Trying a new angle

 

Rain and cool weather more typical of October blew me to the Complutense and into the Residencia de Estudiantes today

After heading to the Complutense in the morning for a really fascinating talk by the early modernist Luce López Baralt about the literatura aljamiada of the sixteenth century, I went to the Residencia de Estudiantes to follow up on the Gustavo Durán Martínez character I discovered earlier.

Briefly, so that the topic of Luce López Baralt's talk makes sense, because it was super interesting, aljamiada is the name given to work written by Spanish Muslims in a Romance language -- usually Castilian but also sometimes Portuguese or Valencià -- using Arabic characters.  It comes from an Arabic word meaning "foreign" or "not-Arabic."  There was quite a bit of this written in sixteenth century Spain, and it persisted up until the final expulsion of the moriscos in 1609.  Most of it was lost then, when people walled it up behind false partitions or buried it or similar because (don't I know it!) books are heavy and hard to carry when you're relocating, and there was the hope that you could come back for them soon.  Every so often another cache is found when an old wall falls down.  (I remember seeing an exhibit of books found in walls nearby at the Biblioteca Nacional, I think at the four hundredth anniversary of the expulsion.  Time flies.)  Professor López Baralt explained that the aljamiado texts have been relatively little studied because the first people to look at it recognized the writing as Arabic, and took it to Arabic speakers who read it phonetically and said "this is gibberish."  (Or rather, given a couple of funny 19th C quotes she used, "this must be some kind of North African dialect.  Or maybe Turkish.  Or maybe even from Iran, though it's hard to see how it got all the way to Spain.")  Spanish speakers can read sixteenth century Spanish pretty easily (more easily than English speakers read Shakespeare, even), so they would have recognized it, except that it wasn't transliterated, so they didn't know.  It wasn't until there were Spaniards who studied Arabic and looked at the manuscript that the nickel dropped.

Sing me a song, you're the piano man...

There's always a moment of quiet satisfaction when you figure something out.  That magical instant when you get confirmation that two people did indeed meet and you think bingo.

Today was a quiet day, devoted to reading, laundry, a little shopping, and a walk in the sunshine.  In fact, the only interesting thing I did was go and visit the British Cemetery and take pictures, in anticipation of a blog entry about the same.  It definitely deserves said entry, but perhaps I'll do that closer to Halloween.

I started playing around with research after getting home around sunset from a walk, simply because it was too early to have dinner.  (I try to keep on Spanish hours when I'm here, and although it's still abnormally warm weather, the sun sets around 8:00 now, and it's pretty dark by 8:30.)  A few people had recommended the Residencia de Estudiantes archive to me, as the natural complement to the Residencia de Señoritas, and even though I spent a couple of days there a couple of years ago, and know that sadly their online finding aid has little about Langston Hughes, I thought it couldn't hurt to add in Dorothy Peterson's name, and perhaps simply type in Fuente Ovejuna/Fuenteovejuna since that's the translation I'm pursuing info about at the moment for my Peterson chapter.

As I expected there were no hits (although I was amused to see that when I searched for "Dorothy" alone I found a translation of a work about Montessori Education by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who I am fond of as a children's novelist, in addition to Dorothy Parker, who I know was in Spain during the war, albeit briefly).  Then I decided, despairing, to go back to looking for Rafael Alberti, since I know he knew Hughes well, and I know that any search in the Edad de Plata archives of the generation of '27 is sure to feature him, even though his work is rather dispersed.  I was able to filter the search to "documentos" instead of published books, and noted a series of letters between him and one Gustavo Durán Martínez, spanning the time period I was interested in.

Time to open another tab in the browser.

The Archive Two-Step (Part 2)

You send an email here, you send an email there,

you do the hokey-pokey and you email everywhere...

 

My advisor at the Complutense tipped me off that while the archive of the Residencia de Estudiantes was lost during the Civil War, its companion the Residencia de Señoritas succeeded in maintaining its records (perhaps because the señoritas looked less like combatants than their male counterparts -- a common mistake made by people who haven't worked with adolescent boys and girls respectively).  He also helpfully told me what fundación currently has the archive.  However, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón's archives and library are cerrado por obras until January 2019.

I sent them a begging email yesterday, and received a kind response within an hour, saying that they had no record of Dorothy Peterson in their collection (a fellow Fulbrighter who is more experienced in research mentioned at the Madrid Fulbright picnic this afternoon that she never gives specific search terms to archives but instead only asks generalities, so they have no chance to say they have no material -- a good tip for the future), but that they had a computer available in a small section of the library that was rehabilitada where I could consult the digital catalogue of the archives if I wished, and to please let them know. 

Strike up the band for the archive two-step...

One step forward, two steps back.

So, aside from doing some shopping and cleaning and going for a bike ride today, I actually started doing my research project.  (Pause for shouts of tally-ho, and snufflings of blood-hounds.)

Following a tip from my sponsor at the Complutense, I looked up the Fundación Ortega y Gasset (and discovered that it is now the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Marañón), which currently occupies the building that was the Residencia de Señoritas, which accompanied the Residencia de Estudiantes, and was deeply involved in higher education for women in Spain in the early twentieth century.

Success!  The Fundación does hold the archives of the Residencia de Señoritas.  Even better, it includes extensive letters to and from alumnae, and the "expedientes" (or files) of its students.  Even more excitingly, these resources have not been extensively catalogued yet.  I know Dorothy Peterson was in Spain when the Residencia de Señoritas was active, and I know she mentions staying at the "Residencia de Estudiantes," which at the time would not have been co-ed.  So this looks like an excellent lead!

I was deeply excited for about fifteen minutes, while I tried to figure out the protocol for using the archive, and whether I would need my CSIC card, or another letter of introduction from the Complutense, or whether I should just show up.  The web page was not forthcoming.

So I did another Google search and -- despair!  The library and archive of the foundation are (according to another part of the fundación's web page) closed for renovations until January of 2019.

Aaargh.

They do have an email address that research inquiries can be directed to.  I am considering asking the nice people I know at the Complutense if they know anyone at the Fundación on whose mercy I can throw myself.  It's such a perfect re-play of what Arthur Schomburg writes about in "In Quest of Juan de Pareja," when he describes searching the Prado for a painting by Juan de Pareja and being told that it was on the third floor which was "cerrado por obras."  Lucky Schomburg managed to throw himself on the mercy of the director and beg that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that he had crossed the Atlantic for and could he please, please, please see the painting.  Unfortunately, jet travel has destroyed the "once in a lifetime opportunity" plausible excuse for trans-Atlantic travelers in Europe (though nowadays with the massive pilot strikes that are on the news here who knows?) but still, I only have one Fulbright year, and limited funds and time, and it would be so cool to find more traces of Dorothy Peterson, or even better more of her letters (she was a wonderful letter writer).  Or a draft (or drafts) of the article she published about Spain.  But alas...no guarantees.

So that was today's elation and disappointment in research news.  Fingers crossed that other leads work out.  In the meantime, I've been thinking about how to structure the Peterson chapter, and what to look for about her while I'm here (aside from every single scrap of writing I can lay my hands on).

The archive two-step can be exhausting, but it's exhilarating when you bound forward, and this is just barely the beginning of the first set.  I'm going to get all the way around the dance floor yet.