In 1920, the Nobel Prize-winning “founder of modern neuroscience” Santiago Ramón y Cajal wrote Charlas de café (Café Chats), a popular book of aphorisms and meditations inspired by his years of participation in tertulias, or Spanish salons. Contributing editor Ben Ehrlich has been working on an original translation into English, parts of which have just been published by the literary magazine New England Review. As always, the new issue of NER features great poetry, fiction, and non-fiction (including, incidentally, a re-discovered translation of “Rome: First Impression” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom Cajal revered). Half of the Café Chats piece, selected from two chapters “On Glory, Death, and Immortality” and “On Sorrow and Old Age,” can be seen online here. Selections two other two chapters, “On Genius, Talent, and Stupidity” and “Thoughts on Pedagogical and Educational Tendencies,” can be found in the print edition.
“It is a moving sight to watch on summer mornings as young bees gather honey for the exhausted and dying workwomen who, before their eyes grow dim, receive a passionate kiss from the sun, our father of life. Hear the anxious cry of the dying—“Light, more light!”—from the great Goethe to the humblest creature. Might this universal plea signify an optimistic prophecy? After death’s darkness, will the sun of immortality rise? It is comforting to hope and to believe so.”
Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Café Chats (translated by Benjamin Ehrlich)
