Sirius the Dog Star & a Hot Havana Noon
Sunday, April 08, 2018
In our
recent trip to Mérida when we stopped at the Mexico City airport I immediately
went to a bookstore to see what I could find. I was rewarded in finding a very
new just released (2018) novel La Transparencia del Tiempo by my fave
contemporary Cuban writer Leonardo Padura (formerly going by the name of
Leonardo Padura Fuentes).
This novel
is unique in that it is all about a very today Havana in which our ex-cop,
bookseller and finder, Mario Conde is about to become 60. Padura’s protagonist
suffers a bit of existential ennui in a city in which Padura carefully skirts
what it is like to live in the regime of the moment.
But the
novel is unique in another way. I would not have been able to read this book
comfortably in pre-smart phone times. When I read Jorge Luís Borges, Mario
Vargas Llosa, Homero Aridjis or Julio Cortázar I do not have to constantly
consult a mataburros. The donkey killer is Castillian Spanish slang for
a dictionary.
Padura has
a way with words. Consider
the following:
Durante
demasiados años, muchas veces, habían comido gracias a las artes ocultas de
Josefina [una eximia cocinera de 80 años], pero nunca habían lapidado la ansiedad
nutritiva endémica sufrida a lo largo y ancho de sus vidas, como millones de
cubanos, cuyos estómagos habían sido custodiados durante décadas por la libreta
de abastecimiento, ¿o de desabastecimiento?, que les impedia morir de hambre y
no les permitía vivir sin hambre. Y por
eso, cumplido el momento estético, se lanzaron al ataque.
For too many years, often they had eaten thanks to culinary
magic of Josefina [a very good cook at 80], but they had never eliminated that
endemic nutritional anxiety of their whole lives, like many Cubans, whose
stomachs had been taken care of by a ration card , or an un-ration card?, which
prevented them from dying of hunger and did not prevent them from living
without hunger. That is why now faced with a table of food they went on the
attack.
My translation
Padura’s way with words goes further into the realm of words
I have never ever seen before. Every time I have read a novel in English with
the word inchoate I guess at its meaning. To this day I must look it up.
With Padura when reading in bed my smart phone is on the
night table ready for the word search.
Last night one word was this one:
Al llegar a
su casa y antes de regalarse una siesta que lo aliviara de la cañicula nasesina
del mediodía, Conde había llamado a su amigo Carlos.
When he got home and before gifting himself with a siesta
that would aleviate “the canicula “of the midday, Conde had called his friend
Carlos.
My translation
I had never seen this word, canícula before. I looked it up and it was
all about early summer heat. But I became curious with that route word cani.
This is what I found in Wikipedia en español:
La
canícula, período canicular o días de las canículas es la temporada del año en
la cual el calor es más fuerte, tanto en el hemisferio Sur como en el Norte
(desfasados seis meses entre sí). La duración oscila entre cuatro y siete
semanas, dependiendo del lugar.
La canícula
comienza unas semanas después del solsticio de verano (que ocurre el 21 de
junio en el hemisferio norte y el 21 de diciembre en el hemisferio sur); es la
época en la que el sol del mediodía está a la máxima altura posible sobre el
horizonte. Una fecha aproximada es el 14 de julio para el hemisferio norte.
My curiousity took me further:
De la
expresión canícula, derivada de canes / perros, y su alusión al fenómeno de
calor abrasivo, existe un fundamento astronómico: alude a la constelación Can
Mayor / Canícula [conocida así por Horacio, Blánquez, Tomo 1 (1985, 280)] y su
estrella Sirio, La Abrasadora, cuyo orto helíaco coincidía con el fenómeno de
calor abrasivo. Así lo ratifica el astrónomo Joachim Herrmann (1986, 148):
Su primera
salida, es decir su reaparición como estrella visible en el cielo de la mañana
después de su período de invisibilidad, coincidía hace algunos siglos con los
días más calurosos. De ahí proviene el calificativo de días perros.
Sin
embargo, debido a la precesión del eje terrestre, actualmente reaparece Sirio
en el cielo matutino a principios de septiembre. Según comenta Herrmann (1986):
La
procedencia de la denominación Sirio no está del todo clara. Tal vez el nombre
procede de la astronomía de la antigua Babilonia y (...) la misma palabra
significa también la abrasadora.
Por otra
parte, la gente de campo, sobre todo las personas mayores que se acostumbraron
a iniciar la siembra de sus cultivos mirando a las estrellas en los países de
América Central, notaban que cerca del 15 de julio el clima se secaba y no era
conveniente sembrar. Este tiempo seco terminaba cerca del 15 de agosto, en cuya
fecha reiniciaban la siembra. Este tiempo parecía coincidir con la posición de
la constelación del Can Menor en el cenit a la media noche, aproximadamente de
los 15 grados a los -15 grados del cenit. A este tiempo se le denominaba
canícula (can pequeño), por referirse al Can Menor.
In English it is as follows:
The dog days or dog days of summer are the hot, sultry
days of summer. They were historically the period following the heliacal rising
of the star Sirius, which Greek and Roman astrology connected with heat,
drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck. They
are now taken to be the hottest, most uncomfortable part of summer in the
Northern Hemisphere.
And in further detail as to the origin:
The English name is a calque of the Latin dies
caniculares (lit. "the puppy days"), itself a calque of the Greek
kynádes hēmérai (κυνάδες ἡμέραι, "dog
days") The Greeks knew the star α
Canis Majoris by several names, including Sirius (Σείριος, Seírios,
"Scorcher"), Sothis (Σῶθις, Sôthis, a transcription of
Egyptian Spdt), and the Dog Star (Κῠ́ων, Kúōn).The last name reflects the way Sirius follows
the constellation Orion into the night sky.
Sirius is by far the brightest proper star in the night sky,
which caused ancient astronomers to take note of it around the world. In Egypt,
its return to the night sky became known as a precursor to the annual flooding
of the Nile and was worshipped as the goddess Sopdet. In Greece, it became
known as the precursor of the unpleasantly hot phase of the summer. Greek poets
even recorded the belief that the return of the bright star was responsible for
bringing heat and fever with it; it was also associated with sudden thunderstorms.
In Homer's Iliad, probably composed in the 8th century BC but representing an
earlier tradition, Achilles' approach towards Troy, where he will slay Hector,
is illustrated through an extended metaphor about the baleful effects attending
the return of Sirius:
To anybody who remembers the film the 1975 Dog Day
Afternoon with Al Pacino you know it is about sticky heat.
So Conde is complaining of a very hot tropical noon which
he is going to alleviate with a siesta.
Further research informed me that the brightest star in
the night sky after our sun is Sirius which takes me to that lovely science
fiction book Sirius by Olaf Stapledon a writer whom I have read and admired for
years.
As for Padura’s novel my Galaxy is on the ready for further
consultation.
