“The last invaders chronicled in the Book of Invasions were the Gaels, the first Celts, speakers of a Goidelic language. According to the mythic tradition the Gaels were descendants of the Sons of Míl, who came to Ireland from Spain (Hispania). They dispossessed the Tuatha Dé, causing them to create a new kingdom beneath the earth. When the Gaels reached Ireland, they encountered three eponymous goddesses of the land, Banbha, Fódla and Éiru. Each demanded a promise from the invaders that, if they were successful in establishing themselves in Ireland, they would name the land after her. The seer or fili Amhairghin assured Éiru that Ireland would bear her name and, in return, Éiru prophesied that the land would belong to the Gaels for all time,” (Green, 15).
Despite being understood as genuine history for most of modern history, the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann (Book of Invasions) is contemporarily considered to be sheer myth by today's scholars and historians, and is one of the seminal works of Celtic civilization as well as an early example of Western European literature in a local language. Appearing in the 11th century, it presents itself as an Irish history of pre-Christian society and despite it's contemporary identity as a book depicting legend, it survives as a singular source of knowledge about all happenings pre-historic on the Isle. The tome details the "taking" of Ireland by various peoples over a vast span of time. The penultimate of these people groups, meant to be the pagan Gods of ancient times, later fairy-folk to the Gales, and remaining so in modern Irish society, are the Tuatha Dé Danann who were defeated and forced into an underground realm by the current residents, the Gales of today, a group previously known as Milesians, said to have peopled Ireland after migrating from Iberia around 500 BC, if not long before. The Celts, whose name originates as a Greek exonym "keltoi" originally meant barbarian or foreigner, refers to a wide range of ancient tribal peoples culturally and genetically related to the modern Gales of Ireland, to the residents of Wales (Welsh for Gales), the rest of Britain, and other areas. Among those are the Galicians of Galicia in the Northwestern reaches of the Iberian peninsula, a place known to the Romans as Finisterra, the end of the Earth. Their traditional language, Galego, is a romance language (neo-latin) very closely related to Portuguese and Spanish, but the local cultural identity is that of a Celtic province. On the map, one can see that this part of the world is straight south from other Celtic speaking areas such as Brittany in western France and the British Isles, suggesting that the Atlantic in fact served as a highway for migration between these communities in pre-history. Considering the linguistic diversion from Latin which took place on Iberia, it remains a fascinating question how the linguistic substrates of Celtic peoples affected the way that Latin developed into modern Romance languages like Galego, Português and Español. Just as fascinating are archeological features of Galicia and the folklore that surrounds them in relation to those of Ireland and other identifiably Celtic cultural areas. Although the collection of reliable archeological evidence is rather out of the immediate reach of this author, what remains to be investigated is the surviving folklore and literary references thereto. Thus, the importance of the myth and legend, whether referencing reliable histories or not, survive as epistemological wealth to humankind and persevere across centuries to shed light upon an orally ingenious society, kept secret and sacred by its druidic class, even more so as the threat of Greco-Roman cultural domination loomed and proved itself worthy of pause. What cannot be under estimated, is the vast cultural influence that Celtic cultures had on the rest of Europe in ancient days as well as at the present. Citation: Green, Miranda Jane. Celtic Myths: The Legendary Past. Third University of Texas Press, 1998.
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Unquiet thoughts your civil slaughter stint,
and wrap your wrongs within a pensive heart: and you my tongue that makes my mouth a mint, and stamps my thoughts to coin them words by art, Be still: for if you ever do the like, I'll cut the string that makes the hammer strike. But what can stay my thoughts they may not start, or put my tongue in durance for to die? When as these eyes, the keys of mouth and heart, Open the lock where all my love doth lie; I'll seal them up within their lids forever: So thoughts and words and looks shall die together. How shall I then gaze on my mistress' eyes? My thoughts must have some vent: else heart will break. My tongue would rust as in my mouth it lies, If eyes and thoughts were free, and that not speak. Speak then, and tell the passions of desire; Which turns mine eyes to floods, my thoughts to fire. Thoughts are free, Die Gedanken sind frei, as those students of Heidelberg University so famously declared in the language of the now ubiquitous German folk song of 1800, an enduring expression of free thought, prominent in its inspiration of psychological resistance in the 20th century’s nationalistic political populism and authoritarian cults of personality. Hence, and even in our present stage of radical technological advancement, still none can read the thoughts of the mind’s eye. However, “unquiet thoughts” are those unvoiced but disturbing ponderings of a “pensive heart”, or they do not remain silent, but are communicated, socially or self-harmful ponderings that commit a kind of “civil slaughter” or otherwise “wrap wrongs” therein. Here the songster commands these to “stint” and censures his own “hammer”, or rather, his “tongue” which inevitably transforms his mouth to an industrious “mint” that “stamps thoughts to coin them” into various “words”. This potential for self-betrayal could initiate the narrator to “cut the string” in an effort to halt his verbal mechanism. Here, the extended metaphor employs an eloquent chain of symbols that dualistically pair the deep structures and pure consciousness of our cognitive faculties with the danger posed by their expression in the material and social world, pointing then to the principle of differentiation inherent in expressing words and the arbitrariness of the signified meaning potentially referenced thereby. In the second stanza, the poet queries with Socratic logic what can “stay” or stop his thoughts, pause and inhibit them, or jail for life, or permanently exile his tongue, i.e. put it “in durance for to die”, realizing that it is the eyes which are the “keys” to mouth and heart. In other words: What the mind does not “see”, it can neither develop into a wrongful thought, nor verbally reveal. The eyes relate to mouth and heart in a way that may open the “lock”, or safe place, “where all my love doth lie”. By “seal[ing] them up within their lids forever”, he hopes to halt his mouth and save himself of the self-betrayal that cause him to commit “civil slaughter”, but banishing “thoughts and words and looks” that they might “die together” does more harm would do more harm than good. When, for example the poet laments the inability to then “gaze upon my mistress’ eyes”, he worries that his heart will break without some indispensable venting of his thoughts (or mind), stating that his “tongue would rust” in his mouth if he cannot speak freely of the thoughts inspired by what he sees. He is then resolute that his tongue should be free. “Speak then, and tell the passions of desire”, although his eyes will weep and his thoughts will burn. The song text completes a sort of closed cycle of logic, revealing that though we are aware of the damage we do with words, it is also a necessity for self-preservation. The three stanzas are a fascinating take on the natural senses and tendencies as they are related to the dualistic character of cognizant human behavior, and the inclination to communicate much passion, for better or for worse. This poem was published in John Dowland’s First Book of Songs in 1597 and in its aesthetic simplicity, is an interesting take on freedom of speech, offering wisdom to those 426 years later who are weighing the pros and cons of being outspoken in a digital age. Though its seemingly mundane application to the problematics of social media may seem less than exciting, it speaks to the very present issues presented by a reliance on digital platforms to host human interactions. Despite the age of the song, its central problem is analogous to the struggles of our contemporaries. The public market and therefore, the dominant culture is flooded with tears brought about by reactions to what we see and the regularly harmful reactions we have to what others say or do. The window into the world gives new eyes and unless their lids are sealed, they will continue to reveal the contents of our hearts by spawning unquiet thoughts and their subsequent civil slaughters, committed by our rust-free tongues.
Freight Train is a masterpiece of Americana. The narrator wants to be buried near the train tracks, referring to a familiar place - old Chestnut Street. Living near the railroad track "on the other side of the tracks" refers also to a shared American experience with economic connotations of working class.
When I'm dead and in my grave / No more good times will I crave grave - a final resting place of the deceased; where your body is buried crave - to want something very much. Some people crave attention, others crave certain foods (especially pregnant mothers, as folk wisdom suggests). When people die, they no longer crave food, sleep, money, love or shelter. W.G. Sebald and Junot Diaz: Second-hand Narration in Search of Collective Truth Aaron Burns, M.M.11/4/2021 This article proposes a comparative reading of "Austerlitz" by W.G. Sebald, published in 2001, and "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz and published in 2007, as evidence of the influence of orality in cross-cultural postmodern narrative styles as it pertains to collective historical memory. My intention is to show that the second-hand narration in each novel creates a reactive connection between the reader and the central characters through simulated oral storytelling, thereby shedding light on a collective understanding of traumatic experiences and their implication on society as a whole. In addition to referencing the authors’ insights and other relevant sources, I’ve followed Dominick LaCapra’s comments on the "narrative of trauma” to further investigate the modes of storytelling employed in these novels, which so curiously stood out to me upon their initial reading and called me to associate these two very marked works of fiction.
Díaz offers some insight into his choice to detail Oscar Cabral’s life as the subject of his novel: “It’s one of the strangest things about the particular...there’s something about the way our minds work. The particular allows us to imagine in a more ample way, collectives,” (2013; 17:00). As stated by José F. Colmeiro in his essay “Historic Memory and Cultural Identity: From the Back Room to the Front Page”, “the formation of cultural identity and the construction of historic memory are parallel processes in which individual memory and collective historical memory are developed in reciprocity”, (p. 151). While incommensurable on various levels, these novels have many characteristics that lend themselves to correlation. Firstly, both are considered to be seminal works by their authors. For his novel, Dominican-American Díaz won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 by divulging a trenchantly written story that defies simplistic classification. In her essay, “Making it Home: A New Ethics of Immigration in Dominican Literature,” Ylce Irizarry writes: “The contemporary immigration narratives of Dominican American writer Junot Díaz are distinct not only from modernist European immigration literatures that privilege acculturation but also from Spanish Caribbean exile narratives that privilege nostalgia... His novel depicts characters that migrate cyclically and problematizes the exile community’s sense of identity and social status. These characters negotiate adverse racial constructs present in both the Dominican Republic and the United States,” (Peréz Rosario, p.89-90). W.G. Sebald, who suffered an untimely death soon after the publishing of Austerlitz, is considered by some to be one of the most influential and internationally significant prose writers of our time, hailed as the Thomas Mann or the Albert Camus of his day by American literary critic Michael Silverblatt1, to whom Sebald gave his final interview. In his synthesis upon the “Narrative of Trauma”, Dominick La Capra examines the work of J.M. Coetzee and W.G. Sebald, but substituting Junot Díaz for Coetzee, I propose that many of the same observations are valid: “They both (self-identify as) members of a generation ‘born later’, coming after the perpetration of atrocities and living in the aftermath and the heavy shadow of events they did not directly ‘perpetrate’ but for which they nonetheless bear a sense of responsibility if not guilt,” (2013: p. 55). LaCapra reports that “recently, the Holocaust and colonialism have been related historically and analytically in various ways, perhaps most pointedly in the argument that colonialism, especially in conjunction with racism, may be paralleled, and at times prepared for the Nazi genocide. This argument may raise doubts about the assertion of (its) uniqueness as indicative of an overly Eurocentric frame of reference. But, if one were to offer a simplistic equation, one might say that the Holocaust is to Sebald what colonialism and apartheid are to Coetzee,” (p. 55). It is Díaz’ theme of diaspora that will substitute for apartheid for the purposes of my analysis. "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" is prefaced by a quote from Marvel Comics’ the Fantastic Four “Of what import are brief, nameless lives...to Galactus??”2, which is then followed by a poem by Derek Walcott, dedicating the novel in some way to this idea of Caribbean collective identity in a post-colonial context3. In an interview for the Chicago Humanities Festival entitled: “Diaz: Immigrants, Masculinity, Nerds and Art”, Díaz explains that the topic of “El Jefe”, Rafael Trujillo and his dictatorship in the Dominican Republic has been oversaturated in Caribbean literature. In Oscar Wao, he was drawn to write about Dominican-Americans nerds, characters who went to college and who in their youth, adopted fantasy and mythology from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to survive, two characteristics which signaled non-Dominican-ness to his baffled Dominican friends while he was writing the novel. In reference to Middle-Earth, Díaz sheds light on the importance of narrator Yunior’s perceived hyperbole when he insists that Oscar and the entire Cabral family are the victims of a curse, namely the “fukú” of colonialism detailed in the book’s opening. “(Thanks to) Caribbean history, I always connected to people who were from shattered, post-genocidal societies... (such as the) people sent into diaspora by the Witch-king of Angmar... That is why these metaphors are really important.” (2013; 20:00). Another primary similarity between these works is the shared premise that the titular protagonist is disconnected from his country of origin in the diaspora and seeks a reconnection to his roots. In the case of Diaz’ novel, Oscar Cabral identifies both as a Dominican and an American, although he was born in the United States, while in Sebald’s piece, Jacques Austerlitz has only repressed memories of his identity as a central European Jew who in his youth was transported to Wales and adopted. He does not discover his real name until well into the story. This identity-crisis of sorts is also a quality related to both authors, whose removal from the countries in question is a source of great inquiry and inspiration. In the Queer Art of Failure, Jack Halberstam explains Sebald’s protagonist further: “Austerlitz cannot remember the Holocaust because he was removed from its violent orbit, and yet it haunts him as an absence and as a childhood he never had...a menacing abyss in the center of his autobiography”. Most importantly, both novels of Sebald and Díaz bear narrational fruit through a first-person storyteller, who lends credit to oral tradition or what I’ll call “word-of-mouth", by revealing many details about the protagonists and their fate that can only have been passed to them from the words of others. The narrator Yunior tells Oscar’s story with both dialogue and in a syntactically familiar indirect speech, but he awkwardly reports what Oscar said, experienced, felt and thought to such detail that it hardly seems believable. He validates the information he is passing on by referring to testimonies from Oscar, Oscar’s mother, and from other eye witnesses, but the details liken those given by an omniscient narrator, rather than from a family friend, even extending beyond generations to recount the detailed experiences of Oscar’s mother and grandfather. For example, in a tragic scene which is Oscar’s final appearance in the novel, Yunior writes “Oscar imagined seeing his whole family,…(he) sent telepathic messages to his mom...to his tío...to Lola...to all the women he had ever loved, (p. 321). Here, the news of what happens to Oscar is delivered to his family and then to Yunior supposedly by Clives, an eye-witness. As Yunior is merely the (likely unfaithful)4 boyfriend of Oscar’s sister, this narrative style leaves the premise a bit wanting for realism, but does recall the idea of oral story telling as a source mode for insuring the survival of traumatic family lore. At any rate, Yunior’s is not intended to be an omniscient voice, but rather part of a chain in which information through the rhetorical distance of spoken word from one generation to the next. He takes it upon himself to write Oscar’s story and that is the premise of the novel as we come to find out. Although recorded in an attempt to archive Oscar’s story and avoid Oscar's total annihilation, the narrator takes unconventional approaches towards the story, and in so doing simulates elements of an oral tradition. At inconspicuous moments, Yunior addresses the reader directly, which constitutes a breaking of the “fourth wall” in theatrical terms, an exposition beyond the limits of soliloquy that subtly invites the reader to interact with story and its characters in a way that both reveals its manufactured nature and its potential for collective resonance. With the unaccentuated use of the first-person plural, Yunior directly addresses the reader as a sort of interlocutor, enlisted to receive and interact with the story in a way reminiscent of oral tradition. It reveals that the readership is not only a part of the story itself, but that it is wields power over the fate of central characters. At the end of a chapter detailing the escape of Oscar’s mother from a threatening Dominican Republic, Yunior declares: “Here she is, closer now to the mother we will need her to be if we want Oscar and Lola to be born,” (p. 164). This distortion undermines the traditional narrative mode in its explicit invitation to the reader to root for the characters, to “want” things for them, while exposing the plot as an unfinished story of imperfect aspect that requires the reader’s active participation for its fulfillment and completion. In this way, Díaz recruits an element of oral storytelling modes to express that Oscar’s story must be actively received and passed on again to keep the protagonists’ memory relevant and tangible. The result is the introduction of a certain idée fixe which commands the involvement of the reader and prohibits any passive reading of the novel as a whole. In essence, it impedes the readers ability to inhabit the story solely from the point of view of its narrator, Yunior, and instead invites readers to take up the story as their own, not unlike the moment of hand-off at a relay race. In Díaz’ novel, details about the atrocities of the Trujillo dictatorship are relegated to contextual footnotes embedded in the narrative, where in Sebald, the atrocities of the Nazi genocide are hauntingly absent, until the protagonist finally discovers his origins and reluctantly retraces the steps of his murdered family. "To a large extent, the novel is designed as a monologue of the protagonist filtered through the mouth of the first-person narrator, who gropes his way from his architectural and cultural-historical excursions to the actual memory work, which concerns his repressed prehistory," (Fuchs, p. 41). LaCapra uses Heidigger’s term “Dasein” to the feeling of “being back there” and the traumatic immediacy of reliving a shattering experience (2001, p.89-90). Traumatic “Dasein haunts or possesses the self, is acted out or compulsively repeated, and may not be adequately symbolized or accessible in language.” Memory which is “disseminated into the public sphere” is an “attempt to acknowledge and relate to the past”, (p. 91). “Witnesses and survivors who typically have been overwhelmed by the excess of traumatizing events...are both living archives and (victims).” The unnamed and mysterious first-person narrator in Sebald’s Austerlitz, in turn, often uses indirect discourse, a special verb form in German known as Konjunktiv I, when Jacques Austerlitz gives his first-person narrative and retells what others have said to him. This conjunctive mode is used to repeat what others have said and creates a necessary distance between the speech of Austerlitz and of those he is indirectly quoting, although this distinction is not evident in the English translation. Despite this standard grammar, the anonymous narrator also circumvents this mode and goes for an embedded first-person approach when quoting the character of Austerlitz. Much like Russian dolls, first-person narratives are nested within each other for extended passages in the novel, curiously resulting in first person passages that may end like a childhood game of telephone: “We reached Nuremberg around noon, and when I saw this name in the unfamiliar German spelling on a signal box, I remembered what Vera had said about my father's report about the National Socialists' congress in 1936 roaring enthusiasm of the people gathered here at the time,… said Austerlitz,” (p. 321). The detail of personal recollections that are embedded all throughout the novel neglect to suspend disbelief, causing the reader to stop and consider – how can this unknown narrator recount these experiences in such minute detail? The answer is by tapping into oral tradition. In this passage, Austerlitz is searching for his past. The father’s own experience is passed to a family friend, then to Austerlitz, then to this narrator and finally to the reader in a sort of five-link chain. It is in moments like these that oral storytelling becomes the primary mode of communication. The reader becomes aware that by consuming the story, one becomes another link in the chain, suggesting that the interlocutor, listener or reader alone can inherit, validate, and pass on history as its witness. In a later passage, the narrator proves this by becoming Austerlitz’s heir of sorts: “I don’t know, said Austerlitz, what all this means. And so I’m going to continue looking for my father, and for Marie de Verneuil as well.... He gave me the key to his house in Alderney Street. I could stay there whenever I liked, he said, and study the black and white photographs, which, one day, would be all that was left of his life,” (p. 414). While Oscar Cabral doctors his feelings of social isolation and sexual inadequacy by taking a deep dive into the world of fantasy, the amnesic adult Jacques Austerlitz for many years distracts himself a thirst for knowledge about architecture and history, rather than allowing himself to recall his own repressed memories and discover his own identity. Interacting with an unnamed narrator, the reader takes a rhetorical journey and finds that the truth about the terrifying emptiness of a vanished past is collective, without transition and beyond grasp. It is thus that the narrator records the recollections and words of Austerlitz, in an attempt to validate and pass on his story to future generations. Bibliography Colmeiro, José E. “Memoria histórica e identidad cultural: Del cuarto de atrás a la primera plana” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 35 (2001): 151-163. Díaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007. ---. This is How You Lose Her. New York: Riverhead Books, 2012. Segal, Peter. “Junot Diaz: Immigrants, Masculinity, Nerds and Art.” Chicago Humanities Festival. 16 October 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=TA8X6TUA83k. Accessed 1 Oct 2021. Fuchs, Anne. Die Schmerzensspuren der Geschichte, Zur Poetik der Erinnerung in W.G. Sebalds Prosa. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. LaCapra, Dominick. History, Literature, Critical Theory. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2013. LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Perez Rosario, Vanessa; Ed. Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration, Narratives of Displacement. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. Sebald, W.G.. Austerlitz [2001]. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 2017. Sebald, W.G.. Austerlitz. Translated by Anthea Bell, Narrated by Richard Matthews. Random House Audio, 2017. Audiobook. Schwartz, Lynne Sharon, Editor. The Emergence of Memory, Conversations with W.G. Sebald. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007. Silverblatt, Michael. “Interview with W.G. Sebald”. Bookworm. KCRW. 6 Dec. 2001. www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/bookworm/w-g- sebald. Accessed 12 Oct. 2021. Junot Díaz’ novel This Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead books, 2012) is a quick read if you can tolerate the montón of abusive language and the glut of misogyny that abides in the main characters from start to finish. Unabashedly creepy, the narrator Yunior is a Dominican male, which seems to be his excuse for being the kind of person one might describe as a complete asshole. The book opens: “I’m not a bad guy, I know how that sounds – defensive, unscrupulous – but it’s true. I’m like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good,” (p. 3). However, it seems to the average reader that there is scarcely a redemptive quality about this person other than his humanity.
When caught red-handed cheating on his girlfriend, he comes up with a disingenuous line that is repeated again to other partners later in his rocky love life. “I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try,” (p. 25). Pathetically, he says something just like it to Veronica (la Flaca) on page 84: “This can work, you say, we just have to let it.” It’s definitely Yunior who does not try to live up to his role as a monogamous or trusted sexual partner to any of his girls, most of whom he unabashedly refers to as sucias. No stone is left unturned as Díaz’s character Yunior relentlessly considers women in terms of sexual conquest, referring to the hips, curves, tetas and genitalia of each woman in his wake. With Carribbean slang and Spanish dialogue integrally woven throughout, Díaz writes a dodgy narration in the second person that attempts to connect directly with the readers and put them in Yunior’s unworthy shoes. “You, Yunior, have a girlfriend named Alma,” (p. 45) … “Alma is …. one of those Sonic Youth comic-book-reading alternatinas without whom you might have never lost your virginity.” In fact, Díaz’ Yunior is nothing more than an alter ego for himself, a case made evident by the metafictional qualities of the novel, which refers to its own creation. Caught cheating by another girlfriend, Yunior narrates a poor excuse back to himself: “Baby, you say; baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.” (p. 48). “Both your father and your brother were sucios. Shit, your father used to take you on his pussy runs, leave you in the car while he ran up into cribs to bone his girlfriends. Your brother was no better, boning girls in the bed next to yours. Sucios of the worst kind, and now it’s official: you are one, too. You had hoped the gene missed you skipped a generation, but clearly you were kidding yourself,” (p. 161). Yunior blames his scandalous sexual inadequacy (an inability to treat women, and presumably himself, with respect), upon his Dominican roots and the other men in his life, something verified by his mother and his friends (who partake in womanizing and extra-marital affairs). When he meets the “mujerón of your dreams”, (p. 170), she asks his mother about rumors of his casual sexual relationship with an older woman in the neighborhood, Miss Lora: “Doña, es verdad que tu hjo taba rapando una vieja? Your mother shakes her head in disgust. He’s just like his father and his brother. Dominican men, right, Doña? These three are worse than the rest.” “Your girl catches you cheating. (Well, actually she’s your finacée, but hey, in a bit it so won’t matter.) She could have caught you with one sucia, she could have caught you with two but as you’re a total batshit cuero who didn’t ever empty his e-mail trash can, she caught you with fifty! Sure, over a six-year period, but still. Fifty fucking girls? Goddamn.” (p. 175). The reader is left to wonder, is this guy trying to brag or is he incredibly delusional about relationships and self-respect? When Yunior, who eventually becomes an author of novels and a college professor (just like Díaz) refers to real love, does he mean it only from the point of view of his fiancée, because it’s not believable that this character himself would even be capable to love himself, much less another person. “She’ll stick around for a few months because you dated for a long long time. Because you went through much together—her father’s death, your tenure madness...And because love, real love, is not so easily shed,” (p. 175). “You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda. You compose a mass e-mail disowning all your sucias. You block their e-mails. You change your phone number. You stop drinking You stop smoking. You claim you’re a sex addict and start attending meetings. You blame your father. You blame your mother. You blame the patriarchy. You blame Santo Domingo, (p. 176). When he realizes how truly pathetic he is, he feigns regret in a self-righteous sort of way, opting for an encore act of deception, but his tricks are unconvincing to his scorned partner: “You claim that you were sick, you claim that you were weak—It was the book! It was the pressure! And every hour like clockwork you say that you’re so so sorry. You try it all but one day she will simply sit up in and say, No more,” (p. 177). Díaz and Yunior rely on a conversational charm in the narration that is meant to be like an open book, unafraid of judgement from the reader. Although he does not consider himself to be a bad guy, he consistently treats women poorly and is shocked when other people treat him poorly. It makes for a character that is not self-aware and who lives by the rules of double standard. He is unable to empathize with the victims of his misogyny, but wants to call an alarm when he himself is a victim of others. It results in an inability for the reader to feel sorry for him in any real way. Moving to Boston for work, he reports that “Almost on cue a lot of racist shit starts happening.... White people pull up at traffic lights and scream at you with a hideous rage... It’s fucking scary… Three times, drunk whitedudes try to pick fights with you in different parts of the city. … You take it all very personally. I hope someone drops a fucking bomb on this city, you rant. This is why no people of color want to live here. Why all my black and Latino students leave as soon as they can,” (p. 178-179). Readers may wonder if in fact students are leaving because they have a complete asshole for a professor, given that we know how he may view his female students. In an attempt to win sympathy from the reader because of a bad break-up, Yunior fumbles when he focuses on his idea of his ex’s value in terms of outdated gender stereotypes. “The ex, as you’re now calling her, always cooked...set aside all the wings for you. That night you drink yourself into a stupor, spend two days recovering. You figure that’s as bad as it gets. You figure wrong. During finals a depression rolls over you, so profound you doubt there is a name for it. It feels like you’re being slowly pincered apart, atom by atom. (p.179). Yunior’s awful behavior and prejudicial view of women garner no support from most people who are more sensible about trusted relationships. As the crassly mannered and overly-sexualized sort, he cannot see past his immediate carnal desires to find emotional stability and personal well-being, as we see in an exchange with yet another girlfriend: “Are we going to see each other? She asks on week four, and you almost say yes but then your idiocy gets the best of you. It depends, you say. On what? She is instantly guarded...Where was that guard when she let the banilejo fuck her without a condom? - On whether you’re planning to give me ass anytime soon,” (p. 184). To wrap this up, This is how you lose her recounts an adult’s conquests and failures in sex and love, but reads like an adolescent boy’s misguided guide to womanizing and does not support a convincing story arc, given that the main character does not progress or evolve into a different state of mind, but remains a misguided jerk to the very end. With an unending string of sorry souls who fall into bed with him before realizing who they are dealing with, he is compelled to be a creep and live out regrettable actions that prove he does not treat others how he would choose to be treated himself. “You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those, (p. 193). Unlike Díaz’ previous novel, which was also narrated by Yunior, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), this novel lacks in scope and creative genius. Oscar Wao consisted of much of the same overly-sexualized machismo and adolescent aesthetic, but incorporated magical realism (faceless perpetrators, Trujillo's necromancic reputation) and boasted an archival narration that brought sympathetic characters to life, while enlightening readers on a legacy of colonialism, dictatorship, superstition and diaspora in the Dominican community. Admittedly, I would have liked to see even the smallest mention to the existence of Oscar or his sister Lola in this novel, given that it takes place in some of the same time-frame and has the same narrator. What’s worse is that in the final pages of This Is How You Lose Her, Díaz/Yunior promises what must prove to be a similar forthcoming novel: “You should really write the cheater’s guide to love. You think? I do,” (p. 212). The Cheater’s Guide to Love came out in 2014 and I have my doubts about the meaningfulness of love as portrayed by the character of Yunior. It will be a gamble, based on my mixed thoughts on the first two books by Díaz that I’ve read. Photo by Ruddy Corporan on Unsplash. Jack (or Judith) Halberstam, author of “Trans*” (2017), is an expert on finding and examining the value of “in-between” places. This is a concept that can aid in describing experiences not unique to queer theory, but that are also typical of discussions about transculturation, cultural syncretism, and human migration. In the introduction to her book “The Queer Art of Failure” (Duke University Press 2011), she identifies these medial states of being as being secure from the hooks and snares that constantly lure people toward the hegemony of “binary formulations”, which are essentially a construct of tradition, and not a tangible reality. As we know, the world is not just black and white, but exists in many shades between. By responding to cultural products that range from mainstream and commercial animated films that were designed for children to serious literature and visual art, she institutes an alternation between low- and high-theory that effectively delivers the reader to an unconventional and “more chaotic realm of knowing and unknowing” in order to “dismantle the logics of success and failure,” (p. 2), thereby undermining the definition of achievement in our “heteronormative and capitalist society”, which tends to define people in terms of their ability or willingness to procreate and accumulate wealth to which we are subjected. The dismantling of “the logics of success” and the recognition that failure is an art in and of itself can be considered subversive within the realm of heteropatriarchy, but is in fact liberating for those who accept and practice it: “Failure is something queers do and have always done exceptionally well; for queers failure can be a style, to cite Quentin Crisp, or a way of life, to cite Foucault,” (p. 3). Halberstam argues that from failure emerges a transformative “knowledge from below” (p. 11) that is not commonly accepted as standard erudition and is therefore insight that has been subjugated, yet offers its own rewards in its ability to free people from the “punishing norms that discipline behavior” (p. 3) in a society that values exceptionalism and abhors defeat while turning a blind eye to the “tilted scales of race, class and gender”. From the unsavory acts of “losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, and unbecoming” (p. 2) springs forth a counterknowledge that allows for the establishment of relevant archives that generate creativity, discovery and defiance.
This conversation is thought-provoking and brings so many questions to mind. Will the masses ever face the failure of our shared delusion in favor of manifest destiny and exceptionalism. If so, what will be learned? Is it the failure of our government and constitution(s) or the citizenry that the incarceration rate in the United States is is over 2.3 million people? If failure is an art for (queer) people, at what point does it become intentional? Does the bright side of defeat negate the validity of the adage: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?” In support of her treatment of failure as a uniquely queer art, Halberstam discusses many other fascinating topics such as an extensive analysis of the beneficial act of forgetting, along with an examination of the relationships between feminism and trans-identity, homosexuality and fascism. I hope to tackle more of this amazing book in future posts. Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash. In two wildly different novels by W.G. Sebald and Junot Diaz, second-hand narration creates a unique connection to the reader through simulated oral storytelling and thereby sheds light on collective acts of human society as it pertains to the fate of central characters. A reading of Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) bears narrational fruit through its storyteller Yunior, who reflects upon his interactions with the young Oscar in a way that gives credit to oral tradition, while relegating intertextual historical elements to a vast network of footnotes. This body of facts is contextually incorporated to contrast the life of a young man with the curse or “fúku” of colonialism, which is presented as a backdrop to this intimate bildungsroman. The style of Yunior’s narration is uniquely intercultural where Caribbean Spanish, as well as intensely specific pop-cultural references from anglophone culture are scattered throughout the story to bring a sense of collective culture to the reader. This culminates when Yunior breaks the “fourth wall” by directly inviting the reader to collectively decide whether this story is true or mere fantasy. Similarly, the German novel Austerlitz (2001) meanders through a thicket of indirect speech to reveal that the reader alone can validate the story in its consumption. A grown adult, the character of Austerlitz realizes his life story through interactions with the unnamed narrator, taking the reader on a journey which reveals that the truth about the past and the Holocaust is collective and perhaps beyond all grasp.
“How am I to present a hypocrite on the stage without making him perform outwardly the gestures of an honest man?” - Molière
As Molière’s 400th birthday approaches, the international community celebrates the evergreen relevance of his enlightened age satire, Tartuffe (1664). The dramatist is a true rock star of French culture, proven by his fame-of-one-name, something that even Louis XIV himself cannot boast. This reputation is due in no small part to his lapidary pièce de théâtre about the hypocrisy of an imposter and his faux piety, which speaks to audiences across time and space. The treatment of universal themes in Molière’s brilliant satire demolishes falsehood and reveals truth. For Molière, farcical satire did much more to change society than did the philosophical treatises of his contemporaries. In Tartuffe we recognize that hypocrisy is still alive and well in daily life from the banks of the Seine to the banks of the Missouri river. Therefore, it’s not to be ignored that the only known operatic work based on Molière’s Tartuffe rightly takes its unique place among masterpieces of American opera – and this, thanks to a Kansas boy. Indeed, Kansas native, Kirke Mechem (b. 1925) is one of the most influential voices in the wide-ranging genres of classical music for generations of American performers of the 20th and 21st centuries. His compositions have in fact delighted listeners in over 42 countries and range in scope from symphonies to chamber music. Moreover, his choral works have been an integral part of the American choral experience for decades, with several seminal works such as the secular yet otherworldly Island in Space (Dona Nobis Pacem). The composition was written to the words of Apollo 9 astronaut, Russell Schweikart, who viewed Earth from space and said that he heard true silence. The Stanford graduate studied at Harvard under Randall Thompson and in 2012 received an honorary Doctorate from the University of Kansas for "notable contributions to choral music and opera". ISLAND IN SPACE (DONA NOBIS PACEM) 1990 Augustana Choir - Island in Space - Duke Chapel Born in Wichita and raised in Topeka, the composer is best known to Kansas City audiences for his opera John Brown, about the antagonistic abolitionist and his confidant, the brilliant orator Frederick Douglass, in their anti-slavery campaign. Written in the 1990’s, it didn’t receive its premiere until 2008 at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and still today its themes on the relationship between violence and justice in the American story have never been more relevant. Mechem’s operas are written in a very accessible style, but remain inaccessible in definitive studio recordings have not yet been produced. In contrast, his other vocal works are widely performed and appreciated across the United States. As a choral composer, he is known for motets, folksongs, anthems, choral variations and his American Madrigals such as his arrangement of Kansas Boys. A wonderful example of his virtuosity in writing for the human voice can be heard in Blow Ye the Trumpet. The atheist composer fashioned a powerful prayer, excerpted from his opera, John Brown. It has been scored for both mixed and men’s choruses and is a fabulous example of his composition and influence on young America. Blow ye the trumpet, blow, Sweet is Thy work, my God, my King. I’ll praise my Maker with all my breath. O happy is the man who hears. Why should we start, and fear to die, With songs and honors sounding loud. Ah, lovely appearance of death. The Singing Statesmen - "Blow Ye the Trumpet" - Kirke Mechem
Even still, his first opera, Tartuffe (1980), the only operatic treatment of Molière’s famous satire, was an immediate success on the international scene. With a libretto in English, written by the composer himself, the opera was premiered at San Francisco Opera. In the years since, it has seen over 400 productions in six countries including Canada, China, Russia, Austria. Germany, and the United States.
Mechem wrote all of his own libretti, and Tartuffe required a rhyming English translation of Molière’s French which retains key dialogue. As librettist, he also makes several changes in the original play, most notably by omitting the enlightened, Cléante, enlarging the women’s roles and doing away with Molière’s Hellenistic ending that formulaically featured le Roi Soleil himself saving the day. Mechem’s version has “a sillier, more Mozartean-style conclusion of daffy reverse trickery: Orgon’s kin disguise themselves as public officials, fake an arrest, and Tartuffe flees the scene, to swindle another day,” - Pierre Ruhe (Arts Atlanta). Mechem addressed this change in his written commentaries on the opera. “There are really two Tartuffes by Molière—the three-act comedy he originally wrote, and the five-act comic morality play he was forced to make of it in order to get it past the censors. Unfortunately, we have only the latter, but evidence suggests that the first version was a straight satire of human character. The tedious disclaiming of impiety and the deus ex machina ending are generally acknowledged to be unwelcome additions.” The storytelling of this stage work relies in part on its format as opera buffa, meaning that the musical structure draws inspiration from 18th century works and offers a clear delineation between its arias, cabalettas and ensembles. The structure of the stage work rather resembles neoclassicism of Stravinsky’s Rakes Progress (1951) and the lyricism of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa (1958). In contrast, the music seems to be the polar opposite of the rhythmically experimental minimalism and the avant-garde operatic conceptions that were introduced in Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach (1976) and Satyagraha (1979). In this regard, the composer's treatment of the piece in a somewhat stylized manner is the outcome of his musical style in response to the text and not, as is sometimes misunderstood, a spoof on operatic traditions. Pierre Ruhe wrote: “Mechem’s construction is very fluid, moving gracefully from semi-sung parlando to light arietta to ensemble numbers and back. The score tingles with ear-friendly American modernism, evoking Stravinsky and Barber and comic musical quotations from Wagner and Beethoven: (a perfectly timed) knock at the door. Da da da dum.” Mechem describes the opera harmonically as “patently 20th Century American”, but regarding its form he says, “Tartuffe is a 'numbers' opera because I wanted to revive the flamboyant spirit of Molière, which considerably predates 18th century opera. We know that Molière was a great actor of farce; it is a mistake to load onto his plays the dark 'social commentary' style of the 20th century.” Michem claims to have a sensibility that discourages the trivialization or brutalization of music, which he feels is commonplace in our day. Moreover, he continues “In Molière’s plays, not only hypocrites but con men (Tartuffe), dupes (Orgon), and naïves (Mariane and Damis) are laughed at for mouthing words that the audience recognizes as shopworn clichés. To get the same effect in opera, these characters must occasionally sing in styles equally recognizable as musical clichés”.
The adaptation is known for its gay instrumentation and musical tags, such as the hymnic harmonies associated with the faker, Tartuffe and the flourishing absurdity of the leitmotif that accompanies the duped bourgeois Orgon, a bass-baritone. Appearing early in the score, the cheeky folk ballad “Fair Robin, I love” is perhaps the most famous song and a main theme, as it is sung by Dorine (soubrette soprano), who as the maid in service of a wealthy family is perhaps the wisest of characters. In the opera’s finale “all’s well that ends well”, her playful tune is adopted by her superiors who reprise the theme in a contrapuntal ensemble that exposes the lies of Tartuffe, the ostentatious fraudster who had successfully preyed upon the family.
With his modern interpretation of Molière's masterpiece, Kirke Mechem has secured a place in an underappreciated history of opera, among other American greats: Virgil Thompson, and his more popular countrymen George Gershwin, Aaron Copland and Leonard Berstein. “The composer cannot, of course, be his own judge. I can say only that I have tried, like Yeats, ‘to rediscover an art of the theatre which shall be joyful, fantastic, extravagant, whimsical, beautiful, resonant and altogether reckless.’ It sounds like a good description of Molière.” — Kirke Mechem SOURCES & LINKS 1 https://www.kirkemechem.com 2 https://www.artsatl.org/opera-review-kirke-mechems-clever-tartuffe-gets-a-winning-show-from-capital-city-opera/ 3 https://www.kcur.org/arts-life/2013-01-26/composer-kirke-mechem-on-realizing-what-opera-could-be 4 https://www.kcmoliere400in2022.com/ Tenor Aaron Barksdale-Burns is a Master of Music and a freelance musician, writer and translator who is native to Kansas City. Aaron studied music and French at DePaul University and the University of Missouri at Kansas City. He is also linguist, specializing in Germanic and Romance language, currently collaborating with both the German Goethe-Institut Pop-Up in KC and the Alliance Française de Kansas City. With his family, he previously owned and managed Californos Westport (1988-2019) and hosted a monthly Opera Supper there from 2007-2019. As a soloist, Aaron has performed across the Midwest and in Europe. He was greatly influenced by performing Kirke Mechem’s compositions throughout his musical training. He lives in Midtown Kansas City with his husband of 12 years, Christopher Barksdale, choreographer and former principal dancer at the Kansas City Ballet (1988-2009). “Each challenge, no matter how difficult, is met with a spirit of determination and anticipation”, Head of School Elimane Mbengue.
The gradual process of leveraging technology to enhance the classroom experience has been turned on its head with the urgent need for distance learning. At Académie Lafayette, a charter school and model full-immersion program in Kansas City, Missouri, where subjects are taught in French starting in Kindergarten, an extraordinary revolution is taking place regarding the way we learn. Due to the viral threat currently at hand, our adaptations have
Something so small as the letter U is more troublesome than you may think!
Why do we say, for example, an Earthling, but a European creature? We'll find out more about the letter U and it's 7 or more pronunciations in English. Reflecting on the letters and sounds brings some insight into our language and this video gives a complete overview followed by explanations and examples.
Please visit the playlist below to hear recordings of our rehearsals. Guitarist Joe Carignan-Garcia and I put together a set of 9 pieces that showcased the brilliance of Dowland's genius songwriting, of which seven are in the playlist below, such hits as 'Clear or Cloudy', 'Sweet, Stay a While', and 'Shall I Sue?'. On themes of love and the melancholy feelings that inevitably accompany fondness, these renaissance period ayres are a delight to the modern ear. Please leave a comment or become a follower on my Soundcloud page, where I post much of my classical music audio. Thanks for listening!
It has broken us, it has crushed us, it has drowned us,
Oh King of the star-bright Kingdom of Heaven! The wind has consumed us, swallowed us, As timber is devoured by crimson fire from Heaven.
Sea-Snatch is a short text, written into the margins of an illuminated manuscript by an anonymous poet or scribe, known to be 8th to 9th Century Irish monk. Originally written in medieval Gaelic, the poem was translated into English by British linguist, Kenneth H. Jackson and set to music by American composer Samuel Barber. Recording: Aaron Burns, Tenor; Lamar Sims, piano.
This was an amazingly fun day, on which I performed several sets of Irish music, including these showstoppers! This shows a bit of my musical range, performance abilities and my sensibilities for the English language. Please enjoy!
The best part of learning another language is that you discover things about your own language that you never realized before. This includes new words, facts, history, diversity, culture and much more! Let's stop and smell the roses, by exploring the letter H together. I'll guide you through the mysteries of the mute and aspirate H in English phonics. A second video details what I call Transformative H, or H as it is combined with other letters to create digraphs and new spellings or even new sounds. The letter H is super interesting in all of the languages I speak and its characteristics are similar or shared across the board.
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Aaron BurnsI'm an entrepreneurial linguist and musician, a European in a former life, and an indefatigable conversationalist (like June). I'm available for hire as coach, teacher, writer, editor, analyst, consultant, marketeer, content specialist, translator, interpreter, MC, facilitator or performer. This blog is a portfolio of my interest and abilities in various languages of which I have extensive knowledge. I am also a student of several other languages that I am less intimately familiar with and they all bring me great joy. I currently hold degrees in Language and Literature as well as in Vocal Music Performance, both fields in which poetics and interpretation are no strangers. Archives
December 2023
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