A sonnet by Lorca!
"The poet asks his love to write to him."
One of his Dark Love Sonnets.
In red ink, on my back, under the right shoulder blade.
Tattooed!
Tattooed: "Love of my bowels, long live death / in vain I wait for your written word...". Little skin is left untattooed.
Here I see other verses...
"How much smell in the air, and the air takes it away." By Francisco Brines.
What does he put on his neck?
"By far, everything is more." Munoz Molina.
On the chest: "Bad Star".
And an epitaph by Manuel Machado for Alejandro Sawa.
Sawa, model for Max Estrella.
Bohemian lights, by Valle-Inclán: I read it when I was 13 years old, Max is my great anti-hero.
Read me that epitaph.
“Never a man more born for pleasure went to more direct pain. It is better to die and forget than to love and live.
Does it identify?
Yes: "It is more merit to let than to get." I tattoo phrases that mark me.
Read me this other one.
“Who loves you, invents you”. By Anthony Lucas. And in the sternum, where it hurts the most.
And here it says...
"Reading is finding what you were not looking for." From Vila-Matas. “If I don't read, I've only lived”, I paraphrase Annie Arnaux (“if I don't write, I've only lived”), because life is not enough.
A reader who tattoos what he read is rare.
Reader and professor of Literature.
A tattooed professor! Do they allow it?
Happily, because I was born to teach, it is my vocation: either a Literature teacher or nothing!
What do your students say?
Kids from 12 to 16 years old, from 1st to 4th of ESO: they are curious and listen to me.
It's already a lot.
“You only have one chance for a good first impression” (Carlos Marzal): this badass appearance helps me educate them so that they are not badass.
And what do you want them to be?
Readers! If they read they will be virtuous and lucid citizens, as Diderot proposed.
Do your tattoos encourage you to read?
They are motivated by my commitment to reading.
Does he show all his tattoos?
Come the visible. If you see this one of the twin...
A boy with a cap: beautiful drawing.
Holden Caufield, from The Catcher in the Rye: it was drawn by a student, Ainoa, from 2nd year of ESO, I liked it and I got a tattoo.
And what do the parents say?
Parents consent because they see that their children defend me.
And the address of the school?
They defend me, and let me take the students one afternoon a week to the neighborhood bookstore: there, without screens, surrounded by books, just paper and pen, we write.
What do they write?
Stories. And we read. And we talk. At the end of the course we will warp a book: Cuentos hilados, with its spine sewn with thread.
What other books would you recommend to readers of the first cycle of ESO?
Now Silence Comes, by Álvaro Colomer. And any work by the great Roald Dahl.
Others, for the second cycle of ESO.
Desire to be punk, by Belén Gopegui. And Lord of the Flies, by William Golding.
Further.
The house of Bernarda Alba, from Lorca: it impacts them more than it does them, the girls are more mature, more sponges... And much more sensitive to injustice.
He has mentioned Lorca to me twice.
The best man in Spain, a true saint of friendship.
What is literature?
A consolation. Help to survive.
And this tree next to Holden Caufield?
Illustrates the story The Last Leaf, by O. Henry.
count.
A woman looks at the tree through the window and tells her sister: "Tomorrow the last leaf will fall and I will die." A neighboring painter overhears the conversation through the wall. This artist hasn't made his masterpiece yet... and there he sees his great opportunity.
What are you doing?
Paint a leaf on the tree at night. The leaf does not fall. And so he saves the woman's life.
Art saves.
But... painting at night has made our painter sick with pneumonia. And... he dies.
Oh... Do you identify with that painter?
I asked the students to read a book and a student wrote me this e-mail on Sunday afternoon: “Teacher, I loved the book. I cried a little at the end. And it's not a joke."
And it's not a joke.
This is my masterpiece! Perhaps I will save a life... I trust not at the expense of my own.
