{"id":2466,"date":"2021-11-09T08:08:37","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T16:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/?p=2466"},"modified":"2023-10-19T18:57:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T02:57:43","slug":"calvino-excerpt-the-wisdoms-of-knowing-and-not-knowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/post\/2466","title":{"rendered":"Calvino excerpt: the wisdoms of knowing and not knowing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_2468\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2468\" style=\"width: 201px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Chac-Mool-sculpture-Mayan-Toltec-Chichen-Itza-Yucatan-e1636474097973.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"201\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2468\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2468\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">ichac00001p1<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nCalvino&#8217;s Mr. Palomar, &#8220;Serpents and skulls.&#8221;  Mr Palomar is getting a tour of Toltec city of Tula from a knowledgable local scholar who goes deep into the mythos, symbolism, and network of associations.  But they interrupted by a schoolteacher telling his students a simpler story.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe line of schoolboys passes. And the teacher is saying, &#8220;<em>Esto es un chac-mool. No se sabe lo que quiere decir.<\/em>&#8221; (&#8220;This is a <em>chac-mool<\/em>. We don&#8217;t know what it means.&#8221;) And he moves on.<\/p>\n<p>Though Mr. Palomar continues to follow the explanation of his friend acting as guide, he always ends up crossing the path of the schoolboy and overhearing the teacher&#8217;s words. He is fascinated by his friends&#8217;s wealth of mythological references: the play of interpretation and allegorical reading has always seemed to him a supreme exercise of the mind. But he feels attracted also by the opposite attitude of the schoolteacher: what had at first seemed only a brisk lack of interest is being revealed to him as a scholarly and pedagogical position, a methodological choice by this serious and conscientious young man, a rule from which he will not serve. A stone, a figure, a sign, a word reaching us isolated from its context is only that stone, figure, sign, or word: we can try to define them, to describe them as they are, and no more than that; whether, beside the face they show us, they also have a hidden face, is not for us to know. The refusal to comprehend more than what the stones show us is perhaps the only way to evince respect for their secret; trying to guess is a presumption, a betrayal of that true, lost meaning.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Calvino&#8217;s Mr. Palomar, &#8220;Serpents and skulls.&#8221; Mr Palomar is getting a tour of Toltec city of Tula from a knowledgable local scholar who goes deep into the mythos, symbolism, and network of associations. But they interrupted by a schoolteacher telling his students a simpler story. The line of schoolboys passes. And the teacher is saying, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/post\/2466\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Calvino excerpt: the wisdoms of knowing and not knowing<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":["default"],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2466"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2469,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions\/2469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}