Entries tagged with català

Entry tags:

català,
español

Al autobús

I don't read books in foreign languages to show off. I read books in foreign languages because I think this is preferable to reading them in English. Still, when I am reading a book in something other than English in public, there's a small part of me hoping someone will notice--despite the fact that this is something which almost never ever happens.

So I was caught quite off guard today when the man sitting next to me on the shuttle glanced over and blurted out "You speak Spanish!" We've ridden next to each other probably a half dozen times or more. If I'm ambitious enough to catch the early run, I almost end up next to him because, like me, he prefers the seat which is close to the door and has slightly more leg room than the others. He's a bit of a lavaballer, so the first time I ended up thighwrestling with him and even passive-aggressively offered to exchange seats and give him the aisle if he needed to "spread out a bit". He demurred; until today, those were the only words we'd exchanged.

In his opinion, Manuel Puig "isn't easy for learners", which is ironic given that relative ease was a major factor in why I chose him. I told him I found him easier going than Bolaño or García Márquez and he couldn't really argue with that. I tried expressing this in Spanish, but mangled it so bad at first that he thought I was asking where he was from. Naturally I was curious about that, too.

"You know where is Valencia? On the east coast? I'm from a town north of there. It's called Castellón."

"Castelló de la Plana? So, parles català?" Not wanting to offend, I amended, "O valencià?"

"Sí, parlo català."

"Llegeixo català també!" I told him--chuffed that I'd managed to get the first word out in recognisable form. This was just as the shuttle reached my stop, however, so we brought the convo to quick conclusion by introducing ourselves. (Naturally, I forgot how to say "Molt de gust!" but, having tried to remember that, didn't dare change gears and say, "¡Mucho gusto!" for fear of bolloxing it. Codeswitching is still not something I can pull off.)

So now, depending on how well I'm braining early in the morning, I either have an incentive to catch the early shuttle again and pick up where we left off or purposely sleep in and not have my terrible conversational skills put to the test.

Entry tags:

Elemental

Of course, one of the things I told myself I would do over the long weekend is read. Predictably, I didn't do much. You could say I finished two books, but I had less then ten pages to go in each, so that's hardly saying anything. One was a collection of short stories by Manly Wade Wellman, which I was deliberately taking my time with. (Wish I'd dispensed with it on a stronger note than "And the Hairy Ones Shall Dance".) The other was Plaça del Diamant, which I think sets a personal record for most time elapsed between beginning and finishing a novel. (I can't remember when I first started it, but I know it was twenty years ago when I last made a serious push.)

It pains me to acknowledge that my Spanish-reading skills have at long last eclipsed my skill at reading Catalan. This shouldn't surprise, given that I've only ever read three Catalan novels in my life (and that's including Rodoreda) but it's the degree of the disparity that's dismaying. When I was contrasting reading Catalan authors to reading, say, Gabriel "Crazy Jungle Spanish" García Márquez, this wasn't quite so noticeable. But the Bolaño reads so easy in comparison to Rodoreda, despite the fact that the latter is deliberately narrated in the voice of a working-class woman with limited education.

On the other hand, there could be the same odd sort of reversal at play that

zompist alluded to in our recent convo. He mentioned that his native Spanish-speaking wife was impressed he could read Borges, but he pointed out that what makes his prose difficult tends to be the diction, namely that he uses a lot of upper-register vocabulary the average speaker isn't familiar with. But in Spanish as in English, these words tends to be Latinate and so the overlap is considerable. The bigger your vocabulary in English, the more of that transfers over into Western Romance languages.

By contrast, it's the colloquial level of vocabulary that you're likely to struggle with, and all bets are off when it comes to slang. That was my biggest worry with the Bolaño, since the milieu is college students in Mexico City in the 70s. But it helps that the narrator is somewhat of a pseudointellectual, so the style is more formal than it might otherwise be. So far there's only been one dialogue that was incomprehensible without reference to a lexicon of Mexican slang. There's not much actual slang in the Rodoreda, but some of the words do seem very specific to early-20th-century Barcelona (to the extent that even larger monolingual Catalan dictionaries omit them).

The upshot is that, even though I mostly neglected it over the weekend, I polished off the first part of Detectives salvajes on the shuttle this morning. However, Diego did warn me that this is also the easiest part, with the going getting steadily harder through the big fat middle section. I plan to keep that in mind and not get discouraged. Normally, I take along an English-language work for when I need a respite from reading a foreign novel, but I haven't felt the need of one yet. If I'm too tired for Ulises and Arturo, I'm pretty much too tired to read anything at all, and that's refreshing.

Entry tags:

català,
reading

Scent of a dove woman

I would probably have finished Parfum about a week or so earlier if I hadn't already seen the movie and thus been able to anticipate the major plot points. It's written well enough not to suffer from spoilers, but this does make rushing to read the next chapter less pressing. Well, perhaps the ending is less shocking the second time around. I managed to forget the climax until I was right on top of it, though.

Only two things about it really bothered me. The first of these was a middle sequence which doesn't feature in the film at all. Supposedly, the protagonist hides out in cave surviving only on water dripping down a cliff face and the occasional dead bird or reptile. For seven years. And then when decides to descend, he manages to do it without dying despite the fact that he'd be suffering from scurvy, pyorrhoea, marasmus, and god only knows what else. For some reason, I can swallow the conceit of being able to sniff out an individual human being from a mile away in a city of half a million but not this. Given the folkloric resonance of "seven years", I kept wondering if there was some allegorical dimension I was missing, but as far as I can see making it a believable six months would've detracted nothing from the overall work.

The other was the heterosexism. It's not so obvious in the film; presumably Grenouille is seeking out female victims because he's underlying heterosexual (despite not having any sort of recognisably normal sexual expression). During the big orgy scene, there's too much going on to tell whether all the couplings are opposite-sex or not. But Süskind makes very explicit in the book his narrow definition of attraction. Grenouille's perfumes make women want to hump him and men want to be him. I mean, yeah, he wrote this in Bavaria in 1985. But 1985 is late in Europe not to be acknowledging same-sex attraction in literature--particularly in a book that's not shy about trotting out incest or cannibalism for more than just shock value.

Two weeks ago, I was struck by the need to read some Catalan again but all I had handy was Quell merdé hurrible de via Merulana, which is rather tough going for someone so out of practice. It didn't take me too much searching, however, to uncover some books I bought in Barcelona in 1991--part two of the Antologia de contes catalans published by Edicions62 and my well-worn copy of La placa del Diamant by Mercè Rodoreda. Kind of a mystery to me why I never finished reading the latter despite making two attempts. I'm chugging along now though, and not having to look up too too many words, albeit way more than I'd like to.

Entry tags:

Embrujado

Okay, I guess I'm reading El embrujo de Shanghai after all. I jumped around for a bit, now I've gone back to beginning and begun reading it straight through, which gives me a chance to speed-read the parts I'd struggled through already and look up interesting new words. With few exceptions, I don't actually need to translate these in order to get the gist of the passages where they're found, but I want to. I find I'm really loving Marsé's diction (¡Por fin, un autor leísta!) and whose life isn't more enriched by learning some Barcelona slang of the 40s?

So far the most interesting word I've come across is tebeo which my sources translate as "(children's) comic". But Wiktionary/Wikipedia goes much further, telling me:

[The title of the Spanish comics digest] TBO is pronounced in Spanish almost the same as "te veo", "I see you". It was so popular that tebeo is now a generic word for "comic book" in Spain.

Neat! Trinxa, representing one of the few instances of Catalan code-switching so far, is a runner-up. The basic meaning seems to be "waistline", but in context ("esa padilla de trinxes") it's a shortening of trinxeraire "street urchin". (The explanation in the DLC is that a trinxeraire is one that sleeps in a trinxera or "trench".)

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"Honey Child, you're not safe here!"

The trip back to Chicago was as smooth as supermarket yoghurt. Southwest said my plane was ten minutes delayed, but after my Christmas debacle I refused to believe them and in fact it left on time. I caught the Orange Line by a whisker and the Devon bus as well, getting me home in good time for the best meal I've had in a week. (Last night I ate reubens; tonight we toasted our own multigrain pita chips and then spread them with bleu cheese and honey-soaked walnuts and pinenuts. I don't mean to dis hospitality, but seriously no contest.)

Much to blog about Missouri, including the complete wildflower roster from our day in Ha Ha Tonka and the freshly-updated Crazy Report (executive preview: lots more crazy!). But of course I'm exhausted so all I have for now is this charming video from Diego and Uncle Betty. Never heard of Manel before, but I'm interested in hearing more. And Sergi López has never looked hotter!

Entry tags:

català,
vocabulary

(no subject)

Fraseologia acollonant

Entry tags:

català,
dreams

Una primera vegada per a tot

Is it possible that I haven't had a dream where I spoke Catalan before this morning? I certainly don't remember one. I was part of a team that was interviewing musical performers from around Spain. My partner, who handled the Spanish, was complaining that, of the "Catalan" pop group we were interviewing today, only two of the members spoke Catalan and they weren't even "los mas importantes". (I wish I could remember the group's name, because it was long and florid.)

What I found most interesting is that, in keeping with the official policy of the Generalitat, he spoke Spanish to me and I replied in Catalan. This all worked well until I shrugged off his complaint with "Què fer?" It took a couple reformulations to hit upon one which said anything to him, namely, "Què farem?" I suppose it's a lot easier to discern the relationship between this and "¿Qué haremos?" than it is to connect ['kɛ'fe] with ['kea'θeɾ].

Entry tags:

català

De porc i de senyor

Here's an odd saying I came across while plying the web last night:

Sant Antoni es va enamorar d'un porc, Sant Joan d'un be, i jo de vostè.

(Roughly: "Saint Antony fell in love with a pig, Saint John with a sheep, and I with you.")

There are a number things which struck me about this. The first one is the use of the formal you, vostè (the Catalan equivalent of Usted). During a discussion a while ago on

linguaphiles of the difficulties of finding equivalents for "I love you", we talked about how odd some of the versions in European languages sound with formal second-person pronouns. As I pointed out, I don't think I've ever in my life heard anyone say "Ich liebe Sie". However, this formulation was probably as much if not more common than the familiar equivalent a few generations ago.

The second is, of course, Why a pig? The best justification I can come up with is the iconography. For some reason, Saint Anthony is often pictured with a pig. (One site I came across suggests that this is because pork fat was once commonly used to treat skin ailments, which he was invoked against.) Supporting this, there is the variation Sant Antoni es va enamorar d'un porc, Sant Roc d'un gos, i jo de vós, which substitutes Saint Roch and a dog for Saint John and his sheep (as well as another, older formal pronoun--vós--for vostè). (I take it I don't have to remind anyone of the legend according to which Saint Roch was saved from death by a dog who brought him bread and licked his wounds.) But I still can't explain Saint John and the sheep. I'm trying to remember if he's ever pictured with the Lamb of God, and I'm not recalling anything.

And the third thing--why would you say this to anyone? More than anything it reminds me of the opening lyrics of the New Order song "Every Little Counts": "Every little counts / When I am with you / I think you are a pig / You should be in a zoo."

Entry tags:

català,
tunes

El cant dels ocells en IPA

En veure despuntar
el major lluminar
en la nit més ditxosa,
els ocellets cantant
a festejar-lo van
amb sa veu melindrosa.

əm'bɛwɾə ð̞əspun'ta
əɫmə'jo ʎumi'na
ənɫə'nit 'mez ð̞i'ʧozə
əɫzusə'ʎɛts kən'tan(t)
əfəstə'ʒaɾɫu 'β̞an
əmsə'β̞ɛw məɫin'dɾozə

Cantava el passerell:
"Oh, que hermós i que bell
és l'Infant de Maria!"
I alegre diu el tord:
"Vençuda n'és la mort,
ja neix la vida mia."

kən'taβ̞əɫ pəsə'ɾeʎ
'o kəɾ'mozi kə'β̞eʎ
'ez ɫin'fan ð̞əmə'ɾiə
jəɫ'eɣ̞ɾə 'ð̞iw əɫ'toɾ(t)
bən'suð̞ə 'nez ɫə'mɔɾ(t)
'ʒa 'neʃ ɫə'β̞ið̞ə 'miə

I l'àliga imperial
pels aires va volant
cantant amb melodia,
dient: "Jesús és nat,
per treure'ns del pecat
i dar-nos alegria."

i'ɫaɫiɣ̞ə⁀jmpəɾi'aɫ
pəɫz'ajɾəz 'β̞a β̞u'ɫan
kən'tant əmməɫu'ð̞iə
di'en jə'zuz 'ez 'nat,
pəɾ'tɾɛwɾənz ð̞əɫpə'kat
i'ð̞aɾnuz əɫə'ɣ̞ɾiə

Notes: Yeah, the coronals should all have bridges underneath to show they're dental, but life is a little too short. The more I sing this to myself, the more I think all those shwas and dark l's might be a bit overwhelming. As I've said before, I don't know if there is a special singing pronunciation for Catalan, but I imagine you could replace the shwas with [a] or [e] as appropriate (let the orthography be your guide) for a sweeter effect.

(And, yes, normally I wouldn't be caught dead posting a carol before Thanksgiving, but this was a special request from someone with a deadline.)

Entry tags:

False Friend of the Day

LLORO "parrot" (Catalan); "crying" (Spanish)
What I Read: "...y hasta sus risas sonaban a lloros."
What I Understood: "...and even his laughs sounded like parrots."
What It Means: "...and even his laughs sounded like weeping."

Entry tags:

català,
vocabulary

Inquiet i bellugadís

My new favourite word is bellugadís. Given the sad state of my memory banks, I'm not sure if it's a word I once knew and let evaporate from the sponge or a truly new discovery. For all of my languages, there is a solid core of words that are in my active vocabulary or at least the brighter areas of my passive vocabulary. Surrounding them is a vast expanse of darkness shrouding thousands of words and expressions that I've never learned. And then there at the border is a wide penumbra of words that are only somewhat familiar. Most likely, I came across them a few times in texts here and there. Context gave me a vague grasp of their meaning, so I never bothered to look them up; I can recognise them, but I can't define them.

In any case, what brought this gem in from either the inner or the outer darkness is reading the short stories of Martínez Ferrando, an early 20th-century author from Valencia. He's very fond of bellugar and its derivatives--at least, if it was used as much by other authors like Pere Calders or Mercè Rodoreda, I'm sure it would've stuck. In origin, it's a metathesised variant of bullegar from Vulgar Latin *bullicare "bubble" and has the basic meaning of "move about". (French bouger is a cognate.) Bellugadís is a derived adjective meaning "always moving about". When I first read it, I thought it meant "making noise", probably because of a subconscious association with German bellen. And, of course, interference from English causes me to associate it with whales and caviar, even though it's pronounced quite different. The ll is palatal consonant as in Spanish, which triggers an association with Catalan bell "beautiful". All in all, quite a rich little web of meaning.

Entry tags:

català,
vocabulary

WotD: Fireplace Vocabulary V

Catalan

el llar (de foc) "hearth, fireplace"
el fogar "fireplace, hearth"
la xemeneia "chimney; fireplace; smokestack"
el fumeral, el canó "flue"
el registre "damper"
la campana de la xemeneia "chimney hood"
la lleixa de la xemeneia "mantlepiece"
la pantalla "fire screen"
el guardafoc "fireguard"
la graella "fire grate"
el rerefoc "hearth back"
el capfoguer "fire-dog, andiron"
la burxa(foc) "poker"
el manxó "bellows"
els molls "fire tongs"
la llenya "firewood"
el tió "log"
l'encenedor "firelighter"
el sutge "soot"

Entry tags:

català

El català més català

A discussion of the relationship between Spanish and Catalan reminded me of a list I'd seen in The Romance languages (Oxford, 1988) of the core distinctive vocabulary of Catalan. Max Wheeler took a list of the 800 most common words based on vocabulary counts done by Josep Llobera [El català bàsic (Barcelona, 1968)], pared away the 4/5ths that were not "etymological distinct from their most likely Spanish translation", and then went on to weed out those which were not etymologically distinct from their most likely translation in French, Italian, or Occitan. The result is a list of 52 words.

I thought it would be fun to take about half of these, search for or contstruct phrases and short sentences incorporating them, and then post those here to see what sense speakers of other Romance languages could make of them, if any. Keep in mind that none of these words are in any way obscure; they are neither slang nor literary, but in current ordinary use. The snippets come from a variety of sources, including the titles of books and TV programmes, as well as poetry and song lyrics. I've purposely kept them short since more context would make them easier to guess. Have at it!

VESPRES TANCAT
Aixeca'm més amunt.
No hi ha cap forat a la butxaca.
La gent duu barret.
El meu avi va cridar el capellà.
L'aigua es treia amb una galleda.
Mitjons bruts o pitjor que han perdut la parella.
Renta-ho amb un raspall tou.
Aquest noi m'estima molt.
El paleta s'ha endut el tros de fusta.
Gos dolent!
Grills esmolen ganivets a trenc de por.
És només soroll.
No els hi agrada gens ni mica.
Fins aviat!

Entry tags:

C is for Catalan

Teach yourself Catalan Yates, Alan. Sevenoaks : Hodder and Stoughton, 1986.

This is one of those books which I can say literally changed my life. The year was 1990. It was exam week of spring quarter and I was feeling restless, unfocussed. In a burst of escapism, I bought this book from the Seminary Co-op--which to this day maintains a cell just past the checkout counter barely 1.5 x 1.5 metres and lined with an incredible range of language learning materials. (If that sounds more-or-less like an Orgasmatron for language freaks like me, it is.)

I'm still not sure what exactly drew me to it. I'd only learned of the existence of Catalan a few years earlier, probably from Mario Pei. My only experience with learning a Romance language had been high-school Spanish, which I ended up taking mainly because they didn't offer German and it seemed more practical than Latin and less foofy than French, my remaining options. My teacher Mr Schriewer I grew to like a great deal, but I never came to appreciate the language in the same way.

With Catalan, on the other hand, it was love from first sight. A lot of that, frankly, was the book itself. I checked out a much older instructional text from the library--I remember poring over it while staying over at my Gay Godfathers' summer home that summer--but I soon forgot about it; if that had been my only textbook, I never would have persevered. To this day, Yates' Teach yourself Catalan remains for me a masterpiece of concision and engagement, the standard by which I judge all other books in the series. Its organisation and layout are exceptional; explanations clear and succinct; the exercises and example sentences are simultaneously useful, natural-sounding, and interesting; the reading samples were appropriate and amusing.

This was my first exposure to the work of Pere Calders, and if I don't love him as I once did, I've never regretted the time I devoted to learning his œuvre. Less than a year after reading this first short story, I bought his Cròniques de la veritat oculta at a shop in the Barri Xinès of Barcelona; before too long, I head read every story in it, some of them as many as five times or more. It was the impetus for my one real attempt at literary translation, as I sought a means of making his wonderful work accessible to my friends who didn't read Catalan. (Which is to say, all of them.)

The cheap paperback wasn't built to withstand the wear of being carted to Germany and thence to Spain (where I made my first feeble attempts to speak a language I'd never actually heard before); the cover has fallen off and I don't know how much longer the text block will stay together, but I've never considered replacing it. In my shelf of Teach Yourself books, it still has pride of place.

Entry tags:

català

(no subject)

Vocabulari nou del conte Alcoi-Nova York de Isabel-Clara Simó.

acerciorar
afalagar
amanyac/amanyagar
atuir
bata
biberó
cot/cotar
desafinar
esmussar
fer cas
fer il·lusions
ferreny
gemec/gemegar
maldar

Entry tags:

català,
dreams

No puc evitar els miquels ni en somnis

No he dormit molt bé, probablement a causa de la sidra que vaig beure a Big Chicks. Els meus somnis no eran tant interessants, fora d'un: Estava en Alemanya, però en un restaurant on tothom parlava el castellà. Encara no em vaig decidir a dinar allí o no i estava posant al personal preguntes en castellà sobre els apats. Oferia un plat de fideus molt estrany que tenia un nome gairbé eslàvic i em semblava molt saborós, però no vaig trobar molt intel·ligible la descripció que em donaren. Per fi, vaig tenir l'idea per a preguntar cada u "¿Habla mejor el castellano o el catalan?" Quan tots em van dir "el català", vaig assajar parlar-hi en català, pero això no va tenir bon èxit: Em van quedar mocat, dient que parlava massa lentament, i van començar a dirigir-se a mi en anglès.

Entry tags:

català

Una llengua singular

According to

bunj, e.'s mother picked up Rodoreda's La plaça del Diamant while they were in Spain. I'll be curious to see what she has to say. To my shame, I've never managed to read it to the end despite several attempts. It's not that it's difficult or unrewarding, but I keep getting bogged down in trying to squeeze every drop of meaning I can out of it instead of reading for the gist, like I do with Borges, Lu Xun, or Maupassant. Silly me.

In any case, it still amuses me no end how Catalan alternatively looks (a) so close to Spanish a translation seems superfluous and (b) so completely different you can't imagine how anyone could confuse them. The Spanish translation of La plaça del Diamant is La plaza del Diamante. But Rodoreda's novel Mirall trencat becomes in Spanish Espejo roto.

Entry tags:

català

Una volta sobre la neu

Quan m'he despertat per la primera vegada aquest matí era abans de la sortida del sol i el cel era taronja. Savia que era l'efecte d'els llums del carrer de sodi a baixa pressió i m'he adonat que el cel s'havia tornat nuvolat. Sentia el soroll suau de gotes sobre les finestres i he conclòs que plovia.

Quan m'he despertat de debò, he vist que havia estat en l'error: Era la neu que queia i no pas la pluja. He mirat el nivell intacte de neu sobre la terra i tot seguit he resolt de fer una volta pel parc.

Entry tags:

català

Catalan pronunciation for Spanish speakers

Vowel system Catalan has a seven-vowel system, with two more distinctive vowels than Spanish. e and o each exist in an open and a close variety. The open versions are similar to the Standard English "short vowels" in bed and off, respectively. The close versions are like the Spanish vowels in eso.
Diphthongs Catalan has a lot falling diphthongs ending in /w/. Except for au, there are no equivalents in Spanish. eu is like Spanish au, but with a different vowel--either open or close e (depending on the word) followed by a short u sound. Catalan ou sounds a lot like English owe.
Palatals From the point of view of a Spanish speaker, Catalan is lleísta. ll is never pronounced like y. Most guides will tell you that it's pronounced "like the 'll' in million" and while this isn't strictly accurate, it's close enough for government work. Note that it has this sound in every position, even at the end of a word like ocell. The same is true of ny, which is the equivalent of Spanish ñ.
Sibilants Catalan is seseante; "soft" c is always [s], never "lisped". Furthermore, where Spanish has only /s/, Catalan has both /s/ and /z/. The letter s is pronounced [z] between voiced sounds. To show the /s/ sound between vowels, Catalans write ss or ç.
Shibilants and affricates Catalan lacks the sound of Spanish jota. j and "soft" g are pronounced as in French genre or rouge. Catalan also has a voiced affricate like English j which is written either tj or tg, depending (e.g. pitjor, Sitges). It has a sound like English sh which is written (i)x and one like English or Spanish ch which is usually written tx (or, at the end of some words, ig, e.g. roig, vaig.) Lastly, it has a sound like the ds in English bids which is written tz.
Silent letters Catalan has a number of silent letters in final position. t is generally silent after n, but reappears in front of a vowel. r is dropped in many words. It's silent in infinitives except when clitic pronouns follow. Other consonants may be devoiced finally, e.g. bard rhymes with art.
Liaison Like French, Catalan has many vowel and consonant liaisons. In addition to the ones already mentioned (e.g. vaig canta(r) vs. cantar-hi), /s/ often becomes [z] before voiced sounds (e.g. pel[z] ulls. When two like vowels come together, one is deleted, e.g. que elegant, pronounced as if quelegan.
Velarisation One feature of Catalan is strikingly similar to English: After vowels, /l/ is "dark" or velarised. If you pronounce Catalan pèl just like English pell, you'll actually be quite close to the true pronunciation.
Stress In general, the same stress-placement rules apply. The biggest exceptions I can think of are words ending in -n (stressed on the final syllable except when it is -en, e.g. Duran vs. duren) and those ending in -ia. In Catalan, the i is assumed stressed unless there's an accent elsewhere on the word (e.g. glòria). Actually, I think this goes for all two-vowel finals (e.g. seminua, canteu, etc.).
Vowel reduction Catalan has a seven-vowel system only for the stressed vowels. For unstressed vowels, there number of distinctions varies from five to three. At the very least, the distinction between open and close vowels is lost. In Eastern Catalan (including the pronunciation of Barcelona), o falls together with u and e with a. Thus, paramà and per amar sound the same, as do ollal and ullal.

Now practice along with me: Setze jutges d'un jutjat mengen el fetge d'un penjat. "Sixteen judges from a tribunal eat the liver of a hanged man."

Entry tags:

català

If they had had more of these around when I was a young, I might still be Catholic!

Avui vaig estar fullejant el catàleg d'un exposició recent en les Illes Canàries. En un dels quadres, del mallorquí Bernadí Roig, figura un Sant Jeroni (el patró de bibliotecaris), madur, panxut, bigotut--

Nu i cru.

Amb una ereció acomodada sobre una calavera.

Si hi hagués hagut més icones com aquesta a les isglèsies de la meva joventut, potser seria encara catòlic!