Day Four

My essay for this day was "Pamplona in July" by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was in Spain with his wife, and talked about the bull run and the matadors. My first exposure to Pamplona was the beginning of the movie City Slickers. James Hillman has also spoken of the career of Monolete, and how to read a life backwards instead of forwards (Manolete was a mama's boy because his soul knew that in the future it had to face bulls). Some extra material on The Looney Tunes Gold Collection spoke of travelling to Spain to record the crowds during a bullfight, and how hard it was to get generic cheering rather than cheering with someone prominently yelling something you didn't want in the recording. I was impressed with the fact that they used not only an authentic crowd, but one from a real bullfight. Then a few weeks ago I watched a Netflix film of Orson Wells at the bullfights in Madrid. Hemingway's account fit these descriptions pretty well, except that more people died during the bull runs earlier in the century. Also I enjoyed his discussion of how a normal man doesn't stand a chance versus a matador in the esteem of his wife. We're just lucky more women haven't seen bullfights. I don't know whether or not this is true, but it's certainly funny.

My short story was "UNDR" by Jorge Luis Borges. Borges is a great writer if you wish to follow the Bradbury diet, but can't commit too much time. Borges went blind in early adulthood. (He says his world was not black, but bluish-green. Interesting note.) This made him choose to write shorter projects because he could keep track of them better. I suppose when he edited, he could find his way around more easily. His average work was about five pages long. If bedtime rolls around and you haven't read, Borges won't man an abbreviated night's sleep. "Undr" explores a kind of idea that Borges enjoyed exploring. Since he was a rare explorer of the idea, it is difficult to articulate, especially without offering a spoiler. But what I found interesting is how this rare idea occurred again in Robert Frost's essay the following night. When you remove one element of a work, what can the rest of the elements carry? Think of musical transcription, where something written for orchestra gets transcribed for piano. Certain keys end up standing in for the woodwinds, and others for the brass. Something is surely lost, but more is occasionally carried than you imagined possible. Borges's story suggests the possibility of a one word poem.

My poem for the day was longer than one word, however. It was "Corpus Christi Carol." The poem seems to be a riddle. I can find more than one solution to it, though I don't think I have found the right one. [Since posting a few minutes ago, I could see it being the inspiration for the folk song "One Tin Soldier," though. The more I think about it, the better it fits.]