Habitus

by Habitus · 02/25/10

Our contributing editor Ilan Stavans has a piece in the Forward about the Jewish-Argentine poet Juan Gelman. Stavans writes:

He makes me think of the Jewish immigrants from the Pale of Settlement who came to Argentina seeking a Promised Land but rapidly found disillusionment. Gelman isn’t an immigrant, but his parents and siblings were born in Ukraine of martial stock. His father fought in the 1905 Russian Revolution. Growing disappointment with the promise of a new life in the New World is Gelman’s theme. It culminated in 1976, at the peak of the Dirty War, when police kidnapped his 20-year-old son, along with the son’s pregnant wife; they were never to be seen again. Theirs became two more names added to the long list of desaparecidos.

For more from Buenos Aires and Ilan Stavans, take a look at Habitus no.3.

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by Habitus · 02/23/10

Habitus contributor Rodrigo Fresán has published an autobiographical essay in Granta, in which he tells the story of the time he thought he had killed Borges.

Upon turning a corner (my girlfriend ran fast, she was already a long way ahead; she belonged to a gym, did aerobics, was in much better shape than me) I barreled into a lightweight old man. The man flew through the air, clutching his stick and uttering choked little cries. He fell face up and then I discovered that the man was Borges and that I, maybe, had killed Borges.

Thankfully, the great man survived, and Fresán went on to his own distinguished life of letters, including a long-standing friendship with posthumous literary superstar Roberto Bolaño.

For more from Borges, read our own never-before-translated interview.

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by Habitus · 02/22/10

Here’s a lovely performance from Giora Fiedman, an Argentine-Israeli musician. Born in Buenos Aires to Ukrainian parents, he emigrated to Israel in 1957. At 21, he became a member of the Israel Philharmonic. Fiedman also contributed clarinet solos to the Schindler’s List score.

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by Habitus · 02/14/08

This interview—which has never appeared before in English—was conducted in 1984 by Professor of Philosophy Tomás Abraham, associate professors Alejandro Rússovich and Enrique Marí, and their students in the Psychology Department of the University of Buenos Aires.

RÚSSOVICH: We begin. What can we say about…?

BORGES: In the beginning, b’reshit bara elohim, no?

RÚSSOVICH: B’reshit bara elohim et hashamayin ve et ha’aretz, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

No, the Gods created.

RÚSSOVICH: Ah, “Gods”; elohim is plural. Borges knows more. [laughter]

ABRAHAM: Today, philosophy invites poetry to a discussion. We have a poet…

Supposedly.

ABRAHAM: A supposed poet, then, of whom we can ask what relationships exist between philosophy and poetry.

Sometime ago I said that philosophy is a fantastic branch of study. But I didn’t mean anything against philosophy, on the contrary; it could be said, for example, that it was exactly the same [as poetry] maintaining that the syntax is from two distinct places, [and] that philosophy deserves a place in the order of aesthetics. If you look at theology or philosophy as fantastic literature, you’ll see that they are much more ambitious than the poets. For example, what works of poetry are comparable with something as astonishing as Spinoza’s god: an infinite substance endowed with infinite attributes?

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by Habitus · 02/05/08

Osvaldo Golijov, an Argentine Jew with a global imagination, is one of the most celebrated composers in the world today. The New York Times suggests that Golijov is “profoundly shifting the geography of the classical music world, dumping the old Eurocentric map.” He has crafted his own vernacular from his experiences in Argentina, Israel, and the United States—along with his learned grasp of the Western tradition and an expansive ear for pop and folk sounds from around the world.

In 2000, he was commissioned to create a Latin American interpretation of the Passion of Jesus Christ. Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos, based on the Gospel of Mark, boldly recasts the story of Christ’s death with Cuban drums, flamenco guitars, Brazilian dance and percussion, cantorial melodies, a choir and soloists singing Spanish and Aramaic texts. The piece ends with a melancholy setting of the Kaddish. It’s both an inward turn and an empathetic leap from a composer who has taken what he calls a “step towards the Other.”

You said in an interview once that you saw music as a way to “map the human soul in sound.” Is Argentina at the center of your personal map?

Argentina is pretty much at the center, but I don’t know if it’s the center-center. [laughter] It’s interesting, because I don’t know if the map even has a center or not.

That’s true. It might not.

For every artist there is a center, which is childhood. And Argentina was my childhood. But it’s not necessarily the Argentina of a Christian kid, who is part of the majority there. My Argentina also has the memory of my great-grandfather, who dressed as if he had never left Romania. A lot of my experiences were specific to the Jewish immigrant community. It might be the Argentina of Borges, but it’s not necessarily the Argentina of the majority.

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by Joshua Ellison · 02/05/08

It’s winter in Buenos Aires, one of the coldest ever. This is a port city in the southern hemisphere—low and humid—and the winds here have a raw, sudden sting. People look restless. If they are outdoors, their heads are down. Most activity has been driven inside. All the life that usually takes place on the street has been corralled into narrow spaces. Noise floods out through the openings in every border or barrier.

The city is always moving, almost compulsively, but it’s also breathlessly studying its own reflection, taking its own pulse. The very existence of the city seems to depend on the psychic exertion—urgent, anxious, and loving—of the people who live here. As if the whole metropolis might vanish if their attention flagged, even briefly. The city has to be conjured anew every day through sheer resolve.

Trying to understand Buenos Aires feels like trying to master the human heart. This is not a place that can be learned in the usual ways: it’s too fragile, too volatile, cobbled together from too many unlike parts. The journalist Jacobo Timerman writes, “Argentina…does not yet exist. It must be created.” Over the generations, Argentines have shaped the city out of desire and discomfort, and these heavy emotions seem as real as all the towers and avenues and parks.

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