Those who think that Antiquity can be a guide against uncertainty or stress should keep in mind these questions from Florence Dupont: "What can we think of the Athenian nobles, for whom drugs and pederasty were superior forms of culture and elite heritage?
What to think of the Romans, who considered hope a defect and for whom the true value in a shipwreck lies not in clinging to survive but in allowing oneself to sink as quickly as possible?
Hellenist and daughter of Pierre Grimal ―the yellow of his dictionary of mythology is a classic in itself―, Dupont is the author of a provocative essay entitled
The Invention of Literature
(Juan Antonio Matesanz translated it for Debate in 2001).
In it, she maintains that what we call literature – according to her, “dead letter” – is barely 200 years old.
The above would be a living entity, elusive in a speech, something closer to a Flemish party than an academic symposium, even though that word refers to the Greek banquet.
'Sing to say nothing' or 'Books not to read' are some of the epigraphs into which a study is divided that considers ancient oral creations as inseparable from partying, drunkenness and eros.
They were
hot
culture
.
Nothing to do with modern lyrics, which would be part of the
cold
culture
, based more on the reproducible than on the unrepeatable, in the library than in the disco.
Despite the prestige of Catullus or Apuleius, Anacreon or Sappho (translated musically this summer by Christina Rosenvinge), we should not read
something that was an
event as
a monument
.
As
kitsch
as it may seem to us, classical statues had
bunting
.
More information
“Say what they say, reggaeton changed the history of music”: Bizarrap, the Buenos Aires star who triumphed from his bedroom
Until now, these notions of monument and event served to explain the traditional relationship between record and concert.
But urban music arrived and dynamited that dichotomy.
The ceremony is different, it needs another skin (to quote another classic).
The letter?
That is for literature.
Two of today's biggest stars won't go down in history for a rhyme like “Who erases it tonight?
/ You kissed me and my cap fell off”, but the umpteenth paradox is the value that many
musicians
and
battle roosters
they concede to the conceptual ingenuity of the old rhetorical figures.
"Codeine to stop thinking / about that bad girl, kills well-being / and dominates me," says Khea in a book alliteration.
And it's funny that in the world number one spot on Spotify the one who has been for weeks is Quevedo, whose session with Bizarrap contains, favored by the seseo, another baroque effect: "I'm going to see if you guarantee me / that you hit me like someone who records with Biza .
/ And I saw the friends leave the
party
/ and she stayed”.
Bizza.
Visa.
It's a calambur and you can dance.
The Greeks would be proud.
50% off
Subscribe to continue reading
read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber