I am delighted to have had a letter published in today’s Guardian; it’s the second one down on this page. It reads
Your article (It was murder: the Chávez version of liberator’s death, November 17) neglects the importance of Bolívar’s last days to any interpretation of his impact on Latin America. Reviled by the educated classes and with just a few friends who remained loyal, Bolívar was leaving for Europe when he died. He considered himself a failure, believing that “those who have served the cause of the revolution have ploughed the sea”.
David Cole
London
First published letter. The original article is here.
xD.
Well done to you, sir.
Thankyou 🙂
Sweet! I also got my first letter published a while back, but in the less auspicious pages of the ‘Daily Post’.
It ran thus:
Sir,
I note in today’s ‘Daily Post’ that La Monte Young’s composition ‘1960#7’ – due to be performed at Bangor University at the end of this month – has been described as the ‘longest piece of music composed by a human being’. However, La Monte Young’s composition falls rather short of attaining this honour. The duration of the forthcoming performance – lasting a paltry two days – pales in comparison to John Cage’s piece ‘Organ2/ASLAP’, which lasts a truly epic 639 years. It is currently being performed in Halberstadt, Germany, and is due to be completed in 2639.
Congratulations! What did he mean by “ploughing the sea”? Is it some reference to turning swords into ploughshares?
Thankyou, thankyou.
WW – he meant that although the effort was impressive, it was ultimately futile because the water behind the ploughshare immediately fills the gap it made.
One of Bolívar’s aims was to kick out the combination of military, political and religious power that led to corruption, clientelism and the other negative effects of the political arrangements of the Captaincies-General. However, he failed and saw a return of the same problems in the fragmentation of northern South America, but under criollos rather than peninsulares.