#Marcos Aguinis

[thatscarletflycatcher]

I'm reading an essay by author Marcos Aguinis titled El Atroz Encanto de Ser Argentinos, The Atrocious Charm of being Argentinians, and while it is generally interesting to me as a dive into the Argentinian psyche, and also food for thought and honing of the idea that Argentinians and Americans have, in terms of national spirit, many, many similarities (a thought I most desperately need to refine down to exact definitions that will stop both Argentinians and Americans to get very pissed by it, because I meant it in the most positive way possible), I reached a part where he reproduces in full a satirical email chain, and it's too good not to be translated here for your enjoyment:

How A True Argentinian Should Behave

While driving:

systematically bother the one behind you; at the same time, blink lights and honk to the one ahead of you. You are super fast and nobody can defeat you.

The indiscriminate use of the honk is capable of dissolving a traffic jam on Córdoba street at 6pm.

The Law of Mass is valid. For example, if you are driving in a 4x4 and by your right your "opponent" cruises in a small Fiat, who has the right-of-way? Bingo!

Read the new traffic law: bikes, motorbikes and motorcycles can go in whatever fashion and direction they want; the helmet can be worn at the elbow, so that the hair can enjoy the breeze.

The pedestrian has a right to nothing, but cross wherever they want. If your insurance payments are up to date, run them over; that will teach them to respect you.

The white lines on street corners are just decoration for the asfalt. Nobody knows who the irresponsible guy who told pedestrians they should cross the street by them.

The car on your side is your mortal enemy.

The car manufacturers commited a complete inconsistency: they put in three pedals, when the vast majority of drivers only has two legs. Don't be confused: eliminated the middle one.

Blinking your lights enables you to do whatever crosses your mind. Not blinking them enables you all the same.

The red light on traffic lights indicates "danger!" you must, then, speed up as much as possible and get out of there ASAP.

Ambulances, firefighters and police can wait. Nobody in the Universe has as much a need to reach destination as you.

At a public bathroom:

Do not press any buttons, in case your fingers might get dirty or cramp.

It is to be assumed that there will be paper, soap, and hand dryers, and that everything will work to perfection.

Use aaaaaaaaaall the paper you want; the one that comes after you won't need it.

Throw all that paper into the wc. Modern physics has demonstrated that it disintegrates in water.

Do not forget to carry a safety pin with you, to write on doors and walls the first stupid thought that comes to your mind. Another one, more stupid than you, will find it funny.

On everyday life:

If it rains and you have an umbrella, walk below roofs and balconies, God forbid your umbrella gets wet.

If you don't have an umbrella, and it starts raining, run like desperate, because once you reach the speed of sound, rain will no longer wet you.

If at a shop you don't find the garment you are looking for, don't be impatient: make the clerk show you all the garments. That way they will be kept nimble and alert at work.

Take a cup of coffee or a soda at a cafe, and never forget to tip 5 cents. The little coins are useful for the bus fare.

If you are calling from a public phone booth, and the number you are calling is busy, insist again and again. The ones waiting in line don't have anything else to do.

At home:

If you live on the top floor, don't forget, before taking the elevator, to call up all the other elevators, so that those who are below and want to go up have time, while they wait, to reflect on what they did during the day.

If, on the contrary, you live on the ground floor, do as well call the elevators, which will allow the neighbours living above you the extra time to plan their activities for the day.

Take the trash out whenever you want. You pay so many taxes that you have a right to expect there to be municipal employees ready to collect it at any time.

Saying "good morning", "excuse me", "I'm sorry", and "thank you" have gone out of fashion.

The windows were invented so that you can have a clean house without the disgrace of having to collect trash in smelly cans. Besides, it's very, very, very funny to throw heavy things from your window or balcony.

At the office:

Keep in mind that locks were created by a guy who resented society and wanted to create a test of ingenuity.

Everything is public property, even the belongings of the people working there. Did you forget to buy cigarrettes? No problem: there's always some other kind smoker to whom it is no extra cost to keep up your vice for eight or nine hours.

If you smoke, close the windows, so the rest can share on the smoke that your generous puffs produce.

Comments such as "you look terrible", "that looks hideous on you", "what an idiot you are" help to boost the self esteem of your subordinates.

It is valid and healthy to note to your female coworker that she has gotten fat.

Same applies to the male coworker that is balding.

Speak very loud, that's how people will listen to you, respect you, and even answer.

The person in charge of cleaning has a servant's mindset. Dirty things up thoroughly, so that they can enjoy cleaning your office and making it spotless.

[x00151x]

Efemérides literarias: 13 de enero

Efemérides literarias: 13 de enero

Nacimientos 1749: Friedrich Müller, poeta, dramaturgo y pintor alemán (f. 1825). 1832: Horatio Alger, escritor estadounidense (f. 1899). 1859: Kostís Palamás, poeta griego (f. 1943). 1893: Clark Ashton Smith, escritor estadounidense (f. 1961). 1926: Mario Trejo, escritor argentino (f. 2012). 1930: Teresa March, escritora española (f. 2001). 1935: Marcos Aguinis, escritor…

[loslibrosdefede]

Marcos Aguinis - El atroz encanto de ser argentinos #aguinis #marcosaguinis #elatrozencantodeserargentinos #ensayo #literaturaargentina #loslibrosdefede https://www.instagram.com/p/CnDQ4fsLsEA/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ruminativerabbi]

Books and Mirrors: As A New Year Dawns

The month of Elul, the last month of the Jewish year, is well known as the traditional time for reviewing the year, reflecting on our behavior and general comportment, owning up to our shortcomings, and finding the resolve to face the season of judgment, if not quite with eager anticipation, than at least with equanimity born the conviction that we can and will do better in the coming year. You often hear the Hebrew phrase ḥeshbon ha-nefesh, literally “an accounting of the soul” in this regard—and those words really do capture the concept pithily and well: thinking of our lives as ledger-books in which our instances of moral courage and ethical inadequacy stand in for the accountant’s credits and debits works for me and will probably suit most. There is even a book with that title—Sefer Ḥeshbon Ha-nefesh by Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel Lefin, written in 1808 and the only rabbinic work known to have been directly influenced by the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin—which I wrote about to you all a few years ago just before Pesach. (To review what I had to say there, click here.)

How exactly to go about this is a different question, however. I suppose some people really can just sit down and review the year week by week, noting where they personally feel themselves to have come up short and resolving to respond in a way more in keeping with the moral code they claim to espouse when facing analogous situations in the future. For most of us, though, that process—although theoretically possible—is not that practical an approach to the larger enterprise: who can remember the days of our lives with clear-eyed enough exactitude to analyze deeds from months ago with the certainty that we are remembering things precisely correctly? Fortunately, there are other ways to see ourselves clearly and for many, myself included, the simplest answer is to use a mirror.  Not a real one, of course, in which you can only see the reflection of your outermost appearance. But there are other kinds of mirrors available to us, some of which have the ability to reflect the inner self and which can serve, therefore, more like windows into the soul than the kind of mirror you look into each morning when you brush your teeth and see yourself looking back with a toothbrush in your mouth.

For me personally and for many years now, that mirror has always been a book I’ve chosen to read or re-read during Elul in the hope that it will allow me to see myself reflected either in its plot, in the way some specific one of its characters is depicted, or in the world it describes. Over the years, I’ve chosen well and less well. But when I do somehow manage to choose the right book for Elul, that choice makes all the difference by allowing me to see myself in the depiction of another far more clearly than I think I ever could have managed on my own.

This year I read Marcos Aguinis’ novel, Against the Inquisition.  Although the author is apparently very well-known in his native Argentina and throughout the Spanish-speaking world, I hadn’t ever heard of him until just this last July when Dara Horn published a review of the new English-language translation by Carolina de Robertis of his most successful book, called La Gesta del Marrano in Spanish, in Moment magazine. The review was stellar (to read it for yourself, click here) and left me intrigued enough to buy a copy with the intention of it being my Elul book for this year. It wasn’t a big investment, so I wasn’t risking much. (Used paperback copies and the e-book version are both available online for less than $5 each.) But it turned out to be exactly the right choice: I just finished it earlier this week and found myself truly astounded both by the author’s literary skill and, even more so, by what the book has to say about the nature of Jewishness itself.

Seeing myself in the protagonist, Francisco Maldonado da Silva—a real historical figure who lived from1592 to 1639—was simple enough. Imagining myself reaching the level of piety, self-awareness, courage, and moral decency he exemplified in his life and, even more so, in his death—that was the mirror into which I found myself peering as I read Aguinis’s book. I don’t have to be him, obviously. But I do have to be me. And so the question is not whether I could learn Spanish and move to the seventeenth century, but whether I have it in me to be me in the same sense that the book’s protagonist was himself. If the concept sounds obscure when I formulate it that way, read the book and you’ll see what I mean: I can hardly remember feeling more personally challenged by a novel, and more eager to accept the protagonist as a moral role model. Against the Inquisition is a historical novel, of course, not a non-fiction work of “regular” history. But it tells a true story…and the opportunity to read the story, to take it to heart, to be moved incredibly by its detail, and to feel transformed by the experience of communing with a great Jewish thinker through the medium of his art—that is the gift Against the Inquisition offers to its readers.

The plot, fully rooted in the real Francisco Maldonado da Silva’s life story, is beyond moving. The details of Jewish life in Latin America in the late 1500s and the early 1600s will be obscure to most readers in North America today. But the short version is that all of South America except Brazil was part of the Spanish Empire back then. And the Catholic authorities (whose power over the region’s secular rulers was almost absolute) were dedicated not merely to making the practice of Judaism illegal, but to ferreting out even the vaguest traces of Jewish practice of belief that might still be lingering among the so-called “New” Christians, the descendants of those Jews who chose conversion to Catholic Christianity over flight when the Jews were exiled from Spain and Portugal, but at least some of whom retained a deeply engrained sense of their own Jewishness intact enough to pass along to their children and their children’s children as well.

Da Silva’s life story as retold in the book is remarkable in almost every way. His father, a physician harboring a deep, if secret and entirely illicit, devotion to his own Jewishness is eventually discovered and punished so cruelly and so degradingly that it beggars the imagination to consider that his torture—which is certainly not too strong a word to describe his treatment—was undertaken by men who considered themselves not only deeply religious but truly virtuous. But the meat of the novel is the story of how exactly the physician’s son Francisco, who also becomes well-known and highly respected doctor, is made aware of his Jewishness and then finds it in him not to dissemble so as not to be caught, but, at least eventually, to embrace his Jewishness and his Judaism openly and fearlessly. That kind of behavior was not tolerated in Spanish America, and the consequences for Francisco are, at least in some ways, even worse than the physical abuse and public humiliation to which his father was subjected.

The last chapters particularly are seared into my memory. You know what’s coming. You know that there’s no other way for the book to end. You understand that the protagonist, Francisco himself, sees that as clearly as you do. And yet you continue to hope that you’re wrong, that some deus ex machina will descend from the sky and make things right. You know you’re being crazy by hoping for such a thing—and, if you are me, you already know that the auto-da-fé of January 23, 1639, in Lima, Peru, was perhaps the largest mass execution of Jews ever undertaken by the Catholic church, a nightmarish travesty of justice undertaken in the name of religion in which more than eighty “New” Christians were burnt alive at the stake for the crime of having retained some faint vestige of their families’ Jewishness—but you continue to delude yourself into thinking that perhaps the author will take advantage of his novelist’s prerogative to just make up some other ending.  That Francisco is depicted as having the means of escaping his prison cell but instead uses his freedom to visit other prisoners and encourage them to embrace their Jewishness and to accept their fate with pride and courage—that detail alone makes this novel a worthy Elul read.

My readers all know who my personal heroes are. Janusz Korczak, who chose to die at Treblinka rather than to abandon the orphans entrusted to his care. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who returned to wartime Germany to preach against Nazism and eventually to play a role in the plot to assassinate Hitler, for which effort he paid with his life. And now I add Francisco Maldonado da Silva, who chose to die with dignity and pride as a Jew rather than to run off and spend his life masquerading as something he was not and had no wish to be. Could I be like that? Could I live up to my own values in the way these men did? Could I be me the way they were them? I ask these questions not because I wish to answer them in public, but merely to show that they can be asked. They can also be answered, of course. And that is what Elul is for: to challenge us to peer into whatever mirror we choose…and ask if the man or woman we could be is looking back, or just the woman or man we ended up as. That is the searing, anxiety-provoking question the holidays about to dawn lay at our feet. If you’re looking for the courage to formulate your own answer, read Against the Inquisition and I’m guessing you’ll be as inspired to undertake the ḥeshbon ha-nefesh necessary to answer honestly as I was.

[adribosch-fan]

Que la psicopatía de los autoritarios no intoxique a la sociedad

Que la psicopatía de los autoritarios no intoxique a la sociedad

Un psicópata no sufre la culpa y la pena como la generalidad de las personas; de ahí la perplejidad que suscitan determinados individuos por sus actos y su conducta Marcos Aguinis LA NACION Los líderes del nazismo fueron juzgados en los juicios de NúrembergGETTY Muchas palabras se usan sin conocer bien su significado. Entre ellas ha incrementado su frecuencia el término “psicopatía”. Hace un…

[sublecturas]

"La matriz del infierno", de Marcos Aguinis en la Línea H

[jgmail]

Adam Smith desfigurado

Por Atilio A. Boron

Fuentes: Página/12

Uno de los rasgos distintivos de los intelectuales conservadores es la impunidad con que difunden sus ideas –en realidad, sus “ocurrencias”, como dijera Octavio Paz- a través del inmenso aparato de los oligopolios mediáticos que los ampara y promueve.

El caso más reciente es el de Marcos Aguinis, un prolífico escritor que en sus mejores tiempos, antes de la lamentable involución ideológica de los últimos años que lo arrojó en brazos del macrismo y los energúmenos de la “infectadura”, supo ser Secretario de Cultura del gobierno de Raúl Alfonsín. En una nota publicada en La Nación (“El inmortal Adam Smith”, 15 enero 2022) rinde un homenaje a la figura de Adam Smith, lo que en principio está muy bien y sólo merecería mi aplauso.

El problema es que el Smith que presenta Aguinis poco tiene que ver con la obra de ese enorme pensador de la Ilustración Escocesa y padre fundador de la Economía Política. Lo que hace en su artículo es difundir una caricatura burdamente distorsionada del autor de La Riqueza de las Naciones, presentándolo como si fuera un profeta del egoísmo y el individualismo, un ingenuo adorador de los mercados y un enemigo declarado de los gobiernos. Esta operación de deconstrucción en clave reaccionaria no es nueva. El propio Aguinis elogia anteriores esfuerzos en esta dirección realizados por Mario Vargas Llosa y Alberto Benegas Lynch (h.), que incurrieron en sus nada inocentes desatinos.

En su nota Aguinis apela a una remanida cita de Smith para fundamentar la idea, insanablemente errónea, que “el progreso no se debe a la caridad, sino al egoísmo.” Cita, a continuación, un pasaje de La Riqueza de las Naciones en donde Smith dice que “No obtenemos los alimentos por la benevolencia del carnicero, del cervecero o el panadero, sino por la preocupación que tienen ellos en su propio interés, sus necesidades, sus ambiciones”. El tan ansiado motor del progreso entonces no es otro que el egoísmo institucionalizado en el “mercado libre”, especie tanto o más fantasmagórica o inhallable que el unicornio azul. Mercados hay, pero los mercados libres no existen: siempre son regulados por los actores más poderosos (monopolios, oligopolios) o por la intervención de los poderes públicos que corrigen sus inequidades o el deplorable “darwinismo social” de los mercados.

¿Es esto lo que creía Adam Smith? ¿Confiaba tan ciegamente en las virtudes del egoísmo? Decididamente no. Utilizando un lenguaje propio de la época decía que “los sirvientes, trabajadores y empleados de diferentes tipos constituyen la gran mayoría de cada sociedad. Y lo que mejora las condiciones de la gran mayoría de una población nunca puede ser considerado como una desventaja para el conjunto.” (pg. 70 de la edición original en inglés) Smith podría creer en algunas de las virtudes de una economía de mercado; sin embargo, una “sociedad de mercado” donde sólo sobrevivieran los “más aptos” repugnaba su espíritu humanista. Nada lo escandalizaba más, por ejemplo, que el trabajo infantil en las minas del Reino Unido o la abyecta pobreza de sus ciudades.

Hace unos años la revista inglesa The Economist aportó un baño de sobriedad a los apóstoles del neoliberalismo cuando dijo que “Mucha gente piensa que él fue un ‘libremercadista’ arquetípico. Pero Smith es a menudo muy mal citado.” (1º de noviembre de 2013) El escocés estaba muy preocupado por las perniciosas consecuencias económicas y sociales del egoísmo, y creía que el gobierno tenía una importante responsabilidad en tratar de combatir la injusticia producida por quienes tenían diferentes posibilidades de defender sus intereses: el salario en un caso, la ganancia en el otro. Esto exige la presencia de regulaciones impuestas a los terratenientes, industriales y comerciantes que, observa Smith, se hallan en constante conspiración a los fines de oprimir a los trabajadores y esquilmar a los consumidores.

En otro célebre pasaje que jamás citan sus actuales voceros Smith decía “los patronos, siendo pocos en número, pueden asociarse mucho más fácilmente; y la ley, además, autoriza o al menos no prohíbe tales asociaciones, mientras que sí prohíbe las de los trabajadores (los sindicatos). No tenemos leyes del Parlamento en contra de combinaciones encaminadas a bajar los salarios; pero tenemos muchas que penalizan las combinaciones que desean aumentarlos. Los patronos están siempre y en todo lugar en una suerte de asociación tácita, constante y uniforme para impedir el aumento de los salarios. (ibid. P. 60) Y más adelante remachaba su argumento diciendo que “los amos [se refiere a comerciantes, industriales y terratenientes] raramente se reúnen aun por entretenimiento o diversión sin que la conversación termine en una conspiración contra el público, o en una componenda para aumentar sus precios.” (p. 75) Smith sostenía que era responsabilidad del gobierno poner coto al desenfreno del egoísmo.

En nuestra crítica a la apología del liberalismo hecha por Vargas Llosa (Cf. El Hechicero de la Tribu. Mario Vargas Llosa y el liberalismo en América Latina) señalábamos la deformación que el pensamiento del humanista y economista escocés sufrió a manos de sus divulgadores. Allí citamos un artículo de Jacob Viner, un economista de Chicago, que ya en 1927 demolió los lugares comunes de la derecha y demostró que Smith estaba muy lejos de ser un librecambista radical, sino que admitía los importantes roles que debía cumplir el Estado. Señalaba entre ellos el dictado de Leyes de Navegación; que los salarios debían pagarse en dinero y no en especies; que el papel moneda debía estar regulado por el Estado; establecer premios y otros incentivos para promover el desarrollo de la industria textil; obras públicas en transporte para facilitar el comercio; regulación de las joint-stock companies y otros tipos de empresas; aceptar monopolios temporarios -incluidos copyrights y patentes- por un tiempo limitado; restricciones gubernamentales en las tasas de interés aplicadas a los prestatarios para compensar la “estupidez” (¡sic!) del inversionista, y, por último, entre tantas otras, las limitaciones a la exportación de granos (sólo en casos de extrema necesidad) y la introducción de “moderados impuestos a las exportaciones a efectos de reforzar el tesoro”. (J. Viner, “Adam Smith and Laissez Faire”, Journal of Political Economy , abril de 1927, pp. 198-232.)

Conclusión: si Aguinis respeta tanto al “inmortal Adam Smith” debería comenzar por honrar su legado y evitar presentar ante el público una caricatura de su pensamiento, sólo apta para su uso político en la Argentina actual y no para comprender la importancia de sus ideas.

Fuente: https://www.pagina12.com.ar/395735-adam-smith-desfigurado

[derechointernacionalpublico]

Jueves 7 de noviembre, 19.00 horas / El mundo que viene y cómo se inserta la Argentina

Jueves 7 de noviembre, 19.00 horas / El mundo que viene y cómo se inserta la Argentina

Jueves 7 de noviembre, 19.00 horas / El mundo que viene y cómo se inserta la Argentina

Ultimo encuentro del ciclo de conferencias 2019 “El mundo que viene y cómo se inserta la Argentina”, organizado por el Comité de Cultura del CARI, con el auspicio de la Fundación Ortega y Gasset

La presentación será transmitida vía streaming aquí

Entrada libre. Se ruega confirmar asistencia a agenda@cari.org.ar

[regisseursur]

Al llegar a casa descubrí en el oscuro balcón la sombra de Carmela, que me esperaba con un vaso de agua azucarada rociada con gotas de alcohol medicinal. Le hice señas para que bajase y fuéramos a dar una vuelta en mi auto ruso (...) Comprobé nuevamente, con renovada bronca, que mientras varias manzanas yacían a oscuras, ciertas viviendas estaban iluminadas por generadores eléctricos propios (...) Nos costaba expresar el desagrado que producía esa falta de ecuanimidad, porque criticarlos significaba pasar al reaccionario distrito de los criticaban la Revolución. No obstante, a ciertos funcionarios y comandantes ya se los empezaba a calificar como los Gorditos, porque comían en los mejores restaurantes, salían de viaje al exterior y disfrutaban viviendas lujosas.

Marcos Aguinis (2009). La pasión según Carmela. 1era Edición. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Sudamerica.

Regisseur.

[leovelfa2020]

En la Argentina, el 2 de abril de cada año se conmemora el Día del Veterano y de los Caídos en la Guerra de Malvinas. Creado por la ley 25.370 de noviembre del 2000, desde junio de 2006 es un feriado nacional inamovible, por lo cual no podrá ser trasladado al lunes anterior o siguiente para conformar un fin de semana largo. La elección de esta fecha se debe a que el 2 de abril de 1982 las Fuerzas Armadas Argentinas desembarcaron en las Islas Malvinas con el objetivo de recuperar ese territorio, arrebatado por fuerzas británicas en el año 1833. Durante el mes de marzo de 2012, en vísperas de la Celebración del 30° Aniversario de la Guerra de Malvinas, los filósofosBeatriz Sarlo, Marcos Aguinis y Santiago Kovadloff, el periodista Jorge Lanata y la ex-senadora Graciela Fernández Meijide, entre otros intelectuales, escritores, políticos y periodistas, firmaron un documento en el cual desaprueban que el 2 de abril haya sido declarado Día del Veterano y de los Caídos en la Guerra de Malvinas.3 En el acto central por dicha fecha patria ese mismo año, la presidenta Cristina Fernández de Kirchner cuestionó este planteamiento, calificándolos de «voces minoritarias» que «intentan desmerecer el reclamo de soberanía» sobre el archipiélago (en Departamento de Cachi) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-dsJfejMtU/?igshid=1njsmkjex5iis

[arco-rc]

AA.VV. Obras Selectas de Premios Nobel. Planeta, Barcelona, 1988.

La publicación en forma de libro de textos de diversos autores, e incluso de obras anónimas, reunidas con los criterios más diversos (procedencia geográfica, lengua, género literario) es históricamente anterior a la publicación de libros siguiendo el principio de la autoría o la obra unitaria (piénsese por ejemplo en los romanceros, florilegios, tesauros, etc.).

A nadie extrañará que la antología (más que la colección) haya sido un modo empleado a menudo por diversas editoriales para dar a conocer ámbitos literarios apenas conocidos o bien olvidados pero aún valiosos o pertinentes para el lector de nuestro tiempo. Es el caso, por ejemplo, de las antologías mediante las cuales se ha intentado dado a conocer en España a algunos narradores que desarrollaron el grueso de su producción en el exilio, como consecuencia del resultado de la guerra civil española de 1936-1939, y que la censura franquista escamoteó a los lectores españoles.

BÖLL, Heinrich. Billar a las nueve y media; Opiniones de un payaso; Retrato de grupo con señora; El honor perdido de Katharina Blum, en Obras Selectas de Premios Nobel (1972). Planeta, Barcelona, 1988.

AÑOS 1952-1980 (29 novelas en 30 volúmenes) 

TÍTULOS:

1952 Juan José Mira. En la noche no hay caminos / 1953 Santiago Lorén. Una casa con goteras / 1954 Ana María Matute. Pequeño teatro / 1955 Antonio Prieto. Tres pisadas de hombre / 1956 Carmen Kurtz. El desconocido / 1957 Emilio Romero. La paz empieza nunca / 1958 F. Bermúdez de Castro. Pasos sin huellas / 1959 Andrés Bosch. La noche / 1960 Tomás Salvador. El atentado / 1961 Torcuato Luca de Tena. La mujer de otro / 1962 Angel Vázquez. Se enciende y se apaga una luz / 1963 Luis Romero. El cacique / 1964 Concha Alós. Las hogueras / 1965 Rodrigo Rubio. Equipaje de amor para la tierra / 1966 Marta Portal Nicolás. A tientas y a ciegas / 1967 Angel María de Lera. Las últimas banderas / 1968 Manuel Ferrand. Con la noche a cuestas / 1969 Ramón J. Sender. En la vida de Ignacio Morel / 1970 Marcos Aguinis. La cruz invertida / 1971 José Mª Gironella. Condenados a vivir (2 vols.) / 1972 Jesús Zárate. La cárcel / 1973 Carlos Rojas. Azaña / 1974 Xavier Berenguel. Icaria, Icaria... / 1975 Mercedes Saalisachs. La gangrena / 1976 Jesús Torbado. En el día de hoy / 1977 Jorge Semprún. Autobiografía de Federico Sánchez / 1978 Juan Marsé. La muchacha de las bragas de oro / 1979 Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Los mares del sur / 1980 Antonio Larreta. Volavérunt

[x00151x]

Efemérides literarias: 13 de enero

Efemérides literarias: 13 de enero

Nacimientos 1749: Friedrich Müller, poeta, dramaturgo y pintor alemán (f. 1825).1832: Horatio Alger, escritor estadounidense (f. 1899).1859: Kostís Palamás, poeta griego (f. 1943).1893: Clark Ashton Smith, escritor estadounidense (f. 1961).1926: Mario Trejo, escritor argentino (f. 2012).1930: Teresa March, escritora española (f. 2001).1935: Marcos Aguinis, escritor argentino.1957: Lorrie Moore,…

[ruminativerabbi]

As the Holidays Approach

Elul, the month that leads directly into the High Holiday season, should be ideally devoted to the thoughtful, principled introspection that can serve as the foundation upon which the spiritual work of the whole holiday season should then come to rest. And that only makes sense: to come before Judge God and successfully to negotiate the experience requires, at the very least, knowing yourself well enough to speak honestly and authoritatively on your own behalf and in your own defense. And that level of self-awareness comes to most of us, possibly even to all of us, solely as the result of the kind of wholly honest self-scrutiny that yields the unvarnished truth about ourselves and our lives.

The problem is that most of us find any sort of serious self-analysis off-putting, unnerving, and, to say the very least, deeply anxiety-provoking. And yet, that is precisely what otherwise halcyon Elul offers: week after week of days unburdened by any other holidays or special observances that may therefore be given over to thinking carefully about ourselves and our lives and our deeds…and, painful though the process may be, also in identifying our own moral shortcomings, errors of judgment, ethical missteps, and unnecessarily missed opportunities to do good in the world. It is a pleasant experience for almost none, but it can be a productive one.

To assist in making the whole Elul experience as positive as possible, it has been my custom in recent years to recommend to my readers a single book that might prove helpful in framing otherwise amorphous thoughts and regrets in a productive way, in confronting the larger paintings of which the details of our personal lives are the brushstrokes, in setting our personal stories into the larger saga of humankind and its foibles and flaws, and, generally speaking, in coming to terms with the lives we have constructed and owning up to the various ways in which those lives have been characterized more often than not by decisions that, for all they seemed reasonable at the time, feel flawed and inconsistent with the values we claim to hold dear when viewed in the rearview mirror.

Last year, I recommended a remarkable novel that I had just read, Marcos Aguinis’s book Against the Inquisition, which I found both moving, intelligent, and stimulating. (To revisit my thoughts from last Elul, click here.) This year, however, I would like to recommend a book that I first read decades ago, and which wasn’t that new a work even then: Clark Moustakas’s book, Loneliness.

Moustakas’s renown has faded in the years following his death in 2012 at age eighty-nine, but in his day he was one of America’s foremost psychologist/authors and was widely acclaimed specifically as an expert in humanistic and clinical psychology. He published prodigiously throughout his career, but the book I wish to recommend was one of his earlier works that first appeared in 1961. (I read it when I was a student at JTS more than a decade after it first came out.) I would like to introduce it to you in this week’s letter and suggest why I feel it would make an excellent choice for Elul reading.

The book isn’t long at all, a mere 107 pages in the first print edition. Yet the author manages in those few pages to speak almost amazingly deeply and provocatively about the human condition…and in a way that is somehow both reassuring and challenging. I just finished re-reading the book and, even after all these years was struck again by its remarkable profundity. If there is one book you can find the time to read this Elul, Loneliness is the one I recommend you consider. (Nor is this a pricey investment: you can find used copies online for $2 a book.)

I was prompted to re-read the book by an article I noticed the other day on the website of YouGov, the U.K.-based data analysis firm, that determined—not anecdotally, but by using actual data collected this last summer and subsequently analyzed by themselves—that the millennials among us can reasonably be characterized as the loneliest generation ever. (Click here to read the article for yourself.) This came as a huge surprise to me—you would think that people raised in a world in which people are practically defined by social media that offer the possibility of maintaining not dozens or scores but hundreds or even thousands of “friendships” concurrently, you would think such people would constitute the world’s least lonely people ever. And yet, the report seemed unequivocal: 30% of millennials polled reported feeling “always or often” lonely (as opposed to half that many baby boomers such as myself) and more than one in five—22%—of millennials reported that they do not have any friends at all. A different slice of the millennial pie—27% of the total—reported having some friends but no “close” ones. Together, that’s one percentage point short of half of all Americans between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-seven reporting that they either had no friends at all…or at least no close ones. When asked why they find it difficult to make friends with others, a startling 53% responded that the fault was in their own stars—that they personally were too shy to go out there and find people to be friends with. All of this came as a huge surprise to me.

There’s more thought-provoking data on the YouGov site to consider as well, but what interested me most of all was the basic assumption of the essay’s author, Jamie Ballard, that loneliness was a bad thing that healthy people would naturally avoid (and thus a situation in which most would only find themselves accidentally or tragically). Nor was I amazed that she took that approach, which I think is probably what most people actually do think. The phenomenal success of the television series Friends, which ran for ten years starting a quarter-century ago, was probably rooted in that concept as well: the show was a little about romance and a little about life, but it was mostly about friendship—its name basically said as much—and its great success lay in the portrait it offered viewers of young urban types, the sustaining feature of whose lives was precisely the degree to which their friends watched out for them, cared for them, and, yes, loved them even when they were being otherwise disagreeable or snarly.

I think most of us subscribe to the notion that loneliness is a bad thing. And yet Moustakas’s book goes off in the precisely opposite direction, describing self-growth—and specifically the kind that leads to self-awareness and self-confidence—as an edifice almost of necessity built on a foundation of the kind of aloneness that moderns inevitably denigrate as unwanted, unworthy loneliness.

He writes anecdotally, telling us the stories of several of his patients and also telling his own story in a few intensely personal, sustained episodes. But he also writes about famous people and describes the source of their inventiveness, their creativity, their artistry, and their success in life as having been rooted in the deep sense of personal autonomy that begins with the acknowledgement that we are all alone in our lives and then goes on to create the impetus to seek the kind of companionship that, rather than denying or masking that sense of aloneness, celebrates and enhances it to the degree that we find in love the experience of being fully autonomous—and thus fully alone—in the company of a similarly autonomous individual. Among the people about whom he writes, some will be familiar to all—the sections on Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, and Admiral Richard Byrd are particularly moving—and others, like the French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry or the German adventurer and explorer Hermann Buhl will be less well known. But, taken all together, the portraits he paints are all of individuals who found in loneliness the foundation upon which to build a social, meaningful, intensely productive life guided by principles forged by those individuals themselves in the crucible of their own autonomous selves.

Perhaps I should let the author speak for himself. In the introduction to these portraits I just mentioned, he sets forth his argument in these terms:

Every man is alone. Ultimately, each person exists in isolation. He faces himself in silence, wending his way in individual pathways, seeking companionship, reaching out to others. Forever, man moves forward stretching to the skies, searching the realization of his own capacities. In loneliness, man seeks the fulfillment of his inner nature. He maps new meanings, and perceives new patterns for old ways and habits.  Alone, the life of man passes before him. His philosophy, the meanings he attaches to his work and his relations, each significant aspect of his being comes into view as new values are formed, as man resolves to bring human significance, to bring life to each new day, to each piece of work, to each creation. In loneliness, every experience is alive and vivid and full of meaning. When one has been greatly isolated and restricted in movement, one deeply feels the value of openness, of freedom and expansiveness. Life takes on an exquisite meaning, an exhilarating richness. When one has lived in total darkness, one piercingly appreciates the sunlight, the fireside, the beacon, the beginning dawn. When one is cut off from human companionship, one discovers a deep reverence for friendship, for the one who stands by in the hour of need and shame. In the days of pain and defeat, loneliness takes on a human depth.  When one is sequestered from life, when one is purely alone and dying, when one is lost in a world of dreary emptiness, then color becomes exquisite, rich, desirable, fulfilling. When one has been sharply isolated and lonely, every moment is pure, every sound is delightful, every aspect of the universe takes on a value and meaning, an exquisite beauty. The isolated tree stretches out to meet its new neighbor; the lonely star twinkles and turns to face its emerging companions in the night; the lost child runs to loved ones with open arms.

 A mere excerpt or two won’t do justice to the book, which is remarkable both in terms of its brevity and its profundity. I recommend it wholeheartedly to all—both broadly as a very interesting, challenging way to consider the human condition and more narrowly as an Elul book that has in its handful of chapters the capacity to frame the whole experience of entering the Days of Awe almost upon us not as a burden or a test, but as an exercise in deep, sustaining self-awareness and self-knowledge.

[adribosch-fan]

"El Papa fue infectado por el virus del peronismo"

“El Papa fue infectado por el virus del peronismo”

En el ida y vuelta, en el intercambio de ideas acerca de cómo debe reconstruirse la Argentina, Marcos Aguinis también dio a conocer su puntos de vista.

“Toda referencia a la propiedad privada creo que se remonta a una etapa antigua de la civilización occidental que olvidamos con frecuencia. Está en los 10 mandamientos de Moisés. Cuando expuso las tablas de la ley, tenía un mandamiento que decía…

[accidentalajumma]

I read a fascinating (and horrifying) book last year by Marcos Aguinis about the persecution of conversos and their fight for freedom in South America. It is called Against the Inquisition and is based on history.

In 1492, best known as the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Spain also decided to expel all practicing Jews from its kingdom. Jews who did not leave—and were not murdered—were forced to become Catholics. Along with those who converted during earlier pogroms, they became known as conversos. As Spain expanded its empire in the Americas, conversos made their way to the colonies too.

The stories have always persisted—of people across Latin America who didn’t eat pork, of candles lit on Friday nights, of mirrors covered for mourning. A new study examining the DNA of thousands of Latin Americans reveals the extent of their likely Sephardic Jewish ancestry, more widespread than previously thought and more pronounced than in people in Spain and Portugal today. “We were very surprised to find it was the case,” says Juan-Camilo Chacón-Duque, a geneticist at the Natural History Museum in London who co-authored the paper.

This study is one of the most comprehensive genetic surveys of Latin Americans yet. The team also found a mix of indigenous American, European, sub-Saharan African, and East Asian ancestry in many people they sampled—a legacy of colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and more recent pulses of immigration from Asia. This is the history of Latin America, written in DNA.

In the case of conversos, DNA is helping elucidate a story with few historical records. Spain did not allow converts or their recent descendants to go to its colonies, so they traveled secretly under falsified documents. “For obvious reasons, conversos were not eager to identify as conversos,” says David Graizbord, a professor of Judaic studies at the University of Arizona. The designation applied not just to converts but also to their descendants who were always Catholic. It came with more than a whiff of a stigma. “It was to say you come from Jews and you may not be a genuine Christian,” says Graizbord. Conversos who aspired to high offices in the Church or military often tried to fake their ancestry.

The genetic record now suggests that conversos—or people who shared ancestry with them—came to the Americas in disproportionate numbers. For conversos persecuted at home, the fast-growing colonies of the New World may have seemed like an opportunity and an escape. But the Spanish Inquisition reached into the colonies, too. Those found guilty of observing Jewish practices in Mexico, for example, were burned at the stake.

Chacón-Duque and his colleagues pieced together the genetic record by sampling DNA from 6,500 people across Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, which they compared to that of 2,300 people all over the world. Nearly a quarter of the Latin Americans shared 5 percent or more of their ancestry with people living in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, including self-identified Sephardic Jews. DNA alone cannot prove that conversos were the source of this ancestry, but it fits with the historical record. This pattern of widespread but low North African and eastern Mediterranean ancestry in the population suggests that its source is centuries old, putting the date around the early days of New Spain. In contrast, more recent immigration to Latin America from Italy and Germany in the late 19th century shows up concentrated in relatively few people in a few geographic areas.

Geneticists have also noticed rare genetic diseases prevalent in Jews popping up in Latin America. “It’s not just one disease. It’s like, wow, this isn’t a coincidence,” says Harry Ostrer, a geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 2011, Ostrer and his colleagues decided to study two populations—in Ecuador and Colorado—with unusually high prevalence of two mutations often found in Jews. (One mutation was in the breast-cancer gene BRCA1, and the other caused a form of dwarfism called Laron syndrome.) And indeed, they found enriched Sephardic Jewish ancestry in the 53 people they tested. With advances in DNA technology, Chacón-Duque and his colleagues were able to carry out similar research, but on the scale of thousands of people.

…By the 17th century, Graizbord says, most conversos had assimilated and lost any connection to Jewish customs. Today, some of their descendants are reclaiming their Jewish identity. They can join Jewish genealogy groups. Some have even converted to Judaism. DNA tests are fanning interest, too. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York politician whose family comes from Puerto Rico, recently revealed during a Hanukkah event that she has Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

Before Chacón-Duque joined this study as a scientist, he had actually submitted his own DNA as a participant. He, like the thousands of others who volunteered, was curious about his own ancestry. He grew up in northwest Colombia, and he had heard the stories. It was a local custom to slaughter a pig for festivities, and it was said that you ate pork publicly to prove you were not a Jew. From that and other tales passed through his family, he had wondered. It turns out he has converso ancestry, too.

[imagenprimero]

En un mismo espacio, en el predio del Tekove Poti ubicado al final de la Costanera Sur, el público se puede encontrar una gran variedad de atractivas propuestas para todas las edades. Por ejemplo, este sábado 22 de julio, unas de las conferencias imperdibles será la del prolífero escritor Marcos Aguinis. La misma será a […]