Ramón
June 25, 2005
"Shadows never grow old. That Romanesque church casts the same youthful shadow as when the church was first completed."
"Deep down in wells, the discs of the moon are dreaming".
"When we sit on the edge of the bed, we are convicts reflecting on our sentence".
I've just bought a fabulous book called Greguerías: The Wit and Wisdom of Ramón Gómez de la Serna (selected, introduced and translated by Philip Ward). I've mentioned Ramón, as he is known, on the blog before. One of the great writers on Madrid, and the author of perhaps the definitive history of the Puerta del Sol, this "Picasso of literature" also invented the greguería, which is something like an adage, a one-liner, a pun, a joke, all rolled into one and with something added. Every PdS blog post for the foreseeable future will come prefaced by one of these mini-masterpieces. (We'll start off with the three above.) They're not all politically correct: he lived in his times. But they are better than that: they are true.
The book is published by the Oleander Press, and on the backleaf of the 1982 edition I have, other Oleander books are advertised, including Enlightenment Through the Art of Basketball by Hirohide Ogawa, Libyan Mammals by Ernst Hufnagl and Darts: 50 Ways to Play the Game by Jabez Gotobed. That's 49 more ways than I was aware of. Long live the Oleander Press.
Comments
In a museum somewhere I saw a mockup (or maybe the real thing, returned to Spain) of Ramón's study in Buenos Aires, every inch of the walls covered with photos and posters, memorabilia of Madrid, and the desk overflowing with papers, books, oddities.
Posted by: Yotro at June 26, 2005 11:10 AM
How odd. Tonight I opened a book of memoirs at random and saw this:
"March 24, 1923. A Spanish writer who is much discussed at the moment, Ramon Gomez de la Serna, has said in one of his books that women's breasts are incapable of sensation! How could anyone have the pitiful impudence to be so far from the truth as that man! Breasts --- my own and almost all those I have known --- the little points of breasts live a life of the most intense passion."
The author of the memoir, Liane de Pougy, was a great courtesan.
Posted by: Yotro at June 27, 2005 01:31 PM
Dear Jonathan,
Sorry for the offtopic. I am a Russian journalist working for the magazine on architecture and design. In July I will come to write an article about Puerto America hotel. I thought I will need a good company in Madrid and decided to contact you. Drop me an e-mail at fedyanin @ salon. ru (I put spaces to avoid e-mail robots)
Posted by: nichcom at June 27, 2005 05:41 PM
That must be "My Blue Notebooks" by Liane de Pougy - I don't have it, but she features large in the terrific anthology of diarists, "The Assassin's Cloak", one of my bedside books. On 16 July 1919, she wrote "One of Cocteau's jokes. Talking of a chameleon, he said: "Its master put it down on a tartan rug and it died of over-exertion". I've actually put that on the blog at some point in the past - which may be another odd coincidence, since I don't generally quote French society women.
Posted by: Jonathan at June 27, 2005 09:43 PM
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