‘El Cid remains: there was always treason within him, in his friendships, his crows, his crossings with the king. He poses the question of what makes power legitimate, and that question will not go away.’
@annadella.bsky.social on the medieval mercenary and ruler.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘During El Cid’s lifetime there wasn’t yet a fully fledged ideology of a war of faiths – the knight would become the “accidental beneficiary” of the crusader rhetoric that grew more pronounced in the decades after his death.’
@annadella.bsky.social on El CId.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘During Spain’s literary Siglo de Oro, or Golden Age, El Cid goes burlesque – part saint, part clown – in plays performed to large audiences of all social classes; at least 22 survive from the period.’
@annadella.bsky.social on the medieval mercenary.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘In the contest with history the myth of El Cid has always come out on top. If you picture him now, you might be visualising Charlton Heston in Anthony Mann’s epic of 1961.’
@annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the mediieval Spanish mercenary.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Berend tracks El Cid’s metamorphoses into the present day, lending his shape to chocolate bars, slashing his way through video games and death-metal lyrics, encountering a time-travelling Donald Duck.’
@annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the mediieval mercenary
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Even stranger, as a figure embraced by both the far right and the left, El Cid has also come to stand as an emblem of democracy and pluralism.’
@annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the medieval Spanish mercenary.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘In the 21st century, El Cid’s image has been taken up by Spain’s far-right party Vox, which has rallied beneath his statues. He has become the medieval precursor of supremacist ideologies.’
@annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the knight and mercenary.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Berend is writing with deicidal intent: once the myth has been fully exposed to the light of fact, she insists, everyone should stop worshipping El Cid. “His heroisation,” she writes, “must be abandoned.”’
@annadella.bsky.social on a new account of the medieval knight
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘El Cid’s sainthood seems to have more to do with poetry, and its immortal ability to keep speaking to changing contexts.’
@annadella.bsky.social on the medieval mercenary.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
I wrote about El Cid in the new issue of @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... (and Count Julian—for the Goytisolo fans...)
‘El Cid remains: there was always treason within him, in his friendships, his crows, his crossings with the king. He poses the question of what makes power legitimate, and that question will not go away.’
@annadella.bsky.social on the medieval mercenary and ruler.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
“The great theme across Marina Warner’s work is metamorphosis, “of bodies changed / to different forms,” as Ovid sang.” —Anna Della Subin (@annadella.bsky.social)
“To inquire into the soul is to enter the realm of the political. Along with goods for trade and plundered wealth, concepts of the soul have traveled the networks of empire.” —Anna Della Subin (@annadella.bsky.social)
“In Warner’s work, new technologies do not dispel but verify enchantment, confirming the presence, ever around us, of an unseen world.”
@annadella.bsky.social from a talk delivered at the conference Enchanting Wor(l)ds: The Works of Marina Warner.
A new magazine of politics, culture, art. Coming soon.
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(Still image from a film by Yto Barrada)
“When I moved the time machine’s lever to the year 1991,/it began to shake severely and seemed as if on fire,” Mikhail writes, recalling the terror of living through Operation Desert Storm.
In the current issue of the @nybooks.com
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
In Dunya Mikhail's work, the mythic, the journalistic, and the poetic meet; war transforms into a Type A character, and Enheduana talks with Siri in a dream. My latest in @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
If you follow the sun around the globe at six o'clock, it's always six o'clock.
snrk.de/breakfast-in...
Through Alice's eyes we see a complete subversion of the adult social world, revealing how rule-bound conventionality is inextricable from other states—of dream, illusion, play, and counter-passages of time.
In Episode 4 of FICTION & THE FANTASTIC, it's always six o'clock. Marina Warner and I step across the silvery mist of Lewis Carroll's looking-glass, to a place where queens scoot backwards and can remember the future. We ask, who was it that dreamed it all? @lrb.co.uk
www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...
@thenation.com
Sahlins detected “a clear and simple law of revolution”: that it is the rulers, not the revolutionaries, who undermine a society’s government. “It is from deep traditional values that the opposition draws its outrage—and in defense of them, takes to the streets.” www.thenation.com/article/cult...
... in the gap between our knowledge, which can only be partial, and our fantasy, which can reach towards totality, "we have only to identify the point where the imagined fortress does not coincide with the real one and then find it,” this exit route to another city or an otherworld.
We look at the relationship for Calvino between the fantastic and his anti-fascist politics, and in contemplating his incantatory last line, at how the literature of the imagination opens up portals. “An opportunity for escape exists," Calvino wrote elsewhere...
These cities, "too probable to be real," are narrated by Polo as bedtime stories for a brooding sovereign in the twilight of his empire. Says Polo to Kublai Khan: "If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance."
We voyage through cities made entirely out of plumbing, populated by water nymphs; through cities of desire, memory, and rumor, built on a collective dream; through cities like New York, perpetually under scaffolding—for when the construction stops, the destruction will begin.
In Episode 3 of FICTION & THE FANTASTIC, Marina Warner and I enter the labyrinth of Italo Calvino's INVISIBLE CITIES, and the text that inspired its frame, the 13th century travels of Marco Polo, composed from a prison cell. www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and... @lrb.co.uk
We end with Gulliver's encounter with the highly-rational quadrupeds who are contemplating the genocide of man, and the still urgent questions Swift poses about the dark side of Enlightenment rationality. Can reason itself be salvaged? Or is there something else that should take its place?
... how the words-on-wood prophesies AI models; the relationship between the fantastic and language; the idea that, if only the words were different, somehow everything could change.
Topics may include! analysis of disgusting treasures; reverse creation myths; Gulliver as Grildrig or "girl-thing"; expulsion from paradise; the abjection of immortality; fantasy and misanthropy (we are stuck with ourselves, so how do we live?); Lilliputian theology (burial with head upside-down)
