Category: café literaio

Mother Courage and Her Children

For many people in our world today, war is a fact of life. It is a daily reality. For others, it is something that goes on in other places, it is headline news — it is something that happens elsewhere.

This last week we read one of the last century’s most important plays: Mother Courage and Her Children. Bertolt Brecht, having lived through two great world wars, shows us with amazing skill the futility of war.

Many people in our society today think that war is a natural part of the human existence and if not natural, then a necessary part. Brecht challenges this understanding of war and its “utility”. Mother Courage and Her Children exposes the senselessness of war.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our discussion this last week at La Biela.

For more information about the life of Bertolt Brecht, click here.

Se lee cada vez menos

«Cada vez se leen menos libros mientras que es muy elevado el número de lectores de periódicos, revistas, fascículos y otras publicaciones de esta índole. Pero esta clase de lectores no lee: mira, observa. Contempla con una atención cósmica, cuando en realidad saben leer; sin embargo, sólo miran y luego tiran a la basura.»

 

Esta afirmación no fue escrita hace unos días ni hace unos años. Eugenio Montale escribió estas palabras en el 1961 en su libro, Auto-da-fé: Cronache in due tempi.

 

cafeliterario

 

Armando Petrucci nos dice que Montale «destacaba la diferencia de actitud en la lectura en las prácticas del estudio y las prácticas del consumo, entre leer para aprender, para recordar y para formarse, y leer por leer, por pasar el tiempo, sólo para divertirse».

 

Si Montale tiene razón, deberíamos preguntarnos por qué se lee cada vez menos.

 

¿Hemos reemplazado la búsqueda de placer y aventura con otros medios? ¿Hemos perdido la capacidad de imaginar al emplear otros medios visuales? ¿Será que hemos abandonado una práctica que infunde vida para luego recurrir a medios que deshumanizan?

 

¿Será que somos más pobres por leer menos?

 

Fuentes:

 

Armando Petrucci. (2011). «Leer por leer: un porvenir para la lectura» en Historia de la lectura en el mundo occidental. Guglielmo Cavallo y Roger Chartier., eds. Buenos Aires: Taurus.

Lectura y metamorfosis

La transformación del lector en un poema de Rainer Maria Rilke.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

El poema se titula Der Leser: “El lector” y dice así:

¿Quién le conoce, a éste que bajó
su rostro, desde un ser hacia un segundo ser,
a quien sólo el veloz pasar páginas plenas
a veces interrumpe con violencia?

Ni siquiera su madre estaría segura
de si él es el que allí lee algo, empapado
de su sombra. Y nosotros, que teníamos horas,
¿qué sabemos de cuánto se le desvaneció

hasta que, con esfuerzo, alzó la vista?
cargando sobre sí lo que, abajo, en el libro,
sucedía, y con ojos, dadivosos, que en vez
de tomar, se topaban a un mundo pleno y listo:

como niños callados que jugaban a solas
y, de pronto, vivencian lo existente;
mas sus rasgos, que estaban ordenados,
quedaron alterados para siempre.

Traducción de F. Bermúdez-Cañete, Nuevos Poemas II.

The Poetry of Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley wrote his most famous novel, Brave New World in 1932. He was a prophet, a man who foresaw things that were to come to pass. His criticism of technology, human relations and even on sexual promiscuity are more appropriate today than they were in the 1930’s.

Huxley however, is less known for his poetry. Here is a poem by Huxley:

Quotidian Vision

There is a sadness in the street,
And suddenly the folk I meet
Droop their heads as they walk along,
Without a smile, without a song.
A mist of cold and muffling grey
Falls, fold by fold, on another day
That dies unwept. But suddenly,
Under a tunnelled arch I see
On flank and haunch the chestnut gleam
Of horses in a lamplit steam;
And the dead world moves for me once more
With beauty for its living core.

Julio Cortázar sobre la lectura con música

Jamás he podido leer escuchando música, y ésta es una cuestión bastante importante, porque tengo amigos de un nivel intelectual y estético muy alto para quienes la música, que en ciertas circunstancias puedan escuchar concentrándose, es al mismo tiempo una especie de acompañamiento para sus actividades. Esto lo comprendo muy bien en el caso de los pintores: tengo amigos pintores que pintan con un disco de fondo o la radio. Pero en el caso de la lectura, yo creo que no se puede leer escuchando música porque eso supone un doble desprecio o un desprecio unilateral: o se desprecia la música o se desprecia lo que se está leyendo. La música es un arte tan absoluto, tan total como la literatura, y el música exige que se la escuche a full time lo mismo que cualquier de nosotros cuando escribimos.
Julio-Cortázar

 

Personalmente me apenaría, me decepcionaría, enterarme de que alguien a quien estimo intelectualmente ha leído un libro de cuentos míos al mismo tiempo que estaba escuchando una fuga de Bach o una ópera de Bertolt Brecht. En cambio puede, sí, leer mientras espero en aeropuerto o a alguien en un café, porque ésos son los vacíos, los tiempos huecos que uno no ha buscado por vida, digamos, te condenan de golpe a media hora de espera; y entonces, tener un libro en el bolsillo y concentrarse en él, en ese momento, por un lado anula el tiempo del reloj y, por otro lado, te crea una sensación de plenitud. Y no es esa especia de mala conciencia que, también por deformación intelectual, tengo yo, en el sentido de que si me paso más de diez minutos sin hacer algo, sea lo que sea, tengo la impresión de que soy ingrato con ese hecho maravilloso que es estar viviendo, tener ese privilegio de la vida. Y es algo que siento cada vez más, mientras mi vida se acorta y va llegando a su término ineluctable, si me permitís la palabra tan cursi.

De la entrevista de Sara Castro-Klarén: “Julio Cortázar, lector”.

Leo Tolstoy’s Pacifist Anarchism

Leo Tolstoy is well known for his novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He is less well known for his short stories. The stories that we read in our last meeting were rather didactic and straight-forward. The author left very little to the reader’s imagination.

This can be seen as a lack of literary style or creativity. While there is no doubt the author could have embellished his stories or made them into mini-masterpieces, it appears that his desire goes far beyond writing good literature.

Young Leo TolstoyTolstoy was well known for his criticism of the Russian nobility and their ostentatious lifestyles. More than once he wanted to run away from his life as a Russian noble. He understood human flourishing as much more than having and administrating goods. His idea of being human had much more to with being good.

Our society today is more interested in “dealing goods” than in “being good”. While culturally and most certainly geographically, Russia may be thousands of kilometers from Buenos Aires, Tolstoy’s call for a more humane society rings true today in this place.

Tolstoy is also known for being an anarcho-pacifist. He insisted on nonviolent resistance as the path for a more humane society. He did not believe in the myth of redemptive violence — the idea that violence can end violence. His ideas not only found a great following in Russia, but in India and in the U.S.as well with people like Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tolstoy asks us today through his stories, “what do you see when you look at other people?” “Can you look past what defines them socially?” “Can you look your neighbor in the eye and see him for who he or she truly is?” His prophetic voice was certainly not silenced by his death. He is, in many ways, still present with us today.

Leo Tolstoy

It’s just not the same!

There are many electronic devices available for reading books both old and new. In some ways, they are very convenient. I’ll even admit to reading a work of G.K. Chesterton on my phone while jogging on the treadmill at the gym. But the truth is: it’s just not the same!

 

worthless thingamabobsThere is nothing greater (well, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit) than holding a book in your hand. Let’s admit it, we love the smell of books! And an e-reader provokes no sweet sensations whatsoever! Those of us who love reading have moved beyond judging a book by its cover to developing a kind of friendship with the book, a literary companion, if you will.

 

Books open themselves up to you, they share with you and wait patiently until you can give them more of your time and attention. They are with you on trains and planes and yes of course, on the Subte as well. Though I have owned a Kindle in the past, my desire for the printed word will always beat out the desire for convenience.

 

It turns out that my instinct and attraction to the printed word might have positive repercussions not only for my mind, but for my body. What does science have to say about those thingamabobs? Check out this article and learn more! Until then, stick with real books!

Flannery O’Connor’s Revelation

“Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted.” These are the words written by Flannery O’Connor in her prayer journal sometime between January 1946 and September 1947. At this point, she did not know just how much of her work was to published and cherished by so many!

This past Thursday we learned about the great American author, Flannery O’Connor. We read her short stories “The Artificial Nigger”, “Good Country People”, “Revelation” and “Judgment Day”. Here’s the handout we shared with the group:

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor is able to arouse our sense of justice but at the same time draw us toward a greater self-awareness of who we are and how we see and treat “the other”. Her stories often mention prejudice and race in the Southern United States. Despite living in a different time and place, her words still speak clearly today and call us dwell upon what kind of people we are today. O’Connor’s revelation story can lead us to our own revelation, if we allow it to.