I taught Unamuno's San Manuel Bueno, mártir in my intro to Hispanic literatures class. In a way, it's a curious repetition, as I read the novel many years ago in a class structured around the same anthology, Aproximaciones.
While similar fault lines in Unamuno's thinking occurred to me this time, I was certainly struck by the discussion Nature and the rural space in different tonalities. Unamuno's position is, of course, infamously contradictory. On the one hand, he praises the timeless existence and illusion (delusion) of the Castilian countryside. It's nicely placed outside of Spain's official decaying History (into la introhistoria). Yet, at certain points, he rails against neocasticismo:
La civilización, y con ella la cultura y la humanidad de sentimientos nacieron principal y supremamente en las ciudades. Y en éstas nacieron hasta la comprensión y sentimiento estético del campo mismo, llevados a los campesinos por hombres de ciudad o en la ciudadanía formados (135).
En torno a casticismo perhaps elaborates Unamuno's intent more fully, attempting to break out of any isolationist tendencies lurking in Spain. The exchange of ideas inevitably knows no borders. So culture should not be conceived through them (his analogue is science).
A similar point is proclaimed by Lázaro (before he fulfills his namesake): "Civilización es lo contrario de ruralización" (ibid). Unamuno's words gloss Lázaro's into a kind of over-writing, oversignification of the countryside signifier. The landscape remains static. Its meaning comes from elsewhere. What I do like about this is the honesty. Ángela, the narrator, paints Nature the same way: "¡Cómo siente, cómo anima don Manuel a la Naturaleza!" (148-49). There is no mention of the reverse: Nature animating humans. There is no insistence on Nature's animation or activity. To relate this to a previous post of Reichmann, this invisible center of Natura naturans is understood as nowhere, absent. The presence that does matter is that of things (not words) as Ángela mentions in the first chapter.
I would not claim that the Generation of 98 escape the inevitable loop between city and countryside, but there is a latent awareness of it.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Jorge Reichmann in "Tres variaciones sobre natura naturans"
Below is Reichmann's poem on the concept of natura naturans, a generative conception of nature, which should counterposed to the term natura naturata, a metonymic structure of nature (trees, rivers, etc.). Fascinating here is the connection between the generative center and a series of metaphors that try to get us to think about the idea of no-place. (How could we ever point at this "manantial en el centro de todo"?) Reichmann raises the stakes through a speculation on each creative point, creativity as a point or point of creativity as a center. Part III does not necessarily comment on equivalences between lo creado: lo manantial: lo centro:, but rather uses the colon to beg the question of their relationality and the implications of such a belief system. The terms are severed and left with the lovely vague pronoun, lo.
This generative approach to the generative view of nature (natura naturans) starts to look a lot like Borges writing on Pascal's sphere:
He deplored the fact that the firmament did not speak, and he compared our life with that of castaways on a desert island. He felt the incessant weight of the physical world, he experienced vertigo, fright and solitude, and he put his feelings into these words: "Nature is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." Thus do the words appear in the Brunschvicg text; but the critical edition published by Tourneur (Paris, 1941), which reproduces the crossed-out words and variations of the manuscript, reveals that Pascal started to write the word effroyable: "a fearful sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
The expansion outwards of generative points precludes the center as a place, or the place of centrality. I, of course, find this fascinating in relation to Lezama's (almost naggingly) persistent proclamation through Pascal: There is no Nature, so mankind created sobrenaturaleza, supernature, overnature. This is followed by a more fascinating corollary: sobrenaturaleza is a composition of elección and paisaje -- things that we have in monstrosity. This mourning and fear has been an obsession at least since the darker side of the Renaissance, the Baroque.
I
Hay un manantial en el centro de todo lo creado
II
creación donde cada punto es centro, pues en él un manantial
III
lo creado: lo manantial: lo centro:
This generative approach to the generative view of nature (natura naturans) starts to look a lot like Borges writing on Pascal's sphere:
He deplored the fact that the firmament did not speak, and he compared our life with that of castaways on a desert island. He felt the incessant weight of the physical world, he experienced vertigo, fright and solitude, and he put his feelings into these words: "Nature is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." Thus do the words appear in the Brunschvicg text; but the critical edition published by Tourneur (Paris, 1941), which reproduces the crossed-out words and variations of the manuscript, reveals that Pascal started to write the word effroyable: "a fearful sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
The expansion outwards of generative points precludes the center as a place, or the place of centrality. I, of course, find this fascinating in relation to Lezama's (almost naggingly) persistent proclamation through Pascal: There is no Nature, so mankind created sobrenaturaleza, supernature, overnature. This is followed by a more fascinating corollary: sobrenaturaleza is a composition of elección and paisaje -- things that we have in monstrosity. This mourning and fear has been an obsession at least since the darker side of the Renaissance, the Baroque.
To end again with Borges (I just finished teaching him - so referencing him becomes obsessive):
"It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors."
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Impossible situations, Jenaro Talens and a line from Jorge Reichmann
I have been working through some revisions for a paper I wrote a little over a year ago, just after being introduced to Morton's Ecology without Nature for the first time, a book that shifted my research towards some of my intuitions from about a year prior (on Lezama Lima and writing poetry without Nature).
Talens, as a scholar and a poet, maintains important affiliations with the lyric tradition, to which some of his contemporaries (cf. the symptom of writing generation here) either parody through another copy of a copy or "avoid" entirely. Talens' approach rides a nice tension between a submersion into a yo poético and avoiding the first person (and most gestures at it).
My paper will be thinking through this in a conversation between (neo)baroque esthetics (especially through William Egginton), the image in the baroque style (ekphrasis, etc.) and a term that René Jara uses in a bilingual edition of Cenizas de sentido, Embers of Meaning, "The Impossible Situation", an approach towards a landscape or Nature that cannot exist. There are numerous examples in Talens oevre , dealing with subject matter that seems Kantian (story seas, starry nights, etc.), yet Talens either drops the human from the images entirely or places them in impossible relations to them. This is a severing off from a seemingly harmonious, semiotic exchange between the human nature writer and the subject matter (impossible due to its nonexistence). My contention is that Talens, fully aware of these difficulties, mobilizes an alyrical poetics (cf. Martín-Estudillo) in order to think about the lyric poet in relation to this impossible situation.
This line from J. Reichmann is also relevant: "Pero al lugar esencial no tuve que llegar: si era accesible, es que ya estaba ahí" ("Filiación", Conversaciones entre alquimistas 21).
Talens, as a scholar and a poet, maintains important affiliations with the lyric tradition, to which some of his contemporaries (cf. the symptom of writing generation here) either parody through another copy of a copy or "avoid" entirely. Talens' approach rides a nice tension between a submersion into a yo poético and avoiding the first person (and most gestures at it).
My paper will be thinking through this in a conversation between (neo)baroque esthetics (especially through William Egginton), the image in the baroque style (ekphrasis, etc.) and a term that René Jara uses in a bilingual edition of Cenizas de sentido, Embers of Meaning, "The Impossible Situation", an approach towards a landscape or Nature that cannot exist. There are numerous examples in Talens oevre , dealing with subject matter that seems Kantian (story seas, starry nights, etc.), yet Talens either drops the human from the images entirely or places them in impossible relations to them. This is a severing off from a seemingly harmonious, semiotic exchange between the human nature writer and the subject matter (impossible due to its nonexistence). My contention is that Talens, fully aware of these difficulties, mobilizes an alyrical poetics (cf. Martín-Estudillo) in order to think about the lyric poet in relation to this impossible situation.
This line from J. Reichmann is also relevant: "Pero al lugar esencial no tuve que llegar: si era accesible, es que ya estaba ahí" ("Filiación", Conversaciones entre alquimistas 21).
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Horizons soaking in(to) the Big Bog
Last weekend I had the privilege to explore parts of the Big Bog State Park in northern Minnesota, located on Highway 72, north of Waskish. And the thing is relatively huge -- one of the largest peatlands in North America. While humans have been intrigued with the area throughout the 20th century, the recreation area is a recent addition (2006), encouraged by grassroots organization.
The artificial path was constructed to avoid most annihilation of the life lurking around underneath it. I recall occasionally stirring up a few birds underfoot, finding nesting in the omnipresent sponge-like moss. Indeed, even the path felt like it was soaking up some of this plant life, as if the bog wanted to consume it.
Quite possibly one of the most fascinating views consists of a long corridor entrenched into the moss by humans in the early 20th century. This Panoramio site gives an idea about the imprint left behind. The view, opens up broadly across "islands" of black spruce and other evergreen trees. The failed road, still remaining an imprint sinking into the peat moss, intersects with the boardwalk. It is interesting how this bogscape swallows everything it touches into its spongey-core, including tools meant for human passage and industry. This sponge has its own web of alliances and what felt to me like its own ideas.
The artificial path was constructed to avoid most annihilation of the life lurking around underneath it. I recall occasionally stirring up a few birds underfoot, finding nesting in the omnipresent sponge-like moss. Indeed, even the path felt like it was soaking up some of this plant life, as if the bog wanted to consume it.
Quite possibly one of the most fascinating views consists of a long corridor entrenched into the moss by humans in the early 20th century. This Panoramio site gives an idea about the imprint left behind. The view, opens up broadly across "islands" of black spruce and other evergreen trees. The failed road, still remaining an imprint sinking into the peat moss, intersects with the boardwalk. It is interesting how this bogscape swallows everything it touches into its spongey-core, including tools meant for human passage and industry. This sponge has its own web of alliances and what felt to me like its own ideas.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Dreaming La deshumanización [del arte]
I often read a few passages right before going to sleep and end up ticking away at different analytical approaches to them. Different in so far as I would not necessarily have thought about a certain way -- or I would have only approached a text from so many sides.
This was the case with Ortega (alongside Lezama's Paradiso and Luis Antonio de Villena's Nuevas semblanzas y generaciones -- the latter is a series of portraits, its title an homage to the 15th century work by Fernán Pérez de Guzmán).
My dream (analyzing the passages from the previous post) clarified the question about the role of nonhumans in Ortega's artwork. "Is there something, let's say, nonhuman in art?" Ortega work's like a sculptor, subtracting human sympathetic qualities from avant garde artwork. De-humanizing allows (or forces) a work to disorient or dislodge a purely human drama (cf. a certain passage from Harman's "On Vicarious Causation").
Despite the reduction in Ortega's own argument, the artwork's confusion (of human perceivers) begins to open up spaces and holes for others viewpoints. Ortega senses this in his next section, "Unas gotas de fenomenología", in which he describes the scene of a man on his deathbed, surrounded by his wife, a doctor, a journalist, and an artist. The reality of the dying is scattered across these perspectives, divided by the relationship to the dying man: while the woman is immersed in the scene, the doctor works through the anatomical implications, etc. The journalist records the facts and the artist, only there by chance, gives a distanced depiction (i.e. interpretation) of the scene. What if we add to this list? First, we would want to dislodge Ortega's proclivity to diagnose through functionality, that is, vocation. Second, one should wonder about the presence of the instruments and beds lying about. The list should go on. One should add to Ortega's "few drops of phenomenology" -- a beautiful phrase.
This was the case with Ortega (alongside Lezama's Paradiso and Luis Antonio de Villena's Nuevas semblanzas y generaciones -- the latter is a series of portraits, its title an homage to the 15th century work by Fernán Pérez de Guzmán).
My dream (analyzing the passages from the previous post) clarified the question about the role of nonhumans in Ortega's artwork. "Is there something, let's say, nonhuman in art?" Ortega work's like a sculptor, subtracting human sympathetic qualities from avant garde artwork. De-humanizing allows (or forces) a work to disorient or dislodge a purely human drama (cf. a certain passage from Harman's "On Vicarious Causation").
Despite the reduction in Ortega's own argument, the artwork's confusion (of human perceivers) begins to open up spaces and holes for others viewpoints. Ortega senses this in his next section, "Unas gotas de fenomenología", in which he describes the scene of a man on his deathbed, surrounded by his wife, a doctor, a journalist, and an artist. The reality of the dying is scattered across these perspectives, divided by the relationship to the dying man: while the woman is immersed in the scene, the doctor works through the anatomical implications, etc. The journalist records the facts and the artist, only there by chance, gives a distanced depiction (i.e. interpretation) of the scene. What if we add to this list? First, we would want to dislodge Ortega's proclivity to diagnose through functionality, that is, vocation. Second, one should wonder about the presence of the instruments and beds lying about. The list should go on. One should add to Ortega's "few drops of phenomenology" -- a beautiful phrase.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Reading La deshumanización [del arte]
Ortega y Gasset is one of those figures who often gets poked fun at in Hispanism. The common phrase describes him as "el primer asno de España". An extreme example is certainly Martín-Santos' provocation of Goya's painting as the philosophical imaginary of Ortega's thinking.
The image depicts Ortega in an act of sorcery, enticing his audience with a series of spells (as an animal). Of course, in Tiempo de silencio this works out to be the terrifying fore-figure for someone like Martín-Santos (as a budding philosopher, clinical psychologist and novelist). This is not a limit case. Juan Goytisolo's Conde Julián also leaves few bodies behind in the canon (its diligence might be a limit case).
A major collection of essays on esthetics, La deshumanización del arte, might prove some use in the (naggingly) persistent divide of cultural production (high/low, popular/elite -- pick your terms). In particular, the work presents itself without compromise, claiming that the difference between avant-garde and the popular effectively divides the human species. Indeed, some art is not human:
"Si el arte nuevo no es inteligible para todo el mundo quiere decirse que sus resortes no son genéricamente humanos. No es un arte para los hombres en general, sino para un clase muy particular...".
Of course, there are several binaries at work here that one should frown at (e.g. class distinctions). However, is there something, let's say, nonhuman in art? This is something curious here that should not be dismissed so easily:
En la lírica buscará amores y dolores del hombre que palpita bajo el poeta. En pintura sólo le atraerán los cuadros donde encuentre figuras de varones y hembras con quienes, en algún sentido, fuera interesante vivir. Un cuadro de paisaje le parecerá «bonito» cuando el paisaje real que representa merezca por su amenidad o patetismo ser visitado en una excursión.
More about this soon.
The image depicts Ortega in an act of sorcery, enticing his audience with a series of spells (as an animal). Of course, in Tiempo de silencio this works out to be the terrifying fore-figure for someone like Martín-Santos (as a budding philosopher, clinical psychologist and novelist). This is not a limit case. Juan Goytisolo's Conde Julián also leaves few bodies behind in the canon (its diligence might be a limit case).
A major collection of essays on esthetics, La deshumanización del arte, might prove some use in the (naggingly) persistent divide of cultural production (high/low, popular/elite -- pick your terms). In particular, the work presents itself without compromise, claiming that the difference between avant-garde and the popular effectively divides the human species. Indeed, some art is not human:
"Si el arte nuevo no es inteligible para todo el mundo quiere decirse que sus resortes no son genéricamente humanos. No es un arte para los hombres en general, sino para un clase muy particular...".
Of course, there are several binaries at work here that one should frown at (e.g. class distinctions). However, is there something, let's say, nonhuman in art? This is something curious here that should not be dismissed so easily:
En la lírica buscará amores y dolores del hombre que palpita bajo el poeta. En pintura sólo le atraerán los cuadros donde encuentre figuras de varones y hembras con quienes, en algún sentido, fuera interesante vivir. Un cuadro de paisaje le parecerá «bonito» cuando el paisaje real que representa merezca por su amenidad o patetismo ser visitado en una excursión.
More about this soon.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
2666 and withdrawn writers
A major figure in Bolaño's work is certainly the disappeared writer, the one who has withdrawn from society after some statement of purpose, genre-splicing work or enunciation. Recently I have found time to inch towards the final pages of 2666, a work that I have leafed through in a leisurely style. In that predictably amazing way, finishing Bolaño's final work will help me rethink my comparative piece of Bolaño and Goytisolo, which I presented here. Bolaño's work is not a regurgitation of some bastardized "post-structuralist" thinking, but rather like an archaeological dig, checking to see where the author's bones are buried, or saving that, where she still resides (cf. Los detectives salvajes). So 2666 as an obsessive search for an individual of course ends in failure. Instead, we encounter a series of places, wars, murders and rivers that work in alliance with a human writer (alliance should be said with Latour here).
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