Hugo Pezzini: That Sailor of Buzios

2011-11-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

Y una mujer, que tenía un niño en brazos, le dijo, "Háblamos de los niños".
Y el dijo:
Vuestros hijos no son vuestros.
Ellos son los hijos e hijas del deseo que la vida siente de sí misma.
Ellos vienen por tu intermediación, pero no te ti,
Y aunque están contigo no te pertenecen.
Les puedes dar tu amor, pero no tus ideas,
Porque ellos tienen las suyas propias.
Puedes alojar sus cuerpos, pero no sus mentes,
Porque sus mentes habitan la casa del mañana, que no podrás jamás visitar, ni aún en sueños.
Puedes esforzarte en ser como ellos, pero no trates nunca de hacerlos a tu imagen.
Porque la vida no camina hacia atrás ni se ocupa del ayer.
Vosotros sois los arcos de los cuales los niños, como flechas, se lanzan hacia el futuro.
El arquero apunta al blanco que es la huella hacia el infinito, y ÉL guía tu mano, usando SU poder para tensar tu arco, para que SUS flechas vuelen rápidas y lleguen lejos.
Deja que la tensión en la mano del arquero sea grata;
Porque así como ÉL ama a la flecha que vuela, ama también al arquero preciso.
Kahlil Gibran

2011-09-22T03:58:00.000-07:00

De los diversos instrumentos inventados por el hombre, el más asombroso es el libro; todos los demás son extensiones de su cuerpo; sólo el libro es una extensión de la imaginación la memoria.

Jorge Luis Borges
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"La Tradición" en Argentina

2011-09-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

La Tradición en la Argentina
(Hugo Pezzini, desde París)

En Argentina, el término "tradición" está asociado principalmente a usos, costumbres, artefactos, música, etcétera, de origen estrictamente rural. El "Día de la Tradición" es un buen ejemplo de ese significado específico que la palabra recibe o denota en Argentina hasta la actualidad: el Día de la Tradición básicamente en Argentina es una fiesta "gauchesca," una celebración "folklórica." Por lo tanto, si la información a proveer a propósito de las "tradiciones" argentinas fuese la "tradicionalmente" fornecida, debería reducirse a "artefactos culturales rurales". Una somera muestra es la siguiente:
la payada,
la doma,
el juego de la sortija,
la yerra,
la mateada,
el arreo de tropillas.
Ademas de los ejemplos provistos en esta columna, se incluyen también, por ejemplo, danzas y ritmos folklóricos, y el cancionero folklórico en general:
el Pericón Nacional,
el malambo,
el carnavalito,
las bagualas,
la cueca,
la zamba,
la chacarera.
Aquí se descubre una singularidad argentina: Tradición y Folklore son entendidos como sinónimos, lo que no es un hecho coincidente en otras culturas. Estos dos términos no son semánticamente equivalentes, aún cuando los significados estén estrechamente relacionados.
La historia es un devenir constante y creciente. Nuevos artefactos culturales son adoptados y se tornan "clásicos." Lo que entra a pertenecer a esa categoría especial puede ser también considerado una tradición: todo lo que es "canonizado," incorporado al acervo cultural nacional, pasa a engrosar el tesoro de las tradiciones de una nación. Sería oportuno entonces aprovechar para reconceptualizar el significado de la palabra "tradición" dentro del entendimiento colectivo de los argentinos. Un gesto tal haría justicia a artefactos que han "tradicionalmente" sido segregados del patrimonio nacional.
Felizmente, algunos pocos artefactos han sido ya incorporados a la lista de las tradiciones vernáculas. No obstante, forman parte de un grupo de objetos considerados como perteneciente a distintos sectores específicos del país, pero que tienen negada la representatividad a nivel nacional. El tango provee un buen ejemplo de un artefacto cultural urbano que indudablemente es "tradicional" pero no es sancionado nacionalmente como "tradición." La palabra usada es "típico." O entonces es aceptado como una "tradición porteña." Es difícil explicar este fenómeno sin referirse a él como producto de una forma histórico-tradicional de pensamiento "unitario", centralista. Este fenómeno--que es parte específica de la historia política nacional-- ha transformado a Buenos Aires y al resto del país en dos esferas separadas, distintas entre sí. Es un binarismo cultural mutuamente exclusivo. Autores canónicos como Jorge Luis Borges han contribuído enormemente para definir lo tradicional que habita una zona limítrofe entre ciudad y campo. De esta forma, Borges crea un "puente" que perturba ese binarismo; y de algún modo trata de resolver esa brecha conceptual. Los artefactos limítrofes borgeanos marcan la tradición de los "bordes" culturales. El carro de reparto, el matadero, los almacenes de suburbio, las pulperías arrabaleras, etc. habitan esa línea borrosa que existe entre lo rural y lo urbano. El arrabal es la región mitológica fundamental, o al menos característica, de la ficción borgeana, cuando ésta trata de lo argentino. "Arrabal" es una palabra española, derivada del vocablo árabe, "al rabal", que significa "fuera de los muros". Es decir, la zona inmediatamente adjunta a la ciudad fortificada, pero localizada extra-muros. El barrio de Barcelona llamado "El Rabal" es exactamente la zona de Barcelona que una vez existió fuera de los muros. La presencia de prostitución, tráfico de drogas, y más recientemente el asentamiento en el barrio de inmigrantes de etnias y nacionalidades consideradas "problemáticas" por ciertos círculos socio-políticos de la Unión Europea, es una prolongación histórica de su origen. No más fuera de los muros, sino totalmente integrada a la ciudad (las famosas Ramblas barcelonesas tocan los bordes de El Rabal), preserva su "marginalidad" original. Hoy en día esa característica estigmática de pasada marginalidad les confiere a ciertos barrios su "aura" de sofisticación bohemia. El barrio que habito aquí en París, justamente, enclave avant-garde en este momento, es Le Marais (el pantano) -- la zona parisina extra-muros en la que se refugiaron los judíos cuando el feroz antisemitismo medieval los expulsó de "intramuros", es decir, de la ciudad propiamente dicha. Por su propia seguridad, permanecieron en el mas cercano "arrabal", apoyados contra los muros fortificados de París, en el pantanoso lodo de Le Marais.
La ginebra es tradición; la misa católica de los domingos a las diez de la mañana es parte de la tradición. Actividades a la vez tan insospechadas cuanto evidentes como, dígase, la pesca de río (con línea, tramayo, "robador" o tiradera) y similares "artefactos" que construyen y han construido las imágenes de la conciencia colectiva argentina, deben ser, y seguramente serán en algún momento apropiado, incorporadas a la tradición. Tal vez suceda cuando la imaginería popular sea seriamente mapeada por científicos culturales deseosos de "realistificar" (no confundir con "reificar") un reduccionismo costumbrista que precisa urgentemente de actualización: La charla en el bar frente al pocillo de café y al cigarrillo negro es otra tradición argentina, por ejemplo; pero esta es una tradición que parece tener un carácter internacionalista (como muchas otras tradiciones que el país comparte con otros; no solamente se arrea o arreó ganado en Argentina, bien se sabe, por ejemplo: pensemos en la iconografía recreada obsesivamente en la narrativa del Far-West Hollywoodiano).
Debe recordarse siempre que hay muchos otros artefactos tradicionales que argentina comparte con otros países. La guitarra "criolla" y el bandoneón no son instrumentos autóctonos, a pesar de haber sido incorporados al acervo nacional (según Astor Piazzolla, el bandoneón, de origen alemán, fue llevado a la Argentina por marineros italianos que lo preferían por su sonido lamentoso para cantar sus repertorios, compuestos mayormente de melodías melancólicas).
Pero volviendo al carácter internacional de la tradición del café y el cigarrillo compartidos en el bar: El director cinematográfico norteamericano Jim Jarmush acaba de lanzar en París, desde donde este artículo se escribe (Abril 2004), su film Coffee and Cigarettes. Esta película está construída como un patchwork, o un quilt (una colcha de retazos) de escenas filmadas --o serie de cortometrages; generalmente dos personas en cada "corto"-- simplemente conversando, separadas por la mesa del café y unidas en el café y el cigarrillo que comparten.
El cigarrillo negro es por supuesto un artefacto cultural argentino. El tabaco negro es fumado principalmente en la zona rioplatense y en Francia. No obstante, parecería que en Argentina el fumar tabaco negro esta dejando de ser una costumbre masiva; como también en los países "desarrollados" del "primer mundo" en general (Francia presenta una interesante excepción en este sentido). Pero indudablemente el cigarrillo negro es un objeto tradicional de estos dos países, y pertenecen a un "glamour" idiosincrático y romántico de ambas culturas. Los negros franceses "Gauloises" fueron glamourizados internacionalmente por obra de la novela Rayuela, de Julio Cortázar. Por supuesto que esta tradición está cada vez más acercándose hacia el pasaje a lo arcaico, debido a la creciente consciencia de los efectos altamente nocivos de la nicotina y a las no tan recientes prohibiciones de fumar en lugares cerrados. Teóricamente al menos, el cigarrillo no se puede encender en ningún café de Argentina.
Esta visión alternativa de lo tradicional abre la discusión de un aspecto particular del concepto de tradición. Lo que se torna arcaico; lo que "muere" o cae en desuso, aun así (o por eso mismo) forma parte de, o constituye, una tradición. Basta observar que "el arreo de tropillas" es parte de la tradición aunque no se arreen más tropillas desde hace ya varias décadas; es más: el "camión jaula" que reemplazó esta práctica ha casi dejado de circular por las rutas, los vagones-jaula que también transportaban ganado han desaparecido (desde que los trenes de larga distancia dejaron de circular) y el plantel de ganado ha disminuído hasta casi desaparecer como paisaje omnipresente de las pampas y planicies argentinas. Esta situación crítica de una de las actividades económicas "tradicionales" argentinas, ha transformado esa actividad en un objeto tradicional "arcaico": es una tradición que ha casi literalmente "pasado a la historia;" para cualquier observador de las rutas y las vías ferroviarias (abandonbadas a la herrumbre, en su mayoría) de la nación, esto no se practica más.
Debe aquí también mencionarse la fuerte "tradición" deportiva argentina: Las carreras de caballos en hipódromos urbanos (tradicionalmente integradas a la mitología tanguera) bien merecerían estar incluídas en el catálogo oral y escrito de la tradición argentina. Están inexplicablemente ausentes, ya que no son mas que una extensión de las carreras "cuadreras" rurales, que sí están incorporadas al canon tradicional: las competiciones en el hipódromo son un artefacto cultural similar o paralelo a las cuadreras criollas, pero de carácter urbano; carácter que --este artículo argumenta-- permanece segregado del ámbito taxonómico de lo entendido como tradición. Lo mismo podría decirse de las competiciones automovilísticas de turismo de carretera: los sonoros apellidos Galvez o Emiliozzi son arquetipos incorporados al imaginario colectivo, al menos están incrustados firmemente en la historia del deporte automovilístico argentino. La cabeza de esta área es indiscutiblemente Fangio. Juan Manuel Fangio, con gran justicia, sí es reconocido como parte de la galería de personalidades populares absorbidas por la memoria nacional, lado a lado, por supuesto, a Pascualito Perez y Carlos Gardel. Este último sirve bien para insertar dentro de este tema "la paradoja del hibridismo" de los artefactos culturales tradicionales argentinos. El lugar de nacimiento de Gardel es abierto a discusión hasta la actualidad (Toulouse, en Francia? Tacuarembó, en Uruguay? Un arrabal de Buenos Aires?). El tabaco negro es una tradición híbrida francoargentina: el cigarrillo negro de mayor venta en Argentina es el Parissienes, y obstenta el sello de la casa francesa Caporal, fabricante del emblemático francés Gauloises.
Dentro del paradigma paradojal argentino se incluyen varios objetos de origen nacional híbrido, algunos ya incorporados al canon tradicional: un buen ejemplo es provisto por el tango fundacional argentino "La Cumparsita" (compuesto por el uruguayo Gerardo Matos Rodríguez). Como lo es también el caso del escritor --de reciente incorporación canónica-- mencionado arriba, Julio Cortázar. Este es belga de nacimiento, argentino por vocación --o por su inscripción en el "Registro civil nacional de las personas" de Argentina, por parte de sus padres, argentinos ambos-- al retornar con el niño al país. Su nacionalidad, por otra parte, fue ganada y demostrada de hecho y de derecho por su formación sociocultural y política, por su idiosincrasia (ser peronista o antiperonista acérrimo fue una tradición del siglo veinte que no ha perecido a los comienzos del veintiuno, a pesar de vivir su fase "revisionista"), y por la "voz" eminentemente argentina de la mayoría de sus personajes. Es posible afirmar que Cortázar gana su derecho a ser reconocido como un "artefacto cultural" de la tradición argentina también por su nunca mitigado interés literario por todo lo argentino, por la temática misma de su literatura(aun cuando sea para criticar muchos aspectos idiosincráticos de la sociedad argentina). El paradigma del hibridismo se completa con su ciudadanía francesa, que adoptó voluntariamente en los postreros años de su vida. Sus restos no descansan en Argentina; su tumba se encuentra, compartida con su mujer Carol Dunlop, en el cementerio de Montparnasse, aquí en París (los restos de Jorge Luis Borges se encuentran --satisfaciendo su deseo testamentario-- también en Europa, precisamente en Suiza, lugar de su formación intelectual mas temprana, donde también se encuentran los restos del compositor argentino Alberto Ginastera).
El "paradigma del hibridismo argentino" tiene indudablemente que ser reconocido como constitucional de Argentina, una tradición primordial del ser nacional: La inmigración masiva durante una buena parte de los siglos XIX y XX, y aún antes, formaron el componente étnico mixto del plantel o stock humano argentino. Con su humor árido y sutil (humor muy británico por otra parte) el mismo Borges ayudó a identificar o definir esta paradoja del siguiente modo (voy a parafrasear su decir, ya que no tengo la cita textual a mi alcance en el momento de escribir estas notas): "El argentino es un italiano que habla castellano y se piensa (o cree ser) inglés."
Para cerrar, se registra aquí el sentimiento de estupor ante el hecho inconcebible de saberse que el fútbol [deporte inglés par excellence, por lo tanto, muy argentino] no es mencionado como una tradición argentina --salvo excepcionalmente por los fanáticos de ese deporte.
El rico "parque" cultural argentino merece una taxonomía apropiada de la cual aún se carece.

Hugo Pezzini
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El abogado argentino, Dr. Jorge Bernatzky, me ha hecho llegar los siguientes conceptos, que transcribo textualmente a seguir. Ellos enriquecen mi ensayo porque definen vocablos cruciales del mismo y justifican su uso dentro del contexto en que los he ubicado:

Si bien generalmente se estiman sinónimos dichos términos: Tradición y Folklore, sus significados formalmente hablando son muy distintos. La Tradición (del latín Traditio) es el acto de transmitir. Por el contrario El FolKlore, o Folclore, o "cultura popular" es lo que se transmite.-
La Tradición es la dinámica, el movimiento físico de pasar, de entregar, como quién enajena un bien, es el acto por el que el vendedor entrega lo vendido al comprador.- En el caso sería la Tradición el acto por el que una cultura popular de una generación es traspasada, o entregada a la generación siguiente.- Cuando muere un ser humano con cierta riqueza ( Y esto lo digo utilizando el término "riqueza" con un objetivo preciso) la misma, se transmite a sus herederos, por ejemplo a sus hijos.- La tradición es la transferencia de la riqueza cultural de un pueblo: "el acerbo cultural".- Creo que existe mayor acercamiento en los términos si se dijera: Tradicional como semejante a Cultura Popular. Porque "tradicional" parece ser un término más indicativo de: "lo que generalmente se hace".- Lo tradicional también me parece como lo más perdurable. El folclore en cambio lo estimo como la actividad actual de los habitantes de un lugar.- Esa actividad, como la arena que se vuelca en un tamiz, pasa parcialmente, y lo que cae es lo tradicional.- Lo que no pasa por el tamiz es la cultura popular de un tiempo y lugar determinado, que luego, se tira.- También ciertas tradiciones, como la arena que cae, se mezclan en el suelo, y se modifican, o se pierden incluso.- Son fiestas tradicionales la celebración del Año Nuevo, Navidad, Carnaval, la independencia de cada país, pero la cultura popular celebra cada uno de esos eventos de manera no siempre igual.- Como por ejemplo en ciertas comunidades la Navidad se la celebra sólo religiosamente, como debe ser, y en otras partes, es una oportunidad de fiestas de contenido diríase ciertamente paganos.- También en distintas partes del mundo ciertas celebraciones se conmemoran de la misma manera, cuando por razones geográficas debería ser distinto: En los países cálidos en diciembre para Navidad se consumen comidas de muchas calorías.- Y pensando en lo que es la cultura, advierto que un cuadro de Picasso es cultura. Por ejemplo el "Guernica", pero también fue un acto cultural la destrucción por bombas de la ciudad: Guernica.- La cultura puede ser buena o mala, constructiva o destructiva.- Cuando la cultura popular es constructiva, como su nombre lo indica construye, es decir fortalece un pueblo, lo identifica, y la identidad lo hace más perdurable.- Cuando la cultura popular es destructiva también ayuda a terminar con determinadas civilizaciones. Por ejemplo, el Imperio Romano tiene su fin por la decadencia moral, entre otras causas, de su pueblo.- Y es así porque la buena cultura tiende a perdurar, y perdura (Salvo un holocausto nuclear por ejemplo). Es como una joya que pasa de generación en generación, y se guarda con cuidado. La mala cultura popular, o es erradicada prontamente por sus efectos perniciosos, o como un arma (revólver) celosa que pasa de un inconciente a otro, pronto termina por dispararse y pone fin a quien la utilizaba.- Estas distintas maneras de ver la Tradición y el Folclore, tú, poniendo énfasis en algunos objetos precisos: Como el mate, bombilla, yerba, tango, arrabal, y yo, mirando la conducta del ser humano, seguramente serían objetos de diversión de un buen semiólogo.

That Thing of the Poets: A Sailor's Love...

2011-08-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

Swollen by acrid love, sagging with drunkenness—
Oh, that my keel might rend and give me to the sea!

Arthur Rimbaud
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My Favorite Words: A rose is a rose is a rose.

2010-07-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

Salvador Dalí
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My Favorite Words: In theory...

2010-07-14T10:47:00.001-07:00

Gravity is the thermodynamic limit of the statistical mechanics of 'atoms of space-time.'

Thanu Padmanabhan
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On Writing: Rise & Fall

2010-07-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

To wish oneself into another's glory ... is an impossibility, untenable on psychological grounds if you are not a writer, and on aesthetic grounds if you are. To embrace your hero in his destruction, however--to let your hero's life occur within you when everything is trying to diminish him, to imagine yourself into his bad luck, to implicate yourself not in his mindless ascendancy ... but in the bewilderment of his tragic fall--well, that's worth thinking about.

Philip Roth
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My Favorite Words: Moral Relativism

2010-06-04T09:44:00.001-07:00

Les actions et les pensées des hommes vous apparaissent comme des cas particuliers de la mécanique universelle, vous n'en concevez ni colère ni haine. Mais il y a des choses qui vous dégoûtent; vous avez de la délicatesse, et il est bien vrai que la morale est an affaire de goût.

Anatole France
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That Thing of the Poets: Marina

2010-05-29T07:34:00.000-07:00

Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves t'have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel ploghs air.

George Chapman
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My Favorite Words: Les Philosophes

2010-05-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Alfred North Whitehead
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My Favorite Words

2010-04-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

Folly is the child of Power... The power to command frequently causes failure to think; the responsibility of power often fades as its exercise augments.

Barbara Tuchman
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On Writing

2010-04-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

My subject in fiction is the action of Grace in a territory largely held by the Devil.

Flannery O'Connor
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Prozac or Pro-sack?

2010-03-18T14:35:00.000-07:00

In most cases, depression is not a mental illness. It's a sane response to a crazy world.

Gary Greenberg
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The Mass-Culture Conundrum

2010-03-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

"Mass culture is a machine for showing desire."

Roland Barthes

... "It's also a machine for expressing resentment, a frustration of desire."

David Denby
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On Writing: Kitsch

2010-03-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

Conventional novelists sometimes produce what Harold Rosemberg called fifty years ago "kitsch," the following of established rules at a time when artists are calling those rules into question.

James Wood
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Oh, Academia!

2010-03-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

Dig an academic slit trench so deep and so narrow that there is room only for you.

Reported by Robert R. Provine
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Obituarium: Farewell, Mylord, Knight

2010-02-15T04:28:00.000-08:00

Dick Francis - R.I.P. Feb. 18, 2010
In Memorian:

Not to read Dick Francis because you don't like horses is like not reading Dostoyevsky because you don't like God.

John Leonard
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On History: The Democratic Making of a Kingdom

2010-01-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

It was not England who made Parliament, but Parliament that made England.

G.M. Trevelyan
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My Favorite Words: Music to My Ears!

2010-01-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

I need an orchestra, otherwise I wouldn't know how my music sounds.

Duke Ellington
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My Favorite Words: Practical Aesthetics

2010-01-15T13:48:00.000-08:00

The first principle of architectural beauty is that the essential lines of a construction be determined by a perfect apropriateness to its use.

Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel!)
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My Favorite Words: Just Kidding!

2010-01-15T13:46:00.000-08:00

"Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar, but, can a joke ever be "only a joke?".

Attributed to Sigmund Freud.
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On Writing

2010-01-15T13:45:00.000-08:00

Good descriptions have a long shelf life.

Robert R Provine
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What is there to laugh about?

2010-01-15T13:43:00.000-08:00

Laughter... can be regarded as an aesthetically and sonically impoverished "human song."

Robert R. Provine
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What is there to laugh about?

2010-01-15T13:42:00.001-08:00

Laughing is, in essence, a movement that produces song.

Robert R. Provine
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What is there to laugh about?

2010-01-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

Hobbes states that laughter is the expression of a "sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminence in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly." (Hobbes´s On Human Nature)

Robert R. Provine
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My Favorite Words: On The Cinema

2010-01-11T13:39:00.000-08:00

Delante de la pantalla, todo. Detrás de la pantalla, nada.

Manuel Puig
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On Writing

2010-01-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

La escritura no es otra cosa que una tentativa de captar la voz a pleno vuelo.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Paráfrasis)
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My Favorite Words: La France!

2010-01-06T12:11:00.000-08:00

France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

Mark Twain
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My Favorite Words: Revolution

2010-01-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

No doubt their pristine sense of undisturbed somnolence will again settle upon them.

James McNeill Whistler
(when leaving the Presidency of the Society of British Artists)
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My Favorite Words: Material World

2010-01-06T11:44:00.000-08:00

My God, money questions are terrible for an artist!

Paul Gauguin
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My Favorite Words: Lutece

2010-01-06T11:39:00.000-08:00

Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.

Thomas Gold Appleton
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My favorite words: Fear = Victim

2009-11-02T04:59:00.000-08:00

Man victimizes what he fears.

Barbara Tuchman
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My Favorite Words: The Problems of Causality

2009-11-02T04:57:00.001-08:00

War is too unpleasant and costly a business to be sustained successfully without a cause.

Barbara Tuchman
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My Favorite Words: The Lessons of History

2009-11-02T04:53:00.001-08:00

If autocrats always acted wisely they would not furnish history with moral lessons.

Barbara Tuchman
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My favorite words: The Muse

2009-11-01T18:38:00.000-08:00

A muse is someone who makes you better than you are. I think I am better because she believes that I am better than I am, and that blind faith gives me a lot of strength.

Pedro Almodóvar
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That Thing of the Poets: New York Autumn - haiku

2009-09-25T19:50:00.000-07:00

Oh! blurs twilight soft
and now ah! levitates leaves
the Central Park mist

Hugo Pezzini
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My favorite words: Three lines by Barbara W. Tuchman

2009-09-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

Satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.

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In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

____________

Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.

Barbara B. Tuchman
______________________________

My favorite words: A Sailor's Love

2009-09-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

When I'm not with the girl I love, I love the girl I'm with.

Slightly altered from Yip Harburg's "Finian's Rainbow"
__________________________________

My favorite Words: On Reputation

2009-08-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

What has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood.

Dr. Johnson.
____________________

That Thing of the Poets: On War

2009-08-05T14:03:00.001-07:00

To say it clearly, I mean that the Iliad is a story of war, without care and without measure. It was composed in praise of a warring humanity, and it did it in such a memorable way that it should last throughout eternity and reach the last descendant of our last descendants, still singing the solemn beauty and the irredeemable emotion that war once and always will be. ... (A)t its heart lies this: The Iliad is a monument to war.

Alessandro Baricco
_____________________

Now down we came to the ship.

Homer
_____________________

That Thing of the Poets: What the Irish Did with the Greek...

2009-08-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

Joyce did other than acknowledge Homer's position: he re-imagined the story of the primordial journey undertaken by every man in every age. His coupling was less between Ulysses and Bloom than between Homer and Joyce himself, less between the creations than between the creators.

Alberto Manguel
_______________________

That Thing of the Poets: Thinking of the Blind One...

2009-08-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

Up there,
High on the walls, the dirge has already begun.
They're mourning the memory, the aura of our days.

Constantine Cavafy.
________________________

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
You'll have understood by then what these Ithakans mean.

Constantine Cavafy.
_______________________

My favorite words: Truth.

2009-08-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

All I have written is true, except the lies.

Timothy Findley
_________________________

My Favorite Words: Truth.

2009-08-05T13:46:00.001-07:00

Myth does not mean something untrue, but a concentration of truth.

Doris Lessing
____________________

My Favorite Words: That Sailor!

2009-08-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

My purpose holds,
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the Western stars, until I die.

Lord Tennyson
_____________________

Latin American Story:

2009-08-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

...a certain South American diplomat told (the Mexican critic) Alfonso Reyes that whenever he returned to his country, he imagined the dictator in office thinking, "I must distrust this man, he knows his grammar."

Alberto Manguel
_______________________

My Favorite Words: For or Against?

2009-07-02T16:12:00.000-07:00

Freud followed Nietzsche in noting that the value we place in life after death was a development of post-Homeric times.

Alberto Manguel

* *

Freud treated Nietzsche's writings as texts to be resisted far more than to be studied.

Peter Gay
_________________

My Favorite Words: War & Death

2009-07-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

Si vis pacem, para bellum
(If you want peace, prepare for war)

Andromache & Hector

* *

Si vis vitam, para morten
(If you want life, prepare for death)

Sigmund Freud
__________________________

The Classics

2009-07-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

Nietzsche... understood that one of the qualities of a classic is that it elicits from the reader a double sense of witnessed truth: that of poetic artifice and that of experienced reality, or, in Nietzschean terms, that of Apollonian illusion and that of Dionysian struggle.

Alberto Manguel (commenting on Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy)
*Note on Nietzsche:
Nietzsche studied in both Bonn and Leipzig and was elected to the Chair of Classical Philosophy at the University of Basel at age twenty-five. He wrote The Birth of Tragedy at age twenty-eight.

__________________________

That Thing of the Poets: On Beauty

2009-07-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

(A sort of prologue)

What songs the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles
Assumed when he hid among the women, though
Puzzling questions are not beyond conjecture.

Sir Thomas Browne

* *

There was a world, or was it all a dream?

Hellen of Troy (according to Homer)

* *

Zeus planted a killing doom whithin us both,
So even for generations still unborn
We will live in song.

Hellen (to Paris, according to Homer)

* *

Ah, no wonder the men of Troy and Argives under arms have suffered
Years of agony all for her, for such a woman.
Beauty, terrible beauty!

Homer

* *

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Illium?
Sweet Hellen, make me immortal with a Kiss.

Christopher Marlowe

* *

Hellen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicaean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

Edgar Allan Poe

* *

Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke
To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate
On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate
And a King's honour though red death, and smoke,
And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
Luxurious bower, flaming like a God.

High sat white Hellen, lonely and serene.
He had not remembered that she was so fair,
And that her neck curved down in such a way;
And he felt tired. He flung the sword away,
And kissed her feet, and knelt before her there,
The perfect Knight for the perfect Queen.

Rupert Brooke

* *

Is it a memory? Has a delusion seized my mind?
Was I all that? And am I?
And shall I still be?
The nightmare image, Helena the cities bane?

Hellen of Troy (according to Goethe)
__________________________

On Writing: Federico Jeanmaire

2009-05-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

No esperar más a que llegaran, cuando se les ocurriera, ni las ideas ni las palabras con las que escribir esas ideas. Aprender a buscarlas. A pesar de ellas. Y también a pelearlas y a discutirlas y a escucharlas. Sobre todas las cosas, me parece, aprender a escucharlas con los oídos bien abiertos. Ser escritor.

Federico Jeanmaire
__________________________

My Favorite Words: Who's on First?

2009-05-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

Goethe once remarked that he could think of only thirty-six tragic situations.

Friedrich Nietzsche
__________________________

Gozzi maintained that there can be
but thirty-six tragic situations. Schiller took
great pains to find more, but he was unable
to find even so many as Gozzi.

Goethe
__________________________

My Favorite Words 19: Pray Thee!

2009-05-19T06:27:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle.
Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole
one and prayed for forgiveness.

Emo Philips
__________________________

My Favorite Words: Pretending

2009-05-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

Education: That which discloses to the wise & disguises from the fool
their lack of understanding.

Ambrose Bierce
__________________________

My Favorite Words: Stuporous

2009-05-15T07:07:00.000-07:00

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: So much has been destroyed.
I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

Adrienne Rich
__________________________

My Favorite Words: Defined

2009-05-13T05:50:00.000-07:00

Jealousy is a passion which with eagerness seeks what causes pain.

Sigmund Freud
__________________________

My Favorite Words: The Remains of the Day

2009-05-13T05:47:00.000-07:00

If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there is no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.

Anthony Swofford.
__________________________

My favorite words: "The" actor

2009-05-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

Marlon Brando's going to class to learn the (Acting) Method was like sending a tiger to jungle school.

Elaine Stitch
__________________________

That Thing of the Poets 9: A Lot!

2009-04-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

Too much is not enough.

Gavin Rossdale (Bush --the band, not The Assassin)
__________________________

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

William Blake
__________________________

My Favorite Words: Traduttore -- Traditore!

2009-04-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

What is translation?
On a platter a poet's pale and glaring head, a parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter, and a profanation of the dead.

Vladimir Nabokov
__________________________

My Favorite Words: The Latin Poet

2009-03-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo

Vergilius Maro
__________________________

My Favorite Words: Blakean

2009-03-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

The Grandest poetry is Immoral, the Grandest characters Wicked.

William Blake
__________________________

My Favorite Words: Cartesian

2009-03-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

Doubt is our passion.

Henry James
__________________________

On Writing

2009-03-06T20:25:00.000-08:00

All the attention and engagement and work you need to get from the reader can't be for your benefit; it's got to be for hers.

David Foster Wallace
__________________________

Perceived Reality: Perceiving Reality?

2009-02-21T07:21:00.000-08:00

Only for the most select and most balanced minds does it seem possible to guard the perceived picture of external reality against the distortion to which it is otherwise subjected in its transit through the psychic individuality of the one perceiving it.

Sigmund Freud
__________________________

Mi favorite words 23: On Writers

2009-01-20T12:26:00.000-08:00

Literatos populares são literatos impopulares entre os literatos.

Millôr Fernandes.
__________________________

My Favorite Words 22: On Language

2009-01-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

The commerce of language is the intermediary of Love.

Aneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II)
__________________________

A Barak to America!

2008-11-09T06:16:00.000-08:00

(barak, in the Swahili --Kiswahili-- language means blessing)

It would be difficult for an African-American to be elected president of this country. However, it is not difficult for an extraordinary individual who happens to be African-American to be elected president.

Cornell Belcher.
__________________________

Life Phylosophy: Sow what you Reap.

2008-10-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

Only men who make Zeno and Pythagoras and Democritus and the other high priests of liberal studies their daily family, who cultivate Aristotle and Theophrastus, can properly said to be engaged in the duties of life... It is a common saying that a man's parents are not of his own choosing but alloted to them by chance. But we can choose our own genealogy... Here are families with noble endowments: choose whichever you wish to belong to. Your adoption will give you not only the name but actually the property, and this you need not guard in a mean or niggardly spirit: the more people you share it with, the greater it will become. These will open the path to eternity for you and will raise you to a height from which none can be cast down. This is the sole means of prolonging your mortality, or rather, of transforming it into immortality.

Seneca.
__________________________

Obituarium: Farewell, my man!

2008-09-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

...it's been a hell of a ride.

Paul Newman
Jan. 26, 1925 - Sep. 26, 2008
---------------------------------- requiescat in pace, Paul. ----------

My Favorite Words 21: That's History!

2008-09-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

History never repeats itself, man always does.

Voltaire
__________________________

History, n. An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Ambroise Bierce
__________________________

History is a bucket of ashes.

Carl Sandburg
__________________________

The sum total of history is all the things they aren't telling us.

Don DeLillo
__________________________

History would be a wonderful thing--if it were only true.

Leo Tolstoy
__________________________

History is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken.

James Joyce
__________________________

History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history.

Clarence Darrow
__________________________

On the whole, history tends to be rather poor fiction--except at its best.

Gore Vidal
__________________________

We learn from history that we do not learn from History.

Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
__________________________

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Napoleon Bonaparte
__________________________

History shall not dare say anything false

Cicero
__________________________

History is bunk.

Henry Ford
__________________________

History is different from personal retrospection. The latter is individual, subjective, private, in many ways untestable: Its realm is memory. History, on the other hand, is social. It is public. Through debate, appeals to data, judgments about coherence and plausibility, history is in some sense testable. It is in its obligations to both evidence and testability that history as a discipline is scientific. Its relation to memory is thus different from that which memory shares with personal recollection, because history's realm is shared, public knowledge.

Paula Frediksen
__________________________

In history nothing happens too early or too late, nothing that has happened could have not, and nothing that has not happened could have been made happen. History only is, and it is so at its own time which is always the right one.

Hugo Pezzini
__________________________

If autocrats always acted wisely they would not furnish history with moral lessons.

Barbara Tuchman
__________________________

People think of history in the long term, but history, in fact, is a very sudden thing.

Philip Roth
__________________________

My Favorite Words 20: A Poet on The Poet's Poems

2008-08-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

Homer´s poems were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization has reposed.

Percy Shelley
__________________________

My Favorite Words 19: On Text

2008-08-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

The concept of a definitive text belongs to either religion or weariness.

Jorge Luis Borges
__________________________

Corageous Disagreement

2008-07-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it might lead.

John Stuart Mill

* * * *

Hippias: "I cannot agree with you."

Socrates: "Nor can I agree with myself, Hippias, and yet that seems to be the conclusion which, as far as we can see at present, must follow from our argument."

There speaks a man not afraid of allowing his thoughts absolute freedom to explore.

Alberto Manguel
__________________________

My Favorite Words 18: Mohawk Grill's Wisdom

2008-06-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

"You're smarter than your old man," he said. " 'Course, you're younger too. You got all your dumb years ahead of you."

Richard Russo
__________________________

The Future:

2008-02-06T09:46:00.000-08:00

We have: . . . the most diverse coalition of Americans we’ve seen in a long, long time. They are young and old; rich and poor. They are black and white; Latino and Asian. They are Democrats from Des Moines and Independents from Concord; Republicans from rural Nevada and young people across this country who've never had a reason to participate until now. . . . We are hungry for change, and we are ready to believe again.

Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.

Yes we can change.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can seize our future.
Yes we can.

Barak Obama.
__________________________

That Thing of the Poets 8: To Kill and Die

2007-12-02T20:30:00.001-08:00

Sunday night in New York; I hear the the sound of cars on the street, crushing and splattering snow and mud with their wheels. Meanwhile -- right now! I say -- our tender children continue to kill and die in Iraq.
I swallow my anguish and let the Dirty Old Man speak for me:

a great white light dawns across the
continent
as we fawn over our failed traditions,
often kill to preserve them
or sometimes just kill to kill.
it doesn't seem to matter: the answers dangle just
out of reach,
out of hand, out of mind.

Charles Bukowsky
__________________________

My Favorite Words 16: On Poetry

2007-11-24T07:28:00.000-08:00

An attractive idea is that the test of poetry should be the same as Henry James's dictum for the novel, that it be interesting.

Jim Harrison
__________________________

My Favorite Words 15: (in)communication

2007-11-04T01:22:00.000-07:00

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Anonymous
__________________________

My Favorite Words 14: What do you know!

2007-10-06T19:07:00.000-07:00

Which is Which? / Who is Who?

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little,
but that they know so many things that aren't true.*

Mark Twain
Pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens [1835-1910]

* The quotation is most likely apocryphal,
or it paraphrases a saying (or some of the
sayings) by Josh Billings, for instance:

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.

Josh Billings
Pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw [1818-1885]
__________________________

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.

Henry David Thoreau
__________________________

That Thing of the Poets 7: MADraft

2007-10-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

Indian Summer in New York. Getting dressed to go for a run (outside, Central Park shinning brightly under a 28ºC-degree unseasonal heat), I hear a certain writer talk on the NPR radio station. He tells me of his relationship with his father, with his country and the world, with his profession(s), etc. His words make me postpone the run and sit down to, rushing, engage that conversation, which translates into this insane work in progress:

MADraft

Pardon, me, please.
I have heard it;
You just said it:

“I am an urban animal
and I need that rush.”
You called Istambul
“The Ceaseless Roar”, but
Next
You said the same
Of The City,
--yours, and mine--
(Our city).

You, the trascendental son
Of an absentee-father,
Your Name is Red.
That dad, semi-goner dad,
Who, filling out
With savage ink
His notebooks,
Filled up
With acrid smoke
--Gauloises's smoke--
The humid rooms
Of cheap hotels.
Craving for it
Waiting for it,
Aimlessly roamed
The darkest alleys
Of labyrinthine
Existentialism
Dans Le fou Marais--
Of gay Paris.
Yes, it was him who
Brought up the child
Who you would be.

Periodically fatherless
Istanbulean urchin
Quite early knew
You would not go
And become the painter.
No, no. No.
That one, you would not be...

Nevermind me.

Thousand-and-one
Cities and books,
Mirrors your brow.

Sometimes I think:
I would I walked
Your threaded paths
Across that bridge
America struggles
--so rough and crude--
To try and chow
To smithereens.

Nights of the crescent moon
Evenings of Montparnasse
Let me lend you for a single minute
The dawn Porteño so full of dew
That mists my body until it blooms.

A few blocks from
A bookstuffedshack
I've called "home,"
The Turk-Professor,
Before the staring
Columbia eyes,
Speaks; (the ears, avid),
And feeds them gracious
Abundant Lit.

Nevermind me.

I think you think
The bridge a myth
Cannot be broken,
But,
Noble man,
Master,
Nobel man
Of many a word:

"Cervantes era.."
Jorge Luis Borges
Once he did say.
This way he said it:

"Érase-una-vez-un-hombre-que-sabía-todas-las-palabras."

You do too, I reckon.

But, I know, my poet,
Storyteller,
Your apartment's window
On the other side
Gazes at Bosphorus
And your difficult
Forceful
Balance-d act
between two worlds
Brings you to our
--yours and mine--
New York.

Was it, perhaps,
your father’s
Parisian haven
Promissed heaven
--A realm so laden--
Where reigns, solemnly,
A Golden Stork?

(The native children
Of my native land
[Still?] believe
In domes above
The enlightened city
Nests the rare bird
Who those children brought)

Nevermind me.

Pushed-away castaways
Listening to borrowed voices;
Broken melodies/
Shakesperean noises/
The likes of those
We emulate.
Erudite parrots,
Of borrowed signage
Are we mad prophets
Howling a desert
Of stolen accents
From Northern winds.

Constantinople <--> Santa María del Buen Aire = New Amsterdam
(Yes, those good old names)

You, Noble Nobel;
Je, le minuscule écrivain;
Peut être nous, étrangeres unconnus.
Nostos draws us:
Strangeman and madman
Trying and straining
To see as the landfall
This strenuos Land.

Yet we galope the world
Astride on a pen
(Once mightier than the sword
As said Sir Lytton, the Lord)
Misssing the Dead Poets
Or...
Running away from them all.

Meeting each other
If there is a zenith:

For you, the minarets;
For me, an obelisk.
(None a relationship
With the rather ancient,
Wondrous Egypt).

Soon, (who knows?)
Could you well be
A United European
Walking the bridge
On your seven-league legs.
I, always in my memory
Ambling that desolate land
Where slaps Aeolus
-- we call it Pampero--
furious my face with his nasty blows.

Nevermind me.

Undisturbed
--He said.

Among the perennial silence
Of blank pages and open books,
--He said:

"We have no longer
The sacred animals
For all the cows
Have gone already
-As it has gone--
Long, away, long
Dear dignity"

Or so he said,
Roberto Bolaño,
My dearest neighbor,
Of many an año
Who, very sadly,
Ya went away.
--He said:

"Only nocturnal and
Roaming Rabbits
We harbor now."

Then, at last,
Do mind me,
I beg you,
And please
Do tell me,
Wise Racconteur:
How do I do it?
Where do I meet you
--Ominous Writer--
Orhan Pamuk?

Hugo Pezzini
(this one is mine)
In New York at about noon.

* The (fake) quotations on cows and rabbits are based on Roberto Bolaño's short-story "The Insufferable Gaucho".

__________________________

That Thing of the Poets 6: Tabla Rasa

2007-09-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

Noticias llegan de Pupi, mi hermana poeta:
mamá se pierde más y más, envuelta en su manto de niebla.
Tú la visitas, Pupi: Sólo vagamente, Madre te vislumbra.
Madre --ciega ya su memoria ante mi silueta-- jamás verá (sabrá), quien soy,
que una vez hubo un hijo.
Madre descansa en un silencio que ruge, en una distancia volátil --interiores, exteriores-- ya inquebrantables, proto-finales.

Entonces recuerdo a la exacta, certera, Alejandra Pizarnik:

cisternas en la memoria
ríos en la memoria
charcas en la memoria
siempre agua en la memoria
viento en la memoria
soplan en la memoria

__________________________

Obituarium: Deadly Poet

2007-07-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

Igmar Bergman died last night.
From the New York Times (July 30 2007):

Once, when asked by the critic Andrew Sarris why he did what he did, Mr. Bergman told the story of the rebuilding of Chartres Cathedral in the Middle Ages by thousands of anonymous artisans.

“I want to be one of the artists of the cathedral that rises on the plain,” he said. “I want to occupy myself by carving out of stone the head of a dragon, an angel or a demon, or perhaps a saint; it doesn’t matter; I will find the same joy in any case. Whether I am a believer or an unbeliever, Christian or pagan, I work with all the world to build a cathedral because I am artist and artisan, and because I have learned to draw faces, limbs, and bodies out of stone. I will never worry about the judgment of posterity or of my contemporaries; my name is carved nowhere and will disappear with me. But a little part of myself will survive in the anonymous and triumphant totality. A dragon or a demon, or perhaps a saint, it doesn’t matter!”

---------------------------------- requiescat in pace, Igmar. ----------

My Favorite Words 13: On Creation, Construction, The Arts.

2007-07-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

The ultimate accomplishment in writing, composing, lyric writing, poetry, fiction, painting… in my humble estimation… is that the audience reads or hears or sees and not only suspends disbelief but, transcendently is taken up into the work or its performance.

"Jeenious"

__________________________

My Favorite Words 12: Politics 2

2007-07-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

While there is a lower class, I am in it;
while there is a criminal element, I am of it;
while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Eugene Debs

__________________________

My Favorite Words 11: Hope, faith, belief. God

2007-07-03T12:58:00.001-07:00

The angel said to me, “All that you have written is sure and will come true: the Lord God who inspires the prophets has sent his angel to reveal to his servants ‘what is soon to take place.’ ”

St. John The Divine

__________________________

O God, if I knew how you wish to be worshiped I would so worship you: but I do not know.

Zayd ibn Amr

__________________________

I do not distinguish between hope and belief.

Laurence Thornton

__________________________

I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.

Julian Barnes

__________________________

That Thing of the Poets 5: On the Seas

2007-06-27T06:38:00.000-07:00

MARES DEL SUR

Mares del sur
siluetas que se desperezan al ocaso.
Cuerpos de arena
que azota la tormenta.
Caballo cimarrón, el viento.
Eterna contradicción de la marea
que se agita contra la escollera.

Hielo en los tobillos...
capricho de los peces
que se contonean en el fondo,
trompo...
giros al viento de cabellos-flamas.
Viento armonioso que se descuelga
en los atardeceres.
Rueda, cañón, marioneta
opaca de payasos.
El fuerte se divisa
sobre las rocas de Cabo Corrientes...
La torre, circunscripta
por el vuelo de gaviotas.
Niños, inventando pasadizos
en el agua
para que la marea
no se lleve la infancia...

Desnudo, quieto, casi congelado
cuerpo de mujer,
abrazado en esa tarde
en que el sabor salobre de la boca
recorría su contorno en el crepúsculo.

Estatua de luz...
embarcación que se agita
sobre el movimiento,
y otra vez el viento...
y la carrera loca hacia la torre.
Desde allí, divisábamos la tarde
larga como una sombra,
y el sonido de la arena
arrasada por el torbellino.

Huellas de pies
que duran sólo aquel instante
en que otra ola
los cancela ahora.

Mareo en las pupilas sorprendidas
de una niña...
Inmensidad del movimiento
irremediable, (que no para)
que amenaza con un vacío
bajo el cuerpo.
Destierro...
impedido por dos fuertes brazos
que amarran,
que protegen,
que sostienen.

Y finalmente, la noche
intrusa sobre la escollera
a donde nos asomábamos
para contemplarla.

Él, distante, indeciso y
loco
como un hechizo
que no cesa de romperse,
como un paisaje
que nunca se ha mirado,
como una vastedad
que vela el sueño
se deja contemplar
equidistante.

Astro conmovido
que pincela la espuma;
música de las ráfagas
que azotan con la arena.
Oscuro camino de Alfonsina
emigrando del dolor
y del olvido.

Una luz que se prende
y que se apaga
nos hace señas desde la otra orilla...
desandar entonces la pendiente
por las piedras.

Rasguños en las rodillas,
pequeños latigazos del salitre
que se cuela junto con el agua .

Decisión de aguardar aquella nave.

Luego... en el interior de la cabaña,
estallaba, de pronto
el silencio.

Silvia Pezzini

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My Favorite Words 10: On Art

2007-06-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Todo parte de cierta confianza, el cine y el arte en general tienen que partir de cierta confianza subyacente que tiene que existir porque si no, no puedes hacer nada, es casi instintivo, es una especie de creencia de que lo que uno está haciendo va a ser algo, de que todo eso se convertirá en una narración.

Martin Rejtman

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My Favorite Words 9: Politics

2007-06-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

My Job Is to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable

A bumper sticker

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For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me. I dare say that you may feel out of temper (like a person who is suddenly awakened from sleep), and you think that you might easily strike me dead as Anytus advises, and then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you sent you another gadfly.

Socrates (according to Plato´s Apology)

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That Thing of the Poets 4: Buenos Aires

2007-06-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

I fly to Buenos Aires tomorrow, so here it goes an Argentinean poet very dear to my heart:

Infancia

Territorio de juegos
rambla del Hermitage
infancia...
Pasadizo al otro lado del espejo.
Islas Canarias
en la esquina de mi casa.
Mar de artificio,
disfraz, hermano...
(madre joven), cometa...
Y yo, princesa de esos juegos.
Perdidos en la bruma
de un puerto amarillento,
armábamos
castillos de palabras y sueños.
Mar de utilería,
(en confrontación
con nuevas playas).
Territorio de olvido
el hoy...
la voz y la añoranza.
Si desde un "piedra libre"
atisbo en la distancia
esa coronación en reinos
que inventábamos...
desempaño el cristal
de la lejanía...
Verano que pasó
la vida.

Silvia Pezzini

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My Favorite Words 8: Madness and Sanity

2007-06-01T09:22:00.003-07:00

The insane view of life has much to be said for it--perhaps it's the sane one after all: and we, the sad sober respectable citizens really rave every moment of our lives and deserve to be shut up perpetually.

Virginia Woolf

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My Favorite Words 7: At Sea

2007-05-29T07:54:00.001-07:00

In all the devious tracing the course of a sailing ship
leaves upon the white paper of a chart
she is always aiming for that one little spot
- maybe a small island in the ocean,
a single headland upon the long coast of a continent,
a light-house on a bluff,
or simply the peaked form
of a mountain like an ant heap
afloat upon the waters.

But if you have sighted it on the expected bearing,
then the landfall is good.

Joseph Conrad

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Perdidos en la bruma
de un puerto amarillento,
armábamos
castillos de palabras y sueños.

Silvia Pezzini

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Just as in a stormy sea, unbounded in every direction, rising and falling with howling mountainous waves, a sailor sits in a boat and trusts his frail barque.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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My Favorite Words 6: The Machine

2007-05-25T05:02:00.000-07:00

Never mind the machinery. Remember the men. The men make the machines, and they make their own tragedies too.

Harvey Swados.

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Man created the machine.
A machine does not feel love, hate or fear; it does not suffer from ulcers, heart attacks or emotional disturbances.
Perhaps man's only chance of survival is to become a machine.
Some men have succeeded.
A machine who passes for a man often rules societies--a dictator is a power machine in his country. A dedicated artist can turn into a talent machine.
Sometimes this evolution occurs without the man realizing it.

Jacqueline Susan

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La máquina acosa a los jóvenes: Los encierra, tortura, mata. Ellos son la prueba viva de su impotencia. Los expulsa: Los vende, carne humana, brazos baratos, al extranjero.
La máquina, estéril, odia todo lo que crece y se mueve. Sólo es capaz de multiplicar las prisiones y los cementerios.
No puede producir otra cosa que presos y cadáveres, espías y policías, mendigos y desterrados.
Ser joven es un delito. La realidad comete ese delito todos los días, a la hora de la alborada; y también la historia, que cada mañana nace de nuevo.
Por eso la realidad y la historia están prohibidas.

Eduardo Galeano

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Flashing lights, rattling scoreboard - there was a voluptuous Amazon on the painted display above, which announced FIRE QUEEN in gaudy fairground calligraphy. The boy's beatific wide eyes flickered as the tumblers clicked and the numbers rolled. Trying for the bonus ball. More than a game of chance - not the fruit machine or the one-armed bandit, there's no solid currency to be gained, only the pleasure of winning. A rarefied skill that could only be developed in the inverse work ethic of Playland. An industrial trade of sorts, a mystery if you like. Like all skilled work it permits the human to imagine that he is working the machine, not the other way around.

Jake Arnott

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That Thing of the Poets 3: Absence

2007-05-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

Enquanto a chuva bate forte no telhado
os carros transitam apressadamente pelas avenidas;
Pessoas se encontram nos cruzamentos/
num vai e vem do verde do sinal;
mendigos tentando um abrigo da chuva
aos transeuntes pedem um trocado qualquer;
as lojas fechando/
deixando à mostra apenas as vitrines;
um homem faz sinal pro taxi.
É quase madrugada;
percorro todas as ruas
e não encontro você.

Consuelo Moreira

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My Favorite Words 5: Encountered Viewpoints

2007-05-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

All a man ever really thinks would go on a half sheet of note paper.
The rest is just elaboration.

Ezra Pound

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It is worthwhile writing down everything

Dr. Johnson (paraphrase)

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My Favorite Words 4: Existentialist

2007-05-12T07:22:00.001-07:00

Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.

Albert Camus

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My Favorite Words 3: Grafittiero

2007-05-12T07:19:00.000-07:00

The art world is the biggest joke going. It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.

Banksy

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That Thing of the Poets 2

2007-05-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

Reminder of a Life

If I were told:
By evening you will die
so what will you do until then?
I would look at my wristwatch,
I ‘d drink a glass of juice,
bite an apple,
contemplate at length an ant that has found its food,
then look at my wristwatch.
There’d be time left to shave my beard
and dive in a bath, obsess:
”There must be an adornment for writing,
so let it be a blue garment.”
I’d sit until noon alive at my desk
but wouldn’t see the trace of color in the words,
white, white, white…
I’d prepare my last lunch,
pour wine in two glasses: one for me
and one for the one who will come without appointment,
then I’d take a nap between two dreams.
But my snoring would wake me…
so I’d look at my wristwatch: and there’d be time left for reading.
I’d read a chapter in Dante and half of a mu’allaqah
and see how my life goes from me
to the others, but I wouldn’t ask who
would fill what’s missing in it.
That’s it’ then?
That’s it, that’s it.
Then what?
Then I’d comb my hair and throw away the poem…
this poem, in the trash,
and put on the latest fashion in Italian shirts,
parade myself in an entourage of Spanish violins,
and walk to the grave!

Mahmoud Darwish
Translated, from the Arabic, by Fady Joudah.

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On Writing

2007-05-12T07:04:00.000-07:00

I don’t want to be anything when I’m writing.

Virginia Woolf

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Obituarium: The Last From the Sixties?

2007-04-12T03:52:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut died last night; he wrote:

We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies.
When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock.
My God, my God -- I said to myself, "It's the Children's Crusade."

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When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.

----------------------------------requiescat in pace, Kurt.----------