Some Writings

I keep translating some excerpts from my novel. It helps me to focus on my writings somehow, for this novel is only a draft and this is just another way to edit. Let's see how it looks:

image by: Alex Barth @ Flickr

He wanted to say many things to his older brother. Sometimes he wondered why he had always wanted to say J. a kind of things that would have been already quite difficult to explain to someone who had paid attention to him. He used to ruminate on it when he leafed through the magazines at home, trying to find some neat printed words.

At their home there were few books. Half were farming manuals sent by the cooperative and the other were gifts just piled on a shelf in the study. Their mother was the one in the family who loved to read, and when she wanted to read she took a magazine. Magazines: that’s what they had at home, dealing with fiction, art criticism, opinions, stories... And some serial supplements for the youngsters. During a time their parents entrusted R. with the task of collecting them at the mail office. Then they stopped to receive magazines, but, according to her mother, it was ok because the best ones were the oldest ones. Most papers, including some books, were reused by the family to keep the top of the cupboards from dust, to plug holes or to light the fire. The magazines never became old papers; on the contrary, they were valuable assets that should be preserved forever anywhere. The family used them as an encyclopedia for the children, a scattered, chaotic, hefty wad eaten by moths, and they were also a distraction for everyone.

While R. used to look for some smart words, J. read a few comics of the Far West that came with one magazine for a while. He read them once and again settled into an old armchair inside the shed. Whenever her mother saw him sitting there, she told him that the comics of the Far West were a way of escape for Jacques Brel before going to Paris. J. didn’t like to hear this because for him the comics were also a way of escape. Once, R. asked his mother to talk more about Jacques Brel. She showed him the only disc she had by Brel, sang two songs and translated some lyrics. He wandered if there was any chance to say those important things to his brother using the lyrics by Brel.

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Introduction to Catalan Literature

I'm really glad to share the following link today — to be honest, I'm bursting with pride. Here you have the latest issue of World Literature Today, the magazine about Literature, Culture and Politics, which main section and cover on September/October 2009 is dedicated to Catalan literature. You can read online some of its contents, featuring the article by Lawrence Venuti, introducing the special Catalan literature section, and the one by J. Madison Davis about "The Inventive Crime Writers of Catalonia".

Davis says something that may explain the pride we the Catalans feel whenever people abroad talk about our writers: "To say the Catalans have been tenacious with their native language and culture only partly gives them credit for how difficult this has been over the years. [...] In a world of declining minority languages, Catalan remains strong partly because it does have a strong literary history."

You can also check some writings from Swaziland, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Morocco and others. I'll read these foreign authors right now; after all, I'm inviting you to read some good foreign authors who do not receive the attention they deserve, and I must lead by example. Cheers.

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The Earliest Writing

One of my classmates is so interested in the origins of writing that I got stuck into this subject at the very beginning of the course, when she started to share her thoughts on it. I've made some research online about the invention of writing so that I can put myself on a par with her — she really helps me to focus on my studies.

For instance, we were told to make a research about the first representations of abstract thoughts. When writing didn't exist, it was easy to represent a house making a pictograph of a house. But how would you represent all the things concerning a certain house without words? Here's the explanation for the transition from pictographs to writing, excerpted from The Write Stuff:

The word "Ti" (pronounced "Tee") in Sumerian means "to give life to" — an abstract concept that's difficult to illustrate. But since "Ti" was also the Sumerian word for "arrow," scribes began using the "arrow" symbol to represent "give life to."

It will be a long, absorbing research until December.

Image: The dark period during which writing was invented... Source: Wikimedia Commons

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The Fall, The Movies, And Brecht

It is not just the rain and my studies which I’m about to meet again now that fall approaches, but some inner feelings. I wish I knew if everyone feels something similar; for me, it’s likely some months ago I put a stream of thoughts away among the scarfs and the blankets. This seasonal changing finds expression in a simple thing that summarizes it all: unlike the rest of the year, at fall I watch movies. I like to think it’s related to sit in front of a fire when the sun’s strength begins to weaken, as the nights get longer. It’s not that odd, since everything is so complicated that for us is easier and cheaper to watch a movie than to have a hearth at home.

Last fall, the movie I enjoyed the most was Das leben der anderen (The Life of Others). So thoroughly amazed was I that now one of my favourite books is the one that read the two main characters in the movie. The book belongs to Georg Dreyman, a playwright living in East Berlin in the eighties who’s spied by the ruling party, the Socialist Unity. State Security captain Gerd Wiesler is bugging Dreyman, and he listens everything that happens in his appartment hidden in the loft of the building so that he can prove his disloyalty to the party.

One day, Wiesler enters the appartment to look around and he notices a book among Dreyman’s belongings. He lies down on the sofa and reads it. We see now Wiesler’s feelings for the first time in the movie. The book is an anthology of poetry by Bertolt Brecht and he reads a fragment of the poem “Erinnerung an die Marie A.”:

Memory of Marie A.
On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September
Beneath a young plum tree, quietly
I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved
In my arms just like a graceful dream.
And over us in the beautiful summer sky
There was a cloud on which my gaze rested
It was very white and so immensely high
And when I looked up, it had disappeared.
— Bertolt BRECHT, “Remembrances of Marie A.”, in Die Hauspostille (1927) (S. H. transl.)

As the movie goes on, Wiesler, who’s heartless and cold, changes until he becomes a good man, thanks to the art and the love he sees in Dreyman’s life. This poem is not lightly picked as a symbol of freedom and love. Brecht’s goal was to contribute to the social change with his plays. He also worked in cinema, one of his films was forbidden by the nazi regime, and he exiled in the United States. Established in Hollywood, he was involved in the McCarthy Witch-Hunt and he had to go back to Europe.

His poem means not only the love itself but also Wiesler love for free ideas, the life which he’s been brought to while he was bugging Dreyman, and his need to run away from the party he works for. He steals the book, he keeps reading it, and his life will certainly change.

... So, this is the kind of things I’m glad to meet again every fall in my spare time, all of them gathered in the movies and just waiting to be disclosed.

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Literacy Day

This winter I’ll be studying at my online University only two subjects, the both of them dealing with sociolinguistics. This week the students have received the materials by mail so that we can check there’s nothing missing and plan ahead. Unlike the last course, this year they’ve sent us two books along with the materials — which is per se an improvement beyond question — and I’ve already leafed through them, just wandering what was all about and trying to imagine myself as an amateur sociolinguist. While I decide if I shall grow a beard and wear sandals and socks like a venerable professor I had years ago, let me share two excerpts from those books that happen to fit the subject of this post. Today is International Literacy Day and everyone who has joined this event through Bloggers Unite is welcome to write a post about the importance of literacy to individuals, communities and societies. It’s not a bad start for a beardless sociolinguistic. Taking into account that I’m a begginer, the excerpts come from the introductions of both books, dealing with the origins of writing:

The survival of the letters offers a magical stability to the written messages and, from the beginning, qualified to confer the laws, sacred texts and trade pacts an aura of permanence: it is written and therefore is an immutable truth (or falsehood). The author could only be questioned if it were possible to communicate with him, but we can not find the author in a book. There is no way to refute a text directly. This is why, in popular parlance, the phrase "the book says," is equivalent to "it’s true." This is also the cause for which many books have been burned.

Jesús TUSÓN, La escritura

Written language is an additional memory with which our species sprang in an unknown way in the biological world, and for the first time a non-biological entity intervened decisively in the evolution. This entity, this memory is our culture and is a universe of knowledge that gives us our species and which is not written in our genes.

Sebastià SERRANO, Comunicació, societat i llenguatge. El desenvolupament de la lingüística.

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Haruki Murakami

The last book I’ve read is Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, and after this first glimpse into such a personal world I’ve happened to become an unconditional fan of this Japanese author. Meanwhile I decide which other books by him I’ll pick next, I’m looking for some recommendations on the net. These are the best I've found so far:

— First, a review of After Dark in Cromely’s World.

Some of the cats that get lost in Murakami's books.
Source: Amazing Bookmarks.

— Then, “Subsconcious Tunnels”, a review of Kafka on the Shore in The New Yorker (January 24, 2005) by John UPDIKE (also a good chance to remember the author of Brazil).

— Finally, in Guardian.co.uk, the concluding part of the tale “Hanalei Bay” included in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, one of the latest books by Murakami (I think I'll pick this one).

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