Why he Refuses to Buy a Rose at Sant Jordi's
Jan Hamminga
The Subterranean Traveller report s
The subterranean, perhaps tired of staying in undisclosed hideouts for so long, chose Sant Jordi's Day for a walk into town. Spraying had been laid off for a couple days and any fall-out by way of shitty Blade Runner rain mostly already dealt with. People offered roses on every street corner, halfway blocks as well, as many for sure as beggars on a normal business day. The traveller had never really understood the rose. Yes, the rose is a flower of love and people like to celebrate their feelings, which is all very fine, but what has love got to do with it? Sant Jordi is such a beautiful affair, people claim. He laid down the beast to save his love. Better still, he didn't even love her, it was pure chivalry. So he acted heroically, he fought like a true knight, but he fought under the cross. There's something not right about that. To be quite clear, the simple red cross Catalunya's patron saint eagerly hides under on every effigy available, is foremost a symbol of hatred and bloodlust. The crusaders carried the cross when they went to slaughter Jesus' murderers (long dead, of course) and any other infidels they happened into on their way. Columbus carried the cross when he set out to destroy the civilizations of Central and South America and murder its populations into submission to the rule of Rome. The cross is the symbol of England, one of the most xenophobic and generally destructive empires in world history. The cross is a symbol of the centuries old and ongoing struggle between state and individual, between on one side the pyramid which found its way from Egypt to Rome and then onwards to Paris, London, Washington, and on the other side the free roaming spirit of humanity and human values, always crushed, always persecuted, always slain by the millions in the name of the cross.
And wasn't the dragon, that inexistent creature, a symbol for all influences foreign deemed dangerous by Rome? Wasn't the dragon the Islamic presence on the peninsula, well-established and the bringer of much development and wealth, much art and wisdom, enabler in its glory days of spiritual freedom? Slay the rebellious, tells us the cross, the claim to truth knows of no mercy. Must we really share our national love story with that?
Then there is the boring environmental aspect. Six million roses would be sold that day, the morning headlines screamed. Of those, a large number come from the highlands of Kenya. Dutch growers use the all year round perfect climate of tropical altitudes and the minimal wage costs to grow flowers which are flown into Schiphol Airport overnight, auctioned at the nearby flower auction of Aalsmeer, and flown out again to worldwide destinations, the city of Barcelona in particular on this day of 23. That's quite a footprint for a gesture which could easily be performed with the help of a locally growing flower, for instance the beautiful red puppy, available in abundance in spring meadows and green shoulders around town.
Finally, there is the minor issue of sexual distinction. Why a book for a man and a rose for a woman? Don't women like to be educated? Don't men like to see a beautiful rose in full blossom? They sure do. All in all, there's something not right about the rose at Sant Jordi's. Everybody is carrying them around, wrapped in horrible plastic. It's simply too much. It's indulging in the one thing we should be glad the crisis has taken away, and that is excessive behaviour, now only lingering in the possessing classes. If love is what this day is about, then why all the attention to paraphernalia?
Sant Jordi to the traveller is the day of books, books as a token of love, of the love the writer showed for his characters, the buyer shows the receiver (the self-buyer undergoing the sensation of monolove), readers feel for their heroes. Books have always made for romantic presents. Many friendships and love affairs have ended with the gift of a book, some books manage to shape life long bonds. It's all there to be read in words, words which are nothing but a writer's version of the truth. You see, words never lie. What you read is what you get. When it comes to their interpretation is where things usually go wrong, but one may hardly blame the writer for that.
23 April is the day of death of two of the world's most renowned early writers, in the same year no less, Shakespeare the writer of kings and Cervantes the writer of peasants, the English writer of mad power wielders and the Spanish writer of foolish dreamers. It's also almost the birthday of that great novelist who managed to cross the boundaries of language which to many a talented scribbler have proved unassailable time and again, Vladimir Nabokov.
So the subterranean traveller set out to buy a book. Second hand stalls he didn't find many, it was all shop stuff where he roamed. The titles on display couldn't inspire him for their price. Many were still celebrating the glorious defeat of 1714, that grand and stupid loss which, apparently, for ever instilled in Catalan hearts the conviction that their dream of an independent nation should never be more than that, a dream. They truly love their Cervantes here. The subterranean never quite understood this believe. Either shut up or declare independence and see what happens. Other novels concerned love stories in more or less accurate historical settings, books about normal people in difficult circumstances. What about half-baked idiots who can't handle easy times, the type of literature the traveller had grown up with? What had happened to a writer's obligation to search the soul of his contemporaries, if only by blurting out his very own anxieties? Perhaps the traveller wasn't paying good attention, simply overlooking the pearls available. That, I guess, is what best-seller overload does to the eye.
With love
