Mike's enticing narrative about the backwoods writer's camp conjured memories of Dick Proenneke, who, if you have not heard of him, lived several years alone in the Alaskan wilderness of the Twin Lakes area. Proenneke was a true outdoorsman--he hand built his own cabin, grew and hunted his own food. He was a meticulous chronicler of his experiences which became a book and then a documentary both titled _Alone In the Wilderness_ (available for purchase on Amazon, PBS, and elsewhere). His life appears quite idyllic on film, but how he endured such solitude I cannot comprehend. You can get an idea of his experiences from this YouTube clip of _Alone..._. The voiceover is not Proenneke but he is the man appearing in the footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsfB6oJ55wM
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Something totally different...
Damian, fantastic painting. It calls for more serious commentary than I am prepared to come up with right now. As does Mike's account of the Santander Maritime Museum.
However, if you want to know what Tara and I are up to in our spare time, check this out. She made it and sent it to me.
However, if you want to know what Tara and I are up to in our spare time, check this out. She made it and sent it to me.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Santander Maritime Museum
Nice to see Damian on the site and moving the discussion backward chronologically. In honor of Damian’s recent sojourn in Santander (and his affinity for odd museums), I dug up this old email about the Museo Marítimo.
Thurs. Aug. 3, 2000
I have found in my wanderings a museum that surpasses in sheer weirdness even the crinkled, stuffed and preserved animals in the Monasterio de Santo Tomas in Avila. I´m referring to the Museo Maritimo de Santander.
I´ve been looking for this place for days, because I always love a good marine museum. I realized today that I had walked right by it a handful of times and never recognized it. This is not a museum that jumps out at you. It´s tucked under some trees near the waterfront, beyond the little marina, beyond the bulk of the town. It´s rather non-descript and announces itself with a small faded sign. You don´t wander in off the street to check it out. You kind of have to be looking for it. I found it after following the seawall past rows of fishermen (who have yet to catch anything of substance in my presence, by the way. I´m beginning to suspect that they´re just subsized by the tourist board to pose for visitors), down a little side street littered with the refuse of the previous night´s sexual activity and boom, I was there.
The main floor is rather boring. Displays and explanations on the history of shipbuilding in Santander will only take you so far. Some of the models were really cool, but most of it looked kind of thrown together. Walk downstairs, though, and you enter a wonderland of oddities. Vast quantities of local and non-local sea life float preserved in bottles of formaldehyde, some as big as aquariums. Sea snails, clams, mussels, worms, eels, a sardine (caught in 1918. For the life of me I could not understand why a sardine captured in 1918 merited preservation), sponges, jellyfish, two jars of dolphin fetuses and a whale fetus. It didn´t specify what kind of whale, but there it was, looking pale and ghostly, wondering why it only saw the light of day sealed in a jar. Reminds me of a teacher I knew in sixth grade who sponsored the elementary school science fair. She had a human fetus floating in a jar, cut in half lengthwise so you could see the development of organs and things. Every year she had one of her students do a booth with the fetus for the science fair.
Anyway, along with the floating exhibits there were quite a few mounted and stuffed fish some of which looked like models. A sturgeon definitely was not a model, nor were many of the more withered examples of the local fauna. The swordfish looked fake, though. Hanging overhead were the skeletons of half a dozen whales and whale relatives that had washed up on Santander shores over the years (or perhaps been taken alive). A massive skeleton of a baleen whale of some kind (perhaps a fin whale. The sign said it was a ballena comun: all I know is it was not a blue whale) hung next to a sperm whale. Nearby hung the skeletons of various dolphins and a killer whale. In back a few tanks exhibited live fish, but somehow these were not nearly as interesting as the dead ones.
Thurs. Aug. 3, 2000
I have found in my wanderings a museum that surpasses in sheer weirdness even the crinkled, stuffed and preserved animals in the Monasterio de Santo Tomas in Avila. I´m referring to the Museo Maritimo de Santander.
I´ve been looking for this place for days, because I always love a good marine museum. I realized today that I had walked right by it a handful of times and never recognized it. This is not a museum that jumps out at you. It´s tucked under some trees near the waterfront, beyond the little marina, beyond the bulk of the town. It´s rather non-descript and announces itself with a small faded sign. You don´t wander in off the street to check it out. You kind of have to be looking for it. I found it after following the seawall past rows of fishermen (who have yet to catch anything of substance in my presence, by the way. I´m beginning to suspect that they´re just subsized by the tourist board to pose for visitors), down a little side street littered with the refuse of the previous night´s sexual activity and boom, I was there.
The main floor is rather boring. Displays and explanations on the history of shipbuilding in Santander will only take you so far. Some of the models were really cool, but most of it looked kind of thrown together. Walk downstairs, though, and you enter a wonderland of oddities. Vast quantities of local and non-local sea life float preserved in bottles of formaldehyde, some as big as aquariums. Sea snails, clams, mussels, worms, eels, a sardine (caught in 1918. For the life of me I could not understand why a sardine captured in 1918 merited preservation), sponges, jellyfish, two jars of dolphin fetuses and a whale fetus. It didn´t specify what kind of whale, but there it was, looking pale and ghostly, wondering why it only saw the light of day sealed in a jar. Reminds me of a teacher I knew in sixth grade who sponsored the elementary school science fair. She had a human fetus floating in a jar, cut in half lengthwise so you could see the development of organs and things. Every year she had one of her students do a booth with the fetus for the science fair.
Anyway, along with the floating exhibits there were quite a few mounted and stuffed fish some of which looked like models. A sturgeon definitely was not a model, nor were many of the more withered examples of the local fauna. The swordfish looked fake, though. Hanging overhead were the skeletons of half a dozen whales and whale relatives that had washed up on Santander shores over the years (or perhaps been taken alive). A massive skeleton of a baleen whale of some kind (perhaps a fin whale. The sign said it was a ballena comun: all I know is it was not a blue whale) hung next to a sperm whale. Nearby hung the skeletons of various dolphins and a killer whale. In back a few tanks exhibited live fish, but somehow these were not nearly as interesting as the dead ones.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Holy Week in Seville, 1879
I recently visited San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor museum. Though originally intended to display works of art from France, the Legion of Honor now houses what was the fine art collection of Golden Gate Park's De Young Museum. I was surprised and fascinated to see this work by José Jiménez y Aranda, "Holy Week in Seville, 1879." This is a painted cuadro de costumbres if there ever was one. I am intrigued to find out more about JJyA.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Writer's Camp
Great report, Mike. I'll be saving my pennies for next year's sequel. If things go my way just maybe I'll meet up with ya'll in the Sierras next year.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Writing Camp
The first annual writing camp at Poso Cabin was a raging success.
Tuesday, July 22
Damian and I set out about 1 p.m. We crossed the Central Valley and stocked up with food in Porterville, before heading up to the cabin. Porterville, which has surprisingly hard to locate grocery stores, proclaims itself an All America City on every street sign, with banners proclaiming “100 Years of the Good Life.” Despite the charms of the All America City, we soldiered on toward the cabin, which is in Sequoia National Forest in the Sierra foothills about an hour southeast of Porterville.
As we climbed in elevation, the valley shifts to rolling grassland dotted with live oaks, a terrain very reminiscent of the train ride from Madrid to Escorial and Avila. Damian and I decided it would be perfect for raising Iberian pigs (the best jamón ibérico is raised on an exclusive diet of acorns, as you no doubt know). The road wound, and I found myself getting motion sick for the first time in years; hard to tell whether it was because I wasn’t driving, or because Damian was. As we transitioned from live oak to evergreens, a black tarantula crossed the road in front of us. An omen?
We arrived at the cabin at 7 p.m. We met up with Kent and had the first of four nightly campfires.
Wednesday, July 23
Reveille at 6:15, which we ignored. The cabin has two beds in the bedroom and a sofa bed in the main room. I took the sofa bed the first night, and it felt like I was sleeping on jagged rocks. None of us had slept well that first night, and it seemed that a little laziness was in order. We were up by 7, showered, breakfasted and working by 8 a.m.
The plan was to work for a couple hours, take a break, work some more, have lunch, work some more, then be done by 2 or 2:30, with the rest of the day for fishing.
Damian and I set out about 1 p.m. We crossed the Central Valley and stocked up with food in Porterville, before heading up to the cabin. Porterville, which has surprisingly hard to locate grocery stores, proclaims itself an All America City on every street sign, with banners proclaiming “100 Years of the Good Life.” Despite the charms of the All America City, we soldiered on toward the cabin, which is in Sequoia National Forest in the Sierra foothills about an hour southeast of Porterville.
As we climbed in elevation, the valley shifts to rolling grassland dotted with live oaks, a terrain very reminiscent of the train ride from Madrid to Escorial and Avila. Damian and I decided it would be perfect for raising Iberian pigs (the best jamón ibérico is raised on an exclusive diet of acorns, as you no doubt know). The road wound, and I found myself getting motion sick for the first time in years; hard to tell whether it was because I wasn’t driving, or because Damian was. As we transitioned from live oak to evergreens, a black tarantula crossed the road in front of us. An omen?
We arrived at the cabin at 7 p.m. We met up with Kent and had the first of four nightly campfires.
Wednesday, July 23
Reveille at 6:15, which we ignored. The cabin has two beds in the bedroom and a sofa bed in the main room. I took the sofa bed the first night, and it felt like I was sleeping on jagged rocks. None of us had slept well that first night, and it seemed that a little laziness was in order. We were up by 7, showered, breakfasted and working by 8 a.m.
The plan was to work for a couple hours, take a break, work some more, have lunch, work some more, then be done by 2 or 2:30, with the rest of the day for fishing.
It was a good plan; usually it’s hard to sustain writing for more than a few hours. I had two papers I was attempting to finish, though, and was convinced I could finish one of them if I just kept working, so when it came time to knock off for the day, I decided to keep going. As it got closer to evening, though, Kent was getting antsy about doing some fishing, so we walked down to the nearby creek to look around. Kent tried fishing the creek with his fly rod, declared himself disgusted and decided to drive to a spot up the road about 16 miles which he had seen on the map.
I finished the draft of my paper at about 7 p.m. that first day, then decided I had had enough. Kent returned, disappointed in the fishing up the road. We shooed some cattle away from the cabin, and stoked up the fire. I cooked dinner that night: pork chops and a sort of ersatz pisto manchego.
The Rest of the Trip
More work. We were all in a groove by this time, working heavily. Kent was absorbed in his work, and Damian was charging through the translation he’s working on at a rate of about 20 pages a day.
On the fishing front, I discovered that trout like sharp cheddar better than dry flies. We grilled the trout outdoors, and ate it with chorizo.
Good work, good food, good friends, roaring fire. What more could we ask for? We're definitely doing it again next year.
I finished the draft of my paper at about 7 p.m. that first day, then decided I had had enough. Kent returned, disappointed in the fishing up the road. We shooed some cattle away from the cabin, and stoked up the fire. I cooked dinner that night: pork chops and a sort of ersatz pisto manchego.
The Rest of the Trip
More work. We were all in a groove by this time, working heavily. Kent was absorbed in his work, and Damian was charging through the translation he’s working on at a rate of about 20 pages a day.
On the fishing front, I discovered that trout like sharp cheddar better than dry flies. We grilled the trout outdoors, and ate it with chorizo.
Good work, good food, good friends, roaring fire. What more could we ask for? We're definitely doing it again next year.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Not a mysoginst!
The violence in the poem is absolutely crucial since it cannot be separated from eroticism. The violent death and erotic feelings operate on the same plane in the primitive psychology of the lover. In nature there are many examples of one insect devouring another after sex.
Maybe the lover anticipates treason or the betrayal of his real lover and destroys her before pain and sacrifice become a reality. By making himself vulnerable, which we all must do if we are to love deeply, he also fears the rejection by his lover.
Maybe the lover is so guilt ridden that any erotic feelings which he has, which are perfectly natural, are accompanied by an awareness of sin, which is a construct. This produces a conflict between nature and culture. It seems that violence is the dialectical result from the drive for death and love. In all three cases, eroticism and death cannot be separated.
Maybe the lover anticipates treason or the betrayal of his real lover and destroys her before pain and sacrifice become a reality. By making himself vulnerable, which we all must do if we are to love deeply, he also fears the rejection by his lover.
Maybe the lover is so guilt ridden that any erotic feelings which he has, which are perfectly natural, are accompanied by an awareness of sin, which is a construct. This produces a conflict between nature and culture. It seems that violence is the dialectical result from the drive for death and love. In all three cases, eroticism and death cannot be separated.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Serial!!!
I once had a student who dressed all in black for Halloween, and affixed individual portion sized boxes of Fruit Loops and Rice Krispies to his clothing.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Cereal murderer?
Would that be someone who pulverizes his shredded wheat before adding milk and sugar?
Salinas misogynist?
I appreciate both Dave's and Mike's take on the poem, but what I don't get is why if he loves a woman who presumably has a body and a voice--in other words, a physical presence--does he feel the need to destroy everything individual about her in order to reach an ideal plane of purified eroticism in which she's not involved? It's the ominous note betraying the specific, perhaps compromising situation that makes me wonder about it all: your voice "ya iba a traicionarnos," so I had to silence it. Is he in a warehouse that some unfortunate policeman will come upon later, spattered with blood? Because that's what it sounds like. He sounds like a crazed cereal murderer.
Dark night of the soul
Apropos San Juan’s “Noche oscura,” I find it interesting to see how the phrase “dark night of the soul” has migrated into popular culture for all the wrong reasons. Wikipedia writes “It has become an expression used to describe a phase in a person's spiritual life, a metaphor for a certain loneliness and desolation.” “Dark night of the soul” is a cool phrase that seems to evoke existential despair. Hence, an interview with Christian Bale about the new Batman movie is titled … “Dark Knight of the Soul.”
But in my reading of San Juan’s poem, the dark night is not fearsome; certainly not desolate. The dark night is quiet, absent of distractions and thus enables mystic union. If the soul is lonely it is a necessary, even welcome loneliness. The house is quiet, the soul is "dichosa." How did this essentially positive, optimistic phrase become a metaphor for harrowing angst? Perhaps there’s something in San Juan’s lengthy treatise, which I guess I need to read carefully. Any thoughts?
But in my reading of San Juan’s poem, the dark night is not fearsome; certainly not desolate. The dark night is quiet, absent of distractions and thus enables mystic union. If the soul is lonely it is a necessary, even welcome loneliness. The house is quiet, the soul is "dichosa." How did this essentially positive, optimistic phrase become a metaphor for harrowing angst? Perhaps there’s something in San Juan’s lengthy treatise, which I guess I need to read carefully. Any thoughts?
Friday, July 18, 2008
Salinas
I like Dave's analysis.
My thoughts are kind of scattered at the moment, so bear with me. The poem is powerful in part because the violent imagery is the antithesis of what we would expect love poetry to sound like. He has to forcefully remove the presence of the beloved in order to reach a higher "spiritual" plane. In a way it's like San Juan de la Cruz's "Noche oscura;" the soul has to shake off all vestiges of the physical to reach a more pure union. That this is accomplished through the violent imagery makes it jarring, perhaps, but strangely beautful.
Presence, absence, and memory are a running theme in La voz a ti debida. It's very melancholy, but in a way, hopeful. The beloved is all the more present by her absence. (**Real life just intruded; Gabe had a video game crisis and has derailed my train of thought, never to be recovered.)
My thoughts are kind of scattered at the moment, so bear with me. The poem is powerful in part because the violent imagery is the antithesis of what we would expect love poetry to sound like. He has to forcefully remove the presence of the beloved in order to reach a higher "spiritual" plane. In a way it's like San Juan de la Cruz's "Noche oscura;" the soul has to shake off all vestiges of the physical to reach a more pure union. That this is accomplished through the violent imagery makes it jarring, perhaps, but strangely beautful.
Presence, absence, and memory are a running theme in La voz a ti debida. It's very melancholy, but in a way, hopeful. The beloved is all the more present by her absence. (**Real life just intruded; Gabe had a video game crisis and has derailed my train of thought, never to be recovered.)
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Morality and other items
Lawyers don't care about morality. They're interested in proving guilt or no guilt. Whether the action was right or wrong is open to interpretation, right? I think the definition definitely overlaps and confuses law and morality.
This is a great poem. It's been a while since I've read Salinas. The poem reminds me a little of Neruda's poem Me gusta cuando callas. Both poems are structured around absence, a void, a lack, in order to find some absolute form of freedom, peace or love and to create desire out of this absence and endless search for the physical. Salinas' disarticulation of the shadow body is certainly more graphic and violent than Neruda's poem.
Thanks for the directions on including a link. I see the icon now.
I've been reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. To see the analysis unfold--to see how is mind works--is a pure delight. Totem and Taboo will be interesting to read in relation to religion, law, morality.
Mike: What is the status of Latin in Spanish Middle Age teaching and research? Does anyone learn it anymore?
Kent: How did you learn French? I'm realizing my French preparation over the years is not enough to deal with the surrealists. I've been on and off with French. I even took a course here. It's the pronunciation. The BBC has a pretty good web site for French lessons.
This is a great poem. It's been a while since I've read Salinas. The poem reminds me a little of Neruda's poem Me gusta cuando callas. Both poems are structured around absence, a void, a lack, in order to find some absolute form of freedom, peace or love and to create desire out of this absence and endless search for the physical. Salinas' disarticulation of the shadow body is certainly more graphic and violent than Neruda's poem.
Thanks for the directions on including a link. I see the icon now.
I've been reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. To see the analysis unfold--to see how is mind works--is a pure delight. Totem and Taboo will be interesting to read in relation to religion, law, morality.
Mike: What is the status of Latin in Spanish Middle Age teaching and research? Does anyone learn it anymore?
Kent: How did you learn French? I'm realizing my French preparation over the years is not enough to deal with the surrealists. I've been on and off with French. I even took a course here. It's the pronunciation. The BBC has a pretty good web site for French lessons.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Conferences
Do any of you belong to a society, association or attend conferences entirely dedicated to your fields or to the writers, themes, issues you work on? I'm trying to find a conference narrow enough to expect some useful feedback and to discuss similar ideas, arguments, etc with those working on the same time period, authors, themes, etc.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Morality and law (and Salinas)
"Almost all the categories that we use in moral and religious judgments are in some way contaminated by law: guilt, responsibility, innocence, judgment, pardon.... (sic)" (Giorgio Agamben Remnants of Auschwitz 18).
What do y'all think of this idea? It seems to me that it may be misframed--that morality and law are in some sense similar and overlapping sets of principles for social behavior, or that perhaps law is dependent on morality.
A couple of responses to some of your previous comments:
A) Mike, can you reproduce the obscene doodle you found and post it?
B) To include a link in a post, click the chain icon at the top of the post window. You have to position the text of your link between the first ">" and the second "<".
C) I love La voz a ti debida. It's one of the best books of love poetry I know. However, the masculine voice raises questions not addressed by an appeal to readerly empathy or understanding--the faculty that allows us to read texts from the past as if they were present-day. I'm referring to "Me estoy labrando tu sombra," which could be read as praise of the spirit of the beloved, transcending the physical, and as fear of sexuality and the need to quiet it before reaching a state of non-physical veneration like courtly love. But, it is also manifestly a handbook for torture in its violent mysogyny. Why must the poet violently dismantle the woman's body to achieve peace?
Me estoy labrando tu sombra.
La tengo ya sin los labios,
rojos y duros: ardían.
Te los habría besado
aún mucho más.
Luego te paro los brazos,
rápidos, largos, nerviosos.
Me ofrecían el camino
para que yo te estrechara.
Te arranco el color, el bulto.
Te mato el paso. Venías
derecha a mí. Lo que más
pena me ha dado, al callártela,
es tu voz. Densa, tan cálida,
más palpable que tu cuerpo.
Pero ya iba a traicionarnos.
Así
mi amor está libre, suelto,
con tu sombra descarnada.
Y puedo vivir en ti
sin temor
a lo que yo más deseo,
a tu beso, a tus abrazos.
Estar ya siempre pensando
en los labios, en la voz,
en el cuerpo,
que yo mismo te arranqué
para poder, ya sin ellos,
quererte.
¡Yo que los quería tanto!
Y estrechar sin fin, sin pena
—mientras se va inasidera,
con mi gran amor detrás,
la carne por su camino—
tu solo cuerpo posible:
tu dulce cuerpo pensado.
What do y'all think of this idea? It seems to me that it may be misframed--that morality and law are in some sense similar and overlapping sets of principles for social behavior, or that perhaps law is dependent on morality.
A couple of responses to some of your previous comments:
A) Mike, can you reproduce the obscene doodle you found and post it?
B) To include a link in a post, click the chain icon at the top of the post window. You have to position the text of your link between the first ">" and the second "<".
C) I love La voz a ti debida. It's one of the best books of love poetry I know. However, the masculine voice raises questions not addressed by an appeal to readerly empathy or understanding--the faculty that allows us to read texts from the past as if they were present-day. I'm referring to "Me estoy labrando tu sombra," which could be read as praise of the spirit of the beloved, transcending the physical, and as fear of sexuality and the need to quiet it before reaching a state of non-physical veneration like courtly love. But, it is also manifestly a handbook for torture in its violent mysogyny. Why must the poet violently dismantle the woman's body to achieve peace?
Me estoy labrando tu sombra.
La tengo ya sin los labios,
rojos y duros: ardían.
Te los habría besado
aún mucho más.
Luego te paro los brazos,
rápidos, largos, nerviosos.
Me ofrecían el camino
para que yo te estrechara.
Te arranco el color, el bulto.
Te mato el paso. Venías
derecha a mí. Lo que más
pena me ha dado, al callártela,
es tu voz. Densa, tan cálida,
más palpable que tu cuerpo.
Pero ya iba a traicionarnos.
Así
mi amor está libre, suelto,
con tu sombra descarnada.
Y puedo vivir en ti
sin temor
a lo que yo más deseo,
a tu beso, a tus abrazos.
Estar ya siempre pensando
en los labios, en la voz,
en el cuerpo,
que yo mismo te arranqué
para poder, ya sin ellos,
quererte.
¡Yo que los quería tanto!
Y estrechar sin fin, sin pena
—mientras se va inasidera,
con mi gran amor detrás,
la carne por su camino—
tu solo cuerpo posible:
tu dulce cuerpo pensado.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Moral
What I'm learning about Buñuel y otros is they take nothing for granted. Everything is questioned. Perhaps they went too far, but as Kent said the times merited such questioning of reason, meaning of art, truth, etc. Such questions are still vital today and can be seen in post modernism's attempts at the revision of truth itself.
How do I include a link in the body of a post?.
How do I include a link in the body of a post?.
Re: The things one finds in books
Why can't I ever find such things in books? The closest I ever came was an obscene doodle I found in a 14th-century manuscript in El Escorial (the Libro de la montería).
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The things one finds in books
This article from Saturday's El Mundo will certainly interest those bibliophiles among you. Is one of them a Magnum?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
"Moral"
I'm riding to Dave's defense with irrefutable proof that the surrealists in general (including Buñuel) were "moral". According to Miriam Webster, the word in the first instance means:
1 a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ethical "moral judgments" b: expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior "a moral poem" c: conforming to a standard of right behavior d: sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment "a moral obligation" e: capable of right and wrong action "a moral agent"
Keep in mind that Surrealism emerged directly from Dadaism. The main surrealists were dadaists-come-lately in the very early twenties before the 1924 founding of the movement, and they always revered certain people associated with Dadaism such as Tristan Tzara and Francois Picabia, conscientiously making space for them in the new movement. Dada was the performance of overpowering moral revulsion at the values (including bourgeois values of art and beauty) that had senselessly led to senseless slaughter in WWI. Remember that people like Appolinaire and even some of the surrealist themeselves had served in the medical corps. I see them as incredibly moral, and incredibly serious about their adolescent stunts, precisely because everything they did was driven by a conviction that if the human mind wasn't fixed--that is, if the patterns of thinking that led to WWI weren't eradicated through a sort of shock treatment provided by art--it all could be repeated. This is why so many fell away during WWII, and why it signaled the end of the movement: art had failed to stop the carnage a second time. In any case, the definition above doesn't suggest any particular right and wrong as necessary for 'moral' behavior.
1 a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ethical "moral judgments" b: expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior "a moral poem" c: conforming to a standard of right behavior d: sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment "a moral obligation" e: capable of right and wrong action "a moral agent"
Keep in mind that Surrealism emerged directly from Dadaism. The main surrealists were dadaists-come-lately in the very early twenties before the 1924 founding of the movement, and they always revered certain people associated with Dadaism such as Tristan Tzara and Francois Picabia, conscientiously making space for them in the new movement. Dada was the performance of overpowering moral revulsion at the values (including bourgeois values of art and beauty) that had senselessly led to senseless slaughter in WWI. Remember that people like Appolinaire and even some of the surrealist themeselves had served in the medical corps. I see them as incredibly moral, and incredibly serious about their adolescent stunts, precisely because everything they did was driven by a conviction that if the human mind wasn't fixed--that is, if the patterns of thinking that led to WWI weren't eradicated through a sort of shock treatment provided by art--it all could be repeated. This is why so many fell away during WWII, and why it signaled the end of the movement: art had failed to stop the carnage a second time. In any case, the definition above doesn't suggest any particular right and wrong as necessary for 'moral' behavior.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Examples
Simon of the Desert (1965), is based on La leyenda aurea, a hagiography from the XIII century. The chapter Simeon el Estilita, specifically. Bunuel was attracted to this saint who lived on a column in the middle of the desert. In fact, Bunuel loved the Middle Ages--nostalgically. The idea of putting characters in isolation and in extreme situations, like Robinson Crusoe or the game warden in La joven (you will like this movie), and then presenting moral challenges is what I like so far about his movies. I guess that's what I mean by a moral sense rather than describe Bunuel's morality. It's the way he challenges certain moral codes like the bourgeoisie, as you say, and religion. But there is more there.
I highly recommend La joven. Here, he's not taking any sides but trying to understand racism and Freudian issues. This is a good film to see because it repeats many of Bunuels images, ideas and fetishes: feet and legs, spiders, chickens, other animals, amour fou, priests, and it's impartial (the film is neither pro black or white), love/death, etc.
I highly recommend La joven. Here, he's not taking any sides but trying to understand racism and Freudian issues. This is a good film to see because it repeats many of Bunuels images, ideas and fetishes: feet and legs, spiders, chickens, other animals, amour fou, priests, and it's impartial (the film is neither pro black or white), love/death, etc.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Buñuel, redux
Dave: Can you give examples of Buñuel's moral sense? From what little I've seen of him (Andalusian Dog, part of The Golden Age, las Hurdes, Viridiana, part of Milky Way, and a long-ago film class viewing of Belle de jour), his moral sense seems to be driven by a cookie-cutter anti-clericalism and an all-consuming need to tweak the bourgeoisie.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Video
I've seen this video twice--once here and previously in the email. I'm intrigued. The connection with Dalí is interesting. What I take away from both viewings are the maternal images that seem to be staged on an altar. Perhaps a reworking of Abraham's sacrifice. There's a lot here. Maybe I can use it in class.
What I admire so far about surrealism via Buñuel are his unswerving moral convictions regardless of his contradictions and often simplistic and incorrect interpretations of Freud. He is imprecise in his terminology but he is not a scholar. He is able to uphold high morals without becoming dogmatic or doctrinaire, like the Marxists he despised.
What I admire so far about surrealism via Buñuel are his unswerving moral convictions regardless of his contradictions and often simplistic and incorrect interpretations of Freud. He is imprecise in his terminology but he is not a scholar. He is able to uphold high morals without becoming dogmatic or doctrinaire, like the Marxists he despised.
Spanish goth?
I'm posting here the video I recommended by email a couple of days ago. It has a Surrealism connection because Monica Naranjo was born in Figueres, birthplace of Dalí.
What's in a name?
I don't mind being classed as a "peninsularista" for the purposes of this blog. But if it's going to be "peninsularistas" shouldn't we by rights include professors of Portuguese, Basque, Galician, Valencian and Catalan literature as well?
What intrigues me most about Surrealism, like other incarnations of the Avant-Garde (though much exaggerated), is just how seriously they went about what they were doing. Two examples from L'Amour fou, Mad Love. The first has to do with the concept of hazard objectif or objective chance--that is, the calling forth from the world that which one needs by desire, a sort of reaction of the world to desire:
“A person will know how to proceed when, like the painter, he consents to reproduce, without any change, what an appropriate grid tells him in advance of his own acts. This grid exists. Every life contains these homogenous patterns of facts, whose surface is cracked or cloudy. Each person has only to stare at them fixedly in order to read his own future. Let him enter the whirlwind; let him retrace the events which have seemed to him fleeting and obscure among all others, which have torn him apart. There—if his questioning is worth it—all the logical principles, having been routed, will bring him the strength of that objective chance which makes a mockery of what would have seemed most probable. Everything humans might want to know is written upon this grid in phosphorescent letters, in letters of desire.” (Mad Love 86-7)
The second has to do with Breton's concept of convulsive beauty, which I'll let him explain:
“And it is there—right in the depths of the human crucible, and this paradoxical region where the fusion of two beings who have really chosen each other renders to all things the lost colors of the times of ancient suns, where however, loneliness rages also, in one of nature’s fantasies which, around the Alaskan craters, demands that under the ashes there remain snow—it is there that years ago I asked that we look for a new beauty, a beauty ‘envisaged exclusively to produce passion.’” (8)
“Such beauty cannot appear except from the poignant feeling of the thing revealed, the integral certainty produced by the emergence of a solution, which, by its very nature, could not come to us along ordinary logical paths.” (13)
“Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial, or it will not be.” (19)
What intrigues me most about Surrealism, like other incarnations of the Avant-Garde (though much exaggerated), is just how seriously they went about what they were doing. Two examples from L'Amour fou, Mad Love. The first has to do with the concept of hazard objectif or objective chance--that is, the calling forth from the world that which one needs by desire, a sort of reaction of the world to desire:
“A person will know how to proceed when, like the painter, he consents to reproduce, without any change, what an appropriate grid tells him in advance of his own acts. This grid exists. Every life contains these homogenous patterns of facts, whose surface is cracked or cloudy. Each person has only to stare at them fixedly in order to read his own future. Let him enter the whirlwind; let him retrace the events which have seemed to him fleeting and obscure among all others, which have torn him apart. There—if his questioning is worth it—all the logical principles, having been routed, will bring him the strength of that objective chance which makes a mockery of what would have seemed most probable. Everything humans might want to know is written upon this grid in phosphorescent letters, in letters of desire.” (Mad Love 86-7)
The second has to do with Breton's concept of convulsive beauty, which I'll let him explain:
“And it is there—right in the depths of the human crucible, and this paradoxical region where the fusion of two beings who have really chosen each other renders to all things the lost colors of the times of ancient suns, where however, loneliness rages also, in one of nature’s fantasies which, around the Alaskan craters, demands that under the ashes there remain snow—it is there that years ago I asked that we look for a new beauty, a beauty ‘envisaged exclusively to produce passion.’” (8)
“Such beauty cannot appear except from the poignant feeling of the thing revealed, the integral certainty produced by the emergence of a solution, which, by its very nature, could not come to us along ordinary logical paths.” (13)
“Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial, or it will not be.” (19)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Surrealism etc.
Surrealism is a new thing for me. I decided to teach a film course when we started tweaking the curriculum soon after I started working here. It is now time to prepare and perform. I decided to focus on one major film maker who happens to be at the same time a surrealist. I can also include theory, poetry, prose, Freud, etc. who all tie into Bunuel's cultural formation. Kent is far better prepared to tackle this question, especially for bibliography.
I missed out on the cafe comercial but ate at cafe gijon across from the national library. I wonder if the air is better there?
We should change the name of the blog. How about hispanistas?
I missed out on the cafe comercial but ate at cafe gijon across from the national library. I wonder if the air is better there?
We should change the name of the blog. How about hispanistas?
Theory of Surrealism
I am deeply involved in medieval matters at the moment, so I don't think I'm going to have time to absorb the bibliography on surrealism. Can you (Dave or Kent) tell me in a nutshell what is appealing to you about the theory of surrealism?
Madrid's air
From an article on air pollution in Spain we get this lovely quote: "Cada madrileño pierde entre dos y tres años de esperanza de vida por respirar aire contaminado."
I felt like I dropped at least 10 years every time I used the internet at the Cafe Comercial.
I felt like I dropped at least 10 years every time I used the internet at the Cafe Comercial.
Betancourt and FARC
This may be off topic, but I'm intrigued by this whole rescue of the hostages story out of Colombia. I just read this story from El Pais, and I can't help but think Ingrid Betancourt may be suffering from a little Stockholm Syndrome.
bunuel continued
I confess to being hopelessly bourgeois, but isn’t “making use of a sleeping woman” beyond the pale? I guess that was the whole point.
By the way, maybe we should change the name. It just occured to me that Kent isn't a peninsularist.
By the way, maybe we should change the name. It just occured to me that Kent isn't a peninsularist.
Buñuel
Many of B's. scenes come from personal memories and experiences so studying his life and reading interviews about his films are helpful. Take the scene in Viridiana where she is drugged by her Uncle so he can sleep with her. According to B., this scene originates in one of his juvenile obsessions where he dreams of drugging the Queen of Spain in order to sleep with her. He also commented much later in life that the idea of making use of a sleeping woman is a stimulating idea. He enjoyed dressing up in his mother's and father's clothing, often combining various articles of clothing from his mother's and father's wardrobes. The uncle attempts to try on the shoe of his dead wife and caresses her wedding dress in Viridiana. The name of the film, according to B., comes from the latin viridium, sitio verde. Is the poet always in the poem?
Monday, July 7, 2008
Golden Age
I'm teaching my Golden Age poetry seminar for the second time in the fall. I really enjoyed it last time, and had the satisfaction of having a few students tell me I had converted them from poetry haters to poetry lovers. That said, I must admit that I'm more comfortable teaching prose.
When it comes to poetry I'm a bit of a traditionalist. We talk of form, language, historical context. I have delved into the 20th century, though, from time to time. Last year in my graduate survey of peninsular literature (yes, we have one of those, to my dismay) we read all of La voz a ti debida, by Salinas, and I have to say that it was one of the more satisfying experiences I've had. I know some regard Salinas as overly intellectual and cold, but La voz a ti debida moves me like nothing else.
So, here's a question to begin our blog: what work of Spanish literature moves you like nothing else? Instead of replying in comments, which are a pain to read, reply in a new post.
By the way, we can always change this blog layout and the description. I threw this together fairly quickly just a few minutes ago.
When it comes to poetry I'm a bit of a traditionalist. We talk of form, language, historical context. I have delved into the 20th century, though, from time to time. Last year in my graduate survey of peninsular literature (yes, we have one of those, to my dismay) we read all of La voz a ti debida, by Salinas, and I have to say that it was one of the more satisfying experiences I've had. I know some regard Salinas as overly intellectual and cold, but La voz a ti debida moves me like nothing else.
So, here's a question to begin our blog: what work of Spanish literature moves you like nothing else? Instead of replying in comments, which are a pain to read, reply in a new post.
By the way, we can always change this blog layout and the description. I threw this together fairly quickly just a few minutes ago.
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