Quiet Sunday, Victory of the Angels, Joe Careers, Kings of the Moon, Lucy’s Frank, The Island’s Shellfish, Joe Louis Shoemaker, July Churches…
Placido Domingo, Victoria de los Ángeles, José Carreras, Reyes de Luna, Paco de Lucia, Camerón de la Isla, José Luis Zapatero, Julio Iglesias…
Unreal and I don’t know of many languages in which famous names, in translation, become so… surreal. Some claiming Gaudí even making it permanently into the English language for the wrong reason, as the adjective gaudy isn’t very complimentary, garish, tacky, to be precise. The modernist Catalan architect was certainly colourful with his use of curved structures covered with ceramics, stained glass, wrought irons, carpentry and trenadís, broken pottery pieces, all of it cemented into a building’s hide. But not gaudy, not tacky in the least, all of his work creating a landscape reminiscent of some magical fairytale even though the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia remains a monument fervently attached to this Catholic land, not some dreamy, faraway kingdom where Shrek lives.
Of course Barcelona has inspired more than only Gaudí as Picasso spent his formative artistic years here, having entered the world in Málaga to the south, subsequently reaching for the sky in France, not unlike Dalí, and even Miró, growing up a stone’s throw away on his Catalán-speaking Balearic Isles. All except Tàpies, whose works are beguiling and loaded with abstract symbolism, but who couldn’t and can’t handle colour, everything always mainly brown.
So that specifically Catalonia and in general Spain produce not only colourful names, but also profound colours, shapes and sounds.
Anthony Steyning’s new novel A Kiss By The Clowns is now available as an EBook on www.kindle.com and http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125336 for $2.99. It is a passionate story about life in a world of shining Oldsmobiles and bold-look ties when Marilyn Monroe was still kicking…
Oh, we all do have those biblical names with direct references to the Jewish god. When Joseph (“YHWH may increase”) is given to someone who later adopts the nom de guerre Stalin, that’s surreal at least.
And then there’s also “Barack”.
Good point! But how would you like to be called Matamoros?
Yeah! Especially when it’s José María Matamoros. Google just gave me almost 6000 results for that name. Cristian Matamoros comes up with less, but then there is also the form Christian.
Of course the reverse can also happen. In our place we refer to the horrible Country singer Johnny Cash… as… Juanito Efectivo!!!
Maybe numbers can do the trick to get us out of this. But then there’s Kabbalah.