.

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Viva Franco!

Spanish songs in Andalucia
The shooting sites in the days of '39
Oh, please, leave the vendanna open
Fredrico Lorca is dead and gone
Bullet holes in the cemetery walls
The black cars of the Guardia Civil
Spanish bombs on the Costa Rica
I'm flying in on a DC 10 tonight

[Chorus]
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito
yo te acuerda oh mi corazón
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito
yo te acuerda oh mi corazón

Spanish weeks in my disco casino
The freedom fighters died upon the hill
They sang the red flag
They wore the black one
But after they died it was Mockingbird Hill
Back home the buses went up in flashes
The Irish tomb was drenched in blood
Spanish bombs shatter the hotels
My senorita's rose was nipped in the bud

[Chorus]

The hillsides ring with "Free the people"
Or can I hear the echo from the days of '39?
With trenches full of poets
The ragged army, fixin' bayonets to fight the other line
Spanish bombs rock the province
I'm hearing music from another time
Spanish bombs on the Costa Brava
I'm flying in on a DC 10 tonight

[Chorus]
Spanish songs in Andalucia, Mandolina, oh mi corazon
Spanish songs in Granada, oh mi corazon
Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Republican government commissioned Picasso to create a large mural for the Spanish display at the Paris International Exposition at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.

Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world's attention.


Nothing like an art tour to inspire volunteers to join the communist/anarchist cause! The cannons require their fodder.

25 comments:

elmers brother said...

That painting always gives me the willies.

The Absolute Marxist said...

I was never a big Picasso fan, personally.

elmers brother said...

I watched a movie another Modigliani, he and Picasso were quite the rivals. It's said that Picasso's last word was "Modigliani "

elmers brother said...

Hey Pablo, how do you make love to a cube?

Thersites said...

Very carefully?

Thersites said...

Modigliani's bio reads as if he were a drunken sod. His art would also appear to have been much more greatly "appreciated" after his passing.

elmers brother said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
elmers brother said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
elmers brother said...

He drank to hide his tuberculosis according to a recent biography.

In art circles, hashish, cocaine and opium were as common as wine. And as time went on, people who knew Modigliani commented on his increasing and excessive use of such substances, often basing their observation on changes in his appearance (by the time he reached his 30s he was losing his teeth) and on episodes of aggressive public hostility.

It is exactly on the subject of Modigliani’s reputed self-destructiveness that the revisionist crux of Secrest’s book lies. She is at pains to dispel the idea that a descent, sometimes depicted as willful, into alcoholism and drug addiction was the primary cause of his decline and death at such an early age. Rather, she says, he consciously used intoxicants as a cover to hide a “great secret,” that being the recurrence of his tuberculosis. In remission since childhood, it now returned full-blown, accompanied by symptoms like spasmodic coughing, stretches of lassitude and bouts of erratic behavior.

Secrest suggests that Modigliani, terrified of the social ostracism that would result if he were known to have the highly contagious disease, deliberately fostered a reputation as an alcoholic and addict to prevent detection. This cover allowed him to freely drink the wine that soothed his coughing, use the drugs that gave him energy to work — his output of paintings surged in his last years — and pass off as drunk and disorderly any irritable or violent outbursts.

It has long been accepted among art historians that tubercular meningitis was the immediate cause of Modigliani’s death, and Secrest doesn’t claim to bring fresh information to this medical history. What she clearly hopes to do, though, is replace the popular myth of the crash-and-burn genius who created art despite himself with the image of an artist who perceived his fate and took calculated steps to prolong and protect his life.

elmers brother said...

you make love to a cube one stroke at a time.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Interesting post. Thanks for clarifying that!

ps - Just like you would to a sphere! ;)

elmers brother said...

My Love is multidimensional, it's why I love her

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

You're definitely a Renaissance Man, elbro...

elmers brother said...

Well I was reading On the Road and Kerouac mentions Modigliani. So I started reading about him, found the film and watched it. I put off one education while I was inthe Navy getting another and the kids were home. So everything you learned in college I'm getting to learn now. I admit to not being the smartest man, but I do love learning. Its really been lots of fun.

elmers brother said...

Since I was trained as a technician I've always felt like I was woefully ignorant of the Humanities so it's a special interest to me now.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Funny, I had many of the same thoughts, being something of a "late bloomer", myself. When I was in college, I was too busy learning how to be an engineer to follow my passion for history and the humanities. They had to wait until I had a surplus of time on my hands, usually when one of the kids was in a gymnastics, piano, dance or "other" class. And I was a c+ engineer, definitely not the sharpest tack in the box. And yes, it has been lots of fun... almost a second childhood for me. So I say "ditto" to your "special interests".

elmers brother said...

It's definitely 1 of the reasons I enjoy reading your blog. I wanted to study music when I went back to school, but it's impossible to do at night because they don't offer the classes. so I thought humanities would be another idea.

We have a lot in common you and I.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Indeed, we do.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

We're both autodidacts.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Liberals in the "classical" sense of the term, not the contemporary sense. ;)

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Perhaps that is why the Sea is such a great teacher... a vast and seemingly empty expanse that must be crossed by all who venture forth upon her. And headed into that vast expanse, you bring a few "Desert Island" books...

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

...I but digress. I'm reminded of a quote from Melville's "Moby Dick", Chapter 35 - The Masthead

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:—

“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.”

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient “interest” in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.

“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.” Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

elmers brother said...

What you said about the sea...beautiful. As for Moby Dick, he is right there's a time and a place for daydreaming, company time isn't a good time. Autodidacts....hmmm, I like it. Have you always been one?

elmers brother said...

BTW Happy Thanksgiving!

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Yes, I always wanted to have the very best teachers... and I 've found them inside the very best books.

And a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, elbro!