Faced with one of many such rambling, intellectual and profound articles that still say nothing right-wing.

by Javier Viñeta

A concert of screeching clarions
with an air of importance and little grace;
if rational, perhaps fallacy,
even if it was nonsense long before.

Stifling sophist's flunkies
who offer so much; whether it be contumacy
or, already more successful, disgrace,
to all their expectant puppies.

I remember when I heard the loud boast:
"Do not doubt, on the topic there have been signed
countless, countless manuscripts have been signed";

and I, inwardly equally amazed,
I thought: "Because his fruits are infinite
I never judged the unnamed more worthy (1)".

I wrote this sonnet out of sheer frustration. The status is this: one day I was reading some stories from Juan RulfoRulfo, and I remember being particularly interested in one that struck me as deliciously written. So much so that I decided to investigate possible interpretations of it, just to exhaust my curiosity a little. What I didn't think was that it would dry up so quickly. It turns out that, to my misfortune, the first thing I found on topic was a wonderful article that analysed the story at core topic... Marxist? (I want to believe it was something like that). The truth is that I couldn't understand a word of it, and the only thing that article conveyed to me was a great sense of annoyance. At the time, I seriously doubted that even the author himself understood what he meant or, for that matter, what he was really saying. 

It was not the first time such a thing had happened to me, and after a few moments of reflection I decided that so many absurd speculations and abstractions had tried my patience. I was in the middle of this when I remembered another incident: the conversation I had some time ago with a certain personage. The subject, otherwise good people, was determined to present a certain doctrine to me as legitimate, with the passion that comes from not understanding anything at all about what it implies. It remains to be said that the result was a feeling of unease very similar to that which the aforementioned article produced in me, and that is why I decided to gather both valuable testimonies in the same poem. 

Once some time had passed and the passion had cooled, as the treatise writers recommend, it was time to decide on the format. I have always liked the literature of the golden century, and one of the most recommendable pastimes I know is to sit down before some sonnet by Quevedo and try to decipher, often with the help of a dictionary financial aid , the tangle of ideas behind them. That is why it seemed interesting to me to try to emulate the master poorly and compose a burlesque sonnet with some background, even a minimum. With this outline in mind I faced the task of sitting down to write. 

Nevertheless, I recognise that the ideas behind the poem are simple: there is too much written about bullshit, and stupidity spreads like a plague when people don't even think about it. The fact that there are so many ideologies and so many people willing to defend them is worrying to me: it indicates that there is someone willing to manipulate; but also that there are many people willing to be manipulated. That's why I got angry at a certain article, and that's why I wrote this amusing and somewhat obscure sonnet, in a way that would arouse curiosity, but otherwise not too complicated. The recipe was perfected, as already mentioned, by Quevedo, and I turned to him for inspiration. I hope you like it, and I sincerely believe that it is necessary to think, and not to let ourselves be carried away by the facile idea that others should think for us. 

1. The unnamed - Refers to the organ belonging to the digestive system and in charge of excretion, opportunely analysed by the great writer Francisco de Quevedo in his Gracias y desgracias del ojo del culo (Thanks and misfortunes of the ass's eye).

Juan Rulfo - Stories. READ ONLINE; paper / Ebook BUY. 

Francisco de Quevedo - Graces and misfortunes of the eye of the ass. BUY.