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Friday, November 12th, 2010
 At the forefront of Mexican literature stands Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who lived from 1651 to 1695; her birthday has been National Book Day in Mexico since 1979.
Dime vencedor Rapaz,
vencido de mi constancia,
¿Qué ha sacado tu arrogancia
de alterar mi firme paz?
Que aunque de vencer capaz
es la punta de tu arpón
el más duro corazón
¿qué importa el tiro violento,
si a pesar del vencimiento
queda viva la razón?
 Tell me Rapacious conqueror
conquered by my persistence --
Where has your arrogance gone,
how will you disrupt my solid grace?
Now even though you conquer
with the tip of your harpoon
the hardest heart
What matters this violent rage
if in spite of your conquest
reason lives on?
↻...done
posted evening of November 12th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Lead ions collide in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN,
generating temperatures a million times hotter than the heart of the sun
and producing a quark-gluon plasma.
posted morning of November 11th, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Your wallpaper search is over: this picture by Roland and Julia Seitre is all you will ever need for desktop background. (Select, of course, for it to be "tiled" rather than "stretched".)
(picture removed. You can view it at the Seitres' website. However do not download it for personal use without asking their permission.)
posted evening of November 10th, 2010: 3 responses
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Oh my God what a fantastic performance. Here are the Texas Tornados covering ? and the Mysterians:
Thanks for the link, Aaron!
posted evening of November 10th, 2010: Respond
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Doing a little more research about Rivera Letelier's book: I was apparently imprecise in calling it an homage to Parra's poem. It looks like both the poem and the book are based on the life of a real historical figure named Domingo Zárate Vega who preached imminent apocalypse in the Elqui Valley of the 1930's. (I am hedging a bit because I'm not finding much primary source material about Zárate Vega on the internets. But multiple pages about the book and about the poem make reference to their being based on real history. An article in the Patagonia Times states that Rivera Letelier "researched the actual existence of the Christ of Elqui for his book and includes a bibliography at the end to avoid accusations of plagiarism" -- I am not finding this bibliography in my copy, which is disappointing and confusing.) From the same Patagonia Times article, a beautiful anecdote about how Rivera Letelier, who grew up in a lower-class family and initally worked as a miner, came to his writing career:
Rivera Letelier began to write when he was 21 years old “because of hunger.†Listening to the radio with an empty stomach, he heard the announcement of a poetry competition whose award was a dinner in a luxurious hotel. He wrote a four-page love poem and won the meal.
I'd love to read that poem, and I wonder if Rivera Letelier has written an autobiography...
 Update: a little information about Zárate Vega in this post from Loruka, who lives in La Serena.
posted afternoon of November 10th, 2010: 1 response
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Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
Another Saramago epigraph from El libro de los consejos -- at the front of his Small Memories is the line, "Déjate llevar por el niño que fuiste/(roughly) Allow the child you were to carry you." The first time I've been able to find a lead suggesting affirmatively that these quotations are actual quotations from somewhere else, not invented by Saramago -- this line takes me to Juan Pedro Villa-Isaza's blog
Casi un objeto, which gives some context for it:
Mientras no alcances la verdad, no podrás corregirla. Pero si no la corriges, no la alcanzarás. Mientras tanto, no te resignes.*
Déjate llevar por el niño que fuiste.
As long as you do not know the truth, you will not be able to alter it. But if you do not alter it, you will never be able to reach it. Still, do not resign yourself. Allow the child you were to carry you.
 (Also, Googling for the original Portuguese rendering of this quote "Deixa-te levar pela criança que foste" leads me to a 2006 interview with Saramago, where he talks about his life and his writing process.) ..."llevar/levar" can also mean "to lead" -- indeed that appears to be the primary meaning in Portuguese; a better rendering of this line might be "Let yourself be led by the child you were." *... and now I am remembering that this line is the epigraph for The History of the Siege of Lisbon... and am back to thinking the whole thing is Saramago's invention.
posted evening of November 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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The Daily Mail publishes some breathtaking photos of the chrysina jewel scarab from Costa Rica. The photographer is Roland Seitre; at his web site you can find much more extraordinary nature photography.
 One other photo from Seitre's site: Baby rhino!
↻...done
posted evening of November 9th, 2010: Respond
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 I bought a book last night on the strength of its cover -- The magnificent cover photo (a still from Buñuel's Simon of the Desert) made me pick it up and read the back cover, made me buy the book and start reading... It is an homage to NÃcanor Parra's Sermones y prédicas del Cristo de Elqui, about a young man from Chile's Elqui Valley who discovers that he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Very dry humor and lovely prose.
Here is a bit of linguistic confusion I found entertaining -- early in the novel the narrator is talking about Christ's difficulties with his good-for-nothing apostles, who are always stuffing themselves, guzzling liquor and smoking -- he compares this with the Messiah's ascetic ways using a quick shift from third to first person, which is made more subtle and confusing by Spanish's imperfect tense. In Spanish, the first person singular imperfect and the third person singular imperfect are usually (maybe always?) the same. So when Letelier writes
Él, por su parte, que debÃa ser luz para el mundo, no fumaba ni bebÃa. Con un vaso de vino al almuerzo, como exhortaba en sus prédicas, era suficiente. Y apenas probaba la comida, porque entre mis pecados, que también los tengo, mis hermanos, nunca figuró la gula. Tanto asà que a veces, por el simple motivo de que se olvidaba de hacerlo, se pasaba dÃas completos sin ingerir alimentos.
The first sentence is obviously the narrator speaking, because its subject is "Él". The second sentence is still referring to Christ in the third person, speaking of "sus prédicas". The beginning of the third sentence looks like it is still doing so until we get to "mis pecados" and "los tengo", and realize Christ is speaking now. Then in the fourth sentence we are back to third person as evidenced by the use of "se" instead of "me" -- I found it surprising what a small proportion of the words in this passage distinguish between the two voices.
posted afternoon of November 9th, 2010: 3 responses
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Tuesday, November second, 2010
Some lovely, incomprehensible, classicist spam in my inbox:
Still call this fire was pleased with. Whereas before to sea is also. Numa had fallen ito italy. Strength of lycurgus and friendship with success. Comparison with less than any one another. Amongst the carthaginians were seen by flight. See and commanding the market place. Besides all greece to take care that Especially those who knew him yet greater. Divine power he took in office. Divine power and confidence in our hands. Found poetry!
posted morning of November second, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, October 31st, 2010
posted evening of October 31st, 2010: Respond
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