European stereotypes

 

There's a very interesting article in today's Guardian about European stereotypes , part of the series on Europe they are doing . Six leading newspapers (including El Pais) from the largest EU countries have come together in a joint project to build up a more nuanced picture of the EU and explore what Europe does well and what not so well. In European stereotypes: what do we think of each other and are we right? - interactive , the six newspapers in the Europa project were asked to stereotype each other, and then asked cultural commentators in each country to assess how accurate they are.
Give it a try, see if you agree...

Happy Burns Night!!

Burns Night is annually celebrated in Scotland on or around January 25. It commemorates the life of the bard (poet) Robert Burns, who was born on January 25, 1759. The day also celebrates Burns' contribution to Scottish culture.
The Burns Supper is an institution of Scottish life. Suppers can range from an informal gathering of friends to a huge, formal dinner full of pomp and circumstance.
The Scottish flag is often displayed at Burns' Night celebrations. It is known as the Saltire and consists of a rectangular blue background with thick white bars on the diagonals. The diagonals form a cross that represents Saint Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland.
At Burns' Night events, many men wear kilts and women may wear shawls, skirts or dresses made from their family tartan. A tartan was originally a woolen cloth with a distinctive pattern made by using colors of weft and warp when weaving. Particular patterns and combinations of colors were associated with different areas, clans and families. Tartan patterns are now printed on various materials.

Many types of food are associated with Burns' Night. These include: cock-a-leekie soup (chicken and leek soup); haggis; neeps (mashed turnips or swedes) and tatties (mashed potatoes); cranachan (whipped cream mixed with raspberries and served with sweet oat wafers); and bannocks (a kind of bread cooked on a griddle). Whisky is the traditional drink.

For more information and recipes go here.
 Apart from eating and enjoying the traditional Scottish dishes, it is also customary to recite some poems and songs such as The Selkirk Grace, 'A man's a man for a' that' and Address to a Haggis, being the last song they sing Auld Lang Syne , of course. I would post one of Burns' poems but I'm afraid they're too difficult as they are not in English but in Scots.

2nd Poem of the year

It's been a long time since I last posted a poem. It was time... 

This is a poem by Robert Bly, a great poet in his own right but an excellent translator too. That's how I first knew of him as he has translated the works of many Spanish (or Spanish speaking) poets, such as Lorca, Machado, Neruda. 

One day I'll post some of his translations.  He is amazing to me because he not only translates from Spanish but from other languages as well, and poetry no less, which is probably the most difficult genre. So, I admire him for that. 

Enjoy this lovely poem!

Starting a Poem

 

You are alone. Then there's a knock 

On the door. It's a word. You

Bring it in. Things go

OK for a while. But this word 

Has relatives. Soon

They turn up. None of them work.

They sleep on the floor, and they steal

Your tennis shoes. 

You started it; you weren't

Content to leave things alone.

Now the den is a mess, and the

Remote is gone. 

That's what being married 

Is like. You never receive your

Wife only, but the

Madness of her family. 

Now see what's happened?

Where is your car? You won't 

Be able to find 

The keys for a week.

Robert Bly

If you like, you can go to Minnesota Public Radio's site, where you can read and listen to this and other poems read by the poet himself, and his comments too. Highly recommended!!

2012: 1st week's poem

Herod and the Three Magi, Canterbury Cathedral, c. 1180

One of my new year's resolutions is to continue posting a poem a week. Last year it was supposed to be every Friday but I failed to post many times. I think that maybe if I don't limit it to just one particular day of the week I'll be more successful. (I probably won't but one can dream...)

So for this first week of 2012 I've chosen a very appropriate poem. Tonight is Twelfth Night, defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking".

It is an old Spanish tradition that on this particular night the Three Wise Men or Magi visit "every child in Spain" bearing gifts (and I won't spoil this night for you with my opinion on this subject, at least not now)

This is a poem about T. S. Eliot's own journey from agnosticism to faith; he wrote it around the time of his baptism and acceptance into the Anglican Church, in 1927.


The Journey of the Magi

 

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

-- T S Eliot 

The following is a rare recording taken from a live interview T. S. Eliot did for the BBC, broadcast during World War II.