The Gulf newspaper, The National, has a profile on “the South African giant of contemporary literature” JM Coetzee in which, unsurprisingly, other people does all the talking.  It also rehashes all the familiar controversies of the last few years around the elusive Coetzee (his lack of overt political involvement during the struggle against Apartheid; the reaction to his novel “Disgrace” inside South Africa; his emigration to Australia, etcetera).  Which leads the reporter to conclude:

“… There can, it seems, be no simple answers about Coetzee. Even as we approach him he slips away from us, into a hall of mirrors of his own making. Perhaps we must come to accept, then, that the many attempts to look beyond Coetzee’s writing to the man himself are misguided, that the most authentic Coetzee available to us is the one revealed ironically, hesitantly, and obliquely in his novels.”

If you still want to read it.

Desde hace más de un año estaba a la espera esta cinta, basada en una de las mejores novelas de J. M. Coetzee. El resultado no es para nada desalentador. Al contrario. Lo único malo de la película es que se presentó en la Cineteca Nacional, plagada de intelectuales del cine –sin serlo– y que muy a su pesar, pocas cosas interesantes pueden decir acerca de la cinematografía mundial; cuando me topo con estos seres que todo critican gratuitamente, extraño las salas populares donde lo único que importa es si la película te divirtió o no.

Desgracia (2008), dirigida por Steve Jacobs y adaptada por Anna Maria Monticelli, es un buen homenaje a la novela de Coetzee. Tanto los escenarios como el ritmo narrativo del filme se mantienen fieles a la progresión dramática que posee la novela. Quizá lo único que eché de menos fueron algunas partes crudas de la obra literaria que la guionista decidió suavizar; aclaro, la tensión que te provoca el buen trabajo de los actores, deja entrever la atinada lectura que tuvo Jacobs de la novela de este autor sudafricano.

Ahora bien, el carácter de la novela no es apto, así como la cinta, para espectadores con problemas morales irresolutos; esto es, simplemente, si son frágiles y proclives a sentirse atacados (por todo mundo), a lo largo de la proyección del filme serán confrontados con la clásica naturaleza humana que, cuando desnuda, resulta deprimente, grosera, racista, hipócrita y, por demás, agresiva. Para quienes, aún así, desean ver una buena cinta, acudan a la Cineteca –les recomiendo ignorar a los intelectuales– y disfruten de una excelente historia puesta en el tiempo. Y si cuentan con buena voluntad, lean el libro…

Consulten la cartelera aquí…

Genre: Novel

Year of Publication: 1986

Susan Barton finds herself marooned on an island in the Atlantic with an Englishman named Robinson Cruso and his mute (mutilated) slave, Friday. Rescued after a year of Cruso’s company, back in England with Friday in tow, she approaches the author Daniel Foe, offering him the story.

DOWNLOAD LINK

http://ifile.it/ornct9u

I recently completed two books: Slow Man, a short novel by J.M. Coetzee and Stitches, a graphic novel by David Small.  Coetzee is a Nobel Prize-winning author of international acclaim with two Booker Prizes to his credit.  Small is a two-time Caldecott-winning illustrator and author.   Both works explore the mindset of the infirm, Slow Man’s protagonist is a recent amputee,  Stitches is a memoir of Small’s bout with cancer.

Both books were well worth my time.  Coetzee is a gifted writer, but not in the same way as fellow Booker Prize-winner John Banville, highlighted in this space earlier.  Certainly, Coetzee has command of the language, but I never felt the plot slipping away from the prose as I did with The Sea.  Slow Man is the story of Paul Rayment, a recent amputee who struggles with his recovery, though not any of the physical aspects thereof.  While there is a moment where the physical problems intersect with the emotional, the novel centers on Rayment squaring himself with being different and with his emotions for his nurse.  About halfway through, Coetzee introduces a character, Elizabeth Costello, from a previous novel (named after the character herself) to help Rayment along in his path to personal recovery.

This is where this particular novel presented issues for me.  Costello is an author and her omniscience of Rayment’s life makes it hazy (i.e not perfectly clear) that Rayment is a character in one of her fictional novels.  I think Coetzee was making a play on the relationship of authors with their stories, but he did so clumsily.  Costello’s involvement smacked of deus ex machina to this reader.  Her all-knowing ways pushed the story along too quickly – a criticism you won’t often find from a reader who prefers and author to trim the excess – in ways that hurt the development of the characters.  Authors are to be applauded for doing different things with their work, and Coetzee should be as well for this work.  However, the ending left me hollow, wanting something more.  It was clipped and unsatisfying.

The ending of Stitches was clipped as well, though completely satisfying.  It is a beautifully illustrated book with all the text it needs.  Small does a tremendous job of filling in the prose gaps with several series of pictures that move the story along.  There’s a sense of foreboding that the novel carries its entire length, but not in the way of a suspense novel.  From the early pages we get the sense that Small (the novel is after all a memoir) has a lot of deeply-felt resentment for his family.

Small develops his characters with his pictures less than words.  Scorn is evident on the mother’s face, indifference is his father’s mask, hurt is young David’s constant countenance.  Even the secondary characters – his brother, grandmother and step-grandfather – show their colors with their expressions to a lesser extent.  The faces of the characters made me uncomfortable, as though they were looking into me with their hate or indifference.

Though the undercurrents of hate (I don’t feel this is too strong a word – the family truly seems to hate young David) carry throughout the book, the ending is a beautiful release of the story.  Small escaped, and that is truly the correct word, from not only his family but from the path that his mother and grandmother went down.  I’ll stop short of a spoiler, but the clipped ending was a perfect facsimile of the clipped way Small left his first life behind and the ultimate middle-finger to his parents.

Both books are worth a read.  Neither will take long amounts of time.  I think I would have preferred to have read Elizabeth Costello prior to Slow Man, but I can’t take that back now.  Coetzee’s skill was evident enough for me to want to read another of his works to wash the distaste of this novel’s finish form my palate.  Small has several children’s books to his credit, which I intend to discover with my children.

Buy Slow Man:

At Amazon

At Barnes and Noble

Buy Stitches:

At Amazon

At Barnes and Noble

1. Today my mom brought home her new boyfriend. I hated him with a hatred that was cruel and black and unforgiving. They came clip-clop through the front door, smiling and laughing, as if returning from a dance. Those are the antagonists.

2. I’m in the family room pretending not to care about them, about their entrance and the intimate adult sounds they make when they talk. I stare at a 10-year old purple cichlid hovering in a fish tank and the steady patient Os it makes with its mouth, its languid mouth, breathing. I fool nobody. Especially him. I see him through the tank. He’s a wiry small-boned man with a slow-smiling mouth. His eyes are black and shrewd like two berries, like two black berries. An inadudible sound drops from my mouth like a stone, the most detestable word I know, worse than any swear word ever coined on a grade school playground — quack! I don’t even know what this word means. But the vicious sound of it says it all. Just as it did when my dad angrily ranted against orthodondists and doctors on the periphery of town.

3. I cannot abide his stare. He is the absence of my dad, his negative.

4. Time thickens, it coagulates, moments congeal into an ugly scab and the platelets of space and time stop altogether. We are three particles of dust suspended in a mote, halted. But I imagine, I see things, I see things happen, I make them happen. I’m a particle of dust with a lyrical mind, a poet of interiority. What have I to do with chronology? My jealousy and anger despise it and will have nothing to do with it.     

5. I rise from behind the fish tank, big and strong and menacing; I am hazardous. My mom stands in the kitchen, resting against the refrigerator.  The small-boned man stands beside her, jauntily pressing his hips to the side, one arm on the wall for balance, the other arm free, a serpent arm. His fingers twist her hair, playfully. She looks over his shoulder with an oddly ambivalent expression, a flat grin, dull eyes, indecipherable. I am vengeance incarnate. The axe sweeps up over my shoulder…. Like a ball on a string it floats down at the end of my arm, sinks into the throat, the pale white throat beside my mom. Time cracks and ruptures and wild tumult ensues.

“Off with their heads” has over 27 million entries when you Google it. It may sound familiar because of its use in our conversational language, as a way of humorously reproaching someone, but both Carroll’s the Queen of Hearts and Shakespeare’s Queen Margaret shriek it once or twice during their stories. And although the speck that began this investigative avalanche came into sight while listening “Sleeping Lessons” from The Shins’ third album Wincing The Night Away, what follows is full of twists and turns. (Please feel free to listen to the song as you read this).

“And if the old guards still offend / They got nothing left on which you depend / So enlist every ounce / Of your bright blood / And off with the heads,” are some of the cryptic lyrics that accompany the band’s concoction of sixties music values and cutting-edge alternative rock. Formed in 1997 in New Mexico, The Shins have released four albums, and their Dylan-like enigmatic lyrics have taken them to new heights. The Shins got their big break when Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State stated: “The Shins will change your life.” And they did.  It is their language, apart from their exploration of new genres, that makes me want to peal off layers, looking for that “something” that tingles deep inside. Where have I heard that before?

It is because of The Shins that my brother repeats “Off with their heads” in any conversation he sees fit, and it is because of them that there’s a new link in my head tying Shakespeare with Lewis Carroll. Where have I heard it before? There’s Part III of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, when a vicious Queen Margaret exclaims, after York has been captured during battle: “Off with his head, and set it on York gates; So York may overlook the town of York.” But I decide to move to a less serious subject and arrive in Wonderland. There’s Carroll’s Queen of Hearts, who besides playing croquet, decrees death sentences at the slightest offense. Opposed to Queen Margaret, few people are actually beheaded though; the kind King of Hearts quietly sets them free when the Queen is not looking.

Attempting to discover its origin, I end up investigating the literal meaning of the phrase; I go to the history of the guillotine and hop back on the somber train. As you’ve seen in movies, executions in France were made public and anybody could watch (So much for entertainment). During the 18^th century, Doctor Joseph Ignace Guillotin, contrary to what you think, wanted to banish the death penalty completely. Then why is this method of absolute silence called guillotine? Because during that time other methods of execution, like quartering or hanging, were more painful or lasted longer for the criminal to die (Actual beheading takes 2/100 of a second), and Guillotin built the first prototype of a guillotine as a step towards banning the death penalty completely. Legend has it that a poet who wanted to rhyme his name added the “e” at the end. It’s almost 2010 and the death penalty is still alive. However, the last guillotine execution took place in Marseilles, France in 1977. I imagine the crowd screaming “Off with his head! Off with her head!” Much alike what the Queen of Hearts repeatedly sentences. But I can’t confirm it. The origin of the phrase is lost in history. J.M. Coetzee explained it very well in Diary of a Bad Year: “How far back can we trace? In African thought, the consensus is that after the seventh generation we can no longer distinguish between history and myth.” When in history did this myth appear? I don’t know.

What I do know is that “Off with their heads” is part of those phrases that form our collective consciousness, those shared beliefs and attitudes that unite us as a society, constantly evolving, constantly modifying itself into an up-to-the-minute language. No more I will be able to indulge in Henry VI without having The Shins’ jangling sounds in my head. That’s the beauty of it. We are all part of it, as a community, as aficionados of our pop and not so pop culture. We are creating a new language by tying together old and new forms; and by doing this we are re-inventing our culture and collective consciousness; “Off with their heads,” after The Shins, has a new meaning. I believe it more and more; in our contemporary culture, there would be no Shakespeare without The Shins.

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This holiday befuddled me, so I did a little more digging. Turns out “Waiting for the Barbarians” is the title of a book by South African writer J.M. Coetzee. It’s about a small town magistrate who gets caught up in a war plot that involved capturing local “barbarians” to tortune and kill them. The magistrate falls in love with a barbarian girl who has been severely disfigured, and the magistrate has to decide exactly where his loyalties lie.

The phrase is also the title of a 1904 poem by Constantine P. Cavafy. It’s an ironic poem about the intersection of politics and cultures. And it makes you like barbarians.

And if that’s just all a little too scholarly for today, check out some Conan the Barbarian cartoons.

Jonathan Ames & Dean Haspiel, The Alcoholic (Vertigo 2008)

Disclaimer: I was not given this book by a publisher, nor is this blog entry a viral effusion in the hope that Vertigo will send me lots of freebies, though I wouldn’t be offended to be told that this review os not a review.*

I don’t imagine that many people would feel compelled to compare this comic with J M Coetzee’s Summertime. But here goes.

J M Coetzee’s hero is called John Coetzee; Jonathan Ames’s is Jonathan A. Both books, then, are presented as some kind of autobiography. In both, wiggle room is created, and the narrative saved from indulgent self-loathing, by the interposition of point(s) of view other than the author’s. In place of Coetzee’s multiple unreliable narrators, interviewees as well as fictional biographer, Ames has the graphic art of Dean Haspiel. It’s possible to imagine Ames’s story of his alcoholism being told for laughs, or with that creepy kind of apologeticness that leaves out the taking of responsibility, or in a way that invites hypocritical prurience, or as a hollow redemptive tale. Jonathan A is a writer, and at one stage he has an audience convulsed with laughter by an essay about his own fecal incontinence. But the pared down narration here, accompanied by Haspiel’s ruthlessly austere black and white art, gives us nothing to laugh at. There are sex scenes, and plenty of naked breasts, but there’s none of the adolescent eroticism of, say, Frank Miller, or for that matter Woody Allen. The hero makes excuses (he’s ‘allergic’ to alcohol, his well-meaning parents were too trusting and then died in a terrible car crash, etc), but on the page they remain just that – excuses. The final moment of decision is as unresolved as that of Summertime. Again and again, the visual severity of the images holds us to a moral (not moralistic) way of seeing. They’re very different books, of course, but they do share this uncompromising self-scrutiny. I don’t think I could have borne the story of  The Alcoholic presented as straight autobiography. As an uncomical comic (or graphic novel, if you need your sequential art to sound dignified), it’s a quick but powerful read.

*Given the frequency of my typos, I should note that that ‘os’ comes from the headline of Rosemary Sorenson’s article as it is online just now. By the time you go there it may have been corrected.

J M Koetzee, Summertime (Knopf 2009)
—-, Boyhood (Secker & Warburg 1997)

I wasn’t there when Summertime was chosen for the Book Group, and might well have argued against it. I’d read some bemused discussion about its mixing of truth and fiction and multiple perspectives that made it sound like the kind of clever writing that disappears up its own whatsit – you know, technically challenging but otherwise as gripping as batshit.

It turned out I loved it, and put in orders at the library for the two previous volumes in Coetzee’s Scenes from Provincial Life series, Boyhood and Youth. It’s autobiographical writing, covering the years when Coetzee was teaching at school and university in Cape Town and writing his first novels. It’s not straightforward autobiography, though. The John Coetzee character is dead, so who knows in what other respects the narrative here differs from the factual record? The book consists mainly of transcripts of recorded conversations between an (almost certainly invented) academic biographer and a handful of people. I have no idea what relationship any of the interviewees have to actual people, but I am persuaded that there’s a genuine project here on Coetzee’s part of imagining how he was seen by a number of key people in his life at that time. ‘Coetzee’ doesn’t exactly emerge covered in glory. In fact, if this had been told in straightforward narrative, even in third person, some of it would have been cringingly embarrassing; and some of it, removed from the realm of hints and suspicions, might have laid the author open to criminal investigation. Coming mainly from women who had, or in one case (if she is to be believed) didn’t have, sexual liaisons with him, it’s funny, and for me at least very engaging. I’m in awe of Coetzee’s feat of creating self-portrait from the point of view of people he’d had unsatisfactory intimate relationships with, most of them much more interested in themselves than in him. It’s an act of great imagination and unsparing self scrutiny.

At the risk of appearing excessively diligent, I managed to read Boyhood before the Group met. At least on the surface, it’s a much more conventional piece of work, a possibly fictionalised memoir of the author’s childhood told in the third person. (We don’t learn that the boy’s name is John until about the halfway point.) Unlike the unreliable interviewees of Summertime, the narrator appears to be omniscient, though he reports the young John’s understanding of things without signalling to the reader when the boy has got it wrong. This sometimes results in a straightforward irony, as in matters of reproductive physiology. Elsewhere, as the boy struggles to make sense of his relationships to his parents, of the English, the Afrikaans, the Coloureds and the Africans, of South African history, of religion and his own preadolescent stirrings, the narrator leaves us alone with the boy’s painful sense of his own peculiarity. The effect, for me at least, rang very true to what childhood is like, stripped of the gloss of nostalgia and self-preserving sentiment. An unexpected bonus from having read the book out of order was the poignant discovery that the father for whom ‘John’ cares in Summertime was an object of his contempt and intense dislike in Boyhood.

Tonight we discussed Summertime in the book group. There were ten of us, fairly evenly divided between those who loved the book and those for whom it did nothing except perhaps induce sleep. A couple of guys turned up with their books bristling with sticky yellow papers, and argued for particular ways of reading the book. Over melon and prosciutto and then strawberries, the conversation tended to take the form of them what enjoyed the book telling them what didn’t about what had given them pleasure or illumination. One man talked about the theme of embodiment – that the struggle of the character was to find a way of being in the body, of having a voice, and the structure with its multiple filters and distancing devices fitted the theme brilliantly. Another read it as an extended build-up to the passage towards the end where a woman says of the John Coetzee character that people may be interested in him because he’s won the Nobel Prize and is seen as a brilliant writer, but to her he is just a man, and not a very interesting one (though others saw that passage as a bit of almost mechanical rounding out of things). Yet another was interested in it as a portrait of a man whose masculinity was under attack. And so on. It was a terrific evening; the book is perfect for that kind of free-ranging discussion.

Historias de mujeres de Robert Musil[1]

J. M. Coetzee

En 1924, Robert Musil publicó una colección de historias titulada Tres mujeres; ese fue el resultado de su trabajo en una novela que trataba sobre los últimos años del imperio de Habsburgo y que comenzó a publicarse por episodios en 1930 como El hombre sin atributos. Tres mujeres proporciona a los lectores desalentados por esta novela, ensayística en demasía, llena de razonamiento, vacía de ideas (porque, para el autor, el destino del poeta era estar abierto a las ideas sin apropiarse de ellas), un preámbulo conveniente al trabajo de Musil como escritor maduro. Inconclusa, y quizás interminable, ésta es una novela que se cuestiona sobre el tema central de manera irónica y artificial —aquello en lo que Europa cree ahora que ha dejado de creer en la historia.

«Tonka», la más fabulosa de estas tres historias, esboza un infeliz enredo de la propia juventud de Musil (es notable la inmediatez con la que este modernista, reservado e irónico, transporta los sucesos de su vida a sus ficciones). Un joven perteneciente a una familia austriaca de clase acomodada se relaciona con Tonka, una sencilla mujer checa. Él la lleva a Berlín, donde se establecen y viven juntos. Después Tonka se embaraza. Peor aún, parece que ha contraído sífilis. El calendario señala sin margen de duda que su amante no puede ser el padre y los doctores insisten en que es improbable que éste la haya contagiado. No obstante, ella se empeña en contar su historia en la que asegura jamás haber estado con ningún otro hombre. La sinceridad de la mujer es tan clara que su amante se cuestiona a sí mismo si es que existe tal cosa como la inmaculada concepción (y la inmaculada infección venérea). Al final, sin embargo, él termina por no creer en ella. «La mujer amada [no] es el origen de los sentimientos aparentemente originados por ella misma; estos son, simplemente, puestos a espaldas de ella como una luz… Él no logró encender la luz a espaldas de Tonka».

Él atiende a la chica conforme ésta empeora y su condición se vuelve espantosa; hace cualquier cosa que se le pide, de alguna manera siente aprecio por ella. Así, después de la muerte de la mujer, él tiene su conciencia tranquila e incluso puede decir de sí mismo que es una mejor persona por la experiencia vivida. Tan sólo por un instante cae el velo: “Los recuerdos lo avasallaban: ¡Tonka! ¡Tonka! Él la sentía por completo, desde el suelo bajo sus pies hasta la coronilla. Todo lo que jamás había comprendido estaba frente a él en este momento, la banda que le había cubierto los ojos parecía habérsele caído tan sólo por un instante; segundos después, fue como si ese tiempo no hubiera sido nada más que un destello a través de su mente.”

El inicio pausado y circunstancial de esta fábula la presenta como una de las obras más condescendientes del realismo germano nacional, que trata acerca de una chica que, aunque probablemente mentía, también era inocente, y de un hombre que fracasa en una prueba imposible. Aquí, Musil encontró el vehículo perfecto, demasiado perfecto y esquemático, para un constante tema de su interés: la infranqueable unión entre lo racional y lo irracional; entre la moral, basada siempre en el ejemplo del pasado y por consiguiente en el cálculo, y en lo ético, exigiendo así un gran salto hacia el futuro.

El pensamiento de Musil muestra una extraordinaria e inquebrantable trayectoria desde su primera novela precoz,  Las tribulaciones del joven Törless (1906), hasta su muerte en 1942. En el núcleo de su pensamiento existe una idea que se expresa de manera sucinta en la siguiente metáfora matemática (Musil fue capacitado como ingeniero): existe una infinidad de números racionales, esto es, números que pueden ser escritos como el radio de dos números enteros. También existe una infinidad de números irracionales, números que no pueden ser expresados como una radio matemática pero sus dos relaciones infinitas no son comparables. Lo infinito de lo irracional es «superior» a lo infinito de lo racional. En particular, entre dos racionales cualquiera, no importa cuán cerca se encuentren, existe un grupo de irracionales. El paso de un racional a otro, tal como hacemos diariamente, se representa en Törless como un puente que se cruza y cuyos pilares se unen por algo que «realmente» no existe.

Para vivir y funcionar en el mundo de lo racional, de forma deliberada debemos eliminar deliberadamente de nuestra conciencia lo irracional que permanece densamente bajo nuestros pies y alrededor de nosotros. Tenemos que aceptar una convención en lo que concierne a lo que es ser tratado como miembro del mundo real. Tal convención definirá el lenguaje de uso cotidiano (en esto Musil se acerca a su contemporáneo austriaco Wittgenstein). No obstante, Musil, en su proceder, acepta el hecho de que un entorno lingüístico no debe significar que estamos obligados a reprimir lo irracional. Así como Ülrich, el héroe de El hombre sin atributos, podemos mantener cierta actitud circunspecta hacia el mundo real; un sentido vivo de posibilidades alternativas. Esta introspección lo define a uno como eso que Ülrich llama un «posibilitador», alguien preparado para existir en «una confusa telaraña de fantasías imaginarias y en modo subjuntivo». Vivir una «vida indecisa» sin compromisos ideológicos; ser «sin cualidades», alguien para quien su modo natural será el modo de la ironía («Conmigo», dijo Musil en una entrevista, «la ironía no es un gesto de condescendencia sino una forma de lucha»).

Con tal agudo sentido del papel que interpreta la represión en la construcción cultural, uno podría imaginar que Musil habría hallado compatibilidad con Freud, pero el hecho es que Musil se mantuvo, a lo largo de su vida, a cierta distancia de Freud, a quien él consideraba fundamentalmente equivocado al asumir que el inconsciente, lo irracional reprimido, o lo que Musil prefería llamar vagamente «la otra condición», era accesible al lenguaje de la racionalidad. De alguna manera, la psicología de Musil es más radical que la de Freud. Para Musil —un positivista en lo que a esto se refiere—, la psicología se limita a lo racional al someterse a las reglas de la lógica y la causalidad que gobiernan lo racional: «la otra condición» simplemente está fuera de su campo. Para adentrarse en «la otra condición» uno debe abandonar el modelo de la ciencia (Wissenschaft), cuyo instrumento es la lógica y tomar como modelo la poesía (Dichtung), cuyo instrumento es la analogía. A los ojos de Musil, Freud llegó a lo más profundo de sus pensamientos cuando éste actuó no como un científico, sino como un «pseudo poeta».

Este no es el único motivo por el cual Musil se mantuvo a distancia de Freud. Para un novelista con un fuerte interés analítico en las oscuras causas del quebrantamiento de las instituciones liberales de Europa, el poder que Freud atribuía a las estructuras fijas de la psique parecía muy cercano al poder que el historicismo germano del siglo XIX les atribuía, presentando al psicoanálisis como una simple continuación del historicismo con objetivos diferentes. Además, debe existir —tal como argumentaba Karl Corino— cierta testarudez en la actitud de Musil, al tomar la decisión de cerrar sus ojos al psicoanálisis porque éste amenazaba con anular el valor del análisis ético metafísico de las pasiones con el que él se sentía más cómodo.

Por tanto, dibujando una clara línea entre el terreno de la Wissenshaft y el de la Dichtung, Musil se propuso explorar como Dichter la «otra condición» oculta. Las tres historias de 1924 dan a conocer personas que se encuentran al filo de una revelación, al punto de abandonarse (o de regresar después de haberse abandonado) a «otro» tipo de conciencia. «Tonka» es el estudio de una cobardía ética. A pesar de la superficial sencillez narrativa, no es sino un arrebato sutil de exploraciones hacia una ceguera por acto de fe, una fe que se halla detrás de la necesidad del protagonista de creer las extraordinarias historias de la mujer, siempre escondidas de sí mismo. En su estado absoluto de enfermedad y, por tanto, en el estado absoluto requerido para el remedio (la conversión preferible a la cura) tenemos una pista más del por qué la ciencia secular de Freud era inaceptable para Musil.

Musil encuentra un camino que lo rescata de cualquier problema en «La portuguesa», una obra inquietante, no menos compleja, con grandes bloques de prosa altamente estilizada. Aquí, aunque ambiguo y absurdo, el milagro que ocurre frente a nosotros tiene que ver con la restauración del amor entre un hombre viejo y celoso y su joven esposa, a partir de la muerte ejemplar de una gatito sucio y sarnoso que ambos, de manera oscura, creen que es Cristo. En «Grigia», un geólogo que trabaja solitariamente en lo alto del valle de Tirol vive un romance con una campesina, una mujer de la tierra con nombre de animal, con quien consigue escapar del mundo, de la vida en sí, hacia un amor místico, distinto del de su lejana esposa.

Musil siempre es autoritario debido a esa facilidad con la que se mueve entre la experiencia sensible, el pensamiento sensual y la abstracción, muy al estilo del escritor que él más admiró entre sus contemporáneos: Rilke. En su diario aquél escribió: «No es que nosotros nos reflejemos en las cosas, sino que las cosas se piensan a sí mismas fuera de nosotros.» Cuando escribe en su mejor momento, tanto en «Tonka» como en otras tantas partes de El hombre sin atributos, la línea de su prosa traza el suave pero incesante empuje de la mente en los límites hasta ahora conocidos. Ningún caso en la historia de la psicopatología nos da un sentido de extrañeza y locura como en los capítulos de El hombre sin atributos, plasmado en Moosbrugger, el asesino sexual. La fuerza de Musil, aquí y en cualquier otro lugar, parece fluir de una capacidad de aniquilar su Yo y entrar en el Otro sin esfuerzo alguno.

Reflexionando sobre su propia vida, Moosbrugger mantenía pausados monólogos internos en los cuales daba el mismo peso a las sílabas acentuadas que a las no acentuadas. Esto creaba una singular canción de vida distinta a la canción que uno escucha usualmente. Es difícil encontrar una expresión para esa unidad del ser que en ocasiones él logra. Uno puede pensar en la vida de una persona como el flujo de una corriente, pero el movimiento que Moosebrugger sentía era como el fluir de un arroyo a través de un gran lago estático. Al mismo tiempo que se adentraba se retraía. El progreso real de la vida desaparecía justo allí. En una ocasión, a medio sueño, él siente que viste al Moosbrugger de su propia vida como si fuese un abrigo viejo que abre un poco, de vez en cuando, mostrando un maravilloso forro que sale a borbotones como olas de seda verde.

Sin embargo, una vez dicho esto, lo que queda en las historias es una cantidad de gestos dirigidos hacia el amor místico y de consumación trascendente, lo cual se aprecia en «Grigia» y en «La portuguesa»; asimismo, es el rasgo más débil de la historia anterior «La consumación del amor».[2] No obstante, «La consumación del amor» es una pieza audaz, de una sostenida intensidad poética y es uno de los textos clave del modernismo germano. Con una extensión de 55 páginas, fue el resultado de dos años de trabajo febril por parte del autor. Es la historia de Claudine, una mujer que «perfecciona» su amor hacia su esposo al entregarse con reacia voluptuosidad a actos sexuales de autodegradación con un hombre extraño, maduro y mujeriego por el cual ella no siente interés. Al término de su breve unión, Claudine siente que ha llegado a un estado de liberación mística… «Como haberse entregado ella misma a todos y aun así pertenecer sólo al hombre amado».

Tal como lo indican los documentos privados de Musil, la historia se basa en la infidelidad de su prometida Martha Marcovaldi. En un principio fue un intento por explorar sus propios sentimientos de celos; sin embargo, se convirtió en una súplica grandilocuente de un adulterio místico (en un ensayo de 1913, Musil fue más allá, buscando un tiempo en el cual los «eróticos bipolares» fuesen anacrónicos). No obstante (y esto es una posibilidad que el tratamiento narrativo de Musil, sujeto a la vida interna de Claudine, no permite emerger hacia un proceso articulado), también es probable que éste sea un esfuerzo por dominar la experiencia sexual de la mujer —al escribirla, al convertirse en su autor— y despojarla así de su perturbadora autonomía. Imagino que «La consumación del amor» fue difícil de escribir debido a que representaba un reto verdadero, altamente ético para la integridad del objetivo de Musil; una empresa en la que él mismo buscaba entregarse a los procesos en los cuales el pensamiento se piensa a sí mismo, analógicamente y paralógicamente, en metáforas, semejanzas y similitudes. El ritmo de las meditaciones de Claudine (si es que es ella la voz del texto) nos invita a caer en un letargo sin voluntad, conforme nos guía a lo largo de lo que Musil llamaría después: «el camino colmado, la vereda de las transiciones graduales e imperceptibles» que van desde el matrimonio recto y feliz hasta el abandono perverso.

La historia de Claudine da varios giros fin de siècle a esas doctrinas cristianas en las que se enseña que, mientras el alma sea pura, no puede ser lacerada por las violaciones que se inflijan sobre la carne. El primer giro ocurre cuando Claudine ofrece su cuerpo a la violación; el segundo cuando se entrega sin reserva alguna, rindiendo su voluntad así como su cuerpo. Debemos asumir que la prueba radica en qué tan intacto puede mantener el núcleo de su ser, ante el martirio de la carne. Pero Claudine está conciente y no repudia esa última etapa de perversión que puede experimentar la doctrina: una búsqueda activa de la violación, la tortura y la muerte como un recurso para alcanzar la trascendencia negativa. Ella confiesa ante su esposo que siente cierta fascinación por la experiencia de un psicópata al que llama G., que más tarde se personificará como Moosbruger en El hombre sin atributos. «Yo pienso… que él cree que sus acciones son buenas», dice ella. En más de una forma, «La consumación del amor» es un ejercicio para pensar lo impensable.

Más tarde, la actitud de Musil hacia esta historia, que apareció en compañía de la muy inferior «La tentación de la serena Verónica» en 1911, es muy interesante: aunque éste era uno de sus pocos trabajos que era capaz de releer, él disuadía a sus amigos de aventurarse a leerla. Es tan oscura, decía, tan relacionada con «los arcanos de un artista» que es posible que el lector común responda con «repulsión». Sospecho que aquello contra lo que Musil se defendía tenía que ver menos con los «arcanos» que una persona pudiese encontrar fuera de contexto y más con su identificación con la postura moral a la que llega Claudine, una postura a la que Musil llega por decisión propia con la finalidad de apropiarse de la experiencia perturbadora de la mujer. Utilizando el lenguaje del «pseudopoeta» Freud, el  más antiguo rival de Musil en cuanto a la exploración de la vida común de la amable sociedad vienesa, notamos que el escándalo de la historia reside en el deseo, que se traiciona en el escritor, de ocupar y ser autor de la grandilocuente y fascinante escena de sexo, suplantando al usurpador, ese extraño con barba dentro de la historia de Claudine y Martha.

Musil acepta como premisa y luego busca superar, en uno de los dualismos, que el hombre y la mujer están uno al lado del otro, en la relación de lo racional con lo irracional, de la Wissenschaft con la Dichtung. En sus primeros años con Martha Marcovaldi, entre 1906 y 1911, se puede pensar en Musil como alguien que alternaba entre su dedicación a las labores científicas cotidianas durante el día y su devoción por Martha durante la noche, recreando imaginariamente la vida de ella antes de conocerlo mediante una sensibilidad femenina erotizada que él había adoptado y creado a medias. Cuando ponemos lado a lado el proyecto de Robert, de vivir imaginariamente la vida de Martha, y el proyecto de Martha, luego de la muerte de Robert, de editar y publicar sus manuscritos, a veces modificados —un proyecto de convertirse en su autor—, tenemos una impresionante diádica casa literaria como no ha existido ninguna después de la de Tolstoi.

El único poema importante de Musil, «Isis y Osiris» (1923), trata de una hermana y un hermano que se devoran mutuamente durante un festín amoroso. Musil, tiempo más tarde, comprendió que la afirmación de que El hombre sin atributos se encontrara en estado embrionario era un mito.

El hombre sin atributos, así como lo tenemos, se encamina hacia un final en el que Ülrich y su hermana Ágata se retiran hacia un incesto místico, una especie de androginia: la última metáfora de Musil para «la otra condición». Por lo general, pensamos que El hombre sin atributos es una novela inconclusa pero, como los cantos de Ezra Pound, otro trabajo de ambiciones épicas, El hombre sin atributos empezó a irse a pique durante los años treinta, pues la historia comenzó a moverse de manera tan acelerada y con tal efecto devastador, que sobrepasó las capacidades de las formas literarias que lo sostenían. El progreso del trabajo de Musil, después de la publicación de la primera parte, pasó de ser lento a ser más lento. La coraza proporcionada por su endeble trama era demasiado frágil e irónica para su época. Tal vez la paz privada de Ülrich y Agatha era lo mejor que se podría esperar dadas las circunstancias.

Traducción de Hugo Alfredo Hinojosa

[2] Incluido, como «La tentación de la serena Verónica», en el volumen Uniones Vereinigungen), anterior a Tres mujeres. [N. del T.]

“Um país se faz com homens e livros”.
Monteiro Lobato

O Dia Nacional do Livro é comemorado em 29 de outubro. Essa data foi escolhida para a comemoração, considerando-se a data da fundação da Biblioteca Nacional (29/10/1810), por D. João VI. O grande acontecimento permitiu a popularização do livro, tornando mais fácil o acesso à leitura.

Em homenagem a esta importante data, que deve ter sido comemorada ontem, relaciono os livros que mudaram a minha vida e se tornaram inesquecíveis em minha história:

- O Vale das Bonecas de Jacqueline Susann;

- Feliz Ano Velho de Marcelo Rubens Paiva;

- Desonra de J.M.Coetzee;

- Dom Casmurro de Machado de Assis;

- 100 Escovadas Antes de Ir Para a Cama de Melissa Panarello.

Cada um desses livros, em suas determinadas épocas, tocou o meu ser e, de alguma maneira, mudou a minha forma de ver o mundo e a vida. Legal, né?!

Vale ressaltar que as coleções Harry Potter de J. K. Rowling, O Diário da Princesa de Mia Cabot e Gossip Girl de Cecily von Ziegesar também tiveram papel fundamental na construção de minha personalidade, de minha visão de mundo e, principalmente, de minha busca sentimental.

De verdade!

Minha estante de livros… Meu orgulho!

• Cronică literară publicată în revista Cultura,  nr. 42 (246) din 22 octombrie 2009.

J. M. Coetzee, Summertime (Hardcover), Harvill Secker: London, 2009, 266 p.

Pentru cei mai mulţi, Nobelul pentru Literatură nu mai este emblema unei certificări literare de necontestat. Odată cu premierea lui Doris Lessing şi a lui J. M. G. Le Clézio, Nobelul pentru Literatură a stârnit contestări şi dezbateri acerbe. E drept, atunci când o Elfriede Jelinek primeşte acest premiu, iar un Mario Vargas Llosa lipseşte din lista nobelizaţilor, scepticismul unora cu privire la criteriile de acordare a acestui, chiar şi-aşa, prestigios premiu pare a fi din ce în ce mai îndreptăţit. Dar decizia din 2003 de premiere a  sud-africanului J. M. Coetzee a fost una cât se poate de inspirată.

La noi, traducerea lui Coetzee a început foarte târziu, abia în 2005, cu „Waiting for the Barbarians”, iar până în prezent s-au tradus alte trei romane – „Disgrace”, „The Master of Petersburg” şi „Life & Times of Michael K”, din aproape o duzină, cât cuprinde CV-ul literar al acestui prozator first-class.

Însă, un caz aparte îl constituie chiar colecţia de memorii, începută în 1997 prin volumul „Boyhood” şi continuată prin „Youth” (2002) şi „Summertime” (2009). Spun asta pentru că primele două volume nu urmăresc convenţiile obişnuite ale acestui tip de scriere. Întâmplările sunt redate la persoana a III-a, dintr-o perspectivă obiectivă, Coetzee nefăcând niciodată referire la sine prin pronumele „eu/I”, ci folosind „el/he” în mod constant – de aici şi denumirea de fictionalised memoir cu care editorii i-au promovat aceste volume. Odată cu a treia carte, publicată în urmă cu două luni, Coetzee îşi regândeşte întreaga strategie narativă, introducând nişte elemente cât se poate de derutante.

Răposatul Coetzee

Deşi este livrat ca ultim volum, purtând chiar şi subtitlul celorlalte cărţi autobiografice – „Scenes from Provincial Life” – cititorul ar putea foarte bine contesta acest lucru după primele 14 pagini, unde aflăm că J. M. Coetzee nu are, de fapt, copii, acţiunea petrecându-se cândva în 1975. Or, din biografia deja cunoscută a scriitorului, se ştie foarte clar faptul că acesta s-a căsătorit în 1963 şi este tătal a doi copii: Nicolas (1966-1989) şi Gisela (n. 1968). Aşadar, de unde aceste inadvertenţe? Problema este, însă, mult mai complicată decât pare.

De fapt, cartea nu are un fir narativ cursiv, ci este o colecţie de interviuri – cinci la număr – încadrate în ramă de nişte însemnări din caietele personale ale scriitorului Coetzee. Interviurile sunt conduse de un biograf, Mr Vincent, care îşi propune să scrie o carte despre, surpriză, decedatul scriitor John Coetzee (aşa cum e numit personajul de-a lungul întregii cărţi şi pe care Vincent nu l-a cunoscut personal niciodată), o carte care să se concentreze pe anii 1972-1977, socotiţi ca punct de maturitate artistică a lui Coetzee. Procedeul prin care Vincent îşi alege metoda de studiu a vieţii scriitorului este cât se poate de simplu, dar nu neapărat şi eficient: date fiind condiţiile (id est moartea scriitorului) şi ignorând opera literară a lui Coetzee, el îşi propune ca, studiind caietele cu însemnări ale acestuia, să identifice persoanele importante din viaţa lui Coetzee la acel moment şi să le intervieveze pe cele încă în viaţă. Aşa ajunge la Julia, iubita sau mai curând amanta lui Coetzee la mijlocul anilor ’70, la verişoara Margot, aceeaşi cu Agnes din „Boyhood”, prima iubire a lui Coetzee; apoi la Adriana, o fostă balerină braziliancă emigrată în Africa de Sud, mama unei eleve eminente căreia John Coetzee îi preda ore private de limba engleză, şi la Martin şi Sophie, colegii de la Universitatea din Cape Town. Scepticismul faţă de metoda de studiu aleasă de biograf este manifestat doar de Martin, practic singurul interesat de viitorul cărţii pe care Vincent intenţionează să o publice. Îndoiala lui Martin faţă de eficienţa metodei biografului provine tocmai din faptul că toate femeile intervievate au fost implicate emoţional în viaţa lui Coetzee şi, astfel, viziunea pe care acestea ar oferi-o despre scriitor va fi una trunchiată: „Are you not inevitably going to come out with an account that is slanted toward the personal and the intimate at the expense of the man’s actual achievements as a writer? Will it amount to anything more than [...] women’s gossip? […] Because it is not in the nature of love affairs for the lovers to see each other whole and steady”.

Un scriitor „minor”

Martin intuieşte corect riscurile şi, pe bună dreptate, ce perspectivă ar putea oferi femeile din viaţa lui Coetzee decât una subiectivă, alimentată de eşecurile suferite în dragoste alături de scriitor? De aici şi imaginea nefastă despre Coetzee care rezultă din paginile cărţii: „he is sexless”, „[...] badly dressed, with badly cut hair and a beard when he shouldn’t have worn beard [...] he struck me at once, I can’t say why, as célibataire [...] not just unmarried but also not suited to marriage, like a man who has spent his life in priesthood and lost his manhood and become incompetent with women. [...] his comportment was not good […] he had not learned to hide his feelings, which is the first step toward civilized manners”, peste care se suprapun imperios frazele rostite de Julia: „he and his father [...] a widower and his celibate son, two incompetents, two of life’s failure”, „John really was a minor character”. Astfel, descrierile negative de mai sus pe care ni le furnizează Julia, Margot (cea mai candidă dintre toate) şi Adriana, imaginea tenebroasă spre care acestea îl împing pe Coetzee cel pasionat de muzica lui Schubert, în care vede o modalitate de a sublima iubirea „aşa cum pe vremuri chimiştii sublimau substanţele bazice” transformă „Summertime” într-un rechizitoriu etic şi social faţă de care „Coetzee” rămâne fără drept de apel. Însă, riscul în care cad mai mult sau mai puţin inconştient cele patru este de a vorbi mai mult despre ele, şi nu despre bărbatul cu care la un moment sau altul au avut o aventură (v. digresiunile Juliei despre soţul ei). Chiar şi-aşa, poveştile pe care ele le spun despre Coetzee – oricât de neadevărate şi îndoielnice ar fi – sunt mai dure decât orice cronică negativă pe care un critic ar fi putut-o scrie despre romanele prozatorului.

Totuşi, există în interviuri şi câteva aprecieri la adresa scrierilor lui Coetzee, care nu vin, aşa cum ne-am fi aşteptat, în contrabalansarea imaginii sociale negative creionate, ci contribuie la potenţarea minusurilor. Implicată şi ea emoţional, deşi nu ştim cât de mult („we had a liaison [...] it did not endure”), Sophie îi face, de asemenea, un review negativ: „his work lacks ambition. The control of the elements is too tight. [...] Too cool, too neat [...]Too easy. Too lacking in passion. That’s all”.

„We are all fictioneers”

La prima vedere toate aceste aprecieri la adresa lui Coetzee au un efect aproape la fel de periculos asupra cititorului, ridicând semne de întrebare nu atât asupra operei sale – cine a citit-o e conştient că afirmaţiile Sophiei sunt goale de adevăr –, cât asupra capacităţilor lui Coetzee de a se integra social. Dar, în fapt, toate aceste probleme sunt secundare. Ceea ce contează în primul rând este de ce Coetzee optează pentru o transpunere negativă a unei perioade din viaţa sa. Paradoxal, răspunsul şi esenţa întregii cărţi se regăsesc în afirmaţiile rostite tot de una dintre femeile intervievate, Sophie: „what if we are all fictioneers, as you call Coetzee? What if we all continually make up the stories of our lives?”. De fapt, toată cartea „Summertime” este ficţiune pură, iar cele câteva elemente de adevăr istoric (menţionarea romanului „Dusklands”, cartea de debut a lui J. M. Coetzee, aluzia la scrierea volumului „Diary of a Bad Year”, cu alte cuvinte, doar cele legate strict de operă) constituie prototipul pentru un soi de joc de make-believe, adevărul dintre pagini fiind mai degrabă un adevăr ficţional care duce la crearea unui univers paralel, ficţional la rândul său, în care J. M. Coetzee imaginează un alter-ego, pe John Coetzee. Astfel, biografia din „Summertime” nu este a lui Coetzee din adevărul istoric, palpabil pentru cititor, ci a lui Coetzee din adevărul ficţional, în spatele căruia Coetzee istoric ascunde un tip – tipul scriitorului cu toate implicaţiile sociale ale acestui statut, procedeul avându-şi rădăcinile în credinţa că ficţiunea este singurul mod de a vorbi al unui scriitor, iar detaliile despre viaţa privată (oricare ar fi ele) nu fac decât să satisfacă ritualic curiozităţiile de tabloid. Chiar şi Vincent poate fi interpretat ca un alter-ego naratorial, pentru că şi el ficţionalizează atunci când recompune narativ interviul cu verişoara lui Coetzee: „you are putting words of your own in my mouth” îi spune adesea Margot.

Scris inteligent, cu vervă, volumul „Summertime” este o ficţiune de cea mai bună calitate în care Coetzee concepe o alegorie sublimă a ideii că noi înşine suntem făuritorii propriilor vieţi, dându-şi, dacă mai era nevoie, încă o dată măsura talentului său literar de invidiat.

Não sei se é desatenção minha, mas acho que ninguém deu muita bola no Brasil à versão cinematográfica de Desonra, o romance premiado de J. M. Coetzee (FLIP 2007). Tanto que o filme nem chegou a estrear no cinema: foi direto para o DVD.

Há John Malkovich no papel de David Lurie, o professor de literatura que cai em desgraça após acusação de assédio sexual. Há tomadas grandiosas das paisagens do interior sul-africano. Há ainda trilha sonora cheia de efeitos, cores esfuziantes e demais recursos do cinemão. Mas nem por isso se falou do filme por aqui.

Confesso que achei meio sem graça e artificial. Mas o ponto não é esse. Quando o livro saiu no Brasil, em 2000, a crítica fez um auê danado – poucas obras de ficção foram tão festejadas nos últimos tempos. Mas mesmo assim os exibidores acharam que não valia a pena levar o filme para o circuito comercial.

É verdade que os grandes autores contemporâneos não costumam ser campeões de bilheteria: os últimos filmes inspirados em trabalhos de Philip Roth, por exemplo, não eram exatamente empolgantes. Mas pelo menos o leitor pôde verificar isso no cinema. Queria entender por que a Coetzee não foi dada a mesma chance no Brasil.

Este não é um livro bonito; não é uma história em que tudo acaba bem depois de um enredo de “suspense”. J. M. Coetze mergulha-nos na África do Sul pós-apartheid, com os seus preconceitos raciais e a sua insegurança, através de um professor universitário que se vê forçado a renunciar à sua carreira depois de se ter envolvido sexualmente com uma aluna.

Refugia-se numa quinta da sua filha, para passar uns dias, mas um assalto, em que a filha é violada mas se recusa a apresentar queixa formal na polícia ou a mudar-se para outro local, obrigam-no a ficar mais tempo do que previa. Os seus projectos pessoais passam por escrever um libreto sobre Byron e uma das suas amantes, mas estes projectos nunca chegam a tomar forma e a verdadeira desgraça é a do próprio protagonista da história.

A linguagem é simples, sem grandes artifícios de estilo, por isso é um livro fácil de ler.

Slow Man by J.M Coetzee was a well-written novel. I am still unsure as to whether or not I actually like it, as it left me hanging.

The main character, Paul Rayment, seemed to me to remain flat throughout the work, with a slight bit of growth near the end.

He is an elderly man who encounters a car while riding his bicycle down a road in Coniston Terrace, Australia. Don’t ask me where exactly that is as I do not know. This accident requires the doctors to amputate his leg. The rest of the book focuses on his transition into realizing how old he has become and how much help he must accept from others.

It discusses the idea of familial love and love that springs from the heart of a lonely person. It brings together immigrants from France and Croatia as well as Australian natives.

The character who intrigued me the most was Elizabeth Costello. An elderly lady who blusters into the story after about three chapters and remains in the forefront of the plot for most of the rest of the book. The reason she caught my attention was the fact that she remains such an enigma. Her character is never revealed by the author. However, farther down the list is another book by the same author about Ms. Costello.

Therefore, I look forward with great anticipation to book number twenty-one.

At the moment, however, I strive on, looking forward with anticipation and allowing regret only at the borders of my mind.

This regret is not bred of the fact that I actually wish I had not read the book, but the realization that I have much catching up to do in terms of reading good literature. I urge you to read through this list along with me and to realize the joy and contentment that finishing a good novel brings.

And, just for good measure, here is the information about the next book:

5. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson ~ This book is not in any library and from researching the author/title I have discovered that it is extremely difficult to find. Also, I cannot even find a formal ‘biography’ of this book. Therefore I am forced to skip this one.

J.M. Coetzee

I have been reading Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee.  It includes a short homily entitled On Intelligent Design, which contains this surprising, in view of its authorship, statement:

I continue to find evolution by random mutation and natural selection not just unconvincing but preposterous as an account of how complex organisms come into being.

Apart from his personal incredulity, Mr Coetzee offers no argument or evidence against mutation or natural selection.  He does not deny that evolution takes place, just that it does not make the grade as an “account of how complex organisms come into being”.  This is fortunate because the evidence for evolution actually occurring is overwhelming: to deny it is akin to denying gravity or believing that the Earth is flat.  He does, however, go on to state that he disbelieves in a personal god who answers prayers and punishes evildoers, but he does believe in some creative intelligence:

It does not seem to me to be philosophically retrograde to attribute intelligence to the universe as a whole, rather than just to a subset of mammals on the planet Earth.

Whether or not such a view is philosophically retrograde is a question for philosophers.  As an ordinary person, I  regard the statement as nonsensical.  Why would anyone ascribe intelligence to the universe as a whole rather than, say, a grain of sand, or a pine tree, or a 1967 Valiant Safari?  All are collections of matter and energy that obey well-established physical laws and show no signs of intelligence at all.

Charles Darwin

So far, so bad.  Mr Coetzee then challenges those who believe evolution is responsible for the biodiversity that we see to answer this question:

Why is it that the intellectual apparatus that has evolved for human beings seems to be incapable of comprehending in any degree of detail its own complexity?  Why do we human beings typically experience awe—a recoil of the mind, as if before an abyss—when we try to comprehend, grasp, certain things, such as the origin of space and time, the being of nothingness, the nature of understanding itself?  I cannot see what evolutionary advantage this gives us—the combination of insufficiency of intellectual grasp together with conciousness that the grasp is insufficient.

OK, I’ll give it a try, and if it comes out the way I think it might, the answer to the question may very well go some way towards explaining Mr Coetzee’s incredulity.

Firstly, the question itself is a non-sequitur; evolution does not depend in any way on the capacity of the human brain to understand itself.

Secondly, not every attribute of humans confers an evolutionary advantage.  Take as an example the mess that is the human upper respiratory tract, which is still optimised for an animal that moves on all fours.  Bipedalism has conferred more of an advantage than the disadvantage of a flawed, dangerous respiratory system.  The flaws in human design are some of the strongest arguments against intelligent design.

The entire question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution actually is.  To ask “why” evolution produces this or that feature in a species is to assume that it is goal-oriented, that it is working toward some purpose.  It isn’t.  Over time, the changes that “work”, or cause the organism to have a higher chance of surviving and reproducing are passed on, those that impair the organism are not.  There is no goal or even direction to evolution.  The egotistical notion that humans are the topmost twig of the evolutionary tree is simply wrong; it is quite conceivable that we might die out and have our place taken by some currently ill-regarded species which better adapts to conditions than we do.

Humans evolved to survive on the Earth.  That they were successful in that endeavour is evidenced by the fact that we human beings are here to discuss it.  In order to survive we had to have a firm intuitive grasp of our environment on the scale of our prey and potential predators. There was not, and still isn’t, any evolutionary advantage to be had by an understanding of quantum mechanics or relativity, because the effects of those phenomena are only evident at scales very different to those required for human survival on Earth.  Our individual lifespans are measured in decades; we have no intuitive understanding of the billion year time spans over which evolution takes place.  The very small, the very large and the very long ago are beyond the capacity of our brains to grasp, because there is no evolutionary reason for us to grasp those concepts.

It is because these things are intrinsically so alien to our everyday lives that we experience the “recoil of the mind”.  We cannot imagine the distances to the galaxies (or even the stars in our own galaxy), the size of a subatomic particle or the age of the Earth; these things do not fit into our imaginations; they must be expressed in a way that allows us to perform calculations and make predictions, but we can only understand them in a dry, intellectual way not intuitively as we understand the parabola of a thrown rock or the acceleration of a falling coconut.

Perhaps this is why Mr Coetzee and others instinctively find the notion of evolution preposterous.  Because they cannot intuitively grasp the time scale involved, they imagine that all this happened in a time scale they can imagine, which would be preposterous.

Grumpy Old Man by Mark Widdicombe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.

• Kirg on tundmatu maa, koomiline, ehkki vältimatu haigus, nagu mumps, mida loodetakse põdeda noorena, kergemas ja ohutumas vormis, et mitte hiljem rängalt haigestuda.
• Keegi ei sure amputeeritud jala tõttu. Inimesed surevad aga ükskõiksusest tuleviku vastu.
• Eelmine peatükk on läbi, teil tuleb sellega hüvasti jätta ja uus omaks võtta. Omaksvõtmine on kõik, mis teil tuleb teha. Siis on teile avatud kõik uksed, mida te praegu suletuks peate. Küll te näete.
• Eluga ei maksa riskida. Risk pole seda väärt.
• Ta on meeleheitel. Juba mitu kuud valdab teda masendus. Kartuses, et teised teda vaatavad, ei suuda ta inimeste sekka tulla. Ta tahab ennast peita. Ta tahab surra. Kuid samal ajal pulbitseb temas – tahtmatult – õnnetu iha.
• Teil tarvitseb vaid oma mälus sorida, kui avastate üllatusega, mida kõike sealt esile ei kerki.
• Kibekiirelt läevad aastad; naudi elu, kuni jaksad; aeg on lühem, kui sa arvad.
• Kui suremine osutub pelgalt illusiooniks, mida võib ka sõnadega luua, kui surm on pelgalt luksatus ajas, mille järel elu läheb edasi nagu varem, milleks siis kogu see tühi muretsemine? Kas võib sellest keelduda – keelduda surematusest, sellest viletsast saatusest?
• Ühed inimesed on maa küljes kinni, juured kodumaa mullas; teised aga on nagu liblikad, valgust ja õhku armastavad olendid, kes peatuvad üürikeseks kord siin, kord seal. Te peate end liblikaks, tahate olla liblikas, kuid siis ühel päeval kukute, ja väga õnnetult, prantsatate maha; aga kui te ennast püsti ajate, avastate, et ei saa enam lennata nagu õhuline olend, ei saa isegi kõndida, olete vaid nagu liiga tihke lihakäntsakas. See on kindlasti õppetund, mille suhtes ei saa pimedaks ega kurdiks jääda.
• Tehke ometi midagi. Ükskõik mida. Üllatage mind. Kas te pole mõelnud, et kui elu näib teile iga päevaga aina üksluisem, piiratum ja igavam, siis tuleb sellest, et te peaaegu üldse ei välju sellest neetud korterist? … Millal te viimati tähistaeva all kõndisite? … Mis mõte on siis kurta? Kuulake!

Ma olen, aga kes, ei hooli keegi sellest,

mu sõbrad hülgavad mu nagu kustund mälestuse,

vaid üksi joon ma sellest murekarikast.

Si sa che i figli tendono a ribellarsi contro i padri, ma poi, quando diventano a loro volta padri, negano, prima ancora di arrivare a combatterla, ogni forma di ribellione.
Sulla rimozione degli slanci della propria giovinezza da parte dei padri, e sulla spinta naturale dei figli verso la ribellione poggia il conflitto generazionale.

E’ un tema su cui si è scritto molto, fin dall’antichità, fin dal mito, e su cui è stato costruito il credo psicoanalitico fondante della nostra epoca: il complesso di Edipo.
Un aspetto non secondario della questione è l’odio dei padri verso i figli: Crono divora i suoi figli perchè nessuno di loro prenda il suo posto, Dedalo invita Icaro a volare un po’ più basso.

Ho riflettuto spesso sul conflitto della mia generazione con la generazione dei nostri padri, e di recente questo argomento è tornato alla mia attenzione grazie a Il maestro di Pietroburgo di J.M. Coetzee. Come ho già scritto, ho iniziato a leggere questo libro perchè mi incuriosiva l’idea che uno scrittore contemporaneo sfidasse un mostro sacro della letteratura mondiale, raccontandolo attraverso un episodio della sua vita.
Non era il Dostoevskij che mi aspettavo di incontrare, quello che ho immaginato attraverso le pagine dei suoi libri.
(Ogni lettore probabilmente si sente interprete e depositario dell’immagine esatta dello scrittore che ama e la custodisce gelosamente).

Coetzee comunque sa di cosa parla, e si muove in modo disinvolto tanto tra le idiosincrasie del suo Fëdor Michajlovic, quanto nel clima sociale e politico della Russia della seconda metà dell’Ottocento.
Il nodo centrale del libro è la riflessione sullo scontro generazionale tra padri e figli, sia sul piano sentimentale che su quello sociale, tema caro allo stesso Dostoevskij e argomento di dibattito nella Russia di quegli anni, anche in seguito alla  pubblicazione di Padri e figli di Ivan Turgenev, il romanzo che fece conoscere all’opinione pubblica la mentalità e le aspirazioni dei giovani russi.

Nel romanzo di Coetzee, Dostoevskij rientra a Pietroburgo dal suo volontario esilio in Germania in seguito alla morte di Pavel, il suo figliastro.
Nell’innaturale circostanza di un padre che piange suo figlio e che cerca in ogni modo di ritrovarlo attraverso le persone che il figlio frequentava e gli scritti che ha lasciato, il conflitto generazionale detona violentemente nell’animo di Dostoevskij.

Fëdor Michajlovic sa di essere vecchio e sente amaramente la mancanza del giovane che è stato. Per questo motivo invidia Pavel e la sua giovinezza che la morte ha reso eterna, ma allo stesso tempo si addolora quando scopre che suo figlio non gli risparmiava critiche e che si sentiva frustrato dal loro rapporto.
I grotteschi tentativi di Dostoevskij di sovrapporre la propria immagine a quella di Pavel gli attireranno l’antipatia e lo scherno di tutti i giovani presenti nel romanzo, giovani verso i quali prova il risentimento che avrebbe forse rivolto al figlio vivo,  ma privo del salvifico involucro dell’amore paterno.

Fëdor Michajlovic, che da giovane era stato mandato in Siberia per l’adesione agli ideali di un circolo rivoluzionario, non riesce a capire le idee dei giovani rivoluzionari “nichilisti” che si raccolgono intorno a Sergej Necaev, anzi ne disprezza la violenza e l’estremismo, ma ne subisce il fascino, come si subisce il fascino di qualcosa che ci venga negato e precluso a causa dell’età e dell’esperienza.

E’ impossibile a questo punto non pensare che l’autore di Delitto e castigo, romanzo tanto amato dai giovani nichilisti, concluderà la propria parabola di scrittore con I fratelli Karamazov, il romanzo del parricidio, in cui il padre è un essere talmente odioso e abietto che ciascuno dei figli potrebbe avere dei buoni motivi per ucciderlo.

“Ci dovete uccidere, altrimenti non vi libererete mai di noi” diceva spesso mio padre riferendosi alla sua generazione. E in effetti sembra che in Italia al momento ci sia un aspro quanto paralizzante conflitto generazionale. Classe dirigente anziana, ascensore sociale bloccato, nessuna possibilità di carriera prima dei quaranta, figli bamboccioni che non arrivano alla fine del mese e rimangono da mammà.

La generazione dei nostri padri, quella che ha scoperto l’adolescenza, non riesce più ad abbandonarla, rincorrendo spesso comportamenti e canoni estetici propri dei figli, senza concedere niente sul piano della cessione del potere.

E noi figli? Non siamo rivoluzionari né parricidi. Non so spiegarmi perchè. Forse il potere non lo vogliamo davvero. E questa potrebbe essere una novità. Infondo Pasolini aveva stigmatizzato (cogliendo nel segno come sempre) gli studenti del ‘68 perchè non rappresentavano nessun futuro diverso, ma una semplice lotta intestina alla classe borghese. Il normale tentativo dei figli di strappare il potere ai padri, per servirsene, e perpetuarlo così com’è.

J.M. Coetzee, Il maestro di Pietroburgo, Einaudi

Disgrace

The film adaptation of Disgrace, one of my favorite J.M. Coetzee novels, has been released in New York. The book, a meditation on the cruelty of human nature, is equally horrifying and beautiful — painful to read but impossible to not. Starring Jon Malkovich, the film looks to be a very-close adaptation, and though I’m usually weary of these things, I’m very much looking forward to seeing this film.

Cititi in curand, in revista Cultura, o cronica scrisa de mine despre J. M. Coetzee, Summertime, carte nominalizata pe lista scurta de la Man Booker Prize 2009.

Excerpt:

Deşi este livrat ca ultimul volum, purtând chiar şi subtitlul celorlalte cărţi autobiografice – „Scenes from Provincial Life” – cititorul ar putea foarte bine contesta acest lucru după primele 14 pagini, unde aflăm că J. M. Coetzee nu are, de fapt, copii, acţiunea petrecându-se cândva în 1975. Or, din biografia deja cunoscută a scriitorului, se ştie foarte clar faptul că acesta s-a căsătorit în 1963 şi este tătal a doi copii: Nicolas (1966-1989) şi Gisela (n. 1968). Aşadar, de unde aceste inadvertenţe? Problema este, însă, mult mai complicată decât pare.

Earlier this week the winner of the Man Booker Prize for fiction was announced, with the prestigious award going to Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Plunging the reader in to the Tudor Court of 16^thcentury London, Mantel tells the tale of real-life historical figure Thomas Cromwell. Initially a simple clerk, and later chief advisor to Henry VIII, Cromwell is a hero/villain who comes to life over the 600-plus pages of the novel. Now, usually I am quite the awards-buff, and like to read several books on various shortlists in order to judge which I would consider the best (and then consequently agree or disagree with the judge’s decision!).

This time, however, I must admit to not having read any of the other books that made the Booker shortlist: The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt, Summertime by J. M. Coetzee, The Quickening Maze by Adam Founds, The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Perhaps I am just becoming a lazy reader, but sometimes one heavy-going novel at a time seems more than enough!

But if you’ve read any of these other books be sure to let me know what I’m missing out on…