Recently I've been spending a lot of time at the Biblioteca Nacional.
It's a fabulous place to head to each day. When I arrive on the steps, greeted by Alfonso el Sabio and St. Isidore of Seville, I feel ready to read some Spanish.
I always find the weird wooden tunnel hallway to be oddly unfancy transition between the gorgeous entry, the formal information area, and the Sala de Lectura.
I get in, show them that my plastic bag contains only licit items, get a seat assignment, retrieve the book I'd put on reserve from box 81, and settle down for an afternoon of library work.
But first, I always stop to look around. Its nice to take a moment to appreciate what a beautiful space it is.
I love seeing the reactions of other scholars coming into
the reading room of the National Library. The other day I saw a man snap a few pictures
on his iphone, and a very old man get up from his work, stop in the middle of
the room, and just look up and all around. It's nice to catch people in a
moment of appreciation. I feel like a bit of a creep intruding on their private moment of enjoying the view. But it's also nice to think that it will always be lovely to work in such a space, and even old people aren't jaded about it.
It's of course gorgeous flooded with light during the day, but I like it when it gets dark at night, too, because the skylight reflects all the desk lights and laptops below.
Each day, I like to check out which famous Spanish author name I'm sitting under. Recently I've been assigned desks under St. Ramon de Penyafort, Averroes, Seneca, and St. Teresa of Avila! It always feels like good research luck to have their names watching over me.
Because reading in Spanish is slow going for me, especially while taking notes and such, it took me a few visits to read through this little blue biography of Ramon Marti. But it was a really useful book to have. I'd never been able to get ahold of it at home (there are 5 copies of it in the US, but they're all on the east coast and ILL was never very cooperative in getting it shipped to the midwest), and there is one copy available through Amazon but it's like a hundred dollars, I was so thrilled to be able to sit and read it for free at my leisure here.
We're not supposed to take photos of the books, but I broke the rules, because I absolutely needed to show you this hilarious drawing of Ramon Marti. We have no idea what he looked like (there's one illuminated image of a friar in one of his manuscripts, which might be the only image of Marti) but I am going to picture him this way from now on because it makes me giggle. I think it's the teeth that make is so creepy looking? Or the horribly shaggy short beard? I especially enjoy the star emanating from his forehead. If you have an opinion or humorous thought about this, please do share.
And actually, exciting story, the other day when I was googling the author of this biography hagiography (Marti is not a saint, but the author seems to think he ought to be), the I saw the text up as for sale on abe books! Since the only other copy I'd seen online was going for such a ridiculous price, I didn't think much of it. But as it turns out, since this book was published on a little Dominican press in Spain, it wasn't expensive to buy here - it was for sale for just a couple euros from a Madrid bookseller! HUZZAH! I couldn't believe it. I dropped what I was doing and snatched it up the only copy for sale right away. This was a perilous process because the internet at the BNE is very unreliable and I was afraid the transaction wouldn't go through. It would have cost a small fortune to ship it home to the USA, but for $2 I could have it shipped to the SLU Campus in Madrid. It'll be waiting for me there sometime next week! I'm over the moon about this purchase, which only cost me about the price of a Spanish lunch all said and done, because I've enjoyed looking through it at the BNE so much. Call it souvenir number 2 from this trip!
The first of course, being this colorful scarf that matched sweater and my "lector" sticker badge so brilliantly:
Just a few pics of days spent working at the BNE
The nice thing about working there, is that the day breaks up into lots of useable hours. I usually arrive around noon, work for a bit, have lunch, and then after lunch there's the whole rest of the day! I have been staying until after 8pm. A typical work day ends at 5 or so, but without dinner at that time, there's really no reason to call it quitting time. So I usually just stay until I should head home for Spanish dinner, around 9pm. And plenty of other people do too, so my days have lot of potential for good work.
Evening work at the BNE.
On the SLU Madrid campus
The library is a very quiet sunny little room - perfect if I'm going to be spending hours working on end. The day this photo was taken, research was really really frustrating and intimidating, and the nice, sunny, peaceful atmosphere was the only thing keeping me working through it.
A rare moment of peace and privacy in one of the usually very busy study rooms! Apparently Friday afternoon is a great time to get work done on the SLU Campus because all the students are busy planning their adventurous weekends!
Students often study outside, but even though it's sunny, the weather's only in the 50s, so idk how they do it. It's a nice place to sit and check my email, but not to work!
So in addition to reading through some sources at the BNE, I've been slowly compiling a big research bibliography for all the references to sources on Marti that I come across. And I retooled the problem statement to my prospectus in light of the sources I've found. I think it's in a good place now, and I've sent that, along with the bibliography, to Damian for some feedback, so we'll have to see what he says. No word yet, but hopefully he'll say it's looking good so far. I am hoping to get some feedback from Dr. Garcia-Serrano too when I meet with him on Tuesday. I'm currently combing through that bibliography, marking which sources I already have, or are easily accessible from SLU through ILL or Mobius, and focusing my energy solely on tracking down those harder to locate sources while I'm here.
Although I'm mostly here to do research, this trip also offers me the opportunity to do some teaching abroad. Dr. Garcia-Serrano is going to let me guest lecture in one of his classes, YAY, and so last week I went into the faculty office to look through the textbook, syllabus, and primary source materials for his class. I like the themes emphasized and the amount of time set aside to cover the middle ages. He's been very relaxed about it, letting me pick whichever week I'd like!
Hm. Which week should I pick? So many good topics...
There was too little Islam for my tastes.
I decided to choose the Early Middle Ages week - I have a soft spot for the dark ages. Plus, I'm hoping to add a little bit of the history of early Islam into that narrative for the students. It'd be a shame to hear the crusades lectures with no background of Islam. But, if the professor wants to keep it focused solely on Christian European culture, that'd be fine too, there's plenty of fun to be had there. :-) I can't wait to add "guest lecturer" to my CV. I love teaching so so much.
The dean of the school also suggested that I could give a talk to the students and/or faculty about my dissertation topic. I definitely love the idea, and any chance to talk about Dominicans, but I think I need to see where I'm at with research, guest lecturing, and the conference to organize and prepare for, before I commit to that as well.
Some days I feel like all of this would just be easier to do at home from the SLU Campus in the US, and I worry about whether I can pull all of these things off while I'm here with how long it seems to take to learn how to do and where to find the things I need. I'm hoping working at the Complutensian University library come the start of March (the librarian here cautions me that right now the campus and library will be crazy with exams) will be a bit easier - being a proper academic institution. Plus Patrick recommended a good open stacks library nearby - being able to see and touch books will be a refreshing change of pace as I prepare this paper, so I think I'll pay that place a visit very soon!
Hope you can give a talk to the students and faculty about your dissertation topic! that would be another plus of your trip to Madrid!
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