Lodidhapura is a city in the Cambodian jungle ruled by The Leper King. Rotundia is an island off the coast of Britain renowned for the good-naturedness of its inhabitants. The Root Beer River cuts through the Valley of Mo, southeast of the Land of Oz.
You won't find any of these or 1,200 other destinations in a conventional atlas. They are all the product of fiction writers' fancies (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edith Nesbit and L. Frank Baum, respectively). But they can all be found in a volume that has been one of my most treasured reference books for a quarter of a century.
"The Dictionary of Imaginary Places" was written by two literary scholars -- Argentinean Alberto Manguel and Italian Gianni Guadalupi, who encountered so much imaginary geography in their fiction reading and opera listening that they decided to collect them all between two covers.
Not only are there tongue-in-check, detailed descriptions of fictional cities, islands, countries and continents, there are detailed maps. Line drawings of places such as Wolf's Glenn in Bohemia (the setting for Weber's opera "Der Freischütz") and the Avenue of Palms in Pala ("The Island" by Aldous Huxley) add to the fanciful texture of the dictionary.
You can find the review here
Monday, March 20, 2006
Reading in Colombia
'We need to rebuild the culture of the book here in Colombia,' explains Manuel Jose Botero, the co-ordinator of academic and cultural activities at the Instituto Caro y Cuervo in Bogotá. The institute is undergoing something of a transformation which reflects the current attempts to transform Colombian society itself.
While Colombia has a strong literary heritage, particularly since 'El Boom' (the explosion in post-war South American literature), for most Colombians, books are a luxury. The nation that famously created magical realism through the pen of Gabriel García Márquez is not short on enthusiasm for literature. At a recent literary festival in Cartagena de Indias on Colombia's Caribbean coast, I saw Latin American heavyweights mobbed by fans who had travelled for up to 36 hours by bus to hear them read. Colombia also has a dynamic literary scene which includes an annual poetry festival in Medellín (notorious as the home town of drug baron Pablo Escobar) and a biennial theatre festival in the heart of Bogotá. But what it has lacked until very recently are libraries, and it is at this grassroots level that things have begun to change.
In 1998, a survey found that there were just 105 libraries in Bogotá - that's about one for every 67,000 people. And three quarters of those libraries had only one employee and were often opened, with limited numbers of books, as cynical vote winners by local officials. Only the BLAA (Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango), which contained 90 per cent of the books in the entire library system, had adequate staffing and equipment and was overcrowded as a result.
Books in Colombia are expensive, costing around US$30 each: well beyond the reach of the 64 per cent of Colombians living below the poverty line. Add to that the four decades of civil war that have ravaged the country and forced around two million refugees to flee their villages for the slums of Bogotá and you can see why access to books is beyond the reach of many.
You can find the full article here
While Colombia has a strong literary heritage, particularly since 'El Boom' (the explosion in post-war South American literature), for most Colombians, books are a luxury. The nation that famously created magical realism through the pen of Gabriel García Márquez is not short on enthusiasm for literature. At a recent literary festival in Cartagena de Indias on Colombia's Caribbean coast, I saw Latin American heavyweights mobbed by fans who had travelled for up to 36 hours by bus to hear them read. Colombia also has a dynamic literary scene which includes an annual poetry festival in Medellín (notorious as the home town of drug baron Pablo Escobar) and a biennial theatre festival in the heart of Bogotá. But what it has lacked until very recently are libraries, and it is at this grassroots level that things have begun to change.
In 1998, a survey found that there were just 105 libraries in Bogotá - that's about one for every 67,000 people. And three quarters of those libraries had only one employee and were often opened, with limited numbers of books, as cynical vote winners by local officials. Only the BLAA (Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango), which contained 90 per cent of the books in the entire library system, had adequate staffing and equipment and was overcrowded as a result.
Books in Colombia are expensive, costing around US$30 each: well beyond the reach of the 64 per cent of Colombians living below the poverty line. Add to that the four decades of civil war that have ravaged the country and forced around two million refugees to flee their villages for the slums of Bogotá and you can see why access to books is beyond the reach of many.
You can find the full article here
Carlos Montemayor in India
The Mexican writer Carlos Montemayor was in Mumbai recently, visiting India on an exchange of ideas mission, courtesy the Sahitya Kala Academy. Carlos Montemayor has written poems and prose but it is indigenous literature that he is most interested in - that of the ‘real peoples’ ("Why call them indigenous?" he argues. "Do you call the French indigenous people of France?"). (...)
A tale of the ancient peoples of Mexico - the Mayas, the Tzotziles, the Tzeltalesa and the Zapotecs. Of how they’ve all been lumped together as ‘Indians’. Christopher Columbus may have made a mistake two centuries ago. However many different tribes, distinct in their cultural identities who have never even set foot in Asia, are still called ‘Indians’.
Montemayor dwells on the wisdom in their voices - the poems and stories that recognise the spirit of the earth. Great literature that has, alas, gone unheard for years. Languages disparaged as dialects and literature as merely oral. Subject to a writing of history both unfair and inaccurate- history as recorded by the colonial victor.
Montemayor tells of a friend who went up in the mountains with a Zapotec. The Zapotec complained bitterly of folk tales fiddled with, like one of a Spaniard and a Zapotec competing with each other. Neither won according to the oral version. But the written (mis)records the Spaniard as the winner.
You can find the full article here
A tale of the ancient peoples of Mexico - the Mayas, the Tzotziles, the Tzeltalesa and the Zapotecs. Of how they’ve all been lumped together as ‘Indians’. Christopher Columbus may have made a mistake two centuries ago. However many different tribes, distinct in their cultural identities who have never even set foot in Asia, are still called ‘Indians’.
Montemayor dwells on the wisdom in their voices - the poems and stories that recognise the spirit of the earth. Great literature that has, alas, gone unheard for years. Languages disparaged as dialects and literature as merely oral. Subject to a writing of history both unfair and inaccurate- history as recorded by the colonial victor.
Montemayor tells of a friend who went up in the mountains with a Zapotec. The Zapotec complained bitterly of folk tales fiddled with, like one of a Spaniard and a Zapotec competing with each other. Neither won according to the oral version. But the written (mis)records the Spaniard as the winner.
You can find the full article here
Studies of Chicano detective fiction
The boom in Chicano detective fiction that began in the '90s shows no sign of stopping, as more and more Mexican American authors have turned to the genre. Although the trend has yet to produce a best seller, it has attracted high-profile writers - most notably, Rudolfo Anaya (best-known to Austinites as the author of "Bless Me, Ultima"), who recently completed a quartet of novels featuring the shaman sleuth Sonny Baca.
What Anaya's crime novels share with other Mexican American mysteries, such as those by Rolando Hinojosa, Lucha Corpi, Michael Nava and Manuel Ramos, is their protagonist's mix of "street" and indigenous knowledge, and their willingness to expose some of America's dirty little secrets - notably, racial oppression, government corruption and conflicts along the border.
A literary trend as significant as this deserves critical attention, and now it's finally getting it. Through some sort of odd coincidence, Ralph E. Rodriguez, a professor of American civilization at Brown, and Susan Baker Sotelo, a Spanish teacher in Tucson, Ariz., have recently published scholarly studies of the five novelists mentioned above.
Although Rodriguez and Sotelo's subjects are identical, their analyses aren't. Both authors claim that the novels they are writing about transcend "escapism" by providing insight into contemporary Chicano culture. But only Rodriguez formulates a coherent - if occasionally didactic - argument. Rodriguez is an academic - he earned his doctorate in English from UT- and at times he writes like one. But "Brown Gumshoes" never lets the reader lose sight of its central point: that detective fiction provides an ideal form in which to explore Mexican American identity in a post-Chicano movement era.
Rodriguez argues that the alienated stance of the hard-boiled detective parallels the outsider perspective of Chicanos, for whom the radical dream of a unified, separatist Aztlán nation has faded. "In a post-nationalist landscape . . . (Mexican Americans) can no longer find refuge in a mythologized Chicana/o homeland of solidarity and ethnic unity," he writes. Rodriguez makes a strong case that Mexican Americans are undergoing an identity crisis, and he provides plenty of evidence from the novels under investigation.
He's also able to construct a smart critique of some of the Chicano movement's oversights (such as its obliviousness to feminist issues) while remaining sympathetic to its ethnic-empowerment agenda. Rodriguez even takes on one of the movement's sacred vacas, the aforementioned Anaya, offering a rigidly political take on Anaya's mystical-mythological story lines, which he finds insufficiently Marxist.
You can find the full article here
What Anaya's crime novels share with other Mexican American mysteries, such as those by Rolando Hinojosa, Lucha Corpi, Michael Nava and Manuel Ramos, is their protagonist's mix of "street" and indigenous knowledge, and their willingness to expose some of America's dirty little secrets - notably, racial oppression, government corruption and conflicts along the border.
A literary trend as significant as this deserves critical attention, and now it's finally getting it. Through some sort of odd coincidence, Ralph E. Rodriguez, a professor of American civilization at Brown, and Susan Baker Sotelo, a Spanish teacher in Tucson, Ariz., have recently published scholarly studies of the five novelists mentioned above.
Although Rodriguez and Sotelo's subjects are identical, their analyses aren't. Both authors claim that the novels they are writing about transcend "escapism" by providing insight into contemporary Chicano culture. But only Rodriguez formulates a coherent - if occasionally didactic - argument. Rodriguez is an academic - he earned his doctorate in English from UT- and at times he writes like one. But "Brown Gumshoes" never lets the reader lose sight of its central point: that detective fiction provides an ideal form in which to explore Mexican American identity in a post-Chicano movement era.
Rodriguez argues that the alienated stance of the hard-boiled detective parallels the outsider perspective of Chicanos, for whom the radical dream of a unified, separatist Aztlán nation has faded. "In a post-nationalist landscape . . . (Mexican Americans) can no longer find refuge in a mythologized Chicana/o homeland of solidarity and ethnic unity," he writes. Rodriguez makes a strong case that Mexican Americans are undergoing an identity crisis, and he provides plenty of evidence from the novels under investigation.
He's also able to construct a smart critique of some of the Chicano movement's oversights (such as its obliviousness to feminist issues) while remaining sympathetic to its ethnic-empowerment agenda. Rodriguez even takes on one of the movement's sacred vacas, the aforementioned Anaya, offering a rigidly political take on Anaya's mystical-mythological story lines, which he finds insufficiently Marxist.
You can find the full article here
Ariel Dorfman (Chile)
A biography of Chilena writer Ariel Dorfman.
A late contributor to the Latin American literary "boom" of the 1960s and 70s, Dorfman, now 61, was hailed by Salman Rushdie as "one of the most important voices out of Latin America". Bilingual in Spanish and English (which he speaks with a New York upper east side accent), he writes in both.
Praising his "accessibility and greatness", critic John Berger said he "leads us, like Dante, into the pit of his country's experience". His art plumbed the state terror of the continent's "dirty wars" of the 1970s and 80s and their troubled aftermaths. His journalism appears in the US, Britain and Spain, and he uses his art for human rights education. Eugenio Ahumada, a Chilean human rights archivist since the coup, places Dorfman at the "centre of the struggle for memory".
His most famous and contentious work, Death and the Maiden, examined the compromise between justice and national reconciliation not only across democratising Latin America but also following apartheid and Soviet communism. In the aftermath of a South American military regime, Paulina kidnaps the doctor she believes tortured and raped her under blindfold to the strains of the Schubert string quartet. While her lawyer husband puts his faith in the "whitewash" of a truth commission, she craves justice but appears destined to coexist with her unpunished torturer.
The play premiered at London's Royal Court in 1991 and won a Laurence Olivier award. Mike Nichols directed the Broadway production while Roman Polanski made a film in 1994 - for which Dorfman co-wrote the screenplay - starring Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley.
For the playwright, the "juxtaposition between torturers and tortured, executioners and victims" is the story of the democratic transitions of the 1990s. His thriller dramatised dilemmas of revenge and reparation yet to be confronted. "I write when there's a void," he says, "but you end up being prophetic. By writing the imaginary, you write the future: what was not happening in Chile, South Africa, the Czech Republic, but was going to happen." Yet some were uneasy with the commercial success of a drama about rape and torture. Dorfman's recent career has been dogged by the charge that he has profited from others' experiences from the safety of exile.
A Chilean national, Dorfman sees himself as an expatriate, no longer in exile. Professor of literature and Latin American studies at Duke University, North Carolina, where he has taught since 1985, he lives with his wife Angélica amid pine forests just outside campus. He teaches two days a week in the spring, travelling for much of the year, and is increasingly involved in theatre and film.
Of his recent plays, Picasso Lost and Found, about the artist in Nazi-occupied Paris, was read in London in January by a cast including Rufus Sewell, Charles Dance, Thandie Newton and Juliet Stevenson, who played Paulina in the original west end production of Death and the Maiden. Purgatorio opens at the Arts Theatre in London in the autumn, while The Other Side has its world premiere in Japan next year.
Dorfman has described Pinochet as a shadow throughout his work, a "dark guide into the worst aspects of myself and others". He was "flabbergasted" in October 1998 when Pinochet, who had been forced to step aside after a 1988 plebiscite but remained chief of the armed forces and senator-for-life, was arrested in London, awaiting extradition to Spain on charges of torture and genocide. "I'd come to terms with the fact that he'd never be brought to trial, that we were never going to see justice done," he says.
In Exorcising Terror, The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet, published in March, Dorfman views Pinochet's "unending trial" as a victory, even though he escaped on the grounds of mental incapacity. The book, praised by Hugh O'Shaughnessy in the Observer as a "small bomb", dwells on Pinochet's betrayal of Allende. "I heard his voice before the coup and didn't recognise his evil," says Dorfman. "It haunts me."
You can find the full article here
A late contributor to the Latin American literary "boom" of the 1960s and 70s, Dorfman, now 61, was hailed by Salman Rushdie as "one of the most important voices out of Latin America". Bilingual in Spanish and English (which he speaks with a New York upper east side accent), he writes in both.
Praising his "accessibility and greatness", critic John Berger said he "leads us, like Dante, into the pit of his country's experience". His art plumbed the state terror of the continent's "dirty wars" of the 1970s and 80s and their troubled aftermaths. His journalism appears in the US, Britain and Spain, and he uses his art for human rights education. Eugenio Ahumada, a Chilean human rights archivist since the coup, places Dorfman at the "centre of the struggle for memory".
His most famous and contentious work, Death and the Maiden, examined the compromise between justice and national reconciliation not only across democratising Latin America but also following apartheid and Soviet communism. In the aftermath of a South American military regime, Paulina kidnaps the doctor she believes tortured and raped her under blindfold to the strains of the Schubert string quartet. While her lawyer husband puts his faith in the "whitewash" of a truth commission, she craves justice but appears destined to coexist with her unpunished torturer.
The play premiered at London's Royal Court in 1991 and won a Laurence Olivier award. Mike Nichols directed the Broadway production while Roman Polanski made a film in 1994 - for which Dorfman co-wrote the screenplay - starring Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley.
For the playwright, the "juxtaposition between torturers and tortured, executioners and victims" is the story of the democratic transitions of the 1990s. His thriller dramatised dilemmas of revenge and reparation yet to be confronted. "I write when there's a void," he says, "but you end up being prophetic. By writing the imaginary, you write the future: what was not happening in Chile, South Africa, the Czech Republic, but was going to happen." Yet some were uneasy with the commercial success of a drama about rape and torture. Dorfman's recent career has been dogged by the charge that he has profited from others' experiences from the safety of exile.
A Chilean national, Dorfman sees himself as an expatriate, no longer in exile. Professor of literature and Latin American studies at Duke University, North Carolina, where he has taught since 1985, he lives with his wife Angélica amid pine forests just outside campus. He teaches two days a week in the spring, travelling for much of the year, and is increasingly involved in theatre and film.
Of his recent plays, Picasso Lost and Found, about the artist in Nazi-occupied Paris, was read in London in January by a cast including Rufus Sewell, Charles Dance, Thandie Newton and Juliet Stevenson, who played Paulina in the original west end production of Death and the Maiden. Purgatorio opens at the Arts Theatre in London in the autumn, while The Other Side has its world premiere in Japan next year.
Dorfman has described Pinochet as a shadow throughout his work, a "dark guide into the worst aspects of myself and others". He was "flabbergasted" in October 1998 when Pinochet, who had been forced to step aside after a 1988 plebiscite but remained chief of the armed forces and senator-for-life, was arrested in London, awaiting extradition to Spain on charges of torture and genocide. "I'd come to terms with the fact that he'd never be brought to trial, that we were never going to see justice done," he says.
In Exorcising Terror, The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet, published in March, Dorfman views Pinochet's "unending trial" as a victory, even though he escaped on the grounds of mental incapacity. The book, praised by Hugh O'Shaughnessy in the Observer as a "small bomb", dwells on Pinochet's betrayal of Allende. "I heard his voice before the coup and didn't recognise his evil," says Dorfman. "It haunts me."
You can find the full article here
Ariel Dorfman reviews four films that chronicle the fight for human rights in Latin America
For anyone intrigued by these questions, four compelling films presented at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival provide some tentative answers. For starters, there is The Dignity of the Nobodies, by the eminent Argentinian film-maker Fernando "Pino" Solanas. Less stylistically provocative than his incendiary Hour of the Furnaces (1968), this film explores in 10 heartbreaking vignettes the ways in which his compatriots have managed to survive the unprecedented economic and social catastrophe that recently engulfed an Argentina reeling under the colossal failure of the neo-liberal "shock therapy" strategy.
In Memoria del Saqueo (2004) he denounced the way in which previous governments, allied with the multinationals and the International Monetary Fund, had looted land that was once the bread-basket of the world and now could not feed its own people. Many of the "nobodies" documented by Solanas endure an existence on the outer margins of destitution, where hunger and unemployment are the recurring spectres and communal soup kitchens the solution. (...)
It is true that the one assassination depicted in The Dignity of the Nobodies - Darío, a young activist - creates such a public furore that the officers responsible are put on trial. And it is a delight to watch those unarmed women farmers flummox their adversaries by belting out the national anthem while the police stand by indecisively. Yes, the military is discredited and weakened and cannot massacre those who dare to rebel. But the rebels themselves know all too well that the terror of the past can easily return, that this terror, in fact, is not really in the past as long as it can be remembered.
State of Fear shows all too clearly how terror can contaminate a country. This timely film by Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís and Peter Kinoy crisply recounts how the Peruvian struggle against terrorists (in this case the messianic sect known as Shining Path, responsible for the death of 30,000 indigenous peasants, in the name of the oppressed Indians of the Andes) eventually degenerated into state genocide and the destruction of the democracy supposedly being defended. As if trapped in a suspense film, we are forced to follow this escalation of violence step by tragic step, slowly understanding how so many Peruvians were poisoned by this maelstrom of madness and cruelty.
You can find the review here
In Memoria del Saqueo (2004) he denounced the way in which previous governments, allied with the multinationals and the International Monetary Fund, had looted land that was once the bread-basket of the world and now could not feed its own people. Many of the "nobodies" documented by Solanas endure an existence on the outer margins of destitution, where hunger and unemployment are the recurring spectres and communal soup kitchens the solution. (...)
It is true that the one assassination depicted in The Dignity of the Nobodies - Darío, a young activist - creates such a public furore that the officers responsible are put on trial. And it is a delight to watch those unarmed women farmers flummox their adversaries by belting out the national anthem while the police stand by indecisively. Yes, the military is discredited and weakened and cannot massacre those who dare to rebel. But the rebels themselves know all too well that the terror of the past can easily return, that this terror, in fact, is not really in the past as long as it can be remembered.
State of Fear shows all too clearly how terror can contaminate a country. This timely film by Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís and Peter Kinoy crisply recounts how the Peruvian struggle against terrorists (in this case the messianic sect known as Shining Path, responsible for the death of 30,000 indigenous peasants, in the name of the oppressed Indians of the Andes) eventually degenerated into state genocide and the destruction of the democracy supposedly being defended. As if trapped in a suspense film, we are forced to follow this escalation of violence step by tragic step, slowly understanding how so many Peruvians were poisoned by this maelstrom of madness and cruelty.
You can find the review here
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Interview with Javier Sierra
An interview with the Spanish author of The Secret Supper
(La cena secreta)
Q: Javier, how would you describe La cena secreta to those who are not familiar with your work?
A: I would describe it as a kind of atlas or guide to learn a new language. It’s not only a novel, but a tool that teaches the reader how to interpret works of art from the past. In fact, I think if La cena secreta has any virtues, it’s the virtue of giving us back the capacity to read art-a capacity we lost with the discovery of printing and with the literacy of our culture and civilization. In the 15th century, not everyone could read. Very few had access to books. Therefore, the formula they used in the past to convey information was through works of art; almost everyone could read art then, something that doesn’t happen now.
Q: Our audience is bilingual Hispanics who are 50 and older. Have you noticed a difference in how various generations respond to your book?
A: Well, there are different approaches to the book, depending on the reader’s age. I think that every good book has different levels of reading. To young people, it’s a thriller, a book of action, of intrigue, of mysteries. It’s kind of like a giant puzzle that they assemble piece by piece. And middle-aged people have discovered that the book tries to bring them closer to a significant aspect of religion. Deep inside, all the characters in La cena secreta fight to find their faith, their real faith. And I think it’s very important for people of a certain age, or any age, to find their real faith.
Q: And do you have an ideal reader?
A: I think that the ideal reader of my books is the reader who feels curiosity and hasn’t lost the capacity to be surprised. It’s a reader who, even though he’s an adult, retains a child’s spirit; he keeps the capacity to be amazed by the things he doesn’t know. He’s capable of opening his eyes very wide to understand more than what he’s been taught. That is my ideal reader: the curious reader.
Q: Which authors have in some way influenced your work?
A: I feel I owe a big debt of gratitude to authors like Umberto Eco, the Italian writer and semiologist. He’s a very intelligent person who in his novels introduces many cultural references and mysteries, but they’re facts. They’re facts, real things. And his books have enabled millions of people in the world to get closer to fragments of classical culture that otherwise would have remained inaccessible to a mass audience. I also admire the great creators of thrillers, of intrigue, of fiction. From Ken Follett with his work in Pillars of the Earth to other contemporary masters like Dan Brown. I discovered Dan Brown when I was about to finish writing La cena secreta.
You can find the full interview here
(La cena secreta)Q: Javier, how would you describe La cena secreta to those who are not familiar with your work?
A: I would describe it as a kind of atlas or guide to learn a new language. It’s not only a novel, but a tool that teaches the reader how to interpret works of art from the past. In fact, I think if La cena secreta has any virtues, it’s the virtue of giving us back the capacity to read art-a capacity we lost with the discovery of printing and with the literacy of our culture and civilization. In the 15th century, not everyone could read. Very few had access to books. Therefore, the formula they used in the past to convey information was through works of art; almost everyone could read art then, something that doesn’t happen now.
Q: Our audience is bilingual Hispanics who are 50 and older. Have you noticed a difference in how various generations respond to your book?
A: Well, there are different approaches to the book, depending on the reader’s age. I think that every good book has different levels of reading. To young people, it’s a thriller, a book of action, of intrigue, of mysteries. It’s kind of like a giant puzzle that they assemble piece by piece. And middle-aged people have discovered that the book tries to bring them closer to a significant aspect of religion. Deep inside, all the characters in La cena secreta fight to find their faith, their real faith. And I think it’s very important for people of a certain age, or any age, to find their real faith.
Q: And do you have an ideal reader?
A: I think that the ideal reader of my books is the reader who feels curiosity and hasn’t lost the capacity to be surprised. It’s a reader who, even though he’s an adult, retains a child’s spirit; he keeps the capacity to be amazed by the things he doesn’t know. He’s capable of opening his eyes very wide to understand more than what he’s been taught. That is my ideal reader: the curious reader.
Q: Which authors have in some way influenced your work?
A: I feel I owe a big debt of gratitude to authors like Umberto Eco, the Italian writer and semiologist. He’s a very intelligent person who in his novels introduces many cultural references and mysteries, but they’re facts. They’re facts, real things. And his books have enabled millions of people in the world to get closer to fragments of classical culture that otherwise would have remained inaccessible to a mass audience. I also admire the great creators of thrillers, of intrigue, of fiction. From Ken Follett with his work in Pillars of the Earth to other contemporary masters like Dan Brown. I discovered Dan Brown when I was about to finish writing La cena secreta.
You can find the full interview here
Friday, March 17, 2006
A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe (Selected Poems) by Fernando Pessoa
A new book of Pessoa translations, with brilliant introductions to the book and each heteronym by Richard Zenith, has been published: “A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe (Selected Poems).” Penguin Classics, 2006, 436 p.
In 1924 you pick up a little po-zine in Portugal called Athena. Among the poets you like: Ricardo Reis, Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, and one of the editors, Fernando Pessoa. Their thumbnails reveal four very different bios, the poems reveal four distinct styles. Only if you penetrate the avant garde scene in Lisbon will you find that three of these poets are heteronyms, imaginary brother poets, of the fourth.
When you discover Fernando Pessoa you don’t walk into a new room of poetry, but into another wing. Hop over to another planet. In solar system Po, he’s Planet X, orbiting just outside, shadowing everything going on in our busyness. More than any other human, he lived life solely in his poems, his life a shell for the literary movement that was himself. Relatively unknown in the US, the publication of a new book of translations brings him to center stage, a poet who eschewed life to create life, a poet for whom “living poetry” was not sprawly boho sensuality, but as Constant Writer.
You can find the review here
In 1924 you pick up a little po-zine in Portugal called Athena. Among the poets you like: Ricardo Reis, Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, and one of the editors, Fernando Pessoa. Their thumbnails reveal four very different bios, the poems reveal four distinct styles. Only if you penetrate the avant garde scene in Lisbon will you find that three of these poets are heteronyms, imaginary brother poets, of the fourth.
When you discover Fernando Pessoa you don’t walk into a new room of poetry, but into another wing. Hop over to another planet. In solar system Po, he’s Planet X, orbiting just outside, shadowing everything going on in our busyness. More than any other human, he lived life solely in his poems, his life a shell for the literary movement that was himself. Relatively unknown in the US, the publication of a new book of translations brings him to center stage, a poet who eschewed life to create life, a poet for whom “living poetry” was not sprawly boho sensuality, but as Constant Writer.
You can find the review here
The return of Federico Garcia Lorca
Lorca haunts us. The Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, one of the most read and loved writers of the 20th century, was killed in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, by Falangist executioners in his native Granada. His martyrdom only added to his fame.
Seventy years later, he re-emerges, radiant with signification, in contemporary works like Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz's Beauty of the Father and classical composer Osvaldo Golijov's new opera Ainadamar, both of which played in New York this winter. And he is the subject of a new work by choreographer Ray Sullivan of the Miami Contemporary Dance Company, The Death of García Lorca, that premieres tonight at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach
You can find the article here
Seventy years later, he re-emerges, radiant with signification, in contemporary works like Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz's Beauty of the Father and classical composer Osvaldo Golijov's new opera Ainadamar, both of which played in New York this winter. And he is the subject of a new work by choreographer Ray Sullivan of the Miami Contemporary Dance Company, The Death of García Lorca, that premieres tonight at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach
You can find the article here
Volver directed by Pedro Almodovar
"Volver" brought Almodovar and Maura back together after a 17-year split. Maura starred in many of the director's features, perhaps most memorably in "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" in 1987.
After that film, the two quarreled and split although they have never told the world why.
"Volver" also marks Cruz's return to Spanish cinema in an impressive lead performance, after spending the last six years establishing an international career in Hollywood.
"I still don't really believe that I was lucky enough to make this film," Cruz gushed. "It was like a gift from God."
The film's title has many meanings for Almodovar.
"There are several returns for me. I've gone back, a little bit, to comedy. I've gone back to the feminine universe, to La Mancha ... (and) to the maternal role as the origin of life and fiction," he wrote in notes for the film.
Almodovar has often said that his addiction to stories comes from listening to conversations between women as a child.
Mostly filmed on location in La Mancha, "Volver" seems set for box office success, at least in Spain.
Apart from the pull of the director and the lead actress, village life is a nostalgic ideal for many Spaniards who moved to Madrid and Barcelona seeking work in the 1970s and 80s.
You can find the review here
After that film, the two quarreled and split although they have never told the world why.
"Volver" also marks Cruz's return to Spanish cinema in an impressive lead performance, after spending the last six years establishing an international career in Hollywood.
"I still don't really believe that I was lucky enough to make this film," Cruz gushed. "It was like a gift from God."
The film's title has many meanings for Almodovar.
"There are several returns for me. I've gone back, a little bit, to comedy. I've gone back to the feminine universe, to La Mancha ... (and) to the maternal role as the origin of life and fiction," he wrote in notes for the film.
Almodovar has often said that his addiction to stories comes from listening to conversations between women as a child.
Mostly filmed on location in La Mancha, "Volver" seems set for box office success, at least in Spain.
Apart from the pull of the director and the lead actress, village life is a nostalgic ideal for many Spaniards who moved to Madrid and Barcelona seeking work in the 1970s and 80s.
You can find the review here
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Francisco Ayala turns 100
Don Francisco Ayala, one of Spain's intellectual giants, turns 100 on Thursday and, while the decades have undoubtedly taken their toll, his humour-filled, piercing brown eyes let you know he still has plenty to say.
"Mindwise, I feel exactly as I've always felt. Energywise, I'm slowing down," he said in an interview at the elegant Madrid home he shares with his wife, Spanish literature professor Carolyn Richmond, an American.
Novelist, sociologist, moralist and literary scholar, Ayala has won all of the prestige prizes in Spanish letters, from the Cervantes in 1991 to the Prince of Asturias in 1998. The Spanish Civil War forced him into decades of exile, leading him to teach in universities in Argentina, Puerto Rico and in half a dozen in the United States before retiring from the City University of New York some 40 years ago.
You can find the article here
"Mindwise, I feel exactly as I've always felt. Energywise, I'm slowing down," he said in an interview at the elegant Madrid home he shares with his wife, Spanish literature professor Carolyn Richmond, an American.
Novelist, sociologist, moralist and literary scholar, Ayala has won all of the prestige prizes in Spanish letters, from the Cervantes in 1991 to the Prince of Asturias in 1998. The Spanish Civil War forced him into decades of exile, leading him to teach in universities in Argentina, Puerto Rico and in half a dozen in the United States before retiring from the City University of New York some 40 years ago.
You can find the article here
Spanish and Portuguese Languages throughout the world
The Tucson Police Department offers financial incentives for officers and civilian employees to learn Spanish and rewards certified Spanish speakers with a bump in pay.
"There is still a big flow of people from Mexico coming to the Tucson area," said Officer Claude Ralls, who has been with the department for 24 years. "(An) increase of the Spanish-speaking population will (create) more of a demand."
In January, 52 officers passed a certification test. An additional 114 police employees, including civilian employees, receive extra pay for speaking Spanish.
You can find the article here
"There is still a big flow of people from Mexico coming to the Tucson area," said Officer Claude Ralls, who has been with the department for 24 years. "(An) increase of the Spanish-speaking population will (create) more of a demand."
In January, 52 officers passed a certification test. An additional 114 police employees, including civilian employees, receive extra pay for speaking Spanish.
You can find the article here
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)