A Joyous Exercise in Futility

Well, hey--I am now the proud owner of yet one more book in a language that I cannot read. The new acquisition is my first in the category--a copy of Tirant Lo Blanc, the White Tyrant, the great Catalan* epic by Joanot Martorell (1410-1465).

Or sort of. What I got is a kind of student edition from Angle Editorial, with some text and notes--don't know what it proves but I find I can often dope out the teaching notes in unfamiliar texts even if I can't read the text itself. I was torn: they also had a Penguin-like "reader's edition." But the cover picture was the Piero picture of the Duke of Urbino and his son; the dates (1422-82) match well enough but it still seems like a stretch to me.

I really don't know this book all that well, not even in translation.  I've got a battered old paperback (second hand from the Palookaville book emporium) on the top shelf in the office at home, which I've dabbled at from time to time. The best thing I can say on fragmentary exposure is that it has a kind of brio and earthiness that you don't get in most medieval narratives--little by way of edifying instruction, lots of unvarnished Good Story.

The hermit soon returned with the ingredient for the explosives.  Then he told the king: "Sire, we lack only one item, but I know the countess has it.  Her husband, William of Warwick, stored it in great quantity, as it has  a great many uses."


The king replied: "Then let us visit the countess and request it."


The king sent word to the countess that he wished to speak with her.  Upon laving her chamber, she saw him standing with the hermit.


"Countess," the king said, "by your kindness and virtue, grant me a little of that sulfur that never stops burring, he sulfur your husband used to make torches the strongest wind could not extinguish."

The countess replied: "Who told Your Highness that my husband knew how to make such torches?"

--Tirant lo Blanc, blurbed as "The Lusty Medieval Classic,"

translated by David H. Rosenthal 

and published by Warner Books, 1985.

--

*A purist might say "Valencian," treating Valencian as a separate language, not merely a dialect of Catalan.  Wiki offers the intriguing observation that "[Valencian] is frequently spoken of as a separate language, the llengua valenciana, though opposition to the use of standard Catalan occurs primarily among those who do not regularly use the language."

Barcelona: Is it Just Me or What?

We've fetched up home again after two weeks on the road including two cancelled flights, one hairsbreadth sprint through customs, and one undocumented night in an airport hotel.  Is that the luck of the draw, or the new face of air travel, or just American Airlines?

In Barcelona, we ran into more hassles than you might expect from what is in so many ways one of the pleasantest cities on earth--terrible internet connections (sorry about those dead links) and two (count 'em) neighborhood blackouts.  Also a three-hour search for the landlord to get access to our prepaid apartment,  mostly spent standing on streetcorners wondering what the devil to do next.  I still love Barca but I did find myself remembering George Orwell in my copy of Homage to Catalonia that an old girlfriend (now long dead) gave me on my 19th birthday:

In Spain nothing, from a meal to a battle, ever happens at the appointed time. As a general rule things happen too late, but just occasionally—just so that you shan’t even be able to depend on their happening late—they happen too early. A train which is due to leave at eight will normally leave at any time between nine and ten, but perhaps once a week, thanks to some private whim of the engine-driver, it leaves at half-past seven. Such things can be a little trying. In theory I rather admire the Spaniards for not sharing our Northern time-neurosis; but unfortunately I share it myself. 

 Maybe it's unfair today; maybe it always was unfair.  Still it sticks in my mind from a barely retrievable past; a time when I scarcely knew what or where Catalonia was.

Non-Barcelona Stuff (Corrected and Updated)

I wanted to write something about Catalan and the sheer arbirtrariness of language categories but I can't think of much that hasn't been said before.   Meanwhile, there is an amazing amount of good stuff piling up in the Instapaper:

Gold Replaces Triple A.

The Sleeping Beauty Problem.

The Hedging Theory of Elites.

Inequality Quiz.

Galbraith v. Keynes Smith.

Note: dead links corrected a week late. sorry 'bout that.

Lines Penned While Waiting for the Funicular

A maiden so very particular
In an enterprise extracurricular
Said she'd compass a chat
And perhaps a light pat
But she counseled her love not to tickular.

Barcelona Culinary Note: Mercat de la Revolucio

We dined today at the cafe in Barcelona's Mercat de la Revolucio, where you can tuck away a couple of thousand calories' worth of bread,  beer, flan, fried meat and gravy for just 8.50.  It was fine for what it offered though perhaps not as wonderful as its analog at the Mercato Centrale in Firenze (love the white bean soup).  I confess to being a sucker for these old European markets, although there is more and more reason to suspect that have lost their function and persist, if at all, more and more on the force of inertia.  The signals are, I concede, mixed.  There are still fruit and veggie hawkers who look like they have been showing up every morning since Franco was alive.  But there are so many fruit and veggie sellers outside the markets--not to mention the proliferating supermarkets (super and otherwise) that you can't help  but suspect   a government subsidy generated by the nostalgia lobby.

 And the cafe itself--the menu is clearly designed for carters and packers and haulers who need every shot of cheap energy they can get (we were feeding teenagers, which is the nearest modern analog).  Yet there aren't many haulers in evidence any more: most of the people who staff the market spend most of their day standing behind counters.


I  tend to get along easily with these folks.  You could say: of course, it is their business to please me.  But it isn't really: they know perfectly well that I am a passing figure on the scene; they might as well just rip me off and let me go.  But no: they are (almost) unfailingly courteous, helpful and honest about things like small change.  Indeed the only real disappointment is that all those lovely veggies aren't all that good.  They're a bit bland, like in California, as if a bit overwatered.  Could it be that the stall vendors (like all the rest of us?) are falling victim to the enticement of modern marketing?

An End to World Conflict

Conversation with the young one.  She speaks first:

--Why are there so many different kinds of plugs?  Wouldn't it be easier if we all used the same kind of plug?

--Well, I suppose that when people started using plugs, different nations hit upon different systems.  There wasn't as much travel in those days so it wasn't a problem.  It became a problem only when people started to do a lot of traveling, like we do.   But by then, every country had a lot invested in its own system, and nobody wanted to go to the expense of changing.

I mean, maybe you could think of it like language.  People started speaking different languages.  When people live apart, it isn't a problem,.   It's only a problem when they come together and find they can't understand each other.   Do you think we all ought to speak the same language?

--(After much thought).  Well, I don't think anybody ought to have to give up his or her language.  But I do want people to understand each other. So I guess what I want is for everybody to speak all languages.

Good luck with that, kid.

Barcelona, and the Craftsmanlike Cabbie

We've fetched up in Barcelona after  more hassles than you'd care to hear about.  It's a busier, noisier place than I remember from my last trip here 16 years ago but the main thing that hits you after Paris is how cheap it seems.  Two bucks (dollars) for a supermarket sixpack; a serviceable lunch for five at $75.  But the immediate purpose of this note is to salute the prince of cabbies, the guy who took us from the Maraist out to deGaulle yesterday morning.   He was a debonaire little man with a pressed white shirt and a suitcoat, and I have never enjoyed the services of so deft a driver.   He seemed never to brake or lurch: just threaded his way through the bottlenecks as if it was some kind of performance.  He sported two racks of upscale magazines in the passenger seat, and the whole trip he kept the radio tuned to classical music--I think for his own enjoyment, quite apart from us.    An artist; and come to think of it, maybe he is an artist.   Could it be that this is the guy who came second in the graduation auditions at the conservatory?   And if we went looking, would we find him at midnight on the Chatelet platform, busking for change?