LLEI D'ART 11

and what he sees reaches that which Nietzsche demands before speaking with God. In a letter sent to his friend Alfonso Nadal from the town of Polop on the 10 th of June 1921, in which he has the idea to write the book, which took seven years to write, Miró says: ‘I need to wait for myself, and to wait for the work to be forged as one.’ On various occasions I have heard Álvaro Delgado tell how, during a meeting at Eugenio D’Ors’s house, whilst the latter was attending to his guests, Antonio Saura was flirting with a young painter. Delgado called her ‘a lovely young filly’ and Don Eugenio, pausing, exclaimed ‘Can you believe how attentive these abstracts are to the specific?!’ I must, however, insist on the need to marry ‘the imaginary’ with ‘the specific’, but never losing sight of reality. Azorín wrote a brief treatise, Gabriel Miró: in memoriam , published in the sixth book of his Complete Works (Madrid: Aguilar, 1947, pp. 999-1025) with texts from 1905 and from 1930-33, including its presentation at the Academy. II Reading . Reading is living intensely, but in a different way. It opens windows to knowledge, information and intelligence; it places us and interrelates us. To read is to fine-tune your sensitivity, which is not just luck, but a rule of feeling, a plantation of emotions. The habit of reading saves, teaching, never disappoints, and places us before a vast, extensive reality. Reading is soteriological, whichever form it may take. Eduardo de Prado, a friend and proven bibliophile, a man of a thousand wisdoms, is quite taken with the e-book and defends it as a medium of reading. The habit of reading is a slow burner with a vocation of eternity. Children must be provided with books in their infancy on their favourite topics, whichever these may be: when the child uncovers the mystery of whatever his interest is through the written word, he is initiated into a process of information and creation of the habit of reading, which will be consolidated as he grows. I like books; touching them, caressing them, closing them whilst reading to stage the events in my mind during those magic moments that make you dream or repeat or discover. Afterwards, you continue your adventure of making the events your very own, for when you are devoted to the book, when it becomes yours, you no longer remember the author or anyone else, you absorb the poet’s pain and love. Reading is all the same thing, but the effect it has depends on the medium, the manner and, of course, the content. It is not the same thing to read a book, a magazine or a newspaper. All on my own, I read four newspapers a day, La Vanguardia , El País , ABC and El Mundo . I edit and set aside anything that takes my interest. On a Sunday afternoon I read articles, reports, interview and informative articles for four or five hours. This is a great exercise – the same content is treated in various ways in each medium; sometimes, it has little interest beyond that very moment. Some pieces are archived or put in a book of the author mentioned. Poetry cannot be read everywhere, but a novel can. Poetry requires solitude, time and space. I read poetry every night, but in a different way every time. Sometimes, I put the book down after reading some poems, or sometimes I carry on, making notes, annotating. I look and wait for the spark, the word that is lit up, the burst of smoke that keeps the magic under wraps…if it does not come to me, I give up, and wait some more. At some other time, I return to it, and try again, always hoping to find the poetry, where a word flows after another, making sparks fly. Reading newspapers gives a sense of the day-to-day; Reading books reinforces your feelings, moulds you and brings you things you didn’t know you were looking for. A journalistic article is like a flash in a pan; a book is like a fire that you must quench with thirst. A magazine’s brief essay falls between both of them: it is usually a specialist’s piece, a hypothesis, and thematic study. Reading informs, comforts, and brings sources to light and makes them valued. On the screen, text needs to be short and the font concise, otherwise, it is trash or a show for the gallery. The authority of the book, forever untouchable, is being lost, and the computer has not yet found the way to separate the dross from the genuine article, the wheat from the chaff in the maze of the internet. The mixture is dangerous; many have been hunted, plagiarised, for showing their hand by chance. III Sunday afternoon . I lock myself in my library with a selection of cut-outs from newspapers, magazines and catalogue. I have an initial purge and keep back what interests me: the interest is led by the writer, the illustration, the topic and the title. The heading is something of an indication, but it can be deceptive –it matters not! You read an article and soon see that it’s not especially interesting, or has nothing to do with what you thought it would, so you leave it and move on to another. You note down the odd phrase, and think about what you have just read. I shall start: a review of a work of Adonis by Antonio Colinas, a bit whiny; an article by Luis María Anson, another by Enric González; various obituaries for Pepe Hernández –he’s treated like some arcane character, as if they were talking about a wizard rather than a painter. A justification from Clara Rocha about the awarding of the Jacinto do Prado Coelho prize to Eduardo Lourenço for his book Tempo da música. Música do tempo (Time of Music; Music of Time). An interview with Nuno Júdice that I’ve not underlined anything about, from El País , because of his awarding of the Queen Sofia Prize from Ibero-American poetry. References to Bob Dylan, decorated by the French and for his sculpture exhibition at London’s Halcyon Gallery. An essay by Miguel Viribay on José Elbo. A text by Joan de Sagarra about Camus. A short reflection by Esperanza Aguirre, and more Albert Camus by Francesc de Carreras. This professor writes a lesson of his impartiality and knowledge each week in La Vanguardia . He plants seeds of his liberal attitude with unarguable clarity and thought: Francesc de Carreras. A report by Arturo Pérez-Reverte on graffiti, and interview with Xesús Alonso Martero, President of the Royal Galician Academy, professor of literature, 33