jueves, 27 de marzo de 2014

Réquiem por un campesino español (Requiem for a Spanish peasant)

This short novel by Ramón J. Sender was first published in Mexico in 1953, under the title "Mosén Millán" (Father Millán), and censored in Spain until 1960, when it's finally published as "Réquiem por un campesino español" (Requiem for a Spanish peasant).

The novel has two different storylines: in the present time, a priest (mosén Millán) is waiting for his audience to start the requiem mass for Paco the peasant, one year after his death; in the meanwhile, we learn about Paco's life and death through the priest's remembrances.

The story takes place in a village somewhere in Spain, right before the start of the Spanish Civil War. In case you don't know, the Spanish Civil War took place during 1936-1939, the contingent bands were the "republicans" (legitimate government by that time) and the "nationals" (coup d'état), and it resulted in about 500.000 dead from both bands (source: wiki), victory of the "national" army and beginning of Franco's dictatorship, that would last until his death in 1975.

Now, a little subjective note: although Franco was a very bad guy who executed hundreds of people including civilians even after the war had ended, and planted the seed that led current Spanish society to think about ourselves the way we do today (see here), and led the country to an absolute isolation from the rest of the world that made our economy and culture fall way behind that of our European neighbors, and almost executed my grandfather..., despite all that, like I was saying, the truth is, the republicans were no angels either and, had victory been theirs, they would probably have been as cruel as their opponents. In fact during the war they executed their good amount of "nationals" as well... But I guess, as the defeated, they have the right to act as the victims... Like I told you, this is absolutely subjective and, paradoxically, it's also my attempt to be objective and not to pick sides so happily, so please, nobody hate me! If I had to pick a side, I'd never pick the bad guy's! And now, I'm gonna put my fist in my mouth and go back to the novel.

So anyhow, also as a result of the war, many republican artists were killed and many others were exiled. Sender was exiled to Mexico, where he wrote the novel in question. And Paco, the peasant, is a republican.

The novel, quite short (about 40 pages), written in plain language, easy vocabulary..., is boring as hell (given the case that hell is boring, which I doubt). Maybe it is because I was annoyed by an altar boy intermittently singing a romance that was meant to be clever but I found stupid and unnecessary, maybe I didn't give a fuck about the peasant's childhood and action seemed never to come, truth is it took about 25 pages to get me interested in the story. I picked the book at the library because it's one of the Spanish post-war literature masterpieces, but in my opinion, that's what it is. Post-war literature. Which is great, don't get me wrong, and I can absolutely see its value in the historical context where it was written, but I just didn't like it.

So, my recommendation on this novel... You totally have to read it if you are interested in Spanish contemporary history. Otherwise, there are better books in the world.

miércoles, 26 de marzo de 2014

El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (No one writes to the Colonel)

This short novel written by Gabriel García Márquez in 1961 tells the story of an old colonel, whose name we'll never know, who has lived his last 50 years waiting for a letter that is supposed to arrive with next Friday's mail. This letter will come along with an important economical compensation for his merits in the army, under the orders of Aureliano Buendía, a character that is mentioned a few times along the novel and becomes one of the members of the Buendía family in A hundred years of solitude (1967).
In fact, it's not until now (while writing this post) that I found out that the Colonel was written before the solitude! Not only that, but also Macondo, the village where the Colonel lives, which is also the setting where all the 100 years of solitude unfolded, appeared for the first time in other two of his works back in 1955.

However..., I had read A hundred years of solitude before, and for some reason it was nice to go back to this decadent village where everything is static, stuffy, dusty and ruined.
Although written, as it was, six years before the solitude, this story takes place about 50 years after Aureliano Buendía's death, which might be about 30 years after the end of the hundred years of solitude (and about 150 years after the foundation of Macondo, whose decadency we attend along that novel).

It's funny, though.
If we take the facts chronologically according to the story, we have that a certain José Arcadio Buendía founded a village named Macondo. Somewhere along the future generations of his descendents we find an honorable general called Aureliano Buendía. During the glory days of Macondo, the so called Banana Boom, the Americans come to the village and settle their banana plantations. But Macondo was fated from the very day of its foundation, and eventually the Americans will leave. Decades after its slow but inexorable decadency, and also decades after general Aureliano's death, we find our unnamed colonel, walking the same ruined streets and alleys. Which is to say, after a few decades of not having news from Macondo, we find out that the village remained just the way we left it, and there's still someone alive to remember the Buendía family with us.
If, on the other hand, we take the facts chronologically according to our reality, we find that one fine day, during a train trip, García Márquez passed by a banana plantation named Macondo that got his attention for some reason. After that, in 1955, he mentions the village for the first time in two works (that I haven't read). Then, in 1961, he puts our coronel in a ruined Macondo, though he recalls those glory days following general Aureliano's orders. And finally, in 1967, he decides to tell us the whole story of Macondo and its founding family.

Anyways, all this was just the excitement of my discovery!
Let's talk about the novel..., though there's not much more to talk about without spoiling it, so I will just say this: it's not thrilling. Solitude, misery and old age are the main topics. It's a very well written short story that is nevertheless very slowly unfolded, in a village where nothing happens, where nothing has happened since we left it 30 years ago.
You don't need to read the solitude first, but you most probably will enjoy this one better if you did. Which, again, is funny, if we have in mind that it wasn't written until six years after...

lunes, 24 de marzo de 2014

March for dignity?

I thought my next post would be about Garcia Marquez and his colonel..., but nope. Much to my regret, this will be about the March for Dignity in Spain. Again, in English... because Spanish people already know the details and got their own conclusions, more or less similar -or different- from mine.

Don't think I'm just a sourpuss. I'm not. But I feel really sorry for spanish society, especially the youngest factions, and really embarrassed about the image the world is getting from us. Maybe I'm a sourpuss after all. For my last moans regarding this topic, see this post.

But anyways..., the march. This is their "manifesto" (in English, yes, you're welcome, I know, right? I'm so nice). The English version, though, is a little bit different from the Spanish one, as they include paragraphs like these:

In our country if you were born somewhere else in the world, if your skin’s a different color or you have another religion, they take away your fundamental rights (healthcare, education et.) and can even shut you up in an Internment Center, even though you’ve committed no crime.
Simply for speaking our own minority language, simply for wanting to live in accordance with the culture of our land, we can be fined or even thrown into prison like during Franco’s fascist dictatorship, but now they call it democracy.

Well, I don't need to say this is a bunch of lies.

... But I'm gonna say it anyways: This is a bunch of lies!

I've had, and have, a few foreigners quite close to me in Spain, and yes, I know cases of foreigners being stopped by the police, and I know one case of a foreigner being held by the police..., because the guy was in fact illegal and undocumented.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he deserved being held and sent back to Paraguay, you know how in my fantasy dreamworld full of rainbows I still think the world should have no boundaries and we should be free to go wherever the fuck we want to go, and managing our frontiers as if the land was actually our property, and closing them to honest people that committed the terrible mistake of being born in the wrong place, and forcing them to jump fences crowned with blades, is the biggest and most insane injustice I can think of. But sorry, back to the point..., so, I'm not saying he deserved being held and sent back, but legally at least, the way things are, that was the right thing to do. That the guy was stopped in the first place just because he looked south-american, that's probably true, and that's a topic for a different discussion.

The next paragraph is another big lie, and one doesn't need to think too much to realize it... If that was true, schools shouldn't be allowed to teach galician, esker, catalan or valencian. A different matter is the fact that, no matter who may disagree, the official language of our precious nation is castilian Spanish, and therefore that's the language to use in the context of official national affairs. But galicians are free to use their official regional language in their official regional affairs, and so do basques, catalans and valencians. But the idea of making the whole country learn galician, basque, catalan, valencian, majorcan and castilian is just absurd, you have to pick one language to rule them all, and guess what, castilian spanish is the official language in the whole country. The same principle can be applied to English as the official language of the EU, and I don't remember miss Bottle complaining when she had to use English to talk about the spanish cups of cafe con leche... As for "to live in accordance with the culture of our land"... Come on, what does that even mean?

My conclusion is that the English version was made to show the world, that doesn't know exactly what the situation is in Spain, a radicalization and a repressive environment that are not completely true. If they were, they wouldn't have had any objections to include those paragraphs in the Spanish version too.

I'm completely "peeing out of the pot" here, because discussing the points of the manifesto was far from being my original intention, but let me just point the last thing about it: from my modest point of view, the right of "bread, work and shelter" and the right of free abortion can't -or shouldn't- be put together in the same bag. (And I'm sorry I used the word "point" three times in the same paragraph.)

So yes, I agree with the main (again) points of the manifesto in general, but it's not difficult to realize that, like most things, it was deeply politicized from the beginning.


But anyways. You may or may not agree with the manifest but, as you can see, they didn't say anything about breaking down glasses, setting urban furniture on fire or stoning a few cops, that I can remember. What it was supposed to be, at least "officially", was a peaceful march for... well, all those things above discussed.

And this, again, leads me to today's starring topic: "Our youth is hopeless".
You know I think american kids take themselves too seriously. I also think spanish ones don't take anything seriously. And going to a protest with the main goal of "messing it up" (liarla parda, as we say) is becoming quite trendy lately, and so is showing a natural hate for the police.
If you are protesting for "bread, work and shelter", then the slogan "Cop, son of a bitch" might just not be the one that best serves your purpose, no offense.
Yes, the police used the force (sorry for this little joke, couldn't help it!) inappropriately many times in the last protests against the government, but the unjustifiable violence of a few protesters brings the best arguments down (not to mention the not so good ones)... and kind of justifies an equally violent repression from the cops. Dude, if you're gonna stone them, let them defend themselves shooting rubber balls! It's just fair. If you try to use a brick to finish off a cop who lies unconscious on the ground, then don't cry and make a fuss when their buddies try to handcuff you.

This all makes me think that these people don't really care about the matter in question. I mean, they kind of get along with the cause, but they use it as an excuse to get violent. Otherwise, I don't get it.

What I try to say with all this is:
1. The situation is horrible, but not that horrible. Exaggerating things makes you loose credit.
2. Someone should teach values to this youth of today. Some of them definitely missed that "slap on time".
3. Don't stone the police if you don't want to get shot rubber balls. Also, burning street containers is wrong.
4 (and now, seriously). We live in a society where everything is politicized, and where the different parties try to manipulate the mass, encouraging radicalism, sharpening the hate among social groups and the polarization of society (multi-polarization, if you want). There's a deep lack of values and a deep lack of objectivity. You may support the cause, but you can't support the violence. If you're a violent, and although you support the cause you're best defined as a violent, then have your own March for the Violence. Don't fuck.
Also, and in counterbalance, you may not support the cause, but you must understand that violent people are a minority and you can find them in both sides.
5. This is how the world sees Spain, and we might have already screwed it too much to try to fix it.



domingo, 23 de marzo de 2014

My book reviews. El cartero de Neruda.

It´s been almost a whole month...

During these days I´ve been doing some reading, and it´s probably time to start reviewing like old times when I used to be an active reader...

I will also go back to the labels, as an easy way to group the posts by their topics. This is, so far, what I grouped as "literature" before I gave up labels:

http://surcosenlaarena.blogspot.com/search/label/Literatura

I must say, I had my serious doubts whether I should write this post in English or in Spanish, as the books I will talk about were originally written in Spanish... My excuses, then, for deciding in favor of English are these:
1. I have English speaking followers now... Not only that, but my English speaking follower might constitute about 30-50% of my current readers, so... that´s a good one.
2. It would be nice if by chance some non Spanish speaker passed by, and after reading got interested in Spanish literature! As this is one of the things from Spain that do make me feel proud of being Spanish. And yet it´s mostly latin-american literature that I will talk about here! But still...

This said, there are five books I´m gonna talk about in this and the next few posts. I started reading Saramago´s The elephant journey (yes, I know, not Spanish! But he is Iberian too...) but stumbled on some others in the process, so I will start with the ones I have already finished. (That way I will make sure that I actually did read all the 90 books in my list! - English use of brackets.)


Today:
NERUDA´S POSTMAN, by Antonio Skármeta

The cover of the edition I got says: "Mario Jiménez, a young fisherman, decides to give up his job to become a postman in Isla Negra, where the only person who ever sends or receives mail is the poet Pablo Neruda. By this plot, as original as seductive, the author gets an intense picture of the tumultuous 70´s in Chile, as well as a captivating love story and a poetic recreation of Pablo Neruda´s life."
Written in 1985, it was originally named "Ardent patience", until in 1995 it was re-named as "Neruda´s postman" ("The postman" in the English edition) after the success of an italian-french movie called "Il postino", which was nominated for five oscars (and got one).
I will be honest, the author is definitely not one of the best I´ve ever read. At some points of the story, especially when describing love scenes (or the girl object of our protagonist´s love), I had the feeling that he was actually trying to emulate Neruda, but he´s far from making it. Too artificial language breaking into the middle of a story that is otherwise quite plain, so it gives the impression that it´s an unnecessary mass of pompous words and twisted sentences. This of course is only my point of view but, as this is my blog so far, you will have to content with that.
But it´s also true that, when he puts Neruda aside and goes back to the simple, easy, plain, straightforward language that dominates the story, he is, in general, quite good, and then, from time to time, he has some brilliant points, like this ones (my faves, translated by yours truly, I´m sure you´ll get a better translation if you get the book!):
                               ..................................................
- My girl, if you mix poetry with politics, you will soon be a single mom. What did he say to you?
- Metaphores.
The mother held the knob of the rustic bronze cot, squeezing it until she thought she could melt it.
- What´s wrong, mom? What are you thinking?
The woman came to her side, let herself faint on the bed, and in a weak voice said:
- I never heard such a long word from you.
                                .................................................
The girl bit her pillow, and then, showing those teeth which, as well as seducing, were able to fray both clothes and flesh, yelled:
- This is ridiculous! Just because a man told me that my smile flapped in my face like a butterfly, I have to leave to Santiago!
- Don´t be stupid! - the mother exploded as well -. Now your smile is a butterfly, but tomorrow your tits will be two doves wanting to be cooed, your nipples will be two juicy raspberries, your tongue will be the gods´ warm carpet, your butt will be a ship´s canvas, and that thing now smoking between your legs will be the jet-black oven where the proud metal of the race is forged! Good night!
                               ................................................

And also, as unusual as it might seem, I enjoyed especially the prologue, where the author explains how he got to write that story.

In summary, it´s a short, touching story that will also help you learn about Neruda and about Chilean political history and the 1973 coup d'état. Easy reading, I recommend it.


... Coming soon: No one writes to the colonel.