The city of pigs. by Gerardo Muñoz
When describing the ideal archaic and primitive polity of basic needs at the beginning of The Republic (371e-373), Socrates willingly accepts Glaucon’s definition that this society will amount to a “city of pigs”. In the English translation of F.M. Cornford, just after Socrtates says that “(these people) lead such a healthy life in peace, they…
L’illusion comique of politics. by Gerardo Muñoz
In the November-December issue of Revista Sur in 1955, Jorge Luis Borges famously published “L’illusion comique”, an indictment against Peronism as a form of social theater, where melodramatic and overacted public liturgy energized the orchestrated pace of the modern mass politics. But unlike in Cornille’s baroque play, for Borges the political ensemble of the l’illusion…
Liturgical senses. On Cristina Campo’s Diario Bizantino (2026). by Gerardo Muñoz
Cristina Campo was a modern mystic who gravitated towards the liturgy of the poetic word. Now thanks to the scholarship of Victoria Cirlot, the Spanish reader is able to read her complete poetry in the bilingual edition Diario Bizantino: Poesía (1945-1977) (Siruela, 2026), which serves the missing companion to the essays collected in Los imperdonables…
Riverrun. On Catalina Porzio’s Ensayo del agua (2026). by Gerardo Muñoz
A hymn to the overflowing currents of water and language, Catalina Porzio’s Ensayo del agua (Mundana Ediciones, 2026) opens with a pindaric scene of celebration: “Una vez que la mano se ensambla a la copa olvida la autonomía que las rige….en esa comunión indisoluble, chocamos los cristales con estridencia y porfía por la satisfacción repetitiva…
Memory and hell. by Gerardo Muñoz
If a possible definition of hell is the incapability of finding an exit or escape, then it is tempting to say that the artificial construction of memory as perpetual remembrance is the ultimate hellish condition for human beings. This was the fictional nightmare in May Sinclair’ old gothic short story “Where their fire is not…
Painting in the evening of the world. by Gerardo Muñoz
That painting was an activity at the end of its long tradition – a tradition that perhaps coincides with the very genesis of anthropogenesis – appears explicitly in Cézanne’s late conversations with Joaquim Gasquet, which is full of rambling thoughts and anxieties. At some point in the dialogues, Cézanne says in context of the pictorial…
You are the task. by Gerardo Muñoz
Out of all of the Zürau aphorisms of Kafka there is one that reads as follows: “You are the task. No pupil far and wide (Du bist die Aufgabe. kein Schüler weit und breit) [1]. It resonates profoundly in our days as the idea of “education” and its inherited traditions are liquidated by the essence…
Excess and solitude. by Gerardo Muñoz
It is a commonplace to think that populations feel ‘lonely’ and ‘alienated’ from society, but perhaps this diagnosis is more of a prefigured talking point than the description of the state of things. In our present, solitude and retreat is a scarce good, as the chatter of automatized languages and images revolve without a moment…
The last tzaddik. by Gerardo Muñoz
According to the Talmudic tradition there is a certain number of just persons, called the tzaddikim, that exist in every generation. Their divine and singular existence is known only to God, and according to the tradition if the world continues to exist it is only for their sake. They live in the desert of the…
Peregrinus ubique. On Eduardo Prieto’s Los lugares de Petrarca (2026). by Gerardo Muñoz
Eduardo Prieto’s slim book Los lugares de Petrarca: Sobre naturaleza y soledad (Acantilado, 2026) counts not just as a book on the great Italian lyricist, but also as a coherent reflection on what it means to write and create from concrete places and in the mood of the genius loci. Before the world became infatuated…
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