No puc dir el teu nom. O el dic negligentment. No puc dir el teu nom.
Certs dies, certes nits, em passen certes coses. Tinc el desig de tu. Esdevens, aleshores, la meua sola pàtria.
No puc dir el teu nom. Esvelta, tendra, càlida. Terriblement esvelta, dempeus, com una pàtria.
No puc dir el teu nom. Car, si el dic, l'he de dir amb una certa negligència.
No puc dir el teu nom. No és un desig tan sols sexual, conjugal. És el desig del riu, i el llençol, i la brossa. És un instint de pàtria. És el desig de l'arbre, i del cel, i del cànter, i el pitxer, i l'argila.
De ser i ser del tot, plenament: tenir pàtria. I una pàtria lliure, i lluminosa, i alta.
I cannot say your name.
Or I say it carelessly.
I cannot say your name.
On certain days, certain nights, certain things happen to me.
I desire you.
You become, then, my only homeland.
I cannot say your name.
Slender, tender, warm.
Terribly slender, standing tall, like a homeland.
I cannot say your name.
For if I say it, I must say it with a certain carelessness.
I cannot say your name.
It is not merely a sexual or conjugal desire.
It is the desire of the river, and the sheet, and the brushwood.
It is an instinct for a homeland.
It is the desire of the tree, and the sky, and the water jar, and the pitcher, and the clay.
To be, and to be wholly, fully: to have a homeland.
Joseph de Cath Lon, Claire Fontaine, and The Grandma are still in Lyon. Today, they will decide whether to head back to Genève and Barcelona or stay another day in the City of Light. It all depends on a sporting event.
Lyon is an amazing city nestled in a region that seems endless to explore; yet, beyond the scenery, a city is defined by its people -and they have many ways of preserving their cultural heritage, one of which is music.
Today, The Grandma wants to talk about Lyonnais folk music -a wonderful, beautiful music that tells the story of how the people of Lyon have shaped the city as it exists today.
Lyonnais folk music is vast and varied, but perhaps one of the most significant songs is La Marche des Canuts.
There are many ways to tell the history of a city. We can read its monuments, walk along its streets, visit its museums or study the names engraved on its buildings. But sometimes, to understand a city, we simply have to listen to it.
Lyon has its own sounds. Among them is the rhythmic noise of the looms that once filled the workshops of the Croix-Rousse: the bistanclaque-pan evoked in one of the best-known songs of Lyon's popular tradition, La Marche des Canuts.
The canuts were Lyon's silk weavers. During the nineteenth century, thousands of men and women worked in the silk industry, particularly on the slopes and the hill of the Croix-Rousse. Their work produced some of the most luxurious fabrics in Europe, yet the people who made them often lived precarious lives. This contradiction would become one of the defining episodes in Lyon's social history.
In 1831, Lyon's silk workers rose in revolt after a dispute over the establishment of a minimum tariff for their work. Their motto was striking: Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant. Live working or die fighting.
Further uprisings followed, particularly in 1834. The Canut revolts would eventually occupy an important place in the history of the European labour movement. They were not merely protests against poverty: they expressed an emerging consciousness that workers shared interests, problems and the possibility of collective action. But history is not preserved only in political documents. It survives in language, gestures, neighbourhoods -and songs.
La Marche des Canuts appeared towards the end of the nineteenth century. Its words are attributed to the Lyonnais performers Ambroise Girier and Louis Chavat, while the music was composed by another Lyonnais, Hermand Brun.
The song became particularly popular in the Croix-Rousse in the early twentieth century. Rather than describing the uprisings directly, it gives a voice to the everyday Canut. The singer tells us that he is a weaver from Lyon and that his wife is a dévideuse, a woman involved in preparing silk thread. He mentions familiar Lyonnais places -the Gourguillon, the Montée, the Pierres Plantées, Saint-Just and the Croix-Rousse.
The geography of Lyon becomes part of the song. So does its language. And so does its work. Its famous refrain imitates the sound of the loom: Et bistanclaque-pan!La navette et l'battant!
Bistanclaque-pan is more than an amusing expression. It transforms labour into rhythm. The shuttle and the beater of the loom become percussion instruments, and the sound that once filled the workshops of the Croix-Rousse enters popular memory.
The song speaks about checking the fabric, watching for damaged threads, handling bobbins and working continuously at the loom. It preserves words belonging to the vocabulary of the Canuts and to the Lyonnais way of speaking.
In this sense, the song is almost an oral archive.
There is another song that inevitably accompanies the memory of Lyon's silk workers: Aristide Bruant's Le Chant des Canuts, written decades after the first uprising and performed in Lyon in 1894. Its tone is considerably darker.
Bruant contrasts the luxury produced by the workers with their own poverty. The Canuts weave golden vestments for the Church and fine clothes for the powerful, while they themselves lack even the most basic necessities.
The image is brutally simple: those who create wealth do not necessarily share in it.
That contradiction turns the Canut into something larger than a nineteenth-century Lyonnais silk worker. He becomes a symbol of labour itself -of the anonymous hands behind beautiful objects, prosperous industries and comfortable societies.
This is why the memory of the Canuts survived. Their struggle belonged to Lyon, but the questions behind it were universal: What is a worker's labour worth? Who benefits from it? What does dignity at work mean? And what happens when those who produce wealth discover that they can act together?
This is perhaps what makes folk music so important. Official history traditionally remembers kings, generals, politicians and battles. Folk songs remember something else. They remember how people worked. How they spoke. Where they lived. What they feared. What made them laugh. What they protested against. And what they hoped for.
Every culture has songs like these. Their melodies may be simple and their authors sometimes forgotten, but they carry something extraordinarily valuable: collective memory.
A folk song can preserve a dialect after words have disappeared from everyday speech. It can preserve the name of a street, an occupation that no longer exists, an old grievance or a forgotten way of understanding the world. It can even preserve a sound.
In La Marche des Canuts, we can still hear the loom: Bistanclaque-pan.
The workshops have largely fallen silent. The great age of the Lyonnais silk weavers belongs to history. But every time the song is sung, the shuttle moves again, the loom beats again, and somewhere on the Croix-Rousse a Canut returns to work.
Perhaps that is the real power of folk music. It does not simply tell us where we come from. It allows our ancestors to speak again.
Today, Joseph de Ca'th Lon, ClaireFontaine and The Grandma are in Décines-Charpieu, Lyon where this afternoon the Northern Star has an important match.
Claire has just arrived by train to join her friends. During the trip, she has been reading a new adventure of the most famous Gaul, Astérix and the Soothsayer.
Astérix and the Soothsayer, inFrench Le Devin, is the nineteenth volume of the Astérix comic book series, by René Goscinny (stories) and Albert Uderzo (illustrations). It was originally serialized in Pilote issues 652-673 in 1972.
In this story, Prolix the soothsayer claims that the village of the Gauls will become polluted by a divine curse. Astérix thinks that the man is a charlatan, and his fellow villagers are concerned about sacrilege.
With a more adult-theme which started with Astérix and the Roman Agent, the story revolves around the superstitions of the people at the time (Gauls and Romans alike) and of today, and parodies the general gullibility of humanity.
The story includes an illustration of the Roman and Gaulish pantheon of gods. In that illustration, Uderzo includes a drawing of his own country home, and a soothsayer's fantastical prediction of the future is illustrated by a photograph of La Défense, the modern district of skyscrapers outside Paris.
An Augur tells Caesar that as long as Brutus is near you...you will have nothing to fear, in the authors' reference to Caesar's murder by his hands.
Key Lessons From Astérix and the Soothsayer
-Skepticism over Superstition. The story teaches us to apply critical thinking rather than blindly believing charismatic charlatans who prey on fear and the desire to know the future.
-The Danger of Gullibility. Even sensible people can fall for scams when a fraudster tells them what they want to hear or plays effectively on their anxieties.
-Common Sense Defeats Fraud. Astérix demonstrates that calm logic and observational proof are far more powerful weapons against manipulation than panic or belief in curses.
-Unity and Resilience. The village overcomes outside infiltration and manipulation because community solidarity and collective action ultimately restore order.
Today, The Grandma is in Lyon (Liyon). She has come to see the Northern Star, who has a very special match tomorrow. She hasn't come alone; Joseph de Ca'th Lon is accompanying her. He lives 158 km from Lyon -an hour away by train. The Grandma lives 639 km away -an hour by plane. Such are the realities of modern transport and communication routes; they seem very modern to us, yet they are nothing more than the roads built by the Romans -routes that, centuries ago, already connected major cities like Genava (Gallia Narbonensis), Lugdunum (Gallia Lugdunensis), and Barcino (Tarraconensis).
It makes no difference how many times you visit Lyon, or -as is the case for The Grandma -whether you have had the chance to live there because your job took you there, no matter how often you visit the city, a trip to Fourvière is a must, for that is where it all began.
The Grandma has wondered what the life of a woman like her would have been like in the Fourvière of Lugdunum, and how many things have remained completely unchanged over the two thousand years of history of this beautiful city -now one of the most important in Europe. In fact, she has wanted to think about Lugdunum through the eyes of two women separated by almost two thousand years.
From Fourvière, she has closed her eyes and has begun to imagine...
She stands on the hill and looks down at the city. Her name is Julia. It is the second century AD, and nobody calls this place Lyon. The city beneath her is Lugdunum, one of the great cities of Roman Gaul.
Julia does not know that she is living in what future historians will call Antiquity. She does not know that archaeologists will one day uncover the stones beneath her feet, carefully catalogue fragments of pottery, reconstruct buildings and try to imagine people like her.
For Julia, this is simply home. And from the heights of Fourvière, her world seems enormous.
The first thing she notices is probably movement. Lugdunum is not silent. People walk along its streets. Carts carry goods. Merchants negotiate. Artisans work in their workshops. Officials discuss matters of administration. Travellers arrive from distant parts of the Empire. Down below flow the Saône and the Rhône.
Julia has seen boats carrying wine, oil, pottery and countless other goods. She has heard accents that do not sound like hers. Lugdunum lies at an extraordinary crossroads between the Mediterranean world and the northern territories of Gaul.
Rome may be far away, but Rome is everywhere. Its laws, its gods, its administration, its coins and its architecture have shaped the city. And yet Lugdunum is not simply Rome transplanted to Gaul. It has its own rhythm. Its own landscape. Its own people.
What might Julia's day be like? That would depend enormously on who Julia was. A wealthy Roman matron and an enslaved woman could inhabit the same city while experiencing two radically different worlds. Roman society was profoundly unequal, and women's lives were shaped by wealth, family status and legal position.
Let us imagine that Julia belongs to a reasonably prosperous household. She knows the shops and markets of the city. She buys food and household goods. She visits relatives and neighbours. She knows which streets become crowded at particular times of day. Perhaps she visits the baths. Roman baths are not merely places for washing. They are places where the city meets itself: people talk, exchange news and maintain social relationships. Water itself is one of Lugdunum's great achievements. Bringing sufficient water to a city built high above the rivers requires extraordinary engineering.
Julia does not need to understand the calculations behind an aqueduct. She only needs to turn towards a fountain and watch the water flow. Sometimes the most sophisticated technology becomes invisible precisely because it works.
And then there is entertainment. Not far from Julia stands the great theatre. Thousands of people can gather there to watch performances, particularly comedies and dances. Nearby, the smaller odeon welcomes music and public recitations. Imagine Julia among the audience. Imagine the conversations before the performance begins, the clothes, the laughter, the impatience of the spectators.
For a few hours, thousands of inhabitants of Lugdunum look towards the same stage.
Almost two thousand years later, people will gather on this very hill once again to watch performances. The actors will change. The language will change. The music will change. But people will still sit together beneath the Lyon sky waiting for a story to begin. Perhaps Julia would understand that perfectly.
Lugdunum is powerful. It is an administrative centre and an important mint produces coins here. Roads connect the city with the rest of Gaul and the Roman world. Materials and objects arrive from astonishing distances. Marble comes from different parts of the Mediterranean. Wine and food travel along commercial routes. Merchants follow the rivers. Julia may never travel to Egypt, Greece or Asia Minor. Yet pieces of those worlds can reach her city.
Lugdunum teaches her something every great city eventually learns: you do not need to travel everywhere for the world to arrive at your door.
Now another woman stands on Fourvière. Nearly two thousand years have passed. She does not call the city Lugdunum. She calls it Lyon.
The landscape before her would be almost incomprehensible to Julia. Bridges cross the rivers. Cars move through the streets. Trains arrive and depart. Electric lights illuminate the city at night. Buildings cover areas that Julia would have known as countryside. The modern woman can communicate instantly with someone thousands of kilometres away. She can travel in a few hours distances that would have required Julia days or weeks. She knows what lies beyond the horizon.
Julia could only imagine it. And yet...
The modern woman looks down from Fourvière and sees movement. People are going to work. Others are meeting friends. Someone is buying food. Someone is complaining about politics. Someone is falling in love. Someone is late. Someone is worried about money. Someone is watching a performance. Someone has just arrived in Lyon and hears a language they do not understand. Someone else has lived here all their life and cannot imagine calling anywhere else home.
Suddenly, Julia's world does not seem quite so distant.
If Julia could stand beside that modern woman, they would probably understand very little about each other's lives. Their ideas about religion, family, citizenship, freedom, medicine and the position of women would reveal an enormous distance between their societies.
Julia might consider some aspects of our world miraculous. We would consider others in hers profoundly unjust. But perhaps they would eventually stop looking at each other and turn towards the city. That might be the moment when they finally understood one another.
Because cities are not only buildings. They are habits. They are noises. They are journeys repeated every morning. They are markets and conversations, celebrations and arguments. They are strangers arriving and inhabitants staying. They are memories accumulated in the same streets.
Julia looks at Lugdunum. The modern woman looks at Lyon. Both see home.
Fourvière has watched the city change for more than two thousand years. Empires disappeared. Religions changed. Languages evolved. Buildings rose, vanished and rose again.
Lugdunum became Lyon.
But down below, between the Rhône and the Saône, human beings continued doing what human beings have always done. Living. Working. Meeting. Loving. Remembering. Perhaps that is what Fourvière really teaches us. Cities change enormously. Life changes with them.
And yet the essential reasons why we need cities -to meet, exchange, create, belong and remember- may have changed much less than we think.
Claire Fontaine and The Grandma share many interests -among them, a love of literature- and if there is one author they both consider pivotal, it is Fjodor Dostojevskij.
Claire is a linguistic prodigy and an accomplished polyglot; today, she has decided to reread Spelaren, the Swedish version of The Gambler.
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Spelaren is a novel about roulette, but gambling is only its most visible subject. Beneath the spinning wheel, the money won and lost, and the feverish calculations of its characters lies something much more disturbing: an exploration of desire, obsession, self-deception and the human attraction to risk.
Its protagonist, Alexei Ivanovich, does not simply want to win. He wants to experience the possibility of winning. That distinction is essential. For Alexei, gambling gradually ceases to be a rational attempt to obtain money. The roulette table becomes a psychological space where ordinary life disappears. For a few seconds, everything depends on a number, a colour, a movement of the wheel. Past and future become irrelevant. There is only expectation. And expectation itself becomes addictive.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Spelaren is Alexei's conviction that he can somehow understand the logic of chance. He observes patterns. He develops theories. He remembers previous results. He convinces himself that discipline, intuition or intelligence may allow him to dominate the roulette wheel. But roulette has no memory. The wheel does not know what happened before. This is one of the fundamental psychological traps of gambling: the human mind desperately searches for patterns even where none exist. Randomness is uncomfortable because it reminds us that some things cannot be predicted or controlled. Alexei therefore tries to transform chance into destiny. And destiny into something he believes he can master.
Paradoxically, the most dangerous moment for a gambler is not always defeat. Sometimes it is victory. A loss can create frustration, but a spectacular win creates something far more powerful: proof. Suddenly, the impossible has happened. The gambler can now tell himself: I knew it. And once chance has rewarded that belief, abandoning it becomes much more difficult.
Dostoevsky understood this mechanism with extraordinary psychological intuition. Alexei's victories do not liberate him from gambling. They bind him more closely to it. The money becomes secondary. What matters is the possibility of repeating the miracle.
There is also a remarkable parallel between Alexei's relationship with gambling and his relationship with Polina. Both are based on uncertainty. Both alternate hope and humiliation. Both offer the possibility of an extraordinary reward while constantly threatening rejection and loss. Alexei does not seem attracted to emotional stability. He is attracted to intensity. With Polina, as at the roulette table, certainty would almost destroy the fascination. He waits. He suffers. He hopes. He risks everything. And then he begins again.
Love and gambling become two versions of the same psychological mechanism: the obsessive pursuit of an uncertain reward.
There is an even darker possibility in Dostoevsky's novel. Perhaps Alexei does not only want to win. Perhaps part of him also wants to lose. There is something strangely liberating about catastrophe. If everything is lost, responsibility disappears with it. There are no longer decisions to make, plans to maintain or futures to protect. Destruction can become a form of escape. This is why Alexei's behaviour sometimes seems less like greed than self-sabotage. He repeatedly approaches the edge and then deliberately takes another step. The roulette table allows him to surrender responsibility while maintaining the illusion that he is exercising absolute freedom.
The psychological power of Spelaren becomes even greater when we remember that Dostoevsky himself knew the world he was describing. He had experienced the compulsive attraction of roulette and the cycle of hope, victory, loss and desperation. The novel therefore has an uncomfortable intimacy. Dostoevsky is not observing his gambler safely from outside. In some respects, he is looking into a mirror. Perhaps that is why the novel contains so little moral judgement. Alexei is neither simply condemned nor excused. Dostoevsky does something more interesting. He allows us to enter his reasoning. And once we are inside it, irrational behaviour begins to acquire its own terrible logic.
Spelaren was published in 1866, but psychologically it feels remarkably modern. Its world could easily be translated into today's casinos, betting apps, online games or financial speculation. Technology changes; the psychological mechanisms do not. The promise remains essentially the same: Perhaps the next one will change everything. And that may be the most disturbing idea in Dostoevsky's novel.
The gambler is not addicted merely to money. He is addicted to possibility. To the few seconds before the wheel stops. To the future before it becomes the present. To the eternal, irresistible thought that next time might be different.
The tragedy is that while the gambler waits for his life to change with the next turn of the wheel, life itself continues to pass. And the wheel keeps turning.
The Grandma is working hard this weekend, wrapping up the final training modules, grading the last exams, and entering the final marks.
Tomorrow, she will begin a well-deserved vacation that -all going well- will last until the start of next year, after the Christmas and Three Kings holidays.
It has been a year of intense work, as always, but everything comes to an end; now she will wrap up another year of training and devote herself to what she loves most: reading, building with LEGOs, birdwatching, diving, playing the guitar, and watching football matches back-to-back -especially those featuring her own team and the Northern Star, whom she will now be able to visit more often.
And if she finds a spare moment, she'll continue creating content for her blog.
So, now is the time to be free for a few months and share more moments with Joseph de Ca'th Lon, Claire Fontaine, and the rest of her family and friends, in fact, it is the most important thing to do: spend time with your beloved people.
Libre he de vivir Libre como el día en que nací Así he de vivir Hasta que me muera
Y mientras ese día llega Dame luz, dame candela Y hazme reír Que prenda la hoguera en que se quema Lo que no vale la pena Déjalo ir
Libre he de vivir Libre como el día en que nací Así he de vivir Hasta que me muera
Que sepas que ese lado más oscuro Del que tantas veces huyo Es parte de mí Y deja que se pierda en el murmullo Como el agua entre los juncos Déjalo ir
Libre he de vivir Libre como el día en que nací Así he de vivir Hasta que me muera
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