Borges' Library

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Las Meninas Notes

360px-Las_Meninas _by_Diego_Velázquez _from_Prado_in_Google_Earth

Brooks sent this: Velázquez’s Las Meninas: A detail that decodes a masterpiece

Being Alone with Las Meninas at 3 Quarks Daily July 23, 2018

Part One of this Post is: A Novel to Cross a Desert With

 Don Quixote Diaries Michel Foucault

Also Eyes Swimming with Tears and A Novel to Cross a Desert With

Also recommended:

Laura Cummings: Vanishing Velasquez (I have read it four times!!)

Everything is Happening: Journey into a Painting, by Michael Jacobs

Jonathan Brown: In the Shadow of Velasquez

Another moving book about a picture: The Angel on the Left Bank: The Secrets of Delacroix’s Parisian Masterpiece

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Below: Provoking the spectator. “Las Meninas” by Joel Peter Witkin

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Top Reads in 2018

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Susan Orlean, in her latest bestseller, The Library Book, describes her fond memory of the piles and piles of library books of her childhood; those stacks of checked-out books forming totem poles of the narratives she had visited. I was quite taken by this description, as I too loved those towers of stacked books from my childhood. And this year, my year of reading formed three titteringly tall totem pole towers! The Tower of el Quixote. The Tower of Thomas Bernhard. And the Tower of what I came to call "the way" of the octopus.

(There was also a small tower devoted to time travel).

2018 Top Read: Don Quixote

Best in Fiction: Don Quixote

Biggest Surprise Discovery: Thomas Bernhard (An addiction!)

Most Thought-Provoking and World Changing: Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble

Best Science: Allen Everett and Thomas Roman’s Time Travel and Warp Drives; Allen Everett, Thomas Roman's Time Travel and Warp Drives: A Scientific Guide to Shortcuts through Time and Space

Biggest letdown: Bug Music and Cricket Radio; Library of Ice

 

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The First Tower: Don Quixote and Spanish history

A Novel to Cross a Desert With

The first tower was built in spring. It was a narrative totem pole that followed my journey in the footsteps of Don Quixote. What a wonderful thing to reach middle age and know there are countless classics left to read and enjoy. The great el Quixote became the sun around which everything else revolved-- el Escorial and Philip II; Charles V and the two Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand (and in the same breath as the two of them: the Spanish Inquisition and this poignant cookbook, A Drizzle of Honey). There was also Isabella's two sister queens...

Battles were Lepanto (Great reads: Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World (Roger Crowley) and The Battle of Lepanto (Nanami Shiono) and the Ottoman Siege (post coming). Enemy at the Gate and the Vienna Wood.

My favorite book about Cervantes was by María Antonia Garcés. Evoking Freud, Garcés explores the way trauma can be bypassed in the mind; not experienced directly and instead registered in the psyche as a kind of memory of the event that patients or survivors return to again and again, neurotically trying to process what happened to them. Of course, many people have traditionally processed traumatic events by revisiting them in art -- and Cervantes indeed seems to return again and again to issues of captivity and broken narratives. For what is trauma but a deep interruption? Falling through the cracks of one's own life is how I used to put it until I read María Antonia Garcés' book. For trauma is an interruption of life, like a broken thread (el roto hilo de mi historia). And Cervantes himself uses the language of tying up the broken thread in his telling tales. As a former captive of Columbian guerrillas, María Antonia Garcés is very compelling. I love her! I love Spain! I love Spanish! I love el Quixote. Very good news to find a new something to fall in love with. 

The Quixote also brought Spanish food and Spanish art into my life. 

Art was Bosch. I am still writing about that, but one book that stood out wonderfully was Cees Nooteboom's A Dark Premonition: Journeys to Hieronymus Bosch 

This is a book I wish I could have written ~~ To see a masterpiece at 21 and then go back and see it again at 82. How has the painting changed? How has the viewer changed? Is it even the same man? Can we moderns access the picture in the way Philip II did? Have our eyes changed so much?

Art was also Velasquez. Thoughts put in this post: Being Alone With Las Meninas (Forgetting Michel Foucault)

Finally, from Ilan Stavans's book on the Quixote, this on Quijotismo

In its full splendor, El Quijote not only has given birth to an adjective but also has become a doctrine, an ideology dictating the way people ought to live their lives. What exceptionalism and the American Dream are to the United States (more about that later), this ideology—Quijotismo—is to Spain and its former colonies across the Atlantic. Its central tenet is the implicit concept of rebellion: paraphrasing Montaigne, to sacrifice one's life for a dream is to know the truth. -- Ilan Stavans 

**Here is my Don Quixote Diary which includes stories from my class at Caltech with Nico.**

 

6a00d834535cc569e2022ad36a6420200cThe Second Tower: Thomas Bernhard and Vienna at the Turn of the Century

Thomas Bernhard came into my life as I was walking across the grounds of a mental hospital in August. Located on top of a wooded hill (Ah, the Vienna Woods!), the Kirche am Steinhof is part of what is a sprawling psychiatric hospital--one of the largest in Europe. Completed in 1907, it is also the location of what is considered one of the most important Art Nouveau churches in the world. And it was here that a dear friend of mine went on a first date with a man with whom she fell madly in love many years ago. I thought it was an awfully unusual spot for a first date. But my friend assured me: it had been perfect--and more, that they were still going strong even now, decades later. I had never been on the grounds of a psychiatric hospital before. The guard inquired if we wanted to see the church: Kirche? We nodded, and he pointed up the hill. There were maybe a dozen old buildings, each set within its own grove of trees, dotting the extensive grounds. The church was visible through the shade trees lining the gravel path up the hill. It's golden dome--recently renovated-- was gleaming in the brilliant sunlight, and I could easily understand why the locals called it: limoniberg (the lemon hill). A cheerful place --but then later I found out it also had a terrible history. This happened during the Nazi years, when Steinhof Hospital became the staging point for the death camps. A heartbreaking history of hospital beds emptied of children and adults deemed "untreatable" because of their ethnicity or for any so-called anti-social tendencies; this was where the now disgraced Dr. Hans Asperger did some of his dirty work. I had no idea about this dark history as I walked along the tree-lined path that sunny August day. All I was thinking was what a perfect setting for a novel the place would make. And sure enough, I would later learn, it had been just that; for this picturesque and strange place was the backdrop for my favorite novel by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Wittgenstein's Nephew (1982), is set over several months in 1967, when the hospital was comprised of two units: the pulmonary disease clinic and the sprawling psychiatric institution. 

Wittgenstein's Nephew bowled me over completely--and it led to several other novels by Bernhard: Old Masters, Old Masters Graphic Novel, Wittgenstein's Nephew, Yes, Correction, and Goethe Dies. It also led to Gita Honngeger incredible biography: Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian. This then led to a fantastic biography of the Wittgensteins by Evelyn Waugh's grandson, called the House of Wittgenstein; as well as Kandel's Age of Insight and Carl Schorske's classic, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna.

For me, the best part about this narrative journey was being able to be reacquainted to the life and work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I had briefly studied Wittgenstein as part of my undergraduate degree in philosophy but I confess I had mainly forgotten him. So, the narrative totem pole ended with several books on Wittgenstein's philosophy, as well as philosophical connections to Heidegger. I am still finishing this tower up and need to catch up on my reviews! I also have a long post on Bernhard and Vienna. 

A Small Tower: Time Travel

This summer, between trips to Spain and Austria, I read several books on time travel, culminating in what I jokingly referred to as my "masterpiece post of the year" at 3 Quarks: Time Travel with Galileo. (I do think it was my best pst of the year there). 

Great reads on time travel are listed here, along with a poem I love by Jack Gilbert. My hands down favorite book on the subject was Allen Everett and Thomas Roman’s Time Travel and Warp Drives; Allen Everett, Thomas Roman's Time Travel and Warp Drives: A Scientific Guide to Shortcuts through Time and Space.

 

IMG_1240The Third Tower: The Way of the Octopus (Do Octopuses Have Souls?)

Beginning with Peter Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, I set out on what ended up being my largest and most teetering tower of the year, one about how consciousness. Actually, the journey ended up being new ways of looking at complex webs of life on all scales, and about how our ego driven consciousness has isolated us from the rich, complex, and sustaining web of life into which we were born.

We do not understand what consciousness is, or where it is located, and one could argue it is in fact not located anywhere and is instead a product of a complex web of connections, and has diverse forms working over vast scales of complexity, time and space. We share it with animals that are similar to us, and with beings that seem completely foreign (octopuses, cockroaches, trees), i.e. we all share this nature. Humanity is becoming more and more estranged from its natural roots and context, removing ourselves from and destroying these complex webs of interdependency and connection in the service of utility and efficiency and the predominance of the individual ego. We do this at the peril of ourselves and the entire world. Books are below.

I ran out of time... so this journey will spill over into 2019--as will Thomas Bernhard and Vienna. 

Looking Forward

Today on Facebook, my friend Steven asked everyone what books they plan to re-read in 2019. I thought this was a great question since I agree with him that re-reading also deserves attention! Speaking for myself, I would really like to re-read my favorite book of 2017, Emmanuel Carrère's The Kingdom. I would also like to re-read the beginning and then finish Fuentes' Terra Nostra (this is both in connection to finishing a post on Bosch and also in preparation to seeing the murals at Orvieto). Before that, though, I do want to finish my essay on animal consciousness and the other one on Vienna and Thomas Bernhard... and then I plan to read up on Venice, as well as on counter-tenors and Handel in anticipation of a return to Salzburg, this time for the Whitsun Music Festival. I've stated a music diary and here is my Report from Salzburg. 

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Way of the Octopus

Peter Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

Sy Montgomery's Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

Christof Koch's Consciousness: Conversations of a Romantic Reductionist

Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid? & I Am A Strange Loop

Peter Wohllenben's The Hidden Life of Trees

Deborah Gordon's Ants at Work

Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability

Union of Concerned Scientist's Cooler Smarter: Practical Steps for Low-Carbon Living

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's Mushroom at the End of the World

Timothy Morten's Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World

Martin Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology

Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene

Michael Pollen's How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

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Also recommend Sean Carroll's podcast with David Chalmers (who is working on a new book on the subject) on Consciousness, the Hard Problem, and Living in a Simulation

And Paul Stamets (who has a new book coming out called Fantastic Fungi) video Fantastic Fungi

New Atlantis/Understanding Heidegger on Technology

New Atlantis: Do Elephants Have Souls?

Documentary Film: Soil! The Movie

Film: Salt of the Earth

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Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

IMG_4795Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)
by Robin Sloan

For bibliophiles and those with an interest in the history of typography, this book is a must-read! But beware if you are over thirty years old! For this is a book of tweet-short sentences; a world of google coders and vegan oatmeal cookies; a world of women who are called girls, where they are admired multiple times for their micro-muscles to be contrasted to the micro wrinkles of older women; a world where the hero says things like:“I am really into the type of girl you can impress with a prototype.” Indeed, this is a world where the hero remarks on his "spider senses tingling" because of course, these are gamers, coders and fantasy novel readers. 

As the one of the characters remarks, “If this sounds impressive to you, you’re over thirty.” 

Yep, I am over thirty! And I was impressed!

A well-known science writer recently tweeted how he felt his daily tweets were a form of writing discipline; for to get your thoughts down under 280 characters is hard work. The author of this novel, a former employee of Twitter, proves the point with dazzlingly minimalist sentences. In fact, I typically don’t prefer minimalist, journalistic style writing but I think when it’s well done --like here-- it can be really a great pleasure to read. This book clips along! Beautifully written, the writer is also funny and clever.

Like this:
“Kat gushes about Google's projects, all revealed to her now. They are making a 3-D web browser. They are making a car that drives itself. They are making a sushi search engine -- here she pokes a chopstick down at our dinner -- to help people find fish that is sustainable and mercury-free. They are building a time machine. They are developing a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris.” 

The book is surprising. Not at all a cookie-cutter MFA graduate type of novel (as I was suspecting given the New York Times review for a first time novelist). It deals with big ideas. It also talks a lot about old books and typography. My favorite font is garamond and now I know that garamond stretches all the way back to Renaissance Venice, to a man called Aldus Manutius.
https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/...

New York Times reviewer complained (along with a few other reviews I read) about its neat and tidy plot-- "too convenient..." I was all set to hate that since by nature I dislike efficiency in anything, but I found the end to be less convenience and more fairy tale. I loved the book. 

Planning to read his latest book soon. Bravo!

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A Novel To Cross A Desert With (From 3 Quarks Daily)

FullSizeRender.jpg-1By, Leanne Ogasawara

When I was a young, I don't remember why, but I scribbled a poem by Osip Mandelstam on a piece of thick, mauve-color Nepalese mulberry paper. And as I wrote it, I thought to myself, "This is a poem to cross a desert with." 

Depriving me of sea, of a space to run and a space to fly,
And giving my footsteps the brace of a forced land,
What have you gained? The calculation dazzles 
But you cannot seize the movements of my lips, their silent sound.
--Osip Mandelstam 1935

I carried this poem around in my wallet for twenty-five years--like an amulet. Looking back, I can only wonder what in the world drew me to it when I was still so young and free-spirited...But in fact, this poem of Russian gulag captivity gave me strength during times of hardship; for contained within those few short lines is a beautiful testament to the great strength that our inner lives have to sustain us...

Fast forward twenty-five years when a forty-five year old woman scrawled one line from another poem on the back of that same mauve-color piece of mulberry paper. This time it was the famous line from Tao Yuanming's poem, Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence:  

採菊東籬下 

A world away in spirit from Mandelstam's poem perhaps. As the poem sums up perfectly the serenity achieved by a life of cultivation --at the end of the hero's journey.

飲酒詩     陶淵明
結盧在人境 而無車馬喧
問君何能爾 心遠地自偏
採菊東籬下 悠然見南山
山氣日夕佳 飛鳥相與還
此還有真意 欲辨已忘言

 

Drinking Wine (#5)--Tao Yuanming
I’ve built my house where others dwell
And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses
You ask me how this is possible-- (And so I say):
When the heart is far, one is transported
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern fence
And serenely I gaze at the southern mountains
At dusk, the mountain air is good
Flocks of flying birds are returning home
In this, there is a great truth
But wanting to explain it, I forget the words (my trans) 

That line has become a perfect touchstone for the next part of my life; another poem to cross a desert with.  

All this about deserts....

The truth is, if I were really to cross a desert, I would most probably prefer to take a novel--not a poem.

I'm curious, do you have one book that you would happily re-read over and over until the end of time?

I had thought I had a definite answer for myself. My novel of a lifetime has always been The Brothers Karamazov. This changed in an eye-blink when I finally began Don Quixote. Like Karamazov, the Quixote is chock full of philosophical questions that would engage a reader endlessly. And what the Quixote may be lacking in religious truths, it more than makes up for in humor. And indeed, don't we want to keep laughing? The countless droll and surprising images in the book can become like little poems that a reader can carry around with them in their pocket and bring out whenever they want to smile or giggle, or to just plain fall on the floor laughing! I love el Quixote and was not surprised one bit to hear that it is one of the most requested book by the inmates at Guantánamo. (That, according to Quixote scholar Roberto González Echevarría).

As is well known, the great Borges was deeply passionate about the Quixote and returned to the work over and over again --in stories, essays, and poems-- throughout his life. In particular, Borges loved Cervantes' literary devices that worked to undermine literary truth (and notions of absolute truth in general it could be said); indeed, the works of both Borges and Cervantes could be characterized by a playful questioning of something Karl Popper called the myth of the framework. Better explored by Martin Heidegger and Thomas Kuhn, the idea being that what we see as "the world" is no more than a shared cultural, linguistic and ideological framework by which we interpret things. This framework informs --and indeed decides-- not only how we interpret experiences but frames perception itself.

This is to say, we are all enchanted.

Imprisoned in our preconceived notion such that not only are our judgements being compromised but our sensory perceptions themselves are suspect. Thus, Thomas Kuhn famously illuminated this by examining scientific paradigms, coming up with the concept of incommensurability. We know we are in the gripe of a linguistic, cultural or ideological framework when we come up against concepts that simply do not translate (for example, mass and gravitation do not perfectly translate from classical to quantum mechanical schemes; or in Heideggerean terms, saints and sinners no longer show up for us today as meaningful--any more than the ancient Greek concept of a hero would seem a sensible option for a man today). Humans assign meaning and interpret not only the world around them, but their understanding of being itself, so that being is intrinsically embedded within all the shared social and cultural practices by which we have been socialized and through which we understand the world around us (l'existence précède l'essence). So fundamental, it is often unconscious to us as well-- like the air we breathe. Foucault used Heidegger's concept of the clearing to explore what he called the episteme. This was always Foucault's primary interest: to try and grasp the a priori network or grid of meaning that we map onto the world. 

My Don Quixote professor called this grid of meaning the "rules of the world."

I love that expression.

Cervantes gives us a fiction. But he also always gives us the rules, says the dear professor.

And, it is in the recognition that reality is a cultural construct and that all narratives have rules by which we can--in this recognition--  take a stand. [the existential stand]. 

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Just amazing that Cervantes was exploring something so modern over four hundred years ago!

But Cervantes was not any ordinary writer! Indeed, has any writer had as adventurous a life as Cervantes? 

First of all, he was at the legendary Battle of Lepanto. Yes, you heard me right. And there, by all accounts, he was very heroic. Hit three times by harquebus fire, he was struck twice in the chest and once in the left hand. Luckily, his armor deflected the chest wounds, but his left hand was permanently damaged during the battle. His maimed hand earned him the nickname, "El Manco de Lepanto." His heroic service that day got him several letters of commendation; one being from "his serene highness" Don Juan himself. Unfortunately, these letters were on his person when he was captured by the dreaded Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers. . His new master, believing him to be a man of great value because of these letters, set an exorbitant ransom, prolonging his captivity to five hopeless years.

I wonder whether returning home, he struggled with resuming normal life. I had trouble readjusting to life in the US after my decades abroad. It can be very hard coming home because things that you once thought as being "obvious" or "natural," no longer feel that way and you find yourself questioning everything. Cervantes does this in the novel by pitting all manner of preconceived notions and narratives against each other--even calling into question the act of storytelling itself. Is Don Quixote mad or is the world mad? Are all those notions held by people in various times and places somehow "real" or are we all not bewitched like actors playing parts in a wondrous play?  One of the most eye-opening techniques that Cervantes uses to highlight the role of narratives in our lives is his use of interruptions. I was surprised by how modern they feel-- the way chapters and situations simply trail off, and all the interpolated tales--not to mention the way the main story is abruptly paused by a complete novella plopped into the middle of the first book! Just as a reader is being lulled into a certain worldview, Cervantes adroitly yanks the rug from beneath our feet! As if to say,

See how good I am at this? But be wary, dear reader, for this too is only another narrative and you shouldn't be too trusting. Step back and take a stand on everything!

FullSizeRender-28María Antonia Garcés is one of my intellectual heroes, and she wrote a book about Cervantes' years in captivity in Algiers. Evoking Freud, she discusses the way that in some people trauma is actually bypassed in the mind: it is not experienced directly and instead is registered in the psyche as a kind of memory of the event that patients or survivors return to again and again, neurotically trying to process what happened to them. Of course, many people have traditionally processed traumatic events by revisiting them in art -- and Cervantes indeed seems to return again and again to issues of captivity and broken narratives. For what is trauma but a deep interruption? Falling through the cracks of one's own life is how I used to put it until I read María Antonia Garcés' book. For trauma is an interruption of life, like a broken thread (el roto hilo de mi historia). And Cervantes himself uses the language of tying up the broken thread in his telling tales. As a former captive of Columbian guerrillas, María Antonia Garcés is very compelling.

Writing this two days after the Florida school shooting on Valentine's Day, I was thinking of this very sobering article by Umair Hacque that was shared widely, including at 3 Quarks Daily. Echoing another friend of 3 Quarks, Anis Shivani, who also has written about the futility of trying to repair a situation that has deteriorated this badly, Hacque gives real reasons for despair. It is starting to feel like a complete societal collapse, since we are not even protecting or doing right by our own children (we are the most dangerous wealthy country to be a child ). Umair Hacque ends his piece by suggesting that, 

We need a whole new language — and a new way of seeing — to even begin to make sense of it.

I agree!

Both Descartes and Cervantes were interested in the notion of being "bewitched." In this state of slumber we do not question “the world”, instead accepting that what we know as real is truth and cannot be replaced with an alternative, better, saner world. The rules of our problematic world are built into the very language we use to talk about it, trapping us unless we break out of our own narrative prisons. As Amitav Ghosh tells us concerning climate change, we cannot tell the story of how to make a better world using a language that was built word by word on the framework upon which the problems are built. Interruptions can begin to distance us from the current narrative.

Humor and playfulness can also be very effective. As can be immersing oneself in a different language or culture to help see the world with new eyes. I might have mentioned the sabbath movement here. Spearheaded by Columbia Theological Seminar professor Walter Brueggmann and inspired by the Jewish sabbath, it is a movement to set aside one day where you interrupt the current model of human beings as producers and consumers (I think this is what Heidegger would say we are bewitched by) and try to do things in a different way. It is an effort to step out of the Matrix. In our house the aim is to not work or be consumers; and to just play for an entire day every Sunday. Our day usually involves cocktails at lunch and a homemade dinner with candles and listening to music... we try to avoid computers and cell phones and resist all the things we have become. No amazon, no streaming, no heavy-duty industrial food.... It is enlightening to realize how hard it is to do this. In fact, when I see how challenging it is for me to live in a simpler way (the way I lived thirty years ago), I realize how much I have drunk the Koolaid.

One of my presumably non-religious friends on Facebook shared this article about the Anglican church encouraging Lent be used to step out of our current mindless use of plastics. He said this:

This looks like a neat example of how religion might do what it does best and encourage virtuous behaviors among its members and perhaps model that behavior for society at large. I’ve always thought that Lent has such potential for critiquing our consumer society—and here is an environmental twist. Maybe we should all try it—religious or not. Check out the Lent calendar link in the article. It is very cool.  

It is very cool! Many traditional calendars have these kinds of feast and fast days and also days of abstinence. They are very helpful in attempting to combat 24/7 consumerism, where everyday is Christmas. In any case, it's harder than it looks from here. I can say, it was orders of magnitude easier in Japan (where the average citizen has 1/4 the carbon impact that the average American has, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists). And with this in mind, I think Cervantes is right that interruptions can be the first step to taking a stand in life; for as Einstein might have said: We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Or better

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

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Much gratitude to Nicolás Wey Gómez for teaching me so much about the Quixote.... 感謝! 

María Antonia Garcés' Cervantes in Algiers: A Captive's Tale

My Goodreads review of A Captive's Tale is here. 

For more, see my: A Poem to Cross a Desert With  &

ARE WE DERANGED? (GLOBAL WARMING PART 2)

Also, if you are interested in the Quixote, please see my (and the Puppy-Librarian Senor Borges') Don Quixote Diaries 

What to Give up for Lent? Plastics! Lenten Calendar

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el Escorial

IMG_3865With the possible exception of the dazzlingly perverse Borgia popes and the women who surrounded them, I am not sure any family in history has quite the dark and dastardly reputation as the Spanish Habsburgs.

I have written at length about my own attachment to the dark legend of Queen Isabella.

Even after reading--and really appreciating-- the fair portrayal of Queen Isabella in Giles Tremblett's Isabella of Castille, I must be honest and confess that I am stubbornly sticking to my image of her as the psychopathic religious fanatic and power hungry queen that I have long imagined her to be-- as portrayed so memorably by Salman Rushdie in his wonderful short story that appeared in the New Yorker way back in 1991, called Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain Consummate Their Relationship, Santa Fe, January, 1492. ( Download The-New-Yorker-Jun-17-1991) 

Rushdie is such a genius. In just a few short pages, he somehow evokes the most unforgettable picture of Columbus and Isabella; for this so perfectly captures just how I have always imagined them:

 ….he bowed over her olive hand and, with his lips a breath away from the great ring of her power, murmured a single, dangerous word. 'Consummation.' — These unspeakable foreigners! The nerve! 'Consummation', indeed! And then following in her footsteps, month after month, as if he stood a chance. His coarse epistles, his tuneless serenades beneath her casement windows, obliging her to have them closed, shutting out the cooling breeze….”

And so she plays with him! At luncheons she promises him everything he wants and cuts him dead later in the afternoon, looking through him as if he were a veil.”

 He wonders if she is tormenting him for fun alone…!

 Isabel la Católica~~ 

Love her or hate her (she is my own personal arch enemy), her religious fanaticism takes center stage in most books about her. Our British tour guide in Seville referred to Isabella and Ferdinand as "the psychopaths"~~ for indeed, everyone knew who he was referring to. 

 Her daughters don't fare much better either... In The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile, author Julia Fox very courageously sets the record straight on these two much-maligned women. Just leaving aside Catherine for now and looking at Juana... Juana, is the stuff of dark Spanish legend. So passionately in love was she with her husband (otherwise known as Philip the Gorgeous from Burgundy), she went stark raving mad after his death. The story goes that she, despite being pregnant, insisted on traveling with the corpse of her dead husband from Burgos to Granada (they never made it that far), where she had wanted to have him buried. It is said that she would not allow any women near the body, so jealous was she in his death as much as in his life and that she opened the coffin on several occasions to kiss his hands and feet-- and lips. Julia Fox does a wonderful job poking holes in the legend and explaining that it was probably her father who was the "mad" one and by locking her up in a nunnery was able to take the rulership of Castille for himself. 

800px-El_escorial++

Henry Kamen, in his wonderful book on the Escorial, has perhaps the hardest legend of all to right: that of Philip II and the building of the Escorial. Probably no one quite captures the black legend on Philip II as Carlos Fuentes does in in 1975 novel, Terra Nostra. This is from a Kirkus review:

It is like a movie by Bunuel unreeling marvels, cruelties, compulsions--a Buneul, who had been given unlimited funds by some mad mogul. Fuentes' labyrinth starts in Paris in 1999, when the Seine is boiling, the Louvre has turned to crystal and the Eiffel Tower to sand. Flagellants parade the streets. On a bridge a man meets a woman with tattooed lips; he falls into the river; the story shifts back to Spain on the eve of the New World's discovery, it is a Spain of blood, torture, religious and sexual obsessions, ruled by El Senor, who hates life (God's greatest sin was the creation of man) and has immured himself in a necropolis. His mother consorts with the cadaver of her husband."

In the novel, Juana la Loca is Philip's mother, instead of his grandmother, but you recognize the consorting... and she is not the only necrophiliac as Philip II has long been portrayed as a cross between a religious fanatic and necrophiliac. In the novel, for example, we find him engaging in self- flagellation (wildly whipping himself as he prays prostrate on the cold marble floor of the basilica at el Escorial. They say he was unusual for a king in his avoidance of most pleasures and indeed, in the novel, he is depicted as entertaining some very strange religious ideas. 

The Black Legend

The Black Legend itself has its roots in the aftermath of the failed Armada but really more than anything it is a product of the Protestant Reformation, which as part of its cultural wake, saw Catholic countries (especially Spain) portrayed as extremely backward--with religious superstition and fanaticism holding the country back in ways not seen in more enlightened Protestant countries. And so we have the inbred Hapsburgs with their courts filled with incredible art (from Bosch to Valesquez) their many dwarfs; religious sects and the dreadful Spanish Inquisition. It was a world embodied by black-clad aristocrats, in women strictly hidden away in their palaces and Byzantine religious practiced that had a strong hold on everything. 

Philip II in particular was seen as monomaniacal in his building of the tremendously expensive Escorial. It didn't help that the monastery-palace itself was constructed on top of a hill in a rather remote and harsh location and built in an unadorned and cold-feeling classical style. It appeared harsh and authoritarian and was much loathed by Europeans of the time... And did I mention that this monastery-palace was also a pantheon? Philip had designed what later writers described as a necropolis-- a place of burial for the Spanish royals. 

EscorialPanteoThere must be other places like this somewhere in the world but for the life of me, I can't think of any. Basically, when the building was completed, bodies were taken out of their mausoleums and brought to el Escorial for their final interment. Royalty who died after the building's construction first had to be reduced to bones before being interred so fresh cadavers were first laid to rest in the “El Pudridero” (aka the rotting room). 

You can read all about it here (since pictures are not allowed inside, I didn't get any of my own). 

This project dominated Philip II's mature years as he spent enormous resources and energy in designing the huge complex and bringing artists from Italy over to adorn it. 

Much was made of this in other parts of Europe--especially in lands prone to discriminating against the Spanish in the first place. But in all fairness, the Spanish themselves did much to spread the memes about their dark and morbid king Philip II.

In the book, Kamen addresses every single trope. His book is less a history of the building of el Escorial as much as it is a revisionist history of the life of Philip II (with special attention to his latter years). It is really stimulating reading--especially if you have read a lot of Spanish history. Kamen pays close attention to art--from the many Titian portraits to the opera by Verdi (based on Friedrich Schiller’s  play about Philip and his son, the Don Carlo of the title):

I will sleep alone in my royal mantle
When my day has come to evening
I will sleep alone beneath the black
vault
There in the depths of the Escorial.

++

Kamen's book is a dazzling tour through the life of Philip II. But as he tackles each different element in the myth surrounding Philip II, you will probably be left clinging to the Black Legend despite Kamen's best efforts since; well, where there is smoke there is fire. And the Expulsions did happen and women were very much hidden away and in some ways Spain was indeed as "backward" as people said until fairly modern times (If you look up how long the Spanish Inquisition was continued down to modern times, you might be surprised).

As Ingrid Rowland's fabulous review to the book states:

Kamen notes that the king attended “only” four autos-da-fé in person, and that none of them involved burnings at the stake. But surely it is incontrovertible that Spanish colonial rule, the Spanish Inquisition, and Spanish pressures on the Catholic church caused the world untold misery. The legacy of Philip II and the Escorial is as mixed and ambiguous as their eclectic heritage.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS ONE! 

Ingrid Rowland: The Fortunate Journey in the New Republic

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Mogusaen

高幡不動Last night, when he asked me to remind him where exactly in Tokyo I had lived, I gave the simplest answer possible, by telling him that I had lived in the westernmost reaches of greater Tokyo. 

Practically in Hachioji, I said.

But that drew a blank expression. So I tried again:

You take the Keio Line from Shinjuku all the way out to Hino City, almost to the end of the line in Hachioji. 

But still that drew a blank. So, I gave up sighing and told him: 

It was a wonderful place...

++

In 2012 I traveled to Shanghai to give a talk about Tokyo. I couldn't recall, though, whether I had ever actually located myself in the paper within the gigantic megacity. Going back to look at it this morning, I was so relieved to see that I had indeed written a little about Mogusaen: 

百草園 

It's name means means "garden of a hundred grasses." To get there from Tokyo, you have to board an express train from Shinjuku, heading toward Hachioji. Traveling for about thirty minutes all the to Seisekisakuragaoka station, you have to change to a local train. Mogusaen is the next stop on the other side of the Tama River. Mogusaen just never grew large enough to merit an express stop. Not when I lived there at least. Well, except for when the plum trees were in bloom --since Mogusaen is famous for its plum blossoms. So popular is the garden at that time of year that the trains are completely re-scheduled in order to turn Mogusaen into an express stop during the short plum blossom season. But then, once the flowers have scattered, Mogusaen reverted back to its ordinary incarnation of being local stop again.

不動様Even now, I still can't help but smile all these years later when I think of how blossoming plum trees required the complete rescheduling of one of Tokyo's busiest train lines! 

In addition to the plum blossoms, Mogusaen had its rice paddies, which dominated the landscape (and the soundscape) during the summers. There were even fireflies. But perhaps my most unforgettable memory about living in Hino was the temple. Just a short walk along the river toward the west stood one of Japan's most important Shingon Buddhist temples. Filled with statues of esoteric Buddhist deities and religious items more commonly associated with Tibet--including the thunderbolt and small handbells, it was the most exotic temple I had ever visited in Japan. With a constant stream of chanting coming from the interior and a festival-like feeling surrounding the place all year long, every time I visited there was something new to capture my attention. Fudo-sama is a wrathful deity and the statue of him was surrounded by flames, as well as his name appearing in Sanskrit in the temple. Like the Tibetan thunderbolt, Fudo-sama cuts through people's ignorance and delusions.... yes, he is a Buddhist slayer of evil. Fudo, the immovable. 

My most vivid memory of Takahatafudo, though, had nothing to do with the deity. My most vivid memory of the temple happened during the hydrangea festival. 

紫陽花 Ajisai (or hydrangea) means Purple Globe Flowers --and isn't that exactly what they look like? Every late spring to early summer, the gardens of Takahatafudo temple are lit up by purple hydragea, It is a universe of purple worlds blossoming all along the path behind the pagoda. I looked forward to the hydrangea festival every year. We would go and eat takoyaki and yakitori, and then choco bananas or tai yaki (I am going to cry I miss Japan so much)... anyway, on that day, we were walking behind the pagoda toward the flowers, listening to a mother describing to her blind son just how utterly dazzling the flowers. She was holding his hand as he used a cane and she was so lovingly describing everything she saw to him. Then, as we passed them I heard her saying that it wasn't just the flowers that needed describing because a foreigner was here as well--and she proceeded to describe me in detail to the boy!

I told Tetsuya, "I will never forget this moment." 

And I was right too!  

(Am reading Liza Dalby's novel Hidden Buddhas) & Wonderful video below by 一人旅人 solitary traveler

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El Cid and Ein Karem (Week 7)

AlegraOn the outskirts of Jerusalem (also known to some as the center of the world), there is a magical hotel where all the rooms are named after famous lovers. Like paradise, there a wonderfully fragrant garden with comfortable chairs for reading and napping; and if you climb up the stairs to the roof, the views stretch all the way across the valley to the golden onion domes of Gorny Convent, gleaming against a background of pine and cypress trees. And there, every night at precisely at 8pm, the guests find their way back inside the building. Made of cool Jerusalem stone, the walls are adorned with brightly-colored contemporary art. Entering the dining room, the guests all sit down to dinner together.

Ah, hotel Alegra. 

I had requested the Dante and Beatrice room--but was informed that that would cost more!!! So, we settled into el Cid and Jimena. Despite my definite preference for Dante and Beatrice, our room was absolutely unforgettable. And ever since, I've found myself quite interested in el Cid and his lady. Of course, if you watch the famous movie--and you should-- you would be made to think that el Cid was a great fighter of moors; an early hero of the reconquista in Spain. But that is simply not the case.

++

Still reading everything I can get my hands on about Spain and al-Andalus, I just finished reading, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture, by Jerrilynn D. Dodds, María Rosa Menocal, Abigail Krasner Balbale. I am a big fan of  María Rosa Menocal's work; and while this book is not as beautifully written as her others (writing is a bit dull), it is filled with the most gorgeous photographs of cathedrals and mosques and contains many wonderful poems. A celebration of al-Andalus in stories and pictures, the book has a jewel-like quality! And the way the authors re-tell the el Cid legend is just what the doctor ordered for clearing up all the misconceptions about this famous hero. For el Cid fought for whoever was paying. He fought for the Muslim emirs of al-Andalus but he also fought for the Christian kings of future Castille. I wouldn't say he was out for money alone, but he certainly was not moved by religion or ideology, as much as for land and friendship. His nickname itself is from Arabic. 

Alegra-boutique-hotelBefore Isabella and Ferdinand, religion and language was much more porous for people in Spain. One of the first times Cervantes pulls the rug out from beneath his readers' feet was when he informs us that the manuscript of this true history of the Hidalgo Don Quxoite was written by a Moor named Cide Hamete Benengeli. As Professor Wey-Gomez explained, Benengeli, was nothing if not a "hybrid creature and product of the frontiers!" The "Arabic and Manchegan author" wrote in something we are told might be Arabic; for it then had to be translated by a morisco that the "narrator" happens to meet in the markets of Toledo (translation capital of the world at that time).

A translation!

A translation of a partially completed manuscript written in Arabic by a Moor. 

Cervantes himself lived captive as a slave kidnapped by Barbary pirates in a land ruled by the infamous Hayreddin Barbarossa. Barbarossa was a Greek-born Muslim convert who rose to rule over Algiers. The Ottoman empire is well-known for its incredible porosity. If a person converted and learned the language, they could rise to the very top. And this was so to a lesser extent in North Africa and in al-Andalus. People paid a tax and would be left to live how they saw fit. They could worship in churches and synagogues and were allowed to intermarry. Like in the Ottoman empire, Muslim-ruled Spain was surprisingly multi-cultural--and if one converted to Islam they could rise to the very top. 

Al-Andalus lasted for 700 years. If we can say anything, it is that the culture of Spain from 711- 1492 was much more open than what came before or after it. People did learn each other's languages and they converted to each other's religions. Cervantes book is filled with converts.

There has been some push-back against an overly idealized version of al-Andalus. But as Harold Bloom said in the introduction to María Rosa Menocal's other book, Ornament of the World, this is a necessary idealization; one from which we can learn a lot, I think.  

With that in mind that we have much to learn, I just finished another book about multi-cultural Islamic Spain, called A Vanished World, by Chris Lowney. Interesting on so many levels, the author was a one-time Jesuit seminarian who went on to work for JP Morgan as a managing director. He did the Compostela pilgrimage to raise money for Catholic charities and indeed is an active philanthropist. His treatment of the Saint James story was especially compelling, I thought (and as a pilgrim himself, he was very moving on the camino). As is well-known from the New Testament, Saint James was the first Christian martyr and died back in Jerusalem not all that long after Christ was crucified. So, how did he get to Spain? There is a myth that a shepherd was drawn by a field bathed in heavenly light (compostela means "field of stars") and discovers the tomb of the apostle James. Impossible and yet the pilgrims would come. For a story had been born that the body of Saint James, after martyrdom in Jerusalem, had been placed in a ship made of marble (!) and ended up in Spain, which was at the time considered to be the end of the world. (For Jesus told James: You shall be my witness to the end of the earth). 

The myth was forgotten but then resurrected when Charlemagne had a dream (like Constantine had a dream). Saint James appeared to him and instructed him to follow the milky way, where he would uncover-or deliver-- his grave. This legend would be more martial than the earlier story of the shepherd (whose story recalls the nativity); and would become the origin of the Saint James the Moor Slayer, screamed by knights on the battle field during the reconquista. Like Spain itself, the legend of Saint James went from a story of peace and harmony to a battle cry, and this also shares much with the legends about el Cid. The book started and ended with the 2004 bombings in Madrid since we are repeating the same things again and again.

 

Video from our stay in Ein Karen below. 

(Also we are going to have to immediately take a second trip to Spain, I see... )

 

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Gaudi's Heaven on Earth

31451074The Sagrada Familia: Gaudí’s Heaven on Earth by Gijs van Hensbergen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A short and wonderfully-written history of the Sagrada Familia. You will definitely need to get some kind of coffee table book with pictures of all Gaudi's main works, as well as with photographs the Sagrada (or look them up online) otherwise the read won't be as illuminating.

Being quite heavy on the political and historical context of the building of the cathedral and it is less detailed on the religious and biographical context, which is fine. But readers might want to see the author's biography of Gaudi, as well.

I cannot recommend enough the wonderful film, Sagrada: the Mystery of Creation. It is really moving, thanks in great part to the photography. The film also spends quite a lot of time with the Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo - 外尾悦郎.  Sotoo is a fascinating person--from Japan, he left his country decades ago after feeling called by the stones he saw in wait at the Sagrada building site... after learning Spanish, he then converted to Roman Catholicism and insists that it is through the lens of Gaudi's faith that one must approach the miracle of La Sagrada Familia.

I was so happy that van Hensbergen ended his book with the story of Sotoo--who is, I believe, the only official sculptor working on La Sagrada Familia. A remarkable man from Japan.

++

Suntory ad that launched the Gaudi boom in Japan here

 

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The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote

FullSizeRender.jpg-1Yesterday, in a post at 3 Quarks Daily, I declared that Don Quixote was a novel I could cross a desert with. Long ago, I once asked whether a friend had just one book that he would happily re-read over and over until the end of time? I had thought I had a my own definite answer to this question; for my "novel of a lifetime" has always been The Brothers Karamazov.

This changed, however, in an eye-blink when I finally began Don Quixote.

Like Karamazov, the Quixote is chock full of philosophical questions that would engage a reader endlessly. And what the Quixote may be lacking in religious truths, it more than makes up for in humor. And indeed, don't we want to keep laughing? The countless droll and surprising images in the book can become like little poems that a reader can carry around with them in their pocket and bring out whenever they want to smile or giggle, or to just plain fall on the floor laughing! I love el Quixote and was not surprised one bit to hear that it is one of the most requested book by the inmates at Guantánamo. (That, according to Quixote scholar Roberto González Echevarría).

But of course, my two favorite books are connected. So deeply did Dostoevsky love the Quixote that he wrote his own version of the story, in his novel The Idiot. This below is from a letter Dostoevsky wrote from Geneva to his niece as he was working on the book:

The main idea of the novel is to present a positively beautiful man. This is the most difficult subject in the world, especially as it is now. All writers, not just our, but European writers, too, have always failed whenever they attempted a portrait of the positively beautiful. Because the task is so infinite. The beautiful is an ideal, but both our ideal and that of civilized Europe are still far from being shaped. There is only one positively beautiful person in the world, Christ, and the phenomenon of this limitlessly, infinitely beautiful person is an infinite miracle in itself. (The whole Gospel according to John is about that: for him the whole miracle is only in the incarnation, in the manifestation of the beautiful.) But I am going too far. I’d only mention that of all the beautiful individuals in Christian literature, one stands out as the most perfect, Don Quixote. But he is beautiful only because he is ridiculous. Dickens’ Mr. Pickwick (who is, as a creative idea, infinitely weaker than Don Quixote but still gigantic) is also ridiculous but that is all he has to captivate us. Wherever compassion toward ridiculed and ingenious beauty is presented, the reader’s sympathy is aroused. The mystery of humor lies in this excitation of compassion.

"This excitation of compassion"

It has been so interesting sitting in on a class on the Quixote with 25 undergraduates at Caltech. They do not seem overly impressed by the hero's idealism--and indeed rather than a hero, one even referred to him as an anti-hero. They are concerned about the havoc he wrecks and the people he hurts. They also worry about his influence on Sancho. This has been very strange. Certainly DQ is no Odysseus. He is not even an Aeneas. But wouldn't they be surprised to learn that it was not just Dostoevsky who considered Don Quixote as a "Spanish Christ." No lesser figure than the great Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, declared him to be likewise so.

To paraphrase Kessel Schwartz: like Christ, Don Quixote went out into the world with his disciple, where he was persecuted; "not so much for his beliefs but for what he thought of as the Kingdom of Heaven." He was ridiculed for trying to tend to the needs of men.

Luke 4:18-19 King James Version (KJV)
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised...

I think the students would be shocked by this because, strangely, they do not seem to see him as a hero. He does cause a lot of trouble along the way...it's true.

**

Simon Leys had a wonderful essay in the NYRBs a million years ago, called The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote. A great piece, I highly recommend it to you!

Would love to get a copy of Unamuno's book, The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Below from Ley's wonderful essay:

His main argument, which he sustained, tongue in cheek, over more than four hundred pages, is that Don Quixote should be urgently rescued from the clumsy hands of Cervantes. Don Quixote is our guide, he is inspired, he is sublime, he is true. As for Cervantes, he is a mere shadow: deprived of Don Quixote’s support, he hardly exists; when reduced to his own meager moral and intellectual resources, he proved unable to produce any significant work. How could he ever have appreciated the genius of his own hero? He looked at Don Quixote from the point of view of the world—he took the side of the enemy. Thus, the task which Unamuno assigned to himself was to set the record straight—to vindicate at last the validity of Don Quixote’s vision against the false wisdom of the clever wits, the vulgarity of the bullies, the narrow minds of the jesters—and against the dim understanding of Cervantes.

In order fully to appreciate Unamuno’s essay, one must place it within the context of his own spiritual life, which was passionate and tragic. Unamuno was a Catholic for whom the problem of faith remained all his life the central issue: not to believe was inconceivable—and to believe was impossible. This dramatic contradiction was well expressed in one of his poems:

…I suffer at your expense,
Non-existing God, for if You were to exist,
Me too, I would truly exist.5

In other words: God does not exist, and the clearest evidence of this is that—as all of you can see—I do not exist, either. Thus, with Unamuno, every statement of disbelief turns into a paradoxical profession of faith. In Unamuno’s philosophy, faith ultimately creates the thing it contemplates—not as subjective and fleeting autosuggestion, but as an objective and everlasting reality that can be transmitted to others.

And finally it is Sancho Panza—all the Sancho Panzas of this world—who will vouch for this reality. The earthy Sancho, who followed Don Quixote for so long, with skepticism, with perplexity, with fear, also followed him with fidelity. Sancho did not believe in what his Master believed, but he believed in his Master. At first he was moved by greed, finally he was moved by love. And even through the worst tribulations, he kept following him because he came to like the idea. When Don Quixote lay dying, sadly cured of his splendid illusion, ultimately divested of his dream, Sancho found that he had inherited his Master’s faith; he had acquired it simply as one would catch a disease—through the contagion of fidelity and love.

Because he converted Sancho, Don Quixote will never die.

Thus, in the madness of Don Quixote, Unamuno reads a perfect illustration of the power and wisdom of faith. Don Quixote pursued immortal fame and a glory that would never fade. To this purpose, he chose to follow what would appear as the most absurd and impractical path: he followed the way of a knight errant in a world where chivalry had disappeared ages ago. Therefore clever wits all laughed at his folly. But in this long fight, which pitted the lonely knight and his faithful squire against the world, which side finally was befogged in illusion? The world that mocked them has turned to dust, whereas Don Quixote and Sancho live forever.

 

 

 

 

 

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A Captive's Tale

FullSizeRender-28Cervantes in Algiers: A Captive's Tale
by Maria Antonia Garcés

Has any writer had a more adventurous life than Cervantes?

First of all, he was at the legendary Battle of Lepanto. Yes, you heard me right. And there, by all accounts, he was very heroic. Hit three times by harquebus fire, he was struck twice in the chest and once in the left hand. Luckily, his armor deflected the chest wounds, but his left hand was permanently damaged during the battle. His maimed hand earned him the nickname, "El Manco de Lepanto." His heroic service that day got him several letters of commendation; one being from his "serene highness" Don Juan himself. Unfortunately, these letters were on his person when he was captured by the dreaded Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers. His new master, believing him to be a man of great value because of these letters, set his ransom to an exorbitant amount of money, thereby ensuring he stayed a captive for five years, most of which he felt hopeless for ever being ransomed!

Returning home, I wonder if he didn't struggle with trying to fit back into life there. It can be very hard coming home after an intense period abroad because things that you once thought as being "obvious" or "natural," no longer feel that way and you find yourself questioning everything. Cervantes clearly does this in a different way by basically pitting all manner of preconceived notions and narratives against each other--constantly calling into question the act of storytelling itself. Is Don Quixote mad or is the world mad? Are all those notions held by people in various times and places somehow "real" or are we all not bewitched like actors playing parts in a wondrous play?

María Antonia Garcés is one of my intellectual heroes. And her book, Cervantes in Algiers is revelatory. Evoking Freud, she discusses the way that in some people trauma is actually bypassed in the mind: it is not experienced directly and instead is registered in the psyche as a kind of memory of the event that patients or survivors return to again and again, neurotically trying to process what happened to them. Of course, many people have traditionally processed traumatic events by revisiting them in art -- and Cervantes indeed seems to return again and again to issues of captivity and broken narratives. For what is trauma but a deep interruption? Falling through the cracks of one's own life is how I used to put it until I read María Antonia Garcés' book. For trauma is an interruption of life, like a broken thread (el roto hilo de mi historia). And Cervantes himself uses the language of tying up the broken thread in his telling tales. As a former captive of Columbian guerrillas, María Antonia Garcés is is very compelling.

This is an award-winning book for good reason. The opening chapters on the history of Algiers and the Barbary pirates is very interesting. I don't think I have ever read this history before and after going through her two opening chapter twice, I learned so much.

This book is very dear to me. Eye-opening on the history of the time, you will learn more than you imagine on Cervantes life. But, I would add, it is what she has to say about the life-saving grace of literature and about trauma that moved me tremendously.This is an interesting article on her work from BBC culture... and I am posting at 3Quarks Daily tomorrow on it as well. 

[First posted at Goodreads]

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