Rhetoric

Cristiano Ronaldo plays for Real Madrid. He is Portuguese, as is the former coach of RM, José Mouriño, now coaching Chelsea. Ronaldo and "Mou" did not get along. Interviewed on British tv, Mou referred to Ronaldinho, the Brazilian player, as "the real Ronaldo." Ronaldo, in his rhetorical parry, chose the high road, saying that of course there are some things not worth commenting on, that there was a Portuguese proverb that you don't spit in the food you are about to eat, and that he does his real talking on the field. Madrid and Chelsea played a match in Miami, where the Dolphins play, and Ronaldo scored two goals in a 3-1 win for Madrid. He denied that he looked at Mou after he scored the goals, or that there was any grudge involved in playing against his former nemesis. Grudges are for losers, he said. Sure, he wanted to beat Chelsea, but that is simply because he is professional soccer player playing for whatever was at stake in that game. It's just a day at the office.

So I would say the battle is Ronaldo 5, Mou 0. He scored 2 goals plus at least three rhetorical points. He called Mou a loser, implicitly, but simply by saying that he himself does not hold a grudge against him. He quoted a Portuguese proverb that refers exactly to Mouriño's behavior. (Mou would understand the meaning of the proverb, which CR gave in its original Portuguese version.) All the while pretending to remain entirely above the rhetorical battle itself. Even if he hadn't scored two goals in the match he would have been ahead. Soccer is only a game, but Ronaldo proved himself superior in the game of life.

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Later, Mouriño tried to clarify that his reference to the "real Ronaldo" was simply due to the fact that (Brazilian) Ronaldinho came first, chronologically, before CR. This seemed lame, because he could have said "the first Ronaldo," or simply "Ronaldinho." Nobody calls the Portuguese Ronaldo by the diminutive "inho." Of course, Mouriño's lack of rhetorical tact is one thing that alienated him from Madrid players, fans, and ownership, so Ronaldo's responses brilliantly showed up "Mou" once by beating him once again in the game of tact: "see, this is why Mouriño was not a good coach for Real Madrid." He didn't even have to call his former coach an arrogant asshole.

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You don't even have to take Ronaldo at his word for him to the rhetorical winner. IN fact, I'm convinced he does hold a grudge against Mou, and played extra hard to show him up. He simply had nothing to gain by engaging with Mouriño's statements. That would be spitting in his own food.

The Scholarly Base: The Personal Library

I purchased several books here in Barcelona. A few editions of Lorca and Lezama Lima, some contemporary novels, some new books of poetry, some political articles. The two teaching assistants on my program were great, saving my ass many times over. One thing I noticed, though, was that they didn't buy books or browse in bookstores. They are specialists in earlier periods of Spanish literature, and Quevedo is not publishing any new novels any more. (It could be a money thing too, but I still bought books when I was their age (29-30) and equivalent level of grad student poverty.) Still, I think I would buy almost as many books if I were a medievalist. For me, maintaining a personal library of books is inherent to my identity as a scholar and researcher. (Sure, there's the library, but it's not the same thing.)

This gives me some insight into my own assumptions. I have to stop assuming that other people resemble me, even though they "should" if they want to be like me. But should they want to be like me? In a word, no.

So my advice is geared to people who want to be like me, in general terms. To assume the same level of drive or intellectual curiosity / independence in other people is a big mistake on my part.

Make your Own Mooc (2)

I don't know what it is, but my recent post on making your own mooc got more than 500 hits, more than any other post in the past three or four months. Maybe it was just the title of the post made it a google magnet? It was a pretty banal post, so I don't know.

Retrato

Everyone knows Machado's "Retrato," but not as many people the poem by the same title by Manuel Machado, his brother. It can be read contrapuntally against that of Antonio:


Esta es mi cara y ésta es mi alma: leed.
Unos ojos de hastío y una boca de sed...
Lo demás, nada... Vida... Cosas... Lo que se sabe...
Calaveradas, amoríos... Nada grave,
Un poco de locura, un algo de poesía,
una gota del vino de la melancolía...
¿Vicios? Todos. Ninguno... Jugador, no lo he sido;
ni gozo lo ganado, ni siento lo perdido.
Bebo, por no negar mi tierra de Sevilla,
media docena de cañas de manzanilla.
Las mujeres... -sin ser un tenorio, ¡eso no!-,
tengo una que me quiere y otra a quien quiero yo.

Me acuso de no amar sino muy vagamente
una porción de cosas que encantan a la gente...
La agilidad, el tino, la gracia, la destreza,
más que la voluntad, la fuerza, la grandeza...
Mi elegancia es buscada, rebuscada. Prefiero,
a olor helénico y puro, lo "chic" y lo torero.
Un destello de sol y una risa oportuna
amo más que las languideces de la luna
Medio gitano y medio parisién -dice el vulgo-,
Con Montmartre y con la Macarena comulgo...
Y antes que un tal poeta, mi deseo primero
hubiera sido ser un buen banderillero.
Es tarde... Voy de prisa por la vida. Y mi risa
es alegre, aunque no niego que llevo prisa.

Caballero Bonald

CB has been winning all the prizes recently in Spain. It could be because he is still around, after a lot of the poets of his generation are deceased. It could be that he is the safe choice. His language is ornately Latinate, but I find that his poetry does not satisfy. There is a poverty of ideas behind the rich surface of words. It is not bad, but almost its only attraction is in the sheer number of unfamiliar words used. It is surprisingly inert.

How to Mooc: 1.000 Lectures

Desde el año 1918, que ingresé en la Residencia de Estudiantes de Madrid, hasta 1928, en que la abandoné, terminados mis estudios de Filosofía y Letras, he oído en aquel refinado salón, donde acudía para corregir su frivolidad de playa francesa la vieja aristocracia española, cerca de mil conferencias.

That's the beginning of Lorca's duende lecture: "From 1918, when I entered the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, to 1928, when I left, having finished my studies of "Philosophy and Letters," I heard in that refined salon, where the old Spanish aristocracy came to compensate for their frivolity of French beaches, nearly 1,000 lectures."

I have some notes on this first paragraph:

(1) It is not included in the translation of the lecture that Ben Belitt includes in his translation of Poet in New York. He skips over the introduction to the lecture completely.

(2) The Residencia (or Resi) was a special kind of elite university dorm, affiliated with the most prestigious institution of the Krausist movement: La Institutición Libre de Enseñanza, founded by Giner de los Ríos. Lorca met Dalí and Buñuel there. This was a kind of elite laboratory for (male) Spanish intellectuals, carrying on the tradition of the previous generations from the 19th century. Lorca was born in 98, so he lived there between the ages of 20 and 30.

(3) The lecturers were people of the caliber of Einstein. The list of people visiting includes "Albert Einstein, Paul Valéry, Marie Curie, Igor Stravinsky, John M. Keynes, Alexander Calder, Walter Gropius, Henri Bergson, and Le Corbusier." Lorca studied law and Filosofía y letras, but he was not a good student. His real education was in the Resi, arguably.

(4) The number of lecture he says he attended is "nearly a thousand." This sounds exaggerated, even for 10 years. That would be a hundred a year obviously. Still he wants his audience to know that he knows what it is like to sit through a lecture or two.

(5) Wealthy people, aristocrats, would come to hear lectures; it must have been fashionable thing to do. I like the idea that the aristocracy would want to "corregir su frivolidad de playa francesa."

(6) His purpose in beginning the lecture that way was to apologize for giving a lecture at all. It is a classic captatio benevolentiae. He doesn't want to bore his audience. In the next paragraph, he will talk about being bored many times and needing some fresh air after sitting through a lecture. Hence the dichotomy "boring lecture" vs. "poetic contact with nature." This contradicts, a bit, the idea of "frivolity" vs. self-improvement.

(7) Lorca was a charismatic figure and a gifted public performer. The kind of lecture he is about to give will make us of his oratorical skills, and the topic of his lecture, the duende, is a kind of gift that is characteristically performative. Thus you need a lecturer like Lorca to drive it home. You can't just read about the duende on the page and get the same effect. So there is another dichotomy: the dull academic lecture (even if given by Stravinsky or Einstein?) and the the poetically performative lecture that Lorca himself is about to give.

(8) So the lecture itself can be a work of art, and needs to be performed as such. Now we have a lot of lectures we can find on the internet. It is relatively easy to find vast amounts of material on almost everything. The lecture is just one kind of resource. The lecture given by a professor at your own campus, whom you can ask questions of, is also a wonderful resource to have.

(9)But you also need someone to explain the lecture to you. You need to have an idea of why it's so special to hear about the duende from Lorca, why you need to be listening rather than reading (or vice-versa for other kinds of sources). Otherwise you get the pearls-before-swine phenomena. I am directing a study abroad program now and get the "why do we have to look at castles and museums" question. Even Lorca himself does not seem sufficiently appreciative of hearing lectures from high-caliber people.

(10) Doing this right is as difficult and expensive as doing other kinds of education right.

Make your own Mooc

Here is an ample and astonishing assortment of lectures and poetry readings from the Fundación Juan March in Madrid. You can listen to poets read their own work, lectures on Mahler or Rilke or Cervantes or Lorca. Just put in a word in the search and see what you come up with.

Of course, it is in Spanish, and some of the material is dated--giving it historical interest as well in some cases. So a lecture on Lorca might be from someone who actually knew Lorca.

So a lecture is a kind of resource that can be used educationally. I've downloaded tons of this for free, and it seems like they invite this downloading, since they have a download button on their page.

[Update: FIXED link: thanks to Leslie for that]