Comments on: Talkin’ frog blues

By: ER

ER — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 12:12:52 +0000

I referred to the Wikipedia entry on Prescott and stumbled onto this prescient observation:

Historian Richard Kagan has identified “Prescott’s Paradigm” as a 19th century interpretive model first fully articulated by Prescott. It argues that Spain’s early modern ‘decline’ and subsequent ‘torpor’ was a product of its religious bigotry and political despotism.

Yes, history does repeat itself…

By: ER

ER — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 11:49:46 +0000

Referring to your remarks about the Nostalgia for Empire, the Imperial Spaniards were meticulous and obsessive archivists, everything was dutifully recorded and filed away. A 19th century American historian, William H Prescott, learned antique Spanish and started a systematic documentation and rediscovery of the cruel deeds Cortez and Pizarro inflicted on the Aztec and Inca civilizations of the Valley of Mexico and the Andes. The Spanish, while grudgingly admiring Prescott’s scholarship, were incensed that this foreigner had successfully reconstructed their own spectacular history, warts and all, from their own records, which they had neglected for three centuries.

Your musings about how we will remember our own Golden Age in some Chinese or Russian or Muslim dominated future is something I have often pondered myself. Every nation that has lost its global ascendancy (and they all have, we will not be an exception!) has gone through this experience, but Americans, with their poor grasp of history, will no doubt take it harder than anyone else.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 04:04:09 +0000

It was a series from Spanish TV that Netflix picked up, and I noticed my ancient high-school Spanish returning as I “read along”. It helps that I read quickly, so I could simultaneously listen and read. One thing that I noticed was that sometimes the English translation was more a transliteration taking into account Anglophone sensibilities, like translating “puta” as “bastard”.

Enjoyable show, BTW. Spain’s answer to Dr. Who envy–a government Ministry possessing a time travel circular stairway, descending down a pit back in time. No crazier than a blue police box. One of the threads of the show, given all the travel through Spain’s past, is what it’s like in the present to live in a failed Empire. Memories of a past that was sometimes glorious, sometimes embarrassing, like the Revolution, a lot of rueful shrugging. Perhaps some clues to America’s future post-Trump.