Who’s Sorry Now? (L2.11)

Who’s sorry now

Who’s sorry now?

Whose heart is aching for breaking its vow?

Who’s sad and blue

Who’s crying too

Just like I cried over you?

Right to the end

Just like a friend

I tried to warn you somehow

You had your way

Now you must pay

I’m glad that you’re sorry now.

~ Connie Francis

Lavinia had taken a position as an advisor to the Administration in the section of Cultural Affairs. The site she was assigned to was the General Library in the Pazo de Fonseca. Her favorite, or nearly favorite, building in the city of Santiago de Compostela.

Because she was a native speaker of [American] English, the Administrators felt she would be key in promoting Galician culture internationally. She could even take on a number of speeches Administrators had to make…. Plus, Lavinia had also managed to acquire a good bit of galego, the Galician language. As a former academic, she could manage a meeting like it were a classroom, probably. 

Anyway, she was a feather in their collective cap. They thought their invitation was ingenious. It would also allow them to keep a close eye on her. 

At least for the moment they thought of her as a feather.

Lavinia was aware of all of this. Some time, long before she’d first come to Galicia, she’d known she was related, their lands touched in some way. She must have also known, or soon found out, that her life would not always be well-accompanied and not without compromise. She was learning now to reevaluate her priorities. Nothing was written in stone, in one sense, and in another, once recorded in stone, it stays.

If the pilgrimage was for her the way her life must be, she would do what was necessary to continue along that road, compromise or not. The invitation might turn out to be a good one. She found herself in a lot of meetings, listening intently.

Lavinia then found that once she stopped listening to provided suggestions, that the Administrators either ignored or carried out all wrong. One such case was when she presented the idea that they should Take literature into the streets or onto playing fields. Have it compete with sports. Mix it with art and music, dance, film. Distribute the texts in bilingual pamphlets, Galician-English. Involve the authors in different ways.

Another idea offered by Lavinia to the Administration was creating readers’ theater groups who could present literary collages in the schools. The scripts could be made available in English, too, and hopefully other languages would follow.

Speaking of following, the Administers were better at administering, meaning they followed suggestions incorrectly, or partially, which is nearly the same thing. When they subsequently failed, she was blamed. Like the part about creating bilingual pamphlets. Mostly lists of authors and works, dates, etc. was what they turned out to be. (Pretty much ignored. And useless.) There was also the part about literary collage that she had suggested be done as literature on stage. 

Another pamphlet was produced, this time with fragments of quotes juxtaposed to achieve an artistic effect. (They should have learned from the first experience that a pamphlet by itself is useless.) The print in the fragments was too small to read, so the ‘literature’ only served as decoration for a pamphlet. Worse yet.

That partial use (which meant misuse) of more complex ideas happened once, then it happened again. The third time it happened Lavinia was let go, although she had been herself about to tell the Administration she was leaving. She had put months of effort into doing a good job, but had only run into roadblocks. Clearly her path led in another direction. It included not trying to use shortcuts, condensed information that interested nobody, sucked dry into a list of dates and letters. A pamphlet should only be a footnote to a place one visits.

The time in Administration had nevertheless been well spent. Lavinia, once outside again, was not in a hurry, because ideas were always slow in coming forth in medieval Compostela. She slowly, cautiously went about forming her own liaisons, with her own ideas but she used theirs as well. As she talked about what she envisioned for taking literature to the streets, certain people began to cross her path. There were artists and musicians, but also craftspersons and experts in Galician history. There was even an expert in ecclesiastical affairs. 

It was all so organic, as they say, that nobody really noticed. The change in attitude grew on the participants and spread to audiences. They all needed literature, like rain, to survive.

Gradual success also came to the groups in charge of creating literary collages or sketches for a general public. Most of the scripts were an average of fifteen to thirty minutes long. A few were longer, and the attendees always knew how much of their time was needed. On the other hand, a few were like advertisements for the longer pieces. They were ‘spots’ lasting no more than two minutes, and popped up two hours before the actual shows. Like movie trailers.

The shows themselves were held in the Obradoiro Square, which is facing the façade with the famous Pórtico da Gloria, and the Quintana dos Mortos with all its history. The latter includes a plaque reminding passersby that a group of students majoring in Humanities (literature) went off to fight. Most people from Santiago would know the fight was against Napoleon’s forces, but some might not know. The important thing was to associate the Batallón of the nineteenth century with the ‘batallón’ of the twenty-first that Lavinia and her companions were seeking to form.

It probably is less relevant to know that there were subsequent batallions that fought for ‘the right side’, as other dates on the plaque note.

The brief pieces were performed as street theater whenever and wherever possible, but certainly could be staged in an interior. One such an interior was the President’s residence at a very prestigious university in Boston. (The Institution also had enthusiastic donors who might well be interested in seeing culture taken to the masses.)

What worked best was definitely the mini theater model of literature. Three examples of shows that ‘worked magic’ over a group of spectators were: 

Bibliópatas e fobólogos, set of short, sometimes flash or micro fiction with main characters who are bibliopaths and phobologues who live in a world of words. Great example of retranca, Galician humor. Author: Emma Pedreira.

Un ollo de vidro, a glass eye, by Castelao is more priceless humor, despite being set in a cemetery with death being a major theme (naturally). Subtitle: Memoirs of a Skeleton. Not only a real classic, but also subtly subversive politically. One simply forgives the author for a snippet of racism, because he wasn’t really racist, when one looks at his drawings.

Poems of Manoel- Antonio, the sailor-poet who died at thirty of the tuberculosis that was so common then. Despite the misconception that a sailor wouldn’t be given to writing and much less to writing of the most avant-garde style, Manoel-Antonio was extremely skilled at writing Cubist poetry and it is easy to stage a reading of his work with a backdrop of artists’ books and creative photographs of sea scenes. Think how easy to conceptualize his From Four to Four with pages and sails shaped like the humber four.

O conto galego [The Galician Story] by Rosalía de Castro, might be from a century and a half ago, but good folk tales never die, nor do rogue figures. The two friends who conspire to deceive a young widow are as bright as burnt-out candles, but are left to try their scheme again. Is the author on the side of the two scoundrels or is she on the side of the young widow who may be young but might also be very smart? Perfect for all female audiences.

Lavinia was thrilled at the attention the literary shows were getting. People were talking another look at the original text, and kids were ordering it through inter library loan. Heretofore it had not been a huge topic for staging, but there must be a reason. (Well, of course, good literature never dies. Even bad literature has been known to hang around after its shelf life.) She tried out a couple more mini theater events:

Rosalía’s novel Flavio was perfect for presenting certain dialogues between Flavio and the protagonist, Mara. The novel was misread for long over a century, until it turned out you could reread it all through the eyes of a feminist (fifteen year old) Mara, who had to bite her tongue every time she opened her mouth. An outstanding lesson in self-censorship by the main character or an effort by the author to avoid censorship? Up for debate by an interested audience, hopefully. That was the point, after all.

Interviews with Frank Soutelo on necrophilia worked like a charm. Frank was the main character of the noir series by Miguel Anxo Fernández. At times he sounds very aware of himself as protagonist, but he tones that down with his ability to laugh at himself. However, Frank is committed to his profession. From the first novel, A Niche for Marilyn, in which he doesn’t bat an eye when agreeing to search for MM’s cadaver (worth a fortune) to the later search for an arsonist, Frank is the proverbial human bloodhound. Readers like to feel he’d be interesting to meet. The audience wants to chat with him.

Lavinia even is writing her own stories. Some are set in the town where she grew up and others are set in Galicia. (Usually the twains do not meet.) The stories, she is more than pleasantly surprised to see, are also able to draw crowds. The persons in charge of publicity are quite agile, able to present the work of literature as accessible as well as thought-provoking. She had never started out to be a playwright, and maybe she wasn’t, technically. However, the little stories were ones that showed what can happen to the foreigner who leaves doors open to a new life. They were written from experience.

This went on for several more months, maybe for over a year. By then, many little literary plays had reached an audience beyond the Academy or the classroom, and something had shifted. More books were being sold and checked out of libraries, for one thing. Reprintings were more frequent. At least three newspapers had interviewed Lavinia, who didn’t harm the popularity of her project by giving credit to the artists, musicians, writers, etc. who were necessary to getting the work done. It was very symbiotic.

The Administration eventually called Lavinia back for an interview, wanting to capitalize on her creativity. They didn’t tell her what interested them this time around, but again she was aware of what was transpiring. Things would be no different because the Adminstrators’ thinking had not changed. The old feather in the cap. 

Until the wind blew the cap away, of course.

They told her they’d thought might use her to make tourism ads this time around. They might have her greet visiting dignitaries and introduce one-liners about Galician literature in conversations. That might only be possible once in a conversation, but it was something, at least. Or they would take her suggestions (take them, if not carry them out) for writers whose images could be painted on buildings around Galicia. Like the one three stories high of Xela Arias in her native Sarria, not far from Lugo. Or the ones in Vigo.

To these and other supposed enticements to return to the fold of the Administration, Lavinia politely said no. She feared alienating them, but couldn’t live with the uncertainty of having her suggestions admitted but never really implemented. Who could? That compromise was too big to accept. Time worked slowly to bring about change, but time was also short.

The Teatro Corruncho, Lavinia’s little ‘theater over there in the corner’ as she liked to think of it, was doing fine. All the attention and good reactions were encouraging. Literature - meaning Galician literature - really did have a future. The English equivalents, staged in Galicia occasionally, had had a very positive response, especially from tourists who were tired of seeing the same old story of Saint James and were happy to be exposed to a little Galician humor.

For now, at least, the Administrators would have to live with blaming her for something that hadn’t been her fault. Since everything happened slowly around Santiago, which could have something to do with its history, Lavinia knew she had time, a lot of time, before she was invited back again.Who’s Sorry Now