I love books. When I come to the end of a book, I write on the last page the date, time and where I was when I finished reading it. I love collecting and cataloging books. Readers of this column are welcome to visit my 6,000 volume library at the Cemanahuac Educational Community in Cuernavaca.
A book caught my eye at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City. It had a wonderful illustration of Miguel Cervantes on the cover. The book was sealed in plastic but I judged it by its cover and bought it. Now, some people may have been disappointed by the content, but I was delighted. Inside was a detailed listing of every edition of Don Quixote owned by the museum.
Cervantes’ novel remains Spain’s major language masterpiece. Some call it the first modern novel of Western culture. U.S. literary critic Lionel Trilling asserts that “just as all philosophy can be seen as an answer to Plato, it can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.”
“The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” (“El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha”) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was an instant hit when it was published in Spain in 1605. Pirated versions were made shortly after. Copies were shipped to the New World. Editions were soon printed in Italian, English and French.
At close to a thousand pages, reading Don Quixote is daunting. I must admit I have never read it. But this could be the year. Should I read it in the original Spanish, or in one of the recent English translations? Carlos Fuentes really liked the translation by Edith Grossman. He wrote in his New York Times book review “This ‘Don Quixote’ can be read with the same ease as the latest Philip Roth and with much greater facility than any Hawthorne. Yet there is not a single moment in which, in forthright English, we are not reading a 17th-century novel.” Sounds good to me.
According to the Franz Mayer library director, Myriam Velázquez Martínez, “with the exception of the Bible, Don Quixote is the world’s most translated and published book.”
The Franz Mayer Museum prides itself in holding the western hemisphere’s largest collection of Don Quixote editions. Mayer himself collected 739 editions in 14 languages. Since his death, the museum’s acquisitions have taken the total up to 800 editions in 18 languages. Their publication dates span from 1605 to 2014.
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of its publication, the museum opens the exhibit “Somewhere in La Mancha – The Quixote: Fourth Centenary of the Second Part” Tuesday. Let me explain. “Somewhere in La Mancha – The Quixote: Fourth Centenary of the Second Part,” will be on display in the Franz Mayer Museum’s library for the rest of this year, Tuesdays-Sundays (closed Mondays) through Dec. 31 at 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
After the publication of the book in 1605, Cervantes made a vague promise to write a second part. He hadn’t gotten around to completing it when in 1614, a book called “Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda of Tordesillas was published. Avellaneda taunted Cervantes in his introduction, which got Cervantes fired up enough to finish his version, which was printed in 1615. The version of Don Quixote you read now has both parts one and two.
Don Quixote captures the imagination of most everyone who has ever heard its basic theme. An idealist gentleman of little financial means, Don Quixote (Alonzo Quixano) incessantly reads romantic novellas. He leaves reality behind and begins a quest to right the wrongs and injustices of the world, as he perceives them.
Its influence has been such that even those who have not read the book are familiar with common words or phrases in English making reference to Don Quixote. The expression “tilts at windmills,” can capture the increasing reality of the 21st century’s 99 percent trying to battle the powerful 1 percent, only to be met with ridicule, silence or simply being brushed off. “Quixotic” entered the English vocabulary to refer to something unrealistic and impractical, accurately describing Cervantes’ woebegone hero.
Who hasn’t lived for at least a while in the magical thinking world of Don Quixote and “dreamed the impossible dream”? I know I have in the past, do in the present and will in the future.
Cervantes’ novel remains Spain’s major language masterpiece. Some call it the first modern novel of Western culture. U.S. literary critic Lionel Trilling asserts that “just as all philosophy can be seen as an answer to Plato, it can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.”
At close to a thousand pages, reading Don Quixote is daunting. I must admit I have never read it. But this could be the year. Should I read it in the original Spanish, or in one of the recent English translations? Carlos Fuentes really liked the translation by Edith Grossman. He wrote in his New York Times book review “This ‘Don Quixote’ can be read with the same ease as the latest Philip Roth and with much greater facility than any Hawthorne. Yet there is not a single moment in which, in forthright English, we are not reading a 17th-century novel.” Sounds good to me.
I know where I will be when I read the last page. Sitting in the central courtyard of the Franz Mayer Museum, housed in a former convent and hospital across the street from Alameda Park, looking at one of the most beautiful gardens in downtown Mexico City.
“Somewhere in La Mancha – The Quixote: Fourth Centenary of the Second Part,” will be on display in the Franz Mayer Museum’s library for the rest of this year, Tuesdays-Sundays (closed Mondays) through Dec. 31 at 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Parking is available in a building adjacent to the museum. The Bellas Artes metro station is a block away. Save some time for a meal, or coffee and dessert in the museum’s cafeteria.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Writing icons
In December 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro made the simultaneous surprise announcement that after more than 50 years of U.S. embargo and no formal diplomatic communication, the two countries would begin to normalize their relationship. The “Cuban Thaw” – as it was referred to in the U.S. press -- was an early Christmas gift to the world.
But long before the “Cuban Thaw” Teresa Harrison of the U.S. was building unusual bridges to Cuba. Teresa is an icon writer.
Icons are flat-panel paintings with an image of Jesus, Mary, or a saint. The tradition began in the very early Christian church and is a major component of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. But it has also caught on in Roman Catholic and Anglican (Episcopal) churches.
Teresa told me that the writing of icons is “a sacred process of illumination. Christ, His mother and saints of the church are written in stylized, formal positions. The hands and faces of the images are of great significance. Wars have been fought over the meaning of the position of Christ’s fingers in different icon representations -- not the best moments for iconography! For the iconographer the days of writing an icon are days of quiet contemplation and prayer with the saint -- ideally a transformative, wonderful experience.”
Teresa said that icons are written, not painted, as they are considered an extension of the Word of God.
In 2006, at the invitation of the Episcopal Church of Cuba, Teresa and six of her advanced students traveled from St. John’s Cathedral in Jacksonville, Florida to Havana to teach iconography to a group of priests, seminarians, and trained artists. Included in that class was the first ordained Anglican female bishop in Latin America, Cuban Suffragan Bishop Nerva Cot Aguilera.
These 21 men and women painted the Stations of the Cross as well as a number of traditional saint and Holy Family icons. Once consecrated, the icons were presented in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Havana where they remain. The apprentice iconographers were encouraged to continue writing icons and it is Ms. Harrison’s understanding that iconography in Cuba continues to grow.
Teresa Harrison has brought her expertise to Mexico. Last week I picked her up at the Mexico City airport. In Cuernavaca eight U.S. and four Latin American icon apprentices joined her. She is leading a second annual weeklong retreat at the La Mancha Inn – the first of this year’s eleven workshops she has scheduled.
Participants in the retreat withdraw into sequestration to pursue solitude and contemplation while replicating the image of a saint or holy figure. Teresa says that iconography is not a creative process; it is one of faithful replication.
The process is intense and formal. The first step is tracing the image onto a board that has received multiple coats of white marbleized paint and is as smooth as a piece of glass. Color is placed in blocks on the board, filling in robes and background. The most difficult part – flesh -- is also the most important. Hands and faces are first covered in sankir-green. “It is the color of death and decay,” says icon apprentice Carol Hopkins. “From that point one must begin to breathe life into one’s image. Scores of coats of increasingly lighter-colored flesh will cover sankir. When the image begins to breathe you know the saint has come alive before you.”
In Mexico we have what is perhaps the world’s most famous icon – The Guadalupe. Many in the Cuernavaca’s 2014 icon workshop wrote Guadalupe. This year icon writers have chosen other manifestations of Mary, the Angel Gabriel, Saint Martin of Porres, Saint Monica (mother of Saint Augustine), and Christ.
The setting at La Mancha recalls contemplative life. The daily writing of icons begins with the Eucharist celebrated by the workshop’s chaplain Tamara Newell, herself the first female ordained priest in the Anglican Church of Mexico. She introduces four hours of writing icons in silence. Noonday prayer -- a responsive liturgy the whole group knows – is followed by meso-soprano Rosemary Alvino singing. A 40-minute break for lunch leads into a second four-hour session of writing.
Traditionally men have played the larger role in the liturgical church. All but one of the dedicated iconographers in this retreat is female. This goes along with the increasing roles of women in the Anglican community, in which Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.— the same year Cuba elected it’s first woman bishop, Suffragan Cot Aguilera.
While adhering to strict traditions developed through seventeen centuries of documented iconography, Teresa Harrison is quietly linking nations, taking down gender barriers, and conserving and ancient art form. It is wonderful to witness this happening in Cuernavaca.
But long before the “Cuban Thaw” Teresa Harrison of the U.S. was building unusual bridges to Cuba. Teresa is an icon writer.
Icons are flat-panel paintings with an image of Jesus, Mary, or a saint. The tradition began in the very early Christian church and is a major component of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. But it has also caught on in Roman Catholic and Anglican (Episcopal) churches.
Teresa told me that the writing of icons is “a sacred process of illumination. Christ, His mother and saints of the church are written in stylized, formal positions. The hands and faces of the images are of great significance. Wars have been fought over the meaning of the position of Christ’s fingers in different icon representations -- not the best moments for iconography! For the iconographer the days of writing an icon are days of quiet contemplation and prayer with the saint -- ideally a transformative, wonderful experience.”
Teresa said that icons are written, not painted, as they are considered an extension of the Word of God.
In 2006, at the invitation of the Episcopal Church of Cuba, Teresa and six of her advanced students traveled from St. John’s Cathedral in Jacksonville, Florida to Havana to teach iconography to a group of priests, seminarians, and trained artists. Included in that class was the first ordained Anglican female bishop in Latin America, Cuban Suffragan Bishop Nerva Cot Aguilera.
These 21 men and women painted the Stations of the Cross as well as a number of traditional saint and Holy Family icons. Once consecrated, the icons were presented in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Havana where they remain. The apprentice iconographers were encouraged to continue writing icons and it is Ms. Harrison’s understanding that iconography in Cuba continues to grow.
Teresa Harrison has brought her expertise to Mexico. Last week I picked her up at the Mexico City airport. In Cuernavaca eight U.S. and four Latin American icon apprentices joined her. She is leading a second annual weeklong retreat at the La Mancha Inn – the first of this year’s eleven workshops she has scheduled.
Participants in the retreat withdraw into sequestration to pursue solitude and contemplation while replicating the image of a saint or holy figure. Teresa says that iconography is not a creative process; it is one of faithful replication.
The process is intense and formal. The first step is tracing the image onto a board that has received multiple coats of white marbleized paint and is as smooth as a piece of glass. Color is placed in blocks on the board, filling in robes and background. The most difficult part – flesh -- is also the most important. Hands and faces are first covered in sankir-green. “It is the color of death and decay,” says icon apprentice Carol Hopkins. “From that point one must begin to breathe life into one’s image. Scores of coats of increasingly lighter-colored flesh will cover sankir. When the image begins to breathe you know the saint has come alive before you.”
In Mexico we have what is perhaps the world’s most famous icon – The Guadalupe. Many in the Cuernavaca’s 2014 icon workshop wrote Guadalupe. This year icon writers have chosen other manifestations of Mary, the Angel Gabriel, Saint Martin of Porres, Saint Monica (mother of Saint Augustine), and Christ.
The setting at La Mancha recalls contemplative life. The daily writing of icons begins with the Eucharist celebrated by the workshop’s chaplain Tamara Newell, herself the first female ordained priest in the Anglican Church of Mexico. She introduces four hours of writing icons in silence. Noonday prayer -- a responsive liturgy the whole group knows – is followed by meso-soprano Rosemary Alvino singing. A 40-minute break for lunch leads into a second four-hour session of writing.
Traditionally men have played the larger role in the liturgical church. All but one of the dedicated iconographers in this retreat is female. This goes along with the increasing roles of women in the Anglican community, in which Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.— the same year Cuba elected it’s first woman bishop, Suffragan Cot Aguilera.
While adhering to strict traditions developed through seventeen centuries of documented iconography, Teresa Harrison is quietly linking nations, taking down gender barriers, and conserving and ancient art form. It is wonderful to witness this happening in Cuernavaca.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Straight roads to Cobá
In the mid-1970s the resort destination of Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula was still in its planning stages. I had seen the diorama set up on the side of the highway at what was to become the intersection with Kukulcan Boulevard. Its portrayal of a futuristic complex of high-rise hotels seemed a pipe-dream on a grand scale.
Planners knew that vacationers attracted by beautiful beaches and the crystal-clear Caribbean water could be enticed to stay a few more days if there were interesting day-trips to take. Chichen Itzá and Tulum were already well-established archeological destinations, each reachable within a two-hour drive from Cancun. Yet Cobá, within that radius, featuring the highest Maya building on the Yucatan Penninsula, was virtually inaccessible to modern vehicles.
Mexico’s Secretariat of Communications and Transportation was entrusted with building a road connecting Cobá to Tulum. Archeologist Victor Segovia was entrusted with opening Cobá to visiting day-trippers.
In its heyday Cobá was the best-connected Maya city and the seat of one of the three powerful kingdoms in the Yucatan Peninsula – the others being the Puuc cities surrounding Uxmal and the Itzá kingdom headquartered in Chichen Itzá. Cobá is located near two depressions in the limestone shelf -- allowing the underground water table to surface, creating two lagoons with an abundant supply of fresh water.
Instead of clear-cutting the site, Archeologist Segovia chose to only clear the area around selected clusters of Maya buildings and courtyards, leaving the rainforest between clusters untouched.
His first challenge was to map the ancient city. For this he purchased surveying equipment that was state of the art at the time –- tripod-mounted theodolites, plumb-rules, and metal tape measures. His plan was to cut paths through the rain forest at 100-meter intervals going both north-south and east-west. This was a concept similar to the archeologist’s traditional trenches following strings laid out at one-meter intervals, though on a much grander scale.
At the end of the first day of Segovia’s on-site surveying training, Domingo Falcón, the supervisor of the local crew of contemporary-Maya workers, spoke with admiration about the fancy equipment. But he asked Segovia if he would allow the crew to use their own technique for a day. If it didn’t work, Falcón said they would follow the archeologist’s instructions using the equipment purchased in Mexico City.
Segovia agreed and told Falcón where he wanted the first path. The following morning a Maya workman stood at the beginning of the path and another stood where it was to end. They started yelling at each other. Using machetes they both cut through the vegetation towards the sound of the other’s shouts. Once the perfectly straight path had been cut, Mr. Falcón asked Mr. Segovia how wide he wanted the path to be!
Needless to say the traditional technique won out and who knows how much time was saved in clearing the paths. Segovia mapped every building he found along the paths. The technique his workers used led him to theorize that ancient Maya road-builders had worked in a similar way.
Mayan roads were characteristically straight. A road was called a sacbé, with the plural being sacbeob. “Sac” means white, “be” means road. Indeed they were white roads since they were made of limestone.
The longest sacbé in the Yucatan Peninsula runs about 100 kilometers (62 miles) in a straight line from Cobá to Yaxuná, twenty kilometers south of Chichen Itzá. This is where the territory controlled by the three kingdoms converged.
While mapping Cobá, Segovia found a building shaped like a cone. It had no temple on its top and no stairway to climb. He theorized its function was to hold a bonfire at night to serve as sighting point during construction of roads and later as a beacon for travelers on the several sacbeob that converge at that point.
Still today, as you travel the roads of the northern Yucatan and Quintana Roo, it’s interesting to see how often the road seems to go straight to a church ahead in the distance. In your rear view mirror you’ll see the church in the town behind you. The churches are on top of ancient Maya buildings and the paved road is running on top of an ancient sacbé.
Though hard to detect on the ground, sacbeob radiating out of Cobá are visible from the top of its highest building. The trees growing on the old roads do not grow as well or as tall as those on soil. A straight line through the forest is visible from above.
Next time you’re in Cancun, take that day trip to Cobá. Once you’re within five kilometers of Cobá notice the number of places where the highway goes up and over a slight rise. Each time you do that you’re crossing a sacbé.
Rent a bike and explore Cobá’s extensive network of shady paths. You’ll see the highest Maya building of the Yucatan peninsula and be at the starting point of the longest Maya road as well as where the largest number of sacbeob converge.
Planners knew that vacationers attracted by beautiful beaches and the crystal-clear Caribbean water could be enticed to stay a few more days if there were interesting day-trips to take. Chichen Itzá and Tulum were already well-established archeological destinations, each reachable within a two-hour drive from Cancun. Yet Cobá, within that radius, featuring the highest Maya building on the Yucatan Penninsula, was virtually inaccessible to modern vehicles.
Mexico’s Secretariat of Communications and Transportation was entrusted with building a road connecting Cobá to Tulum. Archeologist Victor Segovia was entrusted with opening Cobá to visiting day-trippers.
In its heyday Cobá was the best-connected Maya city and the seat of one of the three powerful kingdoms in the Yucatan Peninsula – the others being the Puuc cities surrounding Uxmal and the Itzá kingdom headquartered in Chichen Itzá. Cobá is located near two depressions in the limestone shelf -- allowing the underground water table to surface, creating two lagoons with an abundant supply of fresh water.
Instead of clear-cutting the site, Archeologist Segovia chose to only clear the area around selected clusters of Maya buildings and courtyards, leaving the rainforest between clusters untouched.
His first challenge was to map the ancient city. For this he purchased surveying equipment that was state of the art at the time –- tripod-mounted theodolites, plumb-rules, and metal tape measures. His plan was to cut paths through the rain forest at 100-meter intervals going both north-south and east-west. This was a concept similar to the archeologist’s traditional trenches following strings laid out at one-meter intervals, though on a much grander scale.
At the end of the first day of Segovia’s on-site surveying training, Domingo Falcón, the supervisor of the local crew of contemporary-Maya workers, spoke with admiration about the fancy equipment. But he asked Segovia if he would allow the crew to use their own technique for a day. If it didn’t work, Falcón said they would follow the archeologist’s instructions using the equipment purchased in Mexico City.
Segovia agreed and told Falcón where he wanted the first path. The following morning a Maya workman stood at the beginning of the path and another stood where it was to end. They started yelling at each other. Using machetes they both cut through the vegetation towards the sound of the other’s shouts. Once the perfectly straight path had been cut, Mr. Falcón asked Mr. Segovia how wide he wanted the path to be!
Needless to say the traditional technique won out and who knows how much time was saved in clearing the paths. Segovia mapped every building he found along the paths. The technique his workers used led him to theorize that ancient Maya road-builders had worked in a similar way.
Mayan roads were characteristically straight. A road was called a sacbé, with the plural being sacbeob. “Sac” means white, “be” means road. Indeed they were white roads since they were made of limestone.
The longest sacbé in the Yucatan Peninsula runs about 100 kilometers (62 miles) in a straight line from Cobá to Yaxuná, twenty kilometers south of Chichen Itzá. This is where the territory controlled by the three kingdoms converged.
While mapping Cobá, Segovia found a building shaped like a cone. It had no temple on its top and no stairway to climb. He theorized its function was to hold a bonfire at night to serve as sighting point during construction of roads and later as a beacon for travelers on the several sacbeob that converge at that point.
Still today, as you travel the roads of the northern Yucatan and Quintana Roo, it’s interesting to see how often the road seems to go straight to a church ahead in the distance. In your rear view mirror you’ll see the church in the town behind you. The churches are on top of ancient Maya buildings and the paved road is running on top of an ancient sacbé.
Though hard to detect on the ground, sacbeob radiating out of Cobá are visible from the top of its highest building. The trees growing on the old roads do not grow as well or as tall as those on soil. A straight line through the forest is visible from above.
Next time you’re in Cancun, take that day trip to Cobá. Once you’re within five kilometers of Cobá notice the number of places where the highway goes up and over a slight rise. Each time you do that you’re crossing a sacbé.
Rent a bike and explore Cobá’s extensive network of shady paths. You’ll see the highest Maya building of the Yucatan peninsula and be at the starting point of the longest Maya road as well as where the largest number of sacbeob converge.
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