Agustin Garcia Calvo
Encyclopedia
Agustín García Calvo (born October 15, 1926 in Zamora
) is a Spanish
philologist
, philosopher
, poet
and playwright
.
and Antonio Tovar resigned from their university chairs as a sign of protest against this reprisal. García Calvo spent many years of his subsequent exile in Paris, being appointed professor at Lille University and at the Collège de France. He also worked as a translator for the exiled Spanish publishing house Ruedo Ibérico. In the French capital he organized a regular circle of political discussion in one of the cafés of the Latin Quarter. In 1976 he recovered his chair in Madrid, where he remained teaching ancient philology until his retirement in 1992. He is now emeritus professor at the Universidad Complutense.
Agustin Garcia Calvo formed Acratas
, an anarchist movement, in 1967 while studying at the Complutense University of Madrid
. The movement was influenced by new protest movements amongst students abroad.
The ever-increasing sophistication of Power arrives at its pinnacle in democratic societies that are composed of masses of individuals. Given that the "scheme of progress" consists in imposing this democratic system in all parts of the world, popular struggle has to be directed against democracy itself, being this the kind of political régime that administers death to the people in the most advanced societies. The simultaneous survival of comparatively old-fashioned systems of domination (for example, communist dictatorships and some forms of religious rule in Arab countries) is only meant to legitimate democracy through a rhetoric of "unfavourable comparison" and must therefore be considered a "cheat".
An essential ingredient of the maintenance of Power and Reality is God, a personage who has assumed many different names (such as the name of Man) in the past, but in his most advanced and sophisticated form presents himself under the name of Money - a ubiquitous idea to which everything can be reduced, since everything has a cost or value. The religion in which this new God is worshipped is Science - a religion whose most important mission is to keep the idea of Reality up-to-date and to convince individuals that everything is under control: it makes us believe that there is certain knowledge of everything or that at least there will be such knowledge at some point in the future. In spite of all this we can find evidence in scientists' investigations (and especially in physical investigations), at least when they are conducted in an honest manner, to the effect that things offer a certain resistance to their being reduced to the status of ideas.
In democracy, State and Capital are only two manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon. Popular struggle must be directed against both, without ever claiming a "right" to anything (as this would imply an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of Power) or proposing alternative forms of government (as this would only contribute to the further advance of Power). This popular struggle is not an individual struggle (since the individual, created after the image of the State, is essentially a reactionary entity and must be conceived as the people's most important adversary), but rather the people's struggle - a struggle that originates in what remains in us of the people, beneath all our individual features and in open contradiction with these.
Speech or language plays an important role in oppressing the people, but also in their rebellion. Those words that have signification in each of the world's languages constitute a Reality that happens to be different in each tribe. Insofar as language helps create the illusion that we know everything there is and that we know how to call it and how to manipulate it, language is a weapon directed against the people. On the other hand we continuously see conjectures or glimpses arise in the common use of language that point to the opposite conclusion (that we do not know what there is and that Reality does not reach so far as to include everything that occurs), and in this sense language, something that anyone can use although no-one can possess it, also constitutes the people's self-expression par excellence.
Specific examples of what this struggle against Reality may look like can be found (1) in García Calvo's attacks on the car (the individual vehicle) and his activism in defence of the train, (2) in the struggle against the idea that "we all together form public finance" and (3) in the decision to use the same style in writing as in oral communication, as opposed to the pedantic use of language that we know from academic scholars, civil servants and newspaper journalists.
, La Razón
, etc.
Zamora, Spain
Zamora is a city in Castile and León, Spain, the capital of the province of Zamora. It lies on a rocky hill in the northwest, near the frontier with Portugal and crossed by the Duero river, which is some 50 km downstream as it reaches the Portuguese frontier...
) is a Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
philologist
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
.
Biography
Agustín García Calvo read Classical Philology at Salamanca University, being one of the first students of the eminent Spanish philologist Antonio Tovar. He concluded his doctoral dissertation on Ancient prosody and metrics in Madrid at the age of 22. In 1951 he worked as a grammar-school teacher. In 1953 he was appointed to a university chair of Classical Languages in Seville, and he occupied a second chair at Madrid's Universidad Complutense (then called "Central University of Madrid") from 1964 to 1965. In 1965 the Franco administration expelled him from his Madrid chair, along with Enrique Tierno Galván, José Luis López Aranguren and Santiago Montero Díaz, because they had given support to student protests against the fascist government. José María ValverdeJosé María Valverde
José María Valverde Pacheco poet, essayist, literary critic, historian of ideas and translator of Spanish.-Biography:...
and Antonio Tovar resigned from their university chairs as a sign of protest against this reprisal. García Calvo spent many years of his subsequent exile in Paris, being appointed professor at Lille University and at the Collège de France. He also worked as a translator for the exiled Spanish publishing house Ruedo Ibérico. In the French capital he organized a regular circle of political discussion in one of the cafés of the Latin Quarter. In 1976 he recovered his chair in Madrid, where he remained teaching ancient philology until his retirement in 1992. He is now emeritus professor at the Universidad Complutense.
Agustin Garcia Calvo formed Acratas
Acratas
Acratas, also known as the anti-crats, was a protest group formed at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, by Agustin Garcia Calvo in 1967...
, an anarchist movement, in 1967 while studying at the Complutense University of Madrid
Complutense University of Madrid
The Complutense University of Madrid is a university in Madrid, and one of the oldest universities in the world. It is located on a sprawling campus that occupies the entirety of the Ciudad Universitaria district of Madrid, with annexes in the district of Somosaguas in the neighboring city of...
. The movement was influenced by new protest movements amongst students abroad.
Political thought
In his written works and public statements, García Calvo attempts to give voice to an anonymous popular sentiment that rejects the intrigues of Power. An essential part of this struggle consists in denouncing Reality - an idea that appears to be a true reflection of "what there is", while in fact it is an abstract construction in which things are reduced by force to the status of mere ideas. In this process of reduction all unpredictable and undefined aspects that may be found in things are destroyed, thus facilitating their subjection to all kinds of plots, schemes and intrigues. People - just another case of a "thing" - are in this way organized into individuals, subject to a double and contradictory requirement, which is that each of them has to be the one he is, and yet all of them have to constitute a mass of many. Fortunately this kind of social organization always leads to flaws and imperfections, and it is just these unpredictable impulses, inaccessible to planning and calculation, to which García Calvo refers when he speaks of "the people".The ever-increasing sophistication of Power arrives at its pinnacle in democratic societies that are composed of masses of individuals. Given that the "scheme of progress" consists in imposing this democratic system in all parts of the world, popular struggle has to be directed against democracy itself, being this the kind of political régime that administers death to the people in the most advanced societies. The simultaneous survival of comparatively old-fashioned systems of domination (for example, communist dictatorships and some forms of religious rule in Arab countries) is only meant to legitimate democracy through a rhetoric of "unfavourable comparison" and must therefore be considered a "cheat".
An essential ingredient of the maintenance of Power and Reality is God, a personage who has assumed many different names (such as the name of Man) in the past, but in his most advanced and sophisticated form presents himself under the name of Money - a ubiquitous idea to which everything can be reduced, since everything has a cost or value. The religion in which this new God is worshipped is Science - a religion whose most important mission is to keep the idea of Reality up-to-date and to convince individuals that everything is under control: it makes us believe that there is certain knowledge of everything or that at least there will be such knowledge at some point in the future. In spite of all this we can find evidence in scientists' investigations (and especially in physical investigations), at least when they are conducted in an honest manner, to the effect that things offer a certain resistance to their being reduced to the status of ideas.
In democracy, State and Capital are only two manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon. Popular struggle must be directed against both, without ever claiming a "right" to anything (as this would imply an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of Power) or proposing alternative forms of government (as this would only contribute to the further advance of Power). This popular struggle is not an individual struggle (since the individual, created after the image of the State, is essentially a reactionary entity and must be conceived as the people's most important adversary), but rather the people's struggle - a struggle that originates in what remains in us of the people, beneath all our individual features and in open contradiction with these.
Speech or language plays an important role in oppressing the people, but also in their rebellion. Those words that have signification in each of the world's languages constitute a Reality that happens to be different in each tribe. Insofar as language helps create the illusion that we know everything there is and that we know how to call it and how to manipulate it, language is a weapon directed against the people. On the other hand we continuously see conjectures or glimpses arise in the common use of language that point to the opposite conclusion (that we do not know what there is and that Reality does not reach so far as to include everything that occurs), and in this sense language, something that anyone can use although no-one can possess it, also constitutes the people's self-expression par excellence.
Specific examples of what this struggle against Reality may look like can be found (1) in García Calvo's attacks on the car (the individual vehicle) and his activism in defence of the train, (2) in the struggle against the idea that "we all together form public finance" and (3) in the decision to use the same style in writing as in oral communication, as opposed to the pedantic use of language that we know from academic scholars, civil servants and newspaper journalists.
Spanish bibliography
Grammar and language theory
- (Madrid : Sociedad de Estudios Clásicos, 1954)
- (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1973)
- (Barcelona: La Gaya Ciencia, 1975)
- (Zamora: Lucina, 1979; 2 ªed correg. 1991).
- (Zamora: Lucina, 1983).
- (Zamora: Lucina, 1999).
- (Premio Nacional de Ensayo 1990) (Zamora: Lucina, 1989; 2ª ed. 1990; 3ª ed. 1990; 4ª ed. 1993)
- (Zamora: Lucina, 2002).
Editions and translations of classics
- Aristófanes, (Zamora: Lucina, 1981; 2ª ed. 1998).
- Don Sem Tob, (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1974).
- Heráclito, (Zamora: Lucina, 1985).
- HomerHomerIn the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
o, (Zamora: Lucina, 1995). - Jenofonte, (Madrid: Alianza Editorial; 1967, Salvat editores, 1971).
- (Zamora: Lucina, 1981: 3.ª ed. con el Parmenides renovado 2001).
- Lucrecio, . Edición crítica y versión rítmica de A. García Calvo (Zamora: Lucina, 1997).
- Plauto, (Madrid: Cuadernos para el Diálogo, 1971).
- PlatónPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, (Barcelona: Salvat Editores, 1972). - (Zamora: Lucina, 1992).
- SócratesSócratesSócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, MD, , more commonly known simply as Sócrates, is a Brazilian former association footballer....
(en , t. II, fasc.30), (Barcelona: Salvat Editores, 1972). - Sófocles, . Versión rítmica de A.García Calvo (Zamora: Lucina, 1982; 2ª ed. 1988; 3ªed. 1993).
- VirgilVirgilPublius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
io () (Madrid: Ediciones Júcar, 1976).
Other translations
- Shakespeare, William, Sonetos de amor ( texto crítico, traducción en verso, introducción y notas) (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1974)
- Shakespeare, William, Sueño de noche de verano (1980: 2.ª ed. 1988: 3.ªed- 1993)
- Shakespeare, William, Macbeth (1980) Versiones rítmicas de A. García Calvo. ed Lucina
- Marquis de SadeMarquis de SadeDonatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
Instruir deleitando o Escuela de amor (La philosophie dans le boudoir). Traducción y prólogo de A. Garcia Calvo- (Zamora: Lucina, 1980: 2.ªed. 1988) - Georges BrassensGeorges BrassensGeorges Brassens , 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981), was a French singer-songwriter and poet.Brassens was born in Sète, a town in southern France near Montpellier...
. 19 Canciones. Con versión para cantar de A. Garcia Calvo (1983) ed. Lucina - BelliBelliThe Belli, also designated ‘Beli’ or ‘Belaiscos’ were an ancient pre-Roman Celtic Celtiberian people that lived in the modern Spanish province of Zaragoza from the 3rd Century BC.- Origins :.The Belli were of Celtic origin and part of the Celtiberians...
, Giuseppe-Gioachino, 47 sonetos romanescos con las versiones de Agustín García Calvo (Zamora: Lucina, 2006) - ValéryValeryThe French name Valery [valri] is a given name or surname of Germanic origin Walaric , that has often been confused in modern time with the latin name Valerius, that explains the variant spelling Valéry [valeri]...
, Paul, Le Cimetière Marin / El Cementerio Marino con la versión rítmica de Agustín García Calvo (Zamora: Lucina, 2006)
Essays, politics
- Contra el Tiempo (Zamora: Lucina, 1993; 2ª edición 2001)
- De Dios (Zamora: Lucina, 1996)
- Actualidades (Zamora: Lucina, 1980)
- Análisis de la Sociedad del Bienestar (Zamora: Lucina, 1993: 2ª ed. 1995)
- Cartas de negocios de José Requejo (Zamora: Lucina, 1981)
- Contra la Pareja (Zamora: Lucina, 1994: 2ª ed. 1995)
- Noticias de abajo (Zamora: Lucina, 1991 - 2.ª ed. 1991 - 3ª ed.1995)
- Locura. 17 casos (Zamora: Lucina).
- De la felicidad (Zamora: Lucina, 1986; 2.ª ed. 1989; 3ª ed- 1991, 4ª ed. 2000)
- De los modos de integración del pronunciamiento estudiantil (Zamora: Lucina, 1987)
- El amor y los 2 sexos. Del tiempo de amor y olvido (Zamora: Lucina, 1984: 2.ª ed. 1991)
- Familia: la idea y los sentimientos (Zamora: Lucina, 1983; 2ª ed. 1992)
- Historia contra tradición. Tradición contra Historia (Zamora: Lucina, 1983; 2ª ed. 1998)
- Contra el hombre (con dos epílogos de Isabel Escudero) (Madrid: Fundación de Estudios Libertarios, Anselmo Lorenzo, 1996)
- Manifiesto contra el despilfarro(Madrid: Banda de Moebius, 1977)
- ¿Qué es el Estado? (Barcelona: La Gaya Ciencia,1977)
- Apotegmas apropósito del marxismo (París: Ruedo Ibérico, 1970)
- Contra la Paz. Contra la Democracia (Barcelona: Editorial Virus, 1993)
- ¿Qué es lo que pasa? (Zamora: Lucina, 2006)
Poetry
- Al burro muerto... (1998), ed. Lucina.
- Bebela (1987; 2ª ed 2001), ed. Lucina.
- Canciones y soliloquios (1982; 2.ª ed. 1993), ed. Lucina.
- Del tren (83 notas o canciones) (1981), ed. Lucina.
- Libro de conjuros (1979; 2ªed 1981; 3ª ed 1991; 4ª ed. 2000), ed. Lucina.
- Más canciones y soliloquios (1988), ed. Lucina.
- Ramo de romances y baladas (1991), ed. Lucina.
- Relato de amor (1980; 2.ª ed. 1982; 3ªed. 1989; 4ª ed.1993), ed. Lucina.
- Sermón de ser y no ser (1980; 2ª ed.1984; 3ª ed. 1988; 4ªed. 1995), ed. Lucina.
- Valorio 42 veces (1986), ed. Lucina.
- Uno o dos en 23 sitios y más, ed. Lucina.
- 4 canciones de amor perdido y el cínife (2006), Ediciones del 4 de Agosto.
Theatre
- Baraja del Rey Don Pedro (Premio Nacional de Literatura Dramática 1999) ( 1998; 2ªed. 1999) ed. Lucina
- Ismena. Tragicomedia musical (1980)ed. Lucina
- Rey de una hora (1984) ed. Lucina
- Tres farsas trágicas y una danza titánica. "Traspaso», «Dos amores», "Velatorio» y "Rotura», cuatro obras de teatro de una media hora de duración. (1980) ed. Lucina
- Los carboneros (Acharneis). Aristófanes
Other
- Himno de la Comunidad de Madrid (1983 BOCM)
- Eso y ella. 6 cuentos y una charla (1987; 2ª ed 1993) ed. Lucina
- ¿Qué coños? 5 cuentos y una charla. (1990; 2ª ed 1991; 3ª ed. 1991: 4ª ed. 1995) ed. Lucina
Articles
Scientific articles on philology and linguistics published in journals Emérita, Estudios Clásicos, Revista Española de Lingüística, Saber Leer, etc. Articles on politics in the journal Archipiélago, and newspapers El País, Diario 16Diario 16
Diario 16 was one of the most widely-circulated newspapers in Spain. According to the 1981 General Media Study , it had about 100 thousand readers. It often criticized President George W...
, La Razón
La Razón
La Razón is used as a name for newspapers in the Spanish-speaking world including:*La Razón , Argentina*La Razón , Bolivia*La Razón , Ecuador*La Razón , Peru...
, etc.
Agustin's Translated Work
- What is it that's happening? Translated by Eduardo Guzmán Zapater.
- Analysis of Welfare Society Translator signs himself "Ulrich".