~LA CANCILLER DE HIERRO~

(Relato de un suceso histórico, enmarcado en un encuentro ficticio)

En la guía turística que nos dieron al llegar a la Isla, me llamó la atención ver que como parte del programa de viaje nos ofrecían una visita al puerto. La atracción principal, según decían, era contemplar el busto de ella.

Fue más mi incredulidad, lo admito, la que me condujo hasta dicho lugar. Me sonó tan extraordinario este hecho que sentí que debía verlo con mis propios ojos. Era para no creérselo.

La verdad es que si no hubiese sido por una nota que Yanis Varoufakis publicó en la revista digital theonion.com, y él  mismo promocionó a través de su cuenta en Twitter, a propósito de ella y el final de sus 16 años de mandato, el suceso histórico se me hubiese pasado por alto, como a casi todo el mundo. Más el título nomás ya lo decía todo: “EU Honors Angela Merkel’s Tenure by Giving Her Greece.”

Trabajo me costó creerlo… Allí, en el lugar más prominente del puerto, en efecto, yacía su busto. Y créanme, si no hubiese sido por sus tetas no la hubiese reconocido: estaba cubierta de grafitis grotescos. En un momento histórico como el que vivíamos; cuando la mayoría de las estatuas, imágenes, cuadros, monumentos y demás de personajes alguna vez considerados históricos habían sido destruidas con virulencia ‘Covid-na’ -como yo he dado en llamarla-, o, en su defecto, puestas a buen resguardo en museos obsoletos; ¿a quién se le pudo ocurrir la descabellada idea de levantar un busto de ella, precisamente en Grecia?

Me quedé boquiabierta y, al mirarla fijamente, la brisa marina, como si fuese una evocación de la diosa Minerva, me sopló estas palabras, Lo que más me molesta de ella es no haber podido ser yo. 

Sin comprender nada, me fui alejando de allí convencida de que la historia, ya sea fresca o añosa, es un ovillo de enredos que siempre termina por confundirnos más y más.

- He ahí el porqué de las tragedias griegas-, me dijo mi compañero convencido; por algo él era economista y yo no.

C.S. Ariza-Olarte - Utrecht 28-9-2021

 

To HISHAM MATAR

To HISHAM MATAR

Dear Hisham,

As a Colombian who twenty years ago had to leave my land behind, it was a nice surprise to see your name in the list of guests to the Hay Festival in my beloved city of Cartagena de Indias.

I have just finished my reading of your heartbreaking “RETURN” –one of the books I’ve asked as a Christmas present, following the Chimamanda Adichie’s recommendation in The Guardian.- 

I would like very much to be there, in Cartagena, but... Anyway, I am going to take this occasion as a good opportunity to ask you some questions which were coming meanwhile my reading was going on…

For instance, in the list of the books your dear father and other relatives were reading in jail I had missed the name of Gabriel García Márquez, is there a reason for…? Maybe cultural, social, ideological…?  Perhaps I sound a little Chauvinism! Sorry, it’s not my intention. It’s only the reader’s curiosity.

As a woman who is living another live in another culture -as a Dutch citizen,- I know very well the feelings you’ve magnificently described in your book. Some years ago one of the books who helped me  to understand my own feelings and my pain was the Milan Kundera’s novel “Ignorance” and reading you I was wondering if you have read it too? Nostalgia as Ignorance! If your answer is No, I would like to recommend it!

All of these feelings you described evocated in me things I have learned in my own country and, more important,  made me think again and again in all the mothers in my land who are still looking for their missing children or husbands… full of hope but without any answers!

In the name of your loved father, thank you for your ‘Return”. A kind of revelation!

Carmen Socorro Ariza-Olarte

BOB DYLAN's Nobel prize in literature and the others

BOB DYLAN’s Nobel prize in literature and the others

“…No words are needed for those who understand music,” said a Zen Buddhist parable.

And, meanwhile Dylan was speechless, one of the others - who doesn’t understand music -, speaking out in front of his own audience at the University of…., like a lion king giving a verdict on Dylan’s Nobel, had said:  “El próximo se lo darán a un futbolista.” I guess he feel so superior that he doesn’t want to be in the same box with Bob Dylan. He wants to be the one and the only taking part of the show he referred when he added… “hoy en día la sociedad está marcada por el espectáculo en todas las actividades, también en la cultura y la política.”

But who cares? Nobody! This is exactly his problem. He criticized Dylan’s Nobel only because he is the one who has failed to be a serious one. Being honest, this one in question is very well known because all of his professional carrier as a writer has been marked for scandals which have helped him to be selling his books and, also, to win all kind of prices, titles, honoris causa’s and you named, even the Nobel prize in literature…  So what? One punch more direct to the eye of ‘another real good contender’ - as García Márquez was and Bob Dylan is-, has to be no more than another try to be in the buzz for something more noble that to be the unfaithful husband: a most recent revival of interest in him. Anyway, to be or not to be, despite his boxer qualities had he listened at least ones the story of Hurricane? I don’t think so. But in one way or another – bad footballer,  good boxer, once on upon time he was also the Nobel laurate and there, in his own boxer ring, ‘can be but one king’, thundered the boxer or the writer?

Still, what is important here is to see how sometimes people who doesn’t deserve ‘to be’, sooner or later, show us in the most funny way his true colors or - as Jesús y María could say: “nos muestran el cobre.” And yes, I’m using Spanish words because one of the first things who made me fell in love with Bob Dylan’s songs was exactly that in many of his lyrics he use names, sayings and words in Spanish: my mother tongue! In these days of war against the immigrants I have to remember, for instance, ‘Deportees’, one of his songs about the deportation of non-documented Mexicans in America! Because no matter what -60’s of 70’s, the Dylan’s work seems, now, so relevant and, undoubtedly, is set to be even more in the… Times… of the man of the year and the years to come! 

To say that a songwriter doesn’t deserve to win a Nobel prize in literature because of… is, simply, deny what literature is all about. It’s denied the literature’s roots and his origins. It’s denied the classics. It’s denied Homerus and his Odysseus’ canto, the Ramayana, the troubadours at the kingdoms service and so and so… All we know today as literature is founded in songs or cantos or poems or lyrics and so. All of these compiling works were much more than beautiful poetry. These cantos were used, as today, to tell true stories, to transmit messages, to connect people and, also, as entertainment -one of the most significant literature’s functions – ad-látere of others such as social, cultural and political activities. The problem of the literature today is exactly that, thanks writers as the good boxer, the literature world is changing in a bored academic-matter. No wonder why the young people today prefer the political-business social media-show than to read a good novel or create scenarios where the poets could read loud their works or, why not, speak out in the middle of the public squares of the universities. Public squares that now and then are more scenarios of mass murders or, simple, boxing rings.

By the listening Bob Dylan’s work nobody could denied that every song is a story perceived as tragedy, as drama, as epopee, as comedy, as romantic novel, as terrific fiction, as metaphor, as sweet dream or as terrible war. Ones we have climbed this particular way of understanding, that we will appreciate that such as creative process is also our own choice because every metaphor produces its own forms of prejudice… that whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent…

Bob Dylan regarded songwriting as the higher art because by singing one can confront us with our own realities and universal problems. He has accomplished what King Lear couldn’t: to fill de gap between generations. One of the reasons, perhaps, to the Nobel prize ceremony  he has chosen*  let us ‘see and hear’ -in the sweet voice of Patti Smith his touching song, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall…  and… “all of the sudden much of the bookish poetry in our word felt anaemic”  -beautiful words Horace Engdahl, a Swedish literary historian and critic and member of the academy has said as response to all who doesn’t understand what literature is all about!  

To Bob Dylan and all of songwriters in this world with love!

*I've right read that it was Patti Smit who had chosen this song in particular and it was de Nobel organization who invited her to sing at the ceremony... Sorry, I apologize!

Carmen Socorro Ariza-Olarte

Conversations with DANTE about the art to send 'pobres-diablos'to the Hell with poetical elegance!

Conversations with DANTE about the art to send ‘pobres-diablos’ to the Hell with poetical elegance! 

Today, when even the prominent people of the world use to send others to the hell in the most unintelligent and easy way, Who can deny that you, Dante Alighieri, have been the great master in the art to do so within grandeur and sacred style?

I remember my first encounters with your ‘Divine Comedy’ and a kind of jealous you provoked me when I realized this should be a nicer and most therapeutic way to exorcize our demons sending our enemies to the place each of them deserve -not literal but literate… Keeping up the idea that if they are smart enough perhaps they could be able to upward their souls a little bit or, why no, rise them to the perfection, give my soul a kind of relief. I’d learned that following your steps it is possible go onwards from the lowest of the steps (Inferno) to the second one (Purgatorio) where we can be freed and able to arise from outward ceremonials and observances to a spiritual worship and then, going on and on, we could get the third step: the Knowledge (Paradiso),  endowed by which with supernatural insight, we become like the angels around the throne, and have but one farther step to take before we reach the goal and become one with God. It leads me to an image of the divine made human, to teach me how the human might also make itself divine.  

Use our intelligence and talent as a wise alchemist, transforming our frustration and anger in something really poetical and productive -as your immortal poem- has to be the real essence, the deepest meaning of art and perfection. It is true Dante, that your originality consists in your not allowing any divorce between the intellect and the soul in his highest sense, in your making reason and intuition work together to the same end of spiritual perfection.(James Russell Lowell, Among my Books-Dante)

But, in my real-life many times the things work different, even when I think that I am ready to reach… a flash of lightning wherein came its wish… the real-life comes again to challenge me with his awful reality-show-business…  Yesterday’s morning I really wished to have your talent when again and again, not for days neither weeks neither months, but for more than three years, I have being confronted with the same idiot who is calling in the name of Microsoft trying to catch me in order to ‘ransomware’ the information of my computer and kidnap my database asking for money via the Western-Union in ex-change. ‘Go to the hell, hijo de puta!’ It was my hysterical reaction when a little tired to listen the telephone ringing ones again I decided to answer it and, of course, who else?... The same ridiculous Indian voice calling me Madam and bla-bla-bla. And yes, of course, one second later, I’d  understood my own stupidity, Why I was sending this man to the Hell when the most obvious thing is that someone who does this kind of dirty jobs has to be already living in the Inferno? Otherwise how can I explain myself the fact that someone has accepted to do something so insane for a living?

And it was when your lessons came to be more alive, master! I thought and again wonder how sad could be the real story of these kind of people? So, Dante, tell me how can I send people to the Hell when they are already slumdogs in the hands of any kind of ‘pobres Diablos’? More I think more questions are coming to me… How , why, what for? And again the big one question mark… How  -in a Big Brother’s cage all of us are living at the moment- could these kind of ‘pobres diablos’ be able to go and come free without any control? Where is the police, the intelligence agencies, the hackers at the State’s service? What is the role of companies as Microsoft or Western-Union in this sort of cybercrime? And more than that, What is the role of the governments against cybercrime? How is possible that these kind of stories are vox-populi but the institutions and agencies who really must and can do something do nothing? Where are the laws against cybercrime? And yes, at this step, I remembered exactly what kind of rich-demons were the ones you used to send to the deepest rings of your Inferno and I have to laugh again and again… Meanwhile… my I-phone is ringing and I can see in the display that the one who is calling is, again and again, an unknown! Master, tell me please, How can I help these ‘pobres diablos’ to get out of the infernal rings of the richest-demons or biggest fishes they are serving as slaves? I want the big fish, they are the ones who really deserve to pay the bill or to be send to… right there! But, who knows, It is also true that the most of them, more-or-less billionaires,  are also living within their own misery even if their Infernos are looking as beautiful as a Taj-Mahal! So, please, leave in peace! I have angels to protect me against your motherfucker Indian-Demons!

Carmen Socorro Ariza-Olarte

From MURAKAMI to JUAN GABRIEL... GRACIAS AL SOL!

The summer, as usual in Holland, was vanished in the cold Scandinavian winds and… When all of us were ready for the autumn –last week of August- yeah, yeah, the sun began to shine… It was a hot Indian summer in autumn. As a kind of celebration we decided to take a break and go to the see, but – as usual in Holland- there was no place for anyone at the beach, and no room for two… So, no beach… boys!

Instead of the North, we went to the South. One all-day trip to Maastricht. We are always sitting in the middle so, any direction is always possible when you want to run away. Maastricht doesn’t have a beach but it has a river: the Maas; quiet impressive but less splendid than the Danube. Yes, Maastricht is a nice and pleasant city but… doesn’t have the grandeur of Prague… neither than Vienna, and yes, The Saint Servaas bridge is the oldest bridge of Holland, but it’s less opulent than the Charles Bridge. Anyway, Saint Servaas, as the Charles bridge, provided a lovely striking view of the river, the harbor and the city. So, what more can we ask??

One of the attractions of the city is, no doubt about, the bookshop. The bookshop had originally been the oldest Lowlands Gothic monastery church in the centre of Maastricht. It boasts a sacral elements as stained-glasses windows and fresco’s dating from 1619. Yes, The 13^th century Dominican Bookshops is a unique gothic place to be and  to look around. It has been many times selected as the most beautiful bookshop in the world and some people knows it as the ‘Heaven”. Right there, looking for something cold to refresh myself as a Knausgaard’s novels I found, as thirty years earlier, face to face with the cool wind of Murakami’s first novella’s, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball. This time it was not just a home-run, it was a major Cathedral-run!! Who had said that once the books are vanished, never return?

Feeling excited and hot again, it was a kind of blue be sitting in my lovely place to re-read Murakami’s Wind with a few more devices than the simple Gaga radio of the seventies. It was quite easy to find in YouTube the Rat’s songs and… really amazing it was to discover how one song can you bring to another in a most crazy and weird ways. It was how looking for Creedence Clearwater Revival’s  “Who’ll Stop the Rain” I found Juan Gabriel’s cover of 
 “Have you ever seen the rain” and, Yeah, yeah, “Gracias al sol” I have learned a little more how literature and music could take us to another order of the things and, beyond of the years and our age, they could bring us to the highest point where our vanished dreams will be return… Let’s rock baby!..

Paraphrasing Nietzsche, How can those who live in the light of the Caribbean sun possible comprehend  the coldest of winter! 

Carmen Socorro Ariza-Olarte

   

   

SHARAPOVA'S LESSONS

SHARAPOVA’S  LESSONS…
How could be translated into English this very popular Spanish saying: La suerte de la fea la bonita la desea?

Well, a perfect example of this common situation could be the case of Maria Sharapova: one of the most spoiled girl in the tennis world (by federations, sponsors, media-market, commercial branches, international organizations, commentators… you name it), but – at the same time - one of the most hated tennis player in the history of the white-game.These two premises could be the ellipsis of the ‘Sharapova’s Tragedy’. It is a tragedy because after her ‘set-down’ are two or more truths in contradiction. It’s a tragedy because Maria Sharapova is a Russian woman who, in order to achieve all the things she has achieved, had to learn quickly not only how to play tennis but also - and maybe most important -, how to think and to act as a man. Because the sport business is a “macho man-world”, dominated by powerful and obscure forces who make the players look like a kind of ‘gladiators’. Who can deny these facts after all the big scandals within the sport’s world?      If Sharapova was able to be the best-tennis-player and also a successful business ‘tennis-player-star’ was not only because she was the most beautiful one, it was because she decided to play the game as a best and to win her matches as a man. She knew that to do so she had to pay a price: to be alone, meanwhile all kind of people were going and coming around her …like in the Lena’s song… asking for something! A truth that many successful people knows very well, but…
…A big price merely a few are able to pay. A quick look around give us good examples. Perhaps the most obvious ones would be the cases of Ana Ivanovic and Caroline Wozniacki - as good tennis-players as beauty-queens-, which couldn’t cope with the pressure to be both: the best players and the media-stars. The difference between them is that Ivanovic at least won one Grand Slam, meanwhile the spoiled Wozniacki was #1 for almost one year without win any big tournament.

Contradicted truths which have helped to make Sharapova the most hated player, but also good start-points that let us free to go further and to admire her. You really need intelligence, character and personality to be able to leave your coach-mother and then your coach-father in order to get your game-set and match-points. You also need resilience to close all the possibilities to be and to get friends meanwhile the world is at your feet and everyone wants to be your ‘best friend’. Because, even if the most of them are not capable to admitted, to get enemies is a big part of the game and not the opposite. If Serena Williams of America today is the best friend of Caroline Wozniacki is not because Serena is the most loving-nice girl in the park or because Caroline is kindlier and nicer than her; it’s just because the beauty and the talent of Caroline is not and will not be a real stone in the sneakers of Serena.Who - in any case - does deserve more respect: the person who felt down and is able to admitted in front of all the cameras or all the organizations, sponsors, federations, big branches, drugs-control-posts and so, who let a girl goes on-and-on pushing her to the limit - even if the limit was the sky -, and then let her falling down alone? We all are not more than human beings, and nobody can say that never makes a mistake or never will be? What a shame that organizations that you suppose exist to help people and make the world a better place are magnanimous at their discretion. What is the difference between all of these big organizations and the North Korea’s dictator who sentenced the American student Otto Warmbier only because he tried to steal a poster of Kim Jong-un? No, Sharapova is not another Lance Armstrong who was cheating for years and - in order to do it well - was able to created a kind of ‘doping-corporation’, meanwhile all the organizations in charge were looking through their fingers letting him free not only to corrupt others but also to win 10 times the Tour-de-France. Only to let behind FIFA’s corruption scandals.

As a fan of the tennis I feel shame for all the powerful organizations and people after the players, and for the ‘Game-Set and Mats’, even for Mats Wilander: the sacred cow. No, it was not Maria the one who felt down, are you all together the ones who let the sport came down. Maria Sharapova has given to all of you her best years, her health, her life and now… because she is 28 years old and doesn’t have to much fresh blood to give to you, and because she is Russian and at the moment the political relationships with Russia are in cold-crisis, and because is better to take advantage to the situation now than later… you let her alone trying to make us to believe that “she is a big ‘cheater’ on the tour”.Like in the big Greek tragedies  - because they were made to let you confront yourself with your fate -, Sharapova will come out of her own tragedy richer and - we hope- happier. Within the same grandeur and elegance impress on her own branch. So hard it was her Set-Down so great it will be her Set-Up!
“Dare now to be tragic men, for ye shall be redeemed!”.  Nietzsche

Author: C.S Ariza-Olarte

Tras el eco de UMBERTO ECO

“Tras el eco de UMBERTO ECO”

El 20 de febrero del 2016, estando leyendo las noticias matutinas en mi Ipad me sorprendió el anuncio del  fallecimiento de Umberto Eco. Un escritor, filósofo y profesor de semiótica; quien sin duda quedará  inmortalizado en su obra, y seguirá siendo un autor obligado en todas las academías y las bibliotecas infinitas, sea con o sin el gusto de quienes las administran.  

Sabido es que Umberto Eco tenía tantos admiradores como detractores; como quiera que no tuvo pelos en la lengua para poner en evidencia los malos manejos de los medios de comunicación y las grandes empresas editoriales, ni tampoco los de las mafias de su propio país.

Mas, en este momento de despedida, dejando de lado los asuntos turbios, a manera de homenaje quisiera enfocarme en, por ejemplo, los autores que lo influyeron y, a la vez, la influencia que Umberto Eco y su obra ha ejercido en el mundo literario y en un escritor bastante popular entre la gente más joven y menos erúdita como lo es Dan Brown. Y es que, al menos me pasa a mí, sería casi imposible leer alguno de los Best-Sellers de Dan Brown sin pensar o remitirnos al gran Umberto Eco. Eso para aquellos lectores que antes de entretenerse leyendo a Brown han tenido –como yo- el raro privilegio de leer y estudiar un poco  novelas como El Nombre de la Rosa y/o El Péndulo de Focault. Y que conste que antes de que me acusen de snob o pedante, aclaro que a mí también me encanta entretenerme leyendo al –se me antoja llamarlo así- ‘integrado’ Brown.

Integrado, porque alguna vez, como material de estudio, tuve que leer un ensayo de Eco llamado Apocalípticos e Integrados, en el que Eco trataba de establecer una especie de ecuación perfecta entre lo que él llamó ‘binomio entre la cultura popular (masscult) y la alta cultura (highcult)’.  Una ecuación de la que Brown, invento, ha sabido echar mano para crear sus deliciosos intrínguilis; un poco, imagino, con el objeto de bajar de sus altos pedestales a autores clásicos o apocalípticos como Dante Alighieri para ponerlos a nuestros pies; o, dicho de otra manera, hacerlos accesibles a todos los públicos, a las grandes masas. Una cosa que algunos erúditos considerarían como una blasfemía, casi igual o peor que la cometida por los lectores del libro prohibido que tantas muertes ocasionó (el libro, no los hombres) en la novela El Nombre de la Rosa.

Jugando con una frase que, pronunciada por Picasso en la época en que tanto él como Apollineire fueron acusados de robar del Louvre el cuadro de ‘La Gioconda’, y que ha terminado por convertirse en cliché luego de que Steve Jobs la usará para referirse a su propia manzana, quiero repetirla para señalar que, ni más ni menos, eso es lo que a mi modo de ver ha hecho Dan Brown con la obra de Umberto Eco, “Los malos artistas copian, los buenos roban”. Jugando, como ellos, sus juegos de probalidades y coincidencias, lo primero sería darle confirmación a la regla: Eco era tan grande y bueno que Dan Brown no tuvo ningún reparo, no en copiarlo, pero si en robarlo –se me ocurre-. Para empezar le usurpa su personalidad, convirtiendo a su protagonista, Robert Langdon, en el profesor de semi/o/tica/o/logía que en realidad era Umberto Eco. De ahí, lo que sigue es tratar de comparar los laberintos borguianos de Eco, con las telarañas de Brown, colmando todo mientras tanto de símbolos, primordialmente religiosos. Quien que haya leído y releído El Nombre de la Rosa no recuerda el inteligente laberinto que crea Eco usando como fundamento los planos del monasterio medieval, donde su inolvidable protagonista, fray Guillermo de Baskerville, y su díscipulo Adso de Melk, realizan la minuciosa investigación policial que los conduce a desentrañar una misteriosa trama de asesinatos en serie.

Ahora bien, para muchos de ustedes, como para mí, hay cosas, nombres, referencias... que en el momento de la lectura no pasan de largo, como por ejemplo el apellido Baskerville. Una cosa nimia que no obstante nos deja entrever cómo también Umberto Eco supo echar mano de muchos de los autores que colmaban su borguiana ‘Biblioteca de Babel’ . Y es que precisamente el Sherlock Holmes de Conan Doyle, fue el detective en el que Eco se inspiró para regalarle un razonamiento deductivo a su propio protagonista. Y aunque hay infinidad de citas y coincidencias como estas –fáciles de encontrar en Google-, por mi propia experiencia creo que sería interesante que alguno de ustedes, un tanto inspirado con estas líneas, en busca de los ecos de Umberto Eco se den a la tarea de inventar paralelos y/o binomios entre él uno y el otro. Porque sin duda los dos: el uno, considerado muy acádemico o ‘highcult’, y el otro, bastante popular o ‘masscult’; aparte de brindarnos sano entretenimiento, también pueden ayudarnos a ampliar nuestro propio conocimiento y, por qué no, quizás como a mí, muy a pesar de las apreciaciones de Picasso quien decía odiar los museos por considerarlos algo así como un ‘antro donde el arte se petrifica’, a alguno le dé por visitar el Museo del Louvre con el Código Da Vinci en mano; o, quizás, algún otro quiera planear un viaje en busca de las huellas y la máscara de Dante guiado por la novela Inferno también de Brown; porque encontrando a Dante: el por siglos inmortalizado autor italiano, de una u otra manera termináremos por toparnos con el otro grande de Italia: Umberto Eco...  

Hace frío en mi scriptorium... la tumba de Eco lo espera no sé si en la Praga de Kafka o en el Milán de Umberto... En su honor, parafraséandolo, aquí les dejo este escrito. No sé exactamente para quién, tampoco sé muy bien de qué se trata... staat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus...

Carmen Socorro Ariza-O