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Monday, June 4th, 2012
Currently reading Nostromo on the subway to and from work, The Lives of Things and (very, very slowly) Manual de pintura y caligrafÃa* for weekend reading, and making plans to open up and read and write about Antigua vida mÃa as my contribution to the Spanish Lit Month which Richard of Caravana de recuerdos will with his various co-conspirators be hosting in July. Here is a snippet of reading experience from this weekend --
One could say that the chair about to topple is perfect. In what sense? "complete" certainly -- is the implication here that perfection is death?
Two books in hand on Sunday morning, Sunday morning, pleasant summer Sunday in South Orange, in the village where I live. The orderly torrent of yellow luxurious sunlight amazes me, soft on my skin like satin. I open up The lives of things and read about the Chair, about the bench beneath me, the allegory's still not crystal clear to me, I'm happy though to dig the plain, the superficial meaning of the words and phrases, marvel at the beauty of the key instead of trying it in its lock.
 *(And what, precisely, is the point (you will ask) of reading Saramago in Spanish translation, a novel which is available in English translation, in translation by Pontiero no less? Not sure. But I am having fun with it...)
posted evening of June 4th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, June third, 2012
Here is the utterly beguiling epigraph Saramago chose for his short stories:
If man is shaped by his environment, his environment must be made human.
It is from Chapter 6 of Marx and Engels' The Holy Family, a critique of the Young Hegelians which was their first collaborative effort. Saramago's method of carrying out this transformation of the environment, while I cannot imagine it to be just what Marx and Engels had in mind, is somehow exactly the right thing.
posted evening of June third, 2012: Respond
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 In Pontiero's translation, Saramago calls silence the "universal synonym, the omnivalent" -- a basis, a bottom layer to the intricate sediment of meaning which accretes as sounds are given voice and associated with their meanings. As these fluid meanings set and stick and harden, deepen, language diverges, attaining "a variety of words which never say the same thing, however much we might want them to. If they were to say the same thing, if they were to group together through affinity of structure and origin, then life would be much simpler, by means of successive" erosions of the sediment. Perhaps it is implicit here that this destructive simplification is/was a goal of Salazar*, the "poor wretch" sitting in the termite-eaten chair in its last moments as chair, but I may be reading this in.
 *And a million thanks to Pontiero's introduction for elucidating this supremely important detail -- when I was reading this story in Spanish last year, I could mostly understand and make sense of the words and sentences, but was unable absent this critical bit of backstory to put them together into anything like a meaningful whole. Wikipædia says, In 1968, Salazar suffered a brain hæmorrhage. Most sources maintain that it occurred when he fell from a chair in his summer house. In February 2009 though, there were anonymous witnesses who confessed, after some research about Salazar's best-kept secrets, that he had fallen in a bathtub instead of from a chair. Despite the injury, Salazar lived for a further two years; as he was expected to die shortly after his fall, President Américo Thomaz replaced him with Marcello Caetano. When Salazar unexpectedly recovered lucidity, his intimates did not tell him he had been deposed, instead allowing him to "rule" in privacy until his death in July 1970.
posted afternoon of June third, 2012: Respond
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2012
"Very well," had said the considerable personage to whom Charles Gould on his way out through San Francisco had lucidly exposed his point of view. "Let us suppose that the mining affairs of Sulaco are taken in hand. There would be in it: first, the house of Holroyd, which is all right; then, Mr. Charles Gould, a citizen of Costaguana, who is also all right; and, lastly, the Government of the Republic. So far this resembles the first start of the Atacama nitrate fields, where there was a financing house, a gentleman of the name of Edwards, and -- a Government; or rather, two Governments -- two South American Governments. And you know what came of it. War came of it; devastating and prolonged war came of it, Mr. Gould."
Somehow I had gotten in mind from The Secret History of Costaguana, that Nostromo held specific allegoric reference to the building of the Panama Canal. That does not seem to be quite right... Certainly the story of the Canal is a relevant line of thought for approaching this book; and the Atacama, too -- nitrate was of huge importance when Conrad was writing this.
posted evening of May 29th, 2012: Respond
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Monday, May 28th, 2012
 In his 7th chapter, "The Dethronement of Cronus" (full text of the book is here), Graves slips in a fun quick reference to Epimenides' paradox:
Some say that Poseidon was neither eaten nor disgorged, but that Rhea gave Cronus a foal to eat in his stead, and hid him among the horseherds. And the Cretans, who are liars, relate that Zeus is born every year in the same cave with flashing fire and a stream of blood; and that every year he dies and is reburied.
posted afternoon of May 28th, 2012: Respond
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Me and Sylvia spent the afternoon in Maplewood yesterday, we went down to [words] bookstore looking to add to her collection of Tintin books (she picked up The Seven Crystal Balls and, hence, will be back soon for Prisoners of the Sun) and came away with some unexpected but promising finds; and went over to the pizzeria to eat some ices and read. I found two books that just demanded for me to own them based on their mere existence -- it seems like there is no way for me to coexist in a world which contains the book The Adventures of Hergé without owning a copy of it; and similarly for the new Penguin edition of Graves' Greek Myths, with an introduction by Rick Riordan. (The bookshop has unaccountably categorized the latter as a "Graphic Novel" -- this worked out well as that was the section I was browsing in.)
We spent some time this morning reading Graves' take on The Gods of the Underworld, comparing the details to the stories she knows from Riordan's novels...
posted morning of May 28th, 2012: Respond
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Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
In foramine terræ habitabat hobbitus. Middle Earth Network News reports that Mark Walker's Latin translation of The Hobbit will be available this fall.
posted evening of May 22nd, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, May 20th, 2012
La culpa is (must be said first of all, and I am after all just starting out reading it) an amazing, wonderful book. I have two questions about the setting; I'm hoping someone reading my notes will be able to clue me in. César leaves Buenos Aires hitchhiking, bound for a Brazilian town on the coast, between Porto Alegre and Florianópolis; the route he takes is north to the Brazilian border, crossing into Uruguayana and then west to Porto Alegre. (This happens before page 1; the book starts with his crossing into Uruguayana.) Looking at a map it seems like it would be shorter to cut northeast through Uruguay; but I have no idea what the ramifications of this would be in terms of ease of travel or specifically of hitching a ride. I'm assuming the route he takes is the natural one but would love to get confirmation/explanation of that. (The historical period is probably of interest here; his trip takes place 16 years after the coup -- or rather, 16 years after his last trip there, which was a few years before the coup -- I assume this is referring to the 1976 coup, so the story must be set, at a guess, in 1988 or 89.) Also, I wonder how much language difficulty is to be expected for a Porteño hitchhiking in southern Brazil. Communication with all of the people he interacts with seems to be pretty trouble-free -- or any troubles communicating are not based on language barrier -- and the dialog is written in Spanish, but it has crossed my mind to wonder if they are speaking Spanish, Portuguese, or something in-between.
Further research on the hitchhiking route -- Google Maps® suggests as a route from Buenos Aires to Porto Alegre, heading north to Uruguayana (although crossing the river into Uruguay at Concordia), so I guess the coastal route has issues not immediately apparent, and/or does not actually save distance. If the roadways are the same now as they were at the time of the story, it looks like César traveled through Argentina keeping on Highway 14, then across Brazil on Highway 290.
posted afternoon of May 20th, 2012: Respond
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posted afternoon of May 20th, 2012: 2 responses
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Saturday, May 19th, 2012
Some really striking passages are popping up in this collection of Giuseppe Ungaretti's poetry. Sound, listening, singing, sirens,...
y el mar es ceniciento
tiembla dulce inquieto
como una paloma
Agua confusa
como el ruido de popa que escucho
en la sombra
del
sueño
Hay niebla que nos borra
Tal vez nace un rÃo por aquÃ
Escucho el canto de las sirenas
El sol roba la ciudad
No se ve más
Ni siquiera las tumbas resisten demasiado
Below the fold a stunning elegy. Who is the translator? Not credited in the linked file -- possibly it is Luis Muñoz, his is the only name I am finding as a translator for Ungaretti in a few tries via Google.
 (original and (similarly uncredited) English translation here) IN MEMORIA,Locvizza, 30 de setiembre de 1916
Se llamaba
Moammed Sceab
Descendiente
de emires de nómadas
suicida
porque no tenÃa más
Patria
Amó a Francia
y se cambió el nombre
Fue Marcel
pero no era francés
y ya no sabÃa
vivir
en la tienda de los suyos
donde se escucha la cantilena
del Corán
tomando un café
Y no sabÃa
soltar
el canto
de su abandono
Lo acompañé
junto a la dueña de la pensión
donde vivÃamos
en ParÃs
en el número 5 de la rue des Carmes
lánguida callejuela en bajada
Descansa
en el cementerio de Ivry
barrio que parece
siempre
en un dÃa
de
feria descompuesta
Y tal vez yo sea el único
que sabe todavÃa
que vivió
↻...done
posted afternoon of May 19th, 2012: Respond
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