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05-02-2005, 07:10 PM
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Location: Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
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Rhina's words say it beautifully.
It's in a lot of African American music--Bessie Smith-- and it's in Beethoven. It's in the music of Astor Piazzolla.
( I just listened to some Fado by Amalia Rodriques and decided that what she had wasn't Duende.)
I think Edith Piaf had it sometimes.
It's a sort of purity of transfigured suffering.
I think it can have an erotic ingredient but at the level where sex meets death.
I have heard it in some rough Gypsy performers.
But then I could be wrong.
Duende
Janet
Ann,
Thank you so much for that wonderful link.
[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited May 02, 2005).]
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05-02-2005, 09:33 PM
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Janet-
Your "purity of transfigured suffering," sounds like it, and if that's not duende that has to be something. That's amazing.
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05-03-2005, 04:11 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Forest Park, GA USA
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Maybe duende is the inherent symbiosis of beauty and pain that makes art art. (Not, I rush to add, the overt "look-at-me-suffer-aren't-I-a-beautiful-phoenix?," poet maudit fashion statement.)
Robin
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05-03-2005, 05:37 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A.
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Edward Hirsch's _The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration_ (2002) is a book-length study of duende as it manifests itself in a wide array of artistic media in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Hirsch seems to prefer "joyous darkness" as a shorthand translation for the spirit of duende in contemporary art. Besides poets like Rilke and Lorca, Hirsch isolates duende moments in the work of visual artists like Klee, Joseph Cornell, a few abstract expressionists, as well as blues and early jazz musicians (among others). It's an interesting speculative survey.
In my youthful naivete I once asked a flameco guitarist (in a bar in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico) about duende, and she said: "For myself, it is like an utterance about which nothing else intelligible can be spoken." And that is the impression I get from reading Hirsch's book, that duende manifests itself fleetingly and momentously, then vanishes before the critical gaze. It's more of a visitation upon the artist, rather than a replicable aesthetic practice at an artist's disposal.
For most poets, I suspect that the pursuit of duende would be like trying to catch butterflies at night.
[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited May 03, 2005).]
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05-03-2005, 08:08 PM
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J.A.-
Not to be reached by chasing, that's for sure. Maybe it's every poet's or artist's prehensile tail.
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05-03-2005, 09:44 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Alabama, USA
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Seeing you use Rebekah Del Rio's "Llorando" (Crying was recorded in Spanish) as an example perked my interest. I added a hyperlink to her song from the movie, and another to the page where she describes actually recording it, which goes with the rest of the description, so I thought I'd post that, too. Very interesting discussion! Thanks for posting. Christy
Quote:
I keep seeing the image of the woman on the darkened, empty stage in a scene from Mulholland Drive, who sang this heart-rending version of "Crying."
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The movie itself was one of those movies people either loved or hated. It took several viewings to absorb it all, but the song was a pivotal point, which only added to its magic.
http://www.rebekahdelrio.com/audio/l...lm_version.mp3
Her story of recording Llorando
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05-03-2005, 10:57 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Massachusetts
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Originally posted by Rhina P. Espaillat:
"a kind of deep desperation, a raw sensibility to experience that goes deeper than the personal and into the universal, under language."
Yes, as, say, Billy Holiday's, but it's in her voice more than her language, which writers produced.
"The "possession" element is inescapable. People talk like that when they are "not thinking clearly," to put it euphemistically. But they're feeling clearly, and they have the nerve to say it, before "the pale cast of thought" does any editing."
I suppose that if a writer has felt it and got it down, it would be awfully difficult to revise, never mind even think about revising.
This IS a wonderful discussion. My long term understanding of the word "duende" has been rather shallow. Very Bostonesque.
I'm not sure yet that I can apply the word to writing so much as to the performance arts. Perhaps as an addition to the set of muses, the spooky muse. Sort of like Loki in the Norse Myths. The dark, underbelly muse.
Bob
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05-04-2005, 01:33 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Tomakin, NSW, Australia
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I am not sure I am understanding the essential quality of "Duende" properly, but this line from Lear, when he realises that Cordelia is truly dead, always chills me with its emotion. It is a line stammered in horror, and its effect could not be reproduced by a "sensible" or "more descriptive" line:
Lear: And my poor fool is hanged! No, no, no life?
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more.
Never, never, never, never, never!
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05-04-2005, 06:51 AM
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Bob-
A writer at work could be an exciting sight for a camera to zoom in on. People associate that kind of sight with musical composers; the depiction of Mozart in Amadeus for example. Writers getting closer, however close can be managed, to duende, are no less dramatic than musical composers. The act of writing is a kind of performance, no matter if there's no one present in the room.
It's too bad American writers don't fill the Starbucks'.
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05-04-2005, 04:06 PM
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Location: Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
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Anybody who's ever witnessed a woman give birth to a child knows what Duende is.
Janet
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