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2/7/2010 SEVA BHARATI JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES, Jan 2010 (includes my review of Sophie Treadwell, MACHINAL, ed. Dolores Narbona)Now out is Vol. VI (Jan 2010) of SEVA BHARATI JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES, from Midnapore, India (ed. Jaydeep Sarangi). This issue includes, inter alia, articles by Rajeshwar Mittapalli (representation of Dalits in Indian Writing in English), E.E. Sule (on the Indian-Nigerian writer Kanchana Ugbabe), Pramod K. Nayar (Nayantara Sahgal), K.V. Dominic (Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”), Nilanshu Agarwal (Indian women writing in English), and a tribute to the deceased critic Meenakshi Mukherjee, by Subendhu Mund. Also included is my review of:
Maria Dolores Narbona Carrión (ed.), 'Sophie Treadwell: Contexto teatral, biografía, crítica y traducción de su obra Machinal,' (pp. 175-187; also on-line at: http://yatrarollason.info/files/Sophie.pdf)
The volume reviewed is a translation of and commentary on MACHINAL, a play by the American dramatist Sophie Treadwell (1928). Treadwell, a pioneering woman dramatist and journalist, was of part-Mexican extraction and the play is also of Edgar Allan Poe relevance. My review looks at those aspects and also considers the Translation Studies issues raised by the Spanish version of the play. I hope, therefore, it will be of interest from multiple viewpoints. For more details of this article and an abstract, see the earlier entry on this blog, 23 April 2009.
MAPOCHO (Chile), N° 66 – INCLUYE MI ENSAYO SOBRE / INCLUDES MY ESSAY ON WALTER BENJAMINHa salido el N° 66 (segundo semestre de 2009) de MAPOCHO: REVISTA DE HUMANIDADES, publicación de la Biblioteca Nacional de Chile y de la DIBAM (Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos), del Gobierno de Chile (director de la revista: Carlos Ossandón Buljevic). Este número incluye, entre otros, textos sobre César Vallejo, Andrés Bello y culturas indígenas chilenas, así como una amplia recopilación de escritos en homenaje al escritor chileno Alfonso Calderón Squadritto. También y por segunda vez, MAPOCHO me ha brindado el honor de publicar un texto de mi autoría, concretamente la versión en lengua castellana de un ensayo que ya publiqué en inglés en la India, sobre Walter Benjamin y París (véase entrada en esta bitácora, 25-IX-2005, donde también hay fotos de los pasajes parisienses). Detalles:
· 'The Passageways of Paris: Walter Benjamin's "Arcades Project" and Contemporary Cultural Debate in the West', en Modern Criticism, ed. Christopher Rollason and Rajeshwar Mittapalli, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2002, pp. 262-296; versión revisada, Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate, www.wbenjamin.org/passageways.html (Internet), 2002; versión en lengua castellana, 'El Libro de los pasajes de Walter Benjamin, la historia no lineal e Internet', tr. Andrea Sekler, Mapocho: Revista de Humanidades (Santiago, Chile: Ediciones de la Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos), N° 66, 2° semestre, 2009, pp. 13-31; en línea: http://yatrarollason.info/files/BenjaminES.pdf
Now available is No 66 (Jul-Dec 2009) of MAPOCHO: REVISTA DE HUMANIDADES, published by the National Library of Chile y and the DIBAM (Directorate for Libraries, Archives and Museums), of the Chilean Government (editor: Carlos Ossandón Buljevic). This number features, inter alia, articles on César Vallejo, Andrés Bello and Chilean indigenous cultures, as well as a collection of tributes to the Chilean writer Alfonso Calderón Squadritto. Also and for the second time, MAPOCHO has honoured me by publishing one of my essays: this time, the Spanish-language version of a text earlier published in English in India, on Walter Benjamin and Paris (see entry on this blog, 25 September 2005 - that entry also has photos of the arcades). Details: · 'The Passageways of Paris: Walter Benjamin's "Arcades Project" and Contemporary Cultural Debate in the West', in Modern Criticism, ed. Christopher Rollason and Rajeshwar Mittapalli, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2002, pp. 262-296; rev. version on Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate site, www.wbenjamin.org/passageways.html (Internet), 2002; Spanish version, 'El Libro de los pasajes de Walter Benjamin, la historia no lineal e Internet', trans. Andrea Sekler, Mapocho: Revista de Humanidades (Santiago, Chile: Ediciones de la Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos), No 66, July-December 2009, pp. 13-31; on-line at: http://yatrarollason.info/files/BenjaminES.pdf
** Resumen:
El presente ensayo examina el célebre libro de Walter Benjamin, el Libro de los pasajes, desde la perspectiva del principio de la interrelación, considerado como el motivo estructural clave del libro. Se demuestra que Benjamin, en este trabajo y en las "Tesis sobre la Filosofía de la Historia", rechaza la doctrina del progreso y propone el modelo alternativo de la constelación histórica. Se concluye que el principio relacional que se afirma en el trabajo de Benjamin ofrece una anticipación significativa y desafiante del modelo de organización de la actual Internet.
1/26/2010 JAIPUR BOOK FAIR 2010: VIKRAM CHANDRA SPEAKSVikram Chandra spoke on 25 Jan 2010 at the Jaipur Book Fair, India. Extract from the report in the International Herald Tribune, 26 Jan 2010, p. 9 - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/books/25festival.html?hpw (AT FESTIVAL IN INDIA, BOOKS ARE THE BUZZ - by Vikas Bajaj) **
'JAIPUR, India — A crowd, some members sitting on the floor, listened attentively last week as the author Amit Chaudhuri described the influence of writers from Ireland and the American South on his work. Outside the tent where he was speaking, fans and photographers mobbed the Indian poet Gulzar, who shared the Oscar for the song “Jai Ho” in “Slumdog Millionaire,” blocking his exit from a hall. Elsewhere the Pakistani wunderkind Ali Sethi was fending off people who wanted to have pictures taken with him.
That was just the first day of the Jaipur Literature Festival, a five-day extravaganza that in only five years has become the official annual celebration of a vibrant and resurgent Indian and South Asian literary scene. By the time the festival ends on Monday, organizers estimate that some 30,000 people will have seen more than 200 authors and other speakers.
Indians might be known worldwide for being mad about cricket and Bollywood musicals, but they are also increasingly embracing literature in all its forms. Book sales have been rising as incomes and literacy have steadily climbed in recent years. Even the country’s once insular Hindi film industry, known for its formulaic song-and-dance dramas and thrillers, is taking notice of the boom and adapting popular novels into movies. Vikram Chandra, the author of “Sacred Games,” said that when he was attending boarding school near Jaipur, few authors commanded the kind of celebrity that was on display at the festival, where schoolgirls — some from the elite Mayo College, at which he studied — chased him and other authors down for autographs.
Literature in India “was a cottage industry confined to the university,” he said. But in the past decade, and especially in the past five years, a booming economy has created big audiences for books, including genres like literary fiction, young women’s literature and children’s books, which were tiny niches earlier. Book sales here are increasing at about 5 percent a year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“What we see now is intimately linked to the economic growth,” said Mr. Chandra, who teaches creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley.
One indicator of the vibrancy of literature in India today was the presence of film stars from Mumbai and socialites from Delhi at the festival, Mr. Chandra said. “That itself is a sign of strength, when you can get the beautiful people in any culture to connect” with a medium, he added (...)'
1/25/2010 Satish Verma: launch (Ajmer, India) of book of poems, ANOTHER KURUKSHETRA22 January 2010 saw the launch, at Dayanand College, Ajmer (Rajasthan), India (Fourth Biennial Interdisciplinary International Conference), of two books of poetry by the prolific and distinguished poet Satish Verma, "Another Kurukshetra" and "Footprints in Dark" (both - Ajmer: A.R.A.W.LII Publications, 2010). The first-named has three afterwords, bu Nathaniel Reilly (USA), Andrew Parkin (France, ex Hong Kong and Canada) and myself (France).
Here is an extract from my afterword (pp. 141-42). The full text is at: http://yatrarollason.info/files/VermaKurukshetra.pdf
**
For all versed in Indian culture and storytelling, Kurukshetra, the great battlefield of the Mahabharata, is synonymous with warfare, conflict and carnage – and yet also of an ultimately meaningful universe, since it is on the eve of that same battle that Krishna bestows on Arjuna the great philosophical gift that is the Bhagavad Gita; the Gita itself, in its very first sloka, describes Kurukshetra as a dharmakshetra, a ‘sacred field’. The past poems of Satish Verma have walked us through a world of darkness and disintegration, yet have aspired to the light through the poetic process itself. Here in this new collection, as the title warns us, the ambiance grows darker and the groping for redeeming hope will become more urgent. Kurukshetra is no mere name from a mythical past: it is here and now.
The poems delineate a universe of chaos, destruction, civil war and what the poet darkly names as ‘collective guilt’ (...) In Satish Verma’s darkened world, the public sphere is reduced to conflict and killing, while the private and personal has been degraded into cynical exploitation. The official discourse that seeks to justify oppression is mere empty rhetoric, the ‘floral tribute of words’. Man and woman can interact only through bodily gestures that have lost all spiritual meaning: ‘a huge umbrella of hot kisses / dissolving the contaminated beads / of musk, like fever’. Age brings on not wisdom but despair: in the particularly bleak poem ‘Breaking From Past’ the speaker watches his own loveless homecoming: ‘One counts the annual rings of / old trunks ... / tasting one’s own decline’.
(...) 1/19/2010 LIBRO "HISTORIA DE LAS MUJERES DE LA INDIA", de ANA GARCÍA-ARROYO
Ha salido el libro HISTORIA DE LAS MUJERES DE LA INDIA, de Ana García-Arroyo (Barcelona: Laertes, 2009). Este libro goza de la subvención del INSTITUTO de la MUJER (Ministerio de Igualdad española), y fue presentado en el Instituto Cervantes de Nueva Delhi el día 8 de enero de 2010, por su director, Oscar Pujol, con la presencia de la autora y de la profesora Saraswati Raju de la Jahawarlal Nehru University (JNU) de Delhi.
** Siguen unas precisiones sobre este libro:
"El desconocimiento del mundo occidental sobre la mujer de la India ha dado lugar a acentuados estereotipos y representaciones erróneas que la definen como pobre, sumisa, esclava de su marido o, por el contrario, estrella de Bollywood. ¿Pero quién, en realidad se aviene a creer que el total de la población femenina, más de 600 millones, se acople a estos parámetros tan mezquinamente simplificados?
El objetivo de este libro consiste en estudiar la diversidad cultural de las mujeres de la India a lo largo de su Historia. Las mujeres indias han participado en los quehaceres culturales, en los procesos históricos, en los movimientos políticos, en las subversiones artísticas, en los encuentros filosóficos y en los estados elevados de divinidad.
Por una parte observamos que existen textos antiguos y medievales de la tradición hinduista, budista y musulmana que cantan las cualidades femeninas y humanas de su heroína y logran destituir la hegemonía narrativa del poder patriarcal. Ejemplos de éstos son el Devi Mahatmya, el Ramayana de Chandrabati, el Gita-govinda, la colección Therigatha, o las ghazals de Mahlaqa Bai Chanda. A la vez aprendemos que algunas mujeres forman parte de movimientos místicos para alzarse contra la tiranía brahmánica dominante, y que en el mundo artístico tradiciones como la de las devadasis y las cortesanas son respetadas socialmente por la sabiduría de estas mujeres y sus eminentes dotes intelectuales.
Por otra parte en la época moderna y contemporánea la mujer india ha intervenido en las transformaciones sociales, políticas, económicas, culturales y religiosas de la etapa colonial y postcolonial. Desde la independencia en 1947 las mujeres comienzan un largo camino hacia la legitimación de sus derechos y el reconocimiento social, emprendiendo campañas de lucha contra la dote, la violación o los abusos de la tradición. Sus esfuerzos han acentuado la relevancia de la educación como pilar esencial para el progreso del país y del espíritu humano. Se estudia también con especial hincapié el momento actual destacando temas que relacionan a la mujer india con la familia, la sexualidad, la literatura y el cine, y cómo se ha producido una evolución en el proceso de representación.
Historia de las mujeres de la India es, pues, un ensayo que podríamos llamar de ‘ética representativa’, al examinar el amplio abanico de diversidad idiosincrásica de las mujeres de la India, que contribuye a deconstruir parámetros eurocentristas procedentes del legado colonial, y cubrir de forma magistral el vacío cultural hasta ahora existente.
En un mundo global donde la sensibilidad de lo femenino, la shakti del cosmos, debe destacar frente al discurso dominante de la violencia y la guerra, un texto como Historia de las mujeres de la India nos ofrece las claves del conocimiento, del entendimiento, para sentirnos identificados/as y actuar respetuosamente; y crear conjuntamente."
1/9/2010 José Saramago’s CAIM: a lost opportunity?
José Saramago, CAIM: Lisbon, Caminho, 2009
I offer some brief impressions on José Saramago’s latest novel, CAIM. Coming straight after the genial comedy of A VIAGEM DO ELEFANTE, CAIM reverses the mood altogether: it is one of its author’s blackest works, perhaps only to be compared with ENSAIO SOBRE A LUCIDEZ in its harshness. Saramago returns to the critique of Judeo-Christian belief-system that he began in O EVANGELHO SEGUNDO JESUS CRISTO, doing for the Old Testament what he did in the earlier novel for the Gospels.
Again as in O EVANGELHO, Saramago offers an atheist’s judgment on the Judeo-Christian God (‘o senhor’, ‘the Lord’), seen as a capricious and irrational tyrant. By focusing on the figure of Cain he places himself in a long line of writers who have, with varying degrees of orthodoxy or scepticism, revisited the myth of the primal murder from ‘Genesis’, among them Coleridge, Blake, Byron, Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, George Eliot, and, in Portugal, Jorge de Sena. The conceit that holds the book together is the appearance of Cain the wanderer as a character – onlooker or participant – in a whole sequence of Old Testament stories. Thus, Saramago revisits episodes from Genesis and other Old Testament books, such as the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham and Isaac, Moses and the golden calf, the fall of Jericho, the sufferings of Job, etc. The characters are virtually all scriptural other than the decidedly non-biblical Lilith, according to some Adam’s first wife, but here Cain’s lover.
The narrative stays fairly close to the biblical sources, until the culminating episode, a radical rewriting of Noah’s Flood whose full details I leave the reader to discover. I will reveal that the book’s conclusion is bleak and despairing in the extreme. Meanwhile, however, I would draw attention to what Saramago has *not* done in this novel.
The biblical myth of Cain is ambivalent in the extreme. Cain sheds the first human blood, but humanity’s first shedder of blood as such is Abel, with his animal sacrifice. The mark on Cain’s brow is a sign of his crime but also a warning from God that no-one may lay hands on him. Cain’s punishment is not to wander forever, as many erroneously think, but to wander for a certain period until he becomes the founder of the first city, Enoch. His descendants settle there and invent and practise the arts and crafts of metallurgy, stockbreeding and music. Even if the Cainites are presumed to have perished later in the Flood, the arts they have invented remain. Cain and his family thus have a Promethean side to them, an aspect explored, ambiguously or otherwise, by Hugo and Eliot in their respective poems ‘La Conscience’ and ‘The Legend of Jubal’, but not taken up by Saramago. Equally, Byron, in his two dramas ‘Cain: A Mystery’ and ‘Heaven and Earth’, makes an eloquent case for Cain as cultural rebel and questioner of authority.
In CAIM, Abel’s brother and killer plays the role of eternal vagabond, not of founder of cities and arts. The city of Enoch appears in Saramago’s narrative, as does Cain’s son of the same name, but in this version the city already existed, presided over by its queen Lilith, when Cain arrived, and his seed through Enoch goes nowhere. Saramago has, quite simply, ignored the Promethean potential of the Cain-figure as rebel and founder of arts, and for all its eloquent critique of Judeo-Christian theology, his novel, I would argue, ultimately suffers from excessive stress on the figure’s more conventional wanderer aspect. Such a contention would, of course, require an exhaustive comparison with the biblical sources and with other literary representations of Cain. Nonetheless, my feeling is that Byron would win in the end.
** Note added 18 January 2010: A Portuguese translation of this review, by Cláudio Quaresma (Brazil), is now on-line at: http://yatrarollason.info/files/SaramagoCaimPT.pdf
12/26/2009 BOB DYLAN'S "CHRISTMAS IN THE HEART": SOME REFLECTIONSI have been asked by several people for my take on Bob Dylan’s new album CHRISTMAS IN THE HEART (cf. post on this blog, 26 Aug 09), and I have to admit that complying is no easy task. However, here, for what they are worth, are my decidedly non-expert seasonal comments! (also posted on the Bob Dylan Critical Corner site at: http://nicolamenicacci.com/bdcc).
I have been assisted in reaching a few conclusions by a number of sources: the “Dylan Christmas interview” which has been widely syndicated on the Web; the multi-author symposium on the album, with contributions from Toby Thompson, Sean Wilentz, Todd Harvey, and others, published in THE BRIDGE, No 35, Winter 2009, pp. 45-81; Michael Gray’s review on his blog; and some comparative listening to similar Yuletide material by Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and Elvis Presley. So from one or other of these sources I know that 13 of the album’s 15 tracks were recorded by Bing Crosby (thanks, Sean); that Elvis did ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’, Dean did ‘Winter Wonderland’ and Nat did ‘The Christmas Song’; that ‘Must be Santa’ is a polka; and that Dylan doesn’t know whether Christmas Island exists (it does; it’s an Australian dependency in the Indian Ocean).
The question I have been repeatedly asked is: what is the point of this album?, and to that we can add: what is it doing in the canon? My first reaction is to take it as some kind of freak or sport, only very tenuously connected to anything he’s done before, and in all probability to anything he’ll do in the future. Attempts to link it to earlier Dylan albums don’t seem to get too far. It connects back to, if I mistake not, a mere two original songs in the canon that mention Christmas, ‘Three Angels’ from NEW MORNING and ‘Floater (Too Much To Ask)’ from “LOVE AND THEFT”. It contains not a single Dylan composition and thus aligns itself with GOOD AS I BEEN TO YOU and WORLD GONE WRONG, but those are acoustic albums containing mostly folk and blues material, not retro pop songs. Insofar as Christmas is a Christian theme, it connects to the SLOW TRAIN COMING - SAVED - SHOT OF LOVE trilogy, but it has no evangelical pretensions and the music isn’t gospel. The retro arrangements hark back to elements on the last three albums of originals, but this is an album of covers. The revenues will go to charity and the album might be considered a (successfully achieved) commissioned job, which could link it to PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, but, despite Pretty Boy Floyd and his gifting of Christmas fare for the families on relief, outlawdom and Santa don’t have that much in common.
An album replete with 15 cover versions will certainly give Derek Barker some homework for any future new edition of his encyclopaedic THE SONGS HE DIDN’T WRITE: BOB DYLAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (even more so as Dylan fails to give any credits in the packaging); and conversely, won’t have anyone excavating for hidden quotations or crying wolf over alleged plagiarism. There is Eleven of the songs covered are Christmas pop songs; four - ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’, ‘The First Noel’, ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ and ‘O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles)’ - are carols proper, regularly included in officially sanctioned events like the famous King’s College Cambridge Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols; the last-named offers the novelty of Dylan singing in Latin in the first verse, following his official ventures into Spanish (‘Romance in Durango’ and ‘Spanish Is The Loving Tongue’) and Italian (‘Return to Me’).
I have enjoyed listening to this album, though once the festive season 2009 is over I will probably put it on file till Yuletide 2010. I certainly find it more listenable than either MODERN TIMES or TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE, and I believe other Dylan commentators join me in this. Perhaps we could see this album as the equivalent in the Dylan canon to A CHRISTMAS CAROL in the work of Charles Dickens, a beautifully polished minor gem, sentimental certainly but at the time dedicated to the best of sentiments – to the Christmas spirit of which Dylan sang in ‘Floater’, ‘all the ring-dancing Christmas carols on all of the Christmas eves’ .... 12/22/2009 BOB DYLAN CRITICAL CORNER SITE: relaunched with new urlThe Bob Dylan Critical Corner site (BDCC),
founded in 1996, has now been relaunched. The migration was necessitated following the closure of the site's previous host, Geocities. New urls - site: - articles page: http://nicolamenicacci.com/bdcc/reviews/ The new BDCC includes a blog which will be frequently updated, and as always will welcome article submissions. Do visit us!! Christopher Rollason and Nicola Menicacci for BDCC 12/21/2009 INDIAN JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES, No 9.2 (Dec 2009)Now out is the latest issue of the INDIAN JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL
LITERATURES, No 9.2 (Dec 2009) (ISSN 0974-7370), a peer-reviewed journal edited by Dr K.V. Dominic - prof.kvdominic@gmail.com - and published from Newman College, Thodupuzha, Kerala, India. This issue includes, inter alia:
- a tribute to the late Meenakshi Mukherjee by Jaydeep Sarangi - an interview with the poet Shanta Acharya, by Nilanshu Agarwal - short stories, inter alia by Sunil Sharma and K.V. Dominic - poems by Stephen Gill and others - articles on, among other topics, Tagore's THE HOME AND THE WORLD (A. Tamilselvi). Githa Hariharan's THE THOUSAND FACES OF NIGHT (Avis Joseph), Khushwant Singh's TRAIN TO PAKISTAN (A. Pradeep Kumar) and Anita Desai's WHERE SHALL WE GO THIS SUMMER? (V. Ramesh) - reviews of K.V. Dominic's 'Pathos in the Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore' (Ayo Kehide) and Jaydeep Sarangi, ed., 'Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao) (Cielo G. Festino) and, if I may add,
- my own (Christopher Rollason's) reviews of: Vikram Chandra, SACRED GAMES, pp. 236-239 (also on-line at: http://yatrarollason.info/files/VikramSacredGamesrev.pdf and (joint review) Amitav Ghosh, SEA OF POPPIES and Salman Rushdie, THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE, pp. 240-244 (also on-line at: http://yatrarollason.info/files/GhoshRushdiereview08rev.pdf) I am more than pleased to have contributed again to this excellent journal. 12/11/2009 25 LECCIONES sobre HIPERESPACIO - Víctor Sandoval«25 Lecciones sobre Hiperespacio (HS)»
por Victor Sandoval Llamo Hiperespacios los espacios multidimensionales generados con la implementación de TIC, la Internet y la Web. Cientos de millones de personas conectadas lo viven y experimentan a diario. Ciertos aspectos de estos espacios son diferentes de los del nuestro ordinario. Esa es mi visión. Se trata de comprender su naturaleza e implicaciones para las actividades humanas. El objetivo principal de estas presentaciones es comentar algunos de estos aspectos.
Aquí el dr Víctor Sandoval pone en linea una selección comentada de PPT, hecha en el 2005 cuando preparaba mi jubilación. 4 años más tarde, el crecimiento explosivo de redes, servicios y otros confirman plenamente mi visión y definiciones de los años 1990. Por eso no hablo nunca, por ejemplo, Web 2.0, blogs, Facebook, Twitter o de la explosión de celulares. Para qué si estos desarrollos confirman mis ideas. Congreso/Conference - EDGAR ALLAN POE, Valencia, December/diciembre 2009Photos by / fotos de : Hilda Hurtado
I took part from 2 to 4 December 2009 in the 'International Conference: Genius and Psychosis in Edgar Allan Poe: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives', held by the University of Valencia, Spain, giving a paper entitled 'Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher": A Twenty-First Century Revisit', and also participating (in Spanish) in a round table with a contribution on Poe and psychology.
Del 2 al 4 de diciembre de 2009 participé en el congreso internacional 'Genius and Psychosis in Edgar Allan Poe: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives', organizado por la Universidad de Valencia, dictando una ponencia bajo el título 'Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher": A Twenty-First Century Revisit', y contribuyendo igualmente (en castellano) a una mesa redonda con un texto sobre 'Poe y la psicología'.
EDGAR ALLAN POE BICENTENNIAL CONFERENCE – “GENIUS AND PSYCHOSIS IN EDGAR ALLAN POE: NEW INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES”, VALENCIA (SPAIN), 2-4 DECEMBER 2009
Report by Christopher Rollason, Ph.D - Metz, France - rollason54@gmail.com This report has the approval of the conference organisation.
From 2 to 4 December 2009, the University of Valencia hosted the international conference “GENIUS AND PSYCHOSIS IN EDGAR ALLAN POE: NEW INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES” – no less than the fourth such academic event to be held in Spain for the bicentennial of the American writer's birth. Its predecessors took place at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Albacete campus) (3-6 February), the University of Alcalá de Henares (21-23 May), and the University of Extremadura (Cáceres campus) (19-21 November). To the present writer’s knowledge, no other country in the world, not even the US, has held so many Poe conferences during the bicentennial year, and if we add the numerous other Poe-related events – theatre productions, readings, fancy-dress parties, etc – held in Madrid and elsewhere over the year, not to mention the multiple reissues and new illustrated editions in 2009 in Spanish of Poe’s writings in translation, there can surely be no doubt that today’s Spain offers an academic and cultural environment particularly favourable to the presiding shadow of the great Edgar. I myself, as a Poe scholar from outside Spain, was pleased and honoured to participate in the Valencia event with two texts, a paper and a round table contribution.
The overarching themes of this closing conference of 2009 were, on the one hand, the complex and disturbing range of Poe’s themes, from the hyperrational to the irrational, and, on the other, the rich, if not, confusing variety of perspectives that critics and other artists have applied to an oeuvre that is particularly open to exploration from the multidisciplinary viewpoint. Poe is an author whose work belongs simultaneously to both high culture and mass culture, and whose writings have proved unusually permeable to adaptation into other media, including visual arts, cinema and music. Diversity, as hallmark of both Poe’s own work and its reception and criticism, was, then, the keynote of the three days. The event was ably and sympathetically organised by Eusebio Llácer Llorca, Nicolás Estévez Fuertes and Amparo Olivares Pardo, all of the University of Valencia’s Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication. The proceedings were enlivened by a sherry and amontillado wine-tasting session at the Colegio Mayor Luis Vives (can you tell Amontillado from Sherry?) and an official reception at the Town Hall. There was also a poster session displaying the results of a competition among Valencia students to design the best Poe poster, and an exhibition of Poe poems in calligraphic form by the Paris-based artist William Wolkowski.
The four plenary lectures between them covered enormous ground, from ‘“Mastery in mystery’: the real thing in Edgar Allan Poe’s ghostly literature””(Juana Teresa Guerra de la Torre, University of Las Palmas) to ‘Edgar Allan Poe and Utopia’ (Daniel Ogden, University of Uppsala, Sweden) and from ‘Edgar A. Poe and French Musical Poetics’ (Michel Duchesneau, Université de Montréal, Canada) to ‘La caída de la casa Usher de Jean Epstein y las criptas de Luis Buñuel’ (‘Jean Epstein’s Fall of the House of Usher and Luis Buñuel’s crypts’) (Pilar Pedraza, University of Valencia). Ogden’s revelation of Poe as social critic and science-fiction pioneer opened the eyes of those in the audience hitherto familiar mostly with the Gothic Poe, while the depth and detail of Poe’s influence on such French composers as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Darius Milhaud, as explored by Duchesneau with generous visual and musical illustration, also broke new ground for many.
The papers offered reflected a commendably wide spectrum of interests, and from the viewpoint of interdisciplinarity the following merit particular mention: on Poe’s literary intertext, ‘Manifestaciones de lo clásico en los textos góticos de Edgar Allan Poe’ (‘Manifestations of the classical in Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic texts’) (Ana González-Rivas Fernández, Universidad Complutense de Madrid); on translation (‘Emmanuel Roidis: the introducer and first translator of Edgar Allan Poe in Greece’ – Eleftheria Tsirakoglou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece; ‘La traducción de Poe: las figuras retóricas como elementos clave en la creación del miedo’ (‘The translation of Poe: rhetorical figures as key elements in the creation of fear’ – Isabel Tello Fons, Universitat Jaume I de Castellón); on ageing (‘“I loved the old man – I made up my mind to kill the old man”: Poe on the edge of ageing’ – Marta Miquel Baldellou, University of Lleida/Lérida); on ‘Usher’ and avant-garde art (‘Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”: a twenty-first-century revisit’ - Christopher Rollason, Metz, France – my first of two contributions); on ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ and its literary and cultural progeny (‘Tras la pista del barril de Amontillado’ – ‘On the trail of the Cask of Amontillado’ - José Luis Jiménez García, Real Academia San Dionisio); on Poe and silence (‘“Siope” as the ineffable: Etymology of a Title’ – María Carmen Pérez Branchadell, Universitat Jaume I de Castellón); and on Poe, Dickens and the didactics of literature (‘Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens: a perfect team creating atmosphere’ - María Alcantud Díaz, University of Valencia)
The proceedings also included a workshop on a multimedia theme, namely the influence of Poe-inspired films on contemporary Italian musicians (led by Roberto Calabretto, University of Udine, Italy); and a round table, dedicated specifically to interdisciplinarity in Poe studies, with contributions on Poe and poetics (Jaime Siles, University of Valencia, poet and President of the Spanish Classical Studies Association), Poe and the sciences (Fernando Ballesteros, University of Valencia, astronomer), and Poe and psychology (Christopher Rollason, Metz, France; my own second contribution). From this three-way exchange, the American author emerged, intriguingly, as a continuator of Aristotle and precursor of both Freud and Einstein.
The unprecedented sequence of Poe conferences over this year has had the gratifying effect of creating an Edgar Allan Poe community in Spain, indeed one not even confined to that country. Many Poe scholars, from both Spain and further afield, attended two, three (in my own case) or even all four conferences, thus acquiring invaluable opportunities for networking and sharing. The challenge will now be to find new ways, more informal but lasting and sustainable, of building on these gains, and to take Poe studies in Spain on to fresh ground, in constant contact and cooperation with the best international scholarship.
** CONGRESO CONMEMORATIVO DEL BICENTENARIO DE EDGAR ALLAN POE – 2-4 DICIEMBRE 2009
Informe de Christopher Rollason, Ph.D - Metz, Francia - rollason54@gmail.com Este informe ha sido aprobado por los organizadores del congreso.
Del 2 al 4 de diciembre de 2009, la Universidad de Valencia / Universitat de València albergó el congreso internacional “GENIALIDAD Y PSICOPATIA EN EDGAR ALLAN POE: NUEVAS PERSPECTIVAS INTERDISCIPLINARES” (“GENIUS AND PSYCHOSIS IN EDGAR ALLAN POE: NEW INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES”) – nada menos que el cuarto evento de esa naturaleza organizado en España para conmemorar el bicentenario del nacimiento del gran escritor norteamericano. Lo precedieron los congresos poeianos que tuvieron lugar en Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (campus de Albacete) (3 a 6 de febrero), la Universidad de Alcalá (21 a 23 de mayo), y la Universidad de Extremadura (campus de Cáceres) (19 a 21 de noviembre). Al menos dentro del conocimiento de quien escribe estas líneas, ningún otro país del mundo, ni siquiera Estados Unidos, ha dedicado tantos congresos a Poe en este año del bicentenario, y si añadimos los muy numerosos espectáculos inspirados en el autor – obras de teatro, lecturas, fiestas de disfraces - que se han montado en Madrid y otros lugares a través del año, sin hablar de las múltiples reediciones y nuevas ediciones ilustradas de las obras de Poe que han salido en traducción castellana en 2009, podremos concluir sin lugar a dudas que la España de hoy proporciona un ambiente académico y cultural muy propicio a ser presidido por la sombra del gran Edgar. En el registro personal, puedo afirmar que fue con mucha ilusión y sentido agradecimiento que participé en el evento de Valencia con dos textos: una comunicación y una aportación de mesa redonda.
Los campos dominantes de este último congreso de 2009 fueron, por un lado, el abanico temático de la obra poeiana en su amplio espectro - desde lo hiperracional hasta lo irracional - y, por otro, la inmensa (y a veces confusa) variedad de enfoques que han sido aplicados, tanto por la crítica como por otros artistas, a una producción literaria que se caracteriza por ser excepcionalmente abierta a ser explorada desde una perspectiva pluridisciplinar. Poe es un autor cuya obra pertenece simultaneamente a la cultura erudita y a la de masas, y cuyos escritos han resultado ser especialmente susceptibles a la adaptación en otros medios, como las bellas artes, el cine y la música. Así, la tónica de los tres días fue, lógicamente, la diversidad, vista como rasgo esencial tanto de la propia obra poeiana como de su recepción y crítica. El evento fue organizado, con habilidad y cordialidad, por Eusebio Llácer Llorca, Nicolás Estévez Fuertes y Amparo Olivares Pardo, profesores de la Facultad de Filología, Traducción y Comunicación de la Universidad anfitriona. Las (animaciones) paralelas fueron desde una degustación de vino de jerez y, particularmente, del eterno amontillado, en el Colegio Mayor Luis Vives (¿sabe Vd. distinguir entre amontillado y jerez?), hasta una recepción oficial en el Ayuntamiento, pasando por una sesión de pósteres que presentaba los resultados de un concurso entre estudiantes valencianos para concebir el mejor cartel poeiano, y una exposición de poemas de Poe en forma caligráfica, obra del artista William Wolkowski, residente en París.
Hubo cuatro conferencias plenarias, cuya temática no hubiera podido ser más variada: ‘“Mastery in mystery’: the real thing in Edgar Allan Poe’s ghostly literature”’ (‘“Maestría en misterio’: lo real en la literatura fantasmagórica de Edgar Allan Poe”’ (Juana Teresa Guerra de la Torre, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria); ‘Edgar Allan Poe and Utopia’ (‘Edgar Allan Poe y la utopía’) (Daniel Ogden, Universidad de Uppsala, Suecia); ‘Edgar A. Poe and French Musical Poetics’ (‘Edgar A. Poe y la poética musical en Francia’) (Michel Duchesneau, Université de Montréal, Canadá); y ‘La caída de la casa Usher de Jean Epstein y las criptas de Luis Buñuel’ (Pilar Pedraza, Universidad de Valencia). La revelación hecha por Ogden de un Poe crítico social y pionero de la ciencia ficción (les) abrió los ojos a quienes lo conocían primordialmente como escritor gótico; e igualmente nuevas para muchas fue la preciosa información proporcionada por Duchesneau, con un rico acompañamiento musical y visual, de) la profunda influencia que ejerció la obra del gran estadounidense en compositores franceses como Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel o Darius Milhaud.
Las comunicaciones reflejaron una gratificantemente amplia gama de intereses desde la interdisciplinaridad. Destacaremos algunas, las cuales incidieron en los aspectos siguientes: Poe y la intertextualidad (‘Manifestaciones de lo clásico en los textos góticos de Edgar Allan Poe’ - Ana González-Rivas Fernández, Universidad Complutense de Madrid); la traducción (‘Emmanuel Roidis: the introducer and first translator of Edgar Allan Poe in Greece’ – ‘Emmanuel Rodis: presentador y primer traductor de Edgar Allan Poe en Grecia’ - Eleftheria Tsirakoglou, Universidad Aristóteles, Thessaloniki, Grecia; y ‘La traducción de Poe: las figuras retóricas como elementos clave en la creación del miedo’– Isabel Tello Fons, Universitat Jaume I de Castellón); el envejecimiento (‘“I loved the old man – I made up my mind to kill the old man”: Poe on the edge of ageing’ – ‘“Quería mucho al viejo – me fui decidiendo a matar al viejo”: Poe en el borde del envejecimiento’ – Marta Miquel Baldellou, Universitat de Lleida); el relato ‘Usher’ y las corrientes artísticas de vanguardia (‘Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”: a twenty-first-century revisit’- ‘“La caída de la casa de Usher” de Edgar Allan Poe: revisitado en el siglo XXI’ - Christopher Rollason, Metz, Francia – la primera de mis dos aportaciones); ‘El Barril de Amontillado’ y su prole literaria y cultural (‘Tras la pista del barril de Amontillado’ - José Luis Jiménez García, Real Academia San Dionisio); Poe y el silencio (‘“Siope” as the ineffable: Etymology of a Title’ –‘“Siope” o lo inefable: etimología de un título’ - María Carmen Pérez Branchadell, Universitat Jaume I de Castellón); y Poe, Dickens y la didáctica de la literatura (‘Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens: a perfect team creating atmosphere’ – ‘Edgar Allan Poe y Charles Dickens – un equipo perfecto creador de atmosfera’ - María Alcantud Díaz, Universidad de Valencia).
También formaron parte del evento un taller multidisciplinario en el ámbito ‘multimedia’, concretamente la influencia de películas inspiradas en Poe en los músicos contemporaneos italianos (moderado por Roberto Calabretto, de la Universidad de Udine, Italia); y una mesa redonda consagrada al tema ‘Edgar Allan Poe: Enfoques pluridisciplinares’, con intervencioners sobre Poe y la poética (Jaime Siles, Universidad de Valencia, poeta y presidente de la Asociación Española de Estudios Clásicos), Poe y las ciencias (Fernando Ballesteros, Universidad de Valencia, astrónomo), y Poe y la psicología (Christopher Rollason, Metz, Francia; mi segunda aportación). A partir de este intercambio triangular se pudo dibujar una fascinante imagen del autor norteamericano como seguidor de Aristóteles y al mismo tiempo precursor tanto de Freud como de Einstein.
La cadena de congresos a lo largo del año del bicentenario en tierras españolas se perfila ahora como un fenómeno inédito que ha surtido el benigno efecto de dar a luz a una comunidad poeiana española, cuya composición ni siquiera se limita a gente residente en España. Muchos especialistas de Poe, tanto españoles como gente de fuera, estuvieron presentes en dos o (como en mi propio caso) tres de los congresos, o incluso en (todos) los cuatro, así) generando preciosas posibilidades de compartir ideas y trabajar en red. Ahora se planteará el desafío de encontrar otras modalidades, más informales pero de naturaleza sostenible y duradera, de seguir adelante y crear nuevos moldes para los estudios poeianos en España, en un marco de contacto y colaboración permanente con los mejores estudiosos internacionales. Siguen unas imágenes de Valencia / below, some images of Valencia -
entre otras / including:
Jardines del Turia / gardens in the bed of the former river Turia; Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias / Arts and Sciences complex - Hemisfèric, Oceanográfico, Acuario, Delfinario - Hemisfèric, Oceanográfico, aquarium, dolphins.
        ATLANTIS Vol 31,2: article /artículo BOB DYLAN / EDGAR ALLAN POENow out is the latest issue of ATLANTIS, the journal of AEDEAN (the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies). I am pleased to state that it includes my article:
- "'Tell-Tale Signs' - Edgar Allan Poe and Bob Dylan: towards a model of intertextuality"
Details: Atlantis Vol. 31, No. 2, December 2009, pp. 41-56; on-line at: www.atlantisjournal.org/ARCHIVE/31.2/2009Rollason.pdf
This text was given as a plenary lecture at the 'International Conference: Poe Alive in the Century of Anxiety' held in May 2009 at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain (see entry on this blog for 5 June 2009)
Acaba de salir el último número de ATLANTIS, la revista de AEDEAN (Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos). Me complazco informar que incluye mi artículo: "'Tell-Tale Signs' - Edgar Allan Poe and Bob Dylan: towards a model of intertextuality" - detalles: Atlantis Vol. 31, No. 2, December 2009, pp. 41-56; www.atlantisjournal.org/ARCHIVE/31.2/2009Rollason.pdf
Dicho texto fue dictado como conferencia plenaria en el congreso internacional 'Poe Alive in the Century of Anxiety' que tuvo lugar en mayo de 2009 en la Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (véase entrada en esta bitácora, 5-VI-09).
** SUMMARY / RESUMEN:
This article shows how the poetry and prose of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) cast a long shadow over the work of America’s greatest living songwriter, Bob Dylan (1941-). The work of both artists straddles the dividing-line between ‘high’ and ‘mass’ culture by pertaining to both: read through Poe, Dylan’s work may be seen as a significant manifestation of American Gothic. It is further suggested, in the context of nineteenth-century and contemporary debates on alleged ‘plagiarism’, that the textual strategy of ‘embedded’ quotation, as employed by both Poe and Dylan, points up the need today for an open and inclusive model of intertextuality. Este artículo explica cómo la poesía y la prosa de Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) proyectan una larga sombra sobre la obra del mayor cantautor vivo de Estados Unidos, Bob Dylan (1941-). Ambos artistas se ubican en una encrucijada entre la cultura ‘de elite’ y la ‘de masas’, puesto que la obra de cada uno se sitúa en ambos dominios a la vez: leída a través de Poe, la obra dylaniana aparece como una importante manifestación del gótico norteamericano. Se plantea igualmente la hipótesis de que, en el marco de los debates, tanto decimonónicos como contemporáneos, sobre el supuesto ‘plagio’, la estrategia textual, empleada tanto por Poe como por Dylan, de la cita ‘encajada’ señala la necesidad urgente de plantear un modelo abierto y global de la intertextualidad. ** Note added / nota añadida 15-XII-09:I am pleased to say that an appreciative piece about this article, by Peter Kellton, has appeared in the on-line Albuquerque Examiner (New Mexico, USA) at: http://tinyurl.com/yew6n8e: 'Literary text message to Bob Dylan: Edgar Allan Poe is embedded in your songs' (11-XII-09) ** Me complazco informaros que un texto halagador relativo a este artículo ha aparecido, firmado por Peter Kellton, en el Albuquerque Examiner (Nuevo México, EE UU; en línea), en: http://tinyurl.com/yew6n8e: 'Literary text message to Bob Dylan: Edgar Allan Poe is embedded in your songs' (11-XII-09) 11/8/2009 Hugues Aufray revisits Bob Dylan - 'New Yorker', 2009Recently released in France is NEW YORKER (Mercury, 2009, 532 279 8 – www.huguesaufray.com), the third album of Dylan covers by the veteran French singer Hugues Aufray (the previous two are AUFRAY CHANTE DYLAN, a single album from 1965, and AUFRAY TRANS DYLAN from 1995, a double CD featuring re-recordings of the 1965 songs plus new material).
This time too, Aufray has for the most part chosen the re-recording route, but introducing a new element in the form of duets, with well-known singers, French or France-resident (or in one case, a trio). The songs are, as before, in Hugues Aufray’s own French-language adaptations. The album consists of 13 tracks, of which the opener, ‘New Yorker’, is a prose narrative by Aufray himself, the closing track, ‘Cloches sonnez’ (‘Ring Them Bells’), features Aufray solo, while of the rest the trio is ‘Nous serons libres’ (‘I shall be releaesd’), with Pep’s and Wasis Diop, and the remaining 10 are duets. Of the 12 songs proper, 10 have already appeared in French translation on AUFRAY TRANS DYLAN (one of them on AUFRAY CHANTE DYLAN too), the ‘new’ songs being the above-mentioned ‘Cloches sonnez’ and ‘Tout comme une vraie femme’ (‘Just Like a Woman’, with Jane Birkin). Of the remaining 9, ‘Au coeur de mon pays’ (‘Heartland’, with Arno) is only dubiously by Dylan, who is generally believed to have confined himself to contributing the music for Willie Nelson’s words for that song, on which the two duetted on the latter’s 1993 album ACROSS THE BORDERLINE.
The remaining 8 are: ‘La fille du nord’ (‘Girl from the north country’), with Eddy Mitchell (this is the song that features on all three Aufray albums); ‘N’y pense plus, tout est bien’ (‘Don’t think twice, it’s all right’), with Carla Bruni); ‘Mr l’homme orchestre’ (‘Mr Tambourine Man’), with Laurent Voulzy; ‘Knock Knock, ouvre-toi porte du ciel’ (‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s door’; retitled from 1995’s ‘Knock-Knock ouvre-toi porte d’or’), with Bernard Lavilliers; ‘L’homme dota d’un nom chaque animal’ (‘Man gave names to all the animals’), with Alain Souchon; ‘Tout l’monde un jour s’est planté’ (‘Rainy Day Women Nos. 12 and 35’), with Didier Wampas; ‘Dans le souffle du vent’ (‘Blowin’ in the wind’), with Francis Cabrel; and ‘Jeune pour toujours’ (‘Forever young’), with Johnny Hallyday. Some of the songs have snatches of English, notably Birkin’s contribution to ‘Just like a woman’.
An ‘authentic’ feel is given to the album by the participation of American musicians associated with Bob Dylan himself, including Charlie McCoy, Larry Campbell and David Hidalgo.
The packaging includes the full text of Aufray’s French adaptations, plus brief texts by Aufray himself and ... Bob Dylan, who reminisces on times passed with Hugues Aufray in Paris (‘Hugues introduced me to all the sights: the Bastille, the Cathedral at Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe ... He showed me where Marat had lived and Robespierre ... I told him that if he came to New York, I would show him where Alexander Hamilton and Poe lived’).
The general quality of the interpretations is high: Aufray has lavished care on this recording. A question mark hovers over Carla Bruni’s presence: she sings beautifully on ‘Don’t think twice’, but what would the Dylan of 1965 have said about a song of his being performed by the French president’s wife? I only ask .... 11/7/2009 Dictionnaire des littératures hispaniques: Espagne et Amérique latineMe permito señalaros una nueva obra de referencia, salida ahora en Francia : ‘Dictionnaire des littératures hispaniques: Espagne et Amérique latine’, ed. Jordi Bonells – París: Robert Laffont (Bouquins), 2009, xii + 1636 págs. Se trata de un volumen monumental, rebosante de informaciones e ilustrando un enorme abanico de escritores y géneros de la literatura hispana. Más adelante, seguramente lo reseñaré: por ahora lo recomiendo para la biblioteca de cualquier estudioso o apasionado de la literatura que domine los dos idiomas, castellano y francés.
I draw your attention to a new work of reference, recently published in France: ‘Dictionnaire des littératures hispaniques: Espagne et Amérique latine’, ed. Jordi Bonells – Paris: Robert Laffont (Bouquins), 2009, xii + 1636 pp. This is a monumental work, overflowing with information and shedding light on an enormous range of writers and genres of Spanish-speaking literature. I will certainly review it later on: for now, I would recommend it for the library of all scholars or lovers of literature who know both Spanish and French. 10/26/2009 SEMANA GÓTICA DE MADRID, 24-X a I-XI 2009Entre el 24 de octubre y el 1 de noviembre de 2009 se desarrollará, en la capital española, la muy interesante y evocadora SEMANA GÓTICA. A continuación reproducimos, con el beneplácito de la organización, los folletos oficiales.    10/14/2009 WALTER BENJAMIN RESEARCH SYNDICATE site: reviewed by REVISTA CRÍTICA DE CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS (PORTUGAL)I am pleased to have just discovered that at: www.ces.uc.pt/publicacoes/rccs/artigos/75/RCCS75-Espaco%20Virtual-179-180.pdf, the Portuguese journal based in Coimbra, Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais - http://www.ces.uc.pt/publicacoes/rccs/ in its No 75 (Outubro 2006), p. 180, featured an appreciative review in Portuguese, by José Manuel Mendes of the site The Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate - www.wbenjamin.org/walterbenjamin.html - of which I am co-editor. Mentioned, in particular, was my article: “Globalisation and Particularism in the Work of José Saramago: the Symbolism of the Shopping-Mall in A Caverna” - www.wbenjamin.org/saramago.html
It is a particular pleasure to be mentioned in this way by the RCCS, a journal to which I contributed on several occasions in the 1980s. For more on RCCS, see entry on this blog for 11 Nov 2008. 10/13/2009 COURSE ON JOSÉ SARAMAGO FOR TEACHERS OF PORTUGUESE (AZORES): INCLUDES MY ORWELL/SARAMAGO ARTICLEI am pleased to note that my article:
- 'How totalitarianism begins at home: Saramago and George Orwell', in In Dialogue with Saramago: Essays in Comparative Literature, eds. Mark Sabine and Adriana Alves de Paula Martins, Manchester: University of Manchester, 2006, pp. 105-120; http://yatrarollason.info/files/SaramagoandOrwell.pdf (see this blog, entries: 25-4, 30-5 and 26-7 2006)
has been included in the reading list for the course 'Descobrir Saramago' ('Discovering Saramago'), to be offered from 2 to 6 November 2009 to secondary school teachers of Portuguese and organised by the Centro de Formação da Associação de Escolas de São Miguel e Santa Maria (Azores, Portugal) - see programme at: www.cenform.web.pt/2009/prog_web_nov/76_saramago.doc (organiser: Clarisse Ribeiro Medeiros).
The aim of the course is to increase teachers' knowledge and understanding of the work of Portugal's most distinguished living writer. I am more than honoured to have this study of mine included on it. 9/29/2009 REVISTA ARGENTINA "ISEL" - TEXTO DE ÁLVARO CUADRA (CHILE) SOBRE J. VERNE Y WALTER BENJAMIN Llamo a vuestra atención el número de 2009 de la revista argentina ISEL, publicada por el Instituto Superior de Estudios Lomas de Zamora (Buenos Aires). Esta revista se destaca por la calidad no sólo de sus textos, principalmente sobre temas educacionales, filosóficos y literarios, sino también de su diseño gráfico, hallándose todos los artículos enriquecidos por ilustraciones a colores de calidad excepcional. Entre los textos, señálense: 'La intimidad en el diván' (estudio de "Mujercitas" / "Little Women", de Louisa May Alcott), de Marcela Pereyra: 'Laberintos: Acerca de los tiempos de un espacio' (evocación polifacética de la localidad de Adrogué, de fuertes connotaciones borgianas), de Diego Gojzman; y el extenso estudio (magníficamente ilustrado) 'Ópticas de la Modernidad de Julio Verne a Walter Benjamin' (pp. 66-97), de Álvaro Cuadra (Chile), en cuyas páginas tengo el honor de encontrar citado un texto mío también sobre Benjamin (cf. esta bitácora, entrada del 24-IX-2007), 'The Task of Walter Benjamin's Translators' (p. 74).
Más informaciones sobre la revista: www.isel.edu.ar
9/14/2009 BOB DYLAN: my/Nicola Menicacci's work/ORAL TRADITION, analysed in Iowa and FinlandI am pleased to note the choice of the issue of ORAL TRADITION (22, 1, March 2007 - http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/22i - see entry on this blog, 27 June 2007) containing the proceedings of the symposium ‘Bob Dylan’s Performance Artistry’ held in 2005 at the University of Caen (France) (see this blog, 30 September 2005) as the main subject-matter for the 6 October 2009 session of ‘After Postmodernism’, an seminar for anthropology majors at Grinnell College, Iowa, USA, taught by Prof. Katya Gibel Mevorach:
For 6 October, students are asked to prepare, read and take part in a roundtable discussion, ‘focusing on the broad themes in each article related to ethnographic representations’, of the following articles from the Dylan issue of ORAL TRADITION: (i) Désveaux, Emmanuel. “Amerindian Roots of Bob Dylan’s Poetry.” (ii) Rollason, Christopher. “Sólo Soy Un Guitarrista”: Bob Dylan in the Spanish-Speaking World––Influences, Parallels, Reception, and Translation.”- - http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/22i/Rollason.pdf; see this blog, 30 September 2005 (iii) Thomas, Richard F. “The Streets of Rome: The Classical Dylan”
I am of course enormously flattered and grateful to find my own work being the subject of such close and detailed analysis in a college classroom.
***
I add that I have, furthermore, just discovered that my article on Dylan in the Spanish-Speaking World was *also* discussed and quoted at length, in the version appearing on the Bob Dylan Critical Corner site, in a text which appeared on 23 August 2007 in NY TID, a long-established and prestigious Swedish-language weekly based in Helsingfors, Finland (author: Sven-Erik Klinkmann; www.nytid.fi/arkiv/artikelnt-684-5167.html). In the same piece, Klinkmann also discusses the book by Nicola Menicacci, 'Bob Dylan, L'Ultimo Cavaliere' (see this blog, 27 September 2005), reviewed by myself, again, on Bob Dylan Critical Corner. Not knowing Swedish, I have had to rely on Google’s rough machine translation into English to get a general idea of this article. However, it is clear that the author sees both Nicola’s analysis of esoteric and elements in Dylan’s work and my suggestion of a link between Federico García Lorca and Dylan’s ‘Standing in the Doorway’ as examples of Dylanological ‘overinterpretation’, of enthusiastic Dylan scholars ‘reading too much’ into the song texts. Be that as it may, it remains gratifying to find my work and Nicola’s examined at such length in a well-respected newspaper, and I am very grateful to Sven-Erik Klinkmann for his attention!
9/3/2009 JOURNAL/REVISTA "HISPANIC HORIZON" (JNU Delhi), No. 27, 2009: OCTAVIO PAZ, JOSÉ MARTÍ, TAGORE, MANJU KAPUR ..Just published is the 2009 issue (no 27) of HISPANIC HORIZON (ISSN 0907-7522), the journal (bilingual in English and Spanish, and this time with incursions into Hindi too) of the Centre of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Latin American Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi.
Among the highlights of this issue are two articles on Octavio Paz ('Octavio Paz as a critic and connoisseur of art' - Susnighda Dey and 'Reading Octavio Paz Today' - Indrani Mukherjee); a comparison of José Martí and Rabindranath Tagore (Preeti Pant), a re-reading of the famous picaresque novel 'Lazarillo de Tormes' (in Spanish - Nicolas Balutet), and a study of 'The Spanish Civil War in its International Context' (Joan Maria Thomas). There are three classic Latin American poems, by José Martí, Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz, newly translated into Hindi. Also featured is a retrospective by Gokulananda Nandan looking back on the Centre's activities since the last issue, with particular focus on the conference on 'Multiculturalism in Spain' held in January 2009 and organised jointly with the Universitat Rovira i Virgili of Tarragona.
Included too (pp. 80-107) is my own article: 'Problems of translating Indian Writing in English into Spanish, with reference to "A Married Woman" by Manju Kapur', which was given as a lecture at JNU in 2006 - see this blog, 15 March 2006 - and analyses the Spanish translation of that novel by Dora Sales Salvador, 'Una mujer casada' (available on-line at: http://yatrarollason.info/files/MANJUTRANSREV)
Contact: Meenakshi Sundriyal, Editor, msundriyal@jnu.ac.in
**
Acaba de publicarse el número para 2009 (No 27) de HISPANIC HORIZON (ISSN 0907-7522), la revista (bilingüe en inglés y castellano, y en esta ocasión también con material en hindi) del Centre of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Latin American Studies de la Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), de Delhi.
Destaquemos en este número, entre otras aportaciones, dos textos sobre Octavio Paz ('Octavio Paz as a critic and connoisseur of art' - Susnighda Dey y 'Reading Octavio Paz Today' - Indrani Mukherjee); un artículo comparativo sobre José Martí y Rabindranath Tagore (Preeti Pant), una relectura de la célebre novela picaresca 'Lazarillo de Tormes' (en castellano - Nicolas Balutet), y un estudio de 'The Spanish Civil War in its International Context' (Joan Maria Thomas). Hay también tres poemas clásicos latinoamericanos, de José Martí, Pablo Neruda y Octavio Paz, en nuevas versiones en lengua hindi. Señálese igualmente un texto retrospectivo de Gokulananda Nandan detallando las actividades del Centro desde el último número de la revista, con hincapié en el congreso sobre 'Multiculturalism in Spain', realizado en enero de 2009 y organizado conjuntamente con la Universitat Rovira i Virgili de Tarragona.
También está incluído (pp. 80-107) un texto de mi autoría: 'Problems of translating Indian Writing in English into Spanish, with reference to "A Married Woman" by Manju Kapur', el cual vio la luz como conferencia dictada en la JNU en 2006 - véase esta bitácora, 15-III-06 - y analiza la traducción al castellano de dicha novela (traductora: Dora Sales Salvador), 'Una mujer casada' (disponible en línea en: http://yatrarollason.info/files/MANJUTRANSREV)
Contactar: Meenakshi Sundriyal, redacción, msundriyal@jnu.ac.in
9/2/2009 PARNASSUS: AN INNOVATIVE JOURNAL OF LITERARY CRITICISM (India) - Vol. I, 2009Now out is the first issue (Vol. I, 2009) of PARNASSUS: AN INNOVATIVE JOURNAL OF LITERARY CRITICISM (ISSN 0975-0266), published from Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli (Uttar Pradesh), India, and edited by Dr Nilanshu Agarwal. The journal is annual and accepts critical articles on the whole range of world literature, as well as poems and book reviews. Dr Agarwal may be contacted at:
**
Advisory Board:
A.N. Dwivedi (University of Allahabad); Christopher Rollason (France); Ludmila Volna (Charles University, Prague); Fawzia Afzal-Khan (Montclair State University); Karen Alkalay Gut (Tel Aviv University); D.Parmeswari (Madurai Kamaraj University); Ann Iverson (Dunwoody College of Technology, Minneapolis); Stephen Gill (Canada); K. V. Dominic (Newman College, Thodupuzha), Jaydeep Sarangi (Seva Bharati College, Paschim Medinipur, W.B), Seema Miglani (JCD College of Engineering, Sirsa, Haryana) **
Contents of Vol. I:
1. Allahabad in Pankaj Mishra’s The Romantics: A Partly Corrective View A.N.Dwivedi 2. Stairway to the Stars: Women Writing in Contemporary Indian English Fiction Anita Singh 3. Japanese Noh Drama and the Theatre of the Absurd Anita Myles 4. The Conflict between Tradition and Modernity in R. K. Narayan’s The Guide K. V. Dominic 5. The Cultural Designation of Feminism: Theory and Praxis Nandini Sahu 6. Scientific Discourses and Post-Modernist Parody in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 Mónica Calvo-Pascual 7. The Boat Named Romance and "The Lady of Shalott" as the Boat's Sailor Mustafa Bal 8. East-West Encounter in Manohar Malgonkar’s Open Season Seema Miglani 9. Creeping Saplings (A Poem) Ram Sharma 10. ‘Y’ in Blake’s ‘The Tyger’: A Note Suman Chakraborty 11. English--The Window to the World Vineeta Prasad 12.Panel on “History and the South Asian Novel Written In English”, 20th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, University of Manchester, July 2008 Christopher Rollason 13.The International Aldous Huxley Society (IAHS), Germany A. A. Mutalik-Desai Book Reviews: Meena Kandasamy’s Touch - rev. Jaydeep Sarangi Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger - rev. Satendra Kumar Pramod K. Nayar’s Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction - rev. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal **
Note: My conference panel report is pp. 108-112. For the full text and more details, see entry on this blog for 26 July 2008.
8/31/2009 MY SITE/MI SITIO "YATRA": NEW AND IMPROVED VERSION / VERSIÓN NUEVA Y MEJORADAI am pleased to inform all my correspondents that today, 31 August 2009, is the official launch day of the new and improved version of YATRA, my personal website - which hosts or links to most of my writings. Please note the new url: http://yatrarollason.info.
The migration was made necessary by Yahoo's decision to close, as of 26 October 2009, its Geocities facility, under which my site was previously hosted at: www.geocities.com/christopherrollason.
I very much hope you will find the new site, ably designed by Ismael Ochoa Pelayo (Puerto Vallarta, Mexico), more professional and user-friendly. I will welcome all comments and suggestions, via the Contact or Guestbook facilities.
All the urls for my articles hosted on the site have changed. The old ones will still be valid till 25 October, but if you have any links on your own site either to my site as such or to article(s) on it, I would appreciate it if you could change them, and let me know. The migration code is: OLD URL – www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/ARTICLE.pdf; NEW URL – http://yatrarollason.info/files/ARTICLE.pdf, so for all new urls, just substitute the actual filename for ARTICLE in the second formula. Many thanks in advance.
I will continue to add new material to the site as before. I now officially launch the new YATRA, and hope you will enjoy visiting it!
**
Me complace informar a la totalidad de mis correspondientes que hoy, el 31 de agosto de 2009, es el día oficial de estreno de la nueva y mejorada versión de YATRA, mi sitio web persona - el cual alberga, o enlaza hacia. la mayoría de mis escritos. Os pido, así, el favor de apuntar la nueva url: http://yatrarollason.info.
Esta migración se ha impuesto debido a la decisión de Yahoo de cerrar, a partir del 26 de octubre de 2009, su servicio geocities, con el cual mi sitio se albergaba anteriormente, en: www.geocities.com/christopherrollason.
Espero mucho que hallaréis el nuevo sitio, expertamente diseñado por Ismael Ochoa Pelayo (Puerto Vallarta, México), más profesional y más atractivo. Me llegarán bienvenidos cualesquiera comentarios o sugerencias, a través de las funciones Contact o Guestbook.
Han cambiado todas las url de los textos míos albergados en el sitio. Las antiguas permanecerán válidas hasta el 25 de octubre: no obstante, le rogaría a quien tenga en su propio sitio cualquier vínculo o hacia mi sitio como tal o hacia uno o varios de sus artículos, me haga el favor de efectuar las necesarias modificaciones, y hacerme saber. El código para la migración es el siguiente: ANTIGUA URL – www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/ARTICLE.pdf; NUEVA URL – http://yatrarollason.info/files/ARTICLE.pdf - así, para todas las nuevas url, es sólo substituir el actual nombre de archivo por ARTICLE en la segunda fórmula. Mil gracias de antemano.
Seguiré enriqueciendo el sitio con material nuevo, como antes. Ahora procedo al lanzamiento oficial del nuevo YATRA, y ¡mucho espero que visitarlo os resulte una agradable experiencia!
8/28/2009 José Saramago: forthcoming novel (about CAIN) and new book of interviewsThose interested in José Saramago may wish to know of the two following pieces of news:
1) Recently published in Portugal is a 416-page book of interviews, with Saramago himself and other people connected to his work:
http://www.portoeditora.pt/produtos/catalogo/ficha/id/1458680 Uma longa viagem com José Saramago João Céu e Silva Porto Editora, 2009 ISBN: 978-972-0-04276-7
2) October 2009 will see the release of a brand-new Saramago novel. The title is CAIM, or CAIN: so, as in ‘The Gospel According to Jesus Christ’, we will find Saramago wrestling with the angel and questioning received biblical narratives and the status of religion. The book will appear simultaneously in Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan versions and will be featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair. See, in Spanish: EL PAÍS 27-VIII-09
and in Portuguese: http://blog.josesaramago.org/indexpor.php.
** Note added 10 Jan 2010: I have reviewed CAIM on this blog (see entry for 9 Jan 2010). 8/26/2009 BOB DYLAN CHRISTMAS ALBUM!?!: DUE OUT IN US, 13 October 2009The latest Bob Dylan news is that 13 October 2009 will see the US release of a new album called "Christmas in the Heart". Yes, this really will be a Bob Dylan Christmas album, with covers of such Yuletide standards as: "Must Be Santa", "Little Drummer Boy", "Winter Wonderland" and "Here Comes Santa Claus".
Many long-term acolytes will no doubt feel ambivalent about this, though those who cherish his radical past might recall that, on his own admission in the song "My Back Pages", Dylan hasn't been a protest singer since ... 1964. Meanwhile, the new album will presumably take its place as his *fourth Christian album*, following the trilogy from his late 70s / early 80s born-again epoch.
He has earlier mentioned Christmas in his songs "Three Angels" (on "New Morning", 1970) and "Floater (Too Much To Ask)" (on '"Love and Theft"', 2001
**
Note added 26 Dec 09: I have put a seasonal post here on this blog with some impressions of this album! 7/31/2009 "CAVALCADE": A NEW JOURNAL FROM NIGERIA (includes my translations of 2 poems by Carla Vanessa Gonzáles) I draw to your attention the first issue of CAVALCADE, a well-produced and originally conceived journal from Nigeria. Details: CAVALCADE: A JOURNAL OF WRITING, CRITICISM AND ART - Vol. 1, No. 1, Jan-Apr 2009 - Abuja Writers' Forum, Abuja, Nigeria; editor: Emman Usman Shehu - guest editor for this issue: Dr E.E. Sule
** The journal includes literary criticism, short stories, poems, interviews and reviews. The contributors are mostly Nigerian; there is also material from Kenya, India and Peru. The critical articles in this issue concentrate on the work of the Nigerian writer Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (1932-1967). The interviews ate with Gboyega Kolawole (Nigeria - interviewed by Uchenna Oyali) and the Denmark-resident Indian writer Tabish Khair (interviewed by Jaydeep Sarangi). There are stories by D.E. Kaze, Wumi Raji, Elnathan John and Ifeoma Chinwuba (all Nigeria). Among the authors of the poems included are: Angela Nwosu and Ismail Bala Garba (Nigeria), Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Kenya), Satish Verma and Anuraag Sharma (India) and Carla Vanessa Gonzáles (Peru; two poems, 'Dream No 3' an 'Dream No 4', translated from the Spanish by Christopher Rollason). **
The editors may be contacted at: abujawriters@fastermail.com; cavalcade@bigstring.com; ejahsule@yahoo.com
Thanks for visiting! ¡Gracias por tu visita!
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