Taking a Holiday in Spain
Digest No. 11 - July 2024
On Commonplacing
“Toledo is symbolically the soul of Spain,” began Don Alonso after a few moments of silent walking. “By that I mean that through the many Spains you have seen and will see is everywhere an undercurrent of fantastic tragedy, Greco on the one hand, Goya on the other, Moráles, Gallegos, a great flame of despair amid dust, rags, ulcers, human life rising in a sudden pæan out of desolate abandoned dun-colored spaces . . . I have often wondered whether that fiery vitality of spirit that we feel in El Greco, that we felt in my generation when I was young, that I see occasionally in the young men of your time, has become conscious only because it is about to be smothered in the great advancing waves of European banality. I was thinking the other day that perhaps states of life only became conscious once their intensity was waning.”
John Dos Passos. Rosinante to the Road Again (New York: George H. Duran Company, 1922). pp. 233-234.
Great Ideas: Citizen, Habit, History, Time
While in Bilbao, I heard a fascinating talk on Hemingway and John Dos Passos. In particular, I was motivated to read Dos Passos’s Modernist novel, Rosinante to the Road Again, as I’ve been doing some work on EH and Don Quixote myself. I found a PDF of the book on The Internet Archive and read it while completing my last bit of travel. It was a marvelous way to wrap up the trip to Spain.
On Reading & Speaking
Most of my reading this month has been work-related, but fortunately that has included some excellent books. I noted above reading my first John Dos Passos novel. I’ll probably slow down a bit in terms of reading for a week or two as I put my focus on completing some projects.
I’m also relieved to not have any presentations on the docket for a while. I will do some teacher development sessions in August, and I have a conference in October, but otherwise I’ll be concentrating on the many projects I already have in the works.
The two panels I was on this month went very well. First, I gave a brief talk on my contribution to Hemingway and Film, a forthcoming book from Kent State University Press. The book is available for pre-ordering now and has a Fall release date. It’s a collection of essays exploring how to use film to teach Hemingway. My contribution takes aim at the moral components that often get lost in adapting Hemingway’s work to the big screen. It was the first academic essay I wrote specifically for publication, all the way back in 2018. My second talk was about the connections between The Sun Also Rises and Don Quixote, specifically in thematic areas related to Spain and pilgrimage motifs. I think it came together nicely and I’ve got some ideas about how to expand / reuse it for other work.
On Publishing
I’ve been fortunate enough to have an essay published by the good folks over at The American Reformer. The piece, “Is Higher Education Collapsing?,” was an attempt to unpack many of the doom-and-gloom reports from recent months warning of impending catastrophe. When I started digging into this back in May, I became convinced that the reports of crisis were overblown, and I think that is borne out by the numbers. You should go read the whole thing. And share it around. I hope more people will think differently about higher education than is common today, and this is a small contribution towards that conversation.
On Traveling
The month of July was a month of travel. Every four years, the Ernest Hemingway Society holds an international conference outside of the United States. My wife and I went to the conference in Paris back in 2018. Due to COVID delays, the next international conference didn’t take place till this year, but the 2024 conference was worth the wait. It spanned two cities in Northen Spain, San Sebastian and Bilbao. Both were excellent places to travel, eat, and enjoy Spanish culture.
Two of my former students, who also became co-workers after they graduated, joined us on this trip as we went from Paris to Barcelona to San Sebastian to Bilbao to Dublin. Not every leg of the trip was equal, but we made the most of the time and returned home exhausted yet full to the brim.
We spent four nights in Paris, France, hitting as many museums as we could. We also enjoyed great food and walked. A lot. We managed to see / do the following:
dinner cruise on the Seine
The Rodin Museum
The Musée d'Orsay
The Louvre
The Musée de Cluny
The Sainte-Chapelle
The Panthéon
We saw some other things from a distance, but the city was preparing for the Olympics so sights like the Eiffel Tower or the still-under-construction Notre Dame were only viewable from a great distance.
After Paris, we headed to Spain where our first stop was Barcelona where we stayed two nights. My wife is studying the Art Nouveau movement this Summer, and Barcelona had lots of things for her to see. On the whole, I did not enjoy Barcelona as I did Paris, but there is no doubt the city hosts some stunning works of art. IN the short time we had, we hit:
the Sagrada Família
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya
Casa Batllo
a street escape edition of the Ruta del Modernisme
Once we arrived in San Sebastian, I had to truly shift into work mode. While I did some work in Paris and Barcelona, the days were filled with taking things in so that I only could work at night, giving me limited time. We spent three nights in San Sebastian, and I had conference work to do. Still, we were able to see some things of note, particularly taking their funicular up to Monte Igeldo. The food in San Sebastian was also wonderful, with Sarah having many options despite her limited diet.
On our travel day to Bilbao, we did a wine tour that included a stop at La Guardia. The wine was good, as was the food, and the countryside. It was a relaxing pace to balance out the hectic pacing of the conference.
Bilbao was our last stop on the continent, and we stayed four nights there. The conference ended in a beautiful fashion, and there was more Art Nouveau and excellent dining for Sarah. We were able to squeeze in some museums here too:
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The Fine Arts Museum Bilbao
an Art Nouveau walking tour of the city
The Reproductions Museum Bilbao
Our last stop was Dublin, and though we only had one night there, we made the most of it. We managed to see a few things:
The Book of Kells, Trinity College Dublin
The Long Room, Trinity College Dublin
Christ Church Cathedral
While I am certainly glad to be home with my children, and to return to a more familiar pace, this was certainly a wonderful trip.
On Listening
I’ve not listened to much music this month, but I did hear a rousing rendition of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” by an Irish folk band in a Dublin pub. It’s my kind of weird.