Within a Sky Full of Earth

O que conta não é a manifestação do desejo, da tentativa amorosa.
O que conta é o inferno da história única. Nada a substitui, nem uma segunda história. Nem a mentira. Nada. Quanto mais a provocamos, mais ela foge. Amar é amar alguém. Não há um múltiplo da vida que possa ser vivido. Todas as primeiras histórias de amor se quebram e depois é essa história que transportamos para as outras histórias.
Quando se viveu um amor com alguém, fica-se marcado para sempre e depois transporta-se essa história de pessoa a pessoa. Nunca nos separamos dele.
Marguerite Duras 

"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) 

Leonard explica a Sandra que as suas fotografias nunca mostram pessoas porque as pessoas entram nas fotos quando as vêem. Para quê oferecer um mundo feito em vez de receber mundos inesperados?
James Gray, Pedro Mexia, Joaquin Phoenix e Vanessa Shaw.

No matter how much you know,
no matter how much you think,
no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan,
you're not superior to sex."
Philip Roth • The Dying Animal

IIUM PUBLIC LECTURE • Center for Global and Strategic Studies
China’s Age of Openness Before Mao
A LECTURE BY FRANK DIKÖTTER • CHAIRPERSON: ERIC SAUTEDÉ

The era between empire and communism is routinely portrayed as a catastrophic interlude in China's modern history, but this engagingly written book shows instead that the first half of the twentieth century witnessed a qualitatively unprecedented trend towards openness.
Frank Dikötter argues that the years from 1900 to 1949 were characterized at all levels of society by engagement with the world, and that the pursuit of openness was particularly evident in four areas: in governance and the advance of the rule of law and of newly acquired liberties; in freedom of movement in and out of the country; in open minds thriving on ideas from the humanities and sciences; and in open markets and sustained growth in the economy.
Freedom of association, freedom to travel, freedom of religion, freedom to trade and relative freedom of speech wrought profound changes in the texture of everyday life. While globalisation itself was a vector of cultural diversification, pre-existing constellations of ideas, practices and institutions did not simply vanish on contact with the rest of the world, but on the contrary expanded even further, just as much as local industries diversified thanks to their inclusion into a much larger global market. Arguably the country was at its most diverse in its entire history on the eve of World War II – in terms of politics, society, culture and the economy.
Accessible to general readers, while providing an integration of ideas that will be valuable for specialists, this book presents a fresh way of approaching the history of modern China.

In this succinct and vigorous book, Frank Dikötter presents a cornucopia of graphic examples to show that China in the first half of the twentieth century, far from being in a state of decay that called for revolutionary action, was in fact a vibrant and cosmopolitan society. In such a reading, the current Chinese leaders should not be seen as striving to do something bold and new; they are merely struggling to rebuild a network of global connections that Mao and others had systematically helped to destroy. This should be an ideal book to spark class discussion on modern China.
Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern China and Return to Dragon Mountain.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frank Dikötter is a Professor of Chinese Modern History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Chair of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. He has published a series of innovative books, including The Discourse of Race in Modern China and the controversial Narcotic Culture: a History of Drugs and China.

VENUE: IIUM AUDITORIUM • RUA DE LONDRES, 16 (NAPE) MACAU
DATE: APRIL 23, 2009 AT 6:30 PM
TEL: +853-87964404
MORE INFO AT: www.iium.edu.mo
RELATED LINK: FRANK DIKÖTTER WEBSITE

The Age of Openness - China Before Mao, by Frank Dikötter
HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS • 2008 • 125 MOP$ • RESERVE ONE FOR YOU NOW!

* In collaboration with IIUM, Bloom will be present at this session making the book available to all the readers of Macau. Don't miss it!

Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, he was hill and could not attend a presentation at the official ceremony. The following was his speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, in December 10, and was read by John C. Cabot, United States Ambassador.
[The photo was taken when Hemingway was a soldier in World War I, 1918, in Milan]

Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.
Ernest Hemingway, 1954

'THE SOLDIER, HIS WIFE AND THE BUM'
I was a bum in San Francisco that once managed to go to a symphony concert along with the well dressed people. And the music was good but something about the audience was not. And something about the orchestra and the conductor was not. Although the building was fine and the acoustics perfect I preferred to listen to the music alone on my radio.

And afterwards I did go back to my room and I turned on the radio. But there was a pounding on the wall. 'Shut that god damn thing off!' There was a soldier in the next room bubbling with his wife and soon he would be going over there to protect me from Hitler. So I snapped the radio off and then I heard his wife say 'You shouldn't have done that'. And the soldier said 'Fuck that guy' which I thought was a very nice thing for him to tell his wife to do. Of course she never did.

Anyhow I never went to another live concert. And that night I listened to the radio very quietly, my ear pressed to the speaker.

War has it's price and peace never lasts. And millions of young men everywhere will die. As I listened to the classical music I heard them making love. Desperately and mournfully, through Shostakovich, Brahms, Mozart, through crescendo and climax and through the shared walls of our darkness.
BY CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Para quem não saiba, ou anda distraído, José Saramago continua com a sua actividade de blogger mesmo aqui ao lado. O Caderno de Saramago, é o espaço vivo, diário, escrito pelo Nobel português no espaço virtual da Fundação com o seu nome e que pode ser lido, de imediato, pelos quatro cantos do mundo. Quase que podemos ouvir o autor a respirar e a dedilhar as notas do teclado como se de uma viola se tratasse fazendo-nos chegar toda a música das suas palavras por entre as brisas da Ilha de Lanzarote, ou lá onde ele estiver.
No mesmo espaço foi também aberta uma secção onde podem ser lidas as "Cartas ao Escritor", espaço dedicado aos leitores onde podem dar a sua palavra e que nos ajuda a reflectir sobre o acto de ler e de pensar. É também uma janela aberta ao mundo da literatura em confronto com a realidade individual e experiências de leitura, local idílico onde os imaginários voam por entre as páginas dos livros.
A Fundação José Saramago vai instalar-se este ano na Casa dos Bicos em Lisboa. Unem-se assim, de forma homogénea, dois símbolos da cultura portuguesa.
• SITE DA FUNDAÇÃO JOSÉ SARAMAGO

Each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword.

Some kill their love when they are young, some when they are old.
Some strangle with the hands of lust, some with the hands of gold.
The kindest use a knife because, the dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long, some buy and other sell.
Some do the deed with so many tears, and some without a sigh.
For each man kills the thing he loves, yet each man does not die.
Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves by GAVIN FRIDAY • WORDS by OSCAR WILDE

É sempre curioso o método ou o próprio acaso que nos faz escolher o nome das personagens. É quase como escolher o nome de um filho. Depende sempre de uma enorme série de factores. Se é inédito, se é bonito, se tem uma ligação familiar, etc. Nas personagens o campo também está sempre muito lavrado e é preciso reflectir nas consequências. Se chamarmos a alguém Herman, Pombal ou Eusébio, a imagem desse nome fica automaticamente marcado, agarrado a uma figura que já conhecemos, e durante o livro todo essa imagem, quer se escreva ou se leia, não nos sai da memória.
O livro "Longe de Manaus", de José Francisco Viegas, pelo meio tem um Isaltino. De pronto visualizei um homem a dar para o forte, de bigode ou mesmo barba, um cabelinho daqueles e uns óculos que mudam de cor conforme a intensidade da luz. Ah! E um fato de xadrez amarelado. Não sei se foi a intenção do autor construir essa alusão. Mas isto não deixa de ser um ficção, deslocarmos as personagens para o nosso mundo particular. Por essa razão é que a leitura, e a escrita, é uma expressão pura de criatividade e imaginação. Vive com determinação colada a uma espécie de sonho.

Sobre o público e a massa crítica, um texto muito interessante de Maria do Rosário Pedreira, a não perder.
[VIA BLOGTAILORS • QUE A PARTIR DE HOJE PODE SER SEGUIDO AQUI, À DIREITA, EM 'ONDAS CURTAS']

In 1958 I wrote the following:
«There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.»
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?
"Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture" / FABER AND FABER 2006

A próxima edição de aniversário do jornal Público, no dia 5 de Março, vai ter uma particularidade. Vai estar a cargo do escritor António Lobo Antunes que irá dirigir no local todas as operações. Um dia diferente na redacção deste jornal português que marca nessa data o seu 19º aniversário. Para Lobo Antunes será também uma experiência inédita e decerto do seu agrado.
Já curiosos sobre o resultado, a Bloom irá reservar um exemplar desta edição e guardá-la no seu baú de boas recordações, sejam elas quais forem.

Desde que deixei o Líbano, em 1976, para me instalar em França, perguntam-me inúmeras vezes, com as melhores intenções do mundo, se me sinto "mais francês" ou "mais libanês". Respondo invariavelmente: "Um e outro!" Não por um qualquer desejo de equilíbrio ou equidade, mas porque, se respondesse de outro modo, estaria a mentir. Aquilo que faz que eu seja eu e não outrem, é o facto de me encontrar na ombreira de dois países, de duas ou três línguas, de várias tradições culturais. É isso precisamente que define a minha identidade. Tornar-me-ia mais autêntico se amputasse uma parte de mim mesmo?
Amin Maalouf no livro que todos deviam ler "As Identidades Assassinas"

People ask about my name. Where it comes from. I often don't tell and most of the times I keep quiet, trying to mumble some birdish sound in between my teeth. Then they ask me something else and forget it. Why should I tell anyway? Fuck them, I think, with all those stupid questions. Asking me 'who are you?' or even in the third person, all eyes trembling with a funny face, 'who the hell is Ring Joid?'
As soon as they start, when I'm sitting in front of them, they holding a pen or a sound device to record my voice, I drift away to a faraway land where I find myself driving in the middle of a field full of dry unharvested barley, the sun up high, me raving the engine of some four wheeler bike. And suddenly something else. Crows or other type of straight birds, a swimming pool, some nice girls around, a glass of lemonade. Then how can I pick up with the mind in front of me, searching for glory on some sentence I might tell?
"Hmm?", I say, completely out of mark. And then they repeat the same thing again and again and I take a full breath to keep it on focus for a while.
"Oh, my name...", I restart, sometimes I'm in a good mood, and holding my lemonade in one of my hands I say, "I got my name on this book, with this guy called Holden Caulfield, a kid, you know him, his eldest brother's favourite writer was Ring Lardner, and I don't know why, that flipped my mind."
The other part I don't know, even if they ask me with a hammer I can't tell. I think it was my parents or something. My mom Joy and my father Void. "I really can't tell", I add. Because I never knew my parents but that's what I believe. Or maybe it was the name of a train station or the brand of the tyres on my full roaring bike.
Sometimes I get some piece of paper and I write them the place where they can find something about it. Something like this. And they sort of get happy and turn off the tape and go home. That leaves me satisfied.
[IN CASE YOU DIDN'T GET THE LINK]

The legendary editor Robert Giroux, who died Friday at the age of 94, worked closely throughout his career with literary giants including Robert Lowell, Flannery O’Connor, Jack Kerouac and Bernard Malamud. But there was one that got away. In his new book, “The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Publishers, Their Editors and Authors” (St. Martin’s Press), Al Silverman includes the following anecdote from Mr. Giroux, recounting how early in his career he lost the chance to publish “The Catcher in the Rye.” (The “Mr. Shawn” that J. D. Salinger mentions is The New Yorker’s editor at the time, William Shawn.)

I was eating a sandwich at my desk when our receptionist called. “Mr. Salinger is here,” she said, “and he wants to meet you.” I said: “Mr. Salinger? What’s his first name?” And she said, “Jerome, his name is Jerome.” I said, “Send him in.”

In he came. He was very tall, dark-haired, had a horse face. He was melancholy looking. It’s the truth — the first person I thought of when I saw him was Hamlet.

“Giroux,” he said. I said something like, “Right. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Salinger.”

“Giroux,” he said again. “Mr. Shawn has recommended you to me. But I want to tell you that to start me out it would be much better to publish my first novel instead of my stories.” I laughed, thinking, you want to be the publisher, you can have my seat. But I said, “I’m sure you’re right about that.” And I said, “I will publish your novel. Tell me about it.” He said, “Well, I can’t show it to you yet. It’s about half finished.” I said, “Well, let me be the publisher.” And he said yes, and we shook hands. ...

A year later a messenger came to the office with a package from Dorothy Olding, Salinger’s agent. ... There on the top page I read the title: “The Catcher in the Rye.” ...

I gave [my boss at Harcourt, Eugene Reynal] the book to read. He didn’t like it, didn’t understand it. He asked me, “Is this kid in the book supposed to be crazy?” ...“Gene,” I said, “I’ve shaken hands with this author. I agreed to publish this book.”

“Yes,” he said, “but, Bob, you’ve got to remember, we have a textbook department.” And I said, “What’s that got to do with it?” He said, “This is a book about a kid going to prep school.” So he sent it to the textbook people, who read it and said, “It’s not for us.”

I remember apologizing to Salinger. He said, “Ah, it’s O.K. I expect things like that. It happens.” Well, I never thought it would happen to me.
[FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES / 2007]

The House on Mango Street (1984) written by Sandra Cisneros is one example of contemporary Chicana literature that represents a feminist voice for Mexican-American women. Through the new experimental literary style, she expresses a series of Chicana problems in a male-dominated society, in which people value the idea of ‘machismo’ or the belief that men are superior to women in various aspects.

Although the feminist’s movement has emerged in the US since 1960s as a large group of women has been trying to fight against gender discrimination, it seems only liberal white middle-class women have been able to successfully challenge the power of male supremacy. On the other hand, women of colour, members of ethnic and working class minority, have been excluded from the social mainstream, and their problematic status as ‘the other’ has never evolved. Thus, Mexican-American women have not only struggled for equality with men in their own patriarchal society and the world at large, but they have also tried to find a way to be part of the white-dominated Women’s Movement.

As an ethnic writer from a Mexican-American community, Cisneros does not only create a unique ‘voice’ or what she calls ‘the suppressed voice’ of a Chicana, but she also drives forward a new literary form that is different from the ‘standard’ literary canon of male-writers.

In The House on Mango Street, instead of focusing on the protagonist, Esperanza, and her process of growing from adolescence to adulthood which can generally be found in most coming of age fictions or bildungsroman, Cineros dedicates many vignettes to the lives of other Chicanas on Mango Street through Esperanza’s point of view. As a result, readers can see the development of Esperanza’s self-discovery and self-definition as she narrates along her own stories. Also, her narrations of other female neighbours’ lives show how these powerless women, sharing the same misery in the oppressed society, have a major impact on her perception as a woman growing in a Mexican community. The relationship between Esperanza and these other women helps her, in a dramatic way, to understand herself, and it also motivates her to escape from the Chicano patriarchal society. Additionally, Cisneros’ poetic prose written in fragmentary forms do not only represent the fragmentation of the life of the protagonist who has to search for her identities, but also the way she breaks grammatical rules parallels how Esperanza breaks traditional roles, cultural norms and social expectations of Chicanas.

At the beginning of The House on Mango Street, Cisneros states “A las Mujeres” or “To the Women”, which implies that she dedicates her work to both female readers and Chicana women in Mexican-American society whose lives are portrayed in her fiction. With this assumption in place, Cineros, as a writer, bears in mind that her creativity together with the power of language can free women from the world of silence regardless of their ethnicity.

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros • VINTAGE • 1984

ARTIGO SOBRE HENRIQUE SENNA FERNANDES NA REVISTA BRASILEIRA BRAVO

Toca o telefone no escritório de advocacia do escritor macaense Henrique de Senna Fernandes. Chamada de São Paulo. Em Macau, ex-colônia portuguesa na Ásia e desde 1999 região administrativa especial da República Popular da China, os relógios estão no futuro — nesta época do ano, dez horas a mais em relação ao Brasil —, mas o idioma no qual se expressa o jornalista que procura pelo autor ficou no passado. "Can you speak in English?", pergunta do outro lado da linha, com voz constrangida e sotaque achinesado, uma assistente de Senna Fernandes, logo que ouve as primeiras palavras na língua da antiga metrópole.

O episódio reforça a ideia de que Senna Fernandes (1923) talvez represente o último capítulo de peso da história da literatura produzida em português no continente asiático — ou, ao menos, em Macau. Assim, a publicação no Brasil de dois livros do ficcionista, Nam Van (contos, 1978) e Amor e Dedinhos de Pé (romance, 1986), já constituiria, por si só, um acontecimento editorial. Há, no entanto, algo mais a sublinhar: a obra do autor é um paradigma da expressão identitária de Macau, moldada a partir da fricção entre as tradições portuguesa e chinesa, disso resultando uma "cultura de encontro". "O macaense é precisamente o produto do equilíbrio de várias culturas, entre as quais se destacam a portuguesa, a raiz, e a chinesa, o solo. Eu sempre quis mostrar essa possibilidade de duas culturas tão díspares encontrarem uma plataforma de entendimento e de adaptação, criando um mundo novo", explicou o escritor em entrevista a BRAVO.
[TOTALIDADE DO TEXTO AQUI] [FOTO BLOOMLAND.CN]