The Great Inquisition did nothing for the Church, it led to Protestantism, to separation between Church and State and to a work ethic celebrating reconciliation and collaboration that became the precursor of modern western society and all its wealth. Japan’s infliction of terrible horrors led not only to its inevitable defeat, but indirectly to its ultimate wealth. (America wrote its Constitution!) Germany’s idiotic pre-war dreams about domination led not only directly to its defeat but to wealth attributable as much to production as to enforced tolerance. (America wrote its Constitution!) Franco’s cruel Spain did everything wrong, creating a nation the exact opposite of what he … [Read more...] about Amar y Vivir
About Anthony Steyning
The name falls mainly on the plain, in Spain; in Spain!
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, … [Read more...] about The name falls mainly on the plain, in Spain; in Spain!
Death’s Error
Frank Sinatra sang That’s Why The Lady Is A Tramp! And we could sing a thousand times of Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il, That’s Why The Leader Is A Preposterous Fraud. But the real man was Vaclav Havel, and I quote him from a speech he gave in support of political prisoners everywhere: Ladies and gentleman, allow me to start with a short recollection. Many years ago, when I was behind bars, I needed to see a dentist. There was no dentist in the prison and when the prison authorities realised that I was serious, I was escorted to a civil dentist by a guard. I was in handcuffs and prison stripes and stared straight ahead of me as I sat between two guards. I was very curious to watch … [Read more...] about Death’s Error
Art not Bombs
It is remarkable how a small nation can fill such giant shoes in the world of contemporary sculpture as the Basque Country does through artists like Chillida, Oteiza and a dozen others. On first arriving in Spain one is struck by their oversized creations in public places, giving airs of freshness and modernity to a country no longer dark. It is later that we realise these are the same grand masters from that minuscule province whose work we find in Berlin, Paris and many other places of infinitely larger import. And these two men are contemporaries, though I have no idea if they were friends or foes but most certainly having had to be rivals, at times coming very close to magically … [Read more...] about Art not Bombs
The Outsiders!
Music doesn’t generally create history, but accompanies it for better or for worse. Same tides, same flow: rising with human comeuppance, or descending alongside a collective human crash. And the human race itself is like water: slowly flowing to the lowest point, changing its composition to rise to the top, only to fall down again. So that music is like water, we can’t live without it but it also celebrates our funerals. Horace Silver and Paul Gonsalves were two Portuguese Cape Verdeans, who made an enormous contribution to American Jazz by creating beautiful rhythmic flow, just ask Duke Ellington. I’m not a Fadista so I don’t know if there were any outside influences on the … [Read more...] about The Outsiders!
Kafka in Spain
Kafka’s is the art of comic exasperation deploying absurd, even paranoid pseudo logic, labyrinthine insurance company and regulatory double-thought and dead-end speak, at one point probably convincing Derrida and the rest of the deconstructionists to become plumbers. Of course, calling officials, their projects and indirectly the Government itself the Arrangement, says a lot about Kafka's own state of mind. (Personally, I think the Deranged is more like it!), but he still created world literature out of the texts that as an insurance lawyer and later a Workman's Compensation Board verifier, engulfed him. He imitated the structures of treacherously simplistic but circular language so … [Read more...] about Kafka in Spain
O Lusitania
Tabucchi loves Lisbon, the film director Wenders loves Lisbon, and I much like Lisbon: the sweet urban decadence of it, the formidable Atlantic ocean of it making it Europe’s last vestige on the southern flank, but also an easy, open way to the new world, as far as the immensely flowing Amazon. A city in a nation well positioned for potential greatness, but Portugal still needing to be represented in the international literary canon with its only available candidate at one point, the poet Fernando Pessoa it seems. A chap through his compositions and spiritual meanderings contributing to its name, ironically named pessoa, meaning person in Portuguese, yet a man cleverly made up of many … [Read more...] about O Lusitania
¡Sangre!
Her name was Catherine Sintes. She was the illiterate child of Catholic peasants from Menorca but grew up near Oran, Algeria, to where many dirt poor Spanish families migrated at the turn of the last century. It was where she married a farm worker raised in a Protestant orphanage, a kid named Lucien Camus, who would give her the son they would soon name Albert. Not an astonishing background, and neither Spain nor Africa are universally known for their thinkers. For even had Catherine stayed home, it is doubtful the Baleares would have produced much more than an avid tennis player. But colonial Algeria producing the melting pot and gene pool that sometimes gives rise to the development … [Read more...] about ¡Sangre!