LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

I finally ploughed through Enrique Vila-Matas’ Canon de cámara oscura (2025). I say plough through because, although I am sold on this Spanish author, the read was tough going. Vila-Matas is always unique and innovative. He writes with cultured mastery of the language, free of flourishes and put-ons. His extensive reading and ongoing engagement with world literature make his work both engaging and challenging. In this new novel-narrative, nothing ever happens. But then, in much good literature, nothing ever happens. Nothing new there. An android attempts to explain why it has decided to enclose literature -its literature- within a canon. Why it does this, or what its wanderings mean, is not clear to me. To me, mind you. Read it, by all means. But don’t make this the entry point into Vila-Matas. Save it for last.

  I read the classics mostly, in English and Spanish, because I still have a long way to go to cover the extent of my unread literature. I do not at all scoff at current, young, and new writers. I am just being practical. I have little time left, and the day still has twenty-four hours. With Enrique Vila-Matas I make an exception. Why? I find his writings different, new, and I can relate to his way of seeing reality, or fiction, or whatever. I just simply like him. He fits the definition of literature Jorge Santayana gifted us with in his Three Philosophical Poets: "The sole purpose in possessing great works of literature lies in what they can help us to become." Vila-Matas does that: reading him, we become more, more reflective, more meditative, more insightful, more ourselves. And I was lucky to meet him yesterday, at the presentation of his new book "Canon de cámara oscura" at the Rafael Alberti bookstore, in Madrid. (Do visit when you come.) He is an affable, se...

  Many quotation dictionaries in English mention few Spanish writers or thinkers and usually quote Gracián, Cervantes, and, perhaps, Ortega y Gasset. Spanish quotation dictionaries tend to offer the usual fare of Plato, Bernard Shaw, Confucius, and Tolstoi, in poor translations from English. Sources are never mentioned. I decided in 2006 to put together a dictionary of contemporary quotations gathered from the writings of Spanish-speaking writers from 1900 to 2008. Ediciones del Serbal published the 465-page volume as Diccionario panhispánico de citas . It was prologued by Enrique Vila-Matas , El lujo de la citas . Under headings like abogados , democracia , esperanza , globalización , felicidad , Dios , pobreza ... you can find quotations from writers, journalists, and thinkers from the Spanish-speaking world, adding sources, places, and dates. For over a year I would borrow three books daily from the José Luis Sampedro Library in Madrid and spend the day reading and extract...

Más de la mitad de los miembros de la Real Academia Española en este momento me son desconocidos. No deja de ser curioso porque me dedico a esto de las letras más de setenta años, con asiduidad, con ahínco y con mucha curiosidad. Un aspecto pueril de mi personalidad es el afán de saber, de tratar de saberlo todo, de estar al día. Me llevo diarios berrinches cuando me hablan de un famoso autor que vende mucho y muy celebrado y del cual yo no sé nada. ¿Cómo es posible? Mi único consuelo es que lo mismo le pasa, y le ha pasado, a la Real Academia Española . La "docta casa" nunca se enteró de la existencia de Francisco Umbral , ni de Caballero Bonald , ni de Fernando Sánchez Dragó . De  María Moliner la Academia no quiso saber nada y la pasó por alto. Tampoco se ha percatado de que un tal Vila-Matas escribe novelas. De Eduardo Mendoza y Luis Landero ni hablemos. ¿Andarán tan despistados como yo? De los académicos actuales podemos aplicarles el dicho popular de que ni están t...