A blog by Dani Giribet
Frankie Manning ens va deixar un llegat artístic excepcional en el món de la dansa i la coreografia en ser un dels creadors del Lindy Hop. En la seva biografia escrita conjuntament amb la ballarina i escriptora Cynthia R. Millman, Manning ens explica com va nèixer aquesta disciplina de ball de la música Swing, com va crèixer i evolucionar però també com va passar de moda per finalment renèixer als anys 80. Continue reading “Lindy Hop: El regal de Frankie Manning”
Leo Marks va ser un heroi de guerra molt particular. Va salvar moltes vides a la Segona Guerra Mundial amb la criptografia… i la poesia. Tal com explica el seu genial i autobiogràfic llibre ‘Between Silk and Cyanide‘, tot va començar com les bones històries, amb els clàssics universals.
Continue reading “La història dels espies que també eren poetes”
I am quite pleased to read in Lupine Nuncio that Gene Wolfe is releasing a new book this September.
The book is called ‘An Evil Guest‘ and it is supposed to be a pulp, adventurous, Lovecraft-meets-Replicants thriller. Definitely looking forward to 304 more pages of Gene Wolfe goodness. Great news!
“Long I signed on the silver-sailed ships, the hundred-masted whose masts reached out to touch the st-st-stars, I, floating among their shining jibs with the Pleiades burning beyond the top-royal sp-sp-spar, but never have I seen ought like you! He-hethor am I, come to serve you, to scrape the mud from your cloak, whet the great sword, c-c-carry the basket with the eyes of your victims looking up at me, Master, eyes like the dead moons of Verthandi when the sun has gone out. When the sun has g-g-gone out! Where are they then, the bright players? How long will the torches burn? The f-f-freezing hands grope toward them, but the torch bowls are colder than any ice, colder than the moons of Verthandi, colder than the dead eyes! Where is the strength then that beats the lake to foam? Where is the empire, where the Armies of the Sun, long-lanced and golden-bannered? Where are the silken-haired women we loved only last night?“.
The Shadow of the Torturer – Gene Wolfe
There couldn’t be any other way to start this blog than quoting my favourite literary master Gene Wolfe, as read in the first volume of his masterpiece The Book of the New Sun.
Quoted are the words of Hethor, an unimpressive personage -possibly quite mad or at least very impressionable- met by the main character Severian during his travels. Hethor has just witnessed the performance of Severian and a cadre of unlikely chance actors led by one Dr. Talos. They have just finished a supposedly improvised theatrical performance of some depth and unknown significance. Is the newcomer just impressed by the fiction portrayed by that motley group of performers? Or does he somehow relate the fiction to truths too big, too terrifying to comprehend or accept as real?
Are these insane words from a fool or do they recollect epic voyages between the stars? Where is this mythical Verthandi place? Is it maybe one of the furies of fate? Has that person been driven mad by loss, by forsaking such an adventure for a more trifling existence? Have those eyes really seen the Pleiades framing the hulls of an armada of silver ships?
The master Gene Wolfe perhaps invites us to draw our own tentative conclusions. I contend that he entices us to challenge these passages, to be lost in thought for awhile, to explore them and imagine for a moment how the moons would look framed against that starscape named after Verthandi, a mythical being of fate.
Well, a blog is a perfect place to ramble about such things and many more. And I cannot think a better humble way to start that under the shadow of the master, so much like being under the shady safe haven of an ancient tree.