READIN

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

🦋 More exhortations

Another Saramago epigraph from El libro de los consejos -- at the front of his Small Memories is the line, "Déjate llevar por el niño que fuiste/(roughly) Allow the child you were to carry you." The first time I've been able to find a lead suggesting affirmatively that these quotations are actual quotations from somewhere else, not invented by Saramago -- this line takes me to Juan Pedro Villa-Isaza's blog Casi un objeto, which gives some context for it:

Mientras no alcances la verdad, no podrás corregirla. Pero si no la corriges, no la alcanzarás. Mientras tanto, no te resignes.*

Déjate llevar por el niño que fuiste.

As long as you do not know the truth, you will not be able to alter it. But if you do not alter it, you will never be able to reach it. Still, do not resign yourself.

Allow the child you were to carry you.

(Also, Googling for the original Portuguese rendering of this quote "Deixa-te levar pela criança que foste" leads me to a 2006 interview with Saramago, where he talks about his life and his writing process.)

..."llevar/levar" can also mean "to lead" -- indeed that appears to be the primary meaning in Portuguese; a better rendering of this line might be "Let yourself be led by the child you were."

*... and now I am remembering that this line is the epigraph for The History of the Siege of Lisbon... and am back to thinking the whole thing is Saramago's invention.

posted evening of November 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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Monday, December 13th, 2010

🦋 Happy Feast of St. Lucy!

At Making Light, Teresa posts lyrics to a Swedish carol for this opening night of the Christmas season, along with descriptions of customs around Europe for observing the feast day. Marissa Lingen also has her annual Santa Lucia post.

Update: Fantastic! Saint Lucy, the patron saint of the blind, is the woman in the Blindness church scene, who "did not have her eyes covered, because she carried her gouged-out eyes on a silver tray."

posted morning of December 13th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, October 19th, 2014

🦋 Two epigraphs

"Be quiet the doctor's wife said gently, let's all keep quiet, there are times when words serve no purpose, if only I, too, could weep, say everything with tears, not have to speak in order to be understood."
-- Blindness, Jose Saramago

"Doc tried calling her name but of course words out here were only words."
-- Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon

posted evening of October 19th, 2014: 1 response
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Monday, May 11th, 2020

🦋 Ten books

So the ten books that first occur to me as "books that have profoundly influenced my worldview" (whatever those words mean) are, and I posted them in the order that they occurred to me yesterday and today:

1. Snow (Orhan Pamuk, Turkey 2002)
2. Bicameral Mind (Jaynes, US 1976)
3. INFINITE JEST (dfw, US 1996)
4. El arte de la resurrección (Hernán Rivera Letelier, Chile 2010)
5. Bleak House (Dickens, UK 1853)
6. The Autograph Man (Smith, UK 2002)
7. Manituana (Wu Ming, Italy 2007)
8. Debt (Graeber, US 2011)
9. Regeneration Through Violence (Slotkin, US 1973)
10. The Unknown University (Bolaño, Chile 2011)

I'm happy with this list. I would recommend any of these books highly, were a friend to come to me looking for reading material. Maybe 9. should trade places with #11, "Blindness" by Saramago. I have blogged many of these reads, not all.

posted afternoon of May 11th, 2020: Respond
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