Serena's Span365 Blog

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2007-04-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

Cien Años de Soledad sat on my shelf long before I took this course but I had never read it. I kept telling myself that I didn't have the time, that I'd pick it up when I had enough hours in the day to wander leisurely through it. But instead I read it at top gear, jumping into into it at every spare moment, just to keep up with class and avoid the untimely revelation of secrets in unread chapters. Every time I picked it up 20 years would go by, the cast of characters would be shaken up with a handful of births, deaths, and people loosing their sanity. At least I kept my Josés and Aurelianos straight. In the end I was left with a powerful impression of the book as a whole, undiluted by too much of my own life happening in between. Amongst the most vivid of my vicarious memories are those from Macondo, like time-lapse footage of a plant that sprouts up from a patch of barren earth, sends out a multitude of shoots during the wild rotation of day and night, then rapidly withers, crumbles, and is blown away like dust.

I enjoyed this class for a number of reasons. Firstly, the reading selection was very good, exposing us to writers from across the map who treated the themes of the course in diverse and interesting ways. Secondly, I liked the themes, they structured the course well and provided some illuminating points of inquiry into the texts. Lastly, although it often pained me to sit down and do them, the blogs were good. I liked being able to access this pool of ideas and they made me stop to really think about what I had just read and capture impressions that would otherwise be forgotten. That said, I will definitely enjoy returning to these authours at a later date without having to tax my brain over them every Sunday night.

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Cien Años - End

2007-03-25T23:56:00.001-07:00

So I think I’ll talk about change. We witness Macondo transforming from when the first humble houses were established into the throes of a violent modernization. Initially, the town becomes rooted into the ground with the first births of children and the first burials of the dead, then eventually it becomes drawn into the reach of governmental authority with the arrival of the magistrate, and tainted by political colours which draw the men out into a protracted and pointless war. The foreign influences that flow into Macondo increase in volume and have further points of origin; from the strange and enchanting objects peddled intermittently by gypsies to the permanent market of goods of increasing technological sophistication. These products have profound impacts on daily life; the light bulb lengthens the day and the train enables rapid and far-reaching transportation. The arrival of the gringos – with their cultural impositions and labour exploitation – seem to signal the beginning of the end.

However, how many of these changes are, in a way, superficial? Have they actually altered the character of the people, the way they interact with each other, or the way they perceive everyday life? I’ll give an example; say that a McDonalds is built outside of the US in an otherwise un-corporate town. Though I'd say this is a bad thing for the negative impacts that it would have on local people, I disagree with those who call this total Americanization, a cultural disaster, a signal that the world is becoming homogenous. This underestimates how strong and deep local cultural meanings and values are. Likewise, I was interested to see in class when we made our list of “cambios” and “continuidades” that the latter category was bigger, that more remained the same. That recurring characteristics, enduring practices, persistent obsessions, and eternal circumstances carry on as if written into the landscape upon which all of this flux occurs. Some things may change, but through it all what is essential about Macondo and its characters remains intact.

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Weird

2007-03-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

You have to see this for yourself. Painstakingly handcrafted newborn babies called Reborns. Take Beveline for example - wet pouty lips, mottled chubby skin, deep shining eyes - for the price of $5200 on eBay. Here are some features copied straight from the page:

!!An AMAZING Head of ULTRA-REALISTIC Hand Rooted Mohair!!
Doe Suede Jointed Cloth Body Weighted to have a Realistic Baby Feel
**Amazing Factory Made Baby Fat Inserts**
Full Vinyl limbs with soft body, for Optimum Cuddliness & Posablity

This is a serious business. Beveline was "born" not "made" and is "adopted" rather than "bought". The artist calls for "a mature loving parent to adopt and take care of her" - this is not a child's toy or a mere decoration. What's more, only one of each Reborn model is made, making the buyer unique like any biological parent. The only thing missing, which could be solved with, say, some tubes pumping warm water, is human warmth. Las Hortensias anyone?

To take a look enter the item number 270094789246 in the eBay browser.

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Cien Años - Part Two

2007-03-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

There are two theories of time that are seen in all novels and films about its disruptions, such as traveling through it or following alternative branches. In one, the future is a nebulous and shifting realm of possibilities, possibilities determined by our actions in the present. In the other, the future is a fixed reality that the present inevitably becomes, there is one future and it depends upon our acting it out.

Cien Años de Soledad adheres to the second theory, but with some interesting quirks and lapses. From early on in the novel we get a strong impression that premonitions and destiny are to be taken very seriously. Each character comes into the world with his or her future already written; this can be read by certain individuals by signs in nature, fortune telling cards, and predictions from family history.

In the second part of the novel, Marquez plays with time in various ways, while still keeping the lives of his characters under the dominion of an inevitable fate. At one point, for example, the renegade present gets the details wrong and a man who is not destined to die that night is killed by one who is. Time corrects itself by sending two bullets to strike down Captain Aquiles Ricardo after his lethal shot at Aureliano Jose, yet nothing can be done for the girl who would have married the latter, the cards showing her future are left blank. With a small margin of error, there is only one future that may occur. Another example is how characters can lapse behind future scenarios that depend upon their actions. This is true in the case of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who finds that his orders are being carried out before he even gives them.

Even though their destiny/future is fairly rigid, the characters do have ways of tinkering with it. Ursula, for her part, is against naming anyone else Jose Arcadio or Aureliano. When names carry so much importance for character, naming children differently might improve the fate of the family. It would at least make our reading experience a little easier.

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Cien Años – Part One

2007-03-05T15:57:00.000-08:00

I loved this novel right away. Having to read a significant portion of it in a short space of time in preparation for class allowed me to get completely involved in the shifting and expanding collection of characters, each one complex and multi-dimensional in their own right, as well as the richly described circumstances of their everyday lives. This is the first time that I have read a book in the genre of magical realism and I love the way that the fantastic is so seamlessly woven into the mundane. Márquez has constructed this world very subtly. The magical elements could easily affront our sense of reality but somehow they don’t – perhaps because we are taking cues from the characters who so casually engage with them. The distortion of time also adds an interesting element to the novel – sometimes I get the sense that it is elongated and other times collapsed – it is cyclical in the way that we re-encounter characters and events repeat themselves, but it is also measured in that we are always a certain distance away from those final moments before the firing squad.

Doubtlessly this work is highly revered and forms an important part of Colombian, and on a larger scale Latin American, cultural heritage. However, I came across the name of a movement not too long ago that, when I researched it further, revealed something problematic about this. McOndo (a wordplay on Macondo and McDonalds) is a recent literary movement in Latin America that seeks to distance itself from the tradition of magical realism. Supporters feel that magical realism has dominated Latin American literature at the expense of new forms of literary expression and contemporary thematic material. I’m sure that Jon would have something to say about this in his class on bad literature. It's not hard to make the connection between the popularization of magical realism on an international scale in the 60s and 70s and the demand for Latin American novels of stereotypically folkloric and exotic content in the market today. Perhaps we’ll discuss this later.

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First Half Overview

2007-02-25T22:57:00.000-08:00

I’ve enjoyed this course a lot – because of the works themselves, how they are presented, and our ways of responding to them. I like how they were selected. Not only do they represent a variety of countries and literary styles, but each makes a vivid and distinct contribution to our understanding of the family, while at the same time providing fuel for other discussions. As we follow the lives of our demure and deranged families, we’ve also touched upon topics like nationalism, subalternity, gender roles, nature, class values, and anxieties of the modern age. The only odd one out is Neruda, who was enjoyable to read and discuss, but seems more engaged in feminine contours and his own experience of artistic awakening than anything to do with the family. Any ideas about his place in the course?

There are a few improvements that could be made, but these are all limited by time, so I think the course does a good balancing act between the various factors. For example, a number of people have said that they would like know more historical context, which would be great if the course was longer, but I think that doing a bit of background research outside of class would be better than cutting down on time that new connections and observations can be made about the novel itself. Also, I did find it a challenge to read so much in a short period of time and a bit frustrating to move on from each one so quickly, but then again, it was great to be exposed to such a variety of works. This course so far has been informative and enjoyable, and if the whirlwind tour and unusual selections of the first half didn’t do it for some people, we have the entire second half to explore a masterpiece at leisure.

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Piedra Callada

2007-02-11T00:42:00.000-08:00

There could not be two more different portraits of family life than those described by Theresa de la Parra in Memorias de Mamá Blanca and by Marta Brunet in “Piedra callada”. The first takes place in Eden; the protagonists exist in an idyllic state before sickness, injustice, and want. Nature is beautiful and fertile, the girls embrace it with imagination and wonder, and it yields a variety of goods to the family. When a death occurs, such as that of the calf, it does so peacefully. The family is ideal, the girls are pretty and bright, they adore their mother and respect their father. They live a life free of hardship.

The second takes place in an environment of entrapment, antagonism, and manipulation. The family is a group of creatures snarling, consuming, procreating, and perishing their way through a world determined by the survival-of-the-fittest. Nature is a volatile element that produces obstacles and danger, and it must be laboured upon to provide sustenance for the family. The protagonists are at the bottom of the social hierarchy, ragged and neglected children, a dumb brute of a man, an older woman without support, and a poor girl physically destroyed by multiple unhealthy childbirths. Nothing in life comes easily, and the characters react to their circumstances with explosive and poisonous anger or silent conniving to secure personal interests at any cost.

Still, the families are similar in their essential roles and power relations. For example, the role of child bearer dominates the character of the mothers, from the doomed Esperanza, unable to avoid pregnancy and unable to continue giving birth, to the mother of Blanca Nieves, who leaves the hacienda periodically and exclusively for this purpose. The children, mostly nameless, roam around in packs. The role of the fathers is the unequivocal master of the house. Both are men of few words, but these dominate over everyone, and neither touches domestic affairs such as raising children or tidying the household.

However, an important factor limits making simple comparisons of the two families, one beautiful and the other basic. The first story focuses on the experience of children and the second on the experience of adults. Leaving aside differences in the standard of living between the children of both stories, they are all reasonably happy. However, we know very little about the parents of Blanca Nieves. Why, for example, do we never hear them speak to one another? Perhaps if the memories in this story were those of an adult, there would have been just as much manipulation, competition, and animosity at Piedra Azul. It all depends on perspective.

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Memorias de Mamá Blanca

2007-02-05T00:19:00.000-08:00

Instead of talking about just the second half of the novel, I want to talk about something I noticed that affects it as a whole. In class on Wednesday, Memorias de Mamá Blanca was introduced as a return, both in terms of the course, to the heart of the family and the experience of women, and within the novel itself, as we encounter Mamá Blanca then delve into the childhood described in her memoir. However, this sensation of returning that we have when reading the novel, of revisiting a closed era and viewing it with present knowledge, is dependent on a single editorial decision.

A footnote is attached to the title of the first chapter which informs the reader of variations between editions. The most significant variation is that in some editions (like this one) this text is the first chapter, while in others it is the prologue, in some editions it is located at the end of the novel, but in others it is excluded entirely. This decision, made by the various editors who were responsible for these editions, has a huge impact on our perception of the novel as it unfolds. In this edition we encounter Mamá Blanca in the first chapter, a spirited elderly lady who enchants a young girl with her floral society and conversation over cake, but there is also a hint of sadness due to events that brought about her current poverty and distance between herself and family. So from the second chapter and onwards, we are not merely reading humorous and tender anecdotes describing the escapades of little girls, but we are looking, as if down a well, into the past from the vantage point in the first chapter, and we read with a certain degree of apprehension because we know that these girls will grow up and apart, their universe will fracture, and Blanca Nieves will become this woman we know as Mamá Blanca, caught up in nostalgic rapture on her untuned piano. We would watch a film about the Titanic differently, the story that takes place on board would do so in an entirely different light, if we didn’t know that it was doomed to sink. It is only in the last chapter that we get the bitter taste of the fall from Eden, that we see the universe of the little princesses shatter into pieces, and experience the yearning to revisit in those mental photographs what was once tactile and encompassing. Because that first chapter appears as it does in our edition, the book forms something of a circle, both ends are linked with a sense of nostalgia that spanned a lifetime.

According to Marina Gálvez Acero, the editor of this edition, it is “imprescindible para una correcta lectura de la obra" that it be presented in this format. So this is how we read the novel, returning to the past rather than finding ourselves immediately within it, and our perceptions are thus altered. As well, we have to remeber that what we read has been subjected to the tyrannies of a fictional editor, one who has taken the memoirs of Mamá Blanca and reproduced them unfaithfully, cleaning them up and straightening them out, cutting them short. And of course, as this is a memoir, it is likely that Mamá Blanca took her own liberties with the facts, exaggerating some and eliminating others. Somewhere within this are pieces of truth about a fictional life, the life of Blanca Nieves, and as the events of the novel share some similarity with the life of the author, Teresa de la Parra, there are also fragments of a real life. Unlike what is claimed in the final pages - "los recuerdos no cambian" - the novel seems to suggest that memories are prone to take on different qualities over time and that once commited to paper, can become altogether different.

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Neruda

2007-01-26T16:46:00.000-08:00

This is a fascinating collection of poems and they carry many themes that could be discussed, but I want to continue with the representation of the woman who is being addressed. Poetry about the female body is commonplace, but to see the body being addressed directly caught me by surprise, with fragments of flesh selected for praise, a single white thigh hanging in fetishized isolation, a single pair of soft hands connected to nothing. It was a little unsettling. Throughout the twenty poems bits and pieces of this woman show up, consisting of erotic anatomy (thighs, curves, lips, pubis) and points of communication (lips, eyes, hands).

The speaker asks in poem 18, “Quién eres tú, quién eres?” I also would like to know, but I can’t because she is always distant from the speaker, both when they are separated and together. Though physical separation is a source of anguish for him, he prefers that she is silent in his presence, such as in poem 16 when he says “Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.” There appears to be something fragile between these two that an excess of words, especially her words, could break. But she will allow herself to be silenced with a touch of his lips – she is like a figure of clay whose mouth the artist can seal. We’re back to the idea raised in class that he forges her. (A word with so many definitions…)

There is a tension that runs throughout the poems between forms of distance and types of intimacy. There is a contrast between an intense desire, carnal knowledge, and possessive need and a love that is sporadic and vacillating, as is apparent on behalf of both parties in poem 20. There are also issues of distance. The speaker gives us an intimate and magnified view of her body, from “las rosas del pubis” to the “blancas colinas" of her physical landscape, but he never draws us back to give us a complete portrait. In poem 5 he begs her “No me abandones” but when she is with him in poem 16 he prefers to have space between them in the form of silence.

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Cumandá Part II

2007-01-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

Having finished Cumandá I thought: this novel was centered around the complicated situation of inter-racial relationships (both amorous and societal) – what message did Mera hope to impart? The main point seems to be that reconciliation is possible – that the past can be overcome and that the two peoples can coexist. However, this reconciliation reveals itself as imperfect on a number of occasions. Firstly, when I began reading Cumandá, I thought that it would be about the relationship between an indigenous woman and a criollo man, about their love breaking racial boundaries. I soon realized that this wasn’t the case – Cumandá was white (and as such frequently touted as the most beautiful of the indigenous women), which meant that Carlos was attracted to her on the basis of similarity rather than difference. Beyond this, his feelings toward her were fraternal love and deep admiration, not sexual desire. So this was not the relationship I had expected, one that would have shown that strong attraction and sincere admiration occurs between races.

Secondly, the good indigenous/criollo relations in the novel seemed only skin-deep, and when the going got tough, the resentment felt by both races quickly arose. One example is when the jíbaro messenger arrives at Andoas to demand that Padre Domingo hand over Cumandá (pg. 254). At first they speak with the customary courteous language. However, as Domingo stalls for time, and it becomes clear that he is standing in the way of indigenous traditions, the messenger becomes blunt, accusatory, and threatening. Another example is when Carlos says his final farewell to Cumandá (pg. 268). He is extremely distressed by the sacrifice of Cumandá and he curses “¡Crueles, crueles salvajes!... ¡indios atroces!” It could be that he refers specifically to the jíbaros, but I get the impression that he is speaking generally.

Lastly, in one of the novel’s most significant scenes, a supposed familial and racial reconciliation occurs wherein Padre Domingo appeals to the dying Tubón for mutual forgiveness. Despite the fact that Tubón’s last words are “Ya no puedo alzarme para despedazarte, ¡quitate de mi presencia!”(pg.282), Domingo keeps cajoling him. Domingo pours promises and pleas over Tubón, so weak that he is unable to speak, and as two tears roll down Tubón’s cheek in his dying moments, Domingo joyously interprets these as agreement. A criollo kneeling over a mute indigenous person and telling him what he ought to do is hardly a symbolically appropriate scene to deliver the message that reconciliation is possible. There is no equality between races or respect for the cultural integrity of the indigenous people. Indeed, it is clear throughout the novel that the indigenous people are not perceived as equals, with romantic language presenting them as objects for aesthetic appreciation as well as condescending anthropological remarks on their nature and customs, forever subtly positing Europeans and their descendants as superior.

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Cumandá Part I

2007-01-22T00:37:00.000-08:00

The first two chapters of Cumandá seemed to be from a nineteenth century travelogue, a type of literature that swelled upon library shelves during this time as privileged Europeans dutifully recorded their experiences in foreign lands. Typical accounts from Latin America reveal the awe felt by their writers as they described what was to them an extraordinary landscape and a population that required scientific ordering. Indeed, Mera paints an immense and majestic physical environment, like an endless organic cathedral, and conscientiously describes the different tribes and their customs. But what these chapters also share with the nineteenth century travelogue is that they are largely devoid of human characters and interactions – a strange way to begin a tale of impassioned racial strife and impossible love between youths. Travelogue writers frequently favoured descriptions of the environment over the indigenous people they encountered, the former evoking the sublime and the latter often shock and repulsion, or they made no differentiation between the two. It is interesting to note that the cover of our edition also lacks human representation – it could be a book about tropical plants.

In Cumandá, descriptions of the environment and people blend into one another, such as the anthropomorphic whispering of the river, the way love is likened to a protective bark and the organic way it sends its roots into the heart, and women said to have the qualities of certain birds. This tendency is especially true concerning indigenous people, whose character is frequently described in the same terms as the environment in which they live. The indigenous characters encountered so far strike me as static and archetypical. They can be put in two categories – punks or poets – the belligerent jíbaros and the friendly záparos – the barbaric types who tear out eyes and burn down houses and the lyric/folkloric types who express themselves in romantic prose. To be fair, the white character Carlos is just as one-dimensional as the melancholy poet archetype, and the racially ambiguous Cumandá is beginning to reveal her surprisingly strong character in the face of obstacles to their relationship. However, this book appears to be written to be easily digested by a European audience that already felt both physically and morally distant from the jungle and the people who inhabited it, and Mera doesn’t employ descriptive language or social commentary that would convince them to feel otherwise.

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Literature and the Family

2007-01-13T20:49:00.000-08:00

Prominently shelved, scattered about, and tucked away in forgotten places all over my house is an untold number of books. They can usually be found in little clusters with some type of thematic cohesion – such as the interests of a certain individual or pertaining to a certain era – and all reveal something about my family, its members, and its secrets. Packed onto a wide set of shelves over the TV, as if enticing the viewer to higher forms of entertainment, are the classics that my mother accumulated while at university. This is the literature that she values and she revisits it multiple times to access the worlds described within. My father began collecting books later, with embossed leather covers and pages that smelled of the passage of time, which I remember hunting for together when I was a child in antique markets and thrift stores.

This is what is visible in our house, the inheritors of English literature and history pre-1960. My family lives in Canada while all of our relatives live in England – in ways that are too difficult to think about for the purposes of writing a blog, these books provide a connection, both familial and patriotic, to a life that was left behind. Down in the basement however, a dim and unpleasant place, is where books are hidden away. There are boxes of children’s books and shelves containing bestsellers and other dubious items. The children’s books are mostly mine but some are my mother’s – some we both read as children – families grow and literature perseveres. Two large boxes sent from England gather dust in a corner, they arrived years ago but for fear of provoking some unwanted emotion I don’t ask why they haven’t been opened. Sometimes I wonder about the nature of the books I know they contain, books that were written, read, and perhaps affected the course of events in a family history that I don’t even know the half of.

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