Lectures

I got this crazy idea of writing a non-specialist book on Lorca. I would call it something like "six lectures on Lorca." The idea would be to sit down and explain everything I know, but in 6 hour long presentations. The idea would be to follow the model of the speaker invited to give a series of lectures someplace, rather than just the standard one lecture.  I would write exactly 36,000 words.

We think of the lecture as a boring format, but that was Lorca's own format (not the written essay). Though, of course, he wrote them.

Since I've given lectures on Lorca, the idea would be to write some more and revise some I've already given and create a coherent shape to it.

***

A particularly idiotic person came up to me during the conference and said, "yes, now can we transmit the duende to Americans in translation; it is impossible."  But, of course, I had said the opposite, that communicating about Lorca is just as difficult in Spain itself.  There are idiotic Spaniards (like this guy) just as there are idiots in the US.  My idea would be a little bit like: "Lorca for non-idiots."

Chilling Words

I don't know why I was thinking of this quote by a well-known Spanish scholar, one José-Carlos Mainer; probably because I was just in Spain, and was discussing with my students about how instruction in literature has to be dialogic. Critical thinking only develops through dialogue, never just through a one-sided format: 

"Mire: el saber es jerárquico; sencillamente, yo sé más que mis alumnos, ¿por qué debo discutir el temario con ellos?"

[Look: knowledge is hierarchical; simply put, I know more than my students. Why should I discuss / debate the material with them?]. 

I remembered enough of the quote to be able to find it on google, because when I first read it it made my heart sink. I didn't remember the word "temario." But anyone who thinks of his subject matter as a "temario" is a cretin.  

Do I know more than my students? Yes. But how can they ever learn to think if I have that attitude? Teaching is about catching them in the act of generating an idea and then pointing  out to them that they are thinking.  

leadership

When I complimented our grad student leader on what he had done with the organization, he said that it was team work, not just him. But, of course, the good leader gives credit to the team rather than to himself. Again, I'm finding that life can be good.

musicology

The musicologists at the Lorca conference all gave talks that are completely irrelevant to what I'm doing. There are good researchers, in the sense of digging up raw information, but there is no critical thought going on at all. The research question in one case was what concerts Lorca might have gone to in Madrid in the 1920s.

So I guess my research project is going to be an original one. My main idea actually is this one: to approach to corpus with some degree of critical thought.  Everything else results from this initial attitude.  

IT

 I used the think the awe of simply being alive and aware of being alive was it.

(The reason for having poetry at all.)

Then I thought it was imaginative freedom:

The ability to strip away arbitrary labels and classifications

to see other possibilities in reality itself.

Now, I think this clarity of vision is it 

as the result of this freedom to imagine.

You might have a different idea of what it is.

Maybe the mystery of the push and pull of time.

Maybe for you there is no it at all!

The worst thing, though, would be for you to accept some definition of mine.

Then you will have missed the whole point of the exercise.

The Classic Anxiety / Prestige Dream

I had the classic anxiety / prestige dream.  I was at an academic conference and was mistaken for someone else. A French guy said to me: "Ah, Ud. es el experto americano en estudios miguelinos." I said, "pues, es cierto que he mencionado a Miguel de Molinos en un par de artículos, pero..." The other said guy said, "Incluso he coincidido con Ud. en otro congreso..." I wasn't sure whether I was the guy he meant or not. Later Jacques Derrida showed up. I'm not sure why we were speaking Spanish, but I guess my French isn't good enough to dream in.

Earlier I had realized that I was supposed to give my talk with a piano. I realized I hadn't memorized "Las tres morillas de Jaén," though someone else it my department had just played in perfectly (someone who in real life doesn't even play piano.).

Lorca Concert

Just got off the phone with my cousin, Michael Barrett, who was an assistant to Leonard Bernstein.  He and another colleague have a New York Festival of Song where they give concerts of art songs, and they are doing a Lorca concert in April. They were asking for my expertise, though they knew of some things that I hadn't discovered yet.  Anyway, can life get any better?