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The South (Borges Story)
"The South" (original Spanish title: "El Sur") is a short story by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, first published in ''La Nación'' in 1953 and later in the second edition (1956) of ''Ficciones'', part two (''Artifices''). Plot summary Juan Dahlmann is an obscure secretary in an Argentine library. Although of German descent, he is proud of his ''criollo'' maternal ancestors: his military grandfather had died fighting the aboriginals in the wild Pampas ''"pierced by the Indians of Catriel"'', a romantic end that he enjoys thinking about. He has a number of family heirlooms: an old sword, a lithograph photo, and a small estate in southern Argentina he has never found time to visit. In February 1939, he obtains a copy of Weil's ''Arabian Nights''. He takes the book home, and—eager to examine it— he rushes up the stairs to his flat while reading it, slashing his head accidentally with the sharp edge of a window frame left open. The wound on his scalp keeps Dahlmann bedri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries. It is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The largest population of native speakers is in Mexico. Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peon
Peon (English , from the Spanish ''peón'' ) usually refers to a person subject to peonage: any form of wage labor, financial exploitation, coercive economic practice, or policy in which the victim or a laborer (peon) has little control over employment or economic conditions. Peon and peonage can refer to both the colonial period and post-colonial period of Latin America, as well as the period after the end of slavery in the United States, when "Black Codes" were passed to retain African-American freedmen as labor through other means. Usage In English, ''peon'' ( doublet of '' pawn'') and ''peonage'' have meanings related to their Spanish etymology (foot soldier); a ''peon'' may be defined as a person with little authority, often assigned unskilled tasks; an underling or any person subjected to capricious or unreasonable oversight. In this sense, ''peon'' can be used in either a derogatory or self-effacing context. There are similar usages in contemporary cultures: * South A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés (born 4 January 1932) is a Spanish film director, photographer and writer. Along with Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar, he is considered to be one of Spain’s most renowned filmmakers. He has a long and prolific career that spans over half a century. His films have won many international awards. Saura began his career in 1955 making documentary shorts. He quickly gained international prominence when his first feature-length film premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 1960. Although he started filming as a neorealist, Saura quickly switched to films encoded with metaphors and symbolism in order to get around the Spanish censors. In 1966, he was thrust into the international spotlight when his film ''La Caza'' won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. In the following years, he forged an international reputation for his cinematic treatment of emotional and spiritual responses to repressive political conditions. By the 1970s, Saura was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Performance (film)
''Performance'' is a 1970 British crime drama film directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, written by Cammell and photographed by Roeg. The film stars James Fox as a violent and ambitious London gangster who, after killing an old friend, goes into hiding at the home of a reclusive rock star (Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones). The film was produced in 1968 but not released until 1970, as Warner Bros. was reluctant to distribute the film, owing to its sexual content and graphic violence. It initially received a mixed critical response, but since then its reputation has grown in stature; it is now regarded as one of the most influential and innovative films of the 1970s, as well as one of the greatest films in the history of British cinema. In 1999, ''Performance'' was voted the 48th greatest British film of the 20th century by the British Film Institute; in 2008 ''Empire'' magazine ranked the film 182nd on its list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. Plot Chas is a m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English singer and songwriter who has achieved international fame as the lead vocalist and one of the founder members of the rock band the Rolling Stones. His ongoing songwriting partnership with Keith Richards is one of the most successful in history. Jagger's career has spanned over six decades, and he has been widely described as one of the most popular and influential frontmen in the history of rock music. His distinctive voice and energetic live performances, along with Richards' guitar style, have been the Rolling Stones' trademark throughout the band's career. Jagger gained press notoriety for his romantic involvements and illicit drug use, and was often portrayed as a countercultural figure. Jagger was born and grew up in Dartford. He studied at the London School of Economics before abandoning his studies to join the Rolling Stones. Jagger has written most of the Rolling Stones' songs together with Richards, and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (; 28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003) was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel ''Los detectives salvajes'' ('' The Savage Detectives''), and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel '' 2666'', which was described by board member Marcela Valdes as a "work so rich and dazzling that it will surely draw readers and scholars for ages". ''The New York Times'' described him as "the most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation". In addition, the author enjoys excellent reviews from both writers and contemporary literary critics and is considered one of the great Latin American authors of the 20th century, along with other writers of the stature of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, with whom he is usually compared. Life Childhood in Chile Bolaño was born in 1953 in Santiago, the son of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Insufferable Gaucho
''The Insufferable Gaucho'' (''El Gaucho Insufrible'', 2003) is a collection of five short stories and two essays by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003). It was published in English in 2010, translated by Chris Andrews. During his lifetime, Bolaño made his name as a writer of short stories, and ''The Insufferable Gaucho'' collects a disparate variety of work. From its comical title story to the Kafkaesque "Police Rat", the book's wide spectrum of storytelling techniques "makes an ideal introduction to the Bolaño ''imaginaire''." Contents * "Jim" – A short tale about a troubled Vietnam veteran living as a poet in Mexico. * "The Insufferable Gaucho" – The title story of the collection is inspired by the Jorge Luis Borges story The South, which is mentioned in the story. The esteemed lawyer Héctor Pereda leaves Buenos Aires for a simpler life at a remote ranch on the pampas, and later returns to the city a changed man. (Its strange pampa "rabbits" are not fantasy b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blood Poisoning
Sepsis, formerly known as septicemia (septicaemia in British English) or blood poisoning, is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. This initial stage is followed by suppression of the immune system. Common signs and symptoms include fever, increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, and confusion. There may also be symptoms related to a specific infection, such as a cough with pneumonia, or painful urination with a kidney infection. The very young, old, and people with a weakened immune system may have no symptoms of a specific infection, and the body temperature may be low or normal instead of having a fever. Severe sepsis causes poor organ function or blood flow. The presence of low blood pressure, high blood lactate, or low urine output may suggest poor blood flow. Septic shock is low blood pressure due to sepsis that does not improve after fluid replacement. Sepsis is caused ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Present Tense
The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present tense, it is useful to imagine time as a line on which the past tense, the present and the future tense are positioned. The term ''present tense'' is usually used in descriptions of specific languages to refer to a particular grammatical form or set of forms; these may have a variety of uses, not all of which will necessarily refer to present time. For example, in the English sentence "My train leaves tomorrow morning", the verb form ''leaves'' is said to be in the present tense, even though in this particular context it refers to an event in future time. Similarly, in the historical present, the present tense is used to narrate events that occurred in the past. There are two common types of present tense form in most Indo-European lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Past Tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some having several types in order to indicate how far back the action took place. Some languages have a compound past tense which uses auxiliary verbs as well as an imperfect tense which expresses continuous or repetitive events or actions. Some languages inflect the verb, which changes the ending to indicate the past tense, while non-inflected languages may use other words, such as "yesterday" or "last week" etc to indicate that something took place in the past. Introduction In some languages, the grammatical expression of past tense is combined with the expression of other categories such as grammatical aspect (see tense–aspect). Thus a language may have several types of past tense form, their use depending on what aspectual or other ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knife Fight
A knife fight is a violent physical confrontation between two or more combatants in which one or more participants is armed with a knife.MacYoung, Marc, ''Winning A Street Knife Fight'', (Digital format, 70 min.), Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, (January 1993) A knife fight is defined by the presence of a knife as a weapon and the violent intent of the combatants to kill or incapacitate each other; the participants may be completely untrained, self-taught, or trained in one or more formal or informal systems of knife fighting. Knife fights may involve the use of any type of knife, though certain knives, termed fighting knives, are purposely designed for such confrontations – the dagger being just one example. History Traditional schools During the long history of the knife as a weapon, many systems or schools of knife fighting have developed around the world. Each is usually distinguished by region and culture of their origin. In past centuries the repeated invasion and conquest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Facón
A facón is a fighting and utility knife widely used in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay as the principal tool and weapon of the gaucho of the South American pampas.Shackleford, Steven, ''Blade's Guide to Knives & Their Values'', (7th ed.), Iola, WI: Krause Publications, , (2010), p. 395 Often fitted with an elaborately decorated metal hilt and sheath, the ''facón'' has a large, heavy blade measuring from 25 cm (10 in.) to 51 cm (20 in.) in length. History The ''facón'' is a derivation of the Portuguese ''facão'', a large-bladed fighting and utility knife that accompanied Portuguese explorers and émigrés during their settlement and exploration of Brazil.de Rementeria y Fica, Mariano, ''Manual of the Baratero'' (transl. and annot. by James Loriega), Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, (2005) Deprived of their ability to wear a sword by various edicts, Spanish '' caballeros'' in South America adopted the facón,Estrada, Santiago, ''Miscelánea: El Duelo'', Barcelona: Henr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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