A book a day: Marco Aurelio Denegri: Miscellaneous Humanistic

Original Language: Español

Year of publication: 2010

Valoración: Highly recommended

If you want an early sample of the tone and the issues addressed in this book, you can see on YouTube some episode of the function of the word, with Marco Aurelio Denegri. In essence, the book develops in the form of an essay various issues discussed in this program (I do not know if these texts were previously written or constitute a subsequent extension of the television content). As the title suggests, these essays explore a variety of issues whose common point are the author’s intellectual fans and hobbies: human behavior, music, linguistics, literature, psychoanalysis, rooster fights, among others.

Although I widely recommend the television program, reading the essays constitutes a totally different experience. Denegri has a singular charisma; His particular way of speaking and expressing himself, his absolute lack of repairs when exercising criticism and his extraordinary scholarship become interesting any matter that he addresses. However, it is in the written text where he fully displays all his talent.

In these essays it is clear that Denegri does not only seek to inform, but also to cause a critical reflection on the reader. It uses anecdotes, historical references, literary quotes and brushstrokes of caustic humor (which makes the television program extremely fun) that always keep attention alive. Perhaps the greatest virtue of this collection is its ability to arouse curiosity towards apparently trivial or little explored issues (although, to my liking, it extends too much when it addresses issues such as penis size or prostitution), demonstrating that any matter, when it is addressed with intelligence, rigor and passion, can become a fascinating pretext for an intellectual exercise.

Finally, it is an advised reading for anyone who wants to learn to write well. Sample paste, a button:

Introduction to ludology

Etymological-semantic considerations

By game It is normally understood a recreational activity or exercise, usually subject to rules, in which it is won or lost. Play, The dictionary says is to do something for spirit of joy and with the sole purpose of entertaining or fun.

The word game It comes from Latin jokefun, clamp, mockery. locariin Latin, it means chance, having fun, mocking, joking. That’s why we say jocular of what is fun and funny; and who formerly —for money— He had the people with their songs, dances and games, he was called Jugglar, and minstrel It was also said that, by stipend or gifts, it recited troubadour poems for recreation of kings and magnates. Jocular y minstrel They are derived from jokejoke, joke, joviality, party, fun, recess.

In Latin, to mean game It was not said jokesino sport; y LoDere —no jokes— He denoted playing. True that LoDere I secondarily had the meaning that it primarily had jokes. LoDere It was worth playing, surrender to an exercise, do or practice bodily exercises; It was also worth writing light things, composing, singing, playing a role. In addition, as I said, the accessory denotation of LoDere It was distracted, solazing, entertaining, surrendering to the pleasures of the senses.

Palmaria relationship is between the fun and the playful, but in the old name the playful did not communicate at the same time (Hogaño is the same) the fun (there was another word for that, jokes); That is why Cicero, when he wants to indicate that he is speaking joke, is not limited to saying «in the game», sino «a game with a joke».

Despite LoDere It was the own verb to mean play, the one that went to the Romanesque languages ​​was jokes. And so we have, in French, play; In Italian, play; in ports, to play; in Romanian, yucca; and the same the corresponding voices in Catalan and Provencal.

He sport Latino is present in a series of our voices; Verbigracia, Prelude, interlude, elude, colude, ludibrio; but ludirin the right sense of playing, it does not appear in the Dictionary of the Academy, which, on the other hand, only in its twentieth edition of 1984, welcomed the adjective playfulderived from ludocastellanized sportand for quite general use among educated people. The academy wanted us to say recoilthat nobody says, and that as Corominas points out is a raw Latinism that entered the official lexicon in 1939.

The study, treated, speech, doctrine or game science is called ludology.