I am perfectly well, perhaps the best ever, but so introverted. It is possible that other people have these phases as well, when they are on sabbatical. I am not working on teaching, research or service, I am going through my books and creating a more amenable, and also more up to date work environment for myself. I’ve needed to do this for some time but now I am impelled. I always question people who say they did something because they could not resist but I do understand.
When I went into shock in November, 1991 I bookmarked my books and journals, to come back to later. I have kept all of these since, but not read them. Now they are yellow. I should stop listing what I discard here, and create an electronic library, and I will; for now, though, I want to say I am discarding:
— a copy of Luis Alberto Sánchez, VALDELOMAR O LA BELLE EPOQUE (México: FCE, 1976), which is of historical interest;
— Tom Weiskel’s THE ROMANTIC SUBLIME: STUDIES IN THE STRUCTURE AND PSYCHOLOGY OF TRANSCENDENCE (1976), which I had because I thought/think that if one understood these sources one might understand more about subjectivity, shadows and terror in Vallejo;
— CRITICAL INQUIRY 13:3 (Spring 1987), a special issue on “Politics and Poetic Value,” which I had kept by now in large part for Rob Nixon’s article on Caribbean and African appropriations of Shakespeare’s Tempest, which I thought would be good for teaching but which obviously, if I still need to see a piece this old, I can look up again.
— a bound photocopy of Meo Zilio, STILE E POESIA IN CESAR VALLEJO. It is a classic, but I do not believe I will ever have the patience for it.
I also got rid of two thick files of student papers and exams from some semester several years ago, and my 2006 TEI materials. I still think a digital archive of Vallejo with text versioning would be a good thing to have, but these materials are out of date and digital humanities irritate me. That is the project I’d like to do at the end, or start at the end of my life.
Because of the obsolescence of digital platforms this is a series of experiments I would like to do with text versions, and then write articles about.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 