anythingarian bubbles and troubles from the land of the fretting nun
/ kalebeul / category / of philosophers / joan amades /
Mare de Déu Fumadora, Mother of God Smoker, is a local name used in Arenys de Mar on Catalonia’s Maresme coast for the day before yesterday’s feast of the Immaculate Conception, la Purísima. According to the much-maligned Jordi Bilbeny, this is the day when children were allowed to smoke by their parents (picture of kiddie […]
Two old people were arguing this afternoon under the memorial to Joan Amades on Calle Carmen in the Raval about whether the pigeons should be fed. The argument proceeded along roughly the same lines as in the 1950s Parisian skirmish recorded in Juan Goytisolo’s Señas de identidad (1966), in which the old man is determined […]
Amando de Miguel notes the commonsensical notion that two people will tend to speak the language that supposes the least combined effort for them (all other things being equal), and proposes naming this law for his correspondent, Candela Zamora. You all know what a candela is, of course.
De Miguel refers in the same piece to […]
“On Ponent Street lived another woman known as the Queen because she was daughter of one of the Three Kings”
In which I suggest that a Catalan folksong about a Hungarian princess also touches on the latter country’s foundation myth.
Curiously, Joan Amades noted that Catalan parents used to terrify their children out of going to lonely spots on windy days by telling them that the breeze carried in it a ferocious and sequestracious demon called Cul Pelat, Cul Pelé in French, for which the only reasonable English equivalent I can imagine is Shaven Arse. […]
“Sh*t, operating as the preeminent figure of self-alienation …, becomes a symbolic medium for questioning the place of the autonomous individual in new postcolonial societies.”
The sardana was encouraged by the Francoist state and suffered its greatest difficulties during the period of revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist and Stalinist control
Els de “no a l’esquerra” estan al carrer, doncs, li presento alguns (fragments de) crits del carrer del cançoner de Joan Amades (Barcelona, 1951) sobre la melodia d’un cànon anglès (MIDI) del segle disset:
La segona regla és del barretaire Joan Saluders de Barcelona (1918):
No et posis davant
de la ventisosa;
no et posis davant,
que et vindra un […]
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Something puzzling me on V-E Day on May 8 last week: no one seems to have noticed that Ben Shahn’s Liberation is a French maypole scene. Here it is:
I believe I remember from MOMA@NY that it draws on a Cartier-Bresson image, but I can’t remember whether this was intended to represent the liberation of France from June to August 1944 or the events further east in May 1945. The French do (did) have maypoles (in September), of course, because they are actually Germans, curse their dark and devious souls.
This excellent piece by Mr Butler provides background to Deutsche’s warning on Spanish mid-table banks and illustrates the eternal perils of investing in real estate in Andalusia–unless you happen to have Manuel Chaves’ mobile number. It will be ghoulishly interesting to observe whether interventionist regions fcuk up better or worse than the ones that still haven’t worked out what’s happening.
Edward Fennell writes: “Looking ahead to the height of summer, I must commend to sunseekers a place at the specialist course that the City Law School is to run in Barcelona… Those who successfully complete the programme will be awarded a certificate of achievement. Those who fail to complete will earn a suntan (cum laude) instead.” Let there be no misunderstanding: the Il·lustre Col·legi d’Advocats de Barcelona is an extremely serious organisation and as such puts on fine choral concerts in St Whatsisname on Rambla de Catalunya. (Merci MM)
Didn’t expect this one: “Not inviting Catalan authors writing in Spanish was, in my opinion, a big error. They should have positioned the Catalan culture as an open culture with excellent contributions in our mother tongue and also in other languages like Spanish. They could have even tried to find Catalans who write in other languages like English, French, German or Swedish (actually, there is afew of us) and give us a booth too. What about me?, I write in English, am I not considered Catalan culture?, apparently not, at list, for Carod-Rovira.” All I need now is for Joan Laporta to resign, and life could be a dream.
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