After the Friday night show I was talking to several empresarial gents about taking something along similar lines into districts and villages much further afield. It would be really interesting to weave in local culture, said one, at which point my spirits sank. Literary fakelorism of the silverquick quality of Lorca’s gypsy ballads has always…
On Thursdays, after this, I like to cycle round the buildings of the Industrial School/Can Batlló to the Guastavino chimney. On moonlit nights if you glide the last 50m while staring at the 60m chimney top, it’s like coasting down some baked clay Milky Way. There’s a picture here of his Oyster Bar at New…
El santuario no se rinde, on at 10 at the Filmoteca. Released in 1949, apparently it has the besieged Guardia Civils sing fandangos while they wait for the red notary to desert the French International Brigades and die honourably. The big question: will it be worse than Jean Renoir’s La Marseillaise, seen the other week?
Someone told me the other night that Joan Maragall’s little jingle is metaphorically cunnilingual, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the explanation. I guess you could make a case for lines 1-4:
MJ suggests that “adventures, devices and hoaxes” is a better translation of “aventuras, inventos y mixtificaciones” than “adventures, inventions and mystifications.” I think that’s a bit hard on C19th Spain’s greatest scientist ;o)
I’ve a little bottle in my brisses pocket, which I call Icum Spicome, Spinto of Spain Which brings dead men to life again Here Jack take a sup out of my little bottle And let it run down thy throttle Arise and fight for ten thousand.
I don’t think author and diplomat Juan Valera (“Good should always be in fashion”) will mind me revealing his smoking fetish, now he’s been dead 100 years. Here‘s a quick tranny of an 1850 letter from Russia: On May 8th, Russian style, I left Saint Petersburg for Moscow on the noon train, accompanied by a…
Re shepherds, Pío Baroja says that in the Navarre village inhabited by Silvester Paradox, hero of The adventures, inventions and mystifications of Silvester Paradox (Aventuras, inventos y mixtificaciones de Silvestre Paradox, 1901) that the local guardians of public order were called ministers (ministros). (Silvestre Paradox is very strange and very funny. It’s a disgrace that…
Lord Frederic Hamilton, Here, There And Everywhere (1921): “The Briton contrives an ugly town in which you can live in reasonable health and comfort; the Spaniard fashions a most picturesque city in which you are extremely like to die.”
The last time I was in Caracas a general parked his tank outside the national assembly building and the chamber maid died of cholera. Things haven’t improved since, and Hugo Chávez’s infant daughter has just thrown a spanner in the works of the historic Bonaire invasion project by telling him to drop everything else until…