Re-reading Vallejo's Poemas humanos reminds me of his saturated use of juxtaposition. Terms and images might try to sit in isolated lines, but the juxtapositions stack-up.
If it were legitimate to interpret Vallejo's poetics as dialectic, his work would complicate (or sicken) the entire process. As one reads on, it becomes difficult to maintain a simple dialectical poetics. There is too much interweaving, too much contamination.
Take this poem that works from the cinematic image (via the theatrical) of Eisenstein:
La emoción que despierta el decorado es de una grandeza teatral exultante. De las poleas y transmisiones, de los yunques, de los hilos conductores, de los motores, brota la chispa, el relámpago violáceo, el zig-zag deslumbrante, el tranquilo isócrono, los tics-tacs implacables, el silbido neumático y ardiente, como de un animal airado e invisible.
The concrete of the poem describes a spark that ignites the scene. The moment becomes contagious and contiguous with other moments in time. Each isolated moment joins in the spark(ing) so that the "tranquilo isócrono" is not so isolated (isócrono suggests one or two equal moments of duration). Its spark spatially and temporally joins other moments to it.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Three lines from Merleau-Ponty & One from Borges
The notes that would have composed the final part of The Visible and the Invisible compose some of the most enticing moments in the text because MMP makes phenomenology dialogue with (Lacanian) psychoanalysis, making it very weird indeed.
We were a flux of individual Erlebnisse, whereas we are [now] a field of Being. Even in the present, the landscape is a configuration.
The "associations" of psychoanalysis are in reality "rays" of time and of the world.
This evening, I chased MMP with the short Manual de la zoología fantástica by Borges and Margarita Guerrero. The Manual intentionally leaves out the werewolf or lobisón because they morph from mankind. B & G are interested in the infinite splicing up of Being by the human imagination. Where does it take us?
Según el prólogo:
Ignoramos [los humanos] el sentido del dragón, como ignoramos el sentido del universo, pero algo hay en su imagen que concuerda con la imaginación de los hombres, y así el dragón surge en distintas latitudes y edades.
We were a flux of individual Erlebnisse, whereas we are [now] a field of Being. Even in the present, the landscape is a configuration.
The "associations" of psychoanalysis are in reality "rays" of time and of the world.
This evening, I chased MMP with the short Manual de la zoología fantástica by Borges and Margarita Guerrero. The Manual intentionally leaves out the werewolf or lobisón because they morph from mankind. B & G are interested in the infinite splicing up of Being by the human imagination. Where does it take us?
Según el prólogo:
Ignoramos [los humanos] el sentido del dragón, como ignoramos el sentido del universo, pero algo hay en su imagen que concuerda con la imaginación de los hombres, y así el dragón surge en distintas latitudes y edades.
Valente in motion
I find José Ángel Valente's poetry fascinating. Apparently his work is known for its difficulty - possibly because he tends to depart from concrete social/historical realities and dwells in the possibilities of the written word. (In my mind this is all for the best!) Furthermore, I am not so sure that he has nothing to say on social or political realities. As I was reading more of Punto cero (a rather large anthology of various collections), his (mystical) fascination with the word (lyric) allows for a variety of different (albeit difficult) reformulations of reality. I would think this might have something to do with his fascination with Lezama Lima. For example, his poem "José Lezama Lima":
Yo que he viajado
acaso he visto una serpiente
en la mesa del maestro cantor.
Y, sin embargo, ignoro aún que he visto,
aunque bien sepa
que la palabra, recayendo otra vez sobre mí,
ha de decirme a qué porción de tu secreto pertenezco.
Tal vez, mientras tú hablabas,
yo pude adivinar aquella oscura
complicidad de tu nombre con la luz
o acaso tú mismo me hayas dado
por abundancia de ti el sésamo
desde tu rapidísima quietud.
Pero yo vovleré.
Yo que he viajado volveré.
Y acaso vea entonces al maestro cantor
en el lúcido ojo de la misma serpiente.
There are multiple folds of time here and each express a different sense of uncertainty (as we all should when considering the oeuvre of Lezama). The first lines narrate a possible string of events -- perhaps there was a snake. Yet the futurity in the last lines contains an uncanny sense of return.
I can totally relate this to my reading of Lezama.
In Lezama, there is repetition that becomes obsessive. It always seems to be the same lines of Pascal, Góngora, Yi King, yet its situatedness in Lezama's topography alters the image. The serpent on the table of the master poet (singer) becomes a trope, but his texts always work like sea changes, the tide's ebb and flow alter the form of the animal... and of the visible and invisible poetic content.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
*El pensamiento de Cervantes* & antihumanism
Today I have been working through some of my conceptual frameworks for a piece on the interaction between human/nonhuman in the sertão, as it is manifest in Brazilian films from the 1960s & 1990s. Rocha's manifestos, discusses in a previous post, have allowed me to think more about my reaction and use of the term humanism. As well, I think my designation of humanist (or humanism) may not be far off from Neyrat's antihumanism because he re-reads the humanist traditions instead of urging that they be chopped up into bits and sold off to cyborgs. In this case, he is more in line with Adorno & Horkheimer in The Dialectic of Enlightenment etc....
Perhaps as a response I will offer some of my commentary on Castro's classic, albeit incomplete, work El pensamiento de Cervantes, which brilliantly analyzes what he claims to be the content of Cervantes' though, but not his (literary/poetic) form. I might disagree with this description -- at least by today's standards...
aquí va el primer pedazo de un análisis largo:
Perhaps as a response I will offer some of my commentary on Castro's classic, albeit incomplete, work El pensamiento de Cervantes, which brilliantly analyzes what he claims to be the content of Cervantes' though, but not his (literary/poetic) form. I might disagree with this description -- at least by today's standards...
aquí va el primer pedazo de un análisis largo:
Al acercar a El pensamiento de Cervantes (1972) un lector cualquiera debe reconocer que es un estudio no fracasado sino abortado a causa de otros quehaceres más relevantes a los proyectos maduros de Castro: “las vigentes acerca de quiénes son los españoles”. Mi intento aquí no es sólo dar un bosquejo preliminar a prima facie sino de establecer varios vínculos entre este primer proyecto castrista y la trayectoria compleja entre el humanismo y la literatura del siglo XVI desde nuestro punto de vista crítico. De veras El pensamiento es un estudio imprescindible por su recorreo enorme de fuentes. He aquí el índice general:
I. La orientación literaria
II. Análisis del sujeto y crítica de la realidad
III. El error y la armonía como temas literarios
IV. La naturaleza como principio divino e inmanente
V. Otros temas [El vulgo y el sabio, Las armas y las Letras, Los españoles, Lo picaresco]
VI. Ideas religiosas
VII. La moral
Conclusión [relación de siglas]
Su cuerpo textual aparece desmesurado: fuentes, notas y redacciones, por ejemplo, llenan la mayoría del espacio mientras que los argumentos principales a veces parecen preliminares. Para Castro, es imposible entender “el ángulo vital” de Cervantes sin examinar las ideas que se nutren su proyecto. Lo menciono no para criticar sino para entenderlo mejor. El acto es sumamente anacrónico, entre dos momentos históricos del crítico maestro: investigaciones al principio de su carrera que han llegado a publicación al final de su vida. Mas no sugiero que la aproximación sea sumamente equivocada sino subdesarrollada. Castro mismo menciona en su “Nota del autor a esta nueva edición”: “Decidí entonces dejar mi primer libro cervantino en una vía muerta, y orientar en otro sentido la averiguación de los cómos y los porqués del Quijote”. De acuerdo con nuestra percepción hoy, El pensamiento es un texto muerto (antes de su fruición final). Así que en cuanto a la tesis principal: el pensamiento humanista, que había tenido una influencia enorme en los intelectuales españoles en el siglo XVI, también proveyó la mayoría del contenido y forma en los proyectos cervantinos. De ahí, Castro se hace hincapié en las semejanzas entre escritores humanistas como León Hebreo y Cervantes. Aquéllas son tan enfatizadas por Castro que a veces nos da un par de citas textuales juntos en la misma página. Como indica el título, la interpretación se enfoca más en el contenido que en forma. Su “Nota” explica: “me llevó a conceder primaria importancia a temas abstractos más bien que a la singular maravilla del modo cervantino de novelar”. Ya vemos una especie de redacción en su lenguaje: un reduccionismo filosófico tal vez no contenga “la maravilla” literaria. Hoy en día, como veremos, tal tesis causa una variedad de dificultades con respeto a la recepción contemporánea (por lo general) del cuerpo cervantino, cuya riqueza literaria (e ideológica) se delinea en conceptos como la parodia, la heterogeneidad, la novela experimental y, otra tendencia estilística e ideológica, el barroco. Sin embargo, Con respeto a su análisis, lo fascinante es encontrar los huecos que aún están vaciados después de la publicación en 72. Así que me interesa re-tocar algunos de sus temas principales como la verosimilitud (vista por la mentira) y la naturaleza.
Antes de entrar en el texto, sería útil elaborar una definición concreta del humanismo, como fue considero en aquella época. Dicho en otras palabras, una definición en desarrollo entre nuestro momento y aquello del XVI. Los humanistas siempre quieren estar en medio del camino. La retórica señala la necesidad de establecer una armonía entre elementos en conflicto – varios registros culturales, políticos y lingüísticos. El concepto nos lleva al binario por el estatus mismo del humano o, digamos, lo humano (para distanciarnos de cualquier sujeto establecido). Por un lado, la jerarquía rígida o cristalizada de la visión cristiana se derrumbe. O por lo menos debe restablecerse en otros términos (humanos). Por otra parte, los elementos humanos en esta especie del pensamiento se evitan una evaluación científica. La civilización sigue siendo distanciada del estado natural (del hombre mismo). Por introducir o enfatizar una variedad de elementos mundanos, los erasmistas sí establecen un ámbito clave en la tradición occidental, mas carecen de analizar su propio objecto – nosotros mismos. Las prácticas de investigación en las humanidades continuamente intentan a evaluar este mismo término. Por ejemplo, varios campos de crítica cultural y literaria investigan precisamente para re-evaluar lo humano colocado en su propio ambiente – es decir, al frente de nuestro imaginario (romantizado) – la naturaleza. De ahí, los escritores de la época abrazan abiertamente el pastoral, el lenguaje vulgar – o por lo menos su representación. Según el comentario de Historia social de la literatura española,
La naturaleza tiene un papel primordial, pues, en efecto, se parte de la idea básica de que aquélla es armoniosa precisamente para el amor y por el amor, al tiempo que es éste, el amor, el camino para reintegrarse a un cosmos sentido todavía como orgánico y total, frente a las divisiones y los conflictos producidos por el sistema social como tal. (220)
En seguida, se menciona la falacia patética: el artificio poético que establece la Naturaleza como reflejo (o trasfondo) de los sentimientos humanos.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Ambigüedad de la catastrofe
I have really enjoyed Ángel González's poetry recently. I think I read some of his stuff in a survey course, mixed in with the other "social" poets from 1950s Spain. González is often rather biting with his irony, where as a Blas de Otero or Miguel Hernández would push for a certain portion of sincerity. I think these four lines say more than they want to:
Lo había perdido todo:
amor, familia, bienes, esperanzas.
Y se decía sin tristeza;
¿no es hermoso, por fin, vivir sin miedo?
Let go of the windowed, glossy world. It is much weirder than we want to think...
Lo había perdido todo:
amor, familia, bienes, esperanzas.
Y se decía sin tristeza;
¿no es hermoso, por fin, vivir sin miedo?
Let go of the windowed, glossy world. It is much weirder than we want to think...
"El piano"
Piglia's piece in El país gives a rather scathing critique to all sorts of institutions. It would seem we are at once overly-connected in the most terrifying way and also set-off, separated from our immediate reality:
A la vez en estos días la intervención militar y el riesgo atómico han sustituido a las noticias locales.
The local, sealed-up sense of reality or home is lost. Its replacement seems to be a hyper-glossing of images, which Piglia identifies with the digital in its various phenomena:
En las mesas cercanas, las chicas y los muchachos toman agua mineral o té verde, concentrados en sus notebooks, sus iPod, sus BlackBerry, los auriculares puestos, aislados en sus cápsulas espaciales pero ligados a las realidades exteriores por el teléfono celular.
"Sus cápsulas espaciales" -- in this sense, we are not homeless, but rather sealed-up in a different kind of home. It would appear that the nonlocal, as Tim Morton would put it, still has its neat, glossy viewing window (e.g. Mac-book screens).
Piglia continues his affront with an attack against the status quo of literary criticism: "La crítica literaria es la más afectada por la situación actual de la literatura. Ha desaparecido del mapa". I would seem, correctly perhaps, that literary criticism has disappeared. For Piglia, the best critics now are historians. And there may be something to this tracing other lines through the dirt of history... The first time I read these lines, I wondered, if it may also be the case that the map(ping) of literary criticism has disappeared. Much time has been spent urging the public to read in a literate public (Vasconcelos would be very sad). Instead, literary criticism seems to take its cue from glossing the image, giving name to the (hyperbolic) frontal assault by images. How do we read them? What names do we give them?
Piglia is fascinated by developing other routes towards the future (cf. Respiración artificial). What is terrifying, for me, about this series of journal entries is its silent plea when faced with vacuum-sealed solipsists waiting around after "la destrucción de la naturaleza" only to exclaim, well finally this may be the last days of winter... perhaps (Nadie hace cola porque no hay nadie. Compro una pala para la nieve, un par de guantes de lona y una pinza (para abrir y cerrar las ventanas). Se anuncia una tormenta de nieve, la última del invierno, quizá.)
Let's hope against this (slight) pessimism that the literary has not died. I'm not so sure it has...
A la vez en estos días la intervención militar y el riesgo atómico han sustituido a las noticias locales.
The local, sealed-up sense of reality or home is lost. Its replacement seems to be a hyper-glossing of images, which Piglia identifies with the digital in its various phenomena:
En las mesas cercanas, las chicas y los muchachos toman agua mineral o té verde, concentrados en sus notebooks, sus iPod, sus BlackBerry, los auriculares puestos, aislados en sus cápsulas espaciales pero ligados a las realidades exteriores por el teléfono celular.
"Sus cápsulas espaciales" -- in this sense, we are not homeless, but rather sealed-up in a different kind of home. It would appear that the nonlocal, as Tim Morton would put it, still has its neat, glossy viewing window (e.g. Mac-book screens).
Piglia continues his affront with an attack against the status quo of literary criticism: "La crítica literaria es la más afectada por la situación actual de la literatura. Ha desaparecido del mapa". I would seem, correctly perhaps, that literary criticism has disappeared. For Piglia, the best critics now are historians. And there may be something to this tracing other lines through the dirt of history... The first time I read these lines, I wondered, if it may also be the case that the map(ping) of literary criticism has disappeared. Much time has been spent urging the public to read in a literate public (Vasconcelos would be very sad). Instead, literary criticism seems to take its cue from glossing the image, giving name to the (hyperbolic) frontal assault by images. How do we read them? What names do we give them?
Piglia is fascinated by developing other routes towards the future (cf. Respiración artificial). What is terrifying, for me, about this series of journal entries is its silent plea when faced with vacuum-sealed solipsists waiting around after "la destrucción de la naturaleza" only to exclaim, well finally this may be the last days of winter... perhaps (Nadie hace cola porque no hay nadie. Compro una pala para la nieve, un par de guantes de lona y una pinza (para abrir y cerrar las ventanas). Se anuncia una tormenta de nieve, la última del invierno, quizá.)
Let's hope against this (slight) pessimism that the literary has not died. I'm not so sure it has...
"The Return to Enunciation"
Looking back through John Mowitt's book, Re-takes has taken me back to the glorious nightmares of reading Lacan's 11th seminar last semester. In particular, this statement: "I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think". The human (ego) cannot be (soley) located at the site (sight) of its thinking.
This reminds me of some work I did on humanism last semester. Reading Américo Castro, I argued that (Renaissance) humanism was always "en medio de camino" and requires an outside to predicate its "humanness". This already confuses the supposed gap between human/nonhuman. In a phrase that I very much enjoy, Morton calls this borderline "thick and permeable". Yes.
Back to the Seminar, Lacan distinguishes the hidden (occult) cause from a law (which "absorbs" causal chain). Énoncé gives way to limps, gaps, gasps, slips and faltering and shows what lurks around a discourse.
As M. points out, this terminology seeps into Metz, to think about cinema as impersonal enunciation. Cinema's medium is always full of a double absence. It is composed of fictitious story and then of absent images.
This complicates the phenomenology of landscapes. Metz explains: "[cinema] presents us with long sequences in which only inanimate objects, landscapes, etc. appear and which for minutes at a time offer no human form for spectator identification: yet the latter must be supposed to remain intact in its deep structure, since at such moments the film works just as well as it does at others, and whole films (geographical documentaries, for example) unfold intelligibly in such conditions" (412). We might question Metz as he glosses over the presence of the nonhuman here. It seems to work until we look too closely. What if the film is trying to look too closely at the relationship between a landscape and its (human) creator? I think this is what Rocha is doing in O deus e o diabo na terra do sol. Resources, landscapes, mythical terrifying gods, Antônio das Mortes guns, dead animals all have their terrible effect and presence on the human. In this film, it becomes even more terrifying because we do not always see the cause, but witness the characters perception of their ensuing deaths.
This reminds me of some work I did on humanism last semester. Reading Américo Castro, I argued that (Renaissance) humanism was always "en medio de camino" and requires an outside to predicate its "humanness". This already confuses the supposed gap between human/nonhuman. In a phrase that I very much enjoy, Morton calls this borderline "thick and permeable". Yes.
Back to the Seminar, Lacan distinguishes the hidden (occult) cause from a law (which "absorbs" causal chain). Énoncé gives way to limps, gaps, gasps, slips and faltering and shows what lurks around a discourse.
As M. points out, this terminology seeps into Metz, to think about cinema as impersonal enunciation. Cinema's medium is always full of a double absence. It is composed of fictitious story and then of absent images.
This complicates the phenomenology of landscapes. Metz explains: "[cinema] presents us with long sequences in which only inanimate objects, landscapes, etc. appear and which for minutes at a time offer no human form for spectator identification: yet the latter must be supposed to remain intact in its deep structure, since at such moments the film works just as well as it does at others, and whole films (geographical documentaries, for example) unfold intelligibly in such conditions" (412). We might question Metz as he glosses over the presence of the nonhuman here. It seems to work until we look too closely. What if the film is trying to look too closely at the relationship between a landscape and its (human) creator? I think this is what Rocha is doing in O deus e o diabo na terra do sol. Resources, landscapes, mythical terrifying gods, Antônio das Mortes guns, dead animals all have their terrible effect and presence on the human. In this film, it becomes even more terrifying because we do not always see the cause, but witness the characters perception of their ensuing deaths.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Quevedo's (hypothetical) prologue to More's utopia
Thumbing through Borges always causes referential mania because he invents epigraphs, books, places, labyrinths and kings. The text as a memory machine (cf. Cy-Borges) outside of the human is always in some way re-read, that is to say, re-invented by the present reader-writer. One beautiful epigraph that is indeed accurate, it seems, is from Quevedo (the baroque poet that Borges calls less a man than a collection of works -- so true!). Borges deploys "Utopía, voz griega, cuyo significado es, no hay tal lugar"... wow. Perfect. I would love to read a Quevedo translation of More.
Speculative realism through Lovecraft & Borges
It's great to see that speculative realism is unafraid of dealing with literature, among other -sensuous- objects. For example Ben Woodward's piece, "Thinking against Nature" from Speculations. It seems that, indeed, there is a fascination with human imaginative capacities as opposed to any (feeble) attempts to negate them. Lovecraft rightfully appears to be the representative of this horrific reality. I would add Borges to the list. There has been a lot of work done comparing the two authors, yet I think that relating Borges to speculative realism (a term avoided when discussing B.) would be invigorating.
First, as I mentioned in a previous post, Morton's discussion of the books of a library not necessarily relating to the wholeness of the library. That is to say, some books are always lost. We want to be surprised by what is there. I love browsing the Wilson library at U of MN in order to be taken of guard by my encounters. Borges is obsessed with ideas like this. And so is his inventor, Macedonio...
Second, Borges actually writes on Lovecraft (hence the comparative work between B & L). In the epilogue to El libro de arena, he writes:
El destino que, según es fama, es inescrutable, no me dejó en paz hasta que perpetré un cuento postumo de Lovecraft, escritor que siempre he juzgado un parodista involuntario de Poe. Acabé por ceder; el lamentable fruto se titula There Are More Things.
Destiny, it seems, is fundamentally unknowable. But the "lamentable title" points to some interesting (ecological) possibilities posed in these questions:
¿Cómo sería el habitante? ¿Qué podía buscar en este planeta, no
menos atroz para él que él para nosotros? ¿Desde qué secretas regiones
de la astronomía o del tiempo, desde qué antiguo y ahora incalculable
crepúsculo, habría alcanzado este arrabal sudamericano y
esta precisa noche?
First, as I mentioned in a previous post, Morton's discussion of the books of a library not necessarily relating to the wholeness of the library. That is to say, some books are always lost. We want to be surprised by what is there. I love browsing the Wilson library at U of MN in order to be taken of guard by my encounters. Borges is obsessed with ideas like this. And so is his inventor, Macedonio...
Second, Borges actually writes on Lovecraft (hence the comparative work between B & L). In the epilogue to El libro de arena, he writes:
El destino que, según es fama, es inescrutable, no me dejó en paz hasta que perpetré un cuento postumo de Lovecraft, escritor que siempre he juzgado un parodista involuntario de Poe. Acabé por ceder; el lamentable fruto se titula There Are More Things.
Destiny, it seems, is fundamentally unknowable. But the "lamentable title" points to some interesting (ecological) possibilities posed in these questions:
¿Cómo sería el habitante? ¿Qué podía buscar en este planeta, no
menos atroz para él que él para nosotros? ¿Desde qué secretas regiones
de la astronomía o del tiempo, desde qué antiguo y ahora incalculable
crepúsculo, habría alcanzado este arrabal sudamericano y
esta precisa noche?
Thursday, April 21, 2011
"The Essay as Form"
T.W. Adorno's essay is really quite incredible. Instead of urging for more authenticity towards the object. A's argument soberly reminds us of the limits of working towards the object. The essay as a thing should realize its life blood comes from something that its analytical concepts are entirely cut out from. This comes to light here in a passage that reminds me of his Nature discussion in Aesthetic Theory:
"The essay silently abandons the illusion that thought can break out of thesis into physis, out of culture into nature. Spellbound by what is fixed and admittedly deduced, by artifacts, the essay honors nature by confirming that it no longer exists for human beings."
Yet the essay should pursue new relations and mediators towards "the thing itself" even if there is no access to it:
"By transgressing the orthodoxy of thought, something becomes visible in the object which it is orthodoxy's secret thought to keep invisible."
I think we can still affirm the negative in A's work and say right on.
"The essay silently abandons the illusion that thought can break out of thesis into physis, out of culture into nature. Spellbound by what is fixed and admittedly deduced, by artifacts, the essay honors nature by confirming that it no longer exists for human beings."
Yet the essay should pursue new relations and mediators towards "the thing itself" even if there is no access to it:
"By transgressing the orthodoxy of thought, something becomes visible in the object which it is orthodoxy's secret thought to keep invisible."
I think we can still affirm the negative in A's work and say right on.
estética da fome towards estética do sonho
Recently I have enjoyed reading the 1971 Manifesto by Glauber Rocha, "Estética do sonho", which actually expresses a fair amount of hesitation, considering its medium of a manifesto-like proclamation of style.
What do I mean by hesitation? A Brazilian director, Rocha is implicated in a certain set of political positions via "Estética da fome", which argues for a rather affirmative film-making style. Yet, I find his experimental films, before and after May 1968, completely shattering and disrupted. The mobilization of the sertão as a national, emblematic landscape is shattered in a wide variety of narrative levels. More interesting still, in Deus e o diabo na terra do sol human and object labor become intertwined. Human language mixes with object language. Politics does not become impossible, but it certainly becomes more complicated to articulate. What does this make visible in images? In language?
Rocha sums up this difficulty: "E, o que é mais difícil, exige uma precisa identificação do que é arte revolucionária útil ao ativismo político, do que é arte revolucionária lançada na abertura de novas discussões do que é arte revolucionária rejeitada pela esquerda e instrumentalizada pela direita(...).
(...)Uma obra de arte revolucionária deveria não só atuar de modo imediatamente político como também promover a especulação filosófica, criando uma estética do eterno movimento humano rumo à sua integração cósmica."
What does it look like to bring human movements (think labor) towards a cosmic integration?
What do I mean by hesitation? A Brazilian director, Rocha is implicated in a certain set of political positions via "Estética da fome", which argues for a rather affirmative film-making style. Yet, I find his experimental films, before and after May 1968, completely shattering and disrupted. The mobilization of the sertão as a national, emblematic landscape is shattered in a wide variety of narrative levels. More interesting still, in Deus e o diabo na terra do sol human and object labor become intertwined. Human language mixes with object language. Politics does not become impossible, but it certainly becomes more complicated to articulate. What does this make visible in images? In language?
Rocha sums up this difficulty: "E, o que é mais difícil, exige uma precisa identificação do que é arte revolucionária útil ao ativismo político, do que é arte revolucionária lançada na abertura de novas discussões do que é arte revolucionária rejeitada pela esquerda e instrumentalizada pela direita(...).
(...)Uma obra de arte revolucionária deveria não só atuar de modo imediatamente político como também promover a especulação filosófica, criando uma estética do eterno movimento humano rumo à sua integração cósmica."
What does it look like to bring human movements (think labor) towards a cosmic integration?
"Sea Consciousness: Reading Martín-Santos against Phenomenological Horizons"
My article, published yesterday in More than Thought, synchronizes some of my thinking on Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and The Invisible, a Martín-Santos' short story and the latter's incomplete novel, Tiempo de destrucción. My line of thinking engages Martín-Santos' interest in phenomenology as it appears in his fiction. I try to develop a (latent) understanding of landscapes as phantasmal imaginaries, predicated on human optics and horizons. As psychoanalysis and phenomenology begin to think of the gaze as not merely human (or social), but rather inherent in objects. The nonhuman perspective gains power in these texts. The implication is, of course, political. Following Latour and Morton, maintaining Nature (via landscape) over yonder will fail to incorporate nonhumans into the political process. I see these texts, among others, as 20th century attempts to re-think the relations (and their lack) between humans and nonhumans.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Macedonio through humor
This might actually seem brilliant because I have read too much of his work now - but wow:
Humor could be described as extrañeza ante la impresión de dos cuerpos para la misma psique...
Humor could be described as extrañeza ante la impresión de dos cuerpos para la misma psique...
Saturday, April 16, 2011
More on Macedonio
His writing apparently inspires some wonderfully written criticism. The other author discussed here is Borges. It has been said that Macedonio invented him.
In both writers’ work the supposedly bedrock concepts by which we live are revealed to be unstable isotopes, slippery and layered, none being in essence what they appear to be and all of course eminently moldable, especially within the pages of a story, poem, or essay.
Lovely, enigmatic.
In both writers’ work the supposedly bedrock concepts by which we live are revealed to be unstable isotopes, slippery and layered, none being in essence what they appear to be and all of course eminently moldable, especially within the pages of a story, poem, or essay.
Lovely, enigmatic.
Prólogo metafísico
¿Cómo es este Misterio y en él Dicha y Dolor, esta existencia de la cual no saldremos nunca, esta inexorable eternidad personal nemónica, ese Dolor para el que quisiéramos el no-ser, y que herirá siempre, esa Dicha que llegará y volverá, ese inapartable siempre existir, esa dicha esperada, no actual, para la que quisiéramos el ser con actualidad?
Macedonio's metaphysical prologue begs us to re-consider a series of epistemological categories that we hold about the world. Beginning from a negation of the real in realism, Macedonio gets closer to a Lacanian real. I would argue that his literary metaphysics are not so much a negation of realism, but an attempt to bring it to its inevitable conclusion. No matter how much time and space a Galdós novel swallows up, something eludes it. Some character slips by as a phantom, denigrating are full awareness of the world. Characters are equally withdrawn in Museo de la novela de la Eterna. They appear and disappear, yet perpetually haunt the text.
What is this mystery of the text walking the streets? And what is it to become "un lector salteado" incessantly trying to trace these character-magnets?
Macedonio's metaphysical prologue begs us to re-consider a series of epistemological categories that we hold about the world. Beginning from a negation of the real in realism, Macedonio gets closer to a Lacanian real. I would argue that his literary metaphysics are not so much a negation of realism, but an attempt to bring it to its inevitable conclusion. No matter how much time and space a Galdós novel swallows up, something eludes it. Some character slips by as a phantom, denigrating are full awareness of the world. Characters are equally withdrawn in Museo de la novela de la Eterna. They appear and disappear, yet perpetually haunt the text.
What is this mystery of the text walking the streets? And what is it to become "un lector salteado" incessantly trying to trace these character-magnets?
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Postponing apocalypse
Tim Morton has repeatedly argued that an apocalyptic environmentalism is also part of the problem. Esthetically, it postpones the immediacy of an ecological crisis. Somehow, it is not in our world - or our practice of worlding. This looks like a great response to one of his lectures. I have been considering dealing with similar questions in La lluvia amarilla, which looks at regional landscape after human abandonment. Its post-apocalyptic world tries to seal itself into a unified style (of place), but the outside keeps invading. More soon on this.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Guía a los prólogos (prólogo indicador)
This would be page 76 of the prologues. A guide could only appear at this point. Thanks, Macedonio. Me convirtió en lector salteado... (¿a diferencia del lector policial de Borges?)
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Frédéric Neyrat -- antihumanism
I am really cautious about all of the post-, anti- terms that are floating around with humanism right now. Principally, I am not sure it is the most productive term to use when the humanities are supposedly fading away. That said, I really enjoyed Neyrat's talk earlier this semester. His antihumanism is, of course, trying to operate against the humanist tradition, but also re-works many of its proponents into something salvageable.
The event page at UM - a video of what happened is there:
Also this article is appealing
The event page at UM - a video of what happened is there:
Also this article is appealing
Macedonio Fernández & Borges
It is really great to read Macedonio Fernández for the first time because it is really like a fresh reading on many ideas and styles haunting Borges. The first half of Museo de la novela de la Eterna is composed of prologues, consisting of about 134 pages of materials dealing with different facets of the literary thing. One of my favorite tropes so far is in "Prólogo a mi persona de Autor", when Macedonio mobilizes the exhaustion of petroleum as a comparison to exhausting a text, calling the established readership (um.. the Academy, for example) la Corporación Universal de Lectores.
Yo había proyectado que esta novela se publicara después de los 22 años en que se sabe que se habrá ahotado totalmente el petróleo terrestre, porque una adivinaza me garantizó que estaba dispuesto en la providencia del mundo que simultáneamente se agotara la provisión de bostezos de lector con que se cuenta al presente. Pero la Corporación Universal de Lectores se ha comprometido a vengarse de cierto escritor reservando para él--que anuncia próxima obra--todos los muy abundantes de que disponía para mi no menos anunciada obra. (17)
There are at least two ways to read this idea. We could dismiss Macedonio as naive, thinking that the excess of ground-up dinosaur bones would be comparable to the ineffable quality of an author's work (especially his, given his lack of engagement with a public, etc.). A more interesting reading would situate this statement to re-think relationality as the point of departure for writing (among other things). In academia there is a tendency to discuss an exhausted text, mined for all of its resources. I have always found this persistent, nagging tendency to be tiresome itself. What is that really has been exhausted: the text or the reader? In Macedonio, there is a sense there is a corpus of writings - a collection of objects - that exists as a novel, as a thing without being in relation to a public. It is not yet in the arena of consumption.
I find this interesting because it helps feed Borges' idea of the library. We tend to set up an idea of the library as a thing built from relations, but as Timothy Morton mentioned in a recent lecture, perhaps there is some sense that a library is never summed up in the established relations. The card catalog is only one way to begin mapping what is hiding there. And this is a secondary moment, not a primary "plane of immanence" as some would have it. There are always things lurking in the archive that might be lost, unread, unknown. As I move into the dissertating phase of my graduate student career, this is a very motivating idea.
Yo había proyectado que esta novela se publicara después de los 22 años en que se sabe que se habrá ahotado totalmente el petróleo terrestre, porque una adivinaza me garantizó que estaba dispuesto en la providencia del mundo que simultáneamente se agotara la provisión de bostezos de lector con que se cuenta al presente. Pero la Corporación Universal de Lectores se ha comprometido a vengarse de cierto escritor reservando para él--que anuncia próxima obra--todos los muy abundantes de que disponía para mi no menos anunciada obra. (17)
There are at least two ways to read this idea. We could dismiss Macedonio as naive, thinking that the excess of ground-up dinosaur bones would be comparable to the ineffable quality of an author's work (especially his, given his lack of engagement with a public, etc.). A more interesting reading would situate this statement to re-think relationality as the point of departure for writing (among other things). In academia there is a tendency to discuss an exhausted text, mined for all of its resources. I have always found this persistent, nagging tendency to be tiresome itself. What is that really has been exhausted: the text or the reader? In Macedonio, there is a sense there is a corpus of writings - a collection of objects - that exists as a novel, as a thing without being in relation to a public. It is not yet in the arena of consumption.
I find this interesting because it helps feed Borges' idea of the library. We tend to set up an idea of the library as a thing built from relations, but as Timothy Morton mentioned in a recent lecture, perhaps there is some sense that a library is never summed up in the established relations. The card catalog is only one way to begin mapping what is hiding there. And this is a secondary moment, not a primary "plane of immanence" as some would have it. There are always things lurking in the archive that might be lost, unread, unknown. As I move into the dissertating phase of my graduate student career, this is a very motivating idea.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Girondo «Mi lumía»
Mi Lu mi lubidulia mi golocidalove mi lu tan luz tan tu que me enclucielabisma y
descentratelura y venusafrodea y me nirvana el suyo la crucis los desalmes con sus
melimeleos sus eropsiquisedas sus decúbitos lianas y dermiferios limbos y gormullos
mi lu mi luar mi mito demonoave dea rosa mi pez hada mi lubisita nimia mi lubísnea
mi lu más lar más lampo mi pulpa lu de vértigo de galaxias de semen misterio mi
lubella lusola mi total lu plevida mi toda lu lumía.
Lumia means prostitute. But the referent almost does not *matter* here. What is of import is a different causal chain happening on the material surface of the language. One of my favorites is the transference of mi nirvana over to me nirvana; it becomes active as a verb. Splicing, like in Huidobro, but also a visual re-reading of bodies. I am not sure what we end up with here, but it is no mechanistic portrayal (as in naturalism) of a prostitute. Girondo is wonderful to read for vibrant causality where causes produce unexpected mysterious results.
Often the charge of anthropomorphism et al are charged to authors that dwell too much on the human. Are we not also guilty of this as readers? I have made the comment elsewhere, regarding Lezama Lima, that if we were to actually try to reconstruct a human face out of some anthropomorphic descriptors it would not look so human, but rather would mutate into another being. Reading (and not reception) would have it that powers might not only flow out from the human actor in a text.
descentratelura y venusafrodea y me nirvana el suyo la crucis los desalmes con sus
melimeleos sus eropsiquisedas sus decúbitos lianas y dermiferios limbos y gormullos
mi lu mi luar mi mito demonoave dea rosa mi pez hada mi lubisita nimia mi lubísnea
mi lu más lar más lampo mi pulpa lu de vértigo de galaxias de semen misterio mi
lubella lusola mi total lu plevida mi toda lu lumía.
Lumia means prostitute. But the referent almost does not *matter* here. What is of import is a different causal chain happening on the material surface of the language. One of my favorites is the transference of mi nirvana over to me nirvana; it becomes active as a verb. Splicing, like in Huidobro, but also a visual re-reading of bodies. I am not sure what we end up with here, but it is no mechanistic portrayal (as in naturalism) of a prostitute. Girondo is wonderful to read for vibrant causality where causes produce unexpected mysterious results.
Often the charge of anthropomorphism et al are charged to authors that dwell too much on the human. Are we not also guilty of this as readers? I have made the comment elsewhere, regarding Lezama Lima, that if we were to actually try to reconstruct a human face out of some anthropomorphic descriptors it would not look so human, but rather would mutate into another being. Reading (and not reception) would have it that powers might not only flow out from the human actor in a text.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Lluís Sabadell Artiga -- a manifesto en contra del paisaje
This catalán artist has some very invigorating ideas. And his art looks great too. I must, of course, wonder about the endorsement of Nature, but not landscape - both are limiting imaginaries. The question should be asked about the relationship between our imaginary of Nature to our imaginary of landscape. I see a bit of a correlate here... They don't even work through metaphor or translation - but simply as part (lanscape) to the whole (Nature). What is great is thinking about what typically constructs a landscape and pulling it apart to think about its pieces. To follow OOO, the parts are greater than the whole. So both imaginaries are equally guilty of avoiding the tough questions of interconnectedness.
A *print* form in Catalan and a *web* form in Castellano...
García Posada on Carnero
Gracía Posada spoke in certainty on Carnero's work: "En definitiva, sólo la naturaleza 'salva' al hombre, como indica el poema final del libro"
What if this is not so definite in Carnero's work?
Landscape and, by (a metaphorical/metonymic) extension, language are not that kind. I am not so sure there is a presence of salvation, so much as a staining with life: see the last lines of the introduction to Dibujo de la muerte (2010) by Ignacio Javier López's: "En dicho acercamiento el discurso ya no simula la resurrección de la experiencia de que parte el poema-- «embadurnado de sangre para indicar resurrección»--sino que, en la quietud de ese saber al que me he venido refiriendo, expresa el anhelo de llegar a abarcarla" (80).
What if this is not so definite in Carnero's work?
Landscape and, by (a metaphorical/metonymic) extension, language are not that kind. I am not so sure there is a presence of salvation, so much as a staining with life: see the last lines of the introduction to Dibujo de la muerte (2010) by Ignacio Javier López's: "En dicho acercamiento el discurso ya no simula la resurrección de la experiencia de que parte el poema-- «embadurnado de sangre para indicar resurrección»--sino que, en la quietud de ese saber al que me he venido refiriendo, expresa el anhelo de llegar a abarcarla" (80).
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Martín-Santos and the Bildungsroman
So I will be in Lexington to talk about Martín-Santos' final, neglected work Tiempo de destrucción. While some dismiss the work as un(der)developed, as compared to his "obra maestra" Tiempo de silencio, I think Tdd actually surpasses his first novel. In part, it gets beyond the parodic revulsion of Tds and actually looks towards building something that used to be called sincerity.
My reading of the novel mutated (I won't say evolved) over the course of several months due to a vast array of other (para)texts resting (actively) around my office. Graham Harman's Tool-Being, an encouraging discussion of Heidegger, is certainly one of these books. I really like his brief discussion of bilden- to building vs. forming: a translation based on a homonym rather than a transference of meaning. Sometimes relating on the level of signifiers "transfers" another swath of meanings. This thought made me think about Tdd as a Bildungsroman in reverse. It is kind of like an anti-novela, but so much more...
Here is the abstract:
Although Martín-Santos did not finish his work on Tiempo de destrucción, its ruins offer several contributions towards an understanding of his oeuvre. Instead of limiting itself to the scope of “los paisajes urbanos” in Tiempo de silencio, Tdd focuses on multiple sites physically and psychologically. Indeed, as many Spanish writers expressed dismay with a “simple” social realism of the 1940s and 50s, Martín-Santos develops a novel of dialectic realism, relentlessly focusing on the relation between subject and the environment. Tdd begins to unravel an osmosis of ideas and things in an almost inexplicable mesh. The net result distorts the “superhombre castellano” into a satisficing strategy: it seems to work until we look too close. Indeed, Agustín, the protagonist finds himself increasingly at odds with the gendered paradigms offered by “el hombre varón”. Martín-Santos entangles this infamous noventayochista individual in a process similar to what Timothy Morton has recently described as queering nature. Instead of reifying nature as a pure landscape outside of the metropolis, queer ecology thinks about it as a “perverse meme splice” in order to better re-evaluate the ambience of the home (oikos) studied in ecology. Focusing on the obsessive repetitions and parodies in Tdd, I argue that these fragments of an unfinished novel begin to redistribute the role of science and psychoanalysis found in Tds, developed in a juxtaposed poetic ambience between cityscape and countryside. It offers a glimpse into an ecology of things as well as an ecology of mind.
My reading of the novel mutated (I won't say evolved) over the course of several months due to a vast array of other (para)texts resting (actively) around my office. Graham Harman's Tool-Being, an encouraging discussion of Heidegger, is certainly one of these books. I really like his brief discussion of bilden- to building vs. forming: a translation based on a homonym rather than a transference of meaning. Sometimes relating on the level of signifiers "transfers" another swath of meanings. This thought made me think about Tdd as a Bildungsroman in reverse. It is kind of like an anti-novela, but so much more...
Here is the abstract:
Although Martín-Santos did not finish his work on Tiempo de destrucción, its ruins offer several contributions towards an understanding of his oeuvre. Instead of limiting itself to the scope of “los paisajes urbanos” in Tiempo de silencio, Tdd focuses on multiple sites physically and psychologically. Indeed, as many Spanish writers expressed dismay with a “simple” social realism of the 1940s and 50s, Martín-Santos develops a novel of dialectic realism, relentlessly focusing on the relation between subject and the environment. Tdd begins to unravel an osmosis of ideas and things in an almost inexplicable mesh. The net result distorts the “superhombre castellano” into a satisficing strategy: it seems to work until we look too close. Indeed, Agustín, the protagonist finds himself increasingly at odds with the gendered paradigms offered by “el hombre varón”. Martín-Santos entangles this infamous noventayochista individual in a process similar to what Timothy Morton has recently described as queering nature. Instead of reifying nature as a pure landscape outside of the metropolis, queer ecology thinks about it as a “perverse meme splice” in order to better re-evaluate the ambience of the home (oikos) studied in ecology. Focusing on the obsessive repetitions and parodies in Tdd, I argue that these fragments of an unfinished novel begin to redistribute the role of science and psychoanalysis found in Tds, developed in a juxtaposed poetic ambience between cityscape and countryside. It offers a glimpse into an ecology of things as well as an ecology of mind.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Rhetorical causality in Huidobro and Girondo
Huidobro and Girondo give us two Latin American versions of avant-garde re-workings of poetry. While there is certainly a despair concerning more institutional forms of poetry in each case, there is also a delight in creation, to use Huidobro's catchphrase. Both poets develop a different sensual approach to causality. In Girondo, the 'I' of the poet gradually disappears and falls into the Eye. Vision approaches causality differently. One cause might not produce the predicted cause. Things - in their relations - are more disjointed or mysterious. This is something I have raised as looking a lot like an "industrial" or "urban" sublime. The human, when it does appear in Girondo is under threat from something unquantifiable, yet familiar -- the urban setting made into a horrific scenario. As I have previously stated, I am not so sure that this falls into the ranks of futurism. Girondo's poems do help us re-read objects though. One should certainly read this along Latour's lines in the "Compositionist Manifesto" or Harman's rhetorical thinking about causality.
As for Huidobro, vision falls second to rhetorical and textual reformulations. Creacionismo is often accused of I-centering, calling attention to the purely human manipulation of the environment. Birds and suns become play things. Yet I wonder if Huidobro's emphasis on linguistic creation also yields some symptoms that we all suffer. His "antipoesía" takes delight in the despair of working through an imperfect language. "Imperfect" should mean traditional. It is amazing how much traditional language is worked through, ground up (en sus molinos de viento) in "Altazor".
Causality begins to operate on the level of the signifier. Things relate not out of some type of referent, but rather through an over-exuberance of linguistic materliality. Antipoesía tries to avoid talking around objects and tries to talk objects. That is, being objects into being via language. The trouble in "Altazor" -- and apparently its ultimate failure -- is the linguistic ability to carry this through. Language becomes pure sound/noise/music in onomatopoeia (Canto VII) - but the I-saying (eye) sort of disappears. Each sense of causality - visual and textual - de-emphasizes the ego in favor of looking out towards alterity, which finally does not remain "radically other" but called into the text. In either case, it is an attempt at negativity (qua absolute failure), but rather an attempt at inclusion.
As for Huidobro, vision falls second to rhetorical and textual reformulations. Creacionismo is often accused of I-centering, calling attention to the purely human manipulation of the environment. Birds and suns become play things. Yet I wonder if Huidobro's emphasis on linguistic creation also yields some symptoms that we all suffer. His "antipoesía" takes delight in the despair of working through an imperfect language. "Imperfect" should mean traditional. It is amazing how much traditional language is worked through, ground up (en sus molinos de viento) in "Altazor".
Causality begins to operate on the level of the signifier. Things relate not out of some type of referent, but rather through an over-exuberance of linguistic materliality. Antipoesía tries to avoid talking around objects and tries to talk objects. That is, being objects into being via language. The trouble in "Altazor" -- and apparently its ultimate failure -- is the linguistic ability to carry this through. Language becomes pure sound/noise/music in onomatopoeia (Canto VII) - but the I-saying (eye) sort of disappears. Each sense of causality - visual and textual - de-emphasizes the ego in favor of looking out towards alterity, which finally does not remain "radically other" but called into the text. In either case, it is an attempt at negativity (qua absolute failure), but rather an attempt at inclusion.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
El Maestro (1921)
I will give a talk on this short-lived attempt on Universal education tomorrow -- El Maestro (1921-23). The clear point of departure is Vasconcelos and El ateneo de la juventud mexicana -- which moved against the Porfiriato, positivism and a ridiculous bastardization of Darwinism. Their move in the 1920s arrives after the advent of Latin American modernism, which, to my mind, is more about a complete upheaval of nation-dreaming, looking more towards a contradictory form of cultural anarchy. I think I will get at a hypothesis of cultural cannibalism via these two images. They suggest a few readings, but mine will deal with consumption, juxtaposition, digestion and knowledge production. Ecological thinking would not be too far away...
A bizarre sort of neoclassicism -----> the indigenous production of knowledge
I am thinking that mere discussion of reception and production is naive here. It is more about the recycling of universal knowledge, history and philosophy. The result is a cannibalism, which is often credited as a type of liberation in Latin American modernism. A series of juxtapositions (of the ekphrasitic sort) will demonstrate this consumption.
A bizarre sort of neoclassicism -----> the indigenous production of knowledge
creacionismo
Huidobro is mad with creation. And it seems to get at something profoundly against the Romantic idea of place.
Soy yo Altazor el doble de mí mismo
El que se mira obrar y se ríe del otro frente a frente
El que cayó de las alturas de su estrella
Y viajó veinticinco años
Colgado al paracaídas de sus propios prejuicios
Soy yo Altazor el del ansia infinita
Del hambre eterno y descorazonado
Carne labrada por arados de angustia
¿Cómo podré dormir mientras haya adentro tierras desconocidas?
Problemas
Misterios que se cuelgan a mi pecho
Estoy solo
La distancia que va de cuerpo a cuerpo
Es tan grande como la que hay de alma a alma
Solo
Solo
Solo
Estoy solo parado en la punta del año que agoniza
El universo se rompe en olas a mis pies
Los planetas giran en torno a mi cabeza
Y me despeinan al pasar con el viento que desplazan
Sin dar una respuesta que llene los abismos
Ni sentir este anhelo fabuloso que busca en la fauna del cielo
Un ser materno donde se duerma el corazón
Un lecho a la sombra del torbellino de enigmas
Una mano que acaricie los latidos de la fiebre
Dios diluido en la nada y el todo
Dios todo y nada
Dios en las palabras y en los gestos
Dios mental
Dios aliento
Dios joven Dios viejo
Dios pútrido
Nonlocality appears. And God becomes more a witness. Unlike Marinetti's dislike of adjectives, Huidobro mobilizes them to predicate beings
Soy yo Altazor el doble de mí mismo
El que se mira obrar y se ríe del otro frente a frente
El que cayó de las alturas de su estrella
Y viajó veinticinco años
Colgado al paracaídas de sus propios prejuicios
Soy yo Altazor el del ansia infinita
Del hambre eterno y descorazonado
Carne labrada por arados de angustia
¿Cómo podré dormir mientras haya adentro tierras desconocidas?
Problemas
Misterios que se cuelgan a mi pecho
Estoy solo
La distancia que va de cuerpo a cuerpo
Es tan grande como la que hay de alma a alma
Solo
Solo
Solo
Estoy solo parado en la punta del año que agoniza
El universo se rompe en olas a mis pies
Los planetas giran en torno a mi cabeza
Y me despeinan al pasar con el viento que desplazan
Sin dar una respuesta que llene los abismos
Ni sentir este anhelo fabuloso que busca en la fauna del cielo
Un ser materno donde se duerma el corazón
Un lecho a la sombra del torbellino de enigmas
Una mano que acaricie los latidos de la fiebre
Dios diluido en la nada y el todo
Dios todo y nada
Dios en las palabras y en los gestos
Dios mental
Dios aliento
Dios joven Dios viejo
Dios pútrido
Nonlocality appears. And God becomes more a witness. Unlike Marinetti's dislike of adjectives, Huidobro mobilizes them to predicate beings
Friday, April 1, 2011
modernismo "reificado"
I am taking two cues for my work on modernist poetics:
1) From Huidobro: "Si aceptáis las representciones que un hombre hace de la Naturaleza, ello prueba que no amáis ni la Naturaleza ni el Arte". "Creacionismo". There will be more to come on creacionismo but I do want to observe that Christopher Travis deals with "the environmental dialectics" in creacionismo. For me, this epigraph (of his) hinges on the word "aceptáis" - it could mean: 1) that human representation in general always short circuit (s/c) 2) we need "better" "representations"...
2) It has been many years since I dealt with Valle-Inclán's Luces de bohemia: I really enjoyed its parodic function when matched against the sincerity of Unamuno or Azorín. I later found the same to be true with Baroja. The so-called quijotismo of Unamuno in the attempt to find some type of remainder or excess after the cogs of history roll through modern Spain becomes totally absurd in these texts. In Ldb, the scene with Rubén Darío drinking absinthe with a blind poet becomes ridiculous - incrementally so as they enter further into their verse.
Inversely, this is the esthetics of esperpento - to found at the bottom of a glass (al fondo de un vaso). Earlier, Max, the blind poet deals with the young Modernists, who behave like animals. And maybe not only in a way demeaning to animals. Valle-Inclán's observation about the connection between the natural world and the artifice praised by modernism. Darío talks about Nature not as a forest, but rather as a carved up piece of landscape, in Spanish: boscaje vs. bosque. Even if it seems like these poets escape the traps of Romanticism, "Nature" comes back to haunt them. Or more in line with some great thinking from OOO (object-oriented ontology) - objects never really leave the modernist space. Whatever Darío's praises of the Exposition Universelle, there is always something horrifying about it.
1) From Huidobro: "Si aceptáis las representciones que un hombre hace de la Naturaleza, ello prueba que no amáis ni la Naturaleza ni el Arte". "Creacionismo". There will be more to come on creacionismo but I do want to observe that Christopher Travis deals with "the environmental dialectics" in creacionismo. For me, this epigraph (of his) hinges on the word "aceptáis" - it could mean: 1) that human representation in general always short circuit (s/c) 2) we need "better" "representations"...
2) It has been many years since I dealt with Valle-Inclán's Luces de bohemia: I really enjoyed its parodic function when matched against the sincerity of Unamuno or Azorín. I later found the same to be true with Baroja. The so-called quijotismo of Unamuno in the attempt to find some type of remainder or excess after the cogs of history roll through modern Spain becomes totally absurd in these texts. In Ldb, the scene with Rubén Darío drinking absinthe with a blind poet becomes ridiculous - incrementally so as they enter further into their verse.
Inversely, this is the esthetics of esperpento - to found at the bottom of a glass (al fondo de un vaso). Earlier, Max, the blind poet deals with the young Modernists, who behave like animals. And maybe not only in a way demeaning to animals. Valle-Inclán's observation about the connection between the natural world and the artifice praised by modernism. Darío talks about Nature not as a forest, but rather as a carved up piece of landscape, in Spanish: boscaje vs. bosque. Even if it seems like these poets escape the traps of Romanticism, "Nature" comes back to haunt them. Or more in line with some great thinking from OOO (object-oriented ontology) - objects never really leave the modernist space. Whatever Darío's praises of the Exposition Universelle, there is always something horrifying about it.
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