|
Decidme cómo es un árbol Prólogo de José Saramago Umbriel Editores – Tabla Rasa Comprado en Librería Laie, Barcelona Por suerte leí en El País del 15 de agosto de 2009 un artículo sobre Marcos Ana, en el que se habla de su libro Decidme cómo es un árbol y de la intención de Pedro Almodóvar de hacer una película basada en la vida del poeta. Más sobre Marcos Ana. |
|
Pablo Neruda imprimido: 2007 Comprado en Librería Laie, Barcelona
|
|
Federico Garcia Lorca Poesía Edición de Miguel García-Posada Comprado en Librería Laie, Barcelona Más de y sobre Federica García Lorca. |
 |
|
Moi Nojoud, 10 ans, divorcée Nojoud Ali language: French acquired via: Paris Charles de Gaulle |
 |
This is not what you call hot news, I don’t believe in hot news anyway.
But I can’t deny myself the pleasure to publish this bit of news. For the complete story, see this article in The New York Times.
On July 16th Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener had to publicly present their apologies for a blunder. Amazon had sold several books for their reading machine — superb thing, it seems — named Kindle. Apparently the editor did not have the rights to sell the electronic version for several of the sold books.
So, Amazon ‘recalled’ the books and refunded the owners. So far so good, a pity for the buyer, but no real harm done. Or not?
Fact is that Amazon did not actually recall the books, they just deleted them on the Kindles of their customers. In at least one case, a student had already made a lot of annotations on the book he was reading for a paper, and those remarks were also deleted.
Apart from the indignation about the way Amazon proceeded in this case, customers became aware of the fact that Amazon has the power to erase files on their personal Kindles! If they have this power, “what more can they do?” seems an obvious question. Makes one think of Big Brother.
An article in The Guardian puts it like this:
This early Kindle book-burning episode also provides a reminder of how closely ebook devices monitor their users’ reading. And that provokes quite a few questions. What’s to stop advertisers paying to find out about your preferences, for instance? What’s to stop churches finding out about people reading pro-choice literature in their area? What’s to stop governments finding out about your revolutionary reading preferences?
Ironically, one of the involved books was George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the very book that introduced Big Brother and the memory hole, newspeak, etc.
Thank you Amazon, you gave me one more good reason to stick to my real books, skilfully printed on fine paper, hardbacked. You can’t take them out of my library, you can’t delete them by just pushing a button, you can’t control when and what I am reading. I intend to enjoy this freedom for may years to come.
|
I have just read — simultaneously — two biographies of Pablo Neruda. One is a huge work, in Spanish, by David Schidlowsky: Las Furias y las Penas, Pablo Neruda y su tiempo and the other is a ‘normal’ biography by Adam Feinstein: Pablo Neruda, a passion for life. I read them at the same time because they complement each other. Adam Feinstein’s biography is what one can expect, the bigger lines of a life told as a good story. David Schidlowsky’s biography, on the other hand, is a thesis for a PhD titel, very detailed, with a lot of attention for the political history and the social environment. Schidlowsky relates Neruda’s life based on many documents. For many, this biography will be too detailed, with abundant footnotes, but it will be a work of reference. Unfortunately Schidlowsky could not find an editor prepared to publish such a work (something like 1500 pages), not even in 2004, Neruda’s centenary. Because the text would have benefited of the attention of a good editor. There are many typing errors and small mistakes. Moreover, the biography lacks an index, which is really a pity because this would make all the names and facts in this book readily available. As a whole it is a magnificent work, documentating many aspects of the poet’s life, only not on the literary value of his publications. Schidlowsky’s work is for specialists or devotees like me, interested in getting the whole picture. He accentuates the political environment, the role of marxistic ideas and the communist party in Neruda’s life. He does not lose himself in speculations about the poet’s love life or other fancyful aspects of his life. But he does show (based on documents!) Neruda’s attitude towards Maruca Hagenaar, his first wife. Another documented example: the chronic lack of money, because Neruda used to buy everything he fancied, without regard to his financial situation. Adam Feinstein’s biography is good reading for a general public, for those who are still interested in this incomparable poet. Pablo Neruda resembles Ernest Hemingway in a fashion: the life inspires the work and the work reflects the life. And Neruda did live (as he confessed): traveling all over the world, many loves, three times married, witness of the Spanish civil war, saviour of a few thousand Spanish refugees, consul in Spain and France, senator in Chile for the communist party, banished from his country, his spectacular escape on horseback over the Andes mountains, Nobel prize for literature, and in his very last days he suffered from the coup by Pinochet and the death of his friend Salvador Allende.
Part of this commemoration was an academic session where both Feinstein and Schidlowsky spoke about the poet. At one moment, I remember, a young woman, obviously communist, interrupted the proceedings, waving Vollodia Teitelboim’s biography as if it were a bible. She accused the biographers of blackening Neruda’s reputation. The dubious behaviour towards fis first wife Maruca Hagenaar and their daughter Malva Marina is a thorn in the flesh of the party men. Feinstein and Schidlowsky argued that they had only tried to describe his life as faithful as possible. They did not want to defame the author, nor did they want to write a saint’s life. For me, it felt strange to witness such a young woman defending with almost religious fanaticism a lost case. Neruda wasn’t a saint, nor a hero, but a man of flesh and blood, a man with lovers, friends and enemies. Like anyone with some character. I sometimes wonder: where does my intrest in him come from? Is it because of my travels in Bolivia (where part of my family and friends live) and South-America, the impact of the Andes mountains, of Machu Piccho, of the south-american people? I believe there is more to it. Unlike a writer of novels — in most cases I can read novels without knowing anything about the life of the author — in a poet’s work you’ll find the sedimentary deposit of what he sees, feels, hears. Neruda’s poetry, full of strong images, of love, of the struggle for a simple life, his committed poetry, invites one to know more about the life behind the work. Or perhaps the myth behind the work. But my fascination comes in the first place from the power of his poems. Neruda wrote unforgetables verses like Si muero, sobrevíveme con tanta fuerza pura (If I die, survive me with such a pure force) and Plena mujer, manzana carnal, luna caliente (Full woman, flesh-apple, hot moon) (taking only two verses from his book Cien sonetos de amor (One hundred love songs)). What’s up, Pablo? ¿Qué tal, Pablo? Let’s have a glass of wine, and look at the sea, and talk about women and books. |
|
Marcos Ana
José Carlos Rovira
