Tag Archives: temporality

Week 12 – Conclusion

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Throughout the past few months, this course felt like an endless seesaw ride, bouncing against different – yet similar – themes and cultures. In the beginning of the course, I questioned what “Romance Studies” was, or rather, what it could have meant. However, right from the introductory lecture, I realized I won’t be able to find a single answer to this. I therefore avoided trying to find the meaning behind Romance Studies. This allowed me to approach the texts with an open, unprejudiced mind; rather than seeking for a “hidden” theme, thus creating a filter between the book and myself, I allowed the book to speak to me in its most authentic form, in its most natural language, without any of my own thought filtration. Of course, getting rid of this “tendency to find specific meaning” took time to develop. I remember reading Proust and Aragon and feeling a bit lost as I couldn’t find anything that could answer what “Romance Studies” was. However, simultaneously, the lecture videos were of tremendous help. It guided me through the relevant themes of the story, allowing me to establish an understanding of key concepts without having to systematically “look” for them.

Looking back at the texts that we have read, the strongest commonality I personally found between all the books was the theme of “relationship”. First, there was the relationship between people. From the parent-child relationships shown in The Shrouded Woman, Agostino, Bonjour Tristesse, The Time of the Doves, The Society of Reluctant Dreamers, Amulet, etc., to the temporal relationship between one’s past, present, and future, as shown in “Combray”, Paris Peasant, W, or the Memory of Childhood, everything in our texts started off and ended with relationships. Reading about these different relationships – between people, nations, time, objects, literature – was in itself a truly remarkable experience. One big part that stood out for me was the relationship between narrators and literature – such as the mother’s bedtime stories in “Combray”, the narrator Cercas’ journey to write Soldiers of Salamis, and Auxilio’s obsession with poetry. The relationship between people and literature seemed to have a parallel with the relationship between people and time. Like how time can affect people, in that people can reconstruct the present with a recollection of the past, literature, too, seems to reconstruct people’s futures; in some instances, literature seemed like the key driver of people’s lives (especially for Cercas).

Requiring myself to read a book every week was the best thing I have done in this semester. Not only did I become a faster and better reader, but I was also able to experience a “new world” ever week, every time I opened a new text.

Finally, I would like to express my greatest gratitude towards Professor Beasley-Murray, Patricio, and Jennifer for everything they have done for this class this past semester.

My final question: Out of the numerous themes we have encountered, what stood out to you’re the most? Is it applicable to your life in some way?

Week 12, Agualusa, “The Society of Reluctant Dreamers”

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Jose Eduardo Agualusa’s The Society of Reluctant Dreamers was a very interesting read. It felt surreal in one hand, but also had a lot of relatable, applicable lessons to take away as a reader.

The first thing that stood out to me was protagonist Daniel Benchimol’s unstable state. Although in the early pages Benchimol stated “I discovered I was able to live on almost nothing and be happy. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I was back then,” Benchimol’s life – as a husband, father, and journalist – wasn’t successful (albeit the term “successful” is only subjective) (12). Particularly interesting was his role as a father to his daughter, Karinguiri. I felt sorry for Benchimol when his ex-wife Lucrecia blamed him for the arrest of their daughter Karinguiri, stating “this is all your fault, you’re the one who gets her going, with that armchair revolutionary talk of yours.” I felt sorry because as Benchimol himself stated, he knew “it was true” (116). Benchimol, though he did not explicitly state this, would have felt guilty for his daughter’s suffering – going on a hunger strike in prison.

However, this sorry feeling changed when I read what Karinguiri had to say about this matter. In a letter to her father, Karinguiri stated, “I’ve ended up in this prison because I decided to be Angolan. I’m fighting for my citizenship. […] Fear isn’t a choice. There’s no way to avoid feeling fear. And yet we can choose not to give in to it. My companions and I have chosen to fight against fear” (217). Although Karinguiri might have been suffering physically, I think she was living true to where her heart was leading; she was doing what she believed was right, to get her world closer to happiness. In this way, I dropped my sorry feeling for Benchimol; instead, I was inspired by Karinguiri. Her life “divided between different worlds” and her fight for “the Angola of the poor” inspired me (216-217). In a way, it almost seems like Benchimol’s revolutionary talks laid the foundation for Karinguiri to “dream” – to dream of democracy, and a world for the poor majority of Angola. It is this other meaning of “dream” – as in an ambition or ideal in reality – that caught my attention, despite all the other talks about nightly dreams. In my interpretation, I think this other meaning of “dream” – especially relating to Karinguiri’s story – is worth nothing.

On the other hand, the more conventional meaning of dream – relating to sleep – also interested me. Specifically, the sleep imaging machine caught my attention. The idea wasn’t new, as I’ve heard of machines similar to that before, but it certainly was frightening. Knowing that dreams “express our forbidden desires,” as it was said in the lecture, the thought of this dream-imaging machine seemed to cruel.

Question: On page 171, it is stated “it might be possible for us to remember future events, if they’re very important or very traumatic.” On a similar note, the book suggests that “foreshadowing dreams” can be true. Do you think this idea of a “foreshadowing dream” was mentioned in a literal way – as in, do you think the author actually believed this idea was plausible? Or did the author want to imply a parallel between dreams and literature, trying to suggest that literature can affect the future?

Week 10, Bolaño, “Amulet”

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“All she, and Bolaño, can do is ensure that the echoes of their song, the traces of that generosity and courage, endure as both promise and warning.”

This statement from Professor Beasley-Murray, for me, was a very precise one-sentence summary of the meaning behind Roberto Bolaño’s Amulet. Indeed, this story seems to be the living history of the student movements of 1968; beyond magic realism, which more or less covered up the realities of oppression and violence, Bolaño’s Amulet realistically portrays the memories of 1968 Mexico.

When I was reading the book, I noticed that the book had an interesting portrayal of temporality; in other words, I felt that Auxilio Lacouture’s life wasn’t confined to the natural movement of time (the order of past, present, and future). It seemed as if Auxilio’s thoughts were the drivers of time, and that the change of temporality in the book was a representation of the dynamism of Auxilio’s thoughts and memories. As such, the concept of time in this book was (and still is) so confusing to me. One passage that really made me feel as such is in page 32:

“[T]ime folded and unfolded itself like a dream. The year 1968 became the year 1964 and the year 1960 became the year 1956. […] I started thinking about my past as if I was thinking about my present, future, and past, all mixed together and dormant in the one tepid egg” (32).

Here, past, present, and future are intertwined within Auxilio’s thoughts (or dreams). Although mostly confused, I did feel a connection between this interconnected nature of temporality with the idea of the “birth of history”. My personal view on history is that it is the past, present, and the future. Mostly we view history as the past, but our analysis in our present is what makes it a history of the past, and we ultimately make predictions of the future based off of that historical analysis. I think something similar can be said about Bolaño’s Amulet. It is about an event of the past, however, it is revisited (though not quite analyzed, in a historical sense), recollected, and narrated with an aim to affect the future. In Amulet, Auxilio is the history of the event that happened in 1968; she is the living reminder of the “song of war and love” (184).

At first, I felt like Auxilio’s statement that she was the mother of Mexican poetry was a joke or an exaggeration; how could an unstable (referring to her lack of work) Uruguayan, a marginal outsider, possibly be the “mother” of Mexican poetry? However, I realized what this statement actually meant, in page 177:

“No, I’m nobody’s mother, but I did know them all, all the young poets […] of Mexico City, or […] other parts of Latina America and washed up here, and I loved them all” (177).

I ended up agreeing that Auxilio was truly the mother of Mexican poetry, the mother of the poetry that got washed up in blood before it was written on paper. She witnessed the sufferings, suffered herself from witnessing and living with the memory of the sufferings, and ultimately endured to keep the history alive.

My question: How did the unique portrayal of temporality affect your reading? Did this make you feel as if the story was being narrated in a different realm? Did it confuse or distract you at all?

  • PS. Sorry my blog is a bit over the 500-word limit. I used some long quotations this blog, so I had to exceed the limit by a little to add in more of my own thoughts. Hope that’s okay.

Week 8, Perec, “W or The Memory of Childhood”

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While reading Georges Perec’s W or The Memory of Childhood, I specifically felt parallels with “Combray”. In “Combray”, the narrator reflects on his past, with the perspective he has in his present; in this way, his reflection of the past reconstructs his present, and offers a change to his future. Similarly, in W or The Memory of Childhood, Perec recollects his memories of the past, the memories that have “many variations and imaginary details [Perec] [has] added in the telling of them”, altering or distorting them greatly (13). However, the main difference I felt was that Perec didn’t seem to have a “progressive realization”. Perec, regarding writing about the memories he had with his parents, stated, “fifteen years after drafting these two passages, it still seems to me that I could do no more than repeat them: […] it seems to me that I would manage nothing more than a reiteration of the same story, leading nowhere” (41). This statement helped me realize that Perec wasn’t necessarily seeking for something (ex. For a change) through writing. In fact, he establishes a unique environment where temporality isn’t divided up into hierarchy. In his writing, past and present seem to have equal values; the possible inaccuracies of his memories don’t seem to affect his writing and recollection of the past.

When I first read the title of this book, I had wondered what relationship “W” and “the memory of childhood” had. Although I’ve been thinking of this mysterious relationship throughout reading the whole book, I feel even more confused and fragmented after finishing the book. Thankfully, watching this week’s lecture helped me bring a new perspective to this matter, that perhaps this unresolved question, these “compilations of fragments”, were indicators of the author’s post-modernistic narrative. I also found parallels of postmodernity in the description about W. W was characterized by specific sets of laws and methods that maximize the competitiveness of athletes; at first, these laws and methods almost seemed like the ideological background of W’s political system. However, throughout most of the later parts of the book, these methods are attacked and doubted. In one example, the description stated, “the problem with this method is obviously the risk that […] it will emphasize the differences between the contestants and produce in the end a kind of vicious circle” (92). This narrative, which attacked a method established within W, seemed very close to Professor Beasley-Murray’s description of postmodernity, a “competing claims to legitimacy and truth”.

To close off my blog, I would like to ask a question: Many parts of Perec’s autobiography consisted of a childhood story of which Perec admitted to have “made up” or “distorted”. Did this affect your reading at all? Do you think this affected the reliability of Perec’s narrative?

Week 7, Rodoreda, “The Time of the Doves”

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I was passionately engaged while reading The Time of the Doves, mainly for two reasons. First of all, I really enjoyed the narrative of the novel. I felt like the first-person narration of Natalia made the narrative more credible. Normally, first-person narratives are less credible than a “neutral” third-person view, but since this story was about Natalia’s life, nothing could’ve been more credible than her own thoughts; in this way, the benefits of a first-person narrative of this book resembled that of “The Shrouded Woman” by Bombal. In both books, I did not care if there could have been “another side of the story”. All I cared about was what the narrator perceived and thought, which made the first-person narrative most suitable and credible. Secondly, I really enjoyed the temporality and linearity of the book and plot. It felt like specific plot events did not take up majority of the pages; everything seemed more focused on Natalia’s thoughts and emotions. Moreover, I think the majority of the plot is more about how Natalia “lives on”. Though significant events happen throughout the book, the plot continues quickly without being stopped in one event for a long time. Considering that the narration was Natalia’s own thoughts, I felt like Natalia was too busy – with work, housework, raising children – with her life that she had no time to stop at a single event; life was continuous survival for her, survival through endless sufferings. She just had to keep living on.

While reading, I noticed (and indicated on the pages) a lot of instances where I found Natalia suffering: guilt after leaving Pere, on the motorcycle with Quimet, the disasters with the doves, having no choice but to send Toni away, living through times of war (hunger and pain), and marriage Antonio. The last suffering, marriage with Antonio, isn’t truly a suffering; in fact, it seemed like the foundation for Natalia and her kids’ lives to get better. However, reading the last parts of the book, I couldn’t stop feeling a bittersweet, guilty, and incomplete emotion. The actual events of Natalia’s life seemed to be leading her towards recovery from the terrors of hunger and pain. However, I felt like Natalie still suffered. She was unstable and always seemed preoccupied with thoughts of the past. The last few pages where she finally crossed a street implied that Natalia was recovering, that she was reconstituting her life in a positive way. However, the ellipsis after the last word of the book, “Happy . . .” bothers me. Some part of me doubts that Natalia is truly happy, while I truly wish she would become happy.

Although I feel like this blogpost was clustered with emotions and thoughts, I want to end with an organized question: Natalia’s life can be characterized as a “continuous effort to carry on”. Knowing this, do you think Natalia is truly happy by the ending of the story? Can Natalia ever become happy again, despite everything she has gone through?

Week 6, Sagan, “Bonjour Tristesse”

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Reading Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse felt like riding a playground swing. For me this book was full of an ongoing internal contrast in Cécile’s mind between admiration and resentment towards Anne. On one hand, the difference that Cécile and her father had from Anne seemed to be highlighting class differences; Elsa, Cécile, and her father’s lives were categorized as “Bohemianism”, whereas Anne’s life was that of “a cultivated, well-organized, bourgeois existence” (46). I noticed how Cécile took advantage of this difference to cognitively separated her and her father from Anne, strengthening her treatment of Anne as an intruder and “danger” to the happiness of her and her father.

However, at the same time, Cécile seemed to have viewed Anne with great admiration. Cécile explicitly said, “I greatly admired her” (10). Cécile believed that Anne’s addition (or intrusion) to the family would benefit her as she said, “she would guide me, relieve me of responsibility, and be at hand whenever I might need her. She would make both my father and me into paragons of virtue” (44). I felt that throughout the entirety of the book, there was tension between Cécile’s admiration and resentment towards Anne. Perhaps Cécile’s admiration towards Anne fueled her resentment, as Anne’s attempt to bring order and responsibility to Cécile’s life kept Cécile from liking herself; Cécile, “who was naturally meant for happiness and gaiety, had been forced by [Anne] into self-criticism and a guilty conscience” (52). Cécile undoubtedly admired Anne and her “bourgeois existence”; however, she viewed Anne’s orderly life as something far too superior, something that will require too much work, responsibilities, and changes to her current life that seem to her as unwanted sacrifices.

I felt that love was a key driver of this book. Cécile’s attitude towards love started cynical, where she viewed it as mere sensation rather than happiness (20). Then, love changed to a strong “physical” and “intellectual” pleasure that seemed to make her happy when she was with Cyril; it seemed like a true realization until this point. However, her realization of love took a drastic turn when she realized that it was not Cyril that she loved, but she “had loved the pleasure he gave [her]” (127). Perhaps this attitude accurately summarizes the novel’s focus on sensuality, pleasure, and irresponsibility. At a certain point Cécile started to resemble Anne; she started to think about the future and formed tactics that were derived from critical thoughts. However, her irresponsibility remained the same; she is driven by emotions, usually resentment, and never thought of the consequences that could happen by her actions.

To close off my blog, I would like to ask a question: Throughout the book we never got proper insight on Cécile’s mother. Considering that this book had a first-person narrative, do you think the lack of insight on her deceased mother has any implications? Is it merely because her deceased mother is uninfluential to the plot, or perhaps, is Cécile repressing thoughts about her mother?

Week 3 – Aragon, “Paris Peasant”

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Reading Aragon’s Paris Peasant felt like a brain workout at one hand, and an imaginary escape at another. With a conventional bias, I struggled to find the “plot” of the story, like many of my peers reading this book. I constantly searched for a plot; however, in the process of doing so, I realized that I was characterizing the idea of a “plot”. I realized that I shouldn’t be looking for something in the book, but to absorb whatever the book was throwing at me. In this way, Aragon’s way of writing felt quite similar to Proust’s Combray; both authors reflect on memories associated with specific areas. However, whereas Proust focused on conveying the everyday experiences the narrator had with his family, at least in the first section of the chapter, Aragon focuses on his particular thoughts and opinions that were derived in the Passage de l’Opera. For example, after giving a great description of the Passage de l’Opera, Aragon quickly turns what specific thought he had regarding Hotel de Monte-Carlo, Librarie Rey, the passage’s concierge, Café du Petit Grillon, etc. It was particularly interesting to read the section about exportation, especially because Aragon inserted pictures of authentic signs and newspaper articles for reference. This whole section about exportation, from page 24 to 32, even seemed like a story in itself. Aragon’s description of the struggles faced by whom he called “tomorrow’s victims of exportation” really engaged me in the section of the book, and almost brought out a sympathetic emotion.

Aragon’s attitude, especially in the first pages of the book, also showed similarities to Proust. Particularly, this quote grabbed my attention:

“Humanity’s stupid rationalism contains an unimaginably large element of materialism. This fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes man prefer reason’s imagination to the imagination of the senses” (9).

This quote showed Aragon’s perspective to focus on his senses and be limitless in his imagination; it showed his interesting perspective that errors, especially those that are caused by sensual imagination, can provide a unique insight that nothing else than itself could provide. Perhaps this attitude can be described as “modernistic”; it challenges conventional habits and beliefs suggests a new approach. Much as his writing style being unlike a traditional novel, his thoughts seem very unique and new as well. Aragon’s focus on sensuality is further shown when he writes about hairdressers and sensual pleasures (44-45). Lastly, starting with “A Feeling for Nature at the Buttes-Chaumont”, Aragon’s thoughts seem to deepen, with heavier ideas of surrealism and temporality are shown.

To finish my blog, I would like to end with a question: What kind of attitude do you think Aragon has toward modernism? Does Aragon seem hopeful for the new changes modernism can bring? Does he seem to be against modernity, as it poses a risk that “what was known until today could be completely gone tomorrow?”