Lou Carnon-Deutsch, Narratives of Desire: Nineteenth Century Spanish Fiction by Women

A review of Lou Charnon-Deutsch\u27s Narratives of Desire: Nineteenth-Century Spanish Fiction by Women

The Music of Borgesian Destiny in Saura\u27s El Sur

Carlos Saura’s El Sur was aired on Spanish television in 1993 as part of a series of six programmes based on selected short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. The entire set of these hour-long productions has recently been released on video by the Films for the Humanities, thereby granting easy availability to what thus far has been one of Saura’s most difficult to acquire, and consequently least known, films. Described in its opening credits as an ‘adaptación libre’, Saura’s El Sur differs considerably from Borges’ short story of the same name. This is not surprising given Saura’s long-standing refusal to serve as what he calls a mere ‘ilustrador’ of an already written text. A self-proclaimed auteur, Saura places his own personal stamp on all of his films, recasting original material to conform to his own vision of what it should be. Indeed, in a 1996 interview with Antonio Castro, Saura stated that his El Sur had been designed ‘para hacer un ensayo sobre Borges a través de un personaje interpuesto’, explaining that ‘a veces, he querido hacer una especie de ensayos cinematogra´ficos sobre un determinado personaje. Por ejemplo Lope de Aguirre, San Juan de la Cruz, Borges, Goya’. For each of his cinematic essays Saura extensively researches his subject’s life, but the resulting film does not take the form of a biography. Rather, as Saura goes on to say, ‘siempre es, más que un ensayo de toda su vida, un fragmento de su vida, que a mí me parece esencial, y que de algún modo explica su vida’. For El Dorado it is Lope de Aguirre’s expedition to Peru, for La noche oscura it is San Juan de la Cruz’s nine months of imprisonment in a convent in Toledo, for Goya en Burdeos it is the artist’s period of exile in France, and for Saura’s latest cinematic essay, Buñuel y la mesa del rey Salomón, it is the friendship forged between Buñuel, Dalí and Lorca as university students

The Narrative Premise of Galdos\u27s Lo Prohibido

In their critical study of Lo prohibido most scholars make only casual mention of its memoir format, and the fictitious circumstances of its composition are all but ignored. yet this narrative premise has an overall impact on the novel. In addition to determining the discourse order of the text, it is instrumental in establishing the narrator\u27s authorial autonomy as well as permitting him varying degrees of unreliability. Furthermore, it affects the different narrative voice techniques employed in the novel. The following discussion will examine the implications of this neglected facet of Lo prohibido

Emilia Pardo Bazan, Cronicas en La Nacion de Buenos Aires

Over the twelve-year period immediately preceding her death, Pardo Bazan regularly contributed articles to the prestigious Argentine periodical La Nacion. Surprisingly, these pieces have not been reproduced in previous collections of her works, and few references have ever been made to their existence. Cyrus DeCoster rectifies this omission by bringing together fortysix of what he considers to be the most interesting of the articles. The vast majority of those selected deal with literature and the other arts. Some are eulogies to eminent figures either recently deceased or being honored by centennial celebrations (e.g., Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, Aure-liano de Beruete, Teofilo Gautier, and Jose Zorrilla). Others are reviews of theatrical productions by such writers as Benavente, Echegaray, Galdos, and Oscar Wilde. Pardo Bazan also comments on the operas of Wagner and discusses the merits of El Greco, Velazquez, Murillo, Cervantes, and Shakespeare. A strong critique of Futurism is included among her observations concerning literary movements. Overall, Pardo Bazan\u27s greatest praise is reserved for literary and artistic works that capture the realism of life in all its complexity. This preference even extends to erotic literature when it is well written and portrays human sexual desire realistically

Latent Narratives: Sideshadowing in Fortunata y Jacinta

In his book, Narrative and Freedom, Gary Saul Morson uses the term sideshadowing to identify a set of devices-operating in the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky-that are used to counter the closed view of time associated with another term, foreshadowing. According to Morson, this temporal closure is the result of the backward causation of foreshadowing. That is, in foreshadowing something happens because something else is going to happen. Instead of being caused by a prior event, it is caused by a subsequent one. That means that the future is already set, at least to the extent that it can send signs backwards. Thus, options are closed off and time becomes a single line leading to that existing future. Of course, in a novel-unlike in real life-the future is, in fact, already set, but by calling the reader\u27s attention to the already written nature of narrative, foreshadowing conveys temporal openness by approximating the multiplicity of possibilities and potential resolutions inherent in real life

Metafictional mise en abyme in Saura\u27s Carmen

In the 1983 film Carmen, Carlos Saura creatively refashions Mérimée\u27s novella and Bizet\u27s opera into an exciting new rendering of the Carmen myth. The foundation of this film rests on Mérimée\u27s narrative, which Saura admires for having the ability to convey a passionate love that still seems as fresh and expressive as it was in its own day (52). Since Saura views the plot modification introduced in Bizet\u27s opera as being a betrayal of Mérimée\u27s novella (55), he ignores the opera\u27s story line and concentrates instead on its music, which he describes as being very beautiful, truly inspired, and having moments that are both extraordinary and unforgettable (56). This double heritage of Mérimée\u27s plot and Bizet\u27s music provides the context within which Saura is able to introduce yet another art form -- dance -- through the brilliant choreography of Antonio Gades

Preparation and measurement: two independent sources of uncertainty in quantum mechanics

In the Copenhagen interpretation the Heisenberg uncertainty relation is interpreted as the mathematical expression of the concept of complementarity, quantifying the mutual disturbance necessarily taking place in a simultaneous or joint measurement of incompatible observables. This interpretation has already been criticized by Ballentine a long time ago, and has recently been challenged in an experimental way. These criticisms can be substantiated by using the generalized formalism of positive operator-valued measures, from which a new inequality can be derived, precisely illustrating the Copenhagen concept of complementarity. The different roles of preparation and measurement in creating uncertainty in quantum mechanics are discussed.Comment: latex, 18 pages, 4 eps figure

Interpretations of quantum mechanics, and interpretations of violation of Bell's inequality

The discussion of the foundations of quantum mechanics is complicated by the fact that a number of different issues are closely entangled. Three of these issues are i) the interpretation of probability, ii) the choice between realist and empiricist interpretations of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, iii) the distinction between measurement and preparation. It will be demonstrated that an interpretation of violation of Bell's inequality by quantum mechanics as evidence of non-locality of the quantum world is a consequence of a particular choice between these alternatives. Also a distinction must be drawn between two forms of realism, viz. a) realist interpretations of quantum mechanics, b) the possibility of hidden-variables (sub-quantum) theories.Comment: LATeX, 20 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Proceedings of the International Conference on Foundations of Probability and Physics, Vaxjo, 27 Nov. -1 Dec. 200