What can I say?

I passed. It doesn't feel real, but I passed. And I passed. And now, what?
Wow, it doesn't feel like I passed yet, seriously, I think I still need to study.

Tomorrow is the day

So it's about time for me to stop learning new stuff, read over my notes quickly, and watch an episode of Chapelle Chow before going to sleep.

Cuando me paro a contemplar m'estado (mi estado)

Garcilaso de la Vega
SONETO I

Cuando me paro a contemplar mi’stado
y a ver los pasos por dó me han traído,
hallo, según por do anduve perdido,
que a mayor mal pudiera haber llegado;

mas cuando del camino’stó olvidado,
a tanto mal no sé por dó he venido;
sé que me acabo, y más he yo sentido
ver acabar comigo mi cuidado.

Yo acabaré, que me entregué sin arte
a quien sabrá perderme y acabarme
si quisiere, y aún sabrá querello;

que pues mi voluntad puede matarme,
la suya, que no es tanto de mi parte,
pudiendo, ¿qué hará sino hacello?



Lope de Vega
Rimas Sacras, Soneto I

Cuando me paro a contemplar mi estado
y a ver los pasos por donde he venido,
me espanto de que un hombre tan perdido
a conocer su error haya llegado.

Cuando miro los años que he pasado,
la divina razón puesta en olvido,
conozco que piedad del cielo ha sido
no haberme en tanto mal precipitado.

Entré por laberinto tan extraño,
fiando al débil hilo de la vida
el tarde conocido desengaño;

mas de tu luz mi escuridad vencida,
el monstruo muerto de mi ciego engaño,
vuelve a la patria la razón perdida.

Psychological Torture

At Guantanamo, they used Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Eminem, Mr. Dre, Britney Spears as torture, after tying up prisoners for days and not letting them sleep. Metallica's first response was that we'd tortured our parents for many years with the music, why'd it be any different for a prisoner in Guantanamo...which takes me back to suburban days of heavy metal Marshall half-stacks in the garage that could be heard 15 houses down the street and left all the pictures on the wall hanging crooked.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/agenda/tortura/silencio/elpepugen/20081215elpepiage_2/Tes

Columpio - Gerardo Diego

God, forever I couldn't figure out this poem, playing yes and no, and then I got it, suddenly, when I realized it was included in love poems...pulling off the petals of flowers, shes loves me, she loves me not...duH!
-and I just got that last image, harlequin birds, the petals of the flowers are like clownish fluttering birds (I think)

A caballo en el quicio del mundo
un soñador jugaba al sí y al no

Las lluvias de colores
emigraban al país de los amores



Bandadas de flores


Flores de sí


Flores de no

Cuchillos en el aire
que le rasgan las carnes
forman un puente


Sí


No

Cabalgaba el soñador
Pájaros arlequines


cantan el sí


cantan el no

Realism

-Focus on daily life rather than the large adventures
-Characters usually typical of specific social class, social and personal contemporary problems
-Appear to be objective (really? wit al dese crazy ass naratos n shi?)
-Present all sides, positive and negative, of characters
-Reproduce exterior and interior reality in order to show the life of the individual in relation to society and the environment
-Focus on psychological forces that shape person

Gen 1898
Critical of Spanish decay, acknowledgment of need for modernization and liberalization of Spain, and crisis of identity (what does it mean to be Spanish?)

I'm bored

Don Juan Tenorio

In contrast, an example of a romantic Spanish text would be this play by Zorrilla, in which Don Juan is saved by the love of Dona Ines after repenting for his actions, and also, the final scene/act is outside of logic and reason, as the statues to commemorate dead figures come to life (el comandador sp?) and they have a grotesque last dinner. As for the form, this is also reflected in the verse used in the play and the passage of time; in Si de las ninas, very little time passes. In DJ, 5 years pass as DJ is exiled and then returns home.
---However, it is questionable if he is really saved, it is an open ending. His repentance seems to be so last minute as to be only to save his own ass, a death-bed confession that seems to lack any sense of real apology. His acts throughout the play do not fit with his final words; is he just playing us and Dona Ines?


Romanticism: Imagination over reason, emotion over logic, intuition over science. Focus on individual

Enlightenment

In one sentence, according to me and my friend (encarta): Arguments sustained by Science and Reason (rational thought). Also during this time (1700s) neoclassicism was in style, 3 act plays Greek/Roman style, Moratin example of una obra ilustrada (AND DEFINITELY NOT ROMANTIC!!!). Literature that teaches as it entertains.
El no de las ninas...viejo verde who was to marry much younger woman, who is the emblem of the perfect woman (modest, quiet, virgin), but is in love with his younger nephew. Using reason, the viejo verde deduces that it is better to remove himself from the marriage contract and allow the two lovers to get married.

Golden Age poets

and their titles:
Lope de Vega -- "No se atreve a pintar su dama muy hermosa por no mentir que es mucho para poeta"

Spanish Transition Dates

1955 Readmitted into the United Nations
1970 Economic accord with EC
1973 Spanish Prime Minister Carrero Blanco assassinated in a car bomb attack; concurrently, a trial was set to start only 15 minutes earlier for 10 anti-Francoists
1975 Franco dies; successor Juan Carlos takes over government
1976 Adolfo Suarez takes over as PM, many dismayed by his Francoist links, first partial amnesties for political prisoners
1977 Amnesty Laws passed; PCE is legalized; Pactos de la Moncloa (PM’s palace)
1978 Constitution passed
1981 Failed Gen. Tejero Coup
1982 Joins NATO
1986 (Jan 1st) Joins EC

Garrote

This is one form of execution. Looks like a really bad way to go...
http://www.usmilitaryknives.com/Garrote.JPG

Collective Memory

Collective Memory: “consists of the memory that a community possesses of its own history, as well as the lessons and learning which it more or less consciously extracts from that memory. This variable includes both the substance of that memory (recall of specific historical events) as well as values associated with their evocation (historical lessons and learning), which are modified, very often, by the vicissitudes of the present.”

-Individual memory and collective memory coexist. Personal experiences cannot diverge from the official history to the extent of an inability to coexist, if political stability is desired. huh? I think I mumbled these words while writing them.

• “Effects of amnesia are necessarily heightened over time.”

A brief synopsis of the two sides and their fears. Victorious fear that a return to party politics, return of exiles, granting of political amnesty would lead to the same chaos, violence, anarchy of before, or that they would have a desire for revenge and demands for justice. On the flip side, Left feared that the Francoists wouldn't cede power so easily, especially with a powerful army at command, and that a coup would be imminent (which they weren't too far off the mark, although it was not a strong coup).

• “Memories, due to the very passing of time, cannot always be maintained by individuals as personal experiences, which is why they end up being stored in social deposits (archives, monuments, museums), in numerous ‘sites of memory’”
-Is this a good reason for taking down Franco and Francoist monuments? As sites of memory, they shape "a tradition prior to the existence of individuals of subsequent historical periods". Which is also why I think Drunk History is such a great show.

Paloma Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia

Sleepy

If I had only one word to describe how I feel constantly this past week, it'd be this. WTF!?!?

?s I'm thinkin' on

-Why was the transition to democracy in Spain successful? How do we know it was successful (by what measurements)? What role did memory politics play?
-If I were to focus on two Golden Age poets and their poetic trajectory during their years, it'd probably be Garcilaso and Quevedo? What is that trajectory?
-Why did the testimonio have such influence and popularity in the 60s and died out by the 80s? Should I even know or guess as to why?
-WTF does the historicity of texts and the textuality of history even mean?
-Does anyone read La ciudad ausente by Piglia, or is his only novel La respiracion artificial?
This, and many more questions, tbc...
Oh yeah, should the Giants/will the Giants sign CC Sabathia?

But I guess I'm really not back to work yet

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/digital-short-j-in-my-pants/866262/

Back to Work

It is now time for me to come back to work, and review, study, read, and focus for another week and a half before my oral. I had a few days off of lazying, eating, drinking, sleeping, and am now forced back into action. Thanks again to Mesro and Dena for the signs, the lunch afterwards with Nati and Chem Mike too, thanks for the good words Voncookie, Selene, Dreadlock Dan, Chang, and others, my parents (are you guys reading the blog yet?), Jgill for sticking by me and everyone else who I've forgotten or can't mention because then my cover is blown (Heavy Metal crew).
This means that once again my blog will be active. Not good, but active.

Phd Exam

Today is the day...

La Regenta

Ana Ozores, La Regenta - beautiful, thoughtful, fear of abandonment, object of sexual desire in the pueblo Vetusta, poet, educated, a wife to be sold to the highest bidder
don Alvaro Mesia, El Tenorio - jefe del partido liberal, politician, smooth-talker, good-looking, wants to seduce Ana Ozores, dresses fashionably like in Paris, speaks foreign languages
Her father - librepensandor, leaves others to raise Ana, example of lazy liberal who doesn't know what he's talking about but relies on the ignorance of others to ignore his unintelligible comments, lives abroad, Romantic (bans Ana from reading modern literature)
El Magistral, De Pas - corrupt, sly, spiritual advisor to Ana, has a telescope that he uses to look over his city, powerful, likes to climb shit
Her Husband, Victor - older, like a father to her
Voyeurism of the confessions; it's a jewel all the priests desire
Digressions galore
The way the canonigos talk, vulgar, sexual, dirty dirty filthy filthy; they hate mass and yawn, clearly anti-clerical portrayal of the lazy unholy ones
Blend of Erotic/Church (Obdulia walking around with that short skirt of hers)

Literature (and History) and GALDóS

Lukacs: “To illustrate moral issues, therefore, the novelist may invent plausible potentialities; this the historian cannot do.”
---Soldados de Salamina a clear example of this

Ribbans: “One should not look in a historical novel for a documentary contribution to historical knowledge.”
---Maybe, but then why do so many histories cite passages of Galdos novels?

Hayden White: If “what was at issue throughout the 19th century, in history as in both art and the social sciences, was the form that a genuinely ‘realistic representation of historical reality’ ought to take’, White claims that, for historians as well as novelists, there is no certain scientific or objective proof of superiority of one response over another.”
---Historical knowledge as a construction as much of the imagination as of thought and that its authority is no greater than the power of the historian to persuade his readers that his account is true.

“Brook Thomas comments ironically, ‘World History confirmed God’s will to have a higher state of civilization progressively emerge in Europe’.”

Menéndez Pelayo on Galdós: “Sin ser historiador de profesión, ha reunido el más copioso archive de documentos sobre la vida moral de España en el siglo XIX.”

In his first historical novel, Galdós sees a continual line between the 1812 Cádiz Constitution to the 1820-1823 ‘trienio constitucional’ and ‘la crisis actual’ of 1868-1870, when Prim was searching for a suitable constitutional monarch. Advocates to his liberal contemporaries caution, moderation and unity in order to avoid mistakes of predecessors.
---Prim was assassinated in 1870

3800 imaginary characters in his novels, about 6% recurring ones

In broad terms, he subscribed to the Hegelian or realist concept of history characteristic of the 19th century; seeks ‘the recorded past’ and participates in the ‘rage for a realistic apprehension of the world’ (Hayden White); like the tree metaphor.
---deviations in his obsession with the historia chica
---intrahistoria
---Aware of the precariousness of his information (gaps in narrative, retelling of stories different than his, holes in information)
---Role of chance in shaping history

Once he has returned to the episodios in 1898, no longer easy solutions to Spain’s problems; almost an esperpento, bloodbath, constant conflict, struggle to balance progress and stability

***General lessons to be learned:
Disgust at intrigue and capricious government, loathing of instinctive recourse to violence, distrust of heroic rhetoric and foreign adventures, apprehension about popular uprisings, ironic contempt for bureaucracy, despair at the neglect of education, concern for innocent victims (often women), approval of free and honest personal relations.
-critics claim that his historical perspective in certain areas, econ, working class, regionalism, are lacking
---La de Bringas is an essay on credit consumerism capitalism free market values and the Spanish crown's bankruptcy

Difference bt Episodios nacionales y novelas contemporaneas:
1) Galdos named them this way as such (and even packaged the episodios in yellow and red)
2) Practical working out of national problem, not philosophical-religious theorizing
3) Content dominated, not as interested in the form/style
4) Quantity of Historical knowledge necessary in episodios is greater
5) Titles of episodios refer to historical event, date or person; novelas, minus one exception, do not
6) A major historical development or figure is shown in action in every episodio
7) Lukács: “Necessary Anachronism”
8) Didactic purposes
9) Formal framework: 10 vol. Series unit, progressive sequence of time, prescribed quantitative limitations (?), 85000 words, 30 chapters
10) Narrative Structure: Autobiography, 3rd person, mixed technique
11) Time-scale: Episodios up to 60 years difference; Novelas 6 years
12) Free Indirect Discourse, and character contamination of narration (ideas and vocab enter into the narration)

Historian’s task is not futile: “it is complex, incomplete, and inexhaustible”

Since the future is predetermined in his novels, Galdós is trapped in a rigid deterministic pattern.

Takes particular trouble to construct characters who offer a broad spectrum of opinions from the contemporary scene, and possibilities of outcomes are explored before the expected one arrives. Open-mindedness and reader-response; I’d even say in España sin rey, if you didn’t know the history of Spain well, would you know who is chosen King? And would it matter? Are you more interested in the history outcome or the outcome between Fernanda, DJ and Céfora?
---Take España sin rey as an example; there is much dialogue, discussion and debate over who will be the next King of Spain: Carlos VII, a foreign king, Alfonso XII, etc…etc…we even get a close perspective of los carlistas and the main reason, at least in this narrative, for their failure to put Carlos in the throne (lack of $$$; put into a difficult situation with the constitution)

Galdós on episodios: “el género novelesco con base histórica”

Doña Perfecta (1876)
-First novela contemporánea, de la primera época
-which means: Clear-cut confrontation between two political attitudes representing traditional Catholic values and Modern liberalism; imaginary, provincial setting (Orbajosa) and an unspecified time of action (although it can be deduced rather easily)
- Moderate use of standard form of the traditional novel, the epistolary mode, as in the letters by Don Cayetano which conclude the novel

España sin rey (1908)
-Ribbans quotes the first page of this book as proof of the further justification of unrecorded or overlooked personal events –authentic or fictional—which form part of the totality of history
-Representation of la historia pequeña o la historia chica with the metaphor of the tree and its associations with steady organic growth to designate the fictional stories of obscure individuals
-Anonymous personal narrator
-Novel ends with murder of Céfora by Fernanda, guardia civil comes, theater dialogue with acotaciones: Ribbans calls it ‘pseudo-dramatic dialogue’
-Wayward traditionalist Tapia declares the Progressives would disappear without Prim

Prim not presented directly, but rather mentioned by characters in the episodio
-Most pressing complex problem facing Prim was the ? of succession
-Carlos VII el niño terso (smooth boy)
-This novel deals with the dangerous time, ‘la maldita Interinidad’, before the new choice for Monarch is made
-Prim’s murder anticipated
-Much of book centered on absurdist Carlist figure Don Wifredo de Romarete, Bailío de Nueve Villas and Caballero de San Juan, from Ultra-Traditionalist Vitoria, and reflects the naïve, anachronistic, optimistic claims of Carlist legitimacy. Identified with Don Quijote, idealistic integrity and sympathy as well as unpractical (amorous weapons of ’43); we see the Cortés through him; Dios en el Sinaí speech by Castelar, overwhelms and dazzles his opponents, including Wifredo, who is disillusioned by this and the love affair of DJ and Céfora, engages in drunken orgy, goes crazy, distorts Castelar’s speech while drunk
-Carolina embodies the flexible go with the flow position, at least whichever flow will coincide with your personal interests: she reminisces about her time as camarista for dona Francisca, and loses her property rights during the Revolution, but regains them when restored by Serrano’s gov, accepts Bourbon restoration of Alfonso XII.

Cánovas the leader of the alfonsinos and his powerful influence, behind the scenes, loss of revolutionary zeal and inexorable progress towards Restauración.
-“Esperamos, y esperando hacemos la Historia de España”

DJ Urries does not have much depth of character, due role as donjuan and political intriguer, when he betrays Fernanda he is betraying the unspoilt values of the country.

-Echegaray, using science vocab in his speeches, will win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1904; ‘lastima q no sea usted dramaturgo’



La de Bringas (1884)
-Narrator has an ironic role, unobtrusive but highly significant intervention (he becomes the one who divides and hands out all of the goods of the Royal family, in the final few pages no clear resolution but does tell us that Rosalía will take care of the family after they’ve left the Palacio Real)
-Example of historical incident which forms part of flow of narration and impinges on fictional characters, Los Bringases involved in the fall of Isabella II within the Palacio Real
-Also an example of resemblance bt a fictional character and an eminent historical figure: Bringas is consistently and ironically identified with the French economist and statesman Thiers
-Set toward the end of Isabella II’s reign, and her indiscriminate charitable instincts are used for a fictional purpose: serve as the last recourse for financial assistance for those in her service.
-When Rosalía has a new shawl, she tells her husband that it was generously given to her by Isabella II. She uses her generosity as a way to avoid consequences of her extravagance. When her financial despair has reached critical level, the Señora’s absence has a disastrous effect: she tells how usually Isabella II will help out her friends if you throw yourself at her feet and beg a little bit and cry.
-Milagros: cunning, insinuating, hypocritical, Rosalía’s role model
*-We come near to the queen is the dinner served to the poor after the traditional ceremony of washing their feet. A good example of Hayden White’s Emplotment!!! Viewed a distance from a distorted angle, gives Isabelita Bringas nightmares, seen through the eyes of the children, grotesque parody relieved by Isabelita, the royal part being played by her mother accompanied by Pez (who she cheats on her husband with); identification of Rosalía and Isabella II, each of them adulteresses.
-Galdós does not disguise his disgust for this travesty of charity: calls it ‘comedia palaciega’ that has nothing to do with the Evangelical. Spectators are noisy, poor women hardly eat anything as they are bewildered and shamed, food packed up to be later resold at boarding houses. Another example of unthinking charity. Farce
-Shadows of forthcoming upheaval are everywhere in evidence in La de Bringas
-Caballero’s immoral decision to take Amparo as his mistress and live with her in France a confirmation of the widespread moral and political disorder: “La revolución no tarda; vendrá el despojo de los ricos, el ateísmo, el amor libre.”
*The whole action of the novel, more or less, is confined to the Palacio Real, its own little city, metonymic fashion as a microcosm of Spanish society on the verge of Revolution.
-Thiers prominent in the revolutionary situation, the collapse of the 3rd Empire; Bringas is el ratoncito Pérez, obsession with hoarding recalls the classic miser is the reverse of the dynamics of capitalism; ‘dinero en manos muertas’
-Pez is the mechanism through which politics is explored for most part: is first neutral, makes sure not to upset Bringas with the inevitable coming of the Revolution, sympathizes with the expulsed generals of Unión Liberal
-Bringases rejoice at the forceful sign of government; bodily reaction to the Navy uprising; Bringas blames Prim for the revolution, and rejoices at a false rumor of his death (pseudo-prolepsis)
-Dona Candida says Queen only needs to show up in Madrid to squash the uprising
*-Consistent, meticulous use of historical detail not required; rather it offers the effects of the crumbling of a style of life, the end of a dynasty and a system, with 2 reactions presented: 1) Bringas’ apocalyptic conviction that all traditional values are irreparably lost, 2) Cynical, accommodating view of Rosalia and Pez, who are confident in facing the unknown, things won’t change that much, Pez nicely situated with revolutionary friends
-Surprisingly peaceful transfer of the building; although fearful of the revolutionaries, are meek and the new administrator (the narrator) is very accommodating to his friends
-Bly: La de Bringas is 1/4th historical novel and 3/4th socio-psychological novel
: “I think that it is not inappropriate to assert that the story of Rosalia and Francisco can be construed as an allegory, or a metaphor, on the decline and fall of the House of Bourbon.”

Reign of Isabella II 1843-1868
Daughter of Ferdinand VII and María Cristina. Father died when she was 3. Took throne. Ferdinand VII’s brother, Carlos V, and his supporters rose up in arms, first Carlista Wars. María Cristina abdicated in 1840. Espartero falls in ’43, Isabella 13 and declared Queen by Narvaez and O' Donnell.

Why was the Transition successful, Paul and Raul?

Paul Preston, a British expert on the Spanish transition, said one of its lessons was that ''the longer a dictatorship has lasted and the nastier it is the more likely it is that the opposition will relinquish its demands for revenge.'' He added, ''Any improvement is worth going for, and you get the kind of broad consensus that was the key in Spain.''

Raul Morodo, a Spanish politician and author, was more blunt. ''The key factor in the transition was fear, and fear produced the consensus,'' he said. Spaniards feared a return to the anarchic bloodletting of the civil war; they were determined not to let it happen again. King Juan Carlos feared the anti-monarchist sentiments among the newly legalized Socialists. The military feared a purge, and the left feared the military. By turning its back on old scores, and on its own blood-stained history, Spain achieved the transition.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DEED6143DF935A25757C0A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

Cadiz 1812

First bourgeoisie liberal revolution in Spain
2 aims:
1) Adopt reforms (influenced by French Revolution) that would undo the Antiguo Regimen
2) Institute Constitution to change political regimen

Including: freedom of press, individual freedoms and equality for all citizens under the law, economic freedom (free market), abolition of the Inquisition, Disamortization of Church goods, rejection of sole power in Monarch's hands, individual rights like education, liberty, property, a limited suffrage...

General Elio pronounces on behalf of Fernando VII in 1814, staunch absolutist supporter, Fernando undoes all of the reforms and Constitution of 1812.

Many in the military opt for liberalism, in 1820 another pronunciamiento, this time by General Riego, invokes the Constitution of 1812 and the trienio begins.

Split in liberals over whether or not to have strict interpretation of Constitution and the role of the Monarchy, division later is progresivos y moderados, which causes great instability.
-Liberals clearly anti-clerical, confrontation with the Church

French intervention in 1823 ends the liberal rule

AG II

Political ideal of the AG?
-Anarchism
Octavio Paz says, “el arte y la poesía de nuestro tiempo viven de modernidad y mueren por ella.” ?
-"Ya la modernidad con 2 siglos del movimiento q se ha convertido en tradición…se funde en la ruptura.”
-The agonic or self-destructive function of the AG

Another definition of the AG:
“joven literatura, nueva literatura, creacionismo, ultraísmo y ‘la pamplina’ (nonsense) del superrealismo, para concluir q el concepto, ‘demasiado móvil’, escapaba a toda definición, ‘quizá pq le empuja ese hondo instinto de la Historia q es, ante todo, voluntad de renovación.”

II. Principios de la Vanguarda

• Fascinación por la tecnología
• Arte ‘aristocrático’
• Alineación del artista de las masas
• Colectividad reducida/definida de artistas
• La novedad en arte
• Protagonismo de la imagen/visual
• Tendencia arcaizante
• Desfamiliarización de lo familiar
• La creación del objeto virtual
• Atención a las cosas triviales/cotidianas (“La pistola es el grifo de la muerte”)
• Radio transnacional
• La Velocidad
• Modernismo: o continuación de simbolismo, o un movimiento vanguardista en su momento
• ---El avión era una máquina de guerra en este momento (WWI, even in Civil War and WWII), los ases gran héroes de WWI

Historia de una escalera (1947)

Antonio Buero Vallejo (1916-2000)

• Written during the dictatorship, is usually the work he is most associated with
• Was imprisoned for years after the end of the Civil War, had been a medic on the Republican side, spent six years in jail, was sentenced to death, was out by 1946
• Did not go into exile, remained in Spain, utilized symbolism to criticize dictatorship (hence, the fame of Historia de una escalera)
---Put on the stage in 1949
• TRAGEDY
• Representation of deterioration and vejez (old age), important to contemplate this work within its context and situation
• Theater dominated by evasive tone, or works from past playwrights like Benavente
• Tragedy of the common man, doesn’t have to be ‘great or grand’ people
• In the same year Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman came out, saw convergences with his own work
• Outside Spanish borders, a new theater developing: “El existencialismo como actitud individual y la consideración del destino de los grupos menos afortunados de la sociedad.”
• Another contemporary work La familia de Pascual Duarte by Cela
• *** 2 key innovations:

1) la tragedia contemporánea, con personajes del aquí y ahora del vivir cotidiano del momento de las respectivas escrituras
2) La nueva formula del teatro histórico, entendido como revisión de nuestro más conflictivo pasado y como iluminador de las acciones presentes
• Social Realism; pueblo oprimido por las penurias económicas o las trabas individuales y sociales q soportan los menos afortunados
• How does the end affect the reader? More so than the actors?
-“Es difícil pensar que la vida va a cambiar para la joven generación q se promete un destino distinto del de sus padres…el texto…nos induce a una interpretación q frustra las esperanzas de los personajes q intervienen en el drama.”
• Over 30 years time in this obra
• We don’t see what happens out in the streets or the interior of the viviendas (Escenas omitidas)

Urbano: Proletario sindicalista q pretende la acción colectiva
Fernando: Individualismo insolidario

Acto 1: opens with cobrador de luz coming around to collect payment for light/electricity, Paca yells at him, one woman can’t pay and the more wealthy neighbor Don Manuel can, so he does. Cobrador de luz hates his job, is a symbol of the repressive economic forces against these people. Anticipation within the conversations of people of the love conflict between Elvira and Fernandito and Carminaor the violence of Urbano (who threatens throwing Cobrador down the stairs)
Escena III: development of the relationship bt Fernando y Carmina

Everything repeats itself. The same dialogues are repeated. The kids of Fernando and Carmina are replicas of themselves, Fernandito and Carmina, hija. Fernando’s kid smokes in the same casinillo that Fernando smoked in as a kid, and had the same crush on Carmina that his kid has on Carmina, hija. Fernandito has the same dreams and says the same thing about becoming a better person, taking her out of this dreadful place, becoming an engineer, same dreams, same hopes, we already know how this story ends, it’s the story of their parents.
Time: 30 years pass, and from textual references, we know it starts in 1917 and ends in 1947, contemporary time. Nothing changes during this 30 years, except for the people age and the owner of the building fakes making it nicer. Also, at the end of the 30 years new neighbors which represent the new money and higher class, oficinistas and businessmen, and who look down on their poorer neighbors; they want them to move out so they can take over their places and have bigger apartments. They are symbolic of modernization and industrialization, talk about once the poorer residents are kicked out they will have an elevator, and talk about new cars.
Time: 10 years passes like it’s nothing, like it’s a day. Feeling of stagnation, they have nothing to look forward to except DEATH. Obsession with death. We also find out at the beginning of each act who has died. Stagnation of the dictatorship, the years pass, the people age, and everything remains the same, there is no progress, no moving forward, no visible changes, hope is squashed, whether you decide to confront it yourself or in a group (Individualism vs. Syndicalism) represented by Fernando and Urbano, Dreamer vs. Obrero
Action: All of the action takes place offstage, except for the final confrontation between Urbano and Fernando and Elvira and Carmina. We know about people from conversations, it’s all chisme chisme.
Fractured love stories: Carmina loves Fernando and Fernando loves Carmina, but they do not end up together because Elvira, whose father had money $$$, seduces Fernando for her money $$$. Instead of getting out of the same vicious cycle, stuck in it even deeper.
Nostalgia: nostalgic for juventud, the innocence of their youth and dreams which are quickly crushed, they fight to keep the past alive but are defeated, and we get the image of little Manolín, Fernando’s independent kid, who has a birthday and wants pasteles, but his parents can’t afford to buy him some, and he hits on Trini who wants to give him money to buy pasteles and he acts tough smoking instead, same old story, repetition
End up the same: no matter if they take different paths, they all end up the same, miserable, poor, unhappy…Fernando and Urbano, dreamer and worker, individual and syndicalist, both end up repressed poor and living in the same building they grew up in on the 5th floor without an elevator. Trini and Rosa also end up the same, Trini is single and Rosa ends up alone after marrying womanizer, Trini prude and Rosa prostitutes herself to pay the bills…sad, it’s all very sad.
Pauses/Silences: Lots of pauses, silences, silence speaks and has meaning in this play, creates suspense but also reflects the mood of melancholy that permeates the play.

Fueros

Medieval rights granted to regional areas, typically in exchange for the recognition of the monarch but not complete integration into the kingdom. In Basque region, had these fueros and wanted to reconstitute them. Throughout the 19th century they were losing partial rights of autonomy and regaining them, but after the Fall of the First Republic and the constitutional monarchy, their fueros were abolished in 1876. The Second Republic passed an Estatuto de Autonomia in 1936, but Civil War limited it to the regions which were not under Nationalist control.
1876 The Abolition of the Basque fueros

The granting of autonomy, especially for Catalonia, was an ongoing struggle, and the Second Republic guaranteed many of the freedoms. and then they lost them during the negro bienio, the conservative reign of the CEDA and Gil Robles.



What did the Constitution of Cadiz 1812 actually promise?
Protection and Recognition of individual rights, equality of all under the law, right to property, education, freedom, press
Restricted Suffrage

Was a symbol, a flag of liberalism, against the absolutism of the monarchy, even though it was only actually used in 1812-1814, 1820-23 and briefly before the new Constitution of 1837.

Don't forget to mention somewhere the role of carlismo, especially against the liberals and the battles with the Army, as well as then moving into a powerful alliance with the military, the church and the falange in move to Civil War

Only a constitutional monarchy for Canovas could provide stability for Spain, after two projects in 1868 and la gloriosa fell: the democratic monarchy and the First Republic.

El sistema canovista.
La Constitución de 1876 y el turno de partidos.
La oposición al sistema.
Regionalismo y nacionalismo.

Regionalismo y nacionalismo.

A fines del siglo XIX, nacen en Cataluña y el País Vasco movimientos que cuestionan la existencia de una única nación española en España. El punto de partida de los argumentos nacionalistas consiste en afirmar que Cataluña y el País Vasco son naciones y que, por consecuencia, tienen derecho al autogobierno. Esta afirmación la basan en la existencia de unas realidades diferenciales: lengua, derechos históricos (fueros), cultura y costumbres propias. Estos movimientos tendrán planteamientos más o menos radicales: desde el autonomismo al independentismo o separatismo.

El nacionalismo catalán

Cataluña y los demás reinos de la Corona de Aragón habían perdido sus leyes y fueros particulares con los Decretos de Nueva Planta, tras la guerra de Sucesión.

Durante el siglo XIX, el siglo del nacionalismo en toda Europa, el sentimiento nacionalista se reavivó entre una burguesía que estaba protagonizando la revolución industrial. El regionalismo y el nacionalismo catalán se fue construyendo en varias etapas:

*

En la década de 1830, en pleno período romántico, se inicia la Renaixença, movimiento intelectual, literario y apolítico, basado en la recuperación de la lengua catalana.
*

En 1882, Valentí Almirall creó el Centre Catalá, organización política que reivindicaba la autonomía y denuncia el caciquismo de la España de la Restauración.
*

Enric Prat de la Riba fundó la Unió Catalanista (1891) de ideología conservadora y católica. Al año siguiente, esta organización aprueba las denominadas Bases de Manresa, programa en el que se reclama el autogobierno y una división de competencias entre el estado español y la autonomía catalana. Fuertemente nacionalista, la Unió Catalanista no tuvo planteamientos separatistas.
*

En 1901 nace la Lliga Regionalista con Francesc Cambó con principal dirigente y Prat de la Riba como ideólogo. Es un partido conservador, católico y burgués con dos objetivos principales:
o

Autonomía política para Cataluña dentro de España. La Lliga nace alejada de cualquier independentismo. Cambó llegó a participar en el gobierno de Madrid, pese a no conseguir ninguna reforma ante el cerrado centralismo de los gobiernos de la Restauración.
o

Defensa de los intereses económicos de los industriales catalanes. Defensa de una política comercial proteccionista.

El nacionalismo catalán se extendió esencialmente entre la burguesía y el campesinado. Mientras tanto, la clase obrera abrazó mayoritariamente el anarquismo.

El nacionalismo vasco

A lo largo del siglo XIX, las sucesivas Guerras Carlistas no supusieron sino derrotas para el Pueblo Vasco, tras las cuales se fueron eliminando paulatinamente los Fueros, en un complicado proceso que, iniciado por la Ley de 25 de octubre de 1839 de Reforma de los Fueros Vascos, culminó con la Ley de 21 de julio de 1876, que supuso la definitiva liquidación del ordenamiento foral.

A lo largo del siglo XIX, las sucesivas Guerras Carlistas no supusieron sino derrotas para el Pueblo Vasco, tras las cuales se fueron eliminando paulatinamente los Fueros, en un complicado proceso que, iniciado por la Ley de 25 de octubre de 1839 de Reforma de los Fueros Vascos, culminó con la Ley de 21 de julio de 1876, que supuso la definitiva liquidación del ordenamiento foral.
http://www.historiasiglo20.org/HE/11a-3.htm

Strategies

Take your time, relax, think clearly, deeply
Take five minutes to think through the question, make a brief outline of things to hit
Leave five/ten minutes at the end to look over the response, make sure it makes sense
Focus more on making a strong argument and then supporting it with examples, rather than giving a ton of examples without a strong link or narrative thread
Fueros n cortes
word

Spanish Civil War

Three movements or underlying problems that developed in the 19th and early 20th century that can be traced to contributing to the spark of the military uprising of 1936 and the Spanish Civil War are the failure of liberalism, the role of the Military and the peripheral/regional issue.
One of the elements of the Spanish liberal tradition was the failure to take root, and the lack of a successful liberal government would echo in the 20th century as the Second Republic floundered. The Spanish liberal tradition began in the years 1808-1814, while it was under attack from French invasion. As the Spanish fought off the Napoleonic invasion, the Spanish Cortés was relocated to Sevilla and then to Cádiz, where in 1812 it wrote what has become to be called the Constitution of 1812. It called for many liberal ideas and implementations, such as universal suffrage, disamortization of Church lands and freedom of religion. It failed to take root, and General Elío declared a pronunciamiento in 1814 that placed Fernando VII (El Rey Deseado) at the throne and allowed for the Constitution to be revoked. Liberals again took the civil power with the help of the Military in 1820, and for three years the ‘trienio’ again attempted to implement liberal ideas without success. Foreign intervention, once more coming in from their neighbors to the north, re-installed Fernando VII to the throne and thwarted liberal government. From 1834-1836 what was known as the Estatuto was briefly implemented and undone. Liberals were divided as to the form that the liberal state should take; some were monarchists, some were republicans, some were more self-interested, and there was also a division between the more established and the younger liberals. In addition, many of the populace were either indifferent to liberalism or unaware, as the high illiteracy rate and slow flow of information allowed certain powerful groups to control the production and dissemination of news and information. By 1868, General Prim and other generals declared another pronunciamiento which was to eventually lead to the First Republic. It was short-lived, and it’s failure was subsequently followed by 50 years of the Canovine system of ‘turno pacífico’, where the progressive and moderate parties would theoretically share power, every 5 years turning it over to the other side. They would manufacture votes through the cacique system and social reforms were kept to a minimal. After this system was finally dismantled in 1923, it was followed by Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship until 1930 (with the blessing of Alfonso XIII, which ironically was also to lead to his downfall and exile). By 1931, enough support from both conservative and liberal parties led to the creation of the Second Republic. The left was divided among many different groups, including the socialist PSOE, Partido Socialista de Obreros Españoles, the PCE, Partido Comunista de España, and anarchist groups who were opposed to any form of bourgeoisie state but welcomed the Republic as a change from the extremely repressive Canovine system and Primo de Rivera dictatorship. The many workers’ strikes and uprisings had been put down with violent reprisals, and the hope of the CNT and the anarchists was that the Second Republic would be less oppressive in its measures. They were to be disappointed though, as uprisings in 1933 in Casas Viejas and in 1934 in Austurias (symbolically these were key, although there were many other areas and strikes/uprisings) were handled with extreme violence and repression by the Republican government in the hands of the Left and the Right. After the 1934 Austurias uprising was squashed by the Conservative-led CEDA government, many anarchists realized that their best bet was a Leftist government, and after the split of 1933 had led to a conservative victory at the polls, the various distinct parties formed the Frente Popular and won what turned out to be an ephemeral victory in 1936.
What followed was much unrest from the conservative base, many of whom had decided that dismantling the Republic from the inside was not their best strategy. Instead, military planning which had begun much earlier was strengthened and after the death of Calvo Sotelo, Franco joined General Mola and many others for the military uprising of July 17th, 1936. Yet again, the military had become involved in the politics of Spain. It had a long history of involvement in politics, from General Elío’s pronunciamiento in 1814. Their disastrous losses against France and Britain, including the famous battle of Trafalgar in 1805, as well as the poor financial state of Spain at the turn of the century, contributed to an Army that was top-heavy, not modernized, and unhappy. There was also the beginning of the losses of the colonies, the disintegration of the Empire, which not only weakened Spain financially but militarily, as the losses mounted in vain attempts to secure the colonies and then the blame that was distributed for these losses. At first the Military sympathized with the liberals, as evidenced by their support and assistance with the removal of Fernando VII and the support of the trienio. They were so weak, however, that they could not repel French intervention in 1823. The military was consistently involved in the civilian politics and also seen as the best way to keep law and order. Any fears of unrest would be put down by the military, and the creation of the Guardia Civil by General Narváez was an important step in the use of military force and the existence of a military force that was fiercely loyal to the leaders of the government. Since the military had a history of intervention in politics, it was no surprise to see the Revolution of ’68 led by Generals, who removed Isabel and began the process of replacing her and the debates as to who would lead Spain and in what form of government. By 1873, King Amadeo had already abdicated after a 3 year reign, and the vacuum that was left was the First Republic. Once the turno pacífico was agreed upon after the First Republic fell, the military was a force that was to be relied upon by the government to keep strikers and revolutionary tensions at bay. However, the military was losing force as in 1898, Spain was at war with the United States and lost, resulting in the final dissolution of the Spanish Empire and the colonies of the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico. This military defeat left them humiliated and they took the blame, and it caused a need for rethinking the Spanish identity. Later wars in Morocco also put a strain on the ill-equipped, non-modernized and ill-trained Spanish Army. The division in the Army between those who served in Africa, los africanistas, and those who did not, los peninsularistas, helped cause problems as the system of promotion was debated. Should the promotions be based upon merit or years of service? In addition, compulsory military service was not so, as the rich could buy their way out of the military, which resulted in many of the poor having to pick up the slack. This added to the grumbling. With Spain suffering unexpected defeats in Morocco after already fighting there from 1909-1914, the Spanish public was outraged. The military was going to take the blame, the government was going to take the blame, there was going to be inquiries and responsibilities. This is one of the reasons that led to Alfonso XIII supporting the military takeover by Primo de Rivera, who was staunchly against Spain’s presence in Morocco, and would also help defray the responsibilities issue. Ironically, during his dictatorship, France and Spain united against native forces in Morocco and were victorious. The precedent had been set throughout the years: the Military guaranteed stability, or supposedly did so, it guaranteed law and order, and was a key player in civilian politics. If the unity of Spain was under threat, the Military had the right to intervene in the name of saving Spain, which is what the military uprising of 1936 claimed. The plans had been laid, and Calvo Sotelo’s murder (retribution for a previous murder) enraged enough people that the uprising was to move forward and Franco was convinced of its chances for success.
How did the peripheral/regional question fit in to the explosion of this crisis which was the Spanish Civil War? Due to Spain’s reliance on land and Agrarian production for most of its economy, there was a lack of industrialization compared to other parts of Europe. Where industrialization did take root was mainly in the north, in Vizcaya and Catalonia. Immigration from the countryside to the cities was tame, as the amount of jobs was not sufficient to support the influx of new workers. Many returned back to their rural towns and the strength of regional loyalties was high. One of the contentious issues between liberals had been this question: Do we want a government that will be centrally strong or a federal system with more autonomy for the disparate regions? In the late 1800s, a movement that first began as nostalgic quickly turned to contemporary issues in Catalonia as some of the anarchist workers as well as industrialists were looking at the need for expression of their difference. The Catalan industrialists felt that they paid a high percentage of the taxes but did not have sufficient representation in the centrally located government. Self-rule was an issue, but there was a conflict of interest for the industrialists in Catalonia, who wanted more autonomy but also wanted to insure control over their workers and their businesses. They feared a revolution, so their alliance with the anarchist workers was porous and easily stretched. Offered incentives and assurances of protection by Primo de Rivera, the Catalan bourgeoisie actually supported his ascension to power, but were quickly disappointed with his repressive moves and centralist beliefs. All sort of autonomy was removed; by the time the Second Republic had come to be, many in Catalonia decided their time was now and Lluís Companys and others formed the Esquerra party, which participated in the central government and was granted many autonomous rights, only to have those same rights stripped by the conservative bienio negro of ’33-’35. They too formed a part of the Left coalition in the Frente Popular, and Companys’ death became emblematic of the outcome for regional autonomy if Franco and the Nationalists were to be victorious…

Don't look back, something might be gaining on you

"Yo pensé que la Constitución había acabado con todo eso. No digo que haya que olvidar, sino que hay que mirar al futuro y que ha sido la Constitución de la concordia la que nos ha permitido avanzar juntos sin mirar al pasado y sin echarnos nada en cara", insistió.
---This reminds me of Sarah Palin's argument about global warming. Rather than focus or argue about the causes of global warming, we should focus on the solutions, look to the future and not dwell on the past...
Uh, how do you fix global warming if you don't look back and see what caused it?


Satchel Paige pitched at the age of 59 in the major leagues. How old was he when he threw his first pitch in the major leagues?

Zapatero: Olvidar 20-N

En su rueda de prensa con el primer ministro tunecino, Mohamed Ghannuchi, en La Moncloa, el presidente del Gobierno añadió que "lo mejor de todo es que hoy [aniversario de la muerte de Franco] la mayoría de los españoles ya no se acuerda de lo que representa el 20-N". "Fue el día en que murió el dictador Franco y eso es algo absolutamente marginal y testimonial".
What to remember, what to forget...this is getting confusing

Catholic Church

Cardenal Rouco, the archbishop of Madrid, declared yesterday that: "A veces es necesario saber olvidar." That was what I was referring to a few posts earlier when I said hypocrisy is funny, but I erased my original post. I wonder why the Catholic Church would like to forget the Civil War and the Dictatorship?

How do we know when we should forget and when we should remember?

Probably better to forget:
-Inquisition
-Crusades
-The Catholic Church supporting the Nationalists and Franco, christening their struggle as another Crusade
-Child Molestation charges
-Church cover-up of child molestations
-Our donations going to pay the legal bills and financial settlements from these child molestation cases
-Homosexual priests sleeping with each other and covering it up, using it as leverage to cover-up child molestation

A veces es necesario saber olvidar.

Sometimes I am really saddened to have been raised in the Catholic Church, which is so out of tune with reality, and to have been so involved in it (altar boy). There are certainly good things that the Church does, like charities, and there are good people that belong to the Church, but the hypocrisy and inability to live up to its teachings and reality and practicality and to treat people equally is shameful.

"La Ley de la Memoria Histórica no me parece necesaria", proclamó ayer el cardenal Antonio María Rouco, arzobispo de Madrid y presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal Española (CEE). Su tesis es que la generación que nació "cuando la Guerra Civil" [Rouco, en el año 1936] no debería "trasladar ese problema a otras generaciones".
---They've also obviously lost their ability to rationally argue too. I guess we should forget slavery than too. Don't want to pass on that legacy to the next generations...and WWII, that'd suck if we had to deal with the consequences of that war, and the Holocaust, forget, don't pass that shit on to your family members who were gassed and their bodies torched, and why keep on remembering the Armenian Holocaust either, because it doesn't affect the next generations of Armenians who had to flee their country and land or face death, how could have possibly affect them, just forget about it...

A veces es necesario saber olvidar
His argument is that reconciliation is needed, and the Ley de Memoria Historica only can cause violence, and violence isn't reconciliation, so it is wrong. So we need to reconcile by forgetting. Just like Jesus did...

Presidente Zapatero responds

"Si todos los ciudadanos han respetado que la Iglesia Católica haya hecho un número muy importante de canonizaciones de mártires, ¿por qué no debemos respetar, en ese espíritu de reconciliación, que familiares de víctimas de la Guerra Civil puedan saber dónde están enterrados sus seres queridos y puedan obtener la satisfacción de ese reconocimiento?", concluyó Zapatero. El Pais

Hypocrisy is funny

"El cardenal de Madrid es quien apadrina con mayor entusiasmo la masiva beatificación de católicos asesinados entre 1934 y 1938, los años en los que los obispos creen que se produjo la mayor persecución religiosa de la historia. El Vaticano ha beatificado o canonizado ya a 977 de esas víctimas y hace un mes anunció que hay en cartera otras 500 personas, del total de 10.000 que quiere elevar a los altares el episcopado español."
El Pais

---I don't think we should forget all of the people who were killed by the Republicans and anarchists and communists either...I'd also have to say that the greatest religious persecution in history probably came a few years after the Spanish Civil War...but how can you argue in one line that we should forget and then commemorate in the next breath?

Amor constante mas alla de la muerte

Cerrar podrá mis ojos la postrera
Sombra que me llevare el blanco día,
Y podrá desatar esta alma mía
Hora, a su afán ansioso lisonjera;

Mas no de esotra parte en la ribera
Dejará la memoria, en donde ardía:
Nadar sabe mi llama el agua fría,
Y perder el respeto a ley severa.

Alma, a quien todo un Dios prisión ha sido,
Venas, que humor a tanto fuego han dado,
Medulas, que han gloriosamente ardido,

Su cuerpo dejará, no su cuidado;
Serán ceniza, mas tendrá sentido;
Polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado.

Los de Abajo

Mariano Azuela (1916)

First Mexican Revolutionary novelist
Written in the middle of the fighting, which lasted until 1920
Based loosely on historical events and accuracies, and many of the characters are as well, although Demetrio Mecías is a super-hero combination of Villa and Azuela’s own commander at the time
Azuela was a medical doctor, made his money that way, and did self-exile for a time in El Paso USA after the fall of Madero?
Demetrio’s rise from fame in the pueblos to coronel, also signifies his insertion into the official national battle revolution
Luis Cervantes: medical student, was a federal until a few months prior, found revolutionary god and converted to revolution even though he’s a curro (outsider, higher class, ‘better’ Spanish, read and write, ideals)

Key moments: start of the novel when Demetrio’s dog is killed, wife is threatened, we are introduced to Demetrio by a third person who states that this is the residence of the famous Demetrio Mecías, who doesn’t retaliate (yet) and scares the intruders off, injustice which sets him and his wife off to separate paths, she to his father’s house and he on to fight and lead men, turns back and sees his house burning…

Luis Cervantes joins the revolutionaries, they are weary and since he was a federal, want to murder him immediately, sharp clash between languages, styles, education, ‘humanity’, he gains Demetrio’s good will after cleansing his bullet-wound (their first battle resulted in 500 down for federales, 2 for them, and Demetrio wounded). Begins his role as right-hand intellectual leader man for Demetrio

Cervantes’ talk with Demetrio and convincing him to join the national scene with Natera’s troops, Demetrio tells Cervantes why he started to fight (to avenge injury suffered at the hands of don Mónico) and Cervantes says no, moves from the specific personal individual to the abstract national fighting for the rights of the poor ideals of nation rising up of proletariat…What are we fighting for? A question that gets asked many times, first stumps Cervantes, later Demetrio…Who uses the metaphor of a rock thrown off a cliff and rolling down the mountain, once it gets going…

Decadence of Demetrio and his crew, after winning battles and Demetrio’s rank they party, drink, fight, battle between Demetrio’s girl Comila and La Pintada (revolucionaria) heats up, will culminate with La Pintada getting thrown out with her man’s approval…but we can already see the move towards a foreboding future, even though things look bright there are dark references, Demetrio thinks something is going to happen to him, feels it, goes by instincts rather than thought many times

Retribution on don Mónico, Demetrio burns down his house but does so without pillaging it, holds back his people, does it with more respect, but we are coming full circle as now the villagers who once loved and respected Demetrio have come to fear him and the revolutionaries, more corrupt and barbaric, once relied upon their help and now must force it, what are they fighting for, returns home to his wife in the 3rd part

Demetrio votes blindly for Villa side, lose, Cervantes in the 3rd part writes a letter from El Paso so he is self-exiled and once again looking out for himself, form is of a letter

Demetrio returns and sees his wife and boy, wife who in 2 years of fighting looks like she’s aged 10 or 20, son who is replica of Demetrio but does not recognize his father and cowers under his mother’s dress in fear of him, final scene in which they fight and die (except Demetrio) in the same place where their first victory took place, they’ve now taken the place of the federales los de abajo and only Demetrio remains standing behind a rock, aiming and firing his gun, circular, mythological, a historical event mythical time sacred
--- “Y al pie de una resquebrajadura enorme y suntuosa como portico de vieja cathedral, Demetrio Macías, con los ojos fijos para siempre sigue apuntando con el canon de su fusil…”

In second chapter we get the only insight into the mind of Demetrio, a short monologue as he flees to the mountains and thinks about how the federales will be on their trail, but since they don’t know the trails well and no one will help them, Demetrio and his gang will have an advantage, thinking of which caciques will be of use to him, already plotting in his mind how to go about this…

Demetrio only wants to get peace in order to return to his house, but Cervantes and others use these people for loftier ‘goals’

“¿Pos cuál causa peleamos nosotros?”

Demetrio a Cervantes (y no contesta) – “¿Por cuál causa defendemos nosotros?
---Cervantes había dicho justamente antes que defiende la misma causa q ellos

A la nueva lengua

--Boscán, tarde llegamos--?Hay posada?
--Llamad desde la posta, Garcilaso.
--¿Quién es? –Dos caballeros del Parnaso.
--No hay donde nocturnar palestra armada.
--No entiendo lo que dice la criada.
Madona, ¿qué decís? –Que afecten paso,
Que obstenta limbos el mentido ocaso
Y el sol despinge la porción rosada.
--¿Estás en ti, mujer? –Negóse al tino
El ambulante huésped--. ¡Que en tan poco
Tiempo tal lengua entre cristianos haya!
Boscán, perdido habemos el camino,
Preguntad por Castilla, que estoy loco,
O no habemos salido de Vizcaya.

Memory History Society

El catedrático de psiquiatría y académico de la Real Academia Española Carlos Castilla del Pino, que ha tratado a muchas víctimas de la Guerra Civil asegura: "Un país que no revisa su pasado es menos sano mentalmente. Lo sensato es recordar, que es tanto como evitar repetir errores en el futuro. No es verdad que recordar sea reabrir heridas. No he visto revanchismo. El odio muere, se extingue, pero la necesidad de ponerle nombre a los muertos, de honrarlos, no. Siempre llega un momento en que hay que ponerle fin a ese trauma interminable".

Testimonio Notes, Menchu

Testimonio (The Real Thing, Gugelberger)

• Canonization of the testimonio, a peripheral literature that arose on the margins of institutional power and whose ends were political change, ironically bringing about the institutionalization of its transgressive and counter-hegemonic qualities (from back of the book)
• “The issues of authenticity and salvationality, the poetics of solidarity…became critically investigated, and new social movements approached political reality differently. Furthermore, the acceptance of the icon of testimonio writing, Rigoberta Menchu’s narrative, into an expanded canon…numbed to a certain degree the counterdiscursivity of the genre. In short, a reconsideration is at hand.”
• John Beverly’s definition of testimonio: “By testimonio I mean a novel or novella-length narrative in book or pamphlet (that is, printed as opposed to acoustic) form, told in the first person by a narrator who is also a real protagonist or witness of the event he or she recounts, and whose unit of narration is usually a ‘life’ or a significant life experience. Testimonio may include, but is not subsumed under, any of the following categories, some of which are conventionally considered literature, others not: autobiography, autobiographical novel, oral history, memoir, confession, diary, interview, eyewitness report, life history, novela-testimonio, nonfiction novel, or ‘factographic literature’…The situation of narration in testimonio has to involve an urgency to communicate, a problem of repression, poverty, subalternity, imprisonment, struggle for survival and so on.”
1) Novel, short novel length
2) Written, printed form
3) First person narrator who also ‘real’ protagonist or witness to events recounted
4) Unit of narration is usually life or significant life experience
5) Not subsumed under any previously mentioned categories, although may include
6) Has to involve an urgency to communicate repression, poverty, subalternity, imprisonment, struggle for survival (distress)
• George Yúdice: “an authentic narrative, told by a witness who is moved to narrate by the urgency of a situation (war, oppression, revolution). Emphasizing popular, oral discourse, the witness portrays his or her own experience as an agent (rather than a representative) of a collective memory and identity. Truth is summoned in the cause of denouncing a present situation of exploitation and oppression or in exorcising and setting aright official history.”
• Others say “Testimonio remains undefined.”
Intersection of multiple roads:
-Oral literary
-authored/authoritarian discourse edited discourse (one or two authors?: is the text a product of Rigoberta Menchu or of her editor Elisabeth Burgos-Debray?)
-literature anthropology
-literature non-literature
-canon debate
-postmodernity postcoloniality
• Contradiction: “if we accept, that is, integrate, the outside work into the home of the canon, we violate the authenticity of the genre. Yet, if we do not integrate such genres, we are forced to continue policing the canon with the most conservative policies.


John Beverly’s article, The Margin at the Center
• Testimonio as new narrative genre coalesces in 1960s, further develops in close relation to movements for national liberation and generalized cultural radicalism
• Harlow: “Resistance literature”
• Roots of testimonio go way back
• Testimony: act of testifying or bearing witness in a legal or religious sense, connotation is important bc distinguishes testimony from simply recorded participant narrative (like oral history)
• “In testimonio…it is the intentionality of the narrator that is paramount.”
• “It is not, to begin with, fiction.” Pledge of honesty, as we are meant to experience both speaker situations events as real
• Concerned with problematic collective social situation, is representative of a social class or group
• Narrator speaks for, in name of community group, symbolic function of epic hero, without at the same time assuming his hierarchal and patriarchal status
• Another description: “A nonfictional, popular-democratic form of epic narrative.”
• “Implies a challenge to the loss of the authority of ORALITY in the context of processes of cultural modernization that privilege literacy and literature as norms of expression…represents the entry into literature of persons who would normally, in those societies where literature is a form of class privilege, be excluded from direct literary expression, who have had to be ‘represented’ by profession writers.” (difference bt Menchu telling her story and novel by Guatemalan novelist Miguel Angel Asturias)
• Author has been replaced by the function of the compiler (compilador) or activator (gestante); relief from the figure of the great writer
• “Testimonio gives voice in literature to a previously ‘voiceless’, anonymous, collective popular-democratic subject, the pueblo or ‘people’, but in such a way that the intellectual or professional, usually of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois background, is interpolated as being part of, and dependent on, the ‘people’ without at the same time losing his or her identity as an intellectual. In other words, testimonio is not a form of liberal guilt. It suggests as an appropriate ethical and political response more the possibility of solidarity than of charity.”
• If not expressing the real, what’s important is “a sensation of experiencing the real”… “the testimonio is ‘a trace of the real, of that history which is, as such, inexpressible.’”
• Linguistical shift from ‘I’ as affirmation of individual subject but in connection with a group or class situation marked by marginalization, oppression and struggle. If it loses this connection, it ceases to be testimonio and becomes autobiography.”
• “Testimonio…always signifies the need for a general social change in which the stability of the reader’s world must be brought into question.”
• Is an open work
• Skeptical note: “Literature, even where it is infused with a popular-democratic form and content, as in the case of testimonio, is not itself a popular-democratic cultural form, and…it is an open question as to whether it can ever be.”


Yúdice
• Performance of an act by the speaker – “The speaker does not speak for or represent a community but rather performs an act of identity-formation that is simultaneously personal and collective.”
• Contrasts this with professional writer who attempts to represent whole people…speaker for the voiceless, “there is less of a social and cultural imperative for concerned writers to heroically assume the grievances and demands of the oppressed, as in Pablo Neruda’s Alturas de Macchu Picchu” bc…the gap of consciousness and materiality “is bridged, thus providing the grounds for a universal disalienation and emancipation. In the case of testimonial writing, on the other hand, no claims are made for such a universal emancipation.” Rejects grand and master narratives
• An aesthetic and pragmatic act; the debate over the status of testimonio is important bc it indicates that a shift is taking place in the very notion of the literary
• “As regards literary production, testimonial writing provides a new means for popular sectors to wage their struggle for hegemony in the public sphere from which they were hitherto excluded or forced to represent stereotypes by the reigning elites.”
• Popular Weapons

The Real Thing
“Testimonio is both an art and a strategy of subaltern memory.”

• Testimonio as simply continuation of “the assumption, tied directly to the class interests of the creole elites and their own forms authorization, that literature and the literary intellectual are or could be adequate signifiers of the national?”
• “To celebrate the works of the oppressed…is to romanticize their suffering, to pretend that it is naturally creative, and to give it an esthetic status that is not shared or appreciated by those who actually endure the oppression.”
• “To my mind I, Rigoberta Menchú is the most interesting work of literature produced in Latin America in the last 15 years; but I would rather have it be a provocation in the academy, a radical otherness…than something smoothly integrated into a curriculum for ‘multicultural’ citizenship of an elite university. I would like…students at Stanford…to feel uncomfortable rather than virtuous when they read a text like I, Rigoberta Menchú…that the literature and the university are among the institutional practices that create and sustain subalternity.” – Rather than temporarily resolving our liberal guilt pangs, that this work causes an uncomfortable feeling, an alienation, in its elite readers, and a feeling that our own actions help to cause this situation
• “Counter-possibility of transculturation from below: in this case, for example, to worry less about how we appropriate Menchú, and to understand and appreciate more how she appropriates us for her purposes.” – Menchú uses us for her own purposes
• Questioning of historical veracity of Menchú’s having been able to witness her brother’s torture and death, based on others’ testimony (although no one questions the fact itself of his torture and murder by Guatemalan Army)
• Historical facts/truth vs. witnessing: the individual facts don’t matter as much as the discovery of knowledge, experience, its very happening, the evolution…otherwise we’re taking away their abilities to have their own voice, governed by their own notions of truth and representativity
• Performance of the subaltern?
-“Burgos’ description…of Menchú’s Indian clothing…probably tend to see this as an example of the self-interested benevolence of the hegemonic intellectual toward the subaltern.” Stoll or Burgos assume authorization to represent world for us
-Her outfit, not as proof of her indigenous authenticity subalternity, but: “It speaks rather to a kind of ‘performance’ transvestism on her part, her use of traditional Mayan women’s dress as a cultural signifier to define her own identity and her allegiance to the community she is fighting for (I am told by the Gautemalan writer Arturo Arias, who has worked with her, that Menchú prefers blue jeans and T-shirts outside the public eye).” – It is a Question of Agency
• Testimonio as a means rather than an end in itself
• “It is rather to act tactically in a way that she hopes and expects will advance the interests of the community and social groups and classes her testimonio represents: ‘poor’ Guatemalans.”
• Challenge to authority of the ‘great writer’ in Latin America who could speak for majority of Latin Americans, a new site of ‘discursive authority’

Magic Realism

IS "characterized by its visualizing capacity, that is, by its capacity to create (magical) meaning by seeing ordinary things in extraordinary ways." Zamora

Poeta en NY

Federico García Lorca’s Poeta en Nueva York combines a sharp, stinging social critique with an innovative aesthetic form in an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of socially committed art. Lorca traveled to New York from Spain and encountered firsthand the modern urban cosmopolitan city of his epoch, complete with skyscrapers, poor barrios and the muddy Hudson River, and underwent a feeling of personal alienation. The product to come out of this experience is this book of poems, which was published posthumously.
What are the formal innovations of this collection of poems? One is that many of the images do not appear to have a logical, intellectual connection. In “Vuelta de paseo”, among the images that appear are the following: “Con el árbol de muñones que no canta/y el niño con el blanco rostro de huevo.” How does the reader approach these two disparate and extraordinary combinations? It requires of the public a new way of reading, in which logical connections are superseded by illogical and irrational ones that suggest and provoke, but don’t tell. It is also a creation of new images by combining things that one wouldn’t normally consider, such as little animals with broken heads (“los animalitos de cabeza rota”). The structuring force is the syntax of the poem, and with work the reader can justify drawing certain logical conclusions. In this same poem, one of the recurring themes is mutilation and deformation; the tree stump, drowned butterfly in an inkwell, water with dry feet. There is also an important line in this poem which underlines the fragmented identity of the poetic yo. “Tropezando con mi rostro distinto de cada día./¡Asesinado por el cielo!” This line puts into doubt the unity of the subject, and there is discontinuity.
What are the targets of the social critiques? The impurity of this new world and the dehumanizing effects are one in particular. In “Grito hacia Roma Desde la torre del Chrysler Building”, the poetic yo directs his dismay at the Pope and the failure of the Catholic Church to respond to the dehumanization from industrialization and modernization. Christian symbols permeate the work and are profaned, with the result that the blind multitude (society) has no one to lead it. “Porque ya no hay quien reparta el pan y el vino,/ni quien cultive hierbas en la boca del muerto.” The sacraments are being forgone, humanity has become tainted and the Church does not respond (because it is just as tainted). The great ill is avarice; images abound of money, like “sus anillos y sus teléfonos de diamante.” Where is the Church? “Pero el hombre vestido de blanco/ignora el misterio de la espiga/…ignora que Cristo puede dar agua todavía,/ignora que la moneda quema el beso de prodigio/y da la sangre del cordero al pico idiota del faisán.” One of looking at these verses is that the man dressed in white is the Pope, the wheat is a promise for the future of the land, but Christ has been negated and greed has overcome. The end of the poem is a call to action to end the hypocrisy of a Church and a society that calls for peace and love, and then acts out of avarice and violence. The poet hasn’t given up on society and humanity evidenced by the belief that Christ can still give water. One could, however, argue if this is the Christian Jesus or the concept of a martyr.
A few solutions are offered by the prophetic poet. One is a society constructed for the benefit of all (Democratic). “Porque queremos el pan nuestro de cada día,/flor de aliso y perenne ternura desgranada,/porque queremos que se cumpla la voluntad de la Tierra/que da sus frutos para todos.” Lorca plays with the image of our bread, which can refer to the Eucharist and to real sustenance for the pueblo. The final verse makes it clear that the people, nosotros (including the reader in his equation), deserve what has been promised in Scripture and democracy: land which produces for all, not the select few. But how to invert this situation, and what is the role of the poet? The poems speak for themselves as social critiques, especially the more time the reader spends interacting with the verses, so the poet must describe the social ills. But Lorca envisions another more active role as the poet as martyr. In “Nueva York: Oficina y denuncia”, the poet denounces the described ills (lack of nature in the city, destruction of nature to sustain the city) and then questions what his role should be. “¿Qué voy a hacer? ¿Ordenar los paisajes?/¿Ordenar los amores que luego son fotografías,/que luego son pedazos de madera y bocanadas de sangre?” He denies a realist poetry that represents how it should be or is; rather, he denounces and offers up himself:

“No, no; yo denuncio.
Yo denuncio la conjura
De estas desiertas oficinas
Que no radian las agonias,
Que borran los programas de la selva,
Y me ofrezco a ser comido por las vacas estrujadas
Cuando sus gritos llenan el valle
Donde el Hudson se emborracha con aceite.”

Why or how can the poet be a martyr? I think Pablo Neruda’s experience as a committed communist and tragic death, or Lorca’s death at the beginning of the Civil War and subsequent appropriation as Republican martyr are only two of many examples that one could cite…
Loarca sympathizes with oppressed groups and foresees the time for their release from the shackles of this modern society; in this book the blacks are the group that does not fit into this modern world, and their music is a symbol of their discordance. “Rey de Harlem” can be read as an ode to the blacks.



“Vuelta de paseo” can be placed within the ultraísta category (how and why?)

Murphy: By not creating the illusion of completeness and naturalness that doesn’t exist in reality, he is challenging the notion of a complete perfect world, by doing that it is disrupting an artificial sense of reality. Form as critique.
-Deastheticized aesthetic art – you can have that is recognizable as art and it does not negate is link to reality and social critique
-Self-consciously divest itself of beautiful illusion projected art for art’s sake and also refusing to overstep its boundary of autonomy and become a think among things

Modernism embraces autonomy, art is art

By attacking realist conventions of representation, it’s already articulating a social critique. (associated with Bourgeoisie, conception of reality as whole and not aware there’s a camera there)
Breaking the illusion of this is how reality looked like
What is the structure of Luces de Bohemia?

Short Story vs. Novel

GGM:
Escribir una novela es pegar ladrillos. Escribir un cuento es vaciar en concreto.

El cuento es una flecha en el centro del blanco y la novela es cazar conejos.

El cuento parecer ser el género natural de la humanidad por su incorporación espontánea a la vida cotidiana.

Cortázar:
La historia, la arqueología, la biografía, coinciden en la misma terrible tarea: clavar la mariposa en el cartón.

Cortázar on Neruda:
En el principio fue la mujer; para nosotros, Eva precedió a Adán en mi Buenos Aires de los años treinta. Éramos muy jóvenes, la poesía nos había llegado bajo el signo imperial del simbolismo y del modernismo, Mallarmé y Rubén Darío, Rimbaud y Rainer María Rilke: la poesía era gnosis, revelación, apertura órfica, desdén de la realidad convencional, aristocracia, rechazando el lirismo fatigado y rancio de tanto bardo sudamericano. Jóvenes pumas ansiosos de morder en lo más hondo de una vida profunda y secreta, de espaldas a nuestras tierras, a nuestras voces, traidores inocentes y apasionados, cerrándose en cónclaves de café y de pensiones bohemias: entonces entró Eva hablando español desde un librito de bolsillo nacido en Chile, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada.

Cuando la guerra civil española lo lleva a escribir España en el corazón, Neruda ha dado el paso final que lo desplaza del escenario a los actores, de la tierra a los hombres; su definición política, que tanto malentendido innoble haría surgir (y pudrir) en América Latina, tiene la necesidad y la llaneza del cumplimiento amoroso, de la posesión en la entrega última; y es fácil advertir que el signo ha cambiado, que a la lenta, apasionada enumeración de los frutos terrestres por boca de un hombre solitario y melancólico, sucede ahora la insistente llamada a recobrar esos frutos jamás gozados o injustamente perdidos, la proposición de una poesía de combate lentamente forjada desde la palabra y desde la acción.

Cortázar, que fuera reprodu­cido en el Nº 132 de la revista Señales, de Buenos Aires: “Hace años que estoy convencida de que una de las ra­zones que más se oponen a una gran literatura argentina de ficción, es el falso lenguaje literario (sea realista y aun neorrealista, sea alambicadamente estetizante). Quiero decir que si bien no se trata de escribir como se habla en la Argentina, es necesario encontrar un lenguaje lite­rario que llegue por fin a tener la misma espontaneidad, el mismo derecho que nuestro hermoso, inteligente, rico y hasta deslumbrante estilo oral. Pocos, creo, se van acer­cando a ese lenguaje paralelo: pero ya son bastantes como para creer que, fatalmente, desembocaremos un día en esa admirable libertad que tienen los escritores franceses o ingleses de escribir como quien respira y sin caer por eso en una parodia del lenguaje de la calle o de la casa”.

More on Borges Cortázar

Cor¬tázar, que ha confesado reiteradamente su deuda inte¬lectual con Borges, pero que ha aclarado: “Si se trata de las invenciones y las intenciones de Borges, ando hace mucho lejos de él”, se diferencia sobre todo del autor de Ficciones en un matiz que puede ser decisivo: ambos tienen un fondo de lirismo, pero en tanto que Borges “es radicalmente escéptico pero cree en la be¬lleza de todas las teorías” (son palabras de Enrique Anderson Imbert), Cortázar es más bien esperanzado y reserva su escepticismo precisamente para las teorías. En su agnosticismo, Borges se evade hacia la belleza, mientras que Cortázar busca denodadamente su kibutz en los meandros de la realidad, en los recovecos del alma humana, en las fatigas de la conciencia. La ra¬yuela de Cortázar tiene, de todos modos, un cielo, mien¬tras que las fabulaciones de Borges sólo traman y re¬corren sus ruinas circulares. “La gran lección de Bor¬ges es su rigor, no su temática”, ha dicho Cortázar; pero siendo uno y otro escritores excepcionales, cabe anotar que mientras Borges emplea su rigor para hacer cada vez más irrespirable la atmósfera de sus laberin¬tos, Cortázar en cambio lo usa para calcular y recalcular dónde estará el pasaje o el intercesor o la salida que lleve de algún modo a ese kibutz prolijamente entre-soñado.

Latin Americanists, I need your help

So I've been struggling over this question, why did I put the books and authors on my LatAm list that I did, including Borges and Cortazar short stories and how they are different. And you know what, I can't figure out why or how I think they are different, what did Cortazar take away from reading Borges' stories like El jardin de los senderos q se bifurcan and Pierre Menard and Funes, and what did he do differently?
So here is my attempt at brainstorming; it's very scattered, but seriously, any comments or suggestions would be really helpful. Thanks.

Differences between Borges and Cortázar?
-What progression does Cortázar make, he moves from a more realist story-telling to a fantastical one, he makes us suspend disbelief and creates fantastic worlds where people become fish and fish become people, where motorcycle riders crash and wake up to their real life being hunted by Aztecs for human sacrifice, his works are more sensorial than Borges’, who relies more on metaphysics, philosophy, intertextuality, dialogues with literary works, the questioning of originality, a multiplicity of identities, the disintegration of the subject, highlighting the mediation of storytelling and narration, exploring and reworking nationalistic concepts of courage, betrayal, country, duels, minorities, always looking from the periphery, Argentine writer as writing from the periphery, interested in marginalized groups like Jews (Emma Zunz), Japanese (Se Bifurcan), Irish (Forma Espada), and historical moments (WWII, Irish rebellion against British rule) and canonical figures (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Schopenhour) but an undoing of them or questioning of them, displacement as many of his figures are out of their habitat, Irish mistaken for English living in Brazil Vincent Moon, Japanese spy on English boat spying for Germans, multiple identities like Borges himself with English blood, play with language, infinite games, time, infinite possibilities like ajedrez and the labrytine book of the spy’s ancestor in Senderos like to Bifurcan, translation, mocking of literary criticism’s penchant for lists, how reading informs a writer’s works, and Cortázar writes from Paris, the indepthment of the Argentine writer into the European culture, he is the displaced figure, out of body experiences in his literature, things have gone wrong,

What are the differences between Cortázar’s short stories and Borges’ short stories?
Cortázar avoids the literary intertextuality that Borges thrives upon, he does not reveal so directly the literary dialogues (if such dialogues exist) as Borges does, and he does not engage so explicitly in the dialogue with philosophical theories; his short stories that I have read engage in more subtle exploration of metaphysical concerns (death and earthly time and mythical time), whereas in Borges you have so much engagement with the reader, and Cortázar makes life difficult on the reader, they both make you think and do not let you just slide by without working,

Latin American concern, to be constructed by the other, and the struggle between the lure of Europe and the nation they leave behind, self-exiles or exiles of state, or non-exiles that don’t write enough about their own patria to please some public, Huidobro in Paris from 1916 and that influence on his poetics with creacionismo, Vallejo leaving Peru for Europe by 1923 never to return after feared more incarceration, Neruda and his travels as ambassador and forced exile and triumphant return only to have socialist Allende ousted by Pinochet, Mistral’s travels as ambassador, Borges’ travels (although staying in Argentina), Cortázar to France in ’51 as he was opposed to Peron, Marxists, Communists, Socialists, travels to USSR,

Cortázar – interior monologue, stream of consciousness, surrealism, fantasy,
Borges – dialogue, storytelling by characters in the short stories

Good Call, Von Cookie

And you reminded me of one that I'd forgotten which kinda goes with your Ortega quote.
Guillermo de Torre says una imagen es: “el protoplasma primordial, la substancia celular del nuevo organismo lírico…la dinamo motriz, suscitadora del circuito de sugerencias…el reactivo colorante de sus precipitados alquímicos…nuclealmente, el fijo coeficiente valorador de la ecuación poemática creacionista.”

Mas Guerra Civil

Albert Camus: "Fue en España donde los hombres aprendieron que es posible tener razón y aun así sufrir la derrota. Que la fuerza puede vencer al espíritu y que hay momentos en que el coraje no tiene recompensa. Esto es sin duda lo que explica por qué tantos hombres en el mundo consideran el drama español como su drama personal".

Deastheticized Autonomous Art

Aesthetic Preoccupation and Social Criticism:

Divests itself of Schein effect (appearance of curing social ills, catharsis, but is an illusory effect) but retains distance from the real...

Preoccupied with its own form and brings to bear criticism of society's conditions...

What does this look like?
-Lorca and Poeta en NY (poetic theorizing is more implicit, explicit denouncements of dehumanizing modernized society in urban NY)
-Alberti and sus angeles (alienation of the modern subject), the form itself devolves from controlled/traditional Becquer to complete free verse
-Tirano Banderas

In TB, in 3 days during the celebration of Dia de los Muertos, in the time of caudalismo and its tradition of Tyrants back in the Roman tradition, is an overtly hostile to the reader text, formally very complex and very controlled in its system like a swiss watch, in Valle-Inclan code

- - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
*-*
-
-
-
This scene in the middle is the fulcrum around which circles this story, it is the act in which the young boy dies, the young indigenous child who is eaten alive by wild pigs after he's left alone as the authorities have killed his father and taken away his mother
The system is a reflection too, so in the first scene of Act I and the final scene TB is in his tower

A few good quotes

Ortega y Gasset: "Vida es una cosa, poesía es otra...el poeta empieza donde el hombre acaba."

“Y a mi alborotado ruiseñor
Lo encerré en la jaula
Y oprimí el botón del ascensor.”
-Gerardo Diego

Lorca: “Tropezando con mi rostro distinto de cada día.” (Vuelta de paseo, Poeta NY)

Borges: “El yo es sólo una ancha denominación colectiva que abarca la pluralidad de todos los estados de conciencia.” (Manifiesto, ultraísmo)

Diario de un poeta recien casado

Within the larger trajectory of Juan Ramón Jiménez’s (JRJ) poetry, Diario de un poeta recién casado marks a significant shift from a modernist, ‘fin de siglo’ poetics to one that is outside of all tradition; as Javier Blasco states, “se sitúa con este libro fuera de toda tradición…en su momento, causó un desconcierto…fue y sigue siendo un libro adánico en muchos aspectos” (italics mine). Some of the novel aspects of this book include the rupture between prose and verse and the diversity in tonal registers (from pure lyricism to irony); it is written in free verse without opulent use of adjectives (a contrast with modernismo) in a metaphysical exploration of language that could be seen to rival Huidobro’s creacionismo. Blasco does not locate the intention to be one of novelty for novelty’s sake, but rather “el hacerse paso a paso de una conciencia, en un continuo preguntarse por la realidad profunda q hay detrás de las cosas” and a “nueva intuición generadora del poema”. JRJ moves from a stripping of down language to an encounter with modernity, machines, highly industrialized New York and irrational images that Lorca later picks up in Poeta en Nueva York. What coincide with this metaphysical and linguistic preoccupation are his travels; the catalyst for his social concern is the encounter with hyper-modernity in urban New York.

The structure of this book follows the path of JRJ’s travel, beginning in “Soledad” with el mar and the constant flow of its waves as a metaphor for the constant flow and dynamism of the poetic yo’s conscience. “En ti estás todo, mar, y sin embargo, ¡qué sin ti estás, qué solo,/qué lejos, siempre, de ti mismo!” This image reflects an out of body feeling and the distancing between an essential self and the knowing of the self. The verse, “tus olas van como mis pensamientos”, exemplifies the tides of thoughts in the conscience that lead to “un eterno conocerse,/mar, y desconocerse.” The first line of the final stanza of this brief poem sums up the struggle: “Eres tú, y no lo sabes”. It is beautiful in its simplicity, and yet the sentiment of self-alienation and solitude (evidenced in the title and final words, “mar solo”) reveals a feeling of anguish in the poetic yo. In terms of narrative, JRJ is crossing the sea to America and is embarking upon a trip of self-discovery. The second poem of this first section emphasizes the word nada and the burying of this word “como un cadáver de palabras/que se tendiera en su sepulcro/natural…¡Nada!.” Here JRJ transmits a feeling of emptiness of being, and the focus on the word speaks to the linguistic innovation and renovation that JRJ is engaging in. “Cielo” is an important poem in the transformational qualities of language and the word; the poem is directed at cielo and the poet’s tired eyes admit to having forgotten cielo (“sin nombre”) and its vague existence. But once he retrains and refocuses his gaze, things change. “Hoy te he mirado lentamente,/y te has ido elevando hasta tu nombre.” The sky has been transformed from a nebulous existence to an elevated one, contingent on its name. In the second section, we see how the importance of the name and the essence of the thing coincide as the poetic yo reaches América del este and encounters the sky. “Como tu nombre es otro,/cielo, y su sentimiento/no es mío, aún, aún no eres cielo.” The poet has to submit to a process of knowing and discovery to learn its name and essence. This makes me think of Huidobro’s suggestion that one should always write poetry in a foreign language.

From this adventure of self-discovery, the reader is suddenly shocked by a change in form (reportaje) and the plunge into modernity, complete with its earthly ties. It’s as if the poet has taken us from the interior self and the sky, and planted us directly into melancholic (and barren) Boston and New York. The only marker of location in “Túnel ciudadano” is actually in the description. “Boston, Hotel Somerset,/ 14 de marzo, tarde, después de un día cansado.” As a purely biographical note, this is how the poet must have felt upon finally arriving to America. After such a time on the sea and in isolation from most of humanity, to suddenly arrive in an urban city covered in soot and snow would be quite an epiphany. The dominating sensation in this report on the tunnel to humanity and the city is the color black: black snow, black dried-out trees, black skies (from the murderous smoke of the trains without end), black bridges, black tunnels. “Nada da la sensación de que en parte alguna…haya vida con pensamientos y sentimientos de colores, con sentidos corporales…Todo es confuso, difuso, monótono, seco, frío y sucio a un tiempo, negro y blanco, es decir, negro, sin hora ni contajio.” In other words, everything feels dead to the senses and to the mind. Monotony and ‘sin tregua’, which is mentioned earlier regarding the trains’ smoke emissions, are terms that relate to machinery’s ability to consistently reproduce the same event and the lack of humanity in such an action. We are much more limited from capably reproducing the same movement at the same rhythm; machines are not. Industrialization entails a certain degree of dehumanization.

The next step is on to New York in “Sueño en el tren…no en el lecho”, dreaming of the goodbye at the train station platform waving to someone, no one, ah yes: “era alguien que me esperaba en la estación y me abrazaba riendo, riendo, riendo, mujer primavera…” Spring has embraced our narrator and come along for the ride to the city. Here the contrast between city and nature is explicit. Here the move from calling the train a ‘caballo vencedor’ to ‘caballo negro’ demonstrates a problematizing of industrial advancement. Also, the colors of those saying goodbye, “los pañuelos blancos, los sombreros de paja, las sombrillas verdes, moradas, canelas…”, contrast with the arrival to the urban monotony and black which permeated the previous report. The poems that follow detail various ventures throughout the city and the experiences or thoughts of our narrator. In “Iglesias”, churches are compared to window shopping. “Pesadilla de olores” evokes the nightmarish bad smells walking through the poor barrios. “Es como si en un trust de males olores, todos estos pobres que aquí viven –chinos, irlandeses, judíos, negros--, juntasen en su sueño miserable sus pesadillas de hambre, harapo y desprecio, y ese sueño tomara vida y fuera verdugo de esta ciudad mejor.” What stands out is not only the sympathy towards the poor, oppressed groups or the image of their worst dreams being realized, but this last line about how the plight of the poor has become the albatross around the neck of ‘esta ciudad mejor’. In Poeta en Nueva York the denouncement of the city is rather complete, but here there is the belief that a better city lies beneath this pathetic exterior reality. The emphasis on dreams evokes another consciousness and sublevel reality. I don’t know how to interpret the woman’s role as primavera, except as her role as life-giver. “Fuego” is a comical interpretation on the abundance of fire escapes throughout New York, to the extreme that the narrator asks if this was the point of building New York, in order to save it from fire. Herein there is an incorporation of the conflicting tensions between an industrialization that suppresses nature and an attraction towards urban life. “La primavera asalta las escaleras de hierro…Yo quiero tener en mi casa la primavera, sin posibilidad de salida. ¡Prefiero quemarme vivo, os lo aseguro!” This dramatic declaration is followed by two succinct, bare poems in which the coming of la primavera is announced. “ ¿Sencillo?/ Las palabras/verdaderas;/lo justo para que ella, sonriendo/entre sus rosas puras de hoy,/lo comprenda./Con un azul, un blanco, un verde/--justos--,/se hace --¿no ves?—la primavera.” The hailing of the coming of the spring takes place in “¡Viva la primavera!, which is how this poem ends, with three times the declaration of spring. The battle between the machines and nature has been fought, and spring has broken through.

• “Deshora” and “La luna” are two examples of the irrational imagery approaching surrealism that Lorca employs in Poeta en NY.

• Important quote to remember, which details how JRJ was influential to varying paths of vanguardia: “Nacen dos corrientes fundamentales de poesía posterior: la q vengo llamando el hodiernismo poético q culminará en Cántico; y la q prepara la semántica irracional q culminará en Poeta en NY…, las realizaciones estéticas del 27 más opuestas y significativas de la literatura de los años de entreguerras” (Juan Manuel Rozas).

The Modern Liberal Concept of Spain was created during the Peninsular War of 1808-1814

So says Quiroga and Balfour

• “The invasion of Napoleonic troops mobilized an important sector of the population in the struggle against the French and triggered the liberal revolution. In 1810 the National Assembly convened in Cádiz and assumed national sovereignty in defence of a modern canon of Spain as a political community of citizens endowed with equal rights. In March 1812 the National Assembly approved a constitution that established the Spanish nation as sovereign and recognized Spain as a national, constitutional, parliamentarian and Catholic body. To justify abandoning the absolutist regime, Spanish liberalism sought to position itself within popular traditions. Liberals defined the national community in terms of a common history and culture rooted in the Middle Ages. Thus Aragon’s medieval parliaments and the Castilian Comuneros’ opposition to the rule of the Habsburgs were mobilized as historical landmarks for Spanish liberalism’s claim that it had ‘traditional’ origins. In turn, this contention of a popular and democratic past was meant to legitimize liberalism and the creation of new parcipatory institutions within a modern state. In other words, from its conception the liberal idea of Spain incorporated an important ‘organicist’ perception of the nation as a community shaped by history and culture, an idea that would eventually underlie the 1978 Constitution.”