LOVE OF DICTIONARIES. I AM AN AMBASSADOR OF THE WORD

 

THE CASARES

I went the length and breadth of the roads of the planet, with my books in tow and there was always one that never failed on my travels, the Casares “Ideological Dictionary of the Royal Academy by Julio Casares”. 

I am a poor, forgotten writer, a victim of I don't know how many purges and removals, devotions. I remember that March 17, 1972 when I abandoned my ships, closed the house in Edenthorpe and loaded my books in the mini, I was stopped by the traffic police on the M1 freeway and a compassionate bobby, seeing me crying, said go ahead, and I continued through  all France until Madrid (987km)

I was poor, abandoned, depressed, but rich in words and concepts.

I was a poor poet, rich in words. They are my only fortune. Outside my verses and my writings, I don't give more of myself.

I know how to handle the eighty-odd thousand voices of the Spanish language like a dagger and also like a balm or a bouquet of roses to offer to my loved ones.

Such atavism makes me hated and no less feared. With the language I defended myself, I attacked, I surrendered and let's say with Zorrilla I went up to the palaces, I went down to the huts, and everywhere I left infamous memory of myself. Don Julio Casares has been my stronghold, with his book I showed up in London under my arm and obtained pupillary from that damned Shylock who put out my eyes by charging me exorbitant rents (see my book Correspondent in London) there he was, and I hit the key at the foot of the telex and my Olivetti in that humid and inhospitable Marble Arch basement that rented my entire salary and I didn't have a penny left to eat. I lost weight.

Every cloud has a silver lining. Casares, the language academic, was an admirable man.

The reds burned his house and he lost nearly a million chips in which he noted the use of the different voices in Spanish on both shores of the Atlantic. 

He compared the Nebrija language to a musical instrument in which semantics are as important as cadence, proportion and harmony.

In a word, through language, it is possible to create beauty

01/13/2024