Honig / Lorca / Beckett

I found this quote yesterday, but I didn't realize how significant it was until I woke up today and thought of it before I got out of bed:

In one scene [of Lorca's El público] a desperate, virulent exchange between a Figure of the Vine and a Figure of Bells reminds one strongly of Beckett's later play, Waiting for Godot, which it surpasses in power.

E. Honig, García Lorca, vi.
Wow, just wow. This was written in 1961. The premiere of Godot was '53.

This happens to me a lot. I just read things without paying much attention, and then the next day I realize what I should have been paying attention to.

Honig was a prominent poet, translator, and Brown University Professor. He had serious chops as a Hispanist, with a book on Calderón, for example.

Another example

Here's an example from my own work:

In the English-speaking world, “Lorca has now surpassed Ibsen, Chekhov, and Brecht as ‘the most performed foreign-language playwright.’”

The problem here is that I am quoting two sources. One if from 1993 (Johnston) the other from 2009 (Delgado). Here I am in 2014, citing a five-year old source who is in turn quoting a 21-year old source.

Now Lorca may still be the most performed foreign-language playwright. I simply don't know, though I suspect it is true. Delgado may know this independently of the citation from Johnston, or may be depending on Johnston's opinion. I haven't verified this independently, or figured out how Johnston reached that conclusion. Luckily for me, for my purposes it is enough to know that other people are claiming this and repeating the claim: I simply want to prove that Lorca is canonical outside of Spain, and especially in the Anglosphere, and has been such for a long time. If I am precise enough in my footnote here, I can distance myself from the truth-claim while using the quote for my argument.

Basbøllism

A "Basbøllism" might be defined as the identification of an epistemological gap caused by shoddy scholarship, or by losing track of the "chain of custody" of ideas and words. Here's one Thomas and I were discussing at his blog. The source text:

This ’wild speculation’ on our part may not be so wild after all. Why do the X/Y notations signify theoretical differences? Why not A/Z if the author’s interest was to indicate widely divergent viewpoints? An interesting coincidence (?): At the time this book was written, 1959, women were defined as having two X chromosomes, while men were defined as having an X and a Y, according to the adopted scientific notations. (578-9)

Here's a paraphrase, or "patchwriting," in a textbook:

McGregor’s innovation is known as replacing ‘theory X’ (traditional management theory à la Taylor and Barnard) with a ‘theory Y’ (human relations theory). Why, ask Calás and Smircich, those letters? Why not ‘theories A and B’ or ‘A and Z’? They point out that it was exactly at that time that women became defined as having two X chromosomes, while men were defined as ‘XY’. McGregor’s can therefore be read, deconstructively but interestingly, as an attempt to move from an XY world to a sheer YY world: a homosocial order. (113)

The sexual differentiation of chromosomes was discovered long before, in 1905. Note that the first text does not state that 1959 was the year of this discovery; it merely uses the word "coincidence." This is a confusion in the source text, because males and females are still defined chromosomally in the same way as in 1959. The only chromosomal discovery I can trace to 1959, with my very limited knowledge, has to do with the chromosomal abnormality in Down Syndrome.

X and Y are commonly used to designate axes on a graph, for example, or for algebraic unknowns, so the idea that it is an especially significant coincidence to use these letters in 1959 for theories unrelated to genetics (in management theory) is indeed a pretty "wild speculation." The authors of the textbook seem to have no idea about what deconstruction is, and the metaphor YY = homosocial order is a bit of a stretch too. There is no person with two Y chromosomes! This reads as scientifically illiterate.

The epistemological fissure in this case occurs in taking an already shaky idea and paraphrasing it without really understanding it. The textbook falsely attributes a false assumption to the original text, ("exactly at that time") that makes the original point more forceful, but also exposes the weakness of the original conceptualization.

I am scientifically and mathematically pretty much an ignoramus. So if I do happen to need to refer to something in this area, I have to be extra careful not to perpetuate errors. I still have to trace the reference to see what the original authors thought happened in 1959, so I may have to follow up.

Book Chapters from this century

“De la luminosa opacidad de los signos: el texto visual de José-Miguel Ullán.” Las voces inestables: sobre la poesía de José-Miguel Ullán. ed. Miguel Casado. Madrid: Círculo de Bellas Artes, 2011. 197-207.
“The Persistence of Memory: Antonio Gamoneda and the literary Institutions of Late Modernity.” New Spain, New Literatures. Ed. Luis Martín-Estudillo and Nicholas Spadaccini. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2010. 149-62.
“Manuscrito de una respiración.” In El rumoroso cauce: nuevas lecturas sobre Claudio Rodríguez. Ed. Philip Silver. Madrid: Páginas de Espuma, 2010. 303-12.
“Lorca y la búsqueda de raíces en la poesía española del siglo XX: tradicionalidad y radicalidad.” Principios modernos y creatividad expresiva en la poesía española contemporánea. Ed. Elsa Dehennin y Christian de Paepe. New York: Rodopi, 2009. 325-39.
“Luis Feria y la otra generación de 50.” Oficio de creer, ley del furtivo: en torno a la poesía de Luis Feria. Ed. Miguel Casado. Madrid: Artemisa, 2008. 85-108.
“Valente y Beckett: afinidades e influencias.” In Referentes europeos en la obra de Valente. Ed. Claudio Rodríguez Fer. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2007. 129-147.
“Three Apologies for Poetry: Discourses of Literary Value in Contemporary Spain.” In Contemporary Spanish Poetry: The Word and the World. Ed. Cecile West-Settle and Sylvia Sherno. Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2005. 224-45.
“Andrew P. Debicki: A Synthetic View.” Introduction to Poetry as Discovery: Andrew P. Debicki (2003). 13-16.

Re-flamenquifying

I invented this word today. I got up at 7:45, but between 6:30 and then I just lay awake and did some brainstorming for a talk on Lorca's musical legacy I'm giving in March. Anyway, reflamenquifying is the process of turning a work of Lorca with no ostensible connection to Flamenco or Gypsies and re-inserting it into that tradition.

10 years of lectures

Papers and Lectures:

“Entre Celan y Lorca: modelos para una modernidad futura.” Coloquio “Celan en España. University of Extramadura, Cáceres. May, 2015.
“Lorca’s Musical Legacy: From Strayhorn to Golijov.” ACLA Convention, Seattle, March 2015.
“An Elegy for Lorca Studies.” Keynote address for the Symposium Finite, Singular, Exposed: Who’s Afraid of the Modernist Invididual? University of Córdoba, October 2014.
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Poetics of Cultural Exceptionalism.” LASA Convention, Chicago, May 2014.
““Fail Better”: The Race to the Bottom in Contemporary Spanish Poetry. MLA Convention, Chicago, January 2014.
“New York Lorcas: From Motherwell to O’Hara.” King Juan Carlos Center, New York University, April 2013.
“Postmodern Lorca: Motherwell, Strayhorn, García Montero.” University of Iowa, March 2013.
“Open Secrets of Scholarly Productivity.” Southern Illinois University, Edwardville. October, 2012.
“Modernism and Cultural Exceptionalism: From Miguel de Unamuno to José Lezama Lima.” CUNY Graduate Center, March 2011.
“Las ínsulas extrañas: Late Modernism in Spain and the Latin American Connection.” MACHL, St Louis, November 2010.
“De la luminosa opacidad de los signos.” Symposium on José-Miguel Ullán. Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid). January, 2010.
“Blackburn’s Lorca: Modernist Translation Redefined.” MLA Convention, Philadelphia. December, 2009.
“Theory of Timbre: Wittgenstein, Lorca, and Barthes.” Philosophy and Literature Seminar, Hall Center for the Humanities, November 2008.
“Luis Feria y la otra generación de 50.” Symposium on Luis Feria. Tenerife. May 2008.
“Frank O'Hara''s LORCAESCAS.” Univesity of Virginia Conference on Hispanic Poetry. November 2007.
“Lorca en los Estados Unidos: malentedidos y apócrifos.” Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas, Paris. July 2007.
“Valente y Beckett: influencias y afinidades.” Cátedra José Angel Valente, Santiago de Compostela. March 2007.
“Intravenus, by Amalia Iglesias and Lola Velasco: Collaboration and the Resistance to Commodification.” MLA Convention, Philadelphia, December 2006.
“Lorca and Translation: The Domestic Agenda.” MACHL, Columbia Missouri, November 2006.
Panel Discussion on Kenneth Koch. AWP Convention, Austin, Texas. March 2006.
Presentation of a Translation of Intravenus. CCCP Conference. New York, November 2005.

Statistically rare events

Statistically rare events can assume vast symbolic significance in the narratives we forge to explain how things work. And it's hard to argue against this tendency, because statistically rare events are more psychologically salient. Not only that, but a single traumatic event has the effect that it does; it is dumb to point out that it is rare, after the fact.

Some things that seem rare actually aren't. Take, for example, presidential assassinations. Of 44 presidents, 4 have been assassinated, or one in 11. There have been many more attempts, and vastly more threats. So if we consider that in terms of homicide rates per 100,000, that is almost 10,000. So Obama is 294 times more likely to be killed than the average African American. Of course, it is hard to calculate that, because we are comparing 18th to 21st-century presidents. Let's say, though, that since Andrew Jackson, being president is physically risky job. Recent lapses by the Secret Service aren't very reassuring.