Notes on the youthly rebellion(s)

One of the my most recent enjoyable lectures was The Poetry Lesson by Andrei Codrescu. A writer and a Romanian now living and developing his skills abroad, just like me (but I wouldn't take the comparison further than that), he actually teaches Poetry to university students and he recalls it in a most funny and dreamy fashion in the book. Which of course, makes one think about Dead Poet's Society. :)

I will not speak more on the whole matter here because I will do it elsewhere, but I would like to share a certain remark from the text for purposes to be revealed later:

What statues and culture have in common and abstract economy and politics have not

Marshall Sahlins, in "Culture and Practical Reason", Chicago University Press, 1976.

“Shortly before the events of May 1968, I had the opportunity to witness an informal debate between an American member of the Russell Tribunal – passing through Paris from Copenhagen, where he had learned of the structuralist vogue from French colleagues – and a Parisian anthropologist. After a long period of question and discussion, the American summed up his views in this way: “I have a friend”, he said, “who is doing a sociological study of the equestrian statues in Central Park. It’s a kind of structuralism. He finds a direct relation between the cultural status of the rider and the number of legs the horse has off the ground. One leg poised has a different historical and political connotation from a horse rearing on hind legs or another cast in flying gallop. Of course the size of the statue also makes a difference. The trouble is”, he concluded, “people don’t ride horses anymore. The things in a society that are obsolete, out of contention, those you can structure. But the real economic and political issues are undecided, and the decision will depend on real forces and resources.”
The Parisian anthropologist thought about that a moment. “It is true,” he finally said, “that people don’t ride horses anymore. But they still build statues.”
Something more was implied than that the past was not dead – because, as has been said of the American South, it is not even past. It was also intended that economics and politics have modalities other than the “real” competition for power. [..] The competition does not evolve absolutely, on an eternal and formal rationality of maximization; it develops according to a system of cultural relationships, including complex notions of authority and submission, hierarchy and legitimization. And among other means, it is by a literal concretization of this code into statues that history is made to act within the present, at once directly and through its dialectical reappropriation and revaluation.” (p 19-20)

A wonderful story-style assertion on why anthropology, discourse analysis and cultural theory may exist, must exist and do exist.

Cetatea Neamţului

Nu ştiu dacă v-a plăcut sau nu "Sobieski şi românii" când aţi studiat-o în şcoală, însă în mod cert lui George Coşbuc nu i-a plăcut prea mult. Sau, cel puţin, aşa lasă de înţeles o poezie-parodie pe care a scris-o despre celebra poveste a leşilor şi plăieşilor.
Poezia lui Coşbuc nu face parte, desigur, din categoria umorului care degradează conţinutul originar al întâmplării care parodiază, nu este menit să ofenseze nicio sensibilitate regională sau naţională. Este doar amuzantă (deşi Coşbuc nu şi-a dat mâna la parodii prea des, precum, bunăoară, Topârceanu). Mie îmi plăcea să o citesc când eram mică şi, amintidu-mi recent de ea, am căutat-o de-a lungul şi de-a latul internetului doar pentru a constata că nu se găseşte nicăieri. Ceea ce trebuie, desigur, remediat :).