



S1: so <P :04> that doesn't look so good <P :14> ah, Tim, are you back there? [SU: no ] okay <P :11> there we go. <P :06> you guys have enough light? okay
SU: yeah 
S1: thank you... alrighty. i think they picked the wrong day to come tape this. i told them in advance that half of today's lecture is gonna be in Spanish, but, as we say in Spanish (enciapele.) okay. so, how many of you have seen the movie of this book? what did you think of the movie?
S2: it was much easier to follow 
S1: the movie was easier to follow? 
S2: yeah, i mean i i didn't think that uh, [S1: louder ] i didn't think that um the relationship between the mother and uh Tita was played up enough in the movie. i thought it was, uh better 
S1: did you see the movie before or after you read the book?
S2: after. i thought it was better in the book...
S1: you thought the relationship was better in the book than the_ which 
S2: no not the relationship just the way it was presented. 
S1: was better in the book. 
S2: yeah 
S1: so which was harder to follow? 
S2: um, well, the book as a whole that was harder to follow.
S1: than the movie 
S2: yeah
S1: anybody else share that view? anybody have the opposite view? yes? speak.
S3: um, i had to see the movie first actually for a class, and i remember, at first i, [S1: louder louder ] at first i didn't follow it anywhere close to how easy i thought the book was to follow.
S1: i i must say, i saw the movie first. then i read the book, in English. then i read the book in Spanish. then i saw the movie again. and, my own view is that a lot of what i saw in the movie, seemed a little disjointed. and only when i saw, when i saw in the book how those must've actually been flashbacks or just, you know expanding episodes, that i realized why it was put in there. so i found the movie much better on second viewing after having read the novel. so, personally, i found the movie less, well integrated. you guys know that the director of the movie is the husband of the woman who wrote the book. Arau is Esquivel's husband so, it's a a power couple in Mexico. uh, i saw some nods so, some of you also had my view that the book, the movie was was harder than the book. the movie was good, right? you know that movie made more money than any other foreign language movie in America up until that time. Liz?
S4: i haven't seen the movie but i just noticed that, the people who had spoke_ and your view is that whatever they saw or read first was harder to follow, she said she saw the movie first and that was, harder. [S1: interesting ] so
S1: is that right? is there anybody for whom that is not true? is there anybody for whom that is_ it's not true for you. speak, please.
S5: well, it's because i read the first couple pages of the book, <LAUGH> and then i read the movie i watched the movie, then i read the book again. so i wasn't lost at all ever.
<SS LAUGH> 
S1: ahh, so the book made a nice guide to the movie. right. okay, alright. it is confusing though which i must say, i find really kind of amazing, when you realize the exquisite simplicity of the language. i mean they're not complicated sentences, there aren't very odd adjectives. and it's it it's not like Faulkner at all you know it's just you you can read every sentence clearly, and yet there's something wild about it. um, do you guys like the book? [SS: yes ] okay good good me too_ i read it again this morning and, between eleven and four, but anyway <LAUGH> uh, and i must say i liked it better again. uh, so maybe this is one of those ones that that you keep coming back to. i also feel kind of a, a special relationship to this book because of my grandma Mahler, um, my father's mother, i remember this quite vividly when i was a little boy, um and i mean little like, three, my folks would park me at my grandmother's house sometimes, years later i found out it was because their marriage was precarious and they probably, needed to get rid of me, um so they could work out other things but what did i know, right? i mean i was going to grandma's house. and grandma, who was born in Russia, would make me often, potatoes and cream, which, for, Eastern Europeans that means sour cream. and either baked or boiled potatoes. she made these so-called new potatoes you know with the thin skin. she would boil 'em. and grandma would set out this enormous bowl of sour cream, and sit down opposite an enamel table, i can picture it vividly to this day a metal table top, you know covered with some enamel so that you know nothing got through it i mean you could chip it with a screwdriver but that was all you could do to it. um, and grandma would sit opposite me it was just the two of us it was folded it up so it was just a two person table, and she'd she'd sit there a- and i'd have the bowl and she would have, in her lap, she'd be wearing an apron. she'd have a washcloth, i mean a_ what do you call it? [SU-F: (xx) ] dishwashing, what do you call that yeah? 
SU: dishtowels 
S1: dishtowel. thank you, right it was not a washcloth. dishtowel. good. how do you say in English? right? a dishtowel covering her lap. and she'd reach under the dishtowel, take out a couple of potatoes, and say ess Erechel ess so i_ you know Erechel would ess, and then i would finish the couple of potatoes and there'd still be more sour cream and she'd say so you want another potato? and i'd say sure, and out would come another potato. and i, it was like an endless_ i never ran out of potatoes. i don't know where grandma got them from, she never had to go back to the stove, it was as if she were giving birth to potatoes, <SS LAUGH> you know it was like, constant. and every time i have read this book or seen this movie, i'm always reminded of my grandmother, with this endless supply of potatoes. and it reminds me that there's something going on here. it's it goes right back to the fairy tale roots that we talked about the first week of class that, you don't have to say i love you all you have to do is give somebody food, and that indicates a relationship. (and) i feel that when i read this. and so, when i see the variations on it well what if you cry into the food while you're making it or what if you feel anger while you're making the food and so on, it sort of resonates for me as if the fairy tale world were becoming a real world. that to me justifies, um, having a book made out of recipes. and this is really weird. i mean, do you guys know of any books like this? i know of a couple that are vaguely like this but none exactly_ anybody know any books that are even vaguely like this. yes please?
S6: A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle.
S1: good, you wanna describe it?
S6: um, it's also in segments of monthl- monthly periods. and he bought a house in Provence and dicruss discusses the meals and the recipe he, the recipes that he uses throughout the book so, it reminded me of that.
S1: but that's nonfiction.
S6: right. 
S1: but, yes?
S7: in a way it sort of reminded me of Cosmic Comics where you have the scientific fact at the beginning and then it_ (xx) kind of played with it, throughout the chapter
S1: interesting. i think there's another uh way in which those two books are alike, which i hadn't thought we'd get to until the end of today but, remember wha- i how i was talking about Frie's notion of going through the different archetypes until you get so ironic that it comes out to be a new myth? i think that's sort of what's going on here. you get so, off the deep end you you wind up with a whole new myth. although what that myth might be, something you know we probably oughta go through the book more before we talk about. yeah, but that's certainly not the recipe aspect of it that's the same. any of you guys read Babette's Feast? no, or see that movie? no. how bout Heartburn, has anybody ever read Heartburn? oh, really great novel, you gotta read this novel, it's really cool. um, it's written by, uh, Nora Efron, who was married to Bob Woodward from Bernstein, Woodward, Deep Throat all that stuff. and the son of a bitch divorced her <SS LAUGH> and she got her revenge by writing a novel about the break up of their their relationship. one of the factors in their marriage was that he loved her cooking. particularly her key lime pie. and so she works recipes into the book, and the back of the novel has an index of recipes. you can just turn to one you like and at the very end of the novel, she finally is enough at peace with him, that she figures ah the hell with it and includes the recipe for key lime pie. it's the last recipe she puts into the book. and sorta shows that she doesn't give a damn about the guy anymore. so eating well becomes the best revenge. but i have to say in terms of fiction not the Peter Mayle book but, in terms of fiction every one of these books that i have ever encountered where recipes are woven into the novel, are by women. and, since i cook, i'm not entirely sure why that has to be the case, but it is the case and it says something i think about the role of nurturance and that brings us back to the fairy tales. so this is a very unusual book. it's also unusual in that it fits into some bizarre genre which_ any of you have read this in your Spanish classes? some of you i know. onl- only one? huh. two. um it's magical realism, alright that's the name for this kind of South American_ (that is) usually thought of as a South American genre, where things are discussed as if they're realistic, you know this is what happened that's what happened and we really have the Mexican Revolution being reported here, and then, you know all of a sudden Gertrudis will become so amorous, or to be more etymologically correct so ardent, that is to say her flesh is so burning, that the shower bursts into flames. you know the planks just catch_ and it's reported exactly the same way as saying Chencha got raped by the rebels, you know that just_ that's just what happened. some people, North Americans, call this magical realism they see it as a variety of fantasy. but, some of the most famous practitioners of this kind of uh writing, um <P :12> Gabriel Garcia Marquez uh being the the ce- the central name that everybody always talks about whose book One Hundred Years of Solitude is the one book that everybody in the world agrees is magical realism, and he's a Nobel Prize winner for that and other works. um, he says that it's not fantasy at all. that if you had grown up as he had in Colombia, why you would just see that this is how things really happen. this is just how they look to people. so, it brings us back to the question of viewpoint, which is always central in our view of the fantastic. magical realism, is it a variety of the fantastic or not? what i'd like to do is talk about the genre, and try to make clear some of the things in the book that maybe are not so obvious. was it a hard book to read or easy? i mean you said something about being_ difficulty following but, maybe i've read it too many times now but it seemed to me it was pretty clear. does it se- it seems clear. so let's see then_ if we can assume it's clear, let's see if we can go a little more deeply. and then come up with might what might be, an alternate meaning for the book. the title i think, um is explained on one-fifty-one. Como Agua para Chocolate turns out to be a Mexican proverb that is more or less explained for you about five lines into the first full paragraph on that page. <READING> Tita was literally like water for chocolate. she was on the verge of boiling over. </READING> apparently when you make chocolate out of cocoa powder, what you need to do is get water that's just beginning to show bubbles. if you let it be too bubbly, then the chocolate is terrible. if it's only tepid, it doesn't actually make the right paste. so, water for chocolate is just on the verge of being boiling over. which suggests, that the book is about passion somehow or other. um, it also suggests, thinking of the the title, it's about food. water, chocolate, stuff that tastes good, stuff that's necessary for life, the opening passage is one of birth, with that extraordinary tearing going on, the tears just come and come and come. that infant supplies enough tears to fill a ten-pound sack of salt, that flavors the life of everybody around her thereafter. it's very much a book about food, and what food may come to mean. i i like this book, and i like the_ well, i like the way the book reads, um, but i have to tell you that it's not_ it's the only translation we have, because the translation is copyrighted and the book_ the translation rights have only been sold once, but it's not the greatest translation. not that it's a bad translation, but it doesn't do full justice to the book so, i want to give you some sense of what might be missing. uh, for example, there are, puns in the book, as we have it, that don't exist in the original. for example on two-sixteen. <P :06> it says in the last paragraph, <READING> it was hopeless to try to forget Esperanza. </READING> Esperanza is the Spanish word for hope. so it sounds like there's a pun there it was hopeless to try to forget Esperanza. but in fact, in the Spanish, it says... fue inutile tratar, de olvidarse de Esperanza. it was useless to try to forget Esperanza. there's no pun in the Spanish. mkay, it's not there at all. on the other hand, there are some puns that belong in the book that are missed here. for instance on one-fifty-nine... it looks like there's a typo, it says, <READING> most holy virgin, who's up in heaven, gather up the soul of my mistress Elena, and let her stop wandering among the shades of, pulgatory. </READING> it turns out that the Spanish also says pulgatorio. purgatorio is the Spanish word for purgatory. pulga is the Spanish word for flea. and if you remember when Chencha comes back with her husband, she's told she can have the attic room, but first they've gotta get rid of all the bed bugs that are up there. so she's talking about a pulgatorio. she's talking about a place of long suffering because of little bugs. that pun is in the Spanish and i think if you were only reading the English, you might just, you know think it's a typo. i don't know exactly what the translators should've done there, they could've called it fleambo instead of limbo or something i don't know, but anyway there there are things going on, that are missing as well as things that seem to be going on there that are not. so, let me show you some of this in detail and i've put together, a way that even the non-Spanish speakers will be able to, follow. Laura Esquivel as far as i can tell was born in nineteen fifty-one but i found conflicting sources and i have not been able to reach her herself so, she's more or less f- forty-eight years old. okay? um, this is what we have. okay, this is the Spanish original. this is a literal translation. okay? Like Water for Chocolate. Como Agua para Chocolate. and the meaning of course, we've just talked about. i don't think you would get in the English the idea that that means on the verge of boiling over. that's something you miss if you're thinking in English. A Novel in Monthly Installments of Recipes Romances and Home Remedies. Novela de entregas mensuales mkay, please notice mensuales even if you don't know Spanish if you know any romance language, right? wo- the word menstruation, you realize that there's a pun in the Spanish, alright? mensuales means monthlies, the way we might refer to some magazines as being monthlies. well, monthlies is also a slang word for for a woman's period. so, it's a novel with monthlies as installments, with recipes, amores doesn't mean romances it means loves, and remedios caseros right? which doesn't mean home remedies, it means homely recip- remedies. like the kind of thing you find in your own house. that's an adjective from the word for house. the epigraph, <READING> to the table or to the bed, you must come when you are bid... </READING> not bad. but the Spanish is a la mesa y a la cama, una sola ve- sorry vez, se llama . which literally means to the table and to the bed one time only is one called. ah it seems to me that's really quite different. and it really makes a difference in how you look at what this what this novel is about. if, what you think this means... is that opportunity knocks only once... alright? then, the fact that Tita and Pedro get together again at the end of the novel after not being allowed to marry each other near the beginning of the novel, sounds like it undercuts the epigraph. but if you think it means there is one call and that's it. alright? there's this one true love in your life, period. then it supports, the plot. so, it seems to me that, if we understand the plot in relation to what the Spanish really says, it really means, when it happens you are bound forever. now, that's a kind of a mystic notion. uh i don't know uh, maybe it's because i was finishing up rereading the novel at four in the morning but i was getting a little_ i was really getting kinda, mushy there at the end. did you guys find that? or is it just me being a middle-aged softie it kin- it it's, pretty amazing, yeah. all that light and, you know and they're dying in each other- it's like Romeo and Juliet, a n- except this time she had candles. um okay, it begins Chapter One, January Christmas Rolls. Capitulo Uno, Enero Tortas de Navidad. tortas, does not only mean cakes. alright? it also means a fount or a font in printing. okay, now there's a s- just the way we would say you know i have_ Times New Roman is the font i use. a torta is a font. so, we're being told that they are using the using the font of birth cuz na- navidad means Christmas but it also means nativity. so, it's anybody's birth, in a way. and so then the question is whose birth is being referred to? especially since the Christmas rolls are being prepared after Christmas. we're getting the recipe for these in January. so maybe, the important birth, is Tita's birth. somebody's birth. ingredients, include a can of soy beans well lata doesn't actually mean can it means tin and is the word for the metal itself. i think there's some continuing conflict back and forth between things that are edible and things that are not. and that comes out most prominently when we have the recipe for matches. that the North American, the the gringo gives. all the other recipes are for food. that the Mexican gives, Tita. but, the one recipe we get for matches comes from a man and an Anglo. and then we see somehow, that Tita has managed to combine these different kinds of recipes by eating the candles in that conflagration that happens on the very last pages of the book when she goes into the dark room that is no longer dark, with Pedro. in fact, i would suggest to you that, one of the great things about this novel is that it works with an enormous set of oppositions. Mexican versus Anglo. um, male versus female. um, love versus i sh- passion, i should say versus constraint. uh, notice for example (Quereno's) Manual of Etiquette comes up repeatedly in the book. why? there are just rules for how you have to behave. why does Tita have to stay with her mother? because the rule in our family is and so on. there's constraint versus freedom. there's politics versus domestic life. all of these oppositions are worked on, and ultimately at the end of the book they're all integrated. um, it's a kind of bittersweet integration. but i think that's part of what we get here. that it's not just a can of sardines, it's a tin of sardines. and then, by the way the particular kind of biscuit telera is a rectangular biscuit it's not a roll at all, which has a different meaning, tha- um, in Spanish, not that i find that a particularly significant one but i'm just, trying to be thorough. so, i think you can see, that the Spanish, in the Spanish if you were to be reading it carefully, it doesn't undercut anything that you see in the English, but i think you would much more quickly get more deeply into what the book is doing thematically, by following the Spanish. does that sound plausible? hm, how about for you non-Spanish speakers? is that making sense? mkay. now. here's where_ we're still in the beginning. preparation. the Spanish is manera de hacerse. let me use my Castilian Spanish. i'm sorry i'm just not used to an American accent. manera de hacerse okay, now. hacerse, manera de hacerse does mean method of preparation. but hacerse also means to become, or to transform oneself. alright? so if you talk about, um, a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, you can use the verb hacerse to talk about that transformation. so there's something about transformation that's buried in the Spanish but not in the English... <READING> take care to chop the onion fine. (okay?) </READING> la cebolla tiene que estar finamente picada. <READING> the onion must be finely chopped. </READING> mkay? now, notice the difference, this is the direct, you know order. take care. this is reflexive. <READING> the onion must be finely chopped. </READING> the onion is being given primacy. <READING> to keep from crying when you chop it, which is so annoying. i suggest you place a little bit on your head. i suggest you, plural, put a little piece of onion on the crown of your head. </READING> that's what mollera means. the crown of your head. <READING> with the aim of avoiding the annoying tearing that one produces when one is cutting it. </READING> okay? so that's a different idea_ and those of you who read Spanish can can check my translation if you like. and it's a different thing going on here. <READING> the trouble with crying over an onion is that once the chopping gets you started and the tears begin to well up the next thing you know you just can't stop. the bad part of crying when one chops, </READING> pica. yes please?
SU-F: can you move over just a little bit?
S1: oh, i'm sorry. 
SU-F: thanks. 
S1: sure. hm, this may be tough... <READING> the bad part </READING> can you see? [SU-F: mhm ] <READING> the bad part of crying when one chops, </READING> pica, <READING> onion, is not the simple fact of crying but rather sometimes one begins so to speak, piercing, </READING> pica, <READING> oneself. and already, one cannot stop. </READING> now, i think by the repetition of the verb picar to refer to what one does to oneself in the process of crying and what one does to the onion, we see a connection between Tita and the onions, and we know that we're seeing from the very first pages a connection between Tita and her tears. but if you think of what onions are symbolically even if you don't bother to go to the Theolode's Dictionary of Symbols. i mean if you think of onions, right, where you just get deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, that they are somehow a matter of truth, but a truth which is ultimately ineffable. right? we see her as being this multi-layered creature, that has some essential, something powerful something, a desirable something, i mean onions are in pretty much all these recipes, well not for the matches, right a desirable something, which when you get there cannot exist in this world. and that's, i think what Tita is. she symbolized that. it also happens by the way, if you do look it up that onions are a symbol for immortality. lots of round things are symbols for life of some sort but onions because of their layeredness, are traditionally symbols for immortality. so, we see her, as piercing herself. now i'd like to suggest to you that there are religious allusions in this novel. not very heavy handed and not all that often, but if you think of this as, uh someone who is, spiritual, and certainly the spirit world is is alive and well in this book, then these piercings, may have some other meanings as well. especially if the onion goes on the crown of the head. um, there are some other particular references there's one to two Kings chapter one about a _ i'll ju- Gertrudis comes in, remember she comes back as a general? and we're told that she's a leader of fifty men. uh if you'll take a look at the second book of Kings chapter one i think verses, eight or nine through, thirteen or fourteen. you'll see Elijah has just refused the King Ahazariyah. um, Ahazariyah sends a leader of fifty men to go bring E- Elijah down from the mountain. Elijah says uh, no i'm doing what God says, i'm not coming down and God blasts and kills all_ the leader of fifty men and the fifty men. Ahazariyah send another leader of fifty men and again Elijah blasts them all. Ahazariyah sends a third leader of fifty men and this guy says, listen, we know that you're God's representative, would you mind coming and talk to us about that? and Elijah says oh sure as long as you understand you know fine. yup, my God is really functioning here and comes down and everything is just dandy. i think that's part of what's going on with Gertrudis. Gertrudis the name by the way, means a trusted maiden. she's clearly not a maiden since she can only get the fire out of herself by living in a brothel for a year. but in some spiritual sense she is a maiden i think, because she is really, psychologically innocent. as she always has a kind of purity of vision about her. and that's why it is that she was able to escape from Mama Elena. so that reference to Gertrudis as a leader of fifty men, is yet another one of the the references to, uh, to the Bible. a final, a_ not a final another place, you remember that Tita only gets named in the middle of the book? her na- Tita means little aunt, and it's quite reasonable that the writer of the novel, who says, speaks in the first person on page one and then doesn't speak in the first person again until the very last page of the novel, where she surprises us by saying Esperanza who was my mother, and is now dead but my father still lives in an apartment and my brother er- is coming, you know, my father Alex is going to come over to see me, so, she of course refers to this person as Tita, which means little aunt. but notice in the whole novel everybody's calling her Tita. and you would think if you didn't know Spanish, that that was name, but in fact her name is Josefita, which is a female diminutive of Joseph. so, she is the member of the holy family, la sagrada familia that manages to give birth, without actually participating in the transfer of genetic material. it is Je- Joseph is Jesus's father without actually having donated sperm. and Tita is the mother of Esperanza. without actually having donated an egg. this is the story being retold from a female viewpoint. so, i'm suggesting, already if you're reading it in Spanish, you can see some Biblical allusions, not to say that it's a Biblical story, but one that's concerned with spirituality, and coming out of the Mexican Catholic experience, these allusions work. um <READING> i don't know whether that's ever happened to you that you just keep crying and crying, but i have to confess it's happened to me many times. Mama used to say it was because i was especially sensitive to onions, like my great-aunt Tita. i don't know if it if to you has happened these things, but to me this is the simple truth certainly. </READING> you Spanish speakers can check my translation. <READING> this is the simple truth, an infinity of times. </READING> which i think is a lot of different from many times, if you want to see this as suggesting a mythic, uh, dimension to the novel. <READING> Mama used to say that it was because i am as sensitive to onion as Tita, my great-aunt. </READING> what i'm hoping is going on here, is that looking at this Spanish, we're seeing that it's really in the English, but as you've said it's not as clear in the English. and we can s- see what was really, being, pushed here. now, here's another recipe. another piece of recipe, on page twenty-five in your book. <READING> place five egg yolks four whole eggs and the sugar in a large bowl. </READING> okay? <READING> en una casserola se ponen cinco llemas de huevo, quatro huevos enteros y el azucar. </READING> please take a look at what these words actually mean. large bowl is how casserola was translated. but actually it means, one vessel for mixing, cooking, and serving. that's the definition of a casserole. and, the English could've said a casserole. right? rather than a a large bowl. one puts cinco llemas please notice that there are five women in Mama Elena's household. five eggs, five women. llemas which isn't_ they are indeed the yolks, but also the word llema is the bud of a plant, and the tip of a finger. so it's all of these beginning things, in the Spanish. four whole eggs and sugar. mkay? um, and then the question what do eggs mean themselves? huevos in Spanish is slang for testicle. it's true in lots of European languages, not true in English. but, um, that's the common common thing to say is uh, que tiene huevos, boy has he got balls, but literally it's boy does he have eggs. so, later on, um... let's see <P :06> we'll get to the point where they say that the eggs reminded me of the white testicles they had to take out of the capons. that's that's not accidental if you're speaking Spanish. the eggs should be reminding you of that. okay. um, <READING> adding the remaining eggs two at a time </READING> ah, yes. <READING> beat until the mixture thickens and then add two more eggs repeat adding the remaining eggs two </READING> am i blocking it again? [SU-F: no. ] no? okay, <READING> two at a time until the eggs have been added. </READING> mkay? now, what do we have going on in the Spanish? um, one beats until the mass thickens and one adds two eggs, two whole eggs more, one continues beating and then continues, and uh, until it becomes hardened, uh, thickened. and then one adds the other two egg whole eggs, repeating this, step until it ends in incorporating all of the eggs, de dos on en dos two by two. which is missing from the English translation. but two by two it seems to me, is a reminder, that um, Noah's ark might be involved here. also the testicles. and if you wonder why is he taking Noah's ark, you know with this two by two reference here in the beginning, page one-eighty-five. let me remind you that at the end when the fire breaks out, the final conflagration that ultimately covers the entire ranch with ash, we're told that the animals got warning first and were all able to leave. all the ranch animals escaped first. so, we have a reverse ark going on. instead of all the animals gathering in, all the animals are exiting, okay? <READING> to make the cake for Pedro and Rosaura's wedding, Tita and Nacha had to multiply this recipe by ten since they were preparing the cake not for eighteen people, but for a hundred and eighty. </READING> alright, by having that line there <READING> not for eighteen but for a hundred and eighty </READING> it should remind us pretty strongly that the number eighteen is important we've already seen that before it's the number of life. alright? we see it again and again in all Middle Eastern religions. including Judaism and Christianity. and then it goes on, <READING> therefore they needed a hundred and seventy eggs which meant they had to arrange to have that number of good eggs, on the same day. </READING> the result gave a hundred and seventy eggs, not meant that they had to have_ the result gave it, as if the language produced the result. <READING> and that signified that they had to take measures to have reunited this quantity of eggs, of excellent quantity quality in a single day. </READING> it's as if all of this is an ingathering, not a cumulative serial gathering. it's a different notion here. it's one we can come to understand as we see how the Spanish works. but as we see how the story progresses, but i think it's clearer right off the bat in Spanish. and finally, continuing that <READING> Tita beat the mixture while Nacha broke the eggs and added them to it. a fit of trembling shook Tita's body and she broke out in goose bumps when each new egg was broken. </READING> the Spanish for goose bumps is piel de gallina, mkay? hen's flesh. we in English say goose bumps, yeah or goose uh f- hen's skin i guess. in Spanish they say hen's skin. gallina is hen. so there is a connection being made between Tita, who is feeling like, the chicken and the chicken eggs that she's working with. alright? and so on down the line. and here we get to the castration. <READING> the egg whites reminded her of the testicles of the chickens that they had, uh, they had castrated the month before. </READING> she associated the eggs with the testicles of chickens that been gelded the month before. roosters are castrated then fattened up_ that are castrated and then fattened up are called capons. los capones the capons son gallen- galos, gallos castrados que se ponen a engorda. okay uh, capons are castrated roosters set to fatten. <READING> the family had decided to serve capons at Pedro and Rosaura's wedding because they would impress everyone with the quality of the dinner as much as the amount of work and so on. this delicate dish was chosen for the prestigious at the best tables. preparation entailed ext- and brought the extraordinary flavor of the capons. </READING> you see the continual repetition of the word capon in the literal translation and the Spanish, both the verb and the noun. that gets a little submerged in the English. and i think what we're getting there, is that the person without sexuality, compensates for this, by the excellence of nourishment. and that's what we get with Tita. Tita is by far, the best cook, and the one who doesn't have any children. in fact when we think she's gonna have a child, it turns out simply to be an irregular mensuale. so, the the Spanish gives us an insight into what is also available in the English. but i think it's not perhaps quite as clear in the English... does this make sense? does this sound, right? okay? if you would indulge me, turn to the middle of the book, one-twenty-four. i'd like to, uh, to look at a, a two-and-a-half-page section. this is virtually the center of the book, the book ends on page two-forty-six, this starts on one-twenty-four. there's a section that begins <READING> she heard John's footsteps coming up the stairs. </READING> and, it ends, although i don't think it strikes one in normal reading as being separable. it ends in the middle of the next page, when it says <READING> later of the three of them Tita Chencha and John dried the bedroom, the stairs, and the bottom floor. </READING> and so it goes from stairs to stairs. i think that this section is really a paradigm for the way the whole book functions. and since it happens to be at the center and since something important is going on here, if we slow down and go over this passage with some care, i think we'll see a lot of what's in the book as a whole... <READING> she heard John's footsteps, coming up the stairs. </READING> now, the Spanish for this, i_ it's worth noticing, um, is not footsteps... the Spanish for this is, for those of you who read Spanish escucho los pasos, de John subiendo las escaleras alright? escucho los pasos i heard the steps, of John, going up the staircase. i think that's not insignificant because, down below, three lines from the bottom of page one-twenty-four. it says <READING> and they cried remembering the steps of the recipe. </READING> and in fact in the Spanish although etapa you know the next, s- the next segment of a race could've been used for that in Spanish, the word paso is used there again in Spanish. so Esquivel has explicitly given us the same word twice. and i think there's a connection between the steps of the recipe and the steps of John on the stairs. in fact, if you take a look at this passage overall, the beginning of it, is someone going up a set of stairs, and the end of it is someone coming down a set of stairs. and stairs clearly then, take the same function as say, a threshold, in a room. there's_ it's the connecting it's the liminal space. it's the passage between one realm and another. go down and up, up and down. and we know in this book that that's really crucial because John has just rescued her, from being twenty feet up the ladder up the one thing that Mama Elena was afraid to do. right? go up the ladder. to bring her down from that dovecote. so the going up and going down represents a crossing of boundaries. the bringing together of realms that may appear to be impossible to join. this passage then, is a going up and a coming down. getting outta the world and back into the world. and the steps that John has are just like the steps of a recipe. <READING> she was eagerly awaiting his customary visit John's words were her only link with the world. </READING> tortas font. the words were the link. <READING> if only she could talk tell him how much his presence and his conversation meant to her. if only she could go down to Alex and kiss him like the son she didn't have, play with him until they were tired, if only she could remember how to cook so much as a couple of eggs </READING> mkay? <READING> a couple of eggs </READING> right? huevos. alright? she wants to get, her reproductive functioning going again. <READING> enjoy any kind of food if only she could, return to life. </READING> now, in fact what's going to happen at the end of this two this two-and-a-half page section is that she will come down the stairs. it's as if she's returning to life. and she says that. therefore, her wish at this moment if only she could return to life, is i think, a h- manifestation of what we've called the omnipotence of thought. this book is indeed built on many of same psychological structures as fairy tales. and the centrality of the eggs here is just like the centrality say, of the snake in The White Snake in the Grimm Fairy tales, or the sun or the golden ball in the Frog Prince. it's that same kind of natural archetypal symbol. she wants to return to life. she's able to return to life. there are a number of places in the book where her omnipotence of thought is demonstrated. speaking of other books that this is like, (uh,) who mentioned Caldino? who was that? yes. thanks. at this moment, it seems to me it's a lot like Woman on the Edge of Time. just the way Consuelo is so eager to have a child again. she wants something, and she winds up with Dawn. so we wind up with Esperanza, or Tita. it's this yearning to have somebody to to be a parent for. <READING> she noticed a smell that struck her. a smell that was foreign to this house. John opened the door and stood there with a tray in his hands and a bowl of oxtail soup. </READING> by the way, that's a mistranslation again. it actually is cattle tail soup. and it turns out later on, it's referred to as cattle tail soup. so the translator translates the same term two different ways. i don't know why. it's a sopa de res , not a sopa de buey. <READING> she couldn't believe it. and behind John in came Chencha covered in tears </READING> now we've been told from the very first pages that in this book, tears are indistinguishably both happy and sad. so it's_ right? there it is. so there you_ and it salts your food so it's the salt of the earth. <READING> the embrace they exchanged was brief because they did not want the soup to get cold. </READING> i find that amazing cuz Chencha has brought this from i don't know how many miles away. right? i mean the soup has got to be cold. but, there's this idea that you eat it right away so it won't get, more room temperature than it is now. i don't know. i it's the ritual of the consumption of the soup. with the first sip, Nacha appeared at her side. there's magical realism. we're not being told she hallucinated Nacha. Nacha appeared at her side. right? her dead_ it's her fairy godmother. right? there she is she's really there. <READING> stroking her hair as she ate, as she had done when she was little and was sick, kissing her forehead over and over. there were all the times with Nacha, the childhood games in the kitchen, the trips to the market the still warm tortillas the colored apricot pits the Christmas rolls the smells of boiled milk, bread with cream chocolate atole, cumin, garlic, onion, as always throughout her life, with a whiff of onion, the tears began. </READING> central image for Tita. immortality, inscrutability, a sensial- a sensuality that is not of this world. <READING> she cried as she had not cried since the day she was born. </READING> this is the first page of the book. and it's really important that that's the case, because this is the center of the book, she's going to be reborn in this very passage, and then at, the equal distance at the end she's going to be going all the way back now to heaven from which she had originally been born. <READING> how good it was to have a long talk with Nacha, just like old times. when Nacha was still alive and they had so often made oxtail soup together. Chencha and Tita </READING> which at this point, i think we have to recognize means auntie, <READING> laughed reliving those moments and they cried remembering the steps of the recipe. </READING> each step of each recipe is a way towards something. each one is a completion or is a is a passage toward something that makes us. because food is to be ingested. hence the eating of the candles at the end. <READING> at last Tita had been able to remember a recipe, once she had remembered the first step, chopping the onion. </READING> as i say it's a very important symbol. <READING> this onion and the garlic are chopped very fine and placed in a little oil to fry, as soon they become transparent, the potatoes beans and chopped tomatoes are stirred in until the flavors meld </READING> now, that switch, from the narrative of what's going on to a continuation of the recipe, is absolutely typical of this book. right? we get it, every chapter has that kind of switch in narration. what i'd like you to pay attention to is that that switch, is a switch in verb tense. you could read page one-twenty-four, as if it were all simple past. right? <READING> she heard John's footsteps. </READING> it doesn't mean she heard John's footsteps, again and again and again it means she heard John's footsteps once. but when it says <READING> the onion and the garlic are chopped very fine </READING> it doesn't mean she chopped the garlic and the onion fine that day. it means forever, in this process, onions and garlic are chopped, always, finely. this is what's known grammatically, as an iterative tense... mkay? it just does the thing again and again and again. ah, i've got a friend, uh, Danielle Chatelaine, who has written an entire book on, and th- the argument that iterative tenses are what define the structure of narrative worlds. that the particular that gets reported of a narrative world this happened and that happened, are only as it were, the corks floating on the ocean. but the ocean is defined by those things that are always there. so if you say something like uh, he was always glad to see his friends, but today, he was afraid to tell them what he had just discovered. the today he is afr- was afraid to tell them what he had just discovered, is what we usually focus on, but Dani's point is that he had always been glad to tell his friends, is what constitutes the narrative world. and i think you can see the nature of the argument that (she's) pushing there. i'm not asking you to accept it, as being complete you know, always the case. but, can you see the difference she's drawing between a simple past and an iterative past or an iterative present? mkay. i would like to suggest to you that in this novel, the continual return to an iterative present for the exfoliation of the recipes, suggests that the world of this narrative has lots of corks floating on its surface, but what constitutes this narrative world is the constant process of making food. and it's not just the constant process of making food. it's the constant process of making food, that bridges two completely different kinds of world. on the one hand, we have the natural world, of the ranch. you know again and again we see Tita running around saying oh i don't have the recipe ingredients for this i either have to prepare these and preserve them, or well these people are coming over too soon can i make something really good with what i have around? right? we have the reality of the physical world. and on the other hand, we have the symbolic reality of the written out recipes. and we know that this is a real issue in the book, because we have that wonderful comic passage, where Gertrudis wants her cream fritters, and that poor sergeant is_ who's never cooked before in his life you know. yes mon- my general, you know is trying so hard to follow the written recipe to give her what she wants. so we have the process of making the recipe yet again and again forever. as bridging these two worlds. the symbolic intellectual world and the natural physical world. that's i think what constitutes this narrative world, fully. that's what the ocean is here. <READING> John interrupted these memories by bursting into the room alarmed by the stream that was running down the stairs. </READING> ah i would think that this stream, is not only a recollection of Tita's birth with that enormous flood that came out from her crying and the amniotic fluid. but also, as we've seen in book after book, something about time. cuz notice the verb tense has changed here. alright? so, something is happening we've been out of time for a moment with the recipes which are eternal, and then fft we're back into history. <READING> when he realized it was just Tita's tears John blessed Chencha and her oxtail soup for having accomplished what none of his medicines had been able to do, making Tita weep. </READING> which is a good thing. <READING> sorry to have interrupted he started to leave the room Tita's voice stopped him. that melodious voice had not spoken a word, for six months. </READING> exactly half-way around a year. death and rebirth. <READING> John, please don't leave. at Tita's side John watched her go from tears to smiles as she heard of the news and gossip from Chencha. the doctor learned that Mama Elena had forbidden visits to Tita. in the de la Garca family some things could be excused, but not disobedience, not questioning parental authority. </READING> garca is the Spanish word for heron. and that's the family she comes from. a heron is a very interesting bird symbolically. it's associated with water so it looks like fertility. it's associated with a stork, because it has the same kind of long beak so it looks like it has something to do with bring- bringing babies. but in fact, in fact, it is usually thought of as a bird that fishes. it goes and gets the fish out of the water. dives in gets the fish out and consumes it. and since the fish is traditionally symbol for the soul or the unconscious, and specifically, you know Jesus, but, the heron is associated with birth, but is not in fact birth. and that's the family she comes from. the de la Garca family. in this family, you could do a lotta things, but not disobedience. remember our reading of Genesis. God says, you know, where are you? okay? Adam says, i'm hiding. alright? how did you dare disobey? how did you know i was disobeying? because you're hiding. right? disobedience is the crucial split from heaven. <READING> Mama Elena, would never forgive Tita crazy or not for blaming her for the death of Roberto. she had forbidden anyone to even mention Tita's name just as she'd done with Gertrudis. of course Nicholas had returned recently with news of Gertrudis. he had actually found her working in a brothel. </READING> that's an interesting way of putting it. found out he_ was she like the cook? you know i mean i- i- they're trying to dissociate what she's doing from anything that might actually affect her, morality. and i think that's one of the wonderful things about Gertrudis. which is part of what i meant about her being fundamentally innocent. she is like a force of nature. in the movie i think that's pretty clear with her red hair and her_ she's i think the most buxom of the sisters and so on she just, looks like some, you know, Cycladic fertility goddess. <READING> he had actually found her working a brothel. he had delivered her clothes to her, and she had given him a letter for Tita. </READING> alright? back again to that symbolic world. <READING> Chencha gave it to her and Tita read to herself. dear Tita, you can't know how grateful i am that you sent me my clothes. fortunately, i was still here to get them. tomorrow i will be leaving this place which is not where i belong. i still don't know where that is but i know that i have to find the right place for myself somewhere. </READING> Gertrudis is leading the sisters. just as Rasaura Rosaura, is holding the sisters back. right? Rosaura is the conservative one. wanting to take advantage of the... the weighty traditions Mama Elena tries to impose on the family. Gertrudis is the one who's willing to break out. so Tita occupies this, interesting middle position. between the progressive and the conservative. and she's always trying to do both. she eventually does manage to bring them both together, but at that moment she reaches sexual climax, destroys the ranch, and dies... <READING> i ended up here, in the brothel, because i felt an intense fire inside, </READING> ardiente, <READING> the man who picked me up in the field in effect saved my life. i hope to meet him again some day. </READING> this is a very very enlightened view of what other people might've looked upon as, you know certainly an ungentlemanly act. <READING> he left because i had exhausted his strength. though he hadn't managed to quench the fire inside me. now at last after so many men have been with me, i feel a great relief. perhaps some day i will return home and it explain it to you. i love you, your sister Gertrudis. the trusted maiden. </READING> still virginal in a sense, because these men were just saving her life. this was all for her, not for them. and in fact she does come home. <READING> Tita put the letter in the pocket of her dress without a word. the fact that Chencha didn't ask her anything about the contents of the letter was a clear sign that she had already read it from one end to the other. </READING> these people know each other intimately. <READING> later the three of them, Tita, Chencha, and John </READING> mkay? the Mexican, her servant, her Anglo lover. three different classes, two different genders, different backgrounds, everything. <READING> dried the bedroom, the stairs, and the bottom floor. </READING> i think that this passage which i say is right in the middle this is the one where she gets reborn. this passage is in some sense crucial for the novel as a whole, but it's also typical of the novel as a whole. lots of things begin in one direction and then unfold in the other direction. and we see that with the tears in the beginning, the water in the beginning, and the fire at the end. alright we see a balancing of symbols in the work as a whole. very very delicately, and cleverly constructed i think. <P :08> before i go on, um, does that seem_ am i on target here with this as far as you're concerned? mkay. um, clearly what i'm building is an argument that as easy as the book is to read, it's worth a lot of detailed attention. this is_ it's not accidentally easy. it's in fact, spectacularly clearly constructed to make it feel easy. uh <P :04> the, the politics of this book, i think um, are important. politics comes up, again and again. i found it quite surprising, maybe because movies have a way of, emblazing their visual images on your mind. i found it really surprising as i was rereading the novel, to see that Chencha's rape, and Mama Elena_ the attack on Mama Elena, those two events, cataclysmic, are described entirely in one paragraph. because in the movie you see the rape. i mean from a long distance but you see it and the image of that has stayed in my mind. i saw it when, it first came out in the theatres so it must be four or five years ago now. an- but in the book, it's it's one paragraph. right? and yet the politics is there throughout. so it's not just the different kinds of roles, but also different kinds, of situations. let's take a look. um, on thirty-two... we see how the politics affects pretty much everything. even though they tend not to talk about it... last paragraph <READING> with that Tita fled from the kitchen into the room where Chencha and Gertrudis were embroidering the sheet for the wedding night. it was a white, silk sheet and they were embroidering a delicate pattern in the center of it. this opening was designed to reveal only the bride's essential parts </READING> by the way in Spanish it's the bride's noble parts. um, i'm not sure either of those is how i would describe what's being exposed there but, anyway, clearly they're different. <READING> while allowing marital intimacy. how lucky they had been to obtain French silk, at that time of political instability. the revolution made it impossible to travel in safety, which is why if it hadn't been for a Chinaman, who dealt in smuggled goods it would've been impossible to obtain the materials since Mama Elena would never have allowed one of her daughters to risk traveling to the capital </READING> etcetera. and then we go on, for another paragraph and a half about the machinations of this Chinaman. and how he manages to end up the the, at the end of the revolution. it says uh <READING> so he spent </READING> and about a third of the way down on page thirty-three. <READING> the entire revolution until he wound up a millionaire. but the important thing is that thanks to him Rosaura would be able to enjoy the finest most exquisite fabric on her wedding night. </READING> so this guy is profiting. the fr- the Mexican revolution i i'm no expert on Mexican history but i tried to figure out when the hell the Mexican revolution was and, i can't_ i mean everybody seems to agree it started in nineteen ten, and everybody seems to agree it's definitely over by nineteen thirty-five. but exactly when it gets over depends upon whose view of history you you're reading. you know is it with the first election? is it when the corrupt elected people are thrown out and you get clean government again? is it with the establishment of the revolutionary uh uh the uh uh the uh Institutionalized Revolutionary Party the P-R-I? um, in thirty-five i mean where is it? it's somewhere between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty. we know that this is starting when Tita is fifteen. and we know that the wedding of Esperanza and Alex, is when Tita is thirty-nine. so we know that twenty-four years have passed. if we like, we can think of these twenty-four years then as not coincidentally, the time from the beginning of the revolution nineteen ten with the dis- the uh deposing of uh Porfiro Riborosa uh Diaz. and ending in nineteen thirty-four with the establishment of the governmental monopoly of the P-R-I. which by the way is the party that's still in power in Mexico it's been basically a one party country until quite recently and still the presidency has never gone to anyone who wasn't a member of the P-R-I. so that twenty-four year period, from outbreak of violence until the peace of this establishment looks like it's what's going on in this book. that again i think cannot be coincidental. Mexican readers must really understand that that's those are the dates that this book covers. and it's really interesting that they need Chinese workers to get French silk in order to make sure that their Mexican customs are properly carried out. and all of that is made difficult by this political instability. the political world is a violent world. but ultimately, this violent world, the political world, turns around and becomes a peaceful world. nineteen thirty-four maybe. on page two-forty, almost at the end. at the bottom. we have th- another one of these wonderful food passages, and this one again is intimately tied to the plot. <READING> the chiles not only looked good, they were indeed delicious. never before had Tita done such a marvelous job with them. the platters of chiles proudly wore the colors the flag </READING> <DISPLAYS FLAG> i brought you the flag. <P :14> <READING> the green of the chiles, the white of the nut sauce, the red of the pomegranates. </READING> now, red white and green are not necessarily, compatible. okay i mean if we talk about things being contrastive, they are three very different colors. right? but what's going on is that they are now being viewed as the flag. uh if you go to uh, the website that is flags of the world. okay? F-O-T-W there's actually an F-O-T-W site. you'll find that Mexico has had a whole series of flags and the current flag, which is this flag, is the flag that came into being in nineteen thirty-four. so this is the moment, when the P-R-I takes over, that these colors are brought together. <READING> these tricolored trays didn't last very long. the chiles disappeared in the blink of an eye. how long ago it seemed that Tita had felt like a chile in nut sauce left sitting on the platter out of etiquette. </READING> alright that sense of imposed constraint on ordinary feelings. <READING> for not wanting to look greedy. Tita wandered whether the fact that there was not a single chile left on the platters was a sign that good manners had been forgotten or that the chiles were indeed splendid. her fellow diners were delighted. what a difference between this wedding and that unfortunate day when Pedro and Rosaura, got married. when all the guests had become_ had been overcome by the food poisoning. </READING> which of course it wasn't food poisoning. now, what i would like to suggest as i've, been trying to, you know work back in again and again to this thesis. the book is structured on oppositions, but somehow offers us the promise that these oppositions can be melded together for something beautiful. if you take a look at that detail in the middle of the Mexican flag, you'll see <P :05> those of you who've been to Mexico City will certainly recognize this. this is_ this detail in the middle is a little parable about the founding of Mexico. this is like a net- this is like a graphic version of the founding myth of an entire nation. Mexico City today, occupies an area near Tenotich- uh Tenochtitlan, which was and that's the Nahuatl name for it the ancient Mexican language. actually they have four million native speakers of Nahuatl still around so i guess you couldn't call it ancient but the pre- uh, Colombian Mexican language. the legend is that, an eagle, flew, and captured a snake, and landed on a cactus, by a lake. and this conjunction, of, of powers, remember the ancient notion of the plumed serpent that the Mexicans used to represent their their spiritual force before Christianity. the serpent with feathers, the plumed serpent. this conjunction of powers led them to know that this was place to build the city. and by the way, in fourteen hundred according most demographer's estimates, in fourteen hundred, mkay? before Columbus? in fourteen hundred, what we now call Mexico City, the place where this cactus was, was the largest city in the world. the entire world. okay and so, this valley which today is one of the most smog-ridden, comes about by this mystical conjunction of opposing forces brought together as a perfect emblem on the heart of this flag. i think that's what she's saying is going on. the politics could be violent, but the politics could get worked out. once the politics gets worked out, things look different. viewpoint in other words, is crucial. an easy way to look at the theme_ a theme of this book. i don't think it's the only theme. i think that the real theme has to do with the, transcending of oppositions in human feeling. but, and a way to approach that would be to look at what's clearly a thematic statement that Gertrudis utters on page one-ninety. <READING> the truth? the truth? look Tita. the simple truth is that the truth does not exist. it all depends a person's point of view. </READING> and then that goes all the way on til about six lines from the bottom of that page where Gertrudis is making an argument about how, well this is true if you look at it one way but it could be true if you look at another way and so on. i would like to back away from this book for a minute, to take a look at a passage from Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, by Jorge Luis Borges, a writer who was publishing from the late thirties on, um, he's the one who wrote Emma Zunz, which i read to you a piece of before remember? how Emma Zunz went to the, uh, called uh, Mr Lomenthal to the uh, about the strike, and then she uh went and uh, killed him and then she talked to the police and said yes, true was her anger true was her shame blah blah all that was different were the names and a few details. alright? was, we talked about that in relation to Robbe-Grillet's uh, The Erasers. that same author Jorge Luis Borges, um wrote Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. the premise of this, story essay, you know, i- is that there is some guy named Menard, who has decided, that and this predates Gabriel Garcia Marquez doing his writing and certainly well well before Like Water for Chocolate because Like Water for Chocolate was published after Borges had already died. but he is, retrospectively understood to be one of the masters of magical realism. the premise of this story, essay, is that there's a guy named Menard, who decides he wants to write the Quixote, the greatest work of Spanish literature. and he wants it to be identical to Cervantes' Quixote. now. obviously he could just copy it. but that wouldn't be writing in any significant sense. the essay talks about this. that as well, the next idea that occurs to to Menard, a Frenchman, the next idea the occurs to Menard, is that he could steep himself, in the sixteenth century history of Spain he could move to La Mancha, he could try to come to feel the landscape and inspired by his surroundings and his readings, he could spontaneously compose a book, which if he did it right would automatically be the Quixote. uh but again, the essay says Menard decides this is too easy. instead what he's going to do, is inhabit the modern world in such a way that his understanding of the modern world will produce a book which spontaneously, is word for word identical with the Quixote. and this the essays tells us, Menard has achieved. the essay then conc- goes on to do an analysis of Menard's Quixote, as opposed to Cervantes' Quixote. which of course you understand are word for word identical. so, here's how the essay goes on. and this is just a little passage from it, just as i gave you a passage from Emma Zunz by the same author. nineteen thirty-nine is the date of this essay. magical realism for sure. right? or maybe not. cuz remember Borges says magical realism is just the way we look at things in Latin America. <READING> it is a revelation to compare Menard's Don Quixote with Cervantes. the latter, Cervantes for example wrote part one chapter nine, truth whose mother is history rival of time depository of deeds witness of the past exemplar and advisor to the present and the future's counselor. written in the seventeenth century, </READING> um Quixote, the first part of Don Quixote comes out in like sixteen-oh-one so, you'd have to live in sixteenth century Spain, but it's a seventeenth century text because it's like right at the cusp the turn of the century. <READING> written in the seventeenth century written by the lay genius Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard on the other hand writes truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and advisor to the present and the future's counselor. history the mother of truth, the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality, but as it's origin. historical truth for him is not what has happened it's what we judged to have happened. the final phrases exemplar and advisor to the present and the future's counselor are brazenly pragmatic. the contrast in style is also vivid. the archaic style of Menard, quite foreign after all, suffers from a certain affectation, not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current the Spanish of his time. there is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. </READING> now, i think what's going on in this passage is a suggestion that Gertrudis's argument, that truth really is fundamentally subjective, and that there are many many truths, is valid. in fact, since we see different truths functioning here according to, who blows up and who glows, you know, we see, Mama Elena's ghost in the dark room but it's actually Pedro and Tita making love, right? what we see here i think, is that all natural phenomena, in fact are phenomenological. we discussed this before where we were talk- i was arguing to you that the different literary periods could be understood in terms of the relationship that's fundamentally postulated between nature and humanity. and in the postmodern period, what we get is that nature is a phenomenological construct. it is an intensional, right? as opposed to extensional it's intensional act of consciousness. i think that's what we're getting here. and if that make_ does that make sense? are you following me now? or, yes. Cory? no. reminder. phenomenology says that a phenomenon is not just out there, that it's an intentional act of consciousness. we focus in and separate something out and we construct it as a phenomenon so that we notice it. there is no World War Two, what? when is the Mexican Revolution? alright? is it nineteen ten to nineteen thirty-four or five? is it nineteen ten to nineteen twenty here? we have to construct it. and we make it into a thing. the same thing is true for you guys i mean, i don't see you as attached to that table. i know you're separate from it, but i could look at you and just see you as growing out of the table, alright? <SU-F LAUGH> so i construct a phenomenon. and we all do that. what postmodernism does, is see our whole relationship with nature as phenomenological only, as only a matter of our conscious constructions. okay? if this magical realism can be viewed as Cortasar and Garcia Marquez and Borges do that's Julio Cortasar another great exponent, of this... kind of writing. if as these people do you can view magical realism as just the way reality looks if you happen to be growing up Latin American, then what they're saying is nature, has these things in it because we really see them in it. that in fact magical realism treats all of the world around one as a phenomenological construct. and therefore, is fundamentally postmodern. is that making sense? yes or no? 
SU-M: y- yes
S1: okay. so, if that is the case, let's take a look at the end. what should we be making, of the world if we have the opportunity? if we have the recipes? starting down about a quarter of the way from the bottom of page two-forty-two. <READING> for the first time in their lives, Tita and Pedro could make love freely. </READING> this is the moment of release. <READING> they went into the dark room. before entering </READING> on the top of two-forty-three, <READING> Pedro took her in his arms, slowly opened the door and before his eyes the dark room was completely transformed. </READING> his eyes change it. we're right back to Kafka. right? the way you look at it makes how it is. <READING> all of the furniture, all the furniture had disappeared there was just the brass bed standing royally, </READING> put the onion on the crown of your head, on the first page. <READING> standing royally </READING> crown of your head <READING> in the middle of the room. the silk sheets and bedspread were white. </READING> this is virginity. this is the first time. morally speaking. <READING> like the floral rug that covered the floor and the two hundred fifty candles that lit up the now inappropriately named dark room. Tita was moved at the thought of the work that Pedro had gone to pre- had done to prepare the room in this way, and so was Pedro thinking how clever she had been to arrange it all in secret. </READING> each thinks it's been done by the other. who did it? <READING> they were so filled with pleasure that they didn't notice that in a corner of the room, Nacha lit the last candle. </READING> the dead fairy gram- grandmother is there_ godmother. <READING> raised her finger to her lips as if asking for silence and fading away. </READING> how does the narrator know this? how does the narrator Tita's niece, know that Nacha was there? i think she knows because she has eaten the food prepared with the recipes that she inherited and that gives her a deeper understanding. skipping down the page, <READING> the doves flee the ranch and with them fled the other animals. </READING> here we have the reverse ark going on. <READING> she remembered </READING> the last two lines, <READING> then the words that John had once spoken to her. if a strong motion suddenly lights all the candles, we carry inside ourselves </READING> and so on. that's that passage about the igniting of the soul which happens on one-sixteen. <READING> but Tita checked her passion. she didn't want to die. she wanted to explore these emotions many more times. this was just the beginning. but Pedro was dead. surely, Pedro had died </READING> and on the last paragraph of two-forty-four. <READING> at the moment of ecstasy when he entered the luminous tunnel. </READING> talk about your s- Freudian symbols. <SU-F LAUGH> <READING> she regretted not having done the same. then begins immediately the freezing chill and out comes the enormous bedspread. </READING> how big is it? on the top of two-forty-five. <READING> it covered the whole ranch. all three hectares. </READING> three, i think is a good number because we see that this is a religious thing going on. think of the altar the bed the holy bed all the candles and so on. it happens that hectare is two-point-four-seven-one acres so it's about seven-and-a-half acres that's being covered here. but that's so, eight eight-and-a-half acres but anyway, three hectares. <READING> the box of candles that John had given her </READING> and she begins to eat the candles one by one. at the bottom of that paragraph <READING> they left together for the lost Eden. never again would they be apart. they set on fire the bedspread which ignited the whole ranch. the dark room was transformed into an erupting volcano. </READING> i think sexuality for both of them. on the top of the last page. <READING> a layer of ash, several yards high covered the entire ranch. </READING> what we need to remember is that doesn't kill anything. because we're told on page fifty-nine that the smell of roses from the parking lot that was made of the place where Gertrudis immolated the shower, to this day still smells of rose roses. so there's ash there, there'll be an apartment building there, but the past is sensually still present. <READING> when Esperanza, my mother, </READING> hope, the mother of the narrator, not the mother of history, <READING> returned from her wedding trip all she found of the remains of the ranch was this cookbook, which she bequeathed to me when she died and which tells in each of its recipes this story of a love interred. only for those who can read the recipes rightly </READING> this narrator. <READING> my father Alex still lives in one of the apartments. </READING> and this is the narrator's birthday. he's coming over. the last sentence. <READING> i don't know why my Christmas rolls never turn out like hers or why my tears flow so freely when i prepare them, perhaps i'm as sensitive to onions as Tita, my great-aunt, who will go on living as long as there is someone who cooks her recipes... </READING> what we see here is a fairy tale, of human passion, going beyond human constraint. of love going beyond society. it's bittersweet because the modern world is not constructed to allow it. but for those who're willing to lose themselves in their sensuality, like food, it becomes possible. Pedro and Tita are gone, but live forever. and i think that's why i get mushy. because it looks like they left me this gift too. i think it's a marvelous marvelous book. thanks for staying with it. <P :12> don't forget i need you on Thursday, student evaluations, wrap-up lecture, slide show, goodies
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