my sunday papers

international | arts and media | opinion/analysis Sunday March 28, 2004 16:21 by iosaf mac diarmada (aka ipsiphi)(aka ignatius the indignant) - I also use in the Rennaisance & Joycean tradition various anagrams. iosaf at europe dot com barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, Europe. Yet still an Irish citizen.

being my weekly contribution to the continuing tradition of Irish literature, "bizarre, odd& funny"

I have long noticed that on sundays I have more free time. I like to see my friends if I can, and share a cup of tea or coffee and reflect on how irrelevant we are to the world of the great.
If i can i listen to music and I also play it, and I think of poetry, the river of my nation which shall always be flowing into the universe.
Today I'm not going to be hysterical nor moved by the flows of emotion I have seen in my home (Spain) as the people have come to their own terms with what happened to us as an extended community. It is time I realised the potential of my own words to disturb, to confuse, and thus to be more _careful_.
Writers too often are no more than their readers' prejudices.

I am not going to joke this week, I am not going to refer to my previous texts concieved long ago in my egotism perchance as the vanguard of post Joycean post Beckettian Irish Literature built organically on a quotidien basis, with their jokes and conundra,
Rather today I shall continue the established habit of sharing words with others enjoying this new medium that we may all make the best of it and ourselves.
Allow us to make the best of it!


This week, I am not going to say anything of things that don't concern me, I'm not going to voice the confused feelings of a generation at the decisions made in our name.
I am not going to treat on politics, national (be they in the country where I live, or the country where I was born) or international (wherein both countries of my birth and residence play and have played such important, formative rôles).

I am not going to criticise, nor poke fun, nor even try and be clever. I am instead going to say how nice it is to see people relax on Sundays and how good it is to listen to music.
and:-

how good it is to be literate.
It really is good to be literate.

I am going to share some poets and writers with you, in the hope that you see that politics is not all there is to life, and that poetry and literature is one of the highest arts. Which is perhaps why Literature was one of the 5 prizes envisioned in Alfred Nobel's will.

I hope that the arts, of which many philosophers worried had died, in the last century will still find supporters amongst my generation and our elders and betters.

Irish writers online:-
http://www.irishwriters-online.com/refer.html
{([I am not there yet, but we still live in a system that judges culture as a product, both writing
and literature being taken to mean books, it is strange, our oldest writers came from an oral tradition, out oldest poets were heard rather than read, our newest writers have not been published "privately". Is it such a quantum jump to realise that Literature like Art like Sculpture is found outside the rarified halls of academia?])}

more Irish writers:-
http://islandireland.com/Pages/lit.html
under the quote:-
from Seamus Heaney.
(oh respect to you Sir!)

"The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it."
Seamus Heaney from his poem "Digging"


******************************
lots and lots of writers in lots and lots of languages:-
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/ets/offsite.language.html

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/archives.html

online books, for you to read, for you to download, for you to enjoy.
There is nothing wrong with not enjoying TV, There is nothing wrong perhaps with enjoying it, we are many and varied surely there is enough room for many different types in our civilisation?
reclaim your culture, reclaim your civilisation. It is has been strange for me as a writer, to see how many people seek now to manipulate that word "reclaim". Some see in it, a useful tool to extend their political appeal, others see in it some clue to a superstitious pattern that honestly defies the human condition of free will, and insults the intelligence. Personally I have always liked the word. But I have now become tired of being associated with it though that was my choice.
Reclaim me!
Reclaim you!
Reclaim us!

-gets boring ¿no?

here is link to a french 19th century collection of literature, many of you being educated people, will have a sophisticated sense of humour, and have been exposed to multiple styles and types of book, poetry, comic, etc., but mostly in the English Language, the literature of France is so wonderful, please explore it:-
at
http://www.le-chateau.ilias.com/librai.htm
"La mémoire vive des grands auteurs"
"The living electronic memory of literature"

Here is website in the states, which draws links to the literature tradition of both the north American continent and Europe, including texts with English translations in Catalan | Danish | Dutch | Finnish | French | Galician | German | Greek | Irish | Italian | Latin | Norwegian | Old Norse & Icelandic | Portuguese | Romanian | Provençal | Spanish | Swedish
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/etexts.html

Go on Feed your head!
(as that lovely woman of Jefferson's Airplane sang; "some pills make you smaller some pills make you tall, but the ones that mother give you do nothing at all, go ask Alice when she's ten foot tall")

Other Women's Voices: Translations of women's writing before 1700
http://www.tl.infi.net/~ddisse/index.html
This website compliles translations of over 120 women writers, "women who produced a substantial amount of work before 1700." Each entry contains background on the author and that particular work, useful secondary sources and Internet sites. The site also offers information on how to obtain translations of these writings.

In Ireland every city has a gallery, and you will also find living art sold cheaply on the street, but even if you don't buy it, just look at it, and think "we are special that we may create".
with colour, with sound, with rhythm, with words.

I can not forget the literature of Italy, I ask that you too explore that.
and see its roots in Latin and Hellenic civilisation.
http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/authors.html



the painting I had wished to use an illustration today is too big for the band, and the "organisation" which is indymedia.ie is a collective of people who decide policy openly and respond to each other, and they prefer to use what is deemed "our space" for publishing photos not available in the mainstream press, because perhaps we are not "mainstream people".
It was the school of Athems
by Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520) Scuola di Atene. He was known and is known as "Rapheal". You may see the painting, which is a fresco measuring 770cm at base in either The Vatican City, Holy See of Rome or online at these links:-
http://un2sg4.unige.ch/athena/raphael/raf_ath4.html
http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/r/raphael/4stanze/1segnatu/1/athens.html
http://www.newbanner.com/AboutPic/athena/raphael/nbi_ath4.html
This is how he "Rapheal" imagined the school of Athens, how he chose to represent the school of philosophy. He wasn't there you know. He might have thought, "I am one of these", and perhaps was thought of "as one of them", but he wasn't, he was just an artist.
Berkeley the Irish Philosopher enchanted Borges with his musing that it is not the fruit that tastes, nor the tree, but the fruit upon the palatte.

So go to your galleries and look!

I publish this text in the "arts and media" section, because it is about "arts" and their place in our news-service, as "media", and whether we be, lefty or greeny, liberation theologist or commie, posh or not, this is our media, an ongoing experiment for all of us. I list is as "international" because I live in Spain and am read in Ireland.

Unfortuanately too many people have _read too much_ into these pages I have conitrbuted, which belies more about their insecurity or suspicion than my function as an artist, my purpose or my intent.

I wish all readers a good Sunday, a good week.

Being a writer is difficult at times, scraping experience from the cadevour of trembling emotions be they good or bad, always seeking to raise the human spirit and keep aflame - Memory.

Pero No Olvidem!
=
But We do not Forget!