I never really liked Unamuno, although I like to teach his works: they are very teachable. I am not really an expert on Unamuno either, not having read Paz en la guerra and Amor y pedagogía. As a poet, Unamuno is not among the best, if you compare him to his contemporary Machado. I read his long poem El cristo de Velázquez and could not take it too seriously. He tries a Miltonic blank-verse, but it falls flat because he just doesn't have an ear for verse, sad to say. It is very innovative to do what he is doing, but it just doesn't work.
The poet Guillermo Carnero told me he has a four-part classification:
Me gusta y me interesa.
Me gusta pero no me interesa.
No me gusta pero me interesa.
Ni me gusta ni me interesa.
Unamuno has always been in the 3rd category for me. I don't like him but he interests me a great deal. His reactionary tendencies, his attitude toward women, his egoism, are very off-putting to me.
9 feb 2011
8 feb 2011
The Reader
It was fashionable when I was young to route all of our perceptions of a literary text through "the reader," that imaginary construct. The trouble is, the better reader you are, the less you know about what "the reader" thinks. I was never "the reader." My ideas were more interesting than his, so why bother.
Breakfast of Champions
I don't remember the content of what I wrote about Breakfast of Champions in the 9th Grade. I'm pretty sure I drew on my knowledge of other Vonnegut novels and short stories. It was the work of a specialist in Vonnegut, more or less. I understood the novel completely because I knew all of his moves already. I'm not making any claims for this paper, because I no longer have it and couldn't back them up, but I remember how it felt to write the paper: I had mastered something.
I memorized Miguel Hernández's "Elegía" written for Ramón Sijé when I was in Spain for the first time, when I was 19. You know, the one that starts of "Yo quiero ser llorando el hortelano / de la tierra que ocupas y estercolas / companero de mi alma, tan temprano." Now, when I look at that poem, I understand every word. I not only remember it, but remember remembering it for the first time, parsing the syntax and figuring out each word. It has echoed with me for thirty-one years.
After I got back from Spain, the summer I turned 20, I read almost all of Galdos's novels from the 1880s and some from the 1890s. We're talking about 500-1500 page novels. Galdós published one a year on average during these decades. I innocently thought that every person I would be competing with in Graduate School would have read thousands of pages of novels. I thought I was doing the bare minimum! I also read most of Gabo, Cortázar, and Varguitas during my senior year, because at that point I was going to be a Latin Americanist. The "Boom" was big in those years.
When I got to Graduate School, I felt somewhat defrauded by the lack of seriousness in some of my colleagues and professors. Jean Franco, the big Latin Americanist there, could hardly speak Spanish and assigned three novels for an entire course. That's what I was used to eating for breakfast, a couple of difficult novels. Her entire comments on the paper I had written were: "Nice job. A-."
Maturity as a scholar takes a long time to develop, and it would be easy to go back and condescend to earlier versions of myself. Immature enthusiasm, however, is the real driving force behind all of this. If you can't get excited about it anymore, then it doesn't matter how well developed your metacritical language is. Breakfast is more important than dinner.
I memorized Miguel Hernández's "Elegía" written for Ramón Sijé when I was in Spain for the first time, when I was 19. You know, the one that starts of "Yo quiero ser llorando el hortelano / de la tierra que ocupas y estercolas / companero de mi alma, tan temprano." Now, when I look at that poem, I understand every word. I not only remember it, but remember remembering it for the first time, parsing the syntax and figuring out each word. It has echoed with me for thirty-one years.
After I got back from Spain, the summer I turned 20, I read almost all of Galdos's novels from the 1880s and some from the 1890s. We're talking about 500-1500 page novels. Galdós published one a year on average during these decades. I innocently thought that every person I would be competing with in Graduate School would have read thousands of pages of novels. I thought I was doing the bare minimum! I also read most of Gabo, Cortázar, and Varguitas during my senior year, because at that point I was going to be a Latin Americanist. The "Boom" was big in those years.
When I got to Graduate School, I felt somewhat defrauded by the lack of seriousness in some of my colleagues and professors. Jean Franco, the big Latin Americanist there, could hardly speak Spanish and assigned three novels for an entire course. That's what I was used to eating for breakfast, a couple of difficult novels. Her entire comments on the paper I had written were: "Nice job. A-."
Maturity as a scholar takes a long time to develop, and it would be easy to go back and condescend to earlier versions of myself. Immature enthusiasm, however, is the real driving force behind all of this. If you can't get excited about it anymore, then it doesn't matter how well developed your metacritical language is. Breakfast is more important than dinner.
7 feb 2011
Academically Adrift
Much discussion of this book at the Chronicle of Higher Education and in the blogosphere generally.
The good news is that Arum and Roska find that traditional liberal arts degrees are what continue to teach students to think about complex issues in a complex way. We already kind of knew that, but it's good to see support for that position. Of course, they judge this complexity by performance on a standardized test. I'd have to look at that test first and see what it's really measuring. I'd also have to read the book itself rather than limited excerpts I've seen here and there, before making a definitive judgment.
It also seems that the authors give short-shrift to the content of education, since this test measures reasoning and writing skills. You cannot discount the learning of actual information.
The good news is that Arum and Roska find that traditional liberal arts degrees are what continue to teach students to think about complex issues in a complex way. We already kind of knew that, but it's good to see support for that position. Of course, they judge this complexity by performance on a standardized test. I'd have to look at that test first and see what it's really measuring. I'd also have to read the book itself rather than limited excerpts I've seen here and there, before making a definitive judgment.
It also seems that the authors give short-shrift to the content of education, since this test measures reasoning and writing skills. You cannot discount the learning of actual information.
"Literature is what is taught, period."
That sentence is from Roland Barthes's "Reflection on a Manual," found in The Rustle of Language. I still remember the shock of reading it for the first time. Surely Barthes was being profoundly ironical; he couldn't really mean this? Surely real literature occurs outside the walls of academe, and the teaching of it is only an accidental by-product, an academic reduction of the real thing.
Yet I don't think he was being totally ironical in not seeing literature as lying, in any way, outside the academic subject of "literature," even as he deconstructs a manual (textbook). He wants a better textbook, a better pedagogy, not an escape from the classroom.
We could teach literature less academically, but we would still be teaching it. It would be mauvaise foi to pretend otherwise.
Yet I don't think he was being totally ironical in not seeing literature as lying, in any way, outside the academic subject of "literature," even as he deconstructs a manual (textbook). He wants a better textbook, a better pedagogy, not an escape from the classroom.
We could teach literature less academically, but we would still be teaching it. It would be mauvaise foi to pretend otherwise.
6 feb 2011
One Reason
One reason I'm writing a lot on my blogs is that I am writing a lot on my book. I often interrupt myself to write a pertinent blog post or two, or put some of the spill-over ideas into the blogs. When I'm nor working as hard on it, you won't find as many blog posts. With the blizzard I also lost a day of teaching. Between last Monday and this Monday my only obligation was to go a single one-hour meeting.
The Spanish Soul
Nobody writing on Zambrano (almost nobody) seems to question the idea that there is an essence to Spanish culture, a Spanish soul that can be found in the poetry of Saint John of the Cross.
None of the American poets I studied in Apocryphal Lorca question the duende and its expression of a Spanish essence. These are supposedly postmodern poets. (Only Sorrentino when making fun of Bly.)
I think I see a pattern developing.
None of the American poets I studied in Apocryphal Lorca question the duende and its expression of a Spanish essence. These are supposedly postmodern poets. (Only Sorrentino when making fun of Bly.)
I think I see a pattern developing.
Low Level Material
In teaching literature, there is no such thing as low-level material. The graduate seminar and the junior high school classroom are engaged in an identical enterprise, the reader's response to a literary work. I don't feel that I am doing anything different now than when I wrote a paper about Breakfast of Champions in 9th Grade or The Cocktail Party in 10th. The works I was studying were literary works, just like the ones I deal with now. Not only was my response to them somewhat nuanced and intelligent, but it was reading literature at that age that made me what I am today. The questions I was asking then are the same i am asking now. What makes a novel work, what makes one play better than another?
So the difference is institutional. It has to do with the demands of the classroom, not with the essential activity going on there. We measure outcomes differently, since the graduate student has to produce work that meets institutional requirements (theoretical frameworks, measures of scholarly rigor and bibliography).
As brilliantly original literary critic as Barthes wrote that literature is what gets taught as such. He could not envision it apart from its pedagogy, its ideological state apparatus, as it were. I've always thought it a happy accident that I could be payed as an employee of the state to do what I like to do anyway.
So the difference is institutional. It has to do with the demands of the classroom, not with the essential activity going on there. We measure outcomes differently, since the graduate student has to produce work that meets institutional requirements (theoretical frameworks, measures of scholarly rigor and bibliography).
As brilliantly original literary critic as Barthes wrote that literature is what gets taught as such. He could not envision it apart from its pedagogy, its ideological state apparatus, as it were. I've always thought it a happy accident that I could be payed as an employee of the state to do what I like to do anyway.
5 feb 2011
Universality
This is the idea that people's experiences are pretty much comparable with one another's. Differences exist, but not incommensurability in an absolute sense. (Between genders, nations, what have you.)
Now here's the paradox. If you erect difference or particularism into an absolute principle, insisting on incommensurability, then you create a new kind of universalism on a different scale. If women are different from men, the implication is that all women are the same. An enlightened universalism is much more respectful of differences, because it realizes that some women resemble some men more than they do other women. (Obviously the universalism that takes the white middle-class heterosexual male as the measure of all things is not tenable.)
Let's take the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language determines thought. I'm not interested here in weaker versions that show minuscule results, but in the strongest version of that idea. It collapses all speakers of the same language into a single category. What I know from studying poetry is that no two poets think alike in the same language. Jaime Gil de Biedma's Spanish is more like Auden's English than like Lorca's Spanish.
On the other hand, Beckett's French is not at all like his English. Yet his ability to move back and forth also shows us something.
Now here's the paradox. If you erect difference or particularism into an absolute principle, insisting on incommensurability, then you create a new kind of universalism on a different scale. If women are different from men, the implication is that all women are the same. An enlightened universalism is much more respectful of differences, because it realizes that some women resemble some men more than they do other women. (Obviously the universalism that takes the white middle-class heterosexual male as the measure of all things is not tenable.)
Let's take the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language determines thought. I'm not interested here in weaker versions that show minuscule results, but in the strongest version of that idea. It collapses all speakers of the same language into a single category. What I know from studying poetry is that no two poets think alike in the same language. Jaime Gil de Biedma's Spanish is more like Auden's English than like Lorca's Spanish.
On the other hand, Beckett's French is not at all like his English. Yet his ability to move back and forth also shows us something.
4 feb 2011
...and you never will
The lyric of Ellington's song "Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me" is curious. The idea is that the two lovers are separated but the persona singing the song wants to keep the other lover from breaking off the affair. Though I've been seen with somebody else. Another kiss might cloud my memory, etc... So the song ends: "Do nothing till you hear it from me / and you never will." The ostensible meaning is that you will never get news of my infidelity from me. But the song itself has given its message very clearly. The last line, then, means "you won't ever hear from me again, we're through."
Do nothing till you hear from me,
Pay no attention to what's said.
Why people tear the seams of anyone's dreams
Is over my head.
Do nothing till you hear from me,
At least consider our romance.
If you should take the words of others you've heard,
I haven't a chance.
True, I've been seen with someone new,
But does that mean that I've been untrue?
When we're apart,
The words in my heart
Reveal how I feel about you.
Some kiss may cloud my memories,
And other arms may hold a thrill,
But please, do nothing till you hear it from me--
And you never will
Niceness
I've found that if you treat people as though you liked them (as the default position) they will tend to like you a bit more and then you will end up liking them more than you originally did. This makes it easier to give up resentments and minor irritations. Hatred become dislike, dislike becomes toleration, toleration becomes active appreciation.
I accept, too, that others might be operating on a similar principle toward me, and this doesn't bother me in the least. If someone is acting as though they liked me, simply because that is their default position in social relations, then that means that they are willing to overlook my numerous irritating qualities. Courtesy overrides sincerity. In the end, even the insincerity disappears, because you find yourself with genuinely positive feelings. Behavior overrides inner feelings.
I accept, too, that others might be operating on a similar principle toward me, and this doesn't bother me in the least. If someone is acting as though they liked me, simply because that is their default position in social relations, then that means that they are willing to overlook my numerous irritating qualities. Courtesy overrides sincerity. In the end, even the insincerity disappears, because you find yourself with genuinely positive feelings. Behavior overrides inner feelings.
Bibliography Rules
The book we know as Campos de Castilla by Machado was never published independently, as such, during Machado's lifetime. There was a first edition, that included about half of the "book." Then the poems were published in various collected poems of Machado under the Campos de Castilla rubric. Geoffrey Ribbans points out, however, that in the first such edition the actual title Campos de Castilla is absent.
Lorca never published a book called Romancero gitano in 1928. The actual title is Primer romancero gitano.
As Ben Friedlander notes in a recent facebook update, "bibiography rules." In other words, you can't just pull a book off the shelf and assume that the text is stable, identical to some previous edition. You can't assume that a poem you find on the internet has any textual integrity at all. Students will center each line of a poem in their papers. They will capitalize each line of a poem just because microsoft word tells them to, with no regard for the original.
A critical edition of Cernuda suppressed his capital letters, because that was the norm for that collection of critical editions.
These details are not trivial. They may be pedantic, but they are significant.
Lorca never published a book called Romancero gitano in 1928. The actual title is Primer romancero gitano.
As Ben Friedlander notes in a recent facebook update, "bibiography rules." In other words, you can't just pull a book off the shelf and assume that the text is stable, identical to some previous edition. You can't assume that a poem you find on the internet has any textual integrity at all. Students will center each line of a poem in their papers. They will capitalize each line of a poem just because microsoft word tells them to, with no regard for the original.
A critical edition of Cernuda suppressed his capital letters, because that was the norm for that collection of critical editions.
These details are not trivial. They may be pedantic, but they are significant.
3 feb 2011
R1
Research 1 universities do research and also educate thousands of students at a time. What is the advantage for a student of going to an R1 university?
In the first place, you can get a very good education there if you try. You must choose a major in a department that is involved in educating students. I know extremely well-educated students who have taken advantage of their presence in a university with faculty with first-rate minds.
One of my friends on the faculty here talks about forming part of a conspiracy to educate the students. The faculty who educate and the students who want to be educated have to find one another. The process is not automatic, because students can choose majors where they can drift along without becoming educated. Alcohol and big-time sports play occupy the center of the campus culture.
My proposal is to eliminate some of the barriers to education by removing the cordon sanitaire between teaching and research.
(Liberal Arts Colleges teach very well. There is no cordon sanitaire because the emphasis falls squarely on teaching. The very smart, publishing scholars I know at such places also have to be good teachers. The ones who don't do research can devote all their resources to instruction. Most of those places lack big-time football programs.)
In the first place, you can get a very good education there if you try. You must choose a major in a department that is involved in educating students. I know extremely well-educated students who have taken advantage of their presence in a university with faculty with first-rate minds.
One of my friends on the faculty here talks about forming part of a conspiracy to educate the students. The faculty who educate and the students who want to be educated have to find one another. The process is not automatic, because students can choose majors where they can drift along without becoming educated. Alcohol and big-time sports play occupy the center of the campus culture.
My proposal is to eliminate some of the barriers to education by removing the cordon sanitaire between teaching and research.
(Liberal Arts Colleges teach very well. There is no cordon sanitaire because the emphasis falls squarely on teaching. The very smart, publishing scholars I know at such places also have to be good teachers. The ones who don't do research can devote all their resources to instruction. Most of those places lack big-time football programs.)
NOMA
Religion, science, philosophy, and poetry are four ways of approaching reality in its most fundamental dimension. There may be others, but those four are the major ones.
The idea of "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" developed by Stephen J. Gould affirms that religion and science do not enter into conflict with each other, because they divide up their realms of magisterium. Science gets the natural world, religion gets ethics and larger questions of the meaning of everything. Sounds good.
There are several reasons why this system does not work, however. In the first place, religion has made and continues to make claims about the natural world. The idea that it doesn't is a purely modern development, caused by the advance of science and the retreat (or reaction) of religion from these developments.
Secondly, religion does not have the same authority over ethics and meaningfulness that science can claim over the natural world. A third master discourse, philosophy, has a stake here too, and philosophy can be wholly secular. Gould's division of labors would leave a secular person with no access to the meaning of anything.
So really, any system that claims to be the master system cannot tolerate any genuine rivalry. Science tends to undermine religion. Religion's ethical teachings are contradictory and often unethical, its science unscientific.
We can imagine a system lacking secular science, secular poetry, and secular philosophy. Religion holds the ultimate magisterium, and all song and dance is religious ritual. However, that is not the world in which we live.
The idea of "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" developed by Stephen J. Gould affirms that religion and science do not enter into conflict with each other, because they divide up their realms of magisterium. Science gets the natural world, religion gets ethics and larger questions of the meaning of everything. Sounds good.
There are several reasons why this system does not work, however. In the first place, religion has made and continues to make claims about the natural world. The idea that it doesn't is a purely modern development, caused by the advance of science and the retreat (or reaction) of religion from these developments.
Secondly, religion does not have the same authority over ethics and meaningfulness that science can claim over the natural world. A third master discourse, philosophy, has a stake here too, and philosophy can be wholly secular. Gould's division of labors would leave a secular person with no access to the meaning of anything.
So really, any system that claims to be the master system cannot tolerate any genuine rivalry. Science tends to undermine religion. Religion's ethical teachings are contradictory and often unethical, its science unscientific.
We can imagine a system lacking secular science, secular poetry, and secular philosophy. Religion holds the ultimate magisterium, and all song and dance is religious ritual. However, that is not the world in which we live.
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