Spain’s Most Celebrated Writer Believes the Fascist Past Is Still Present
Javier Marías has spent his career chronicling his country’s moral trade-off with its violent history.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/magazine/javier-marias-spanish-literature.html
This November, we have a wonderful opportunity to study Javier Marías in Valencia as hosted by Salonista Robin Tottenham. His work, A Heart So White, considers the questions around what choose not to know of our loved ones’ lives and histories– and what we imagine in the face of our ignorance. This article connects these explorations to the history of Modern Spain–with insights for us all on memory and forgetting…
Robin spotted this reflective article in the NYT magazine– some thought-provoking reflections on the novelist’s relationship to history, the ambivalence of forgetting crimes of political power, the nobility of speaking out at times, and the importance of silence at other times…and the importance of recognising differing positions on what should be told:
“Some things are so evil that it’s enough that they simply happened,” he said. “They don’t need to be given a second existence by being retold.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “That’s what I think on some days, anyway,” he went on. “Other days I think the contrary.”
“Of course, Marías is not advocating outright ignorance; he is inviting us to consider the tension that exists between memory, which can be stifling and constraining — a form of perpetuating grievance or division — and forgetting, which can be a form of liberation.”
The article also connects our coming read of A Heart So White to these reflections– especially the narrator’s resistance to learning the truth of his family’s history.
Enjoy!
…Today, guess what, we became beekeepers! We went to the local meeting last week (attended by the rector, the midwife, and assorted beekeeping people from neighboring villages) to watch a Mr Pollard make three hives out of one (by transferring his queen cells) under the supervision of the official Government bee-man. We all wore masks and it was thrilling. It is expensive to start beekeeping (over $50 outlay), but Mr Pollard let us have an old hive for nothing, which we painted white and green, and today he brought over the swarm of docile Italian hybrid bees we ordered and installed them. We placed the hive in a sheltered out-of-the-way spot in the orchard the bees were furious from being in a box. Ted had only put a handkerchief over his head where the hat should go in the bee-mask, and the bees crawled into his hair, and he flew off with half-a-dozen stings. I didn’t get stung at all, and when I went back to the hive later, I was delighted to see bees entering with pollen sacs full and leaving with them empty at least I think that’s what they were doing. I feel very ignorant but shall try to read up and learn all I can. If we’re lucky, we’ll have our own honey, too!