Water Empties In Toilet

of scholarship (I): Alfonso Reyes and the Arab FRANCISCO ELBOW AND ZAIDÍN.

These days I have been reviewing various reading lesson from the Mexican master Alfonso Reyes, a delight in prose and varied quantity of information that amazing, teaches and encourages us to digress and study. I would like to stop at one of his first books, the real and imaginary Portraits, published in Mexico, selected Reading in 1920. They are a group of fourteen articles published in Spain that he sends to his countrymen.

"Random of events and books, I have published in the Madrid press notes, some sketches, reviews, excerpts of readings and comments, I wish I had written with simplicity," says in the Introduction, in that leaves derived from the Mexican political wiles of the time: "Keep together. Bring out your reasons for friendship similarities. Tomorrow we will fall into the hands of time. object, a dark force, the wall as of wills. "worrisome times ran from the Mexican Revolution, leading to movement of Agua Prieta, Sonora, and Huerta rebellion.

Alfonso Reyes was in Madrid in October 1914, in a period of exile that would last a decade gives, after being dismissed from the Mexican diplomatic corps in Paris by the government of Venustiano Carranza. This new stage in his life would be of great significance in his career. Here collaborate with Menendez Pidal Center Historical Studies, carried out extensive creative work, research, advertising, translator, which will bear fruit in newspaper articles or essay (In Spain , Ortega's initiative, Sun the Bulletin of the Royal English Academy , the Journal of Philology , Index ), editions of the classics of English literature (Góngora, Gracian Ruiz de Alarcón, Archpriest of Hita, Quevedo, Lope or Fray Servando Teresa de Mier), will offer its prose version of the Poema de Mio Cid , edit their books Madrid cartons, The suicide and Vision Anahuac , published his translations of Orthodoxy, Chesterton and Sentimental Journey through France and Italy of Laurence Sterne, participating very actively in social life and lteraria, as is the curious case of brotherhood The Toledo Window, or the Historical Commission, Francisco del Paso y Troncoso .

Well, it is in this context in which to write and edit these brief flashes of writing and erudión of creative scholarship, sparkling divagational. We will see in its pages a vital presence to acquire a wide range of characters: Madama Lucrezia, the last love of Alfonso the Magnanimous, Cisneros, Luther, Nebrija, Chateaubriand, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, Apollonius of Tyre, Rodrigo Calderon, Baltasar Gracian, etc. .


From the data, Reyes joins the frame of the toy scholar, giving liveliness to the last cold. For example, from the documents provided San Román Francisco de Borja, in an article published in the Bulletin of the Royal Academy of History , December 1918, belonging to the File of Protocols of Toledo and it appears an inventory of the assets of the poet Garcilaso de la Vega:


"theatrically should imagine the old legal documents. Otherwise, luck is impossible to understand.

The scene is in Toledo, to January 3, 1537, Payo in studying Rodríguez, "Secretary publications." is seated at the table when it appears Dona Elena de Zúñiga, the widow of Garcilaso, in mourning habits and plays, the accompanying Pedro de Alcocer, his servant and attorney. Toledo gentlemen come back that will serve as witnesses. Elena starts to make an inventory of the assets of her late husband. The curtain falls.

And when it gets out of bed, and walk through the neighborhood of Santa Leocadia ... "


Thus Alfonso Reyes snippets about the life of Garcilaso the curious reader glibly managing information. So the story ends:


"I'll finish when I hear a laugh in the courtyard are Fatima and Mariquita (slaves in the service of Doña Elena) engaged in pulling a male adorned, to be passing by the window to see what Mr. Secretary audience. "

But vanga what I wanted to come, that is, the last portrait of Alfonso Reyes takes an admirable which resulted in the titanic task of Huesca Francisco Codera Zaidín Arabist, a disciple of Pascual Gayangos and, in turn, illustrious master Miguel Julián Ribera and Asin. Pertenece Francisco that first generation of so-called Silver Age of English culture, but it could be labeled Second Golden Age, these giants writers and scientists of the second half of the nineteenth century, they were able to create and maintain a cultural tradition of great fertile structure and content, amid the most adverse conditions:

" To his disciples, he composed an epitome of a hundred pages, for a man capable of synthesis, which is the masculine condition of intelligence. But when you are printing their books in Spain, remaining until typographic elements. For something has been Codera inventor and manual labor: lithographed he epitomized, he acquired a foundry Arabic, wrote the legends of his coins and was built a special press.

As a bibliophile, was once "a craftsman with skill and patience of Benedictine," Saavedra says, to rebuild the devencijados codices de El Escorial, which, thrown through the windows to save them from fire, were made about trouble reports piled leaves, almost at random. Codera "ordered the leaves by size, count the number of lines about each plan, measured the length and breadth of the writing, and with this information, formed a table methodically, with the help of which could be attributed to many codices leaves them belonged. "

knew and did much, but he practiced and taught to practice scientific doubt, avoiding any process of divination ...

, for selflessness and sacrifice, was able to overcome the scruples of the Muslims on the cross the treasures of their libraries, and could bring news of Africa than any other European scholars had reached ...

Imagine the old, dry and sober, making her toys on her desk scientists, soul and body electrified by the idea. As happened to Fray Juan de Segovia, death surprised him one day ... polishing a chalice and a Creed praying. "