Martí presents New York through an understanding of its architecture. He constructively describes the Brooklyn Bridge as a structure that was created from points on a piece of paper. It is almost surreal that a few dots became a bridge and that same structure became dots again through his vivid description. His use of quasi-technical words reflects the strength of the materials used to build the bridge.
Different kinds of steel were used in the construction and Martí names each of them precisely. I depended on my dictionary until I saw “hierro” and realized that some of the construction terminologies were phonetically the same in colloquial Filipino but orthographically different and reading out loud would be the best way to approach the text.
The bridge symbolically fortifies the link between people regardless of their race. The structure bridges the spatial gap, allowing the people to freely go from one point to another. Personally, the text provides an intrinsic link between two languages.
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4 comments:
Yes, it's a good point that Martí is interested in the bridge as a symbol as much as he is interested in how it is made... in fact, it is more important to him as a symbol. And the symbolism of "bridging" is generally important to him (and to Chicanos and Latinos).
I thought that this was very interesting because i live in a part of vancouver that has a rather large Filipino population. Often on the bus, i hear them talking to each other and think that i am hearing spanish with a twist. always to turn around and see two filipinos. I didn't realize until now how much the filipino language was influenced by castellano.
Lo que señalaste es muy interesante. La grandeza y enormidad de la ciudad sobresalió para mi tanto que no me dejo pensar en el simbolismo del puente. El Puente conecta gente de todo el mundo y la ciudad. Me da esta sensación de globalización, y esta cosa de “tiempo” y de “distancia”. Hay fábricas de amarre, ferrocarriles, coches, conectando Nueva York entero, y Nueva York con el resto del mundo. Es moderno.
Marti certainly holds a great appreciation for the architecture of the bridge as well as what it represents. What i also got out of this story is that the bridge represents a link between everyone and everything in the city.
(ps. most filipino words sounds like spanish words but are spelled completely different! caballo = kabayo)
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