Eternal Sardine: Literature, Art, Objects, Performance
Roi du Lac Presents “Return of the Eternal Sardine” Tray
Famous Writing Routines interviewed Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi shares how Putinoika came together and what it was like creating a world full of real and imagined characters.
Enjoy an excerpt from the interview:
Famous Writing Routines: You not only give credit to poets, philosophers, and dramatists who have influenced your writing, but you turn some of them into characters in Putinoika and have conversations with them. What role did the poet Charles Baudelaire play in your life that he should be such a prominent figure in Putinoika?
Giannina Braschi: When I was 23 years old, I heard a recording by a pretentious French récitateur who exaggerated the diction—an affection made affliction—but made me aware of the pronunciation and the diction.
As I mention in the section “Return of the Eternal Sardine,” I learned it by heart—by memory—the way Baudelaire ought to be read—by heart—to be remembered like a relationship—a poem you recite when you go to bed and close your eyes—and the affection and affliction of the poem opens like an experience you may never have experimented, but you are experiencing it now—and since I learned it by heart—it became part of my affliction—my memory—and whenever it comes back to my lips—wet with wine—the poem appears as a mirage of happier moments that were never happy but that with distance became abundance.
I’m not nostalgic for the past. A madeleine doesn’t open my senses and transport me to another moment. Nothing substitutes the living moment I am living now—better and fuller than all the ones I lived before because it contains all the others—and even if it doesn’t contain any other—it contains my body. Every moment passes with me inside.
Eternal Sardine links
- Return of the Eternal Sardine Video. Dramatic reading by Giannina Braschi and European Association for American Studies (EASS)
- Eternal Sardine Merchandise. Serving Tray and Scarves.
- Interviews about the Rerun of the Eternal Sardine
- Return of the Eternal Sardine art installation
- Burial of the Sardine poem on poets.org
- Franchell’s Sardine Design Store in Visby
Books with Sardines in the title:
- Book: Eloquence of the Sardine: Extraordinary Encounters Beneath the Sea
- Book: Sardine in Outer Space
- Book: The Mystery of the Sardine
- Book: Fitting in is for the Sardines
tags: return of the sardine, eternal sardine, Putinoika,