El triunfo de los santos - Luis Carlos Martín Jiménez

Retropost (26 de julio de 2008): San Xiao

Que no es ningún sabio chino, sino la versión gallega de San Julián, o San Jenaro dicen otros. El día de Santiago fuimos de excursión a Cariño. Pasando por la ría de Ortigueira, que hay que rodearla toda, se ven algunos de los paisajes más bonitos que se puedan ver en España o en otra parte; y Cariño permanece un poquito como atascado fuera del tiempo, en un rincón apartado de la realidad donde no pasan muchas cosas. Nos llegamos con unos amigos de Beatriz al cabo Ortegal, donde se ve un paisaje impresionante de acantilados e islas de roca, con una flota microscópica de barcos en torno a ellas—engaña la perspectiva. A lo lejos se ve la punta de Estaca de Vares (o Bares), que vemos desde el otro lado cuando nos vamos a la playa de Xilloi. Bien, pues bajando hacia el pueblo, en una ladera del cabo, se encuentra la ermita de San Xiao, donde hacen los de Cariño una romería en enero, debe ser la más tempranera del año.

Es una iglesita diminuta, que se abre con una llave que hay colgada a la puerta de una casa un poco más arriba. Y entre otras figuras de vírgenes y santos, ahí está la de San Xiao, una figura al estilo de 1600 que lleva una escopeta. Debe ser el único santo con escopeta. Hombre, al lado está la figura de San Miguel dándole al diablo, pero ese lleva espada, o lanza. Lo de la escopeta tiene su historia, claro, que los santos no pasean por ahí sus atributos porque sí.

Resulta que este Xiao era cazador, nos cuenta la leyenda, y vivía en una casita del monte aislada. Y volviendo un día a casa, ve metidas dos figuras en su cama. Pensando que su mujer estaba refocilándose con otro, ni corto ni perezoso les pega allí mismo dos tiros. Y al salir de casa "cuál no sería su sorpresa" al ver a su mujer, que le venía y le dice que habían llegado los padres de él de visita, y que como estaban muy cansados, les ha dicho que se echasen en la cama. Resulta que creyendo hacer un castigo de honor, se había convertido en parricida.

Drama, desesperación, arrepentimiento, penitencia. Y de allí a santo. Como se ve, la historia tiene su moraleja y su ironía trágica, algo así como "no hay que precipitarse—vamos, que la intención era buena, pero sorpresas te da la vida...."

Tela, lo de San Xiao.

Relacionado con esto, me leía en Ghosts of Spain algo que no sé si entiendo bien sobre el código civil de hace cien años. Decía, creo deducir, que si el marido que mata a su mujer y al amante de ella no lo hace al pillarlos in fraganti, sufrirá pena de destierro. Entiendo que quería decir no que fuese obligatorio matarlos, bajo pena de destierro (por cabronazo consentidor que nos rebaja las gónadas patrias, etc.) sino que si en el sofocón del momento los mata, no hay pena alguna, pero que si los mata después, de modo meditado y vengativo, será desterrado como castigo. En cambio, si el celoso marido sólo les causa lesiones de menor importancia (¿a posteriori, se entiende?) no hay castigo alguno. De la venganza de la mujer no dice nada, creo.

Vamos, que lo de San Xiao era parte del paisaje peninsular, no sólo del cabo Ortegal. Y aún tendría intención cristiana la cosa.

La Cope: Sí, sí...

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Retropost #1513 (19 de marzo de 2007): Día del padre

Es una suerte que en el día del padre te toque tanto dar como recibir felicitaciones. Además a mí (y a uno de los abuelos, José) nos caen por partida doble las felicitaciones, al ser tocayos de nuestro sufrido patrono.

Ahora que se me ocurre, pocas veces se celebra a San José como padre de Judas, pero debió serlo, si las Escrituras no nos engañan. También de Santiago, Simón, y otro pequeño José. Al menos otro padre no se les atribuye, que yo sepa. De Jesús fue padre putativo (de ahí lo de "pepe", dicen), una broma un poco chusquilla—a costa de la Virgen me parece que es, entre líneas.

Pero vete a saber. Los padres enseñan lo cierto y lo no-cierto, y ningún padre jamás enseña a sabiendas lo que no es cierto. En una nube de desconocimiento, pues, el padre procede adelante con su instrucción... Esto viene del "Manual para hijos" de Donald Barthelme, una lectura no recomendable para este día.  Prefiero poner la versión escaneada de una felicitación improvisada por Otas, que incluye una orquestación de mi música favorita simultaneada con varias explosiones atómicas, y naves espaciales con instrumentos perforadores; todo en homenaje al patriarcado, y a mí:

Si nos diésemos cuenta de las responsabilidades no nos dedicaríamos a ser padres. Felizmente tenemos la mente en otro lado.

También me han regalado una lupa. Debe ser para que me fije más en las cosas pequeñas.

Más Edipo

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Narratología de Santa Julián

 Julián de Norwich fue la primera mujer que escribió un libro en inglés. Era una de esas personas que oían voces y veían visiones, of which more here.

Ahora me citan en este estudio narratológico sobre su Book of Showings:

Godeline Gertrude Park. Julian, God, and the Art of Storytelling: A Narrative Analysis of the Works of Julian of Norwich. (Umeå Studies in Language and Literature, 32). Umeå (Sweden): Umeå Universitet, 2016.*
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1021263&dswid=-5977

PDF aquí:
 

         http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1021263/FULLTEXT01.pdf

        

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Sir / St Thomas More

From The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, by George Sampson (1972 ed.):

...

John Fisher (1459-1535), Bishop of Rochester, deserves brief mention in this place, not because he took high rank himself as a humanist, but because he was the means of bringing Erasmus to lecture on Greek in Cambridge (1511-14) at the very time when the university was changing from an ancient to a modern seat of learning.

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), the associate with Fisher in his tragic death—and canonized with him in 1935—was the pupil of Linacre and Grocyn, the disciple of Colet, the beloved friend of Erasmus, and was the one member of the band of English literary humanists who had a distinct gift of literary genius. At Oxford he became a good Latinist and a fair scholar in Greek. Even when he was a highly successful lawyer with a lucrative commercial practice he lectured on the philosophy and history of Augustine's City of God. As a member of Parliament he resisted the royal exactions, and was reluctantly drawn into the royal service, in which, however, he rose rapidly, becoming in the end Lord Chancellor in succession to Wolsey. He was the first layman to hold that office. More had no illusions about his royal master, and the end came also as he had foreseen. Having refused to take any oath which denied the Pope's supremacy in matters of faith he was confined in the Tower amid circumstances of spiteful and gratuitous hardship. The humorous serenity characteristic of his life never forsook him, and displays itself in the moving letters to his daughter, Margaret Roper, scribbled on scraps of paper with a piece of charcoal because writing materials had been taken from him. He went to his death in July 1535, jesting with the executioner in the act of mounting the scaffold. English history can show few baser acts than the judicial murder of this great and good man. More's literary fame rests on his history of Richard III (see p. 133) and his book universally known as Utopia ("Nowhere"), though he gave it a lengthy Latin title that actually does not include that famous name. It discusses in its few pages many of the problems, interests and activities of its time—political speculation, voyages of discovery, the iniquitous wars and leagues of rulers scrambling for extensions of dominion in Europe, royal indifference to social injustice, the growth of crime caused by lack of employment, and the possibilities of a polity in which health and well-being for all are deliberately sought, in which national service is applied to construction instead of to destruction, and in which a liberal existence is made possible by good-will and toleration. It is interesting to detect anticipations of modern social development in More's imaginary island, but the longest and most valuable part of the book is that which describes, not Utopia, but England. The brief account of Utopia itself is little more than an appended parable.  In other words the book (like all its later progeny from Swift's Gulliver to Butler's Erewhon and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four) is mainly a picture of its own time—a criticism of the present rather than a construction of the future. The force of its appeal is attested by the fact that it has added an indispensable word to the world's vocabulary. The book itself illustrates the pleasing internationalism of scholarship, for it was written by the Englishman More in the universal Latin, it received additions from the Flemish Peter Giles, it was revised by the Dutch Erasmus, it was first printed (1516) at Louvain, then at Paris, and then later at Basle, where it was illustrated by two woodcuts from the hand of the German Holbein. No edition appeared in England or in English until after More's death. Ralph Robynson's translation (1551) has the flavour of the time, but is less exact than later ones made in the seventeenth (Burnet), the nineteenth (Cayley) and the twentieth centuries (Paget, Richards). Utopia is best read in its own Latin, with a modern English translation. More's other works can be briefly summarized. His verses, English and Latin, are, for the most part, mediocre, but contain some pieces of great merit. They are interesting as revelations of a character at once humorous and serious, prepared for the best and the worst that life could offer. His translation into English of the Lyfe of Johan Picus, Erle of Myrandula, a greate Lorde of Italy (1510) is a treasury of ideals if not of facts. His controversial tracts, often unpleasing in tone, include A Dyaloge . . . touchynge the pestylent Sect of Luther and Tyndale, the Supplycacyon of Soulys, two parts of A Confutacyon of Tyndales Answere, a long Apology and A Letter against Frith (all c. 1530). More's English writings, first collected by W. Rastell in 1557, with their vivid idiomatic words, their carefully constructed well-balanced sentences, and their modulated cadences exhibit the scholar and the imitator of the Latin classics. Though Utopia was written in Latin, its author was one of the makers of English prose. The sketches of More's life by William Roper and Nicholas Harpsfield set the man before us. The best modern biography is Thomas More (1935) by R. W. Chambers.
__________

[...there are three writers, Sir Thomas More, George Cavendish (1500-61?) and Sir John Hayward (1564-1627), who are scholars and historians rather than mere chroniclers. The History of King Richard the thirde (first printed in Harding's Chronicle, 1543) is properly attributed to More, who no doubt derived his information from the first-hand knowledge of his early patron Cardinal Morton. Its high quality is attested by the fact that the dark and sinister portrait of Richard III drawn in its pages has endured ever since, in spite of vigorous challenge. (....) With [these writers] begins in England the art of history.]

Less Is More

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Flying Monk

Flying Monk, a photo by JoseAngelGarciaLanda on Flickr.