Proust. Or Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust. His father was the one who went to register Marcel: "Achille Proust, aged thirthy seven, aggregate at the University of Medicine, doctor of the Paris Hospitals, Knight of the Legion of Honor...". I'm pretty sure all they needed was his profession but it turned out that he had his CV on the tip of his tongue. The witnesses were his uncle Louis Weil and grandfather Nathe Weil.

Carlos Gardel, born in Toulouse as Charles Gardes which is probably why Uruguay still claims him as their own despite the evidence.

André Breton's is a mess. That's because the french add marriages to the record and they ran out of space.

Apollinaire's Death notice. "Type of Death: War wounds".

Utrillo's is a fun one as his paternity was only recognized when he was 8. So, they just crossed out his previous family name, Valadon.

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March 07, 2012

On consulting a bibliotherapist

I'm never without a book to read and, despite the periodical frustrations with fiction, I almost always have sucess at finding new authors. Especially through other authors - I just ordered a John Cowper Powys on the strength of a George Steiner recommendation, for instance. It may not work out but until it arrives I live in the anticipation of finding a new favorite. No shortage of ideas or choice, then. Yet, I signed up for Mr. B's Reading Year - I will be the recipient of 11 volumes chosen by Nic at the great Bath bookshop.

The reason why I signed up is twofold: I've never left Mr. B's without thinking to myself how marvelously knowledgeable the staff is over there and, mostly, because I am aware of how terribly prejudiced I am.

There are authors whose nationalities put me off - it's not xenophobia, I promise, just a conditioned reflex which is the fruit of a string of bad experiences fueled by a tendency for pessimistic forecasting. Yes, profiling it is. A pink cover will send me running. The book with too many national newspaper endorsements on its back cover will get scoffed at. Book club endorsements likewise. I end up avoiding any "feminine take" because I'm a woman and I don't really see how having a vagina fundamentally changes my metaphysics. In fact, there is an infinite array of other irrational prejudices for which I can't find even marginally defensible reasons. At least I'm aware of it, no?

Also, I love surprises. These surprises arrive by mail wrapped, sealed and with a little note explaining why my bibliotherapist thinks I might enjoy the book they're sending.

And I got for my first monthly installment... Ismail Kadare. Which is fabulous because I have an irrational prejudice against him and I didn't even mention my prejudices to Nic or my goal to exterminate them - that would be embarrassing in a way that exposing then on a blog post is not, for some unfathomable reason. In fact, I am very aware of having irrational prejudices in general against writers from behind the iron curtain.

I am so aware of this that I made an unnatural effort to read Solzhenitsyn, for example. I'm thinking Kundera was easier because I can read his politics as a backdrop to his more philosophically interesting plots. I think I end up liking the allegorical novel as long as it's not too partisan, too much against communism per se but against totalitarianism in general.

I gave it a little bit of thought and I can only imagine that communism has a different meaning to me which is a personal, emotional meaning with no political connotation. Communism was all pervasive in my childhood. It was the exact opposite reaction to the fascist dictatorship that had disappeared just before I was born. My childhood was one long succession of left wing rallies, red carnations and singing protest songs. One of my first memories is of queuing with my mother for her first opportunity to vote - she obviously voted for the communist candidate. The word communism was some abstract ideal that many people couldn't define but that naively sounded like just something everybody must want - a more equal and just society. The last thing on anybody's minds was stalinism, gulags or that what looked like the exact opposite of the right wing regime would inevitably go down the same path. And so these cautionary tales about the perils of communist totalitarianism always sounded to me as cynical remarks by people who love deflating everybody's balloons. It's not they are not correct. It's just that I refuse to connect "my" communism, my first years of life in an exhilarating time of hope of renewal, with those atrocities. A bit like how the Obama voters must feel when somebody points out to them on whose mandate a major terrorist was murdered without even the pretense of a trial.

In any case, The Palace of Dreams was an enjoyable read even if it felt like it was written by the product of a crossing between Salman Rushdie and Bohumil Hrabal - the Rushdiesque vaguely mystical fantasy with the inventiveness of the oppressed Hrabal. Paradoxically, I ended up finding the novel not daring enough in its subversiveness. It made me realize I'm glad I saved some Hrabal for a rainy day. This means I will definitely choose the Czech over the Albanian whenever I feel the need to smother my prejudice a little bit further. But before reading Kadare like a good schoolgirl on an assignment how could I have known?

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Almost makes me want to go to Milan.

Why am I not going to heaven? Certainly for very good moral reasons, but for much more practical reasons too: I've already been there. What is heaven? It is the Galleria in Milan. I'm sitting with a real cappuccino, in front of me is La Stampa, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Le Monde and the Times. I've got a ticket to La Scala in my pocket, and coming at me are the ten or twelve complex smells in that Galleria — of the chocolate, the bakery, the twenty bookstores (which are among the world's best bookstores); the sound of the steps of people moving towards the opera or the theaters that night; the way Milan vibrates around you. I've been to heaven, so I'm not getting a second one.

--George Steiner, Paris Review Interview

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January 17, 2012

Read, read, read

El Mármol by César Aira

Too wacky for me. The narrator, a retired left wing man with the usual hangups, finds himself in an adventure with a Chinese young man inside a Chinese shop with extra-terrestrial life and multiple dimensions thrown in. The most interesting part was the narrator's questioning of his left wing egalitarianism when he catches himself making racist comments. Which came right after I had remarked it to myself.

******

De la elegancia mientras se duerme by Vizconde de Lascano Tegui

This is the favorite of this recent batch. The self-styled Vizconde hobnobbed with the parisian bohemians in the 20's and it shows. It's a sort of diary/autobiography of a murderer but written like nobody could write it today - and even then a pedophilic bit had an addendum by the typographer protesting same. No fears, no compunctions. Death and sex. Savage and poetic at the same time. Here's an excerpt which doesn't add to the story other than establishing the narrator as outside society norms:

I saw the two white she-goats once more. One of them was looking at me. She has eyes like a young woman's. The afternoon was filled with silence and I felt a goat inside me who understood her. Goats are the animals closer to me and I couldn't help but return that gaze and start approaching the more comely of the two - whose pink udder is a woman's breast.

******

Selections from Delacroix's Journals

It's always comforting when great celebrities of the past sound so silly. Silliness is underrated.

******

The life of Berlioz by himself

After watching his opera (extremely) loosely based on Cellini's life , I read a short bio of the composer which promised to be as colorful as Benvenuto's own. And sure enough, Berlioz wrote autobiographical texts which are full of drama, exaggeration and exclamation marks.

******

Mis Dos Mundos by Sergio Chefjec

Chefjec follows the tradition of the philosophical rambling while going on a walk - I see it more as an essay than fiction - which is always such a pleasurable read if you are so inclined yourself. In this case you spend half of the book wondering where it's going and the other half where it's gone. And then you need to reread it because it's short and you can't believe how short it was despite seemingly containing details and descriptions numerous and ample enough to fill a large tome. It's the literary equivalent of fibre in your stomach: a book that expands inside your mind. And then you want to reread it again because there are bits here and there that seem to be paraphrasing other authors - Cortázar, Borges? - but you can't really narrow it down because it's all done so seamlessly. I enjoyed it greatly and the only fault I can find is that I am left wondering why does Chefjec believe he has only two worlds. I don't think he's thinking it through.

******

Au nord par une montagne. Au sud par un lac. À l’ouest par des chemins. À l’est par un cours d’eau by László Krasznahorkai

It's rather surprising how some authors are able to change their whole general theme - not just the setting for the stories but also their concerns (which they disguise as literature). Most write the same book time and time again with slight variations (Philip Roth or Paul Auster come to mind). This was my first Krasznahorkai but it seems almost impossible to relate this novel to the others that have been translated into English from what I gather from synopses and reviews. This one feels like a long new agey oriental style meditation aid - the visualize a beautiful pagoda type - and I'll readily admit that this judgment is substantially based on a very personal and profound prejudice which prevents me from taking seriously any western take on buddhism. Not that I didn't have pleasure reading it - I even dreamt of Japanese monks one night - but I'm surprised it's not being recommended in yoga classes.

******

Earthly Visions: Theology and the Challenges of Art by T.J. Gorringe

I don't understand it. It's probably my fault but it seems there is hardly any challenge in seeing God in secular paintings if you are so disposed. The joy of creation, the abundance of God's offerings, Jesus as the image of God creating the precedent for further representations of God's world, the supposed spirituality of abstract painting can be easily channeled into religion-like ecstasy, etc. Didn't finish it.

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January 11, 2012

Trimming Delacroix's 1849 Journal

Saturday, 18 January

I have been reading about an English judge who desired to live to a great age and accordingly proceeded to question every old man he met about his diet and kind of life he led. It appears that the only thing they had in common was early rising and, above all, not dozing off once they were awake. Most important

Tuesday, 27 January

This morning I received a letter announcing the death of Gericault.

Tuesday morning, 2 February

Got up about seven o'clock. I ought to do this more often.

Wednesday, 3 March

It takes a pitchfork to rouse me; I drop off to sleep when there is nothing to stimulate me.

Thursday, 4 March

Fedel came to see me at the studio and we dined together.

Sunday, 7 March

Fielding and Soulier came to the studio.

Tuesday, 16 March

Dined at Tautin's with Soulier and Fielding.

Friday, 19 March

Looked at the Goyas in my studio with Edouard. Then we saw Piron. Met Fedel. We all dined together.

Thursday, 25 March

Went to Saint-Cloud with Fielding and Soulier, and dined there. Evening at Pierret's - punch.

Saturday, 27 March

Pierret came in. Dined with him.

Sunday, 4 April

Everything tells me I need to live a more solitary life.

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January 10, 2012

On Literary Prizes

"Isn't it a necessary condition that the books which change the course of literature are, precisely, illegible at the time? Even more probable is that literary prizes have the peculiarity of not addressing the new but the contemporary, which is precisely its opposite."

--Anibal Jarkowski, in Clarín (2/1/12) on the 70th anniversary of the first edition of Borges's The Garden of Forking Paths which did not win the National Book Prize because it was "an arbitrary brain exercise" among other great things.

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January 08, 2012

Sharing

My nocturnal procedure is emerging from the search for a harmony between the barbarian and barely legible reality and its antagonist, more readable, but also more artificial for it reads the world as if everything has an explanation.

My procedure is capable of creating precursor methods. Borges’s method could be, with Gombrowicz’s, one of the closest forerunners. I recall that in Ricardo Piglia’s Crítica y ficción, he refers to Borges and talks about his theory of lineages and comments how this writer, by building the genealogy of his own oeuvre, put into practice a reading tactic that harmonized two antagonistic and very distinct Argentinian literary styles (he joined José Hernandéz and his gaucho poetry with Sarmiento) to establish the two strains on which he founded his original poetics, his innovative procedure.

Piglia concentrates on the famous story “Borges and I” and says that it is a paradigmatic piece because it is a sort of microscopic version of the great tradition of the autobiography of the artist, “with a fantastic turn, a sort of literary Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. For Piglia, Borges’s theory of lineages (Borges himself would be the point at which those lineages cross) created an extreme tension around the old dicotomy of Argentinian literature which, by having it as a given that the two writing traditions were radically opposed, made it mandatory to swear allegiance either to Hernández or Sarmiento.

Borges took a shortcut and vampirized the two, he converted himself into the two of them at the same time. Maybe he took his theory of lineages to extremes because he understood that if he opted only for one of the theories he wouldn’t attain the complexity he wished for his work. Borges, we are told by Piglia, is a populist like Hernández who believes that experience is more imporant than books but also, at the same time, somebody who lives behind the closed doors of a library and who thinks that the world is constituted solely by culture and reading: “The remarkable is that, of course, he does not solve the contradiction but instead maintains the two elements alive and present. And for that he had to invent a form, a procedure, a type of fiction which allows him to sustain the tension.”

- Vila-Matas, Chet Baker piensa en su arte (Ficción Crítica). I'm to blame for the translation but that's what VM's publishers get for not going much further than France.

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January 03, 2012

Moving continents. Readings-wise.

We welcomed 2012 in Madrid. It was a perfect weekend. We are no strangers to the city and there was nothing to do but to walk aimlessly taking in the architecture and to stop randomly for vermouth here, sherry and cheese there and tapas everywhere. Museums were closed solving the problem of checking-out-all-special-exhibitions induced anxiety. On Monday the Prado graciously opened for the Hermitage exhibition - showing the most horrible Matisse I have ever seen, among other things. The mandatory hour inside La Central bookshop at the Reina Sofia - the most cosmopolitan and artistic of bookshops - yielded a nice harvest of future readings.

I had been reading English fiction to keep up with the local zeitgeist and then I realized I don't give a flying fuck about the local zeitgeist. Pardon me for the expletive but it's still milder than the sentiment. Last year I got sucked into reading the Hare with Amber Eyes - I hated it with a passion - so I should have known better than attempt to read any books recommended on best of 2011 lists. Well, stupidly, a couple of recommendations on the TLS got me to Philip Hensher's The King of the Badgers*. That intellectual disaster coupled with Enrique Vila Matas erudite "critical fiction" in "Chet Baker piensa en su arte" made me realize I am wasting my time with anglo fiction. Too much storytelling, not enough introspection. Too much creative writing techniques that aren't even that creative. In short, not enough Art. Not enough Beauty. Not enough Philosophy.

Vila Matas talks about trying to find a path for the novel which sits somewhere between Joyce's Fineggan's Wake, the beautiful and daring unreadable, and Simenon's Hire, quality writing that follows conventions. So, literature that is both artistic and readable. He spends pages and pages commenting on Sergio Chefjec's "Dos Mundos" as an attempt to achieve just that. I had never heard of Chefjec and, somehow, reading reviews and biographies I ended up with Aira and Saer on my to-read list. Quevedo was overdue, recommended by Borges. I can read all these in their original language. What was I thinking wasting my time with badgers?

I was going to inaugurate the Argentinian season with Aira but R snatched it. He says Aira writes like Murakami. I guess he means well written, bordering the surreal trash.

(next stop: old french authors I somehow missed - in french!)

(problem: I love german literature and always stop myself from reading it by conjuring up the fantasy that, some day, my german will be good enough to read in the original. High time to do something about that?...)

*****

*I'm hoping it's an ironic novel. It's a portrait of contemporary England taken from the Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror. It's a long succession of tabloid stereotypes: constant fear of crime, pedophiles who are random strangers and kidnap your kids and keep them in basements, council housing people being involved in fraud, brown skinned people selling drugs, gay couples having sex and drugs orgies despite the "normalcy" of being able to get married, dishonest italians, hot gay brazilians, english housewives being pimped by their husbands for free sex, people living above their means and blaming the bankers for not being able to pay mortgages, rude teenagers, american academics on holidays disguised as research projects. The drugs of choice, the slang, the preoccupations are so of today and of such a tiny geographic importance that the novel will be dated quickly. Like the tabloids.

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December 13, 2011

Readin' and watchin'

Handwritten volume 1 of Jane Austen's works at the Bodleian.

Death comes to Pemberley by PD James. So much fun. I read (or re-read) all of Jane Austen's in the past year and was hoping for that headline, you know, the same one I hope to hear about Shakespeare someday: "Treasure trove of author's manuscripts found in grandma's attic." It starts out almost pitch perfect and then loses the Austenite turn of phrase midway, time by which it doesn't matter anymore because you're in the middle of the whodunnit.

The folding star, Alan Hollinghurst. I'm on a Hollinghurst binge. This one's a uninhibited Death in Venice except it takes place in Belgium and there's no death. With the standard Hollinghurst fictional biography of an older gay man thrown in.

Allegory and the Migration of Symbols, Rudolf Wittkower. Essays. Iconography is always entertaining. Didn't know about Carracci's divinarelli pittorici (visual riddles):

(a builder behind a wall showing top of head and trowel, a capuchin monk in his pulpit bending down to take a breath in the middle of his sermon, a knight jousting with his lance behind a wall, a blind man begging right around a corner with his alms box and stick showing.)*

The Bayeux Tapestry by Carola Hicks. I wanted a long description of the tapestry and a short history of it but this book is the precise opposite. Learned there is a 1885 replica of the tapestry in the Reading museum which is only a 1 hour train ride away. That will save me a bit of time.

(I've been meaning to keep a cinema diary but I always forget about it)

The Cave of Dreams, Werner Herzog. Where can I get a print of those beautiful 30'000 year old paintings of lions? I'm not sure I care much about having this movie shot by Herzog - it gives it a quirky feel but that's all. Given the quality of the subject matter, I'd be amazed by any cheapie discovery channel doc about the Chauvet caves.

George Harrison Living in the Material World by Scorsese. Rather odd. George Harrison is not the stuff of legend but then I realized his wife was the producer. Put off by all the new agey superficiality. Surprised - that's unfair but, you know, sports celebrities and all that - by Jackie Stewart's insights. Terry Gilliam looking very non star struck and the only one to point out the irony of calling Harrison an anti-materialist when on his dying days he was buying a house in Switzerland to avoid taxes. I resent having the editing done as if the subject matter is so well known that you need not to give the viewer any other information about the clips they're watching (also, I entertain this hope that in a hundred year's time no one will know who the Beatles were but Yoko Ono will be hailed as a great conceptual artist.)

Filme Socialisme, Godard. I have no idea what was that about. Maybe a long piece of video art. Best line I've heard in a while (maybe it's a quote like most dialogue in the film is) was when the little kid who is painting something we can't see replies to the lady asking him what is he doing: "I'm welcoming a bygone landscape". Than it turns out he's painting a Renoir.

*image and description stolen from:
Annibale Carracci and Invenzione: Medium and Function in the Early Drawings
Clare Robertson
Master Drawings , Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 3-42
Published by: Master Drawings Association
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1554287)

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November 30, 2011

Readings

Max J Friedlander, On Art and Connoisseurship. The Netherlandish art equivalent of Berenson. Adviser to Goering. Wondering if Goering did really have any taste or artistic sensibility or was this guy doing the curating for him? There is a book out about Goering's collection but, at the price of 250 dollars, I don't think I care enough.

Letters of Paul Cézanne. The man couldn't write but he could paint.

Orthodoxy by Chesterton. Amusing to watch him bend over backwards to find logical arguments for his non-rational choices. I love Chesterton even when I disagree with him. Actually, the first chapter has one of the best descriptions of psychosis I have ever read. I wonder if he was a good dinner guest or if his apparent verbal fluidity and wit was reserved for the written page.

The Stranger's Child, Alan Hollinghurst. That was extremely enjoyable. Clever structure. After reading the Swimming Pool Library and finding out I enjoy gay erotica mixed in with well written prose and a taste of social history, I went for the most recent novel. I like how his main thesis seems to be that, once you reread a person's biography knowing they were gay, everything suddenly makes sense.

The Girl with a Green Gown, Carola Hicks. Despite the cheesy title and reminiscence of other art inspired fluff, this is an enjoyable non-fiction read even if not academic enough for my taste. I now know more about the Arnolfini portrait that I ever wanted to and wonder why the Spanish government doesn't reclaim it back as it was plundered from the royal collection. I suppose having the Brits liberate them from the claws of Napoleon would make the claim look ungrateful.

The Swerve, How the Renaissance began, Stephen Greenblatt. I'm not sure he makes a good point - Lucretius de Rerum Natura being a sort of enlightened book which would have saved humanity from the dark ages had it not been relegated to oblivion or how Christians tried to suppress Epicureanism with catastrophic effects for human progress - but it was immensely entertaining. Other than one ranting chapter where he goes on and on about the role of self-flagellation as diametrically opposed to pleasure (a bit naively if you ask me), the whole book tells a wonderful tale of libraries, copyists, popes and humanists.

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October 14, 2011

The readings

Gore Vidal's Palimpsest which should be renamed "Why I am superior to Jack Kennedy". Learned everyone lies except Vidal.

Pytheas the Greek by Barry Cunliffe is highly entertaining. Pytheas circumnavigated Britain 2300 years ago and his book about the adventure is lost but several authors quote him. Cunliffe uses this lost book to imagine - more than imagine since he is an archaeologist and specialist in Atlantic people's pre-history - what Pytheas might have seen in his voyage.

Julian Barnes' A sense of an ending. I loved it. If Rohmer was mildly British (and ignoring the fact that he didn't care a fig about people over 30) he could have written this.

Joe Orton's diaries. I have an affection for Orton. Even when he goes on his neocolonialist sex vacations and despite women bashing diatribes. Go figure. What puzzles me is why anybody has doubts about why Kenneth murdered him after reading that diary.

Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. It was overdue. I think I should have read it in college but my university was Keynes leaning (when not right-down marxist). I could have lived with the wikipedia summary only.

Games for Actors and Non-Actors by Augusto Boal. I picked this up because I chatted with a theatre director at a Brecht conference and she had told me the work she was doing with Boal's techniques in a shelter for battered women. Now I'm realizing I played most of theses "games" in theatrical expression classes I attended in my childhood. Boal worked as a madeleine. I hadn't thought about these classes in ages.

The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh. So sad.

A field guide to melancholy. Theoretical justification for my "overmedication of sadness" and "tyranny of happiness" and "prozac is killing artistic genius" rants. Cf. Van Gogh.

Suetonius Lives of the Caesars. Long overdue. It's mostly gossip and hopefully projections of sexual fantasies by commoners onto their leaders. I really didn't need to know Tiberius had blow jobs performed by babies who were still breastfeeding. Because now that's all I remember about him. Still, fun read. Why was Julius Caesar worried about pulling down his toga to preserve his modesty while suffering knife blows? So, Caligula was schizophrenic and they took 3 years to realize he wasn't fit to be an emperor? I have the feeling Claudius was a misunderstood genius with a wicked sense of humor. Could Nero really sing? At all? Augustus shaved his legs. The problem is I have the memory of a Parisian concierge in charge of a building inhabited by adulterers. Only the sordid details remain in my brain.

Teju Cole's Open City. It's beautifully written but I'm underwhelmed. I'm having a hard time reading fiction when I feel my real life is painfully calling for deep philosophical analysis and, in a very selfish way, imaginary angst looks trite by comparison. Or as the cliche goes, facts are stranger than fiction. I enjoyed Barnes though. Maybe it's just a more youthful writing that isn't striking a chord or maybe Cole is too much of my generation to show me anything I don't know already.

Szymborska's Collected Poems. Every five years or so I remember her and pick up one of her books.

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September 27, 2011

Whoever you are, prisoner in Gloucestershire: good luck.

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August 10, 2011

Gastronomica

I have only so long to live - so many books to read, so many ironies to contemplate, so many meals to eat.

Nero Wolfe says in Rex Stout's "Too many cooks"

****

Artusi prematurely died at the age of 91 due to an overdose of good food. There is no great cuisine (or health) where there is room for margarine, seed, palm, or coconut oil, processed fats and "light" cheeses, or other disgusting abominations. This is sensorial squalor... It occurs when butter (a great deity among foods), lard, rendered pig cheek, and rendered lard (why not?) are ostracized. You cannot live to be almost one hundred if you allow yourself to be ground up by nutritional whims, by fears of lipids and cholesterol. These are diseases of the soul.

Emanuela Djalma Vitali quoted in the introduction to Pellegrino Artusi's La Sciencia in Cucina

****

Our sensibility is a single entity. Who cultivates it, cultivates the whole of it, and I insist that he is a false artist who is not also a gourmet, and a false gourmet who can see no beauty in a color and no emotion in a sound. Art is the understanding of beauty throug the senses, through all the senses, and in order to understand the dream of a Vinci, or the inner life of Bach, one must, I repeat, be capable of adoring the scented and fugitive soul of a passionate wine.

Dodin-Bouffard claims in Marcel Rouff's The Passionate Epicure
*****

The eclectic readings of the past weeks have included a lot of food related books.

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July 29, 2011

The funny bits

(The emblem of Jersey is the toad and that of Guernsey is the donkey. Jèrriais - the Jersey dialect - is strangely reminiscent of Queneau's Zazie dans le métro colloquial language.)

Dgèrnésiais au Jèrriais:
J'crai qu'j'éthons d'la plyie,
car j'vai qu'les crapauds sont sortis!

Jèrriais au Dgèrnésiais.
J'n'ai pas d'peine à l'craithe,
car j'entends les ânes braithe!

Guernsey man to Jersey man: "I believe we'll have rain for I see the toads are out!" to which the latter replies "I have no trouble believing it for I hear the donkeys braying!"

(in the TLS)

*****

After the Resurrection, Christ can be shown going to Emmaus, appearing to his disciples, and sitting with them at supper.(...) But the bread, which was divided by Christ's divine hand, should not be shown cut into equal parts, as if sliced in half by some sort of razor, for this seems to endorse the absurd view that the Savior was recognized because of his miraculous ability to bisect bread perfectly.

Frederico Borromeo in Sacred Painting, 1624

Marco Marciale, Supper at Emmaus, 1506

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July 28, 2011

Mr. B's Emporium of Reading Delights

Among many other delightful things, Bath has one of the best bookshops I have ever set my feet in. I am a cynical, jaded creature who disdains prizes and accolades - bookshops who win prizes around here seem to be all about author events or book clubs and I couldn't care less about hearing authors speak or what my neighbors think about some provincial prize winning fluff novel. Grumpy anti-social reader, yes, that's me. Reading the Bookshop's website in advance, I was put off by Mr. B's "reading spa" and thought their seemingly "squash the competition by coming up with novel services" strategy was the only way to cover up the fact that they were selling the same books as W.H. Smith. Even I am amazed at how malevolently prejudiced I am.

Then I entered the bookshop, grudgingly, saw the fantastically curated selection of books on display and had to let my pride stay in the way of my enjoyment of finer things in life for some moments more by trying to find an objectionable title on the shelves while muttering "Bah, humbug!". Finally swallowed it when I saw the stair case wall covered in Tintin album pages. They even have books in spanish and french. Not many, but they're there. That's unheard of. Also, the green armchair did me in. Can't resist cozy and good books.

Now I'm even considering signing up for Mr B's Year of Reading Delights which I previously considered the work of the illiterate devil. It's a miracle conversion and didn't even take any proselytizing. I just saw the light on my own. Mr. B's Year of Reading Delights will get me 11 books - 1 a month - picked by the staff according to a questionnaire I need to fill in. I'd sooner let Bernard Madoff run my finances than have anybody pick books for me. This is to show how confident I am that Mr. B will introduce me to wonders my sickly snobbish soul would certainly overlook.

*****

We came out of Mr B's carrying Christopher Lloyd's "In Search of a Masterpiece - An Art Lover's Guide to Great Britain & Ireland". It's a wonderful book and a very personal one. It doesn't feature the most famous works in each museum but rather the author's personal preferences with short essays describing the reasons for his choices and a background of the artist. I can't say I share the author's taste but it is a great introduction to a lot of (mostly) British painters I have never heard of and whose merits are expertly expounded.

It got me thinking about which works would I pick if I had to write a similar guide. I was trying to remember which paintings did I really enjoy at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, for instance. Despite the collection of Monets, there were a few Welsh and English painters unknown to me who managed to find a drawer to file themselves away in my memory of beautiful things. The Monets get filed in the important-things-that-everyone-expects-me-to-know-about section.

John Armstrong, A Farm in Wales, NMW

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June 06, 2011

Lately...

These northern latitudes and their 9pm sunsets have been reminding me of Virginia Woolf. I read the last two volumes of her diaries recently and it was both sad and exasperating to realize how bitter and joyless the woman was. Very few things seem to have given her pleasure, emotional pleasure that is - plenty of relatively appreciative literary judgement in there. And yet, despite the gloom and the apparent burdensome chore life was to her, there were times when she seemed genuinely enthralled: when she had walked in Hyde Park and had seen the sunset, violets and reds and golden clouds bewitching her. Sunsets have become such clichés. I blame the 1970's poster design aesthetics and the tiki revival.

*****

In love with Primo Levi's short stories. And with the Penguin mini modern classics which are the literary equivalent of bitesize delights; amuse-bouches in print.

*****

For the past year I have been reading Jane Austen on and off, finally finishing the last of the six novels last month. Now I am mourning the loss of an anxiety free, witty - at times hilarious - companion.

*****

Intrigued by the Sufragettes and their acts of terrorism against works of art. Torn between admiring the sparing of human lives while still using violence - I'm afraid I'm with Sartre on this one - and having chills down my spine when contemplating the possibility of a knife through a Piero della Francesca. But in the end, like the "terrorist" said, it's just a picture.

Attacks on Works of Art in 1914 as reported by the Times in June:

March 11 – National Gallery, ‘Rokeby’ Velasquez damaged.

March 16 – Birmingham Cathedral, Burne-Jones window defaced

April 10 – British Museum: Porcelain exhibits smashed

May 5 – Royal Academy: Mr. Sargent’s portray of Mr. Henry James damaged

May 13 – Royal Academy: Sir Hubert von Herkomer’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington damaged

May 18 – Royal Academy: Mr. Calusen’s ‘Primavera’ damaged

May 23 – National Gallery: Five Italian pictures damaged

May 25 – Royal Scottish Academy: Mr. Lavery’s portray of the King mutilated

May – 25 British Museum – Attack on an exhibit

Rokeby Venus, symbolically murdered.

*****

There's a short story in here somewhere:

"St Albans clock tower reopens- It is thought the clock tower was built as a result of tension between the people of the town and those at the nearby abbey. Councillor Sheila Burton, portfolio holder for culture and heritage at St Albans District Council, said: The consensus of opinion is that the merchants of the town got together [to build it because] they were fed up of being ruled by the abbey. They [people at the abbey] controlled the clock and rumour goes that they would stick another 10 minutes or half an hour on the time, just so that the people working in the fields worked a bit longer if it was a nice evening. So it was put up in defiance of the abbey really."

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May 17, 2011

Ephemera II

(Well, not really ephemera but an inscription inside a book which prodded me into doing a bit of bookish sleuthing on the other side of the world.)

On my quest for the odd and the bizarre and while looking for some historical literary figures in San Diego I ran across Jesse Shepard. Or Francis Grierson as he was later called. Shepard was an all around fraud but in a good way. In the fashioning-a-life-aesthetics-philosophy-and-living-by-it kind of way. He was born in England in the mid 1800's but grew up in the USA; started off his minor celebrity days as a musical wonder touring the european courts and playing for the crowned heads of Europe, claiming to be untrained and only able to play guided by spirits from deceased composers; convinced some gullible locals into building him a gorgeously oddball gothic villa in San Diego - the Villa Montezuma which can be visited once refurbishment works end - where he lived with his life partner Lawrence Tonner and held séances; moved to England and changed names to start off his writing career; lived in Richmond while writing books and articles for magazines; ended up and died in penury in Los Angeles. He was a typical neo-romantic, new age pioneer of the beginning of the 20th century, offering up mysticism as the alternative to the "materialism" of the world.

In any case, at one point he was considered one of the most important writers of the century - mostly by fellow spiritualists - and he did write a book about Lincoln and his childhood memories of one of his speeches which is a (very) minor classic of americana. There was once a time when his name would be mentioned in the same sentence as Strindberg, Edith Wharton and, um, George Gissing. And then he went into the oblivion due to second rate, celebrities of the moment.

He went to Vermont to meet Blavatsky and even she thought he was a fraud. That's how bad he was.

The Richmond apartment house where Grierson later lived and wrote while Tonner worked as a tailor.

I was planning on making my brother in law drive me to the Villa (it's ok, he doesn't read the blog so he can't see how calculating I am) on our next trip to San Diego and so the name Jesse Shepard kept running in the background in my brain. Next thing I know, I was buying a book in french signed by Jesse Shepard from a Madrid bookseller.

The inscription reads: "To Doña Patrocínio de Biedma, etc, etc, Paris, July, 1889).

After a bit of investigation I found out that Shepard did publish his first book "Pensées et Essais" in Paris and in French. Supposedly, Grierson had good friends in the parisian literary salons, hobnobbed with Dumas and Maeterlinck called him his twin spirit.

The dedicatee of the book turned out, surprisingly, to have been a minor celebrity in her own right. Doña Patrocínio de Biedma was a spanish writer and journalist, a defender of women and of peace.

I was mystified by how improbable it was that these two people ever met (I got HP Simonson's biography of Grierson and apparently he never travelled to Spain; Biedma seems to not have been the travelling type). My first guess at how these two people were connected was the Princess Rattazzi, a third minor character - a sort of fake noble, journalist and intellectual - who was portrayed in one of Grierson's essays about parisian celebrities but who was also a friend of Biedma, the two ladies having founded a literary magazine in Cádiz together.

Through HP Simonson's biography I found out there was an unpublished autobiography of Grierson which is now housed at the San Diego History Society Archive. So, I did what every biblionerd would do and contacted them to see if I could read it on my next visit to California in hope of finding the connection between my two minor celebrities. The librarian at the archives was extremely helpful and once I was there showed me one of the files that contained the manuscript. I didn't learn anything amazing about the man - the text was a muddled affair consisting of random excerpts from his old essays; the only well written, thoughtful sounding bits were the ones written by his partner Tonner. I think I can safely guess who the brain of the duo was.

I turned then my attention to the file with his correspondence from Europe. After a brief shock (and momentarily burning cheeks since literary fetishism is hard to control) when I deciphered the handwriting and realized I was holding a letter signed by Arthur Conan Doyle - a mere postcard thanking Grierson for who knows what spiritism piece of information - I finally found what I was looking for. There it was: a letter from Biedma thanking Grierson for his book Pensées et Essais which had been brought to her by Prince Wisniewski. The letter was written in Spanish, dated from July 27th 1889 and also asked for the permission to translate some of the essays to Spanish to be published in a magazine. Hooray!

Double hooray when I searched the wonderful Hemeroteca Digital at the Spanish National Library and found this (the newspaper is La Correspondencia de España, July 30th 1889 edition):

It says that the russian (!) writer Jesse Shepard has dedicated his book Pensée et Essais to Biedma and that Prince Wisnievski, his fellow countryman (!), (an admirer of the glories of Spain, sent a letter saying that Shepard and Biedma had coinciding thoughts. Then they quote from the letter where the most cliche metaphors are used (you know... stars orbiting, fertile fields, immortal flame, etc.).

On August 21st of the same year, "El Correo Militar" publishes this:

One of the essays from Shepard's book (the one about a visit to the czar of Russia which sounds totally fabricated) translated by Biedma!

It would be so exciting to think I'm holding the book from which she made this translation if the people involved were not extremely minor characters in the history of literature. Nonetheless, lesser intellectuals have their charm, don't they? And the sleuthing was rather entertaining.

(remaining mystery which I don't care enough about to pursue: who the heck was Prince Wisniewzki?)

(also, there was another letter from Biedma but dated from 1909 asking Shepard to write something on a postcard to be auctioned off for charity. I suppose he was well known then if she was expecting to make money out of it.)

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March 31, 2011

Lurking: Ephemera 1

London used book fairs are dominated by gentlemen in tweed suits who flip over the first pages of the book they're handling, check for the edition number and, not being a first, put it back where it was. The latest charity book fair I went to added a family of iphone powered abebook price searchers to the usual treasure hunting troupe. They just sat in one corner with a pile of books and punched ISBN's into their phones.

It's always odd to feel that I'm the only one there looking for books to read. This last time, not only did I find some good reads for a pound each, I had also the satisfaction of picking up a tattered book without a spine - attracted by the marbled paper covers and beautiful, worn out binding- which nobody had looked twice at and finding inside it a letter with a BBC Scotland header, dated of 1931 and addressed to Catherine Carswell. The book itself, an 1858 edition of a comparison of a french poem to John Bunyan's The Pilgrim Progress, falling apart, worthless, is inscribed "Catherine Carswell from Daniel, 1938".

Catherine Carswell was a scottish writer and journalist infamous for writing in 1930 an uncanonical biography of Robert Burns for which she even got death threats. She was also the first woman to get a divorce on grounds of (her husband's) insanity. She was one of the few women who were part of the Scottish Literary Renaissance and "She was rebellious, determined, intellectual, and no stranger to conflict." as a recent biography announces.

On the other side of the letter, there are scribbles in black ink which I can only decypher as being themes and off the beaten path stories related to Scotland. I'm assuming these constituted her notes for the "ideas for a series of shows" which the letter requested of her. Another blank piece of stationery inside the book has a London address. On the other side of the sheet there is a childish pencil drawing that I like to imagine was either a memento of her daughter who died at 12 of pneumonia or by her son and editor John.

I payed a pound for it and came home with my own (most likely not very financially valuable) treasure. Everybody knows treasures can only be found when you're not looking for them.

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March 21, 2011

Kertesz

Q: You’ve said that it’s easier to write literature in a dictatorship than in a democracy.

A: That was too sweeping a statement, but there’s a truth to it. Because I didn’t write what the communist government wanted to see, I was cut off and alone with my work. I never thought my book would ever be published, and so I had the freedom to write as radically as I wanted, to go as deep inside as I wanted. In a democracy you have to find a market niche, make sure a novel is “interesting” and “spectacular.” That may be the toughest censorship of all.

(interview with Imre Kertesz, stolen from the Second Pass)

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January 10, 2011

Mary Beard's Parthenon

Finished reading Beard's Parthenon and decided to go inspect and share some of the details she points out as being relevant to the discussion of the unauthorized Duveen cleanings in the 1930's (he was the maecenas behind the building of the Parthenon galleries; he wanted the friezes to be squeaky clean and therefore didn't bother to ask permission to the BM) which, according to some, did irreparable damage by destroying archaeological data. It turns out the patina he had had chiseled off is actually a vestige of the ancient greek's base for the application of paint or a treatment to reduce the natural glare of the marble.

As Beard says, on the left side room that precedes the galleries, a few broken pieces from the pediment have the orange-brown (honey or golden as others put it) coating/patina much discussed in the book.

*****

Having seen that, it's easier to spot it on the friezes as in this case (East Frieze).

Compare to this piece of the west frieze which has been cleaned:

*****

I always wondered what these seemingly cement drippings on the surface of the marble were and Beards explains them as being the ridges of harder stone that stand out as the softer stone erodes (Metope XXVII)

*****

The trace of original paint (also known affectionately as "the brush stroke of Phideas") was easy to spot: it's on the statue on the left, underneath the rectangular cutting: a sort of horizontal brush stroke turned black by weather and time.

*****

The "tide-mark" on the thigh of pediment figure G took me a while to figure out but finally got it. Manipulating the photo for exposure and contrast makes it easier to see where the cleaning process was halted. Above is dirty, below is clean.

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January 06, 2011

Voluminous

"Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a less degrading idea of meanness, than when they are found in the intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of courage; in the other, only a defect of power: and, as it is impossible for the most able statesmen to subdue millions of followers and enemies by their own personal strength, the world, under the name of policy, seems to have granted them a very liberal indulgence of craft and dissimulation."
--Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

I am enthralled. I started by picking up an (abridged) copy of Gibbon's monumental work at the bookshop wondering if it was readable and found that I couldn't put it down. Ended up getting the first two (unabridged) volumes edited by David Womersley for Oxford. Riveting. And so many themes to follow up on thanks to the fantastic footnotes.

(meanwhile, R is reading Les Misérables so I think we're out of the book market for a few months as there's a biography of Thomas Hardy and the complete collected fiction of Borges waiting on the sidelines)

*****

Looking back at 2010, I am amazed by how much we saw in Florence and environs with my parents. I'm looking back fondly at our visit at Bernard Berenson's Villa I Tatti which was such a special treat. And visiting cell after cell at San Marco finding Fra Angelico frescoes felt like opening a box of candy, unwrapping sweet after sweet. But R and I agreed that the surprise of the year was the Savoy and the magical Annecy lake. We had the most amazing lunch at Bernard Gay's restaurant, completely empty save for the pair of us. The table we sat at overlooked a snowy peak and the hours we spent being fed flavorful dishes while gazing at the swift movement of the clouds over the mountains must have been the 3 most relaxing hours of 2010.

******

Christmas by the sea in Ericeira, sleeping with the window open to listen to the waves crashing was pretty much zen-like too.

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December 08, 2010

McCarthyism, The Theatre, The Messiah

I suppose the best description for Tom McCarthy's novel "C" would be that of a retro futurist novel. Not neofuturist as that would imply a similar aesthetics regarding contemporary technology but retro in the sense of being imbibed by nostalgia for a future which is now in the past, a past future that the author didn't experience and therefore romanticizes. Which has its dangers. If you read C without realizing it is the literary embodiment of the Necronautical society's Declaration on the Future (which would deserve a post in itself since I couldn't disagree more with it and yet I love the darned shameless french theoretician name dropping piece of drivel) it ends up being either

an historical novel if you consider that it's a recreation of an era that the author researched and describes to such a degree that real people are mentioned (the egyptian antiquities officer Lacau comes to mind) and even real places whose historical accuracy is of no consequence figure in it (there was indeed a dairy shop on Rugby street which is now a jewelery store - it's supposed to have been the building where Serge lived),

an anachronistic attempt at writing a late 19th century/early 20th century novel complete with country doctors in carriages, sojourns in eastern european spas (inexplicably the spa town doesn't seem to exist in reality or was it supposed to be Podebrady?) and adventures in exploration of exotic lands (I object to the comparison with bildungsromans as there is no "bildung" of any sort to be seen anywhere, Serge dies as apathetic and oblivious as he was born, caul or no caul),

a young adult novel hyped for adults where the flat, dull main character is a device for introducing non expert knowledge à la Sophie's World or Theo's Voyage, facts and more facts, detailed descriptions of physical objects and mechanisms and very little humanity (as the author intended or so he says on his anti-humanist rants)

or, if you're so inclined, take it as a sort of puzzle for the obsessive compulsive. You can have a notebook close by and write down every place name or important object that begins with C and the recurring themes: poison, crypts, insects, lack of perspective and the like. Or note down the allusions to Freud's Wolfman case or Ballard's Crash. Lists, lists, lists.

At one point I got a bit annoyed with the novel and I suppose what set me off was that moment when I was relaxed, reading leisurely and these were the sentences my brain paid attention to:

"The wooden blocks have geometric figures painted on them (...) On a single side of each block (the side that were they dice, would bear the number six)" several of these figures had been combined...

While my eyes were already on the next paragraph I quickly thought "If all the sides of cube were figures how can you know where would the six go?". And then I reread the paragraph and realized it was one of those IQ measuring questions turned into literary description:

"The wooden blocks have geometric figures painted on them, like numbers on dice: squares, triangles, circles and other, more complex forms. On a single side of each block (the side that were they dice, would bear the number six) several of these figures had been combined..."

I like my novels complex but this is more of a party trick than, say, a deep ethical conundrum. Also, the geometric figure representing the number 2 seems to be missing from the sequence. The more I realized this book was a feat of engineering rather than some artistic endeavor (in the reactionary sense, McCarthy would probably say), the further I abused it by finding parallels between it and bad hollywood movies. That's the risk you take by making it clear a novel is borrowing themes and symbols. Some freak might come along and find all the wrong references. For instance, Sophie's lab covered in newspapers headlines making up messages in a secret code that only she could understand was supposed to be Burroughesque of sorts but it also reminded me of "A brilliant mind" and there's nothing like Russell Crowe creeping into your brain for literary turn off. I went totally heretical when I found echoes of Top Gun in the WWI airplane training section. The main character's partner is named Steadman (Cruise's nemesis was Iceman and there was a Wolfman too) and their juvenile adventures while training in England evoked the whole Top Gun callous stunts. Actually a younger Tom Cruise would make a great Serge in a hollywood version of C since he too has only a limited range of expressions.

Anyway, it's a book that needs to be read more than once to get all the clever allusions but I wasn't excited enough to do it as a very enticing biblical studies volume was patiently waiting for my attention.

I'm hoping Tom McCarthy will consider rewriting Hamlet in C style. Maybe entitle it H. Have Hamlet describe in excruciating detail the chemical composition of the poison that killed his father, the physics involved in Ophelia's drowning, the decomposing process that lead Yorick to that poor state and bore his friend Horatio to tears by giving long lectures on what he learned in the university in Germany. For maximum C-like effect, he would leave out all the angst.

(It might not sound like it, but I am grateful for the existence of a Tom McCarthy in the island where books with absurd titles like "Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper" win prizes and where John "Trains and Buttered Toast" Betjeman is considered a great poet.)

*********

The theatre:

Alan Ayckbourn's "Seasons Greetings" at the National Theatre was extremely enjoyable if you are the type who appreciates long sitcoms played live. I am.

Tennessse William's The Glass Menagerie and the Young Vic. One of those cases where I go into a theatre with zero knowledge of the play and come out thinking there was something not quite right with it - the main character does warn in the beginning that we are about to see truth masked as illusion. Then it hit me that Laura's disability was only a metaphor for difference and that the whole play was about homosexuality. And suddenly everything fell into place. From Tom's outings to the movies to the absurd moment when the gentleman caller does that self-conscious homophobic stunt of coming up with a never before mentioned girlfriend when he realizes he fell in love with the "wrong" type of person. It's all very subtle and the directing doesn't help at all. Makes it look like it's all about mommy issues.

**********

Thomas L Thompson's The Messiah Myth was clearly given the title by a greedy publisher - not that the author doesn't treat all religious literature as myth while giving good reasons for it, but it was clearly intending to create some controversy. It's a very interesting and well documented account of the influence of ancient literature (egyptian, assyrian, greek, ugaritic) on the old testament and of the latter on the new testament. From a comparative literature perspective is fascinating.

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December 01, 2010

Uncle Milan's Encounters

Kundera's essays are usually easy reads and I don't mean it in a demeaning way. Maybe conversational would be the right term as I picture him as someone who has used wisely the gift of time and therefore has not only interesting larger points to make, but can fill the skeleton of his theory with meaty tidbits of minor or personal history that I wouldn't otherwise have encountered.

For instance, I totally missed Fellini's attacks on Berlusconi's TV strategies and subsequent almost pornographic exploitation by Berlusconi's TV channel of Fellini's death. Now I need to watch Ginger and Fred again.

I loved the short essay on a lecture delivered by Vera Linhartova: the practical, direct way she addressed the myth of the writer in exile. Indeed, more than saying that writers are not bound by borders or belong to any one place, maybe exile is a valid artistic path that should be sought. It provides a freedom from provincial constraints, a widening of the linguistic possibilities. Look at Beckett, Nabokov, Milosz, Conrad.

*****

Kundera got me into a El Lissitzky mood. In my head El Lissitzky and El Greco have funny conversations in painterly heaven regarding their spanish exile. Obviously El Lissitzky has no clue what El Greco is talking about.

*****

I want to save this Francis Bacon quote which I presume to illustrate my own description of self-stereotyping theoretical author: the ones that fall into a formula, eruditely conceived, and end up writing what feels like parodies of themselves. Crystallized oulipians. You use one formula once and it's art, you spend your whole life doing it and it becomes just a job, a technique.

"I wonder if Beckett's ideas about his art didn't end up killing his creativity... there's something too systematic and too intelligent about him.. in painting, you always leave too much in that is habit, you never cut enough out, but with Beckett I often get the impression that because he wanted to hone down his text, nothing was left, and in the end his work sounds hollow."

*****

Kundera's mention of Danilo Kis sent me searching for a book by him I knew for sure I owned and hadn't finished. In the middle of the search I ran into Daniil Kharms and for a moment I thought my terrible, xenophobic memory for any name outside the portuguese-anglo-french realm had tricked me again. Daniil Kharm's "Today I wrote nothing" was one of those instances of books bought by R. that get re-shelved after he's done with them, escaping my to-read pile. Kharms is perfect for hit and run reading: short absurd stories, poems and plays which run from the silly tragic fable to the absurd thesis to the hilarious dialogue.

Let us suppose that one comlpletely naked authorized apartment resident decides to settle in and surround himself with objects. If he starts with a chair then he'll need a desk to go with the chair, and a lamp for the desk, the a bed, a blanket, bed sheets, a dresser, underclothes, outer dress, an armoire, then a room to put it all in, etc. Here, at every point in this system an unusual little system branch might manifest itself: The desire might arise to place a doily on the small round table, then to place a vase on the doily, then to shove a flower into the vase. Such a system of surrounding oneself with objects, in which one objects snag another - this is an incorrect system, because, if the flower vase has no flowers in it, then this vase is made meaningless, and if the vase is taken away, then the small round table is made meaningless; (...) The annihilation of one object disrupts the whole system. And if the naked authorized resident were to put on rings and bracelets and to surround himself with spheres and celluloid lizards, then the loss one or twenty-seven objects wouldn't make any essential difference. Such a system of surrounding oneself with objects is the correct system. --Daniil Kharms

Obviously this gives me ideas for interior decoration which R. won't approve of even when confronted with a theoretical basis like this one... I kid but I do love the celebration of the non-utilitarian character of art implied. Also, I have no idea where to get a celluloid lizard.

I did find my Danilo Kis but just doesn't work for me. Maybe I need a french translation.

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November 30, 2010

The usual random stuff

Those were the great days of excavating. Anything to which a fancy was taken, from scarab to an obelisk, was just appropriated, and if there was a difference of opinion with a brother excavator one laid for him with a gun.
---Howard Carter in "The Tomb of Tu.ankh.Amen" regarding the days of Belzoni, an earlier fellow excavator who was more of a grave digger and prize hunter than an archaeologist.

I imagine sentences like this mustn't have helped to advance the cause of keeping Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum from being repatriated.

(Carter not as good as Layard, but entertaining nonetheless)

*****

Gorgeous book art as window decorations at Tiffany & co on Bond street.

****

I've been collecting random sentences I hear while walking around in London. I like the out of context, no follow up situation where I'm left wondering what could those people have been talking about.

In a pub, a clean shaven boy in his 20's to his mates, eagerly.

- It's all a big show, isn't it? Like Odysseus.

In a throng of people on Oxford street, a man to presumably his wife who looked a bit annoyed.

-... I'm no connoisseur but...

Near the Barbican, two 60ish old men in suits, one using his hands to demonstrate.

- ...the most perfect breasts...

Or more prosaically, a sentence by a passer by to his friend that sent everybody inside Neal's Yard Dairy cheese shop in Covent Garden into a fit of giggles.

- It smells like my socks out here!

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'Tis the season to feel guilty about ignoring contemporary books this year: Tom McCarthy's C is sitting right here next to me, waiting for an opening in the archaeological adventures mania. Also looking forward to reading Kundera's Encounter and De Waal's The hare with amber eyes.

Waiting for the Economist's top 2010 books to get recommendations for "serious" nonfiction. I always end up keeping up with the times though I try to be a hermit. I'm more like a semi-detached hermit. Still, top of my to-read list, ignoring everything else, will still be Max Mallowan's memoirs.

*******

Abraham sacrificing Isaac (China, Jingdezhen 1750) at the overwhelming, gigantic, jaw dropping ceramics gallery at the V&A.

Other than the western centric surprise caused by the apparent incongruity of seeing a biblical scene re-enacted by asiatic looking characters - and reflecting the brainwashing performed by western art that makes you believe that a blonde, blue eyed jesus christ is perfectly normal - what makes me marvel at this one is how Abraham doesn't look like it's much of a sacrifice to butcher the pesky looking little kid. In fact he looks quite keen on it. Maybe it's the grabbing the kid by the eye. Maybe it's this feeling he might as well have been chopping the head of a chicken. The standing instead of laying Isaac on a sacrificial table doesn't help. As if a sacrificial table made things less violent by giving it a sacred context. Odd.

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November 19, 2010

Pinorama, Assyrian bliss, etc.

I've been reading Giuseppe (Pino) Orioli's Adventures of a Bookseller and Pinorman, a memoir by Richard Aldington of his times with Pino Orioli and Norman Douglas. It's been immensely entertaining - even though I had a goal in mind related to a "sub plot" in a research I was doing and of which I hope to write more about in the future. Orioli's memoirs - edited/censured by Douglas some say - are filled with those vitriolic jibes, stereotypically gay at times, that turn any memoir into an airing of dirty laundry.

(Orioli is probably better known for being the first publisher of Lady Chatterley's Lover.)
*****

This was before I started my Faulkner: Light in August. It wasn't going badly until I got sidetracked by an acquisition at a London antiquarian books fair: Layard's accounts of his discoveries at Nineveh. It's so exciting, such a page turner, I can't put it down. Layard wins my heart whenever he quotes passages from the Bible or Herodotus that match the things he's discovering, even though he downplays how thrilling it must have been to find these biblical sites.

I am continuously enthralled as I read it especially as I am an odd British Museum visitor in that I tend to ignore the Egyptian and the Parthenon sections and go directly into Assyria. I am in such awe of Layard's descriptions that I am now fantasizing about the Greeks getting their friezes back so the BM has space to show the Assyrian wall reliefs properly, in order and as they were found with reconstructions, drawings, ...the works. Transformation of the Parthenon galleries into a mock Nineveh/Nimrud - that's my dream. It's time for a Mesopotamian revival.

This also means I am looking forward to reading the newly published The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art by Mehmet-Ali Ataç...

Assyrian soldier using an inflated animal skin as a floating device.

*****

I will go back to Faulkner shortly but I'm at a point where I don't appreciate the prose enough to care what happens to Christmas. Paradoxically, I think I need to read more non-fiction for pleasure and less fiction for education. I drudged through Henry James's Portrait of a Lady before all this. Periodically I go for James. And periodically I am reminded how I can't see the point of the plots and get tired of the pretentious, meandering, long descriptions and digressions. Trying - unsuccessfully, it seems to me - to be George Eliot. Poor man's Middlemarch.

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August 23, 2010

Snippets

If one had time to write the whole of one's life thus, bit by bit as a novel, how rewarding this would be. The pleasant parts would be doubly pleasant, the funny parts funnier, and sin and grief would be softened by a light of philosophic consolation.

-- Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea

I suppose you can say the same of your own memories, whether you write them down or not.

*******

The Greeks thought of the past as stretching out before them while the future waited behind their backs.

-- David Wheatley, TLS review of the Letters of Louis MacNeice

My first thought was "Silly greeks!" but then I realized they were right. So right.

*******

The highest ideal of a translation from Greek is achieved when the reader flings it impatiently into the fire, and begins patiently to learn the language for himself.

--Philip Vellacott in the introduction to his own translation of the Oresteian trilogy.

Giggle.

*******

Throughout history the domestic pig has been sadly and unjustly neglected, while its more illustrious cousin the wild boar has, since classical times, been revered by warriors, hunters and composers of epic poems.

--Julian Wiseman, A History of the British Pig

Best opening line of a non-fiction book ever.I had to buy it. Got this one at Much Ado Books in Alfriston. With characteristic British dry wit, the customer ahead of me in line said "I almost got that one for myself".

******

The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and an invocation of all Good to enter and abide with us; or else a self-oblivious lifting up of gladness, a Gloria in Excelsis that such Good exists;

-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

The best description I've found of my secular meditations at prayer time whenever I'm attending a service.

*******

Entertained by the Point of View Naming Syndrome: what the English call Peninsular War the Portuguese know as the French Invasions and the Spaniards as the War for the Independence of Spain.

*******

As it was growing dark we passed under one of the massive, bare, and steep hills of granite which are so common in this country. This spot is notorious for having been, for a long time, the residence of some runaway slaves, who, by cultivating a little ground near the top, contrived to eke out a subsistence. At length they were discovered, and a party of soldiers being sent, the whole were seized with the exception of one old woman, who, sooner than again be led into slavery, dashed herself to pieces from the summit of the mountain. In a Roman matron this would have been called the noble love of freedom: in a poor negress it is mere brutal obstinacy.

-- Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle

I read the junior abridged version of this as a child. Lately I've decided I am grown up enough to read the real thing. I am in awe.

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July 28, 2010

Virginia Woolf and the South Downs

Yet another hike in the countryside made possible by including a visit to Monk's House, Virginia Woolf's last address, in the itinerary- the only way to make me exercise is to stick a nerdy carrot in front of my nose.

Virginia Woolf's writing shed. I will try not use the "room of one's own" cliche.

Inside there was a pot of green ink laying around which was a clever touch. No sign of the board which she would hold in her lap to write on.

Virginia Woolf's ashes are buried under this tree; Bust by Stephen Tomlinson.

After visiting the house - which despite the colorful flower gardens I found rather gloomy - we took the path to the river Ouse nearby where Virginia drowned. There are so many marked trails in the English countryside (thorough signage everywhere, impossible to get lost) we were surprised there isn't a Virginia Woolf Suicidal Trail. Turns out that she took a different path and actually drowned near Southease but seeing that the only lifesaver we saw on our 5 km walk on the river bank was at the end of the path leading from Monk's House, I suspect this must be a popular suicidal spot. Why people choose to end their lives in the same place as a celebrity is something I hope I'll never understand.

Obviously, only after this hike did I find out there is such a book as "From the Lighthouse to Monk's House: a Guide to Virginia Woolf's Literary Landscapes". I found it as I browsed the poetry section at the library. It was misshelved and I didn't even know it existed. Talk about a lucky find.

Nest stop: Charleston House. But this time I have extra info thanks to Katherine Hill-Miller. I will be looking for Keynes cottage too.

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July 21, 2010

Take Off!

Ulysses - Episode 1. If Joyce didn't write so well ("wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide") I wouldn't go further than the first chapter. It's boyish - I get the same reaction from reading Conrad. It's a high brow version of a nerd juvenile male life. I swear I try to read it with 1920's eyes but these boys are so much like any other boys who found out they can use their erudition to mock religion or to make clever Nietzschean jokes (and who have these prejudiced views of what girls are like) that I can't stop rolling my eyes once in a while. In any case, I am disappointed Buck Mulligan wasn't naked under his yellow gown: shaving au naturel on top of a martello tower first thing out of bed, wind engulfing the gown, was the very image I was entertaining in my head. But no, he had to be wearing trousers. I forgot Joyce is still a moralist; otherwise he wouldn't be so keen on smut. Fine continuation of Portrait: anti-british, anti-catholic, and generally bitter Stephen continues his non-adventures.

This chapter has already caused an odd conversation in this household. I was puzzled for a few seconds by one sentence and queried my male guinea pig for confirmation:

C: When you enter the sea does your scrotum tighten?
R: Ooooh yes.
C: Ah.
R: Why?
C: I just read the sentence "The scrotumtightening sea." and let's just say it's something I can't readily grasp the meaning of.

It goes to show what kind of public Joyce had in mind. Those of us who are scrotumless are left wondering.

***********

The Martello Tower in Sandycove, aerial view

***********

Oh, and I realized I couldn't care less about how this follows or not the structure of the Odyssey. I'll think about it later.

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July 05, 2010

A visual guide to the fifth chapter of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Entrance to Trinity College at the en of the 19th century, from the National Archives of Ireland.

The grey block of Trinity on his left, set heavily in the city's ignorance like a dull stone set in a cumbrous ring, pulled his mind downward and while he was striving this way and that to free his feet from the fetters of the reformed conscience he came upon the droll statue of the national poet of Ireland.

*********
—I don't know if you know where that is—at a hurling match between the Croke's Own Boys and the Fearless Thurles and by God, Stevie, that was the hard fight. My first cousin, Fonsy Davin, was stripped to his buff that day minding cool for the Limericks but he was up with the forwards half the time and shouting like mad. I never will forget that day. One of the Crokes made a woeful wipe at him one time with his caman and I declare to God he was within an aim's ace of getting it at the side of his temple. Oh, honest to God, if the crook of it caught him that time he was done for.

"Each player had a wooden hurley to strike the ball, generally of ash, about three feet long, carefully shaped and smoothed, with the lower end flat and curved. This was called camán [commaun], a diminutive from cam, 'curved': but in old writings we find another name, lorg (i.e. 'staff'), also used. The game was called iomán [immaun], meaning 'driving' or 'urging': but now commonly camán, from the camán or hurley." from a Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland.

********

The dean returned to the hearth and began to stroke his chin.

—When may we expect to have something from you on the esthetic question? he asked.

—From me! said Stephen in astonishment. I stumble on an idea once a fortnight if I am lucky.

—These questions are very profound, Mr Dedalus, said the dean. It is like looking down from the cliffs of Moher into the depths. Many go down into the depths and never come up. Only the trained diver can go down into those depths and explore them and come to the surface again.

—If you mean speculation, sir, said Stephen, I also am sure that there is no such thing as free thinking inasmuch as all thinking must be bound by its own laws.

—Ha!

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A visual guide to the fourth chapter of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

The director had begun to speak of the dominican and franciscan orders and of the friendship between saint Thomas and saint Bonaventure. The capuchin dress, he thought, was rather too... Stephen's face gave back the priest's indulgent smile and, not being anxious to give an opinion, he made a slight dubitative movement with his lips. —I believe, continued the director, that there is some talk now among the capuchins themselves of doing away with it and following the example of the other franciscans. —I suppose they would retain it in the cloisters? said Stephen. —O certainly, said the director. For the cloister it is all right but for the street I really think it would be better to do away with it, don't you? —It must be troublesome, I imagine. —Of course it is, of course. Just imagine when I was in Belgium I used to see them out cycling in all kinds of weather with this thing up about their knees! It was really ridiculous. LES JUPES, they call them in Belgium.

*****

A chasuble and a dalmatic from the fascinating Sacristan's Manual. A humeral veil from a catholic supply shop.

He had bent his knee sideways like such a one, he had shaken the thurible only slightly like such a one, his chasuble had swung open like that of such another as he turned to the altar again after having blessed the people. And above all it had pleased him to fill the second place in those dim scenes of his imagining. He shrank from the dignity of celebrant because it displeased him to imagine that all the vague pomp should end in his own person or that the ritual should assign to him so clear and final an office. He longed for the minor sacred offices, to be vested with the tunicle of subdeacon at high mass, to stand aloof from the altar, forgotten by the people, his shoulders covered with a humeral veil, holding the paten within its folds or, when the sacrifice had been accomplished, to stand as deacon in a dalmatic of cloth of gold on the step below the celebrant, his hands joined and his face towards the people, and sing the chant ITE MISSA EST.

A thurible, a chalice and a paten.

*****

Bull island (is an island located in Dublin Bay in Ireland, about 5 km long and 800 m wide, lying roughly parallel to the shore off Clontarf)

From the door of Byron's public-house to the gate of Clontarf Chapel, from the gate of Clontail Chapel to the door of Byron's public-house and then back again to the chapel and then back again to the public-house he had paced slowly at first, planting his steps scrupulously in the spaces of the patchwork of the footpath, then timing their fall to the fall of verses. A full hour had passed since his father had gone in with Dan Crosby, the tutor, to find out for him something about the university. For a full hour he had paced up and down, waiting: but he could wait no longer.

He set off abruptly for the Bull, walking rapidly lest his father's shrill whistle might call him back; and in a few moments he had rounded the curve at the police barrack and was safe.

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A visual guide to the third chapter of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Hell. The fear of it. Catholic guilt, etc.

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July 02, 2010

A visual guide to the second chapter of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Uncle Charles smoked such black twist that at last his nephew suggested to him to enjoy his morning smoke in the little outhouse at the end of the garden.

(Got this image from a tobacco shop. This costs 150 euros! Made for coprosmokingphiliacs with too much pocket change if you ask me.)

*******

I wanted to find some videos of musicians performing the songs Uncle Charles used to hum in the morning but they all sound like celtic music which causes no-no-no-no-please-no reactions in this household. So here's a link to a wonderful site called Music in the Works of James Joyce.

********

Belvedere College, which also still exists.

********

A horse drawn tram in Dublin:

It was the last tram. The lank brown horses knew it and shook their bells to the clear night in admonition. The conductor talked with the driver, both nodding often in the green light of the lamp. On the empty seats of the tram were scattered a few coloured tickets. No sound of footsteps came up or down the road. No sound broke the peace of the night save when the lank brown horses rubbed their noses together and shook their bells.

*******
The Mardyke in Cork

The leaves of the trees along the Mardyke were astir and whispering in the sunlight. A team of cricketers passed, agile young men in flannels and blazers, one of them carrying the long green wicket-bag. In a quiet bystreet a German band of five players in faded uniforms and with battered brass instruments was playing to an audience of street arabs and leisurely messenger boys. A maid in a white cap and apron was watering a box of plants on a sill which shone like a slab of limestone in the warm glare. From another window open to the air came the sound of a piano, scale after scale rising into the treble.

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July 01, 2010

A visual guide to the first chapter of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Clongowes school not only still exists but has a James Joyce Library just to prove the point of how ironical life is. Or how the jesuits are such good sports. Or both.

>

Images stolen from here and here.

*****
"Their master had received his deathwound on the battlefield of Prague far away over the sea. He was standing on the field; his hand was pressed to his side; his face was pale and strange and he wore teh white cloak of a marshal." - Maximilian Ulysses Browne was the ghost of Stephen's febrile delirium.

from Bildarchiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Wien.

******

I could't find a picture of a pandybat nor any allusion to it other than Joyce's when I came across some text saying he called it a pandybat as a pun with the latin word pendebat (a conjugation of the verb to hang). The correct name for the jesuit corporal punishment device is Ferula, a whale bone covered in leather.

Found a contemporary picture of a "Ferrula" on a S&M products website:

— Lazy idle little loafer! cried the prefect of studies. Broke my glasses! An old schoolboy trick! Out with your hand this moment!

Stephen closed his eyes and held out in the air his trembling hand with the palm upwards. He felt the prefect of studies touch it for a moment at the fingers to straighten it and then the swish of the sleeve of the soutane as the pandybat was lifted to strike. A hot burning stinging tingling blow like the loud crack of a broken stick made his trembling hand crumple together like a leaf in the fire: and at the sound and the pain scalding tears were driven into his eyes.

*****

What people were wearing at the turn of the century Dublin:

From the Clarke Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

******
"The game of Conkers is a traditional English game where competitors use nuts from horse chestnut trees with a piece of string tied through them. Players take alternate hits at their opponent's conker and the game is won when one player destroys the other's conker. " says LIFE magazine as a caption to an illustrative photo:

"That was mean for Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch because he would not swap his little snuffbox for Well’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty."

*****

Where stood the city of Sybaris?
In Great Greece, near the southern extremity of Italy: its inhabitants were noted for their luxurious and effeminate lives.
How did the Sybarites betray the weakness of their character?
They are said to give marks of distinction to such as excelled in giving magnificent entertainments: they removed from their city those citizens and artisans whose work was noisy; and even the cocks were expelled, lest their shrill cries should disturb the peaceful slumber of the inhabitants.
-- extract from Magnall's questions

******

"Dante gave him a cachou every time he brought her a piece of tissue paper."

A cachou was a liquorice breath freshener produced by a french pharmacist.

And if you think this is an irrelevant detail, academic papers have been written about it and why it isn't a cashew nut instead.

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June 27, 2010

Claudia's Great Summer Enterprise

Me & Jimmy at tarry-easty, last summer.

It's official, this shall be a Joycean Summer. Everything is (almost) ready. I've got Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Hamlet, The Odyssey, will be getting a nice edition of Ulysses, a map of Dublin and also Gifford's Notes. I'm still considering if Campbell's Wings of Art will be post or concomitant reading.

I love Dubliners. I read Portrait many years ago. Read bits of Finnegan's Wake while shaking my head, baffled. I gave a go to Ulysses using a portuguese translation (now THAT was nonsense gibberish) as a teenager. I've listened to an Ulysses audio book while driving 6 years ago. I picked it up and browsed it a few times in bookshops and never felt ready. Here goes.

(this being part of that well-known anti-giving up strategy which consists in committing in public)

*****

Another great enterprise for which I've been sort of preparing for will be to go on a 2 day walk through the South Downs, about 35 km in total. The highlight of the hike will be the Woolf's Monk's house near the river Ouse where Virginia took her own life. Also featuring cute little english towns and cream teas and ploughman's lunches and mysterious looking dark woods and all those things I thought Enid Blyton was making up when I read the Famous Five as a kid in sunny, quasi-desert lands where afternoon meals suffered french influences and the scones I dreamily yearned for were nowhere to be seen. this walk will certainly include a stop at Alfriston to visit Much Ado Books.

Hothouses at Darwin's house. 16 km walk around Downe.

Hugging a beautiful oak tree on the Hever-Chiddingstone-Penshurt-Leigh walk. 16 km.

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June 04, 2010

More breadth than depth

Tolstoy playing chess.

War & Peace ended up being more entertaining than I previously predicted (although I confess to have skimmed more than a few of the descriptions of battle fields; what can I say? It bores me to death). I realize now the novel is mostly a vehicle for Tolstoy to expound his views on history and faith - none of which I care much for - but the breadth of characters, situations and settings makes it a thoroughly absorbing read. I wish I could read it in the original Russian; would the romantic lives of some characters still strike me as having the emotional depth of adolescence? Would the metaphysical pursuits of the existentially anguished characters seem as vapidly pious? Would Tolstoy's amateur historian claims outrage me as much as they did?

Here are two bits that made me rant for hours (R. nodded as he patiently listened. Or maybe he didn't, which would explain why he looked glassy eyed).

"To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense..."

"When an apple has ripened and falls - why does it fall? (...) The botanist that finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decomposes, and so forth, is just as right and as wrong as the child who stands under the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it to fall."

So, simplistic summary: novel as vehicle to propound historical determinism and the romantic notion of the wisdom of simple folk vs. intellectual spiritual pursuits. Some leader envy; patriotic fluffiness in describing an ineffectual, constantly tearful Tsar; some confusion on micro versus macro actions - are individuals responsible for the course of history in their infinitesimal roles or is it an all-encompassing spiritual force that drives events? God, Natasha is annoying. Bitterness towards organized religion. Too many love at first sight/in a new light occurrences and idealized mates leading to disappointment. The women are either futile, immoral or excessively pious and admired by their faith, beauty or joyful mood. Mood seems to be confused for personality, by the way.

*****

More entertaining national stereotyping (and more ranting against science...):

"A German bases his self-assurance on an abstract idea: science, that is, the supposed knowledge of the absolute truth. A Frenchman's self assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically irresistible to both men and women. And Englishman's self assurance is founded on his being a citizen of the best organized state in the world and on the fact that, as an Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is unquestionably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and others. A Russian is self-assured simply because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe in the possibility of knowing anything fully."

*****

Coming up next: Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, for the sole reason that when it came out in installments by an anonymous author there was speculation it had been written by George Eliot. Can't get a better endorsement than that.

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May 24, 2010

Not much Peace yet

I find myself struggling with War & Peace. I know it's too early in the book to start commenting but the long descriptions of warfare strategy are incomprehensible to me. To this day I still don't understand what a victory in a battle means unless one of the sides has surrendered but it appears to be more complex than that. I don't care enough about military tactics to get excited about it. I find disconcerting the fits of patriotism and leader worship that some characters suffer from time to time ("Rostov... felt an even stronger access of love for his sovereign. He longed to express his love in some way, and knowing that this was impossible, he was ready to weep."). To sum up, so far the reading hasn't been wholly pleasant and it's pretty clear that it's not a novel in the orthodox sense of the word. Oh, and Tolstoy (or the translator, who knows?) talking about "our troops" breaks the spell of the invisible, nationless narrator.

Hat of Napoleon I, seized at Waterloo and now at the German Historical Museum.

Nonetheless, it does offer a glimpse of something I find fascinating which is Napoleon as a cultural product - in the sense that the myths about the man are so abundant that at this point we'll never have much information about him other than what his mesmerizing charisma allowed people to know and what anti-napoleonic propaganda succeeded in turning into beliefs. I've always found extraordinary that remnant of collective memory that still survives in cartoons and movies: whenever you want to portray a lunatic all you have to do is draw a man with a hand inside the front of a jacket.

Asylum Worker #1: Hey, Pierre! Here's another Napoleon.
Asylum Worker #2: That's ze twelveth one today.
[Drags Napoleon away]
(from Bugs Bunny's Napoleon Bunny Part)

I do have a secret pleasure in the less political correct bits, mainly the digressions of the more cosmopolitan superficial characters like Prince Dolgorukov, when he is stereotyping national characters:

"Very sorry you didn't find me in yesterday. I was busy the whole day with the Germans. We went with Weyrother to check the dispositions. And when a German starts being accurate - there's no end to it!"

"My brother knows him; he's dined with him - the present Emperor (Bonaparte) - on more than one occasion in Paris, and he tells me he's never seen a more subtle, cunning diplomat - you know, a combination of French adroitness and Italian theatricality."

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January 19, 2010

Readings

I wish I'd remember what made me pick up Max Frisch's novels. I have a vague recollection of someone talking about the effects of technology on our lives and mentioning "Homo Faber" in passing which prompted me to look for it in the library. It might have been Zizek. In any case, after being done with "Homo Faber", I'm now enjoying reading "I'm not Stiller". The novels are old fashioned at times as you'd expect from a product of the 50's to be but I still don't understand why did their popularity subside. Spiritual and identity crisis are always fashionable. What do I know, maybe Frisch is still selling well in Switzerland.

*****

I'm keeping a journal of my readings, a hand written one. I needed it. My penmanship was getting worse and worse. I long for a calligraphy course; my luddite area of the brain is commanding it.

*****

I've been good as I've already read one of the portuguese classics on my New Year's resolution reading list (not much to report other than it was a gripping, well crafted novel where all the characters are petty and provincial and that it could have been written in the 19th century rather than in the 40's). Five more are waiting already, brought in by my parents who seemed to have had a good time tracking down old copies in second hand book sellers in Lisbon. R. briefly browsed them and declared them either boring or depressing. Except for "O que diz Molero". He may be right.

*****

Picking up reserved books at the library (most of them from the Reserve Stock aka the unreadables/unfashionable bin), a librarian I hadn't seen before holds my card and says: "Oh, so you are Claudia!". I'm sure the guy that has to drive the van to the reserve stock warehouse at least once a week would like to meet me too.

*****

I found Iris Murdoch. A bit late, I know, but I'm working on improving the gender balance in my reading habits by increasing the number of female authors. Previously, I had great pleasure in making the acquaintance of Muriel Spark. The only problem is that, after reading The Green Knight, I went to wikipedia to get more info on the author and there was this: "Her novels often include upper middle class intellectual males caught in moral dilemmas, gay characters, Anglo-Catholics with crises of faith, empathetic pets, curiously "knowing" children and sometimes a powerful and almost demonic male "enchanter" who imposes his will on the other characters." Now, that pretty much describes The Green Knight. I wonder if I can look forward to the same gripping style and erudition but hopefully have some variety in the plots. We'll see, it is true that the good authors always write the same story, but I'm hoping it will be more subtle than this wikipedia description.

*****

The next few months will be occupied by anthropology (the real thing, not the convenient name I give to my silly explorations) and food. Should be interesting. At the very least, I'll have new topics for dinner conversation openers.

*****

The current mood is ochre yellow. It's a quieter yellow. Contemplative. Cozy.

(Goya, from the wonderful Dark Paintings in the Prado)

Degas and his candid photo-like paintings of yelllow walls. Who cares for the dancers.

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November 18, 2009

Prosper

It's such a joy for me to subscribe to Sotheby's auction announcements and to be able to browse their e-catalogues. It's as if I am awarded a glimpse of a beautiful work of art or of a piece of memorabilia that will soon submerge once more into the deep waters of private ownership. Almost in a week's time, they're auctioning off some wonderful items on a Paris book sale. My favourite being a doodle-like self-portrait of Merimée in prison.

Merimée has been lately on my mind ever since I compiled a little guide (self-published on Lulu.com and everything!) for our summer roadtrip in the south of France and realized how much of our sightseeing was provided by his conservation efforts as a Inspector of Monuments. This led me to find more about Merimée and his life which in turn made me want to draw a relationship map of his lovers, friends and acquaintances. I'm pretty sure it would cover a huge part of 19th century France's intellectuals. And through Merimée's biography I discovered Guglielmo Libri. Reading "The life and times of Guglielmo Libri (1802-1869) : scientist, patriot, scholar, journalist, and thief : a nineteenth-century story" is like paging through a bookish thriller, the sort where you end up hoping the bad guy will get away with it - even though he is a book defacer and manuscript robber. In any case, Merimée did side with Libri and that's why he ended up in prison. It's also why Sotheby's has this particular sketch to sell since otherwise, Merimée seems to have been a law abiding citizen.

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July 13, 2009

By the end of the nineteenth century, Florence was a key destination for cultured travellers from Europe and America. Writers such as Wilde, Rilke, and Mann, painters such as Degas and Klee, and, not least, the young art historian Aby Warburg and his wife, Mary, flocked to Florence to escape the encroachments of modern life at home and to revel in the city's rich artistic and cultural past. This beguiling book fuses narrative and ideas to consider how the encounter between modernism and Renaissance culture was experienced by both visitors to Florence and its inhabitants. Based on Aby Warburg's letters, diaries, and notebooks, on Italian and German archives and on conversations with E. H. Gombrich (director of the famous Institute Aby Warburg later founded), the book is an intimate guide to life in Florence and the theatres, restaurants, galleries and salons frequented by visiting cultural exiles. At the same time, the book paints an evocative picture of a city at the cusp of the modern age, adjusting to electricity and the motor car on one hand and to social unrest and a clash of cultures on the other. -- publisher's blurb

****

I want to sing the non-scholarly-bookish-art-amateur praise of Bernd Roeck's "Florence 1900" published by Yale UP. In fact, I liked it so much that I hate myself for already having finished reading it. And for not knowing enough German to read his other books.

It's highly scholarly and yet very readable. Permeated with valuable information - and interesting tidbits - you'll never find anywhere else because Roeck read the unpublished sources (including Aby Warburg's personal papers and a magazine 'Il Marzocco" that I'd kill to get my hands on - preferably translated and annotated). If there's a book that can vividly portray the zeitgeist of any particular era or place this is it.

*******

Meanwhile, I need to keep the links to all the interesting things (so many of them in the public domain!) I've learned via Roeck somewhere, so bear with me.

Leo S. Olschki, Florentine collector and bookseller of Renaissance books and prints.
Found a catalog of his ("Choix de livres anciens rares et curieux en vente à la librairie ancienne Leo S. Olschki (1907)" on archive.org from where this pre-darwinian drawing was taken from.

Charles Godfrey Leland's Etruscan Roman remains in popular tradition; (1892) should be entertaining since the information source for the work of this amateur ethnologist were italian "witches" who accepted money in return for the confirmation that secret worshiping of ancient gods and etruscan magic was still in use in Tuscany in modern times...

Jacob Burckhardt's "The Cicerone: An Art Guide to Painting in Italy. For the Use of Travellers and Students (1879)" is online! Burckhardt was seemingly against the "documenting" of history so it ends up being an entertaining collection of informed opinions. And it was the book everybody at that time used an arts oriented travel guide. Of it Nietzsche enthusiastically said: "It seems to me that one should wake up and fall asleep reading Burckhardt's Cicerone: there are few books that can so stimulate phantasy and prepare one for the conception of the artistic.

The aesthetic sensibilities of an age as seen through the writings about Botticelli in Anatole France's "Le Lys Rouge": "Darling, do you not know it is the custom of Florence to celebrate spring on the first day of May every year? Then you did not understand the meaning of Botticelli's picture consecrated to the Festival of Flowers. Formerly, darling, on the first day of May the entire city gave itself up to joy. Young girls, crowned with sweetbrier and other flowers, made a long cortege through the Corso, under arches, and sang choruses on the new grass. We shall do as they did. We shall dance in the garden."

In Zola's "Rome": "Narcisse for his part had not raised his eyes to the overpowering splendour of the ceiling. Wrapt in ecstasy, he did not allow his gaze to stray from one of the three frescoes of Botticelli. "Ah! Botticelli," he at last murmured; "in him you have the elegance and the grace of the mysterious; a profound feeling of sadness even in the midst of voluptuousness, a divination of the whole modern soul, with the most troublous charm that ever attended artist's work."

People in the quattrocento preferred Gozzoli to Castagno. "the affably conciliatory was preferred to the emotionally impressive" as Aby Warburg put it.

Isolde Kurz's Die Humanisten. Lost manuscripts and monks à la Umberto Eco.

Vernon Lee's "Renaissance fancies and studies (1896)".

Bernard Berenson's essays and catalogues. "Among US collectors of the early 1900s, Berenson was regarded as the pre-eminent authority on Renaissance art. His verdict of authenticity increased a painting's value. While his approach remained controversial among European art historians and connaisseurs, he played a pivotal role as an advisor to several important American art collectors, such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, who needed help in navigating the complex and treacherous market of newly fashionable Renaissance art. In this respect Berenson's influence was enormous, while his 5% commission made him a wealthy man." -- from wikipedia

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March 26, 2009

On Gustave's Shelves

Des erreurs et des préjugés répandus dans la société.

Publiés à Paris en 1810 et 1811, par F. Buisson, libraire rue "Gille-Coeur" [Rue Git-le-Coeur], ce sont les oeuvres d'un certain Jean Barthélémy Salgues, né en 1770 et mort en 1830.

Les animaux sont très présents (ce qui est normal, les hommes vivaient en leur compagnie) et doués de pouvoirs mystérieux. Voici quelques unes des interrogations qui hantent les esprits :
- L'araignée annonce t-elle de l'argent ?
- Les abeilles ont-elles un Roi ?
- Les Abeilles piquent-elles de préférence les dames qui manquent à leurs devoirs ?
- Les vieux coqs pondent-ils des oeufs ?
- Les sangsues ont-elles le don de prophétie ?
- Une piqûre de tarentule fait-elle danser comme les meilleurs danseurs de l'opéra ?

From Pages napoléoniennes.

From a bulletin: "En 1853, de plus, Flaubert lit pour Madame Bovary un ouvrage de la bibliothèque paternelle: Des erreurs et des préjugés répandus dans la société, de Jacques-Barthélemy Salgues (Paris, Vve Lepetit, 1811-1813), qui semble avoir inspiré certains articles du Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues."

**********

Hétérogénie; ou, Traité de la génération spontanee, basé sur de nouvelles expériences (1859)

Cet ouvrage est le fruit de trois années d'expériences et de recherches incessantes. Lorsque, par la méditation , il fut évident pour moi que la génération spontanée était encore l'un des moyens qu'emploie la nature pour la reproduction des êtres, je m'appliquai à découvrir par quels procédés on pouvait parvenir à en mettre les phénomènes en évidence : là fut la tache
laborieuse. (...)

La question de la génération spontanée a divisé les savants en deux camps opposés, et les hommes les plus illustres ont pris part aux luîtes animées et incessantes auxquelles ce grave sujet a donné lieu depuis tant de siècles. La victoire est encore indécise; aussi reste-t-il quelque gloire à conquérir pour celui qui la fera pencher de son côté.

Pour nous, nous combattons à l'abri d'une bannière bien respectable et bien imposante, puisque déjà, dans l'antiquité, elle portait les noms d'Anaxagore, de Leucippc, de Démocrite, d'Épicure, d'Aristote, de Pline, de Lucrèce et de Diodore de Sicile; et que depuis la Renaissance jusqu'à nos jours, on a vu successivement inscrire ceux de Rircher, Rondelet, Aldrovande, Matthiole , Fabri , Bonanni, Burnet, Gassendi, Morison, Dillen, BufTon, GuéneaudeMontbéliard, Needham, Priestley, ïngsnhousz, Gleichen, Stenon, Baker, Wrisberg, Fray , Werner, 0. F. Muller, Braun, Pallas, Rudolphi, Bremser, Goeze, Nées d'Esenbeck, Eschricht, Unger, Allen Thomson, de Lamélherie, Cabanis, Lavoisier, Lamarck, Saint- Amans, Turpin Desmoulins, Latreille, Bory Saint- Vincent, Dumas, Dugès, Eudes Deslonchamps, Gros, Tiedemann, Treviranus, Bauer, J. Muller, Burdach...

(I love the "I can't be wrong since all these clever people think like me" argument.)

Full text.

**********
Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, dans le milieu du quatrième siècle avant l'ère vulgaire

En 1788, l'abbé Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (1716-1795), philologue, publia les Les Voyages du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, un récit de voyage détaillé et érudit décrivant les sites et la géographie de la Grèce classique (une version française de la Description de la Grèce de Pausanias).

Quel vide dans tout ce qu'il fait! que de variétés et d'inconséquences dans ses penchants et dans ses projets! Je vous le demande : qu'est-ce que l homme?

Je vais vous le dire, répondit un jeune étourdi qui entra dans ce moment. îl tira de dessous sa robe une petite figure de bois ou de carton, dont les membres obéissaient à des fils qu il tendait et relâchait à son gré. Ces fils, dit-il, sont les passions qui nous entraînent tantôt d'un côté et tantôt de l'autre; voilà tout ce que j'en sais. Et il sortit.

Full text.

**********

(found while creating Flaubert's Legacy Library at Librarything; darn George Sand and her overabundant writings, I thought they'd never end)

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March 23, 2009

Quick thoughts and a reading list

	Expediente del Atentado, Alvaro Uribe I have this feeling only latin americans excel at building narratives around failures. This is a captivating book: an imaginary file of paper clippings, diaries, letters related to the failed murder attempt of Mexico's dictator Porfirio Diaz. It strikes me as a serious, more literary sibling of Jô Soares' Twelve Fingers. Found via Passou.
	La petite Bijou, Patrick Modiano It's so sad and beautiful. After reading his bio I have the feeling this is the type of writer who writes the same story over and over again. It becomes more art than literature, if there is such a distinction. Recommended by Amazon.fr through Régis Jauffret's Microfictions.
	Beaumarchais in Seville, Hugh Thomas Beaumarchais had such an adventurous life that it's actually possible to write a short book about only a couple of years he spent in Madrid. I wish there were more books like this: edifying entertainment. Found through the LRB's recommended books.
	The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt It reads like an old mad professor telling you a bedtime story. This is History pre-"Nouvelle Histoire" and pre-"identification of sources required". My version has no footnotes and more than once I'm amused by the way the author just alludes to people and events as if he's expecting his audience to be perfectly familiar with the more obscure details of his subject. I love it. Where else would I find out about Ferrante of Napoli's room of mummies of his murdered enemies or that Attila was murdered by Dardanus who hit him with a chessboard? And even if this isn't true, I much prefer Burkhardt's version. Found in the National Gallery Bookshop.
	Lord Cucumber, Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell All I knew about this pair was something about defacing library books, a penchant for dark humor and a real life murder tragedy. This book must be the most highbrow mix of camp and classical british comedy I've ever read. Suffice to say that the characters end up on a cruise of the Odyssey's locations. Classic gay fiction with homeric reference to boot. Seen on the local library shelf.

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March 08, 2009

Edmund Crispin proved to be a clever, if lucky, choice. R. read The Moving Toyshop out loud to me in the evenings last week and there were times he had to stop for a few minutes while we laughed. The crafting of the plot around the crime is not what we would call a real master's work but the quips, literary references and pure farcical action make it a gem (also, there is a certain satisfaction in finding out that the murderer is the character who loves Jane Austen). The detective is a Professor of English Literature at Oxford, Gervase Fen, and every other character seems to have strong opinions about literature: the police constable tries incessantly to discuss Measure for Measure with the detective, there's a will which involves Edward Lear's nonsense rhymes, and two gangsters whose identity is unknown are named Scylla and Charybdis by Fen. Also, whenever the hero and his sidekick get stuck or imprisoned, they start playing literary games to pass the time such as listing unreadable novels or naming hateful novel characters that were originally portrayed to be lovable. Which started our classic household discussion since R. added Anna Karenina to the list and I jumped in her defense.

*****

Schwob to dinner.
Daudet told us this. He was having dinner at Victor Hugo's . The great poet of course presided, but in isolation, at one end of the table. He was almost deaf, and no one spoke to him, the guests gradually drawing away, toward youth, toward Jeanne and Georges (his adult grandchildren). He had practically been forgotten, when suddenly, at the end of the meal, the voice of the great man with the bristling beard was heard - a deep voice, coming from afar: I didn't get any cake!

--from The Journal of Jules Renard, a mix of high brow gossip and clever aphorisms.

*****

I love Patrick Caulfield for sentimental reasons. It reminds me of Herge's ligne claire and that brings back childhood memories.

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March 01, 2009

In a hidden treasure of a bookshop, upstairs from the tulip-bouquet-carrying mobs of Columbia flower market, beautiful old editions of penguin pocket books line the hallway wall and someone who I presume to be the owner asks a kid - he couldn't have been more than 8 - sitting behind the counter:

Older man: Do we have a copy of the Six wives of Henry VIII?
Child: We did have one. I'll go look, it must be under History.
(runs away, literally, comes back)
Child: I'm afraid to say but we ran out of copies, granddad.
Older man: All right.

I couldn't resist it. I asked for George Orwell's essays. He looked at me and asked if I meant a biography or other writings. No biographies, I answered. He jumped from his stool, ran to the next room and pointed me to "Orwell's England". I'd hire this kid if I was running a bookshop.

Ended up making some entertaining acquisitions. Who can resist buying from a little bibliophile? It's also called buying-on-a-impulse-inspired-by-intriguing-book-titles.

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February 05, 2009

New finds

(copyright Yvonne Mayer / Crafts Study Centre)

I found Lucie Rie through Ipek (who turns out to share my favorite Monty Python skit - which is the more remarkable as it is an obscure one that no one else seems to find funny).

*****

More than once, while browsing the non-fiction section, I can't help thinking that most of the books there would be fine reads as essays. Why ruin it by eliminating brevity?

*****

At the LRB, I always have a nanosecond of excitement when, neck twisted reading spines, I find "Anatomy of Restlessness". The hope that it is a cross between the Anatomy of Melancholy and the Book of Disquiet is shattered as soon as I find out (again) that it is just a good title for some writings on the author's (who I particularly dislike) theories (which don't seem more than whims to me). I wonder why I keep forgetting it exists.

*****

Thanks to Lisa, added Orwell's Diaries to my RSS feeds. Now I can keep track of the eggs myself. Also, I'm reading the Howard Zinn book she brought from Boston which R. says it gives me extra fuel for my fits of outraged, hand waving disgust at the occasional bit of political news.

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January 19, 2009

Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us 40 years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil! -- Golda Meir

I've started rereading the bible. The first time I read it, I picked a Portuguese version from 1921. The narrator's voice in my head was an old catholic priest which I pictured looking at me menacingly, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose, his index finger a gun ready to fire. Which is obviously not fun and even a little scary since the classic catholic seminary speech style is also guilt inducing. This time, I'm reading the King James version. When I read it in english the narrator's voice belongs to a New York jew. Which makes it seem like I'm reading a script from a Mel Brooks movie. Other times it's a David Mamet character talking in that peculiar rhythm and in constant aporia. Now, THAT is fun.

Example (Exodus 17, Mel Brooks plays Moses, Fran Lebowitz plays "the people", the narrator is Jerry Seinfeld):

So they argued with Moses. They said, "Give us water to drink."

Moses replied, "Why are you arguing with me? Why are you putting the Lord to the test?"

But the people were thirsty for water there. So they told Moses they weren't happy with him. They said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt? Did you want us, our children and our livestock to die of thirst?"

Then Moses cried out to the Lord. He said, "What am I going to do with these people? They are almost ready to kill me by throwing stones at me."

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December 20, 2008

The Holidays book stack

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July 25, 2008

What's on Mundo de Claudia reading pile

Bouvard et Pécuchet is a treasure. R. has been reading it to me in the evenings, the perfect book to be shared as we follow the two gentlemen through their pursuit of knowledge and from failure to failure in putting it to practice.

The Rest is Noise is the proof that a lenient god exists as he answered my atheistic prayer for a book that would read like a long New Yorker article (the erudite yet accessible ones, not the Obama-is-our-God-and-all-Republicans-are-evil ones).

Carnegie's bio. I dunno, I was in the mood for a high brow excuse to peep into other people's lives. That's what bios are all about, no?

The Death of Virgil. I'm scared of it - shouldn't I be brushing up on my Aeneid beforehand? Thomas Mann says it's one of the most profound and extraordinary experiments to have been undertaken under the form of a novel. Steiner says it's the only genuine technical advance that fiction has made since Ulysses. We'll see.

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July 12, 2008

The latest random annotations

"...They were mostly 'His Master's Voice' and 'Columbia'; the latter, however, although easily pronounced, had only letters, and the pensive doggy was a winner.(...) It took me a least a decade to realize that 'His Master's voice' means what it does: that a dog is listening here to the voice of its owner. I thought it was listening to the recording of its own barking, for I somehow took the phonograph's amplifier for a mouth piece too, and since dogs run before their owners, this label all my childhood meant to me the voice of the dog announcing his master's approach."
--from the essay "Spoils of War", so far the only of Joseph Brodsky's writings I have enjoyed, a poignant account of his childhood and youth in the USSR and the meaning of foreign objects left behind by Americans after the WWII in his life.

---

"Dearer to me than a host of base truths
is the delusion that enobles us." -- AS Pushkin

---

"il n'y a de bonheur que dans les voies communes" - Chateaubriand

---

"I hear from people who have seen you that you are becoming stout, optimistic and genial - in other words, Americanized. I believe that I had already noticed traces of this in your letters, and I'm not sure I entirely approve."

Edmund Wilson's letter to Vladimir Nabokov, 14 Jan 1946

___

"Don't let the smallest chance slip by; you never know until you try."
"If you're a salesman worth the name at all, you can sell razors to a billiard ball."
"The salesman who will use his brains will spare himself a world of pains."
"Well kept hands that please the sight seize the trade and hold it tight, but bitten nails and grubby claws well may give the buyer pause."

maxims from Montague Egg's Salesman Handbook (the other Dorothy L Sayers detective)

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May 12, 2008

Many years ago in Lisbon, my very British-crocheted-tie-and-tweed-jacket-type teacher Simon was telling me how he had gone back to London for a short break and how he made a fool of himself for not remembering the appropriate english terms for the several bank operations he had planned to take care of while there. The teller looked at him as if he was demented - or at the very least as if he had a very limited vocabulary - since with that fine Queen's accent there was no doubt he was an englishman. He concluded, "Not only do I speak a poor Portuguese, I'm beginning to forget my own language!".

I haven't been away long enough to have a similar complaint but, whereas I was before a gold card Amazon.co.uk client (if there was such a thing), I find myself now pining for some Portuguese literature. As they say, I can't get no satisfaction. In the absence of an Amazon.pt, my kind and patient parents brought me exactly what I needed:

A modern classic that I managed to procrastinate reading indefinitely until now; a posthumous work of a famous author; the most recent book by my favorite Portuguese contemporary writer.

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April 05, 2008

"Men, commonplace and ordinary, do not seem to me fit for the tremendous fact of eternal life. With their little passions, their little virtues and their little vices, they are well enough suited in the workday world; but the conception of immortality is much too vast for beings cast on so small a scale." -- A Writer's Notebook by Somerset Maugham

quoted by Julian Barnes on Nothing to be Afraid Of, a book I couldn't put down not out of reading pleasure but of suspense on what would he write next that I couldn't disagree more with. It's a memoir verging on becoming an anthology of quotations by famous novelists and artists about death and dying, as entertaining as any other anglo-saxon memoir and their typically detached accounts of family's eccentricities and anecdotes. Yet, I was appalled to find, even already discounting the different nationalities, generations and gender, that this man has a way of seeing the world that is so alien to me. From small insignificant details like "when you're a child you think your family is unique" - when I was a child I thought every other family was like mine and was very surprised to find they weren't - to his interpretation of Maugham's quote "The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love" which, following a story by Browne, he believes is all about growing older, having everyone die around you until there's no one else to love - as if you'd stop loving the dead.

I hope to outlive Mr. Barnes - and I'm only saying this because he actually addressed me, the reader, asking me to consider that I might die before him. I think it will be very appropriate that on the day he passes away, there will be a book on one of my shelves in which his signature will become a sort of modern relic.

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January 31, 2008

Free association

Tom Zé, "All the eyes" album, Brazilian Musician


And when I brought the razor closer and with my fingers separated the borders of his anus, Estefania, my astonishment knew no bounds. My first thought was that Palinuro mistrusted me and had decided to spy on me; you won't believe this, Estefania, but there, in his anus, Palinuro had an eye.
'It's an optical illusion.' he said.
'No sir, it's an eye.' I answered.
'What colour?'
'Blue.'
'It's the Universal Eye.'
'That's a metaphor,' I said to him, 'And what you have in your arse is no metaphor but a real eye.'
'Are you crazy?'
'No, I'm not crazy. The General's glass eye, which you must have swallowed last night in your drunken stupor'.
--Palinuro de Mexico, Fernando del Paso

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January 27, 2008

The weekend's little pleasures

But a great deal of nonsense is written about characters in fiction - from those who believe too much in character and from those who believe too little. Those who believe too much have an iron set of prejudices about what characters are: we should get to "know" them; they should not be "stereotypes", they should "grow" and "develop"; and they should be nice. So they should be pretty much like us. A glance at the thousands of foolish "reader reviews" on Amazon, with their complaints about "dislikeable characters", confirms a contagion of moralising niceness. Again and again, in book clubs up and down the country, novels are denounced because some feeble reader "couldn't find any characters to identify with", or "didn't think that any of the characters 'grow'". -- James Wood in the Guardian, last Saturday.

This is pretty much an elaboration of what Nabokov said on his Literature lectures. They're also both as truculent:

Or, and this is the worst thing a reader can do, he identifies himself with a character in the book. This lowly variety is not the kind of imagination I would like readers to use. -- Nabokov, Literature Lectures

*****

Taking books out of boxes.

*****

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. --Arabya in Dubliners by James Joyce

*****

Roi Vaara, Artist's Dilemma, 1997 (my pic of the London South Bank Centre February leaflet)

Which illustrates perfectly why the cult of the author who researches extensively and writes realistically is actually very non-artistic. A novel is one thing, literature is quite something else.

*****

Um homem que se passeava nu na Praça de S.Marcos em Veneza foi salvo no último momento de ser preso por atentado ao pudor, por um bando de pombas que o vestiram completamente de branco.

As autoridades marítimas investigam o misterioso desaparecimento da linha do horizonte ao longo de toda a costa atlântica.

Levaram-no ao Serviço de Urgências. Perdera a fala subitamente. O médico que o assistiu veio a apurar que ligara as cordas vocais entre si para conseguir escapar da sua prisão interior.

Extractos de A greve dos controladores de voo de Jorge Sousa Braga

(esperando que o Jorge Sousa Braga não se zangue) Here's a probably poor translation:

A man who strolled naked on St. Mark's Square in Venice was saved at the last moment from being arrested for indecency when a flock of doves dressed him in white.

The maritime authority is investigating the mysterious vanishing of the horizon along the whole Atlantic coast.

They took him to the Emergency Room. He had suddenly lost his voice. The doctor who attended to him came to the conclusion that he had tied together the vocal cords to escape his inner prison.

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November 09, 2007

(answering Rui)

I'm currently reading 3 books - in english, alas - so here it goes:

From: "Imbibe! From absinthe cocktail to whiskey smash, a salute in stories and drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, pioneer of the American bar" by David Wondrich (more here).

"Early evidence is lacking, but by the early 1800's Sangaree (usually based on Madeira) is a constant feature in traveler's tales of the Caribbean."

No, I haven't gone alcoholic. These days, I'm fascinated by cocktail trivia and, if may say so, its culture.

***

From: "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem (more here)

"We have plenty of time."

I usually don't read sci-fi but this is too good to be missed.

***

From: "The Tempest" by Uncle Bill

"We are brought to the heart of the matter by the cantankerous assertion, spoken by Miranda, but obviously the thought and vocabulary of her father."

(unfortunately The Tempest is quite a short play so the above is from an essay by George Lamming which is included in my copy)

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October 12, 2007

lessing doesn't care less

Reporters opened the door and told her she had won the Nobel Prize for literature, to which she responded: "Oh Christ! ... I couldn't care less."

"I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot, OK?" Lessing said, making her way through the crowd. "It's a royal flush."

"I'm sure you'd like some uplifting remarks," she added with a smile.

"I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise," Lessing said. "I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off."

She acknowledged the $1.5 million cash award was a lot of money, but still seemed less than thrilled.

"I'm already thinking about all the people who are going to send me begging letters. I can see them lining up now," she said. The phone in her house, audible from the street, rang continuously.

*****

I like her. I don't know if I like her books but now I'm definitely going to read them. Also, I'm hoping her acceptance speech will be a riot.

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October 01, 2007

The Adventures of Claudia in America

This blogger went to the big book sale in San Francisco and all she got was this because she is a narcissist who can't resist it when she sees her own name in print. This completely messes my project of writing "The Book of Claudia" to be added to the bible or to start a new religion, though.

It was a great buy. I'm sure it's not what the author intended but has made me roll on the floor laughing.

"It had been a beautiful night and she loved him more than ever in the morning. 'If it weren't real love', David told her, 'if it were only physical, it wouldn't be that way.'

Claudia, who was eighteen and who did not know very much about love, had the greatest respect for her husband's superior knowledge of sex. Not that he'd ever led a wild life, or run around, but he'd read a great many books on the subject and knew as much as a doctor."

Of course. There's nothing sexier than a gynecologist.

I also "found" and bought the fabulous Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats illustrated by Edward Gorey for 1 dollar and finally got the complete poems of Cavafy, among other cheap finds.

Big. Like everything else here.

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July 07, 2007

Seen at the counter of Skoob books. You can tell when someone starts a second-hand book business out of love: this very persuasive anti-impulse-shopping quote is inconveniently located by the cash register. I almost returned "Breakfast at Tiffany's" to its shelf when I read this.

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May 22, 2007

I wanted to write about...

...the centennial of Hergé and how despite being a Tintinophile I am also a contrarian. Hergé used to say that there was no place for sex or women in Tintin's male friendship world. So I started a post on Tintin porn parodies only to realize this site has a fantastic compilation of bootleg Tintin albums from the 80's and Arte channel aired a great documentary called "La vie sexuelle de Tintin". I also found a couple of bloggers or website owners who got sued (and condemned) for promoting "illegal" Tintin album versions. Which made me want to blog about copyright, civil liberties, the moustache on Mona Lisa, the power of dead people's wishes over the creativity of the living and trash Belgian law but I'm too lazy.

(Roy Lichtenstein is allowed to throw a Matisse painting on Tintin's living room)

...Elias Canetti's Auto da Fé and how if were this book edible it would leave a bitter-sweet taste on my mouth. It's a wonderful bizarre and funny novel, a chimera born of crossing Lynch with Ionesco with a german twist. Alas, the version I own seems like someone pasted the results of Babel Fish "German to English" translation into it (my book says the translation was supervised by the author). Here I am holding what could be one of my favorite novels of all times, wondering if this will be the final trigger to upgrade my current tourist babble german language level. Which made me want to blog yet again about the difficulties of translation, the wonder of learning a new language, post an hilarious excerpt of the novel when the main character tries to convince his books to go to war and faces the opposition of buddhist texts and of Schopenhauer who suddenly found the will to live, quote Walter Benjamin, add an excerpt of Saramago's Baltasar & Blimunda and show you how crappy the english translation is but I'm too lazy.

...Gilbert & George's downloadable art and how the open source paradigm should invade every corner of knowledge, cadavres exquis, the recent trends on how art can be an effective political and social integration tool, how weird that most art reviews I read are favorable and hardly ever anyone dares to say that - although Gombrich says there is no such thing as a bad work of art - that red canvas with a bit of newspaper glued to it brings nothing new and is a lame attempt at originality, the New Yorker article on Banksy and how even the most wannabe rebels give in to money and vanity despite maintaining their anonymity, the Hopper exhibition at the MFA in Boston, the underrated value of art in the developing world and Maslow's hierarchy of needs but I'm too lazy.

...my plans for the second semester of 2007, Cavafy's poems, Socrates' "know thyself", healthy doubts, status quo, Ecclesiastes, Ovid on fishing, missing oneself, the Bloomsbury group, low cost airlines, auction houses, journalism, aging, optimism, adventure, excitement and romance but that would be too personal.

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December 11, 2006

I was thinking how I was such an avid reader as a teenager partly because I wanted to know so many things and books seemed to be the best source for instruction for whatever I didn't know yet, intellectually or emotionally. In part all this reading was helpful, in other ways I suppose I got some prejudices on matters I didn't have enough real experience to have an opinion on. Yes, I was - and I still am - an impatient person. And one of my favourite quotes is still Einstein's "There's nothing as practical as a good theory". Or something like that.

The best part of getting older, book wise, is rereading. If you're fairly smart, you'll understand the book on a first read. For instance, I read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" when I was 17 and thought it was brilliant. I read it again 12 years later. As I finished it, closed it and laid it on the bed of a hotel room in a distant country that smelled of musk & sea & dirt, I put my hand on my forehand and realized how naive I had been. I imagined Milan Kundera, somewhere in France, in a control room filled with TV sets from floor to ceiling, monitoring his readers reactions, spying on me and going: "Ha! Silly girl! Did you think you could grasp the meaning of my book the first time you read it without having been through love & jealousy & desire & heartbreak?"

I wonder what will it tell me if I reread it 10 years from now?

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November 09, 2006

In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki

It can be easily said of this essay that it is a set of jottings about the aesthetic power of darkness. The author's writing is like a stream that runs through architecture, takes a turn into gastronomy, goes swiftly by human beauty and ponders on old age, with a turn of prose so compelling that makes you wish you owned minimalistic decorated japanese house and were reading by candle light.

The considerations on architecture and decoration can be taken as the oriental counterpart to Bachelard's Poetics of Space, taking the way the lived experience of the space is that which matters for his aesthetics and practical purposes.

Tanizaki is a man who can write beautifully about sensuous experiences like sight or taste never losing from sight his theme.

But what exactly is the theme? It seems to me to be a mourning of a traditional way of life, or should we say of lighting, that was quickly disappearing. The view that glorifies darkness which makes lacquer and gold stand out or that softens the whites as opposed to artificial light which makes everything glitter and brings the unbearable brightness can also be just a romantic vision of a lost Japan that never existed. But that really isn't an issue if you are aiming to enjoy this book for its sheer beauty and bits of witty humor.

*****

"It has been said of japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is food to be meditated upon, a kind of silent music evoked by the combination of lacquerware and the light of a candle flickering in the dark."

*****

This edition is lacking a glossary of untranslated japanese terms used throughout.

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October 02, 2006

My theory, which is mine.

I was delighted to read Ricardo's post about Shakespeare and how one astrophysicist is claiming that by studying the astronomic events mentioned on his plays one can determine not the years during which he lived but rather the ones in which he didn't.

Many scholars have been researching the true identity of Shakespeare and there is a strong current in favour of naming Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true author of the works. Many historians have also presumed he was the secret son of Queen Elizabeth I.

My own pet theory is that the only person to live at that time, that knew all the royal court's intrigues, who was in a position to know about the letter Christopher Hatton, Vice-Chamberlain, wrote to the queen and which is parodied on Twelfth Night, and who had enough time in her hands to come up with so many rhymes, was Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen herself!!!!

But...there's more.

Were Liz and Ed ever seen together in the same room? De Vere was appointed as a royal ward in the household of William Cecil, the Queen's most trusted and closest advisor. De Vere's mother wrote to Cecil:

“I confess that a great trust has been committed to me of those things which, in my Lord’s lifetime, were kept most secret from me”.

My own conclusion? The Queen and the Earl were one and the same person!!!!!! So Elizabeth was a transvestite which can explain why she never married or had any children: she secretly wanted to be a man but at the time there was no such thing as sex change surgery!

Elizabeth posing as De Vere and posing as the Queen

****
There's nothing quite as liberating as making public an outrageous pet theory :)

A special thanks to my research associate Ricardo! We could write a Dan Brown style book on this and make money!

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September 10, 2006

"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method."

--Chapter lxxxii, Moby Dick (Melville)

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September 04, 2006

Library Thing

Having fun lately with Library Thing: "LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth."

Author cloud

That's what I call a social network! Just added the few books on my tiny bookshelf and some others piling around. I miss my stored-in-the-basement-of-a-friend books. Now I'm starting my own online library. Great!

(found it through misteraitch whose blog is such a source of many delights - which lately includes a post with my favourite Xul Solar painting and a mention to Javier Marías - the cause of my sunday El País newspaper obsession.

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June 23, 2006

"I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity?" --Correspondence, Horace Walpole

"The kaleidoscope (...) has always fascinated me as a metaphor for life: how a seemingly slight incident can alter the course of one's destiny, just as an almost imperceptible shift in the angle of the lens changes the composition to form an entirely new pattern". --"The Cairo House", Samia Serageldin via J Ryder.

"Some dreamed of a new alphabet, a new language of symbols through which they could formulate and exchange their new intellectual experiences." -- "The Glass Bead Game", Hermann Hesse

"If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons, writes Bokonon, that person may be a member of your karass." --"Cat's Cradle", Kurt Vonnegut

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June 05, 2006

XXX, NSFW, shocking content ahead, read this only if you're above 18, etc.

I found out that James Joyce was a coprophiliac through Javier Marías' entertaining little book "Written Lives". The idea of defying the authority of someone by means of ridicule is a dishonest one. But it's so much fun. I personally have a very mean strategy for the very few situations in which I find someone intimidating: if it's a man I picture him wearing nothing but socks and shoes and if it's a woman I imagine her brushing her teeth, drooling toothpaste all over her chin, looking like a dog with rabies. Works every time.

No one is intimidating as soon as you get to know them better.

Time Magazine, Coprophiliac of the year

I was googling for Joyce's letters to Nora Barnacle in order to see for myself if Marías' diagnosis wasn't the fruit of his own dislike of the man - which he bluntly states in the prologue.

"My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes or to fling you down under me on that soft belly of yours and fuck you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse, glorying in the open shame of your upturned dress and white girlish
drawers and in the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair."

"Have I shocked you by the dirty things I wrote to you? You think perhaps that my love is a filthy thing. It is, darling, at some moments. I dream of you in filthy poses sometimes. I imagine things so very dirty that I will not write them until I see how you write yourself. The smallest things give me a great cockstand - a whorish movement of your mouth, a little brown stain on the seat of your white drawers, a sudden dirty word spluttered out by your wet lips, a sudden immodest noise made by you behind and then a bad smell slowly curling up out of your backside. "

And lots more here.

This is perhaps one of the weirdest things I have ever read. The letters are at times beautiful, poetic, erotic, romantic and simultaneously...yucky (to me, at least....a big apology to all the coprophiliacs reading this). I find this insanely funny. I suppose he meant it to be private...tough luck. You're dead, buddy.

(I warned you)

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May 21, 2006

Book Bliss

Associação de Loucos e Sonhadores, Lisboa

(((((())))))

Finally read Vonnegut's SlaughterHouse 5. My mouth is open in amazement. I love the simple and yet powerful and imaginative writing. Fascinated by the Tralfamadorian concept of time. (sighs with pleasure)

Now I can't hear anyone talking about death without thinking: "So it goes".

Can't wait to get my hands on Cat's Cradle.

(((((())))))

One of those happy succession of synchronicities led me to Enrique Vila-Matas. His name came up at least once every day of this past week, through friends, articles in newspapers, referenced in books I was reading and culminated on the happy, thrifty find of a set of 6 of his books for 18 Euros at FNAC.

The sheer erudition of the man. Pure intellectual bliss and aesthetic enjoyment. So happy.

Also, he writes beautifully about Lisboa:

Lisboa es el nada nunca jamás. Lisboa es para llorar, puro destino y llanto, fado y luz de lágrima. Pero al mismo tiempo es una inmersión radical en la alegría. “Otra vez vuelvo a verte, / ciudad de mi infancia pavorosamente perdida /Ciudad triste y alegre, otra vez sueño aquí”. No es la ciudad blanca que creyó ver un suizo equivocado, sino una ciudad azul de alegres nostalgias inventadas.

Lisbon is nothing never ever. Lisbon is for crying, pure destiny and weeping, fado and light of tears. But at the same time is a radical immersion in joy. "I see you once again, / city of my dreadfully lost childhood / Sad and happy city where I dream again". It is not the white city that a mistaken Swiss thought he saw, but a blue city of cheerful invented nostalgia.

The original text is here (in spanish).

(((((())))))

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April 04, 2006

[Marco Polo to Kublai Khan] "I shall repeat the reason why I was describing it to you: from the number of imaginable cities we must exclude those whose elements are assembled without a connecting thread, an inner rule, a perspective, a discourse. With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unimaginable dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else."

"I have neither desires of fears", the Khan declared,"and my dreams are either composed by my mind or by chance."

--Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

"On the banks of a great river in the povince of Cathay there stood an ancient ciy of great size and splendour which was named Khan-Balik, that is to say in our language, "the Lord's City". Now the great Khan discovered through his astrologers that this city would rebel and put a stubborn resistance against the empire. For this reason, he had this new city built next to the old one, with only the river between. And he removed the inhabitants of the old city and settled them in the new one, which is called Taidu, leaving only those whom he did not suspect of any rebellious designs;for the new city was not big enough to house all those who lived in the old." -- Travels in the Land of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo

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March 21, 2006

Great Ideas

Since I still have a pile of books to read, I was avoiding entering any bookshop; ah, the sacrifices I put myself through. But...since I lack the personal discipline to resist temptation, I did go to a bookshop in the weekend and ran into this wonderful set of books: the Great Ideas series published by Penguin. Such cute books with such simple yet beautiful covers. I *had* to bring a few back home with me and as I was chatting about it with the girl at the counter, she stops packing them and says: "Interesting. You just picked the same ones as Paulo Portas who just left some minutes ago". That's the kind of stuff that can ruin my pleasure. Paulo Portas is the former leader of a Portuguese right wing party and one of the last persons in the world I could imagine sharing reading preferences with. I bumped into the guy as I was walking away and I had a glimpse of *my books* inside his transparent plastic bag as he stopped to light a cigarette. He probably thought "Why is this lunatic peeking at my bag and why is she staring at me in disgust?".

On Art and Life, John Ruskin
Travels in the Land of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo
The Inner Life, Thomas a Kempis
On the Pleasure of Hating, William Hazlitt
The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus (had already read that one but couldn't resist the malevichian cover)

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March 20, 2006

Peddling a poet

I was waiting for an exhibition to open and this man comes up to me and asks where the door to the exhibition is.

- It's right here. They open at 3.
- Thank you. Are you a journalist?
(the exhibition took place at a portuguese newspaper gallery and I was standing at the building's front door which, obviously, qualified me for the job)
- No.
- Oh.
(pause)
- You know, there's this great Portuguese poet no one talks about anymore...but I love his work so much. Pessoa used to say that he was the most trascendental of our poets. He was a great man. A fighter for freedom, a scientist, a man of ideas. At a time when the rate of illiteracy was 78% he said this sublime sentence: "There is more light in the letters of the alphabet than in all the firmament".
At this point I'm thinking whether I should give him the "get lost creep" treatment. But I'm a sucker for literature and curious as a cat.
- Who is this poet you're talking about?
- A great man, miss. A great, great man. One of our greatest poets. He's buried at the national pantheon, right next to Amalia. His name was Guerra Junqueiro.
- Oh, I've read "A Velhice do Padre Eterno" by him.
And so I have a new item for my "what not to say to weirdos" list. The man's eyes shined and he didn't leave me alone during the time I was wandering around the Schwitters, Warhols and Paiks.
He's carrying a plastic bag and excitedly takes out a sheet of paper with the poet's quotations which he gives to me.

- I also have here with me xerox copies of the newspaper edition when he died in 1923. He made the front page!
-Thank you (he's now between me and the Jacquet).

Alain Jacquet, Le Déjeuner sur L'Herbe (1967)

Manet, Le Déjeuner sur L'Herbe (1865)

- He was a great Republican. He fought to bring down that useless monarchy we had...what a man. Here, I have extra copies for you to give to your friends and let him be known to everyone.
(maybe he's founding a new religion)
As I was trying to read Jenny Holzer's electronic-display signboard he comes up to me again.
- You know, he was a man of ideals. He was very active politically, he worshipped freedom but got away from it all when he realized that the parties weren't fighting for the country's benefit but for themselves. He returned to poetry. And today our poets can't get away from politics.
(one of the candidates for last January's presidential elections was a poet)
- Ah.
(and he hands me another sheet of paper with quotations; but this time they're not by Guerra Junqueiro)

What matters most in life is not duration but intensity - Jacques Brel

- You really like culture and art, right?
- Right.
- Good, good. It's important that there is freedom of expression. People should be free to paint and write whatever they feel like. I belong to a very repressed generation. I wish the revolution took place much earlier, we could have avoided a war. It's one of the things I regret the most about my life: to have lived all my youth and adult age under a dictatorship. We have to prevent this from happening again. No more censorship, ever.
(and I'm also a sucker for anti fascists so I'm beginning to like the guy)

He hands me another piece of paper, a xerox copy of a text by Guerra Junqueiro, and walks away.

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February 23, 2006

"Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original? This would seem to explain adequately the divergence of their standing in the realm of art. Moreover, it seems to be the only conceivable reason for saying "the same thing" repeatedly. For what does a literary work "say"? What does it communicate? It "tells very little to those who understand it. Its essential quality is not statement or the imparting of information -- hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. But do we not generally regard as the essential substance of a literary work what it contains in addition to information -- as even a poor translator will admit -- the unfathomable, the mysterious, the "poetic," something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet? This, actually, is the cause of another characteristic of inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content. This will be true whenever a translation undertakes to serve the reader. However, if it were intended for the reader, the same would have to apply to the original. If the original does not exist for the reader's sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise?"

-- Walter Benjamin, The task of the translator

++++

Tricky, the art of translating. Isn't it?

Banubula had a great post on the various English versions of a Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer poem.

++++

The young daughter of the Honourable Master had a go at translating AB's poem I posted here.

I'm not sure he sent me this as any flaunty proud father of a talented (Portuguese) 15 year old would or if he means that "Even a junior high school kid can translate this better than you" :-)

Be attentive,
Be attentive to the conquests of your strength.
Tear the new days with what you've learnt from your weaknesses.
Pledge with the chalice of your tears
Hold it high and well.
Never, never detain yourself and cry out the dreams you will capture.
The springs you crave to discover await you.
Always follow the North of your woes.

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February 22, 2006

Reading Yourcenar's biography.

On her reflections on the writing of Hadrian, there's such a beautiful dedication to Grace Frick, her life companion:

"This book bears no dedication. It ought to have been dedicated to G.F., and would have been, were there not a kind of impropriety in putting a personal inscription at the opening of a work where, precisely, I was trying to efface the personal. But even the longest dedication is too short and too commonplace to honor a friendship so uncommon. When I try to define this asset which has been mine now for years, I tell myself that such a privilege, however rare it may be, is surely not unique; that in the whole adventure of bringing a book successfully to its conclusion, or even in the entire life of some fortunate writers, there must have been sometimes, in the background, perhaps, someone who will not let pass the weak or inaccurate sentence which we ourselves would retain out of fatigue; someone who would re-read with us for the 20th time, if need be, a questionable page; someone who takes down for us from the library shelves the heavy tomes in which we may find a helpful suggestion, and who persists in continuing to peruse them long after weariness has made us give up; someone who bolsters our courage and approves, or sometimes disputes, our ideas; who share with us, and with equal fervor, the joys of art and of living, the endless work which both require never easy but never dull; someone who is neither our shadow nor our reflection, nor even our complement, but simply himself; someone who leaves us ideally free, but who nevertheless obliges us to be fully what we are. Hospes Comesque."

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January 20, 2006

A Theory of Contact

I will now turn my sullen mouth to the discussion of meaningless matters:

"I have sometimes thought of constructing a system of human knowledge which would be based on eroticism, a theory of contact wherein the mysterious value of each being is to offer to us just that point of perspective which another world affords. In such a philosophy pleasure would be a more complete but also more specialized form of approach to the Other, one more technique for getting to know what is not ourselves.(...) when each fraction of a body becomes laden for us with meaning as overpowering as that of the face itself, when this one creature haunts us like music and torments us like a problem (instead of inspiring in us, at most, mere irritation, amusement, or boredom), when he passes from the periphery of our universe to its center, and finally becomes for us more indispensable than our own selves, then that astonishing prodigy takes place wherein I see much more an invasion of the flesh by the spirit than a simple play of the body alone."

-- Marguerite Yourcenar, The Memoirs of Hadrian

Such a quotable book. I feel like copying it all to the longest blog post ever written :-)

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January 16, 2006

Lit Quiz

(found in Anne's blog who saw it in Dick's blog who saw it in The Observer)

1. The Bible or Shakespeare?

Shakespeare. I don't find the Bible particularly well written. Maybe except for the Song of Solomon. And some psalms.

And Shakespeare wrote great jokes & great insults. And you don't get sexual innuendo like this in the Bible:

SAMPSON

'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I
have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the
maids, and cut off their heads.

GREGORY

The heads of the maids?

SAMPSON

Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads;
take it in what sense thou wilt.

GREGORY

They must take it in sense that feel it.

SAMPSON

Me they shall feel while I am able to stand: and
'tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.

GREGORY

'Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou
hadst been poor John. Draw thy tool! here comes
two of the house of the Montagues.

(Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene I)

2. A word you like

In Portuguese: Oxalá (I think it's an adaptation from the Arabic inch'allah - "may god allow" - but don't listen to me, I didn't even google for the origin of the word)

In English: Flabbergasting (must be said with an affected, British accent). Just because I have fun saying it.

3. Most romantic moment in fiction

If I assume that romantic is something that follows the rules of ideal love...then I choose Romeo and Juliet again. Can't help it.

JULIET

What's here? a cup, closed in my true love's hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:
O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make die with a restorative.

Kisses him

Thy lips are warm.

(Act 5, Scene III)

4. Overrated writer

Dan Brown is the obvious one. Oh wait, a writer. Maybe Coetzee.

(and in my more personal universe I have a not-so-secret-anymore antipathy towards Hemingway)

5. Favourite translation

The recent translation of Homer's Odyssey to Portuguese by Frederico Lourenço. Not that I know Greek but it was the first time I enjoyed reading it. The previous Portuguese translations didn't keep the poetic form.

6. Best meal in English Literature

Not really a meal...but the first time literature made me hungry.

In every "The Famous Five" book by Enid Blyton, they'd never depart for yet another adventure without a basket full of goodies. I was intrigued by the obsessive eating of scones, butter and raspberry jam. I was nine, Portuguese and had no idea what a scone was. But it sounded delicious. And then I came across a recipe for scones on one of my mom's cookbooks...oh, the joy (how did I survive without the Internet?)

7.Underrated writer

Bohumil Hrabal. "Too loud a solitude" is such a fantastic book.

8. Favourite Children's books

As a child: "The Boy Who Was Followed Home" by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Steven Kellog. A surrealistic story of a boy who starts being followed home every day after school by hippopotami. Increasingly more and more of them.

Now: "The wind in the willows", Kenneth Grahame. Wait! Does the Harry Potter series count as children's books?

9. Book(s) by your bedside now

Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita"
Feynman's "Six Easy Pieces"
David Lodge's "Author, author"

10. Sexiest book

I can't pick one.

For a more poetic approach of eroticism: Anaïs Nin's "Little Birds"
For plain sex: Any Henry Miller's.
For some S&M fun: "Gordon" by Edith Templeton.
Funny and intriguing: Alberto Moravia's "Me and Him" - yes, I find a talking penis sexy :-)

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December 21, 2005

The colors of infamy

"O que mais alegrava Ossama era contemplar o caos. Debruçado ao parapeito da passagem suspensa cujos pilares metálicos rodeavam a praça Tahrir, ele ruminava idéias atrevidamente contrárias aos discursos propagados pelos pensadores oficiais, os quais sustentavam que a perenidade de um país estava subordinada à ordem. O espetáculo que tinha diante dos olhos condenava sem recurso essa afirmação imbecil. Já havia algum tempo que aquela construção, imaginada por engenheiros humanistas para resguardar os infelizes pedestres dos perigos da rua, servia-lhe de observatório panorâmico, reforçando sua íntima convicção de que o mundo podia continuar indefinidamente a viver na desordem e na anarquia." - Cossery, As Cores da Infâmia

"Contemplating the chaos was what cheered Ossama the most. Leaning over the railing of the overpass whose metallic pillars encircled the Tahrir square, he insolently ruminated contrary ideas to the speeches propagated by the official thinkers, which stated that the longevity of a country was subordinate to order. The spectacle his eyes beheld condemned without appeal this imbecile idea. For some time now, that construction, imagined by humanist engineers to protect the unhappy pedestrians from the dangers of the street, served him as a panoramic observatory, strengthening his intimate conviction that the world could indefinitely continue to live in the clutter and the anarchy." - Cossery, The Colors of Infamy

+-+-+-+

AP's latest. Inspired by the excerpt above.

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A la question : « Pourquoi écrivez-vous ? », Albert Cossery répond : « Pour que quelqu'un qui vient de me lire n'aille pas travailler le lendemain ».

To the question: "Why do you write?", Albert Cossery answers: "So that anyone reading it won't go to work the next day."

(AP! Stop reading that! You've got a mortgage!)

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Albert Cossery is an egyptian anarchist who is 88 years old and has lived the past 56 years in a hotel room in Paris. He was admired by Henry Miller and Camus and has only written 8 books. It took him 16 years to write "The Colors of Infamy". Sometimes he would write only one sentence a day. As he says, he can't afford to waste any more time on writing because he's having so much fun with other stuff.

More on The Colors of Infamy here.

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December 06, 2005

Why Dan Brown should pursue the "Jesus Lived In India" Theory

I read the DaVinci code last year. I was at New Delhi's airport facing a long flight to Frankfurt without anything to read. I rushed to an airport bookshop and bought it. I tend to avoid popular books - it's my intellectual pretentiousness, you see :-) - but it seemed an easy read for a flight and I wanted to see what everyone was talking about.

I enjoyed it immensely. Like I enjoy popcorn-eating-hollywood movies when I'm in the mood for it.

When some friends and colleagues started talking to me about it I was amazed to discover how everyone took it rather seriously ("Dan Brown did a lot of research for it", "There are several historians who say it's a very well written book with solid proof", "maybe it's all true", etc.,etc.)

I had fun reading it. The scholarly, conspiratory tone only made it more fun. Accurate or not, it doesn't matter. Like reading a magazine horoscope. Or it's like reading a much poorer version of some of Arturo Pérez-Reverte entertaining adventure novels.

And I'm not even a religious person, I'm not offended by some of the assumptions the book makes, I was quite amused by them.

So, I was relieved to read this article by Umberto Eco:

"G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church -- from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code.

It is amazing how many people take that book literally, and think it is true. Admittedly, Dan Brown, its author, has created a legion of zealous followers who believe that Jesus wasn't crucified: he married Mary Magdalene, became the King of France, and started his own version of the order of Freemasons. Many of the people who now go to the Louvre are there only to look at the Mona Lisa, solely and simply because it is at the centre of Dan Brown's book.

The pianist Arthur Rubinstein was once asked if he believed in God. He said: "No. I don't believe in God. I believe in something greater." Our culture suffers from the same inflationary tendency. The existing religions just aren't big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide. So we revert to the occult. The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret "container" with his or her own fears and hopes."

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In the same aiport bookshop I bought another popular book in India: "Jesus lived in India" (synopsis here). It's even more outrageous which makes it even more fun than Dan Brown's fantasies. It's so far fetched I swear I wish it was true :-)

I had read Catherine Clément's "Jesus at the stake" in which she writes about these jesus-lived-in-India theories in fictional terms. I found it very interesting and amusing that Jesus had had tibetan buddhist teachings, survived the crucifixion by practising yoga and fled to Kashmir, dying there of old age. As a secular humanist, it seemed as good explanation as the Vatican's :-). When I went to India I had the chance to ask some Indians about this theory. All of them said: "Of course he lived and died here! Everyone knows that! His tomb is up there in Srinagar...go see it for yourself!" - rather mockingly. Too bad that Srinagar is in Kashmir and that I'm rather cowardly or else I would have gone there.

"Ahmadi Muslims believe that the physical ascension of Jesus to Heaven is a later interpolation. The term "heaven" is used for spiritual bliss which the righteous enjoy after a mortal life.

Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 15:24). Out of twelve tribes of Israel, only two were in the region where Jesus preached. The other ten tribes, as a result of exile, were domiciled in the eastern countries, especially in Afghanistan and Kashmir. It was imperative for Jesus to migrate eastwards to complete his mission.

There is overwhelming evidence that the people of Afghanistan, Kashmir and neighbouring regions are of Israelite ancestry. Their physical features, languages, folklore, customs, and festivals attest to their Israelite heritage. Evidence also comes from the names they give to their villages, their monuments, and ancient historical works and inscriptions.

The presence of Jesus in India is recorded in the ancient Indian literature, and records of Kashmir. Jesus came to Kashmir from the Holy Land during the reign of Raja Gopadatta (49-109 AD) to proclaim his prophethood to the Israelites. He was known as Yusu (Jesus) of the children of Israel. It is recorded that great number of people recognized his holiness and piety and became his disciples. " - more here.

They're making a documentary on it in India.

"According to legend Jesus Christ's tomb lies at Rozabal in Srinagar's old town . "Rozabal" is an abbreviation of Rauza Bal, meaning "tomb of a prophet". Isa (the Islamic name for Christ) was in fact also known as Yuz Asaf (Leader of the Healed). At the entrance there is an inscription explaining that Yuz Asaf is buried along with another Moslem saint. Both have gravestones which are oriented in North-South direction, according to Moslem tradition. However, through a small opening the true burial chamber can be seen, in which there is the Sarcophagus of Yuz Asaf in East-West (Jewish) orientation.

According to advocates of this theory there are carved footprints on the grave stones and when closely examined, carved images of a crucifix and a rosary. The footprints of Yuz Asaf have what appear to be scars represented on both feet, if one assumes that they are crucifixion scars, then their position is consistent with the scars shown in the Turin Shroud (left foot nailed over right). Crucifixion was not practised in Asia, so it is quite possible that they were inflicted elsewhere, such as the Middle East. The tomb is called by some as "Hazrat Issa Sahib" or "Tomb of the Lord Master Jesus". Ancient records acknowledge the existence of the tomb as long ago as 112AD.

Thus the legend that Jesus Christ Himself is buried in Kashmir!"

More books about it here.

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November 11, 2005

Time gifts

"Do you remember the story about the astronomer?" Without turning around she pointed her thumb to the right to one of the three paintings on the wall. "If it hadn't been for his nighttime visit beore the execution, Lazar would have happily gone to the stake, convinced of how correct, even exalted, his sacrifice would be."
"But it was a mistake. Visiting the future showed him that his sacrifice had no meaning."
"Do you think that people should be freed from their mistakes? Even when it ends up destroying their happiness?"
"Happiness based on illusion, deception?"
"And what happiness isn't?"
He did not know how to reply at first. He felt like a chess player whose opponent had made what seems like a quiet move, but with many traps hidden behind it.
"What is the meaning of happiness if it entails the loss of a life?" he asked at last, in a muffled voice.
"And what is the meaning of life without happiness? That is the impossible choice Lazar was forced to make. With the best intentions. Everything would have been much simpler if he had not seen the future."

--- Time Gifts, Zoran Zivkovic

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November 09, 2005

Lampedusa

"On one occasion, he did not move for four hours, the time it took him to read a large novel by Balzac, from start to finish. Then he would undertake his long tour of the bookshops, after which he would go to another café, where he would sit but not mix with a few acquaintances of his with semi-intellectual pretensions. He would listen to "their nonsense" and hardly say a word, and then, after all these marathon sittings and feeble peregrinations, return home on the bus. He is always described as walking wearily along, looking very distinguished, but with a somewhat careless gait, his eyes alert, holding in his hand a leather bag crammed with the books and cakes and biscuits on which he would have to survive until evening, since lunch was never served at home. He carried that famous bag with great nonchalance, quite unconcerned that volumes of Proust were sitting cheek by jowl with titbits and even courgettes. Apparently the bag always contained more books than were strictly necessary, as if it were the luggage of a reader setting off on a long journey, who was afraid he might run out of reading matter while away."

Javier Marias on Giovanni Tomasi di Lampedusa (what a sexy name! - to be honest, it was the only reason I ever started reading Il Gattopardo); at the ThreePenny review.

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October 11, 2005

Slowness, Milan Kundera

(one of my favourite books ever)

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There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.

In existential mathematics, this takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

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The feeling of being elect is present, for instance, at every love relation. For love, is by definition, an unmerited gift: being loved without merit is the proof of real love. If a woman tells me: I love you because you are intelligent, you are decent, because you don't chase women, because you do the dishes then I'm disappointed. Such love seems a rather self-interested business. How much finer is to hear: I'm crazy about you even though you're not intelligent nor decent, even though you're a liar, an egotist, a bastard.

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...the man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off both from the past and the future: he is wrenched from the continuity of time; in other words, he is in a state of ecstasy. In this state he is unaware of his age, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.

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October 10, 2005

Short Anthology of Erotic Mirrors

The Chevalier stops, dazzled, at the door: the mirrors covering all the walls multiply their reflections in such a way that suddenly an endless procession of couples are embracing all around them. (Slowness, Kundera)

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Eugenie: (lies down) How comfortable I am in this haven! But why, my friends, have you put up all these mirrors?
Saint-Ange: There is a great sensual excitement in seeing lewdness multiplied around oneself in an infinite variety of positions. All parts of the body are exposed simultaneously, and perceiving the splendid combination of images adds enormously to one's pleasure. (Philosophy in the Bedroom, Marquis de Sade)

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He was in a bedroom with a canopied bed on a dais. There were furs on the floor and vaporous white curtains at the windows and mirrors, more mirrors. He was glad that he could bear these repetitions of himself, infinite reproductions of a handsome man, to whom the mystery of the situation had given a glow of expectation and alertness he had never known.
There were mirrors all around them, repeating the image of the woman lying there, her dress fallen off her breasts, her beautiful naked feet hanging over the bed, her legs slightly parted under her dress. (Delta of Venus, Anaïs Nin)

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Each home elicited a specific way of looking at it. In Éric's apartment the bed was the nerve center in a kaleidoscopic arrangement of camera lenses, screens and mirrors. (The sexual life of Catherine M., Catherine Millet)

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...she was seated on this chair, naked, and they kept her either from crossing her legs or bringing them together.
And since the wall in front of her was covered from floor to ceiling with a large mirror which was unbroken by any shelving, she could see herself, thus open, each time her gaze strayed to the mirror. (The story of O, Pauline Réage)

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I had such a good image to go with these excerpts...but this is a respectable blog after all ;-)

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October 04, 2005

Competition

Mr. Valéry did not like to compete.

Of any competition he would say that from the first to the last, any place was a bad place to finish.

And he would wonder:

- To win a competition from others or to lose a competition for others; what's the point!?
- I prefer to be vice-last or sub-last - he said, ironically.

And explained:

- A competition is fair only if all competitors start on equal conditions. But such a situation does not exist, it's a known fact. And if all were equal, how could one be better than the other? In a competition people finish as they started - concluded Mr. Valéry.

And Mr. Valéry added:

- I would like to see a 100 meters race where each track would finish in a different point.

- Imagine four 100 meters tracks like this ... (and he would draw)

-... in this way - continued Mr. Valéry - when finishing the competition, each athlete would better understand what was waiting for him on the following day. Even if he had won the race he would end it alone, which is a small life lesson.

And after this somewhat ambiguous statement, Mr. Valéry continued his daily stroll, with his slightly crooked body, the hat stuck in his head, and alone, completely alone, as always.

"O sr. Valéry", Caminho, 2002

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Gonçalo M. Tavares is one of my favourite Portuguese contemporary writers. Highly exportabe but I doubt it if he has been published abroad.

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Portuguese version down here.

O senhor Valéry não gostava de competir.
Sobre qualquer competição ele dizia que do 1º ao último lugar todas as classificações eram más.
E interrogava-se:

- Ganhar aos outros para quê? Perder com os outros por quê?
- Prefiro ser vice-último ou sub-último - dizia ele, com ironia.

E explicava:

- Só existe justiça numa competição se todos partirem de condições iguais. Mas tal não existe, já se sabe. E se todos fossem iguais como poderia ficar um à frente do outro? Numa competição as pessoas acabam como começam - concluía o sr. Valéry.

E o senhor Valéry dizia ainda:

- O que eu gostava era de ver uma corrida de 100 metros onde cada pista terminasse num ponto diferente.

- Imaginem 4 pistas de 100 metros assim... (e ele desenhava)

-...deste modo - continuava o sr. Valéry - ao terminar a competição, cada atleta perceberia melhor o que estava à sua espera no dia seguinte. Mesmo que ganhasse acabava a corrida sozinho, o que é uma pequena lição de vida.

E depois desta afirmação algo ambígua, o senhor Valéry prosseguiu o seu passeio diário, com o corpo um pouco curvado, o chapéu enterrado na cabeça, e sozinho, completamente sozinho, como sempre.

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September 15, 2005

City Lights

City Lights Bookstore is dangerous. I wasn't past the first set of shelves and already felt like buying all the books I'd seen :-)

"Founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, City Lights is one of the few truly great independent bookstores in the United States, a place where booklovers from across the country and around the world come to browse, read, and just soak in the ambiance of alternative culture's only "Literary Landmark."

I went there with Ricardo and he got me interested in Murakami, Sebald, Mexican Wrestling (he bought a great book filled with the kitschiest photos ever) and Osman Lins. It was the favourite authors exchange moment of the holidays :-)

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September 12, 2005

Altered Murakami

(an attempt to do something I first saw at this wonderful, wonderful project: Altered Books)

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September 08, 2005

Time Travel

"If there was anything that grabbed me about the book, it was the underlying conceit, the notion of time travel itself. Yet Wells had somehow managed to get that wrong too, I felt. He sends his hero into the future, but the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that most of us would prefer to visit the past(...). If given the chance of going forward or backward, I for one wouldn't have hesitated. I would much rather have found myself among the no-longer-living than the unborn. With so many historical enigmas to be solved, how not feel curious about what the world had looked like in, say, the Athens of Socrates or the Virginia of Thomas Jefferson?(...)To see your mother and father on the day they met, for example, or to talk to your grandparents when they were young children. Would anyone turn down that opportunity in exchange for a glimpse of an unknown and incomprehensible future?"
Paul Auster, Oracle Night

This bit affected me particularly. Thinking about it, if I could travel in time, I had no intention of visiting the future whatsoever but it didn't even cross my mind to visit my ancestors. I actually had a cunning plan :-) to change the course of History of the entire western civilization which I can't really post about (XXX-rated, I'm afraid).

I also asked some friends where/when would they travel to, out of statistical (and personal) curiosity. I'm posting a very non-representative sample of answers - since in its composition there are only highly intelligent beings of the opposite sex - but a high quality one :-)

I'm developing a theory that links the answer to the person's personality...

"The Holistic Bourgeois" said:

"I would go nowhere before the 20th century. I can't imagine myself not driving a car or not having paper to wipe my ass :-)
I'd go to the roaring 20's, USA. It must have been a great time socially, economically and culturally; also it should be a lot of fun mingling with artists and gangsters."

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"The Cautious Curious" said:

"Although there's the temptation to confirm some 'truths' that we think we know about the past, if given a chance to travel in time, I'd risk it and travel to the uncertain future (like 500 years from now), even if inside an indestructible device that would protect me in case I decide not to "land" there. The reason? This is the supreme curiosity, what's there for us on the following day, the only land of chances that we have. The Past, we slowly discover it through History and that itself is a Time Machine that has improved with the years. Discovering the future is much more complicated. Ah immortality, immortality..."

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"The Ambitious Inventor" said:

"Maybe back to the time of Leonardo Da Vinci or Isaac Newon - the time when great ideas / inventions / discoveries were being made. Today, revolutionary science is usually revolutionary to 10 super-experts in a corner, not the general public. Being the inventor of the parachute or discovering gravity - now that would be cool!"

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"The Lazy Laid-Back" said:

"Time Travel? What for? I like the Present. The Future is ours to build and the Past is of no interest to me. It's gone." - after which he makes me read out loud a passage from a book by Gonçalo M. Tavares about how there's no point in wanting to change the past since the connections between any two events are far too complex for us to understand. So destiny isn't really predetermined but we have no way to figure it out out either.
"Oh, wait. Maybe I would travel to the beginning of August 2005 so that I could go on holidays again."

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"The Hesitant Traveler" said:

"I'd like to meet Leonardo da Vinci because he was, probably, the most brilliant mind ever to have lived. I'd like to travel aboard the Niña with Columbus and the Espera with Cabral because, if it is great to travel, it must be unbelievable to travel on a (re)discovery expedition, and those were two of the greatest (re)discovery expeditions ever. But there were so many times and places to go, it's tough to choose... I just feel like traveling, so I went for the Discovery option... :-)))"

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"The Intensity Craver Cartographer" said:

"I'd like to travel back maybe 30,000 years into our past. What was the world really like then? Were we still cowering from beasts or starting to come into our own? During the Paleolithic, we were just starting to write on bones. The sky and stars and moon must have been like some strange fire lighting up the night sky. The howls of beasts a reminder that Death could come tomorrow and swiftly. That this very moment was a borrowed moment. The next day would bring on a new struggle, a new fight to survive. The depths of despair must have been deeper but the joys of the abbreviated life, I imagine, must have been euphoric."

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July 05, 2005

Moravagine

"I can understand your wanting to rest and get back to your books. Of course you need to think things over, you always needed time to think about a whole pile of things, to look, to see, to compare and record, to take notes on the thousand things you haven't had the chance to classify with your own mind. But why don't you leave that to the police archives? Haven't you got it through your mind that human thought is a thing of the past and that philosophy is worse than Bertillon's guide to harassed cops? You make me laugh with your metaphysical anguish, it’s just that you’re scared silly, frightened of life, of men of action, of action itself, of lack of order. But everything is disorder, dear boy. Vegetable, mineral and animal, all disorder, and so is the multitude of human races, the life of man, thought, history, wars, inventions, business and the arts, and all theories, passions and systems. It’s always been that way. Why are you trying to make something out of it? And what will you make? What are you looking for? There’s no truth. There’s only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction. Life." - Blaise Cendrars, Moravagine

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May 22, 2005

Rereading

"When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before" - Cliff Fadiman

Note to self: Ana Karenina.

A rereading list:
The razor's edge - Somerset Maugham

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May 17, 2005

Reading bliss

Buying and reading books about books is a very serious compulsive mania from which I suffer. Fortunately, this last time I found a little gem called "The library" by Zoran Zivkovic, a fantastic set of short stories which are in fact a bibliophile's delight:

"A cycle of six thematically linked stories, droll renditions of the nightmares ensuing upon misplaced, or (of course) excessive, bibliophilia. A writer encounters a website where all his possible future books are on display; a lonely man faces an infinite flow of hardback books through his mailbox; an ordinary library turns by night into an archive of souls; the Devil sets about raising standards of infernal literacy; one book houses all books; a connoisseur of hardcovers strives to expel a lone paperback from his collection."

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April 28, 2005

Through the Looking-Glass

"One CAN'T believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!" Lewis Carroll

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