La Noche Boca Arriba Translation Essay

“There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and he champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his motor-boats slid the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with

“The War of the Blossom” is commonly mentioned throughout many passages in Cortazar’s writing and it is magical realism to an extent because blossom usually means something good, a flower blossoms, a tree blossoms, but you would never think of war blossoming because the whole background of a war involves violence and blood. The author uses blood as the realistic term in this because it is a vivid color and when you imagine the word blossoming you think of vivid, bright colors that stand out. The protagonist began to daze into his dreams during times of darkness as explained in this passage “what tormented him the most was the odor, as though, notwithstanding the absolute acceptance of the dream, there was something which resisted that which was not habitual, which until that point had no participated in the game. “It smells of war” (Cortazar 339). When dreaming one does not usually think of smell because it is not actively used during sleeping. The smell of war that the protagonist is constantly mentioning brings the whole thought of magical realism to life because the smell makes him look like he is not actually dreaming, but appears to be in an actual ritual war, even though he admits acceptance of the dream. The trail is also a key magical realistic part of the

“Tomacaúna” formally known as Domingos Fernandes Nobre was a famous go-between slave trader in Brazil in the late 1500s. He was born a mameluco, meaning he is half of Portuguese and half of Indian descent. He lived a dual life because he traveled from the capital to the wilderness migrating the Indian slaves into the local Portuguese sugar plantations in the colonies. It was an effortless act due to his skin complexion and his relationship between the Indians. However, a problem soon erupted from Portugal’s Holy Office in 1591 when the bishop of Bahia and several members of the city council created a document denouncing anything or anyone that defies the holy Catholic faith within a thirty-day period. By the time of the inquisitor’s arrival

Don’t Eat the Bear: A Spanish adventurer named Gaspar De Portola in 1769 passed through a region what is now Santa Barbara. In the near by sand dunes he found a lake where he crossed passed with an “oso flaco”, a skinny bear. They were dying of hunger and ate the skinny bear not knowing it was poisoned.

"La Malinche." Slave, interpreter, secretary, mistress, mother of the first "Mexican." her very name still stirs up controversy. Many Mexicans continue to revile the woman called Doña Marina by the Spaniards and La Malinche by the Aztecs, labeling her a traitor and harlot for her role as the alter-ego of Cortes as he conquered Mexico.

The 1959 novel, Pocho, by José Antonio Villarreal is an insightful cultural exposition told primarily from the vantage point of Richard Rubio, the coming-of-age son of immigrant Mexican parents who eventually settle in Santa Clara, California, after many seasons of migrant farm work. Although fiction, the story likely mirrors some of the experiences of the author who was born to migrant laborers in Los Angeles in 1924 and was himself a "pocho" - a child of the depression era Mexican-American transition. ("I am a Pocho," he said, "and we speak like this because here in California we make Castilian words out of English words." p 165)

“Aguantando” means holding on. In the very first paragraph we see how important it is for the narrator, Yunior, to hold on to his father’s memory. Yunior lives with his mother (Mami), grandfather (Abuelo) and brother (Rafa). They live in a house where anything of value, including furniture, food, clothing and even Mami’s Bible is stained from a leaky roof. As a Hispanic male, believe me when I tell you there is nothing more sacred than Mami’s Bible in that home. Yet it is clear how important Papi’s pictures are because they’re always in a plastic sandwich bag to keep them dry. It’s also clear that Papi leaving was the

The room was musty and dimly lit. A heavy curtain was drawn across the only window, allowing only a slight and pathetic slant of balmy sunlight to slip in. Faintly, the air tasted of dog urine and stray fur—a fusty undertone hovering beneath ghostly.

(The bright white interior of Bernarda’s house. Thick walls. Arched doorways with canvas curtains edged with tassels and ruffles. Rush chairs. Paintings of

Lorca described ‘Romance de la pena negra’ as one of the most representative poems from the ‘Romancero gitano’. The poem was written in 1924, when Lorca had been sent away from Granada, due to his homosexuality and was living in Madrid, the centre of the cultural ferment of the 1920’s. Here, he attended the ‘Institución Libre de Enseñanza’ (ILE), where he was inspired to search for the national Spanish spirit, through literature.

enemies would be left to rot, but in his own reality, he is doing the only

Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night's old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast: flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror's secret by which - though it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off - the living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations... so the same assertion-through-structure allows this war morning's banana fragrance to meander, repossess,

Sandro Botticelli painted La Primavera between 1477 and 1482 for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a member of the powerful Florentine family. While many Renaissance works depicted scenes of Christianity, this work as well as the others in its group – The Birth of Venus, for example - are focused around tales from classical mythology. Designed to hang in a private room, the painting did not need to be made accessible to large audiences like other works of the time, such as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. An educated family with strong Humanistic ties, the Medici would have had the necessary knowledge to interpret the painting’s subject, while the common people would not have. Now located in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence,

66) coupled with a certainly voluntary non description of the protagonist (“he did not have a name”, p. 66) enable the reader to picture the situation from the beginning. Likewise, the description of the Aztecs world is very detailed (“his feet sank into a bed of leaves”, p. 71), which makes the reader living the dream and even forgetting which world is real. This is emphasized by constant juxtaposition in the description of the two worlds (e.g. “He managed to cut the air once or twice” (…) “It’s the fever” the man on the next bed said.” p. 72).

"... In some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him.