Adventures in reprografía

"Oh, my gosh, how are you going to read that?"

exclaimed the Complutense lecturer whose class I guest taught on Monday when I ran into him by the coffee machines on my way out of the BNE today, and showed him the fruits of my labors, namely the paper pictured below:

Page from Rafael Alberti's notebooks. Go ahead, enlarge it and try to read it. I dare you.

Yes, this is the page I found yesterday at the end of my day, that gave rise to yesterday's long entry, and yes, I have succeeded in printing relatively decent copies from the microfilm (with the help of the nice white-coated microfilm attendant who kindly shook the toner and switched me from one machine to the other so I could make copies that did not have streaks).

As to the answer to "how am I going to read it?" the answer is "with difficulty."

I have yet to go to the "servicio de bibliografía y búsqueda" where you can consult a librarian, but that is on the schedule.  I may take the copy and throw myself on the librarian's mercy and ask to look at the original instead of the microfilm.  (The staff in the Sala Cervantes greet me by name now when I show up, so perhaps they'll put in a good word.)

In the meantime, I have made a little progress today, in that I think I at least know what I'm looking at besides sketches of giant heads that Rafael Alberti should have used a clean page for.  (I bet in elementary school he got very bad marks for penmanship.  I did not properly appreciate Dorothy Peterson and Langston Hughes, never mind real copper-plate writers like Bunny Rucker properly until trying to decipher him.)

I started out today searching out the "servicio de reprografia" to get a little cardboard copy card to stick in the reader above the microfilm machines.  (It's 15 cents a page, and I got a card with 20 copies, figuring that it would get used one way or another.  I now have 9 copies left.)  To find the place where you buy the cards (or show your approved book to the attendant before going and using the photocopy machines), you have to go through the big Sala General I described in an earlier entry, and then into a smaller sala, with a number of desktop computers on the tables, and the charmingly anachronistic sign on the bookshelves "Biblioteca de autores cristianos."  The shelves of the free standing book cases (not the ones on the walls) are about chest height, as if you were browsing in the children's section of a library, and the ones nearest the door are not "autores cristianos" but are in fact labeled "Clásicos Latinos¨and "Clásicos Griegos."  There follow very complete collections of Loeb, and also the equivalents of Loeb in French, German, and Spanish.  I think theology is actually along the far wall.

In any case, you go through the little reading room behind the big reading room and turn right and go through a door discreetly marked "reprografía" to get a card.  Then you retrace your steps and go all the way around the building again, through the museum displays and past the water fountains and snack machines and back to the Sala Cervantes to get to the microfilm machines.

I did this successfully, and as mentioned managed to make copies with a little help.  I was relieved to see that the notes I had taken were good for finding pages again, even on the microfilm, which means that my bibliography if and when I get around to actually putting this into thesis form will be ok.

But I'm honestly not sure how much help printing out the screens is.  It is easier to look at black on white than the reverse, but I've gotten used to squinting at the screen, and the ability to change the focus and zoom in and out does help a bit.  (Sometimes it's just letting your eyes go in and out of focus, or skipping back to a word you've missed.)  I tried to transcribe a little, and though I didn't get very far, I did manage to figure out that Alberti is referring to the specific title of a book, "Mapa de la poesia negra americana."  Googling told me that this book was published in Buenos Aires in 1946 (which fits perfectly with the location and approximate dating of the notebook, so that's good), but edited by one Emilio Ballagas, whom I have not heard of but probably should get to know.  Most fortunately there is a copy of the book in the big, pretty "Sala General" of the BNE, so I plan to go and request it, and take a look at what exactly counted as "poesía negra americana" in Buenos Aires in 1946, and also see if Rafael Alberti's name is anywhere on the book.  I thought at first the stuff in his notes might be by way of an introduction (which I can easily check by looking at a physical copy of the book), but if it isn't that, I'm pretty sure it's a review.  (No idea if the review was published anywhere, but if it was, it would be a lot easier to read the final product.)

In any case, I continue to tug at threads.  I was pleased that when I showed my Complutense colleague another page I had copied from a different notebook he definitely agreed that the line I had marked looked like it said "escribir a EEUU - Lang Hughes."  It's part of a to-do list, which also involves making drawings for a couple of poetry collections, and writing to a few other people.  I'm hoping if I can trace the poetry colletions he's drawing for I can put an approximate date on the to-do list.  So after my euphoric burst yesterday I'm back to patient detective work.  But at least it's a bit more directed now.  (Wish it was directed more toward Dorothy Peterson.  But that will come in time.)

IMPORTANT POSTSCRIPT:  I'm sort of assuming this blog counts as fair use and is not really publication (since it's really only for friends and family), but I'm not sure of the BNE's official policy on permissions for reproduction, so I may have to take down the picture above.  It's intended just as an illustration of my research process and I do not have any rights to it, and I do not want to be unethical, so please don't download or reproduce it in any way.  Many thanks.