What does John Berger say?

October 23, 2012 7:20 PM

From the essay"Portrait of a Masked Man" by John Berger.( American Essays2009) I literally understand English,but I can't get what he actually says. Could you explain them intelligibly? Well,is there anyone who has read this book and could help me to read some of them?

1) Mexico has some of the most extensive silver mines in the world,as the conquistadors rapidly discoverd. It is also a land of mirrors. Some framed palatial ones many times shattered, and, more extensively ,a multitude of fragments, trinkets, sequins,shards of mirror and mica cathing the light. "When we touched the hearts of others,we also touched their sorrows. It was as if we were seeing ourselves in a mirror, "the Zapatistas declared in the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, two and a half years ago.

(Land of mirrors? I have no idea if he uses a kind of metaphor or not.)

2) Mexico City is perhaps the third- largest metropolis in the world, with a soaring population of well over twenty million......There are three "stories " of flyover roads.....The ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan has finally been transformed into a roundabout for the interests of corporate capitalism.

(I checked the site ,but found only " two "stories of flyover roads in this city. And what does it mean,"roundabout" here?)

posted by mizukko to writing & language (9 answers total)

Flyover roads are elevated portions of highways. I'm assuming "three stories of flyover roads" means 3 levels of flyovers that pass over each other.
posted by liketitanic at 7:35 PM on October 23, 2012

In the first passage, it reads to me as though Berger is trying evoke Mexico's revolutionary past by taking the Zapatistas' image of a mirror and shattering it, just as a revolutionary would, upon breaking into the hated dictator's palace, destroy every symbol of the tyrant's power. I don't think he means that you can find stray fragments of mirrors on the Mexican roadside.

I think the intended roundabout in the second passage is, as Wiktionary has it, "A road junction at which traffic streams circularly around a central island." Metaphorically, then, Mexico City has become a place where business and money come and go without necessarily staying.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:41 PM on October 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

1) Yes, it's a metaphor. This passage is sort of making a poetic connection among a bunch of unrelated things.
It sounds like he is beginning from the literal fact that in Mexico, silver is mined (an economic reason for Europeans to conquer and exploit it), and mirrors etc are used decoratively. Then he goes on to draw a comparison to (maybe?) some actual historical incident of a fancy mirror being shattered (does he describe such an incident in the essay?). Then the quote from the Zapatistas sounds like it means something like "we felt a deep connection to others, as if they were very much like us."
Often the image of a mirror means something like "you see yourself in it, rather than seeing the thing itself" - so he might mean that when anyone considers Mexico, they see only their own reflection? The Zapatista quote does not sound like that to me though, so it's possible that interpretation is wrong.

2) I think "stories" of flyover roads here refers to what Americans would call "highway overpasses." To have a triple-decker overpass suggests a lot of big roads crossing, a big city. A "roundabout" is a road configuration that Americans would call a "traffic circle", again a way that roads cross each other.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:43 PM on October 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Here's a photo of what I think of as a three level overpass. (Where roads are passing over at a 90 degree angle to the road below.)

It's also possible that he is referring to a unique road situation in Mexico City - if you look at the section called "Roads" in this Wikipedia page for Mexico City, it says that car traffic was so bad that the city had to build a second set of highways elevated over the existing highways (running in the same path, not at a 90 degree angle). I wonder if there are places with three decks of highway along the same path?

In any case, it all signifies a busy city with lots of road connections and lots of traffic on the roads.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:13 PM on October 23, 2012

Some background information about the subject of the essay:

The Zapatistas are a leftist revolutionary group based in the southernmost part of Mexico. They issued a series of public policy statements, called the "Statements of the Lacandon Jungle". The Sixth Statement of the Lacandon Jungle was a long description of their feelings of solidarity and similarity with other indigenous peoples both in Mexico and elsewhere. The quote from that Declaration is

And the first thing we saw was that our heart was not the same as before, when we began our struggle. It was larger, because now we had touched the hearts of many good people. And we also saw that our heart was more hurt, it was more wounded. And it was not wounded by the deceits of the bad governments, but because, when we touched the hearts of others, we also touched their sorrows. It was as if we were seeing ourselves in a mirror.

John Berger's essay is about his experiences with one of the leaders of the Zapatistas. This group originally attempted violent revolution. When that failed, the changed their goals towards more peaceful attempts to change society. Subcomandante Marcos is apparently the main leader discussed in the essay.

I should point out that the little bit of the essay I was able to find online (mostly quoted paragraphs) is written in a style which I find difficult to follow as a native English speaker. It's quite complex in its phrasing and use of metaphor. I'm not surprised you find it difficult to follow.
posted by blob at 9:08 PM on October 23, 2012

Given his background, I feel certain Berger is aware of the prevalence of mirrors among Mayan artifacts as well as a famous art piece featuring mirrors in the Yucatan landscape and a related essay by the artist.

So while I agree with everyone above that he's using the phrase metaphorically, it's also an obscure allusion to things he knows about Mexico from an art critic's perspective.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 10:36 PM on October 23, 2012

Berger intends to paint a picture of the landscape in an impressionistic, imagistic way. You might go to Mexico and see a road, a cactus, a bird, and a car, but Berger wants you to see what he sees, which (in the first instance) is a landscape full of things that glitter and are broken apart, and (in the second instance) a massive human settlement that transformed shockingly from an ancient city where human sacrifices were held to a city full of highways and new kinds of exploitation that the Aztecs could not have dreamed up.

Why is he doing this? I think it is related to his political beliefs, specifically, his interpretation of Marxism. These beliefs are referenced in the second example you gave: "Tenochtitlan has finally been transformed into a roundabout for the interests of corporate capitalism." By emphasizing the interconnectedness of these different, transhistorical elements, Berger is trying to introduce us to his way of seeing the world. That way of seeing the world involves a vision of a global economic system that he wants to show us has a sorrowful poetry and drama to it, which (as he thinks) deserves to be struggled against, etc. I think that Berger means for this poetic tendency to help show us (or argue for) the political stuff.
posted by spaceheater at 10:40 PM on October 23, 2012

Thank you everybody for answering my question.Although I've roughly studied Mexican history including Zapatistas, Subcomandane Marcos, Lacandon jungle,Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guatalupe,etc..before starting his essay, still it wasn't easy for me to make out what he 's driving at.( Still thinking of it.) Well,it's an essay from a book which many American people read without any preliminary knowledge of a subject,isn't it? Then I wonder how you native speakers feel and get Berger's thought when you look over his essay. Could you tell me a website written description of its impressions? I tried to find out more about it, but I found only the book reviews and dayooshilaja's one(I don't know who he or she is).Thank you.
posted by mizukko at 8:20 AM on October 25, 2012

Think of it as a hundred haiku on related themes. It feels kind of like that to a native speaker. It's in the form of an essay, but one of its most significant aims is to construct a series of striking images.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:11 PM on October 25, 2012