I The Supreme part 2

(Note to teacher: I've finished all my blog entries, I The Supreme is just out of order...)

I think I might have had it wrong in my first post. Earlier I suggested that Bastos, in saying the memory was the stomach of the sole, he was saying the memory is really actual history in this chewed up messy form, and that the narration of the book itself was trying to reflect this messy nature of memory. But I’ve changed my mind. The dictator comments at one point how some one with a good memory remembers nothing because he forgets nothing. In what sense then can then can you have a good memory if you remember nothing? To make sense of this, there must be some kind of distinction between what the memories of someone with “good memory” consist of, and what normal bad memory is. I’m going to take a guess, but I imagine this bad memory is some how the translation of actual experience in some kind of story. With good memory, you never have bad memory because you never forget the actual experience.

But of course good memory, experience, can’t be communicated, it has to be translated in to words, and then in some sense the reality of it is lost. The memory becomes subject to the uncertainty of language. But more importantly it really undergoes a change in kind. The recall of an actual experience a different sort of thing than reading about it. And Bostos forces us to see the fragility of this written form of history as he notes how in this novel characters and facts earn “…through the fatality of the written language, the right to a fictitious and autonomous existence in the service of the no less fictitious and autonomous reader.” That is, when these history turns into written form, it becomes fake, something separate from reality.

I The Supreme

I want to understand what his ranting about memory means. In general kind of way, I suppose he’s simply allowing himself to undermine the legitimacy of the memory of those who oppose him. “Memory is the soul of the stomach”…Memory then, is like chewed up actual history, all cut up and mashed together sitting inside you. This image, of memory being reality scrambled sitting in your stomach, sort of captures what the whole book is about too. We have all these different historical sources, and they’re all meshed together to create a memory. Ironically, he mentions “the memory of one person is useless.” But the book is a bunch of different people’s memories, and it seems to be as much of a mess as an individuals memory(based on how he describes a persons memory.)

“Madness is memory in reverse that forgets its way as it retraces it path.” But the thing is, given this scrambled nature of memory, how can we ever accurately retrace it to reality. How can we ever know what actually happened? All memory then, all attempts to look at the past result in madness.

I also think Bastos is sort of mocking the dictator novel genre. He mentions how you can’t really make him dead by writing it, in response to the poster. That is, words don’t have the power to kill him or stop him. Writers then, in trying to expose dictators are really just waiting their time. But at the same time he’s obviously extremely bothered by the words, they really even seem to drive him mad. Words then, perhaps don’t stop dictators, but make them paranoid and more brutal. Maybe the writers are doing a bad thing…

The Feast of the Goat part2

At a point in the novel the general is being attacked in a dream, he reaches for a gun to protect himself, but in reality, he is grabbing the alarm clock. I believe this is suggesting that the general ultimately finds comfort in punctuality and order. By ordering everything in his society, he is able to preserve his position of power, but when starts to lose grip on this ability to completely manipulate society, that’s when his security is threatened.

It’s also interesting that obsessively controls his own body in this way. Making himself get up at exactly 4 am. Maybe this is compensation for a dictator who is actually in many respects losing control of his body. It might be seen as a pathetic attempt to maintain a sense of control over himself, while at the same time he cannot even control when he urinates.

We discussed this in class, but it really is a theme we keep seeing in the dictator novel genre, the whole irony about an all powerful leader losing control of their own body. The whole being all powerful thing, while at the same time being powerless in the sense that no dictator can really control these biological processes that ultimately control them.

The dictator is also is constantly trying to emphasize the amount of physical control he has. Or he is putting make-up on to cover up darkness in his skin. We get the sense that the dictator as presented to the people is just this mask. It’s like a Wizard of Oz type thing where we find out the man behind it all, pulling all the strings is pretty pathetic. I think this idea actually came from class though, i remember talking about the wizard of oz...

But ya, in the end we get this man who rapes the girl and then is ashamed after. This is a man without self-control, who is endlessly trying to present himself as having complete control. The novel is in the end, really an attempt to lift the mask, and show what these dictators really are...

The Feast of the Goat part1

I’ll just try to explore some idea’s I felt the novel presented.

The novel starts with Urania walking through the city which she had lived in as a child. She notices how the city has changed since she was a child. But she also notices her neighbourhood, along with other parts of the city really haven’t changed. This reminds me or Urania herself. She’s changed dramatically since that time, but that memory of what happened hasn’t gone anywhere.

“Animated chaos, the profound need in what was once your people, Urania, to stupefy themselves into not thinking and perhaps not even feeling.” Urania has been in America, working obsessively in order to escape her past, perhaps then, Llosa is saying that the entire country has been doing what it can to purge the awful memory as well. Urania has become inhuman in the sense that she’s like a working machine, and these people have become inhuman by giving up thinking altogether, by becoming simple instinctual creatures.

Or perhaps she’s saying that her people have been instinctual and unfeeling all along. The dictator was just an extension of this sort of people, and they allowed the dictator rule because they were stupid unfeeling animals. Maybe in this sense, they are all responsible for her being raped, and at the same time no one is responsible, what sense does it make to attribute moral qualities to non-rational creatures?

I think the 2nd person stuff in this story is some sort of split of Urania’s conscious. On page 4 the narrator speaks, and then right below, Urania bursts into laughter, as if shes responding to the voice talking to her. The voice and Urania are interacting. I can’t see it then as being Llosa’s voice. It could be him talking to her, but it would be very bizarre if she could hear him… So I’m going to suggest it’s coming from inside her head. Why does she have this personality? I imagine it’s some sort of self-defence mechanism that’s resulted from her trauma. The voice seems to advise her to turn around, to not go where she’s going ect. In sense then, she’s fighting against her self. To face her past she must confront and ignore this side of her that has been protecting her, but likely making her work far too hard, and avoid personal relationships(I seem to remember this.)

This defence mechanism has been alienating her from herself, and she’s got to regain her soul.

About the protest at the UBC trek park

It's not about Spanish literature... but it's about school. On Friday night a there was a protest, and some students started a fire on the sidewalk. When firemen tried to put it out, several of them got in the way and some were arrested. Following this, many of them surrounded the police car preventing it from moving. I want to consider the ethical the grounds for the students interference with the police and firemen.

I assume that the fire itself was a part of the protest, and the students interfered with the firemen/police because they believed that the police, in tampering with their fire, were also unfairly infringing on their right to protest. The fire was big, on busy walkway.
So it was a little dangerous.

But a little potential harm shouldn't be enough to limit the right to protest. Especially I imagine if the protest is designed to draw attention and prevent some far greater actual evil. So the questions I think are whether or not the importance of the protest justified the degree of potential danger, (which it probably did, the fire wasn’t that dangerous), and secondly we should consider to what extent the factor responsible for the danger was actually necessary for the protest. I don’t see how removing the fire would necessarily take away from their ability to express whatever their concerned about, and because of this I don’t think they had reasonable grounds to interfere with the police…

The power of love(I hope not to cliche)

I want to suggest that this book is about the power of love. I know this sounds cliché, but hopefully I can show you that it’s about “love” in really kind of a cool and complicated way.

“Love has made you free” pg 50. Bolivar set this girl free, but she didn’t accept. Instead she stayed where she was. Bolivar’s love had set her free, but her disinterest in freedom left her as chained as before. This I think is fair analogy for Bolivar’s entire conquest. He set all Latin America free, but they didn’t care enough about this freedom to maintain it.

I will argue that both the girls, and latin america's lack of love have made them essentially powerless, and human, where those who love immensely are all powerful.

When Bolivar’s wife died, and he committed himself to the people, he became unstoppable, if not invincible. When he gave his love to everyone, he really became god like. Before his wife dead however, he was just a regular guy. Later when he became disillusioned with his failures his health deteriorated. In a dream at one point, imagines a boy asking him if he loves him. He was scared that he no longer loved these people. Power might then be understand as something which is determined by the scope of our love. Bolivar who loved everyone was unstoppable, but as he became disillusioned(and felt less love for them perhaps), he began to waist away.

Pg 153 at the end of the first paragraph the general recalls a letter he wrote to Manuela saying “My love for you is steadfast”, in the next paragraph, the next line down in fact, we are told that how his dream began to brake away just as it was realized. I want to suggest the reason the empire collapsed is because he let himself love this women. In narrowing his love, he lost these godlike powers which had allowed him to bring together this country(and I do think there is something to say about magical realism here).

Poor Sucre, another unstoppable general was killed not long after letting him self love a women. Pg 141

Perhaps the reason the general deteriorated at such an incredible pace has something to do with an opposite kind of power of love. Where love makes you invincible, a broken heart destroys you, and he managed to stay alive for so long because every now and then, as that love which confers god like powers stirred.

The general in his Labyrinth with constipation

I have two things I would like talk about. This first has to do with constipation. I hope it doesn’t mean that I have some subconscious fixation on feces that everything seems to have do with poo in this novel.
Early in the novel we learn that the general suffers from constipation. Constipation of course is that condition where one has trouble passing. That is shit builds up inside you. I couldn’t help but see this as some kind of metaphor for the general. This is a depressed man. It’s suggested that he believes he will die alone in a bed without the gratitude of his country. He has mental brake downs every night. During these brake downs he rambles about how no one understood what he was doing. What I’m trying to say that this is a man intensely troubled by the failures in his life. And as constipated man has a certain build up inside himself, the general’s failures build up inside his mind, and result in terrible anxiety attacks. So this is man constipated by his failures.
Unfortunately constipation has more to offer us… A continent that’s on the verge of unification, that collapses from within? Columbia it’s self is unable to advance because the generals want to maintain control and don’t listen to sucre’s advice that they should separate from the government. Is this sort of internal turmoil that’s restricting Latin America from achieving it’s destiny something like constipation? I don’t know. I imagine if one had chronic constipation achieving goals would be difficult….
Thank god I’m done with that. My next issue has to with dying. The novel starts off with an image of the general as being dead. It turns out he’s only meditating, but the truth is that he is already mostly dead. We get this sense that he’s been dying for some time. Death isn’t a thing that hit’s a person all at once, but rather its this extremely slow occurrence.
Physically it’s as if he’s this dying rotting body. Corpses don’t fart, but still, it’s disgusting like a corpse. And people around him act like he’s dead. When he leaves the country his going away gathering is described as something which looks a lot like a funeral.
There is something more to this slow death. The country slowly dying? His dream? The possibility of for the realization of what he once thought was the destiny of America? I don’t know.
Sucre mentions how what starts off as wanting independence from Spain leads to other countries wanting independence from each other. That is, in a way the destiny the general had imagined was self defeating. The independence required to realize he dream would ultimately make it impossible to achieve. It seems like he had it for a moment, and then it broke away.
Maybe this is the generals life, and life in general. There is a point where the human body is growing new cells and is fresh and thriving, but ultimately it has to die away, everything reverses and you slowly die.

President 2

It is the narrator who refers to people by the names of animals most often. The president or police certainly introduce the derogatory designation, but it’s the narrator who maintains it. I feel this suggests the absolute power words have to control. Not only are the people animals in the eyes of the president, but by the narrator referring with animal terminology a sense of universality is created. These people really are what the president says they are. And I suppose the same can be said for all the nick names, not simply the animal ones.

The order established by the president is real in a sense beyond simply the arbitrary stipulation which it actually is. Psychologically it’s real. Believing in this hierarchy anchors a false reality which justifies the presidents behaviour. The people are swine and turkey, what does it matter if they disappear, or are tortured. Or if you are a turkey being slaughtered is every day business. In sense then, words even have a truly absolute power. Not only are they used to carry out cruel orders, but they are capable of inverting reality. Making it such that the cruel orders are actually acceptable. Humans become animals, and what’s wrong becomes right.

And I think the craziness many people seem to suffering with might have to do with some struggle with the backwards reality that is being created for them, and the way they know things should really be.

The President 1

It’s amazing how quickly I can read through this in comparison to Facundo. Sarmiento was aware how his excessive detailing would effect the reader, how it would make ones mind wonder and make reading arduous. But I suppose he didn’t care whether the experience of reading was pleasurable… he had more important goals? Anyway, I think Miguel Angel Asturias must have cared, because I enjoy reading this…

For a moment I thought that in the prison the crazy homeless people were representations or maybe windows into the emotional state of the two non-crazy people. Like they are just acting out and personifying the emotion of the sane people…

The crazy is an abstraction he is a representation of the state of the society which is in constant fear, uncertainty and turmoil.
“I am the Rose-apple of the bird of Paradise, I am life, half my body is a lie, the other half is truth….I give to everyone one glass eye and one real eye; those who see with my real glass see because they dream, those who see with my real eye see because they are looking!"

I’m not sure if this makes sense, but I think the crazy is this Rose-apple, if you look at him one way he’s just crazy, if you look at him in another way, he’s a true reflection of the entire state of things. Something like that.

And when the Police officer kills crazy his friend looks into crazies eye and it nearly makes him go mad. I think it could mean that when he looked into crazies eye, as he was being killed he saw with “the real eye” and saw the truth in crazy which is a truth about the entire state of the society.

I don’t know if this makes sense now, but it seemed clear to my as I while I was reading….

Facundo part two

This blog entry is very late. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to take notes as I read, but it’s a method that seems to make reading an incredibly slow and time consuming activity. So, what can I say about Facundo… I have lots of interpretation type ideas. But really, I don’t think you’d be that interested in hearing them. The cool literary kind of idea’s Sarmiento throws at us are given so directly and repetitively that it doesn’t even feel like I’ve done any work. People are shaped by their environment; The environment determines the destiny of a people; Facundo is a tiger, and as a tiger he can keep even the most savage men in their place(the tiger is the one thing which Facundo feared); People under Rosas are animals. A relationship that differs greatly from the idea’s coming out of “civilized” Europe. People aren’t animals but rational creatures which are capable of choosing their own path in life, and governments ought to respect these principles of human nature. Treating a human as an animal would seem contradictory. Something like that. But my point is just that, I think Sarmiento pretty much straight up tell us everything I’ve just said(and more…), so I think I have to come up with something better(or at least something which isn’t so obvious).

I don’t like Sarmiento Comparing Facundo to Robs Pierre. I know very little of the man, except he was responsible for mass execution following the French revolution. Do they both kill a little excessively? Yea I guess so. But Facundo murdered to make people fear him and to feel powerful ect. I think it was very arbitrary kind of motivation for his mass murder. Robs Pierre wanted to wipe out possible threats to the new order, he did it for the sake of rational government and progress. Maybe Facundo and Rosas also committed mass murder for the sake of progress and rational liberal government. Sarmiento actually makes this point rather clearly, so yes it was necessary murder like that of Robs Pierre. Murder for the sake of progress. So maybe I change my mind.

It was boring, overly detailed, but Sarmiento admits this. So I can’t even talk about without it being trivial.

At some point in the book it talks about how Rosas is able to get us to believe things by repeating them over and over again. “Death to the Unitarists” and that kind of thing. Is Sarmiento using the tricks of the dictator on the reader? Is he trying to trick me into believing everything he has to say? Or did he do this on purpose, so I’ll see on two levels how this repetition technique works. I see the technique overtly described as a practice of Rosas, and then I see the technique actually put to used in the work itself…

Facundo first half

I just thought I would warn you that I’m not an English or literature major. So hopefully you’ll not be too critical of the mediocre rambling that has already began and which will continue on for the next 28 or so minutes. If it’s not to late I would actually recommend looking at the next persons blog. But If you are committed to hearing what I have to say, then there is no sense in stalling any longer.

At the start of chapter one Sarmiento describes how in Argentina it can be hard for one to see where the sky meets the earth. The boundary is obstructed by forest. I feel like he is saying in Argentina it is unclear to see how progression can take place. The transition from earth to the sky might be clear in other places, but here it is tricky and one cannot quite make out how it happens. And I think all of chapter one can be seen as an account or explanation of why this transition is difficult in this place.

The reason why this place is not civilized is a characteristic of it’s geography. The immense open and inhabitable space makes it unnecessary to form communities. Sarmiento suggest that the gathering of people to work to solve problems is the foundation of civilization. But in this place we do not get that. When people gather here, the purpose is to compete and triumph over one another. And it seems a different kind of civilization will arise from these types of gatherings, that will perhaps possess the savage nature of their origin.

The pastoral way of life described seems to remind me of Hobbes’s state of nature where life is “nasty broodish and short”(something like that). Sarmiento says that here people expect violent death, and they are in constant fear. Hobbes state of nature seems to describe the paradigm of backwardness. When he published the leviathan I think he was actually questioned as to whether such a state could ever really exist. But here it is, in Argentina.

The strange thing is that in this state of nature, contrary to what Hobbes described, the people weren’t compelled to enter into a contract and create government. (There was government and law, I just mean, there wasn’t really any ultimate sovereign. When it came down to it, people answered to the authority of caravan drivers, or to their own authority, but not fundamentally to the law).