Hivern, tardor

El fred d'aquest dies em fan pensar en l'abric que embolcalla l'home de "Ya no hay pena", que camina per Barcelona i rep cleques a tort i a dret. Sort que avui hem tingut una petita treva. La combinació d'ahir, de fred i pluja, la vaig trobar molt mal intencionada. No sé qui ho va organitzar, però si pogués redactaria una reclamació formal.

Crítica impura de la poètica novel·lística

La novel·la és un calaix de sastre des del seu naixement, per tant fer-ne una definició voldrà dir no dir res (si és massa general) o excloure moltes obres importants (si és una definició molt restrictiva), per això Maugham és potser una mica massa injust amb Forster, però vaja, la sensació que descriu la conec.

"I read The Craft of Fiction by Mr Percy Lubbock, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like Henry James; after that I read Aspects of the Novel by Mr. E.M. Forster from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like Mr E.M. Forster..."

Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale

Only connect...

"I opened Walt Whitman for a quotation, & he started speaking to me. That the unseen is justified by the other... That the spiritual world might be robust - ! ... No more fighting, please, between the soul & the body, until they have beaten their common enemy, the machine."

E.M.Forster, Diary, 16 june 1908

Obtuseness

"Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted and human love will be seen at its hihghest. Live in fragments no longer. (...) Nor was the message difficult to give. (...) But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for which she was never prepared: his obtuseness. He simply did not notice things and ther was no more to be said."

(E.M.Forster, Howards End, p.188)

Overrated

"Tibby sighed and felt it rather hard that because of his open mind, he should be empanelled to serve as a juror. He had never been interested in human beings, for which one must blame him, but he had had rather too much of them at Wickham Place. Just as some people cease to attend when books are mentioned. so Tibby's attention wandered when "personal relations" came under discussion. Ought Margaret to know what Helen knew the Basts to know? Similar questions had vexed him from infancy, and at Oxford he had learned to say that the importance of human beings has been vastly overrated by specialists"

(E.M.Forster, Howards End, p.250)

Neglected roads

"Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches taht have never joined into a man. (...) Happy the man who sees from either aspect the gory of those outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall fin easy going.
It was hard going in the roads of Mr Wilcox's soul. From boyhood he had neglected them."

(E.M.Forster, Howards End, p.187)

Madness or sensibleness

"That's foolish. In the first place, I disagree about the outer life. Well, we've often argued that. The real point ist that there is the widest gulf between my love-making and yours. Yurs was romance; mine will be prose. I'm not running it down- a very good kind of prose, but well considered, well thought out. For instance, I know all Mr Wilcox's faults. He's afraid of emotion. He cares too much about success, too little about the the past. His sympathy lacks poetry, and so isn't sympathy really. I'd even say" ─ [Margaret] looked at the shinning lagoons─ that, spiritually, he is not as honest as I am. Doesn't satisfy you?"
"No, it doesn't," said Helen, "It makes me feel worse and worse. You must be mad."

(E.M.Forster, Howards End, p.177)

refree - el reloj

"cientos de cosas se van, las pocas que quedan están sin cerrar
porque tú cuentas historias sin ningún final
tú que pones los labios y miras hacia atrás
tú que guardas tu risa para los demás"

catching the train

"Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning. A meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination."

Virginia Woolf, 1937

Atonement

Something that she did not understand took hold of the girl and pulled her through. Though the vision was over, and she had returned to the insipidity of the world, she remembered what she had learnt. Atonement and confession- they could wait. It was in hard prosaic tones that she said: "I withdraw everything".

(E.M. Forster, A Passage to India, 1924)

Què estàs llegint?

En la sàtira d’Alan Bennet la sobtada fal·lera lectora de la reina provoca molts mals de cap perquè la reina es mostra absent, desinteressada per les seves obligacions, poc motivada, comença a ser inpuntual, incomoda a ministres i caps d’estat preguntant “Què estàs llegint?”, pretén dir la seva i posa més pegues que mai a la feina dels seus assessors: que si la correcció política és ridícula, que si llegir informes mastegats no és el mateix que tractar directament amb les fonts, etc. Però la reina també troba en la lectura per trencar el protocol i la gàbia de plata: ensopega amb una via per començar a imaginar com veuen i viuen el món els que no tenen sang blava i descobreix una forma d’alliberar-se del pes que representa sentir-se diferent sense haver-ho triat.

“Books did not defer. All readers were equal, and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night, when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised.” (Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader, Faber&Faber, 2007, p.31)

Un post partit en dos

Gràcies a una correntina m'assabento que al diari Pàgina/12 avui hi ha una entrevista prou sucosa a l’escriptor Jordi Carrión sobre el seu darrer llibre de viatges, La piel de la boca.

I després de llegir-la, ja que hi sóc, remeno una mica el diari argentí i veig la notícia dels canvis en el govern de CFK (amb salt del tigre inclòs) i a la secció de "Cultura y Espectáculos" hi ha una entrevista a Claude Chabrol que parla sobre la seva darrera pel·lícula i sobre l'alta burgesia. I en llegir-la m'he recordat d'una escena brutal de la facultat, parlant de l'estètica del XVIII francès el professor respon a un alumne agosarat: "Qui em torni a dir burgès, li foto un cop de puny!". Us en recordeu? O ho vaig somniar?

–En Una mujer partida en dos usted vuelve sobre su ambiente predilecto, el de la burguesía de provincia.

–Es que, a esta altura de las cosas, ésa es la única clase social que queda. Hace tiempo que estoy convencido de que no hay más que dos clases de personas: los burgueses y los que quieren llegar a serlo. Por eso es que ya no existe la lucha de clases: los que están afuera quieren entrar, eso es todo. Así que cuando me señalan que soy crítico de la burguesía, yo pienso más bien que lo que hago es un simple llamado al deber. El hecho de ser la única clase genera deberes...

–¿Podría hablarse de subclases de la burguesía?

–Eso sí. En Una mujer partida en dos aparecen varias, tal vez todas las que hay. A ver: está la hiperburguesía que representan los propietarios farmacéuticos; la burguesía media, encarnada por la mamá de la chica; la burguesía mediática (la gente de la televisión); la burguesía de negocios (los de la industria editorial) y lo que en Francia llamamos burguesía bobo (los burgueses bohemios), representada por el escritor.

–¿Ya no puede aspirarse a una definición única de la burguesía?

–Sí que es posible. Básicamente la sigue definiendo el culto de las apariencias, el vivir en estado de representación. Yo intento mostrar esto en las escenas que transcurren en restaurantes. Si se fija, va a ver que en esas escenas los personajes no comen. Lo importante es cómo y dónde se sientan, la manera en que se ubican en relación con el resto de los comensales.