I Dissidenti by Sara Zelda Mazzini
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Che accadrebbe se un giorno o una notte, un demone strisciasse furtivo nella più solitaria delle tue solitudini e ti dicesse: “Questa vita, come tu ora la vivi e l’hai vissuta, dovrai viverla ancora una volta e ancora innumerevoli volte, e non ci sarà in essa mai niente di nuovo, ma ogni dolore e ogni piacere e ogni pensiero e sospiro, e ogni indicibilmente piccola e grande cosa della tua vita dovrà fare ritorno a te, e tutte nella stessa sequenza e successione [...].

L’eterna clessidra dell’esistenza viene sempre di nuovo capovolta e tu con essa, granello della polvere!


(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, La gaia scienza, aforisma 341.)



L’eterno ritorno dell’uguale e’ scritto sulle spalle di Mad (sebbene, a dire il vero, il serpente dell’eterno ritorno divori se stesso) per evitare di scrivere la propria vita di nuovo (evito, per necessita’, la parola riscrivere) … lo sforzo dell’autrice de I dissidenti e’ proprio questo.

I dissidenti e’ suddiviso in tracce, come un CD, suggerendo l’idea di un raccontare in musica la vicenda di Mad e dei suoi amici ‘dissidenti’.

Mad, dopo alcune vicende con la famiglia, si aggrega ad una pseudo-autoctona societa’ di dissidenti installata in un ex manicomio.
Nel mondo ‘reale’ prosegue una guerra non sempre ben ricordata nella trama del racconto, oppure e’ solo quella guerra della vita quotidiana che si vuole lasciare al di fuori.

Se durante l’ascolto (lettura) di questo CD l’intenzione era quella di creare una notevole attesa per l’exploit finale non credo che l’autrice ci sia riuscita. L’impressione e’ quella di percorrere una serie di sentieri interrotti (Holzwege) ed appunto l’exploit finale arriva come un segnavia trovato per caso percorrendo uno dei sentieri.

Ciononostante le qualita’ affabulatorie ci sono, la narrazione non e’ mai noiosa, o intricata (tipica dei neofiti che vogliono nascondere plot inesistenti). Punterei su questo per il futuro ed anche con l’aiuto di un buon (esperto) curatore di libri.

Lascerei perdere il racconto di quei ‘tic’ tipicamente italiani: sono gia’ noiosi viverli quotidianamente! (mi riferisco a quella situazione al bar del tipo ‘pago mi o te paghe ti’ (dialetto veneto)).


Il brano migliore: Track n. 9 - Out. (da riascolatare)
La mia valutazione: tre stelle. Questo e’ il risultato della semplice equazione cinque / quattro stelle = classico (vedi Dostoevskij), di conseguenza restano le altre stelle.

Each man kills the thing he loves
(Jeanne Moreau)
Alcune citazioni:

Lentamente scompare ogni amore
mentre noi ci rifiutiamo di cambiare.

Una volta ho incontrato il Destino. Vendeva calzini e fermapanni colorati sul piazzale antistante il mio alloggio.

Che cosa faresti se un giorno scoprissi che i ricordi che hai non sono tuoi? Se scoprissi che hai trascorso la tua vita a immaginare di essere qualcosa che non sei, perche’ quello che ricordi non e’ che una distorsione, un incidente capitato a qualcun altro, o forse a nessuno in particolare?

Perche’ nella mia vita, cosi’ come in quella di chiunque altro, sono accadute cose ben piu’ assurde di quelle che continuo a ricordare. Non so perche’, ma questo e’ qualcosa che vale la pena cercare di non dimenticare.

… il bibliotecario, non ha sentito ragioni e mi ha affidato di sua iniziativa una copia de I demoni di Dostoevskij. E mi ha assicurato che mi sarebbe piaciuto.
“Nei romanzi si trova tutta la storia di cui abbiamo bisogno” mi ha detto. “Il resto non e’ mai altrettanto sincero.”

“Della questione del karma. Cosa ne pensi del’idea di ritornare?”
“Oh, quello. Non so. Mi piacerebbe credere che ci sia una vita dopo la morte. Ma, quando guardo al mondo, non posso pensare che qualcosa di tutto questo continuera’ a essere.”

“Mal bin ich hier, mal bin ich dort, dann bin ich fort.”
…
Significa: ora sono qua, ora sono la’...”
“E poi?”
“E poi non ci sono piu’.”

Il mondo si trasforma, ma gli esseri umani rimangono sempre gli stessi. Adorano i loro idoli soltanto finche’ quelli ottengono il consenso dei potenti, poi viene il momento di seguire qualcun altro. Sono cosi’ volubili…”

Quello che rende sopportabile il giorno e’ che infine arriva sempre la notte, a legittimare le nostre bugie.

Da qualche parte c’e’ un uomo che ha imparato a sovvertire l’ordine del tempo, cosi’ che il mondo viva delle sue menzogne. Uccide il giorno dormendo, rifugiandosi nel cuore di una notte che non finisce mai. Uccide quella verita’ che nasconde per primo a se stesso, poiche’ ha capito che il modo migliore per mantenere un segreto e’ dimenticarlo.

Non so davvero come l’umanita’, per darsi conforto, riesca a ingannarsi col presunto valore curativo del tempo, anche a fronte di ogni evidenza. Io non sono qui per confortarvi, ma per dirvi le cose come stanno (almeno, nel modo in cui queste si sono mostrate ai miei occhi) e vi dico che il tempo non cura nessuna ferita, anzi: non fa che incistirla. Nel momento in cui vi sembrera’ di riuscire a sopportare il vostro grande dolore, quella parte di voi che ha sofferto perche’ prima aveva amato sara’ morta. E la vostra capacita’ di dare e ricevere amore ne uscira’ sempre piu’ logorata, fino a spegnersi del tutto. Anziche’ sollevare lo spirito, lo scorrere del tempo lo indurisce. Ecco la realta’, cosi’ come la conosco.

Davvero, non credo che nessuna donna desideri essere amata. Una donna vuole essere lasciata libera di amare, di deporre il proprio amore dentro un uomo, a germogliare.

Ho voglia di tenere tra le mani quella parte di universo che e’ significativa, sentirne battere il cuore, per un altro giorno appena o per il resto della vita, giocando ad espandermi oltre la linea del tramonto.

Ho sempre pensato che un giorno avrei messo in moto i piedi e non mi sarei fermata piu’.

Forse che la malinconia serve a redersi liberi? Non credo.

Penso a come il mondo si e’ rovesciato da quando i personaggi di Pirandello cercavano un autore per cominciare ad agire, e tutto quello che invece vogliamo noi oggi e’ starcene dietro le quinte, a farci piovere addosso la vita dal cielo e a commiserarci perche’ la vita ci piove addosso dal cielo.

… il passato non puo’ essere oggetto di modifica, cessione o spartizione. Il passato e’ personale, ed e’ la cosa piu’ immutabile che esista.

Se desideri tanto a lungo e intensamente una cosa, quella cosa poi e’ tua. Ma cosa accade quando ti accorgi che, dopo averla ottenuta, non la desideri piu’?
(Rilke?)

In fondo, siamo tutti prigionieri di qualcosa. Di una stanza. Di noi stessi. Non c’e’ peggior luogo di reclusione di un cuore abbandonato. E non c’e’ peggiore abbandono di quello di chi si abbandona da solo.

Se avessi una fede potrei avere paura del giudizio che mi aspetta, ma non credo al vostro Dio e so che dopo non mi aspettera’ un bel niente, come niente aspetta maia questo mondo. Penso, pero’, che potrei ritornare.

Vedete, basta cambiare il nome che diamo alle cose per rendere tutto diverso.


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Il libro dell'alba. La fenice: 2 by Osamu Tezuka
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ci sono il sole, l'acqua, l'erba, tutto, qui non mi manca niente. Questo e' il mio castello. (27)

I primi dieci imperatori, a partire da Jinmu, sembra siano immaginari, inventati molto piu' tardi, all'epoca dell'imperatore Sujin.
Su di loro sono state scritte molte assurdita', ad esempio, che sono vissuti tutti fino alla soglia dei cent'anni.
E' vero che l'imperatore Jinmu ha soggiogato i suoi nemici utilizzando un nibbio dorato e ha fondato il primo governo nella regione di Yamato?
E' certo che qualcuno ha dato vita alla corte imperiale di Yamato. Secondo le teorie degli studiosi, qualcuno tra i nomadi a cavallo venuti dal Continente ha sottomesso gli aborigeni fino a quelo momento presenti in Giappone, e ha fondato nella pianura di Yamato la capitale del Paese.
Lo Stato giapponese si e' formato a poco a poco, in una storia fatta di invasioni, battaglie e massacri. (79)

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La morte d'oro by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Il corpo è la grande ragione, una molteplicità con un unico senso, un conflitto e la sua ricomposizione, un gregge e un pastore. Utensile del tuo corpo è anche la tua piccola ragione, fratello mio, che chiami spirito: un piccolo strumento da lavoro e da gioco della tua grande ragione. (Dei disprezzatori del corpo, Cosi’ parlo’ Zarathustra, Nietzsche)

Forse piu’ un’idea che un racconto...

… la scultura che rappresenta il corpo umano celebra con marmo perituro l’essenza effimera della carne. Ne consegue che appena oltre, un attimo dopo, preme gia’ la morte. (Mishima Yukio, Sole e acciaio) (11)

Se una cultura trascura il corpo, non potra’ mai dar vita a nobili espressioni artistiche. (64)

Dice (Lessing) che per un uomo e’ meglio non avere l’occhio fisico se il fatto di averlo gli impedisce una perfetta visione interiore. Che teoria eccentrica! Per me, l’occhio interiore senza l’occhio fisico non serve a nulla dal punto di vista dell’arte. Penso che il mantenere la fisicita’ del corpo sia il primo dovere di un artista. Percio’ Lessing ha dato un’interpretazione errata dei incip dell’arte. (71)

“Stammi a sentire. Sono convinto che se non e’ una bellezza che si afferra con un colpo d’occhio, cioe’ se non e’ la bellezza di un colore o di una forma esistente nello spazio, non vale la pena di rappresentarla in un dipinto o di descriverla in letteratura. La perfezione della bellezza e’ il corpo dell’uomo. …
Da questo punto di vista si potrebbe dire che soltanto la musica e’ capace di eguagliare l’idea dell’arte. (73)

Ma chissa’ se chi e’ di questo mondo giudichera’ artista uno che ha condotto una vita simile! (94)


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Tristana by Benito Pérez Galdós
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sulle intermittenze delle relazioni amorose.

Resta da dire della parentela di Tristana, che’ tale era il nome della bella figliuola, col gran don Lope, … Nel vicinato, e tra le poche persone che venivano in visita o per curiosare, correvano versioni per tutti i gusti. In certi periodi dominava questa o quest’altra opinione su un punto cosi’ importante. Nel giro di due o tre mesi si credette come al Vangelo che la signorina fosse nipote di quel gran signore. Ma ben presto, diffondendosi con rapidita’, si affaccio’ la tendenza a considerarla sua figlia… (7)

Lui (Diaz) portava il mantello, lei (Tristana) la veletta e il cappotto corto e procedevano sottobraccio, dimentichi del mondo e delle sue fatiche e vanita’, vivendo l’uno per l’altra ed entrambi per un io doppio. (50)

Queste aspirazioni d’artista, questi slaci da da superiore incantavano il buon Diaz, il quale, poco dopo l’inizio della loro intimita’, comincio’ a notare che la sua giovane innamorata veniva crescendo ai suoi occhio rimpiccioliva. La cosa, in verita’, lo sorprendeva e quasi lo contrariava un poco, perche’ aveva sognato, in Tristana, la donna subordinata all’uomo in intelligenza e volonta’, la sposa che vive della linfa morale e intellettuale dello sposo e che vede e sente con gli occhi e il cuore di lui. (87)

Horacio ingannava il tempo leggendo il melanconico poeta di Recanati e si soffermava, meditabondo, dinanzi a questo profondo pensiero: E discoprendo, solo il nulla s’accresce… (102)

Ho capito che non devo lamentarmi, che bisogna mettere un freno all’egoismo. Dio m’ha dato anche troppo bene, e non devo essere incontentabile. Merito che tu mi sgridi e mi bastoni, e persino che mi ami un po’ meno (no, per l’amor di Dio!) … (114)

Piccina, io saro’ il tuo umile vassallo: calpestami, sputami in faccia e da’ ordine di frustarmi. (115)

A questa lettera ne seguirono altre in cui l’immaginazione della povera malata si lanciava sfrenata negli spazi dell’ideale, percorrendoli come un destriero senza morso, perseguendo l’impossibile meta dell’infinito senza sentir stanchezza nella sua folle e gagliarda corsa. (151-2)

Nelle sue ultime (lettere), Tristana dimenticava gia’ il vocabolario di cui entrambi solevano fare ingegnoso sfoggio nelle loro intime espansioni orali o scritte. … Tutto questo le si cancello’ dalla memoria, come o’ svanendo la persona stessa di Horacio, sostituita da un essere ideale, parto temerario del suo pensiero: un essere in cui si riassumevano tutte le bellezze visibili e invisibili. (154)

L’effetto che questo miscuglio di vaneggiamenti e di ragionamenti sottili faceva a Horacio e’ facile da immaginare. Si vide trasformato in un essere ideale, e a ogni lettera che riceveva gli nascevano dubbi sulla sua stessa personalita’, tanto che giunse all’incredibile estremo di domandarsi se egli fosse com’era o come lo dipingeva, con la sua penna indomita, la visionaria ragazza di don Lepe. (157)

Erano felici, quei due? … Forse.


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Novels, 1944-1953 by Saul Bellow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

DANGLING MAN (****)

In the old days, when we had a flat of our own, I read constantly. I was forever buying new books, faster, admittedly, than I could read them. But as long as they surrounded me they stood as guarantors of an extended life, far more precious and necessary than the one I was forced to lead daily. (4)

I have begun to notice that the more active the rest of the world becomes, the more slowly I move, and that my solitude increases in the same proportion as its racket and frenzy. (6)

There were human lives organized around these ways and houses, and that they, the houses, say, were the analogue, that what men created they also were, through some transcendent means, I could not bring myself to concede. There must be a difference, a quality that eluded me, somehow, a difference between things and persons and even between acts and persons. Otherwise the people who lived here were actually a reflection of the things they lived among. I had always striven to avoid blaming them. Was that not in effect behind my daily reading of the paper? In their businesses and politics, their taverns, movies, assaults, divorces, murders, I tried continually to find clear signs of their common humanity. (15)
“I don’t think I want to try to make an officer of myself.”
“Well, I don’t see why not,” said Amos. “Why not?”
“As i see it, the whole war’s a misfortune. I don’t want to raise myself through it.”
“But there have to be officers. Do you want to sit back and let some cluck do what you can do a thousand times better?”
“I’m used to that,” I said, shrugging. “That’s the case in many departments of life already. The Army’s no exception.” (44)

But what such a life as this incurs is the derangement of days, the leveling of occasions. I can’t answer for Iva, but for me it is certainly true that days have lost their distinctiveness. There were formerly baking days, washing days, days that began events and days that ended them. But now they are undistinguished, all equal, and it is difficult to tell Tuesday from Saturday. (57)

Yet we are, as a people, greatly concerned with perishability; an empire of iceboxes. And pet cats are flown hundreds of miles to be saved by rare serums; and country neighbors in Arkansas keep a month’s vigil night and day to save the life of a man stricken at ninety. (59)

Is it because he is an artist? I believe it is. Those acts of the imagination save him. But what about me? I have no talent for that sort of thing. My talent, if I have one at all, is for being a citizen, or what is today called, most apologetically, a good man. Is there some sort of personal effort I can substitute for the imagination?
That, I am unable to answer. (65)

I am no longer to be held accountable for myself. I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled.
Hurray for regular hours!
And for the supervision of the spirit! (140)

++++

The Fall by Albert Camus / Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky / Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (without crime).

Note: the meaning of ‘A basso’ (page 58) is ‘down with’; besides, the correct spelling is ‘abbasso’.

THE VICTIM (****)

By autumn they were engaged, and Leventhal’s success amazed him. He felt that the harshness of his life had disfigured him, and that this disfigurement would be apparent to a girl like Mary and would repel her. He was not entirely sure of her, and, in fact, something terrible did happen a month after the engagement. Mary confessed that she found herself unable to break off an old attachment to another man, a married man. (155)
(The Eternal Husband by Fyodor Dostoevsky).

He kept the bathroom light burning all night. Somewhat ashamed of himself, he had yesterday closed the bathroom door before getting into bed, but he had left the light on. This was absurd, this feeling that he was threatened by something while he slept. (162)
(Ancestral sin or guilt.)

When they reached the lower hall, Allbee stopped and said, “You try to put all the blame on me, but you know it’s true that you’re to blame. You and you only. For everything. You ruined me. Ruined! Because that’s what I am, ruined! You’re the one that’s responsible. … “ (205)

“If you don’t mind, Asa, there’s one thing I have to point out that you haven’t learned. We’re not children. We’re men of the world. It’s almost a sin to be so innocent. Get next to yourself, boy, will you? You want the whole world to like you. There’re bound to be some people who don’t think well of you. As I do, for instance. Why, isn’t enough for you that some do? Why can’t you accept the fact that others never will? (213)

“Now I (=Allbee) that luck … there really is such a thing as luck and those who do and don’t have it. In the long run, I don’t know who’s better off. It must make things very unreal to have luck all the time. But it’s a blessing, in some things, and especially if it gives you the chance to make a choice. That doesn’t come very often, does it? For most people? No, it doesn’t. It’s hard to accept that, but we have to accept it. We don’t choose much. We don’t choose to be born, for example, and unless we commit suicide we don’t choose the time to die, either. But having a few choices in between makes you seem less of an accident to yourself. It makes you feel your life is necessary. (298)
(Free will.)

Allbee bent forward and laid his hand on the arm of Leventhal’s chair, and for a short space the two men looked at each other and Leventhal felt himself singularly drawn with a kind of affection. It oppressed him, it was repellent. He did not know what to make of it. Still he welcomed it, too.
(Master-slave dialectic / Hegel)

Dear Saul, I know, Dostoevsky was your buddy.

THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH

All the influences were lined up waiting for me. …
At this time, and later too, I had a very weak sense of consequences, and the old lady never succeeded in opening much of a way into my imagination with her warnings and predictions of what was preparing for me - work certificates, stockyards, shovel labor, penitentiary rockpiles, bread and water, and lifelong ignorance and degradation. She invoked all these, hotter and hotter, …
I want you to be a mensch. (430)

Well, now, who can really expect the daily facts to go, toil or prisons to go, oatmeal and laundry tickets and all the rest, and insist that all moments be raised to the greatest importance, demand that everyone breathe the pointy, star-furnished air at its highest difficulty, abolish all brick, vaultlike rooms, all dreariness, and live like prophets or gods? Why, everybody knows this triumphant life can only be periodic. So there’s a schism about it, some saying only this triumphant life is real and others that only the daily facts are. For me there was no debate, and I made speed into the former. (605)

I said, “I’m in the book business, as Simon told you.” I thought the old man must be able to pierce by strength of suspicion my crookery, all the oddity of Owens’ house and my friend there. What a book business could signify to him but starving Pentateuch peddlers with beards full of Polish lice and feet wrapped in sacking, I couldn’t fathom. (636)

During the chauffeurs’ and hikers’ strike he had squad cars to protect his two trucks from strikers who were dumping coal in the streets. I had to wait for his calls in the police station to tell the cops when a load was setting out from the yard, my first lawful sitting in such a place, moving from dark to lighter inside the great social protoplasm. (645)

I didn’t yet know what view I had of all this. It still wasn’t clear to me whether I would be for or against it. But then how does anybody form a decision to be against and persist against? When does he choose and when is he choose instead? This one hears voices; that one is a saint, a chieftain, an orator, a Horatius, a kamikazi; one says Ich kann nicht anders - so help me God! And why is it I who cannot do otherwise? Is there a secret assignment from mankind to some unfortunate person who can’t refuse? As if the great majority turned away from a thing it couldn’t permanently forsake and so named some person to remain faithful to it? With great difficulty somebody becomes exemplary, anyhow. (656)

You do all you can to humanize and familiarize the world, and suddenly it becomes more strange than ever. The living are not what they were, the dead die again and again, and at last for good.
I see this now. (710)

Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can’t use he often can’t see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn’t correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn’t try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than we invent. (816)

Me, love’s servant? I wasn’t at all! And suddenly my heart felt ugly, I was sick of myself. I thought that my aim of being simple was just a fraud, that I wasn’t a bit goodhearted or affectionate, and I began to wish that Mexico from beyond the walls would come in and kill me and that I would be thrown in the bone dust and twisted, spiky crosses of the cemetery, for the insects and lizards. (841)

So on some of the golden afternoons by the dive where I sat on a bench in neglected pants and dirty shirt and three days of bristles, I had the inclination to start out and say, “O you creatures still above the ground, what are you up to! Even happiness and beauty is like a movie.” Many times I felt tears. Or again I’d be angry and want to holler. But while no other creature is reprimanded for its noise, for yelling, roaring, screaming, cawing, or braying, there is supposed to be more delicate relief for the human species. (852)

I had Padilla’s slogan of “Easy or not at all.” (881)

I’ll give you an example. I read about King Arthur’s Round Table when I was a kid, but what am I ever going to do about it? My heart was touched by sacrifice and pure attempts, so what should I do? Or take the Gospels. How are you supposed to put them to use? Why, they’re not utilizable! And then you go and pile on top of that more advice and information. Anything that just adds information that you can’t use is plain dangerous. Anyway, there’s too much of everything of this kind, that’s come home to me, too much history and culture to keep track off, too many details, too much news, too much example, too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torrent. Which who is supposed to interpret? Me? I haven’t got that much head to master it all. I get carried away. It doesn’t give my feelings enough of a chance if I have to store up and become like an encyclopedia. Why, just as a question of time spent in getting prepared for life, look! a man could spend forty, fifty, sixty years like that inside the walls of his own being. And all great experience would only take place within those walls. And all achievements would stay within the walls of his being. And all high conversation would take place within those walls. And all glamour too. And even hate, monstrousness, enviousness, murder, would be inside them. This would be only a terrible, hideous dream about existing. It’s better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls.” (902-3)
Dear Saul, I say: YES!

“You will understand, Mr. Mintouchian, if I tell you that I have always tried to become what I am. But it’s a frightening thing. Because what if what I am by nature isn’t good enough?” I was close to tears as I said it to him. “I suppose I better, anyway, give in and be it. I will never force the hand of fate to create a better Augie March, nor change the time to an age of gold.” (937)
Amor fati.

Why did I always have to fall among theoreticians! (956)

I felt settled and easy, my chest free and my fingers comfortable and open. And now here’s the thing. It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore your heart has been, and moreover, all the while you thought you were going around idle terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself! Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast. (979)

Brother! You never are through, you just think you are! (980)

I don’t know who this saint was who woke up, lifted his face, opened his mouth, and reported on his secret dream that blessedness covers the whole Creation but covers it thicker in some places than in others. Whoever he was, it’s my great weakness to respond to such dreams. This is the amor fati, that’s what it is, or mysterious adoration of what occurs. (983)


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The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer. Nietzsche

(Otherwise: Yes-Philosophy; otherwise, again, Amor Fati)







THE SNOW OF THE ADMIRAL

The Snow of Admiral is the diary of Maqroll’s journey on Xurando` river towards a sawmill.
Everything is real but could be otherwise: as Don Quixote and the windmill, or the quest for Dulcinea.

Metaphysical question, and some answer:
‘The best thing is to let everything happen as it must. That’s right. It’s not a question of resignation. Far from it. It’s something else, something to do with the distance that separates us from everything and everybody. One day we’ll know.’ (page 45)

‘How many wrong turning in a labyrinth where we do everything we can to avoid the exit, how many surprises and then the tedium of learning they weren’t surprises at all, that everything that happens to us has the same face, exactly the same origin.’ (page 62)

‘A woman’s body under the rush of a mountain waterfall, her brief cries of surprise and joy, the movement of her limbs in the rapid foam that carries red coffee berries, sugarcane pulp, insects struggling to escape the current: this is the exemplary happiness, that surely never comes again.’ (page 17)

Eventually Maqroll comes to the sawmill:
‘And again, in the fading afternoon light, the enormous metal structure was surrounded by a golden halo that made it look unreal.’ (page 70)

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ILONA COMES WITH THE RAIN

Ilona comes with the rain, and goes with the fire.

‘Somewhere in his soul he bore the mark of the defeated that isolated them irremediably from other men.’ (page 105)

The adventures (and misadventures) of Maqroll this time are set in Panama City.
As always in Maqroll’s life, when the bottom is very close, he meets an old friend, Ilona: so Maqroll’s adventures start again.

Maqroll and Ilona start a business of ‘stewardesses’. After a while, of course, they become bored of this way of life and also another woman, Larissa appears to remind them about finitude of life.

Maqroll’s adventures are always mixed with the idea of humankind without borders, distances, as a world waiting for this character to start running its soul.

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UN BEL MORIR
(or A Beautiful Death)

Un bel morir tutta la vita onora (Francesco Petrarca)

‘I imagine a Country, a blurred, fogbound Country, an enchanted magical Country where I could live.
What Country, where? …
Not Mosul or Basra or Samarkand. Not Karlskrona or Abylund or Stockholm or Copenhagen. Not Kazan or Kanpur or Aleppo. Not in lacustrian Venice or chimerical Istanbul, not on the Ile-de-France or in Tours or Stratford-on Avon or Weimar or Yasnaia Poliana or in the baths of Algiers.’ (page 286)

The Gaviero takes lodging in La Plata and finds a room in the house of a blind woman. Under his room, the river: ‘The room resembled a cage suspended over the gently murmuring, tobacco-colored water …’ (page 193)
Quiet living is not for the Gaviero, so he is hired to transport supposed railway materials upriver. The job turns out to be very dangerous, and ‘His wide-open eyes were fixed on that nothingness, immediate and anonymous, …’ (page 294)

The Gaviero’s question, where ‘I could live?’, has only one answer: everywhere, and always with water (a river or the ocean) which faces and leads to another place.

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THE TRAMP STEAMER’S LAST PORT OF CALL

Alvaro Mutis tells about his ‘meetings’ with a dying tramp steamer, the Halcyon, all around the world.
‘The tramp steamer entered my field of vision as slowly as a wounded saurian. I could not believe my eyes. With the wondrous splendor of Saint Petersburg in the back ground, the poor ship intruded on the scene.’ (page 301)

The tramp steamer as a talking soul suggests to Alvaro Mutis about ‘the world of dreams and fantasy’.
But ‘Life often renders its accounts, and it is advisable not to ignore them. They are a kind of bill presented to us so that we will not become lost deep in the world of dreams and fantasy, unable to find our way back to the warm, ordinary sequence of time where our destiny truly occurs.’ (page 302)

The bill is presented to Alvaro Mutis in form of the Halcyon’s captain; who recounts his love affair with Warda, and the Halcyon.

Warda is the sister of Abdul Bashur, close friend of the Gaviero.
Abdul Bashur warns the Halcyon’s captain: ‘What you two (Warda and the captain) have will last as long as the Halcyon.‘ (page 349)

Alvaro Mutis needed to know Halcyon or the idyllic time of the past.

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AMIRBAR

'Not even the ocean could give back to me my vocation for dreaming with my eyes open; I used that up in Amirbar and received nothing in return.' (page 363)

Maqroll leaves the ocean environment to go into Colombian Andes, during the Gold Rush.
Maqroll's experience in Amirbar's mines will marks his life for ever.

'When I'm on land, I suffer a kind of restlessness, a frustrating sense of limitation verging on asphyxia. It disappears, though, as soon as I walk up the gangplank of the ship that will take me on one of those extraordinary voyages where life lies in wait like a hungry she-wolf.' (page 380)

'You must be wondering what appealed to me in mines so far from the sea. Well, it's very simple: it was a final attempt to find on land even a tiny portion of what I always receive from the ocean.' (page 380)

'We ate and went to bed. Before falling asleep, the word I had heard at the mine passed through my mind, and now I could make it out with absolute clarity. It was Amirbar. ... It came from the Arabic Al Emir Bahr, which tranlates as Chief of the Sea and is the origin of the word almirante, or admiral.' (page 408)

'Maqroll the Gaviero, without country or law, who submits to the ancients dice that roll for the amusement of the gods and the mockery of mortals.' (page 444-5)

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ABDUL BASHUR, DREAMER OF SHIPS

“We know that Abdul was always restless. He was never resigned to accepting what life offered in the way it was offered. Still, he was not moved by a genuine yearning for adventure or a longing for uncommon experiences. He was practical and methodical in his endless desire to modify the course of events, to amend what he always considered the unacceptable arbitrariness of a few people, the same ones for whose sake the rules and regulations governing everybody else’s behavior are made. His favorite phrase was ‘Why don’t we try this instead?’ and then he would propose the radical transgression against what had been presented to him as immutable law. (472-3)

Maqroll was a voracious reader especially of history and the memoirs of illustrious men, liking in this way to confirm his hopeless pessimism regarding the much vaunted human condition, concerning which he held a rather disillusioned and melancholy opinion. Abdul nor only never opened a book but did not understand what possible use such a thing could have in his life. (491)

As they passed the Thorn, Abdul stared at it. “Another ship slips through my fingers,” he thought. “What a strange curse pursues me. Or perhaps destiny insists on saving me from some deadly thing that lies hidden in these dinosaurs from another time.” (531)

As time passed, Abdul Bashur, without Ilona’s loving but subtle vigilance, tended more and more to follow the Gaviero, adopting his senseless wandering and his propensity for accepting fate without calculating the extent of its hidden designs. (538)

“Don’t worry, Abdul,” the Gaviero would console his friend. “These people understand nothing about Islam, and the worst of it is that their arrogant ignorance has not change since the Crusades. They always pay for it dearly in the end, but they can’t understand the warning and persist in their wrongheadedness. It’s hopeless. They’ll never change.” (541)

(Maqroll)
Let’s see if I remember: “A caravan doesn’t symbolize or represent anything. Our mistake is to think it’s going somewhere, leading somewhere. The caravan exhausts its meaning by merely moving from place to place. The animals in the caravan know this, but the camel drivers don’t. It will always be this way.” (567)
(Holzwege - Heidegger)


« desesperanza significa non cadere nella trappola dell’attesa illusoria di “qualcosa” e credere invece nella possibilità di effimere, probabili gioie, e quindi nell’amore, nell’amicizia, nella natura, negli animali...» Alvaro Mutis

«La loro (delle donne)verità del mondo all’uomo manca», diceva Mutis. E Maqroll: «La donna, come le piante, come le tempeste nella selva, come il fragore delle acque, si nutre dei più oscuri disegni celesti. È meglio saperlo fin da subito. In caso contrario, ci aspettano sorprese desolanti».

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TRIPTYCH ON SEA AND LAND


He alluded to these events with sibylline phrases, the most frequent was: “I’ve travelled at the edge of chasms compared to which death is a puppet show.” (579)

Now, the unsettling thing is that if you bring in a cat from another country and set it loose in the port of Istanbul, that same night the newcomer unhesitatingly follows the ritual path. This means that cats all over the world retain in their prodigious memories the plans of the noble capital of the Comnenos and the Paleologos. (610)

A poet from my country, who would have been a good friend of yours and an ideal companion in breaking open bottles of the densest alcohol in the most unbelievable taverns, used to say: ‘Ah, all those ignorant people always expressing their opinions!’ But that’s another story. (624)

“The Gaviero,” he said, “is a born anarchist who pretends not to know that about himself, or to ignore it. His vision of the human journey on earth is even more ascetic and bitter than the one he reveals in his ordinary dealings with people. The other day I heard him say something that astounded me: “The disappearance of our species would be a distinct relief for the universe. Soon after its extinction, its ominous history would be totally forgotten… (635)

“The Gaviero,” he said, “is like those crustaceans that have a shell hard as a rock to protect their delicate flesh. He hides that inner, sensitive area so carefully, it’s easy to think he doesn’t have one. Then come the surprises, and in his case they can be revelations.” (669)

“You remember in the diary I kept on the Xurando’ River, when I was looking for those damned sawmills that vanished into nightmare. I mention the moments in life when we think that the corner we’ve never turned, the woman we’ve never seen again, the road we left in order to follow another, the book we never finished, all merge to form another life, parallel to our own, which in a certain sense belongs to us too! (673)

What the boy had learned was astonishing. I had to tell him all over again how you dock at night in Port Swettenham and how you travel by land from there to Kuala Lumpur, what the schedule of the tides was at Saint-Malo, what information a whaler has to give to the harbor officials at Bergen, the speed at which you maintain the engines in order to enter the bay of Wigtown and anchor across from Withorn when you visit Alastair Reid, the three words you must say to have the locks opened at Harelbeke, which birds sit for the longest time on the masts of a sailing ship or the aerials of a freighter, the name of the sailor who carried the lifeless body of Captain Cook back to the ship, the days and occasions when it is not advisable to say Mass at sea, the brand of diesel engine that gives the best service, the number of times you must sound the bell when a body is buried at sea… (694)

As he so frequently said: “ If it exists at all, the pity of the gods is indecipherable or comes to us when we breathe our last. There is no way to free ourselves from their arbitrary tutelage.” (700)


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