To expect high school students and—yes—even university students, to understand Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is absurd. Here is a masterpiece borne from the mind of a man for whom indigenous cultures and European civilization have no appeal, a man who was involved in gun-running and political conspiracies, who spent nearly two decades in a merchant navy and who bore witness to the horrors perpetrated by Europe in Africa; now, compare such a man to our students:—generally speaking—a class of pampered and privileged children raised on games, noise, and ignorance of silence and suffering. Now, I do not wish to argue that we are bound by experience and that the Heart of Darkness cannot be grasped across time and space, but, please, let us be realistic.

English teachers: we do not enlighten the “heart” by leading students to treat the Heart of Darkness as a work of historical fiction. Text-based questions cannot serve to comprehended the Heart of Darkness. It is not merely a story about the heart of Africa, of Kurtz, or of Marlow; the darkness at the core is also the universal darkness of death, the universal death that challenges and tests human understanding and deserves not essays or courses but entire universities, entire civilizations. Indeed, according to one psychologist, everything human already exists for this purpose.

Although Conrad’s Heart of Darkness can be considered as a work of historical fiction, to treat it as such is to do it a disservice. If we are interested in teaching about the crimes committed by King Leopold against the people of Africa, then we should examine Mark Twain’s neglected, far less ambiguous, far less amoral and far more vitriolic “King Leopold’s Soliloquy.” In contrast to Conrad’s work, Twain’s work does not sound a deep existential note, nor does it indulge in narrative niceties; Twain’s work is a powerful moral assault that condemns the privileged class and exposes how easily a religion of love is adapted to the purposes of horror.

But, expositions as Twain’s “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” provides are rare in our classrooms. We seem to prefer amoral works, or works in which the moral is voiced by the author/narrator as the bravely struggling victim of an immoral world. Not Twain’s dynamite.

To be fair, Joseph Conrad did not neglect the religious dimension of the historical horror. “Kurtz” is a cryptogram for “Christ.” He comes from the east, from Germany, to Belgium, where he seeks success. Filled with resentment for the aristocratic upper class, he sails to the Congo, to make his mark as King Leopold’s merchant of ivory. However, as Jesus rejected Hebrew law to establish a mythology around his own crucifixion, Kurtz soon departs from the methods and policies of the imperial company, establishes even more violent methods of operation, and becomes the center of a cult. Finally, as Christ’s body symbolizes food, in the minds of the natives—Kurtz’s body was fit to eat, especially on account of his persona.

Conrad’s decision to focus his tale on the aspirations of a merchant instead of on King Leopold, the historical “heart” of the problem, is prophetic. Today, kings are largely symbolic, nearly non-existent. In their place, a new class of conquerors has arisen: the merchant class, the capitalists, the industrialists, the entrepreneurs and the robber barons and financial elitists, all people who, without swords, often without guns, produce a greater swathe of death and destruction than any king ever dreamed of. And yet, are these facts taught in our classrooms? We do our best to avoid it by reducing the Heart of Darkness to an aesthetic object and a historical-moral lesson that has no bearing on the ongoing crimes being perpetrated in the Congo, in Africa, and throughout the World of Darkness.

Yes, yes, obviously Marlow’s adventure is loosely based on Conrad’s own life; but he is also a Kurtz figure, another man from the east.

To misread the Heart of Darkness is to become Kurtz’ widow, someone too deluded and in love to see anything else but her delusions.

I don’t care much for people who enjoy killing things, but I am willing to put up with hunters as long as they don’t carry their habits into private and public life. (Trotsky wired Zinoviev re the Kronstadt sailors, in revolt for the fulfillment of the promises of the Revolution, “Shoot them like partridges.” Bertrand Russell commented, “A hunter should never be allowed to lead a revolution.”)

—Kenneth Rexroth “Hemingway”, 1961

***

“You think perhaps I am a Royalist? No. If there was anybody in heaven or hell to pray to I would pray for a revolution — a red revolution everywhere.”

“You astonish me,” I said, just to say something.

“No! But there are half a dozen people in the world with whom I would like to settle accounts. One could shoot them like partridges and no questions asked. That’s what revolution would mean to me.”

“It’s a beautifully simple view,” I said.

—Joseph Conrad The Arrow of Gold, 1919

***

In a recent post, I quoted Michael Ezra thus:

In [Isaac Deutscher's] account of the Kronstadt rebellion, there is no mention of Trotsky’s famous order, “shoot them like partridges.”

In a comment, Steve Parsons writes:

I might be wrong but I think it was Zinoviev who is associated with the phrase “shoot them like p[h]easants”.

For an extensive review – a political critique but also a partial listing of some of the numerous factual inacurracies – of Service’s biography on Trotsky see David North’s ´In the service of historical falsification’

I’ve always thought it was Trotsky, but wondered if it was one of those urban myths, so present here the fruits of some of my googling. It seems it was a committee that Zinoviev chaired, although Trotsky may have had a role in its distribution. However, I think it is fair to say that Trotsky shared the sentiment.

Quick background: in February 1921, the sailors of Kronstadt in Russia, a stronghold of the revolution, raised 15 demands for greater freedom for working class people and peasants. In March, the Red Army moved to suppress the sailors, killing over 1000. Leon Trotsky, as Commissar for War, played a key role in this suppression. As did Zinoviev, by 1921 head of the Petrograd party organization, chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, and a full member of the party’s Politburo.

1. From Israel Gertzler Kronstadt 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy (2002, p.220):

on 4 March 4 an ‘Appeal’ by Zinoviev’s Defence Committee of Petrograd denounced ‘all those Petrichenkos and Tu[k]ins’, meaning Kronstadt’s Revolutionary Committee, as ‘puppets who dance at the behest of Tsarist general Kozlovsky’ and ‘other notorious White Guards’, and demanded the Kronstadters’ unconditional surrender, or else ‘you will be shot down like partridges‘.

2. From The Soviet image: a hundred years of photographs from inside the TASS archives by Peter Radetsky, p.59:

Trotsky ordered leaflets airdropped over the [Kronstadt] base, informing his former comrades that if they didn’t surrender within twenty-four hours, “I’ll shoot you like pheasants.”

3. Ida Mett, from “The Kronstadt Commune” (1938):

On 5th. March, the Petrograd Defence Committee issued a call to the rebels.

‘You are being told fairy tales when they tell you that Petrograd is with you or that the Ukraine supports you. These are impertinent lies. The last sailor in Petrograd abandoned you when he learned that you were led by generals like Kozlovskv. Siberia and the Ukraine support the Soviet power. Red Petrograd laughs at the miserable efforts of a handful of White Guards and Socialist Revolutionaries. You are surrounded on all sides. A few hours more will lapse and then you will he compelled to surrender. Kronstadt has neither bread nor fuel. If you insist, we will shoot you like partridges.

‘At the last minute, all those generals, the Kozlovskvs, the Bourksers, and all that riff raff, the Petrichenkos, and the Tourins will flee to Finland, to the White guards. And you, rank and file soldiers and sailors, where will you go then? Don’t believe them when they promise to feed you in Finland. Haven’t you heard what happened to Wrangel’s supporters? They were transported to Constantinople. There they are dying like flies, in their thousands, of hunger and disease. This is the fate that awaits you, unless you immediately take a grip of yourselves. Surrender Immediately! Don’t waste a minute. Collect your weapons and come over to us. Disarm and arrest your criminal leaders, and in particular the Tsarist generals. Whoever surrenders immediately will be forgiven. Surrender now.

‘Signed: The Defence Committee’.

4. Alexander Berkman, from The Kronstadt Rebellion:

Trotsky had been expected to address the Petro-Soviet, and his failure to appear was interpreted by some as indicating that the seriousness of the situation was exaggerated. But during the night he arrived in Petrograd and the following morning, March 5, he issued his ultimatum to Kronstadt:

The Workers and Peasants Government has decreed that the Kronstadt and the rebellious ships must immediately submit to the authority of the Soviet Republic. Therefore I command all who have raised their hand against the Socialist fatherland to lay down their arms at once. The obdurate are to be disarmed and turned over to the Soviet authorities. The arrested Commissars and other representatives of the Government are to be liberated at once. Only those surrendering unconditionally may count on the mercy of the Soviet Republic.

Simultaneously I am issuing orders to prepare to quell the mutiny and subdue the mutineers by force of arms. Responsibility for the harm that may be suffered by the peaceful population will fall entirely upon the heads of the counter-revolutionary mutineers. This warning is final.

TROTSKY
Chairman Revolutionary Military Soviet of the Republic

KAMENEV
Commander-in-Chief

The situation looked ominous. Great military forces continuously flowed into Petrograd and its environs. Trotsky’s ultimatum was followed by a prikaz which contained the historic threat, “I’ll shoot you like pheasants”.

[Note: The same text is in Voline's The Unknown Revolution, bk.3, pt.1, ch.5, and in Berkman's The Paris Commune and Kronstadt, which notes that the threat was distributed "by a military flying machine"].

5. Daniel Bell, from “First Love and Early Sorrows” (Partisan Review, 1981):

some anarchist relatives, cousins of my mother, a Russian Jewish couple who lived in Mohegan Colony… took me to see Rudolf Rocker, the venerable Anarchist leader, an imposing and portly man with a large square head and imposing brush of gray hair, who then lived in the Colony… In parting, he gave me a number of Anarchist pamphlets, by Malatesta, by Kropotkin (on the Paris Commune), and in particular two pamphlets by Alexander Berkman, The Russian Tragedy and The Kronstadt Rebellion, pamphlets in English but “set up and printed for Der Syndikalist,” Berlin 1922–pamphlets That I have before me as I write (one inscribed in a large round hand, “with fraternal greetings, A.B.. “)–and he suggested that I read Berkman’s The Bolshevik Myth, the diary of his years in Russia, 1920-1922, a copy of which I soon found, and still have.

Every radical generation, it is said, has its Kronstadt. For some it was the Moscow Trials, for others the Nazi-Soviet Pact, for still others Hungary (The Raik Trial or 1956), Czechoslovakia (the defenestration of Masaryk in 1948 or the Prague Spring of 1968), the Gulag, Cambodia, Poland (and there will be more to come). My Kronstadt was Kronstadt.

… I wish it were possible to reprint in full the twelve pages of Berkman’s diary in Petrograd, from the end of February through mid-March 1921, for no bare summary can convey the immediacy, tension and drama as the sailors from the First and Second squadrons of the Baltic Fleet at Kronstadt, the men from the naval base at Petrograd who had catalyzed the October days in 1917, now appealed, following the spontaneous strikes of workers in Petrograd and Moscow, for the establishment of freedom of speech and press “for workers and peasants, for Anarchist and Left Socialist parties,” for the liberation of “all political prisoners of Socialist parties,” to “equalize The rations of all who work,” etc.

For Trotsky, who was Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Soviet, This was mvatezh, or mutiny. He demanded That the sailors surrender or “I’ll shoot you like pheasants.” The last three entries of Berkman’s diaries tell of the sorry end:

March 7. –Distant mumbling reaches my ears as I cross the Nevsky. It sounds again, stronger and nearer, as if rolling towards me. All at once I realize that artillery is being fired. It is 6 A.M. Kronstadt has been attacked! ….

March 17.–Kronstadt has fallen today.

Thousands of sailors and workers lie dead in its streets. Summary execution of prisoners and hostages continues.

March 18.7-The victors are celebrating the anniversary of the Commune of 1871. Trotsky and Zinoviev denounce Thiers and Gallifet for The slaughter of the Paris rebels.

6. Victor Serge, from“Kronstadt ‘21″, originally published in Dwight and Nancy MacDonald’s politics (1945):

The Political Bureau finally made up its mind to enter into negoiations with Kronstadt, lay down an ultimatum, and, as a last resort, attack the fortress and the ice-bound battleships. As it turned out, no negotiations ever took place. But an ultimatum, couched in revolting language, appeared on the billboards over the signature of Lenin and Trotsky: ‘Surrender or be shot like rabbits!’. Trotsky, limiting his activities to the Political Bureau, kept away from Petrograd.

7. John G Wright, of the American SWP, in New International (1938):

In his recent comments on Kronstadt, Victor Serge concedes that the Bolsheviks once confronted with the mutiny had no other recourse except to crush it. In this he demarcates himself from the assorted varieties of Anarcho-Menshevism. But the substance of his contribution to the discussion is to lament over the experiences of history instead of seeking to understand them as a Marxist. Serge insists that it would have been “easy” to forestall the mutiny – if only the Central Committee had not sent Kalinin to talk to the sailors! Once the mutiny flared, it would have been “easy” to avoid the worst – if only Berkman had talked to the sailors! To adopt such an approach to the Kronstadt events is to take the superficial viewpoint: “Ah, if history had only spared us Kronstadt!” It can and does lead only to eclecticism and to the loss of all political perspectives.

8. Emma Goldman, from “Trotsky Protests Too Much” (1938):

Victor Serge is now out of the hospitable shores of the workers’ “fatherland.” I therefore do not consider it a breach of faith when I say that if Victor Serge made this statement charged to him by John G. Wright, he is merely not telling the truth. Victor Serge was one of the French Communist Section who was as much distressed and horrified over the impending butchery decided upon by Leon Trotsky to “shoot the sailors as pheasants” as Alexander Berkman, myself and many other revolutionists. He used to spend every free hour in our room running up and down, tearing his hair, clenching his fists in indignation and repeating that “something must be done, something must be done, to stop the frightful massacre.” When he was asked why he, as a party member, did not raise his voice in protest in the party session, his reply was that that would not help the sailors and would mark him for the Cheka and even silent disappearance. The only excuse for Victor Serge at the time was a young wife and a small baby. But for him to state now, after seventeen years, that “the Bolsheviki once confronted with the mutiny had no other recourse except to crush it,” is, to say the least, inexcusable. Victor Serge knows as well as I do that there was no mutiny in Kronstadt, that the sailors actually did not use their arms in any shape or form until the bombardment of Kronstadt began. He also knows that neither the arrested Communist Commissars nor any other Communists were touched by the sailors. I therefore call upon Victor Serge to come out with the truth. That he was able to continue in Russia under the comradely régime of Lenin, Trotsky and all the other unfortunates who have been recently murdered, conscious of all the horrors that are going on, is his affair, but I cannot keep silent in the face of the charge against him as saying that the Bolsheviki were justified in crushing the sailors.

Leon Trotsky is sarcastic about the accusation that he had shot 1,500 sailors. No, he did not do the bloody job himself. He entrusted Tuchachevsky, his lieutenant, to shoot the sailors “like pheasants” as he had threatened. Tuchachevsky carried out the order to the last degree. The numbers ran into legions, and those who remained after the ceaseless attack of Bolshevist artillery, were placed under the care of Dibenko, famous for his humanity and his justice.

Tuchachevsky and Dibenko, the heroes and saviours of the dictatorship! History seems to have its own way of meting out justice. [Tukhachevsky and Dibenko were executed by Stalin in 1937.]

9. Gabriel and Dany Cohn-Bendit, from Obsolete Communism, the Left-Wing Alternative (1968):

Every attempt to settle matters peacefully was rejected out of hand by the government; Trotsky ordered his troops ‘to shoot the Kronstadt “rebels” down like partridges’, and entrusted the task to Toukhatchevsky, a military expert taken over from the Old Regime.

10. Ian Birchall, from “Victor Serge: Hero or Witness?” (1998):

Serge’s position on Kronstadt is fairly clear (see the extensive treatment in The Serge-Trotsky Papers). At the time, although profoundly unhappy, he decided to accept the suppression of the revolt as necessary. Later, in the 1930s, when he was trying to explain why the revolution had degenerated, he came to see Kronstadt as one of the key stages. This led to a sharp exchange of views with Trotsky, which became perhaps unnecessarily polarised.

11. Cajo Brendel, from “Kronstadt: Proletarian Spin-Off of the Russian Revolution” (1971):

The Kronstadt Rebellion destroyed a social myth: the myth that in the Bolshevik state, power lay in the hands of the workers. Because this myth was inseparably linked to the entire Bolshevik ideology (and still is today), because in Kronstadt a modest beginning of a true workers’ democracy was made, the Kronstadt Rebellion was a deadly danger for the Bolsheviks in their position of power. Not only the military strength of Kronstadt – that at the time of the rebellion was very much impaired by the frozen gulf – but also the demystifying effect of the rebellion threatened Bolshevik rule – a threat that was even stronger than any that could have been posed by the intervention armies of Deniken, Kolchak, Judenitch, or Wrangel.

For this reason the Bolshevik leaders were from their own perspective or better, as a consequence of their social position (which naturally influenced their perspective) – forced to destroy the Kronstadt Rebellion without hesitation. While the rebels were – as Trotsky had threatened being ’shot like pheasants’, the Bolshevik leadership characterized the Rebellion in their own press as a counterrevolution. Since that time this swindle has been zealously promoted and stubbornly maintained by Trotskyists and Stalinists.

This is what a pheasant looks like. This is what a partridge looks like. This is what the Red Army looked like.

Related reading: Steve Parsons on Robert Service’s A History of Twentieth Century Russia; The Truth About Kronstadt.

Desgraciadamente, ahora los piratas no son héroes de película...

Piratas de Somalia…Tan lejos de los de las películas y del Pirata Garrapata, que el Duende no leyó porque cuando nació ya se le había pasado la edad de la fantasía, pero que le hacía mucha gracia tan sólo con escuchar su nombre. En el duermevela del Telediario, y a cuento del fin del secuestro del Alakrana, se imaginaba en la piel del hijo pequeño de uno de sus tripulantes.

-Qué bien que hayas vuelto, papá. Porque esos piratas no se parecen al prota de Piratas del Caribe, ¿no?…

Y el pescador le abrazaba. Los  piratas ya no son lo que eran, y los pescadores tampoco son como el capitán Akab o el entrañable portugués pelirrojo que interpretaba Spencer Tracy en Capitanes intrépidos. Pescar era una profesión de hombres duros y ahora, en determinadas aguas donde el derecho parece que mira a otro lado y se pone a silbar, es más que un riesgo. Casi una heroicidad. Así pasó que los mismos canallas  que consiguieron convertir la navegación aérea en un infierno, ahora se valen de ellos para hacer chantajismo en el mar. Aunque al final casi debamos darles las gracias porque el hijo del pescador haya vuelto a ver a su padre.

-No entiendo cómo se puede dudar de la necesidad de pagar en estos casos –decía la esposa de una de los rescatados.

Sólo unos pocos lo dudan. Quizás de lo que dudan muchos es de la utilidad del estado de derecho cuando se empeña en abrir casi siempre una vía de escape a los que se ciscan en él. Y cuanto más canallas sean, más respeto y más consideración. Cuidadín cuidadín, al criminal regañarle lo justito para que no se nos cabree más, no sea que salgamos de Guatemala para entrar en Guatepeor.

-Enésima contradicción de la vida moderna –anota Homper en su  Moleskine de perplejidades y estupefacciones- El poder es exigente, intolerante e incluso arrogante con el pillo, pero exageradamente comprensivo con gran delincuente. Y el celo del estado de derecho suele ser inversamente proporcional a la gravedad moral de la acción de su enemigo.

Pero, con todo lo que refunfuña su alter ego,  está alegre el Duende. Y eso que nunca navegó más que en las barcas del Retiro, en un chinchorro por la ría de Cubas y en los veleros de un par de amigos que le invitaron a ver las Baleares desde el mar. El resto fueron sólo singladuras y travesías de Salgari, Verne, Twain, Stevenson, Conrad, Kipling y hasta Agatha Christie, que nos mandaba de crucero por el Nilo y nos preparaba asesinatos de mentira por sólo cinco pesetas que valían sus novelas. Está contento, piensa en el chaval, en su madre, en las familias de todos los que han padecido este horroroso secuestro. Serena, resignadamente contento.

Y entretanto el mar seguirá eternamente batido, toujours recommencé, -como decía el único poema de Paul Valery que uno recuerda. Qué sabio es, siempre en movimiento para que no se registre en su superficie huella alguna de las múltiples  fechorías que en él se han perpetrado a lo largo de la historia. Qué prudente, borrar todo rastro de los piratas de ogaño.

Fifteen small box rooms, none of which I want to enter.

 I wake up and remember the night before, 2am, standing outside smoking three cigarettes one after the other and looking up at the trees leading up to the park at the top of the hill where I saw a monkey once. I thought it was a dog at first, but, no, it was a monkey.

 I stay on the bed, imagining it as a sticky pad keeping me down.

 The cigarettes are still in my throat and on my tongue. I have no choice but to get up and brush my teeth. I look in the mirror while brushing and notice the rest of the bathroom around me and I think, which is really better, this or sleep?

 I think some other things too, but mostly I come back to the cigarettes.

 I don’t even smoke…not really.

 I go into the living room and sit down on the couch, but don’t turn on the TV. I never watch TV before the evening, I can’t. Instead, I think and think and worry.

 The day ahead, one bad student I know of. 5pm, box room number thirteen, the little shit next to me with his pencil stuck in the tape recorder.

 I told him last week I wanted to throw him out of the window. I think I’ll tell him this week too.

…the elevator doors open and I walk in and behind me there’s a kid and its helper rushing for the door and I put my hand over the ‘doors open’ button but they run harder and make it and press the number two button which is the same button I’ve already pressed. We’re going to the same floor and the kid is staring at me but I don’t want to talk to it, not until I’m in one of the box rooms and it’s my job to talk to them…

 …but then it shouldn’t just be my job, I think, it should be my character, shouldn’t it? Yes it should, so I look down and say something to the kid and it stares at me and says nothing back, which doesn’t piss me off at all, but gives me a strange sense of power, that I can say whatever I like and the kid will do nothing, like talking to the elevator itself, so I laugh a little and tell the kid that if you press the button for the top floor you will go up and up and fly out of the top of the building like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I mime the explosion of an elevator shooting out of concrete and glass with my hands and the kid says nothing again and edges behind its helper, who is smiling at me but also saying nothing…

‘Hok Yiu, can I see your page one?’

The kid colours page one.

‘Hok Yiu?’

Colours.

‘Hey, you…Hok Yiu, can you show me your page one, please?’

‘No, no, no…’

‘Hok Yiu…’

He says nothing.

The three other kids look at me and then at Hok Yiu.

I stare at Hok Yiu’s hair for a while. I imagine pulling it out one piece at a time, making the little shit scream.

‘Hey, Hok Yiu…page one, come on.’

No answer.

You little punk, you think this is fucking playtime?

I imagine backhanding him across the room.

Yes, across the room and through the wall into the next box room. Could I get him through the wall?

Hok Yiu finishes his colouring and hands me his page one.

‘No, it’s too late,’ I say and shove the paper back at him.

He hands it back.

‘No…’

He hands it back.

‘No…get it away…’

He hands it back.

‘I don’t want it…’

He hands it back.

‘Hok Yiu…’

He hands it back and says ‘tick.’

I stare at him.

‘Look, five minutes ago I asked you for it.’

He pushes page one closer to me.

‘No…five times I asked you for your page one. You didn’t give it to me.’

He starts slapping the paper.

‘No, you didn’t give it to me. I asked you and you didn’t give it.’

His eyes are watering.

I breathe out.

‘Hok Yiu, you didn’t listen to me. You never listen to me.’

He wipes at his eyes, but it’s not enough.

‘Tick’, he says.

‘No, I won’t.’

‘Tick, tick, tick…’ he says louder.

‘Hok Yiu…’

He picks up the paper and scrunches it up.

‘What are you doing?’

He wipes his eyes again.

Yes, wipe them you little shit, you little baby. I know what you are. You’re gonna grow up to be a little cunt, aren’t you? Well, fuck you, I’m not ticking your page.

‘I want to be monster,’ he says, tears falling.

‘What?’

‘I want to be monster,’ he says louder.

I stare at him.

‘I want to go…I want to go away…you are naughty…you are monster.’

I keep staring at him. Punishment. Mercy. Tick his page or punch him through the wall.

‘I want to be monster,’ he screams.

‘Hok Yiu, get a tissue.’

The staff woman comes to the door and looks through the window.

Hok Yiu wipes his eyes and doesn’t apologise.

You little shit…

‘Fine…’

I take his paper and tick it.

We don’t speak to each other for the rest of the lesson.

A break, 2pm to 3pm.

Robert sits in box room fifteen reading the South China Morning Post.

I sit on the other side of the table, thinking of ways to meet better people than Robert.

Brett walks in and takes a seat.

He tells us he’s just had his pipes cleaned.

Robert smirks.

I don’t know what he means.

‘Yeah, over on Dundas. Nice Thai girl. Lovely.’

Robert says he likes the Thai girls, but their tits are too small.

Brett nods. ‘Tits aren’t always great, it’s true,’ he says.

I get up and walk out.

Robert hears the bell at 7pm and leaves the box room before his students.

He heads to the bus stop round the corner and waits in line.

He thinks about going a little further and getting some action before heading back, but vetoes himself. The wife will do for tonight, he thinks.

The bus comes and he gets on.

On the way back to his wife he thinks back on the day and that student he had at 4pm. He remembers Brett and the talk they had about the whores, and he pairs it to his other thoughts, his thoughts of that thirteen year old student and the uniform she was wearing, the hairs on her arms and those few spots on her legs. God, she wasn’t perfect, but she’d take it.

He looks around at the other passengers, sees no one looking his way then goes back to the window and the girl.

He plays it out in full, a whole scene.

There she is, her skirt shorter, her foot touching his leg, his hand moving up her calf and then her thigh…the box room window… a blind for the window that he can reach up and pull down…pulling her onto his lap and lifting that skirt right up and…thirteen years old…thirteen…it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t immoral, not really…was it? Only three years away from legal…was it that bad?

The scene plays on.

Brett goes back home and talks to his wife.

One of his two kids runs into the room and jumps at him. He lifts the little girl up and swings her around, both of them laughing.

Later, they all sit and watch TV.

The little girl starts on the sofa then moves onto Brett’s lap.

He doesn’t push her off.

Little Hoi Lam writes her sentences on page six, singing nonsense.

I sit on my chair, watching her sketch out ‘This is a mouse’ with no spaces, thinking about how many times I’ve seen that page.

‘…mama mouse, mama mouse, drop you on a floor,’ she sings.

I think of other things. The student I had before Hoi Lam. The teachers that came after me and left before. The routine of getting up and getting the bus and coming to the same street for three years, to do the same thing, the thing that I think is probably beneath me but I’m not sure.

‘Bee-bee-bee, bee-bee-bee…ballo!’ she shouts in my ear.

‘Hoi Lam…not so loud.’

She laughs and tries to climb onto my lap.

I look at her. Those cute little eyes and nothing on her face, no marks or creases or anything.

‘Mr. Billy…I go to sleep now.’

She tries to climb up again.

I want to pick her up and swing her around and give her a big hug.

She touches my thigh.

I push her off.

The bell rings and I wait a while before leaving.

I don’t want to meet any of the others downstairs, not the ones who are in today.

I walk downstairs and outside and there is no one waiting.

I walk along Nathan Road seeing people walking alone and people walking in pairs. I’m alone, but it’s a normal day after work, it’s ok. A lot of people go home alone.

I wait for the bus, thinking of what to eat.

I don’t really want to eat anything, but I have to do it.

The bus comes and the line starts moving.

An old man tries to edge ahead of me.

I slow down a little and let him get in front then say to his back, ‘it’s not going anywhere, you old fuck.’

He doesn’t turn around.

I sit at home watching TV.

Las Vegas is on.

Tom Selleck is bowling in a penthouse suite and telling another tall guy to make sure he takes care of it.

Tom Selleck…what’s he doing now?

I mean, right now?

Is he sitting at home with nothing to do?

The programme continues but I lose interest and stare out the window. There are lights in most of the windows across the estate.

What are they all doing?

It’s 2am again and I’m sitting in the dark.

I don’t want to go to bed yet, but I have nothing to do.

I pick up my computer and type ‘Tom Selleck’ into the IMDB search.

What is he doing now?

Las Vegas only, it seems.

Poor guy.

I stare at the screen and wonder where all my friends have gone.

I remember a few faces, a few nights out, long ago.

Yes, I know where they’ve gone.

Outside, it’s not 2am anymore, it’s much later, but I don’t care, I’m walking and I’ve got my music and who gives a shit if I go out and do this every night anyway?

I don’t want to make any more friends.

I’m tired.

I want to be alone.

I recall a Joseph Conrad quote, but can’t remember it exactly. Life is lived alone? We all live and die alone?

It won’t come, not the full line.

Fuck it.

I wake up and look at the clock and think ‘it’s 11am and I’m the last one in Hong Kong to wake up today.’

I stay in bed for another hour wondering whether or not I should bother getting up. I’ve lived enough Wednesdays, do I need to live another?

I tell myself to get up.

I don’t.

I lie there and think of words.

Liminal…I read it somewhere, recently…what does it mean?

Something to do with time?

Time and…subliminal…sub-liminal…it’s connected, isn’t it?

Subliminal means something appearing and disappearing suddenly, so liminal must mean…?

Fuck it.

I think of the word ‘purpose’.

…I walk onto the ground floor and there are about a thousand kids sitting and standing and talking and dancing, and the helpers aren’t controlling them, and the staff aren’t controlling them, they’re too busy fucking about on the computer, and I walk further down the corridor looking for a box room that’s free where I can sit down and put my head in my hands for a few seconds before the bell goes, but these little shits have seen me and they’re looking at me and they want me to do something funny, but I don’t want to right now, I just want to sit down in an empty box room, but they’re still looking and still expecting something from me, and fuck them, what do they want, what should I have to give them when I only get fourteen thousand, fifteen thousand a month, and I smile thinly and keep walking until I find box room three and disappear inside…

The bell rang a few minutes ago and Robert is in the box room waiting for me to leave.

I talk to him and ask him if he played with his kids on the beach before work.

He holds up a hand and stops me.

‘Wait a sec…’

He looks out at the corridor and I look there too.

The new teacher walks past, the seventeen year old half English, half Thai girl, and she’s wearing a tight vest top and her…

‘God, those tits,’ Robert says.

‘Who, her?’

‘The highlight of my day…’ he mutters and leaves.

I don’t want to stay in the classroom because I know the little shit is about to come in, but I have no reason to go outside so I stay.

He comes in, picks up a marker pen and throws it at my head.

Ian Ng.

I get him to sit and we talk about the first page, animals on the farm.

I ask him if we eat pigs.

‘We eat Mr Billy stupid, la…’ he says back.

I tell him to be quiet.

‘No, you are Mr Stupid, you quiet…’

He laughs.

I tell him to shut up.

He picks up a pencil and puts it inside the tape recorder.

‘You’re ruining the tape, Ian. Stop it.’

He doesn’t stop.

‘Ian…’

‘Mr Stupid…’

You little thug. You ugly little fucking midget.

I stop the tape.

‘Listen, Ian. If you don’t shut up I am going to open that window…’ I point to the window two floors above the shitty little alley outside. ‘I will open it and throw you out, you understand?’

‘Stupid…’ he says.

I fucking mean it, you little shit. I’ll throw you out. I’ll watch your little dumb head smash open…

‘I mean it, Ian. Be quiet or…’

‘Stupid Mr. Stupid…I throw you the window.’

I stare at him.

He picks up the pencil and pretends to stab me in the leg.

‘You little motherfucker,’ I mutter under my breath.

It’s just gone 9pm and the restaurant is about to close.

The young men in the dirty white uniforms walk by talking in Cantonese and laughing about something. About me maybe, I don’t know.

I eat the same food I get every time.

The beef is dry and I think I don’t want to eat it, but if I don’t then I’ll have to think about eating something later and I just want to get it done.

I remember another time I was in this place, when I stopped eating because I knew something bad was going to happen.

That was around the time I lost my friends.

I close my eyes and listen to the Cantonese I can’t understand.

I try to think of ways to get new friends. There’s a festival on the weekend, I can go to that. Meet some new faces, some new minds.

I play the festival scene and think of all the words I’ll have to say and the words I’ll have to listen to.

I start to sweat on my head.

I drink some of the iced coffee.

Those guys on the other table, they’re still speaking, but something’s not right. I don’t know what, but it’s not right.

I wipe my head.

No, something bad is going to happen.

I move the plate and the dry beef to the side and put my wrists against the cold, coffee glass.

It doesn’t work. It’s too hot…it’s too hot in here…it’s too hot and they’re still talking and it’s not clear or I’m not clear, something’s not clear, or it’s…it’s outside of me, it’s-…I shouldn’t be here, it’s too hot…something bad is going to-…

A woman in an apron and hat appears and tries to take my plate.

‘No…’ I mumble.

She nods and picks it up.

I put out a hand to stop her.

‘No…not finished.’

She shakes her head and tries to take the plate away.

‘For fucks sake…’

I grab the plate and bring it back.

‘I haven’t finished yet…come on.’

She walks away, mumbling in Cantonese.

Charlotte Tong tells me she went to church and learnt about Abraham.

I nod my head and listen.

‘Abraham was tested, but he passed the test,’ she said.

‘Yes, but…’

I think about not saying anything, not arguing…

‘Abraham was a true believer,’ she said. ‘No one else could do the thing he did.’

‘Charlotte, Abraham tried to kill his kid.’

She shakes her head and says it was a test.

I shake my head back and tell her what I think about Abraham and God.

She says I’m wrong.

‘I studied this, Charlotte. You should trust me, I know what I’m talking about.’

I’ve never studied it, but it doesn’t matter. I know I’m right.

It’s 3am again and I’m walking away from my estate.

I should be going to bed, but I don’t want to.

What’s the point, I won’t be able to sleep.

I walk in the dark alongside the road that will take me to Kwun Tong.

I’ve seen this road a thousand times and I’ll see it a thousand times more.

I light a cigarette even though I don’t smoke.

Tomorrow’s a Thursday and I hate Thursdays.

Not hate, no. It’s something else. I’m tired of Thursdays?

A minibus goes past and a few faces look out at me.

Fuck you, I mouth back at them.

I smoke the cigarette and light another. I’m thinking about smoking the rest of the pack. Why not? It’s better than thinking of Thursday.

I take a long drag and then another.

Thursday. Thursday. Thursday.

I step out into the road and walk with my back to the lane.

No cars come.

I knew they wouldn’t come.

I step back onto the pavement, relieved, depressed.

God…isn’t there any way out of Thursdays?

I sit at home with the financial news playing on the TV.

There’s someone talking about slow recovery and a while before jobs become available again.

I’m not listening.

I stare at the wall and wonder if there’s any possible way I can not only escape Thursday but the whole fucking thing.

The man on screen talks about jobs again and now I’m listening.

There are no jobs, you dumb cunt.

He keeps speaking, saying, ‘yes, there will be jobs’, but then he stops, unsure of something. He stumbles and looks down at his lap.

I start to sweat as I watch.

Something bad is going to happen. I know it.

Robert sits in box room five reading the newspaper.

He’s thinking about the three lessons he has left to teach, and the time it will take to teach them, and how quickly that time will go.

After work, he’s decided to go to Dundas Street.

I walk down the corridor between lessons and say hey to a lot of teachers, most of whom I don’t want to talk to.

Andy stops me and says he really doesn’t want to be there today.

I nod and say yeah.

‘I don’t know how much more of this I can take,’ he says.

‘Yeah.’

I walk to the toilet and close the door.

There’s no one waiting.

I stand there and count down two minutes, but after a few seconds I get bored of counting and stop and just think instead.

I think of a few things, but all the thoughts are cut off.

I wash my hands and flush the toilet I haven’t used.

As I walk back to box room twelve I look in box room fifteen and see Robert standing near that new teacher, the half-Thai in the vest.

I’m probably wrong, but it looks like he’s backed her into the corner.

I wake up and tell myself to call in sick.

Just do it, who cares?

Then I realise it’s my day off.

I check the clock then lie back on the bed.

There’s a short list of people I know, but it’s only short and I don’t want to call any of them anyway.

And the festival, the one over in Pok Fu Lam.

No, too many people. No one I want to talk to.

I won’t go.

I don’t want to go.

Andy walks past me on the stairs as I’m heading up to the second floor.

He tells me he can’t take much more of this, that he’s going straight home and onto the job sites when the day’s done.

I nod and say, ‘yeah, job sites.’

The pencil flies through the air and hits me just under the eye.

I stand up and think about putting my hands around Ian’s neck and crushing it.

He laughs and rocks back on the chair.

Little shit…

I pick up another pencil and throw it on the floor, a couple of inches to the side of him.

I walk over and slam his chair down onto four legs.

‘Listen, you little…shit. When you grow up I am going to find you. Yes, I am going to find you and I am going to beat you. Understand?

He stares at me, unsure.

‘Do you understand me?’ I say louder.

He laughs and goes back on his chair again.

I grab his collar and pull him back.

‘You little fucking shit…you think this is fucking playtime?’

He looks at me, afraid?

I let him go and return to my seat, stopping the tape, rewinding and recording over.

In box room four, I’m reading the South China Morning Post.

Robert is staring out the window as Andy sits next to him, telling him he can’t take much more of this shit-hole.

In the paper, a German goalkeeper has killed himself.

‘We thought we could get through it, with love,’ the wife said. ‘But it was too hard, you can’t.’

It’s a Thursday again and I’m in bed thinking.

Is it possible to just get up, pack everything and get out of here?

I think of Friday and Saturday and Sunday and next week and the other weeks after that and Christmas and…what’s the point?

Even in a different place, what then?

I picture a different place. Austin, San Francisco, New York, Tibet, Madagascar.

I shake my head and put my face in the pillow.

I remember a film. Jack Nicholson, a passenger, a quote.

‘Everywhere you go, you go within the prism of your own mind.’

In box room eight the students are laughing.

‘Ok, next question…’

I look at page five and see a picture of a box.

‘Casey, do you live in a box?’

They laugh.

Next to the box there’s a picture of a chicken.

‘Are you a chicken?’

They laugh.

‘What would you do if you woke up and you were a chicken?’

We all laugh.

It’s way past 2am and I’m walking along the highway on my way to fuck knows where.

Kwun Tong, Ngau Tau Kok, Pok Fu Lam, I don’t care.

I feel tired. Really fucking tired, but…

Thursday, Thursday, Thursday.

Every time a car passes I know I’m going to throw myself in front of it.

Then when there are no cars I edge away from the road.

I keep walking, desperate to get away from the highway.

I think of the German goalkeeper, that line.

‘It’s impossible, you can’t.’

I think of the next day of work and how this time it will be the one that breaks me.

da série “SI: Sydney Impressiona pelo…”

Pronunciado “Circular Key” (estranho até pros padrões da Língua Inglesa – é, eu sei!), situa-se na Sydney Harbour e é caminho para o famoso Opera House, cartão postal da cidade. Com vários barcos (lá eles são meio de transporte público!) saindo pros mais diversos pontos da baía e muitos restaurantes à beira d’água, o lugar abriga vários eventos durante o ano, incluindo apresentações de artistas aborígenes praticamente todos os dias. Um dos quais, falando nisso, até pediu minha mãe em casamento, HA HA HA!

Embora seja talvez um dos pontos mais badalados da região, aquele pedacinho me encantou de uma maneira peculiar. Ao longo de toda a extensa calçada, existem placas no chão com nomes e informações sobre grandes escritores, como Mark Twain, um escritor americano que lançou clássicos como “As Aventuras de Tom Sawyer” e “O Príncipe e o Mendigo” (The Prince And The Pauper), e Joseph Conrad (de quem já falei aqui). Chamada de “Writers Walk” (Caminho dos Escritores), é muito emocionante. Ainda mais lindo é o texto do Ministro das Artes, na placa que abre a calçada:

“O que somos e como nos vemos evolui-se fundamentalmente da palavra falada e escrita. O Caminho dos Escritores demonstra que esse processo evolucionário continua a canalizar os pensamentos e percepções, as esperanças e os medos dos escritores que conheceram esta cidade e seu povo.”  – A calçada foi dedicada em 13 de Fevereiro de 1991 pelo Honorável Peter Collins, então Ministro das Artes do território de New South Wales.

É, eu sei, tenho sérios problemas mentais, aparentemente. Acho que me apaixonar por uma loja de diários antigos e penas de escrever e depois me encantar por uma calçada cheia de placas sobre grandes escritores é caso de internação, não? ;P 

O quê? Writers Walk.
Onde? Circular Quay, Sydney.
Quando? Em seu caminho para o Opera House.
Pra quê? Uma dose extra de cultura (e de beleza, vai, porque a vista é linda demais!).

Brenda Nepomuceno

“Cuore di tenebra” è un romanzo breve di Joseph Conrad, la cui storia si presenta come un racconto dentro il racconto. L’autore infatti narra di un uomo, il capitano Marlow, nonchè protagonista dell’intera storia, che racconta a cinque membri dell’equipaggio l’esperienza da lui vissuta in Africa e il suo sogno: attraversare il fiume Congo. Marlow racconta del suo incontro con gli indigeni, dell’attacco ricevuto dal suo battello e delle scene orribili che vedono come protagonista il signor Kurtz, da lui conosciuto per motivi d’affari.

Il romanzo lo considero scorrevole e non particolarmente impegnativo perché scritto in modo chiaro e usando un linguaggio semplice. Ciò che mi ha colpito è la descrizione dei personaggi, dei luoghi e delle vicende, la quale non si presenta come un’analisi al minino dettaglio ma come un’esposizione che sottolinea solo gli aspetti più particolari che colpiscono a primo impatto il lettore; davvero una lettura interessante, che consiglio a tutti!

Sonia Revel

It’s already half way through November and I’m only just getting around to writing about October’s books – let’s hope I can spin a full post from my half-arsed notes.  As always, all my books are kept in chronological order, I then alternately read the book I’ve had longest (marked B.H.L.), followed by a free choice (F.C.).  For a full description of my insane book selection rules, please click here.

Books Read

I started the month by reading Street Magic (B.H.L.) by Paul Zenon.  I bought it a few years ago, probably from Borders, because I suddenly got it in to my head that it would be a good thing to be able to do a few magic tricks.  Please don’t ask me where this spurious thought came from as I don’t have a clue.  Anyway, I did read some of it at the time but it all seemed a bit like hard work, and, not being afraid to give up when something proves tricky, it found its way to my To Be Read pile.

As I started my second reading of the book I soon remembered my original sticking point: palming.   Not wanting to divulge too many magician’s secrets, this is the skill of concealing a coin in your hand.  And I just couldn’t do it.  I did practice, but, although I could have practised more,  I didn’t feel myself getting any better at it, and so I wondered if I was missing something fundamental.  Anyway, this time I decided just to read it through and see what happened.

There is actually a variety of impressive tricks within the book and it soon became apparent to me that it’s not enough to know the secrets of a magic trick; in order to pull it off you need equal measures of expertise and performance.  Far from spoiling my enjoyment of the art of illusion, reading this book actually increased my respect for its practitioners.

Next up came Archangel (F.C.) by Robert Harris.  This was a random purchase from the British Heart Foundation shop because I’d read, and enjoyed, Fatherland, Harris’ first novel.  This book has the distinction of being the first ever F.C. that has also been the B.H.L., for whatever that’s worth.  It’s an end-of-the-cold-war thriller that charts an academic’s quest to locate an old notebook of Stalin’s.  It’s one of those strange stories in which nothing really seems to happen and yet it is still somehow quite gripping.  It was a fun read but I don’t really have much more to say on it.

It’s another random British Heart Foundation buy next with The Man in the High Castle (B.H.L.) by Philp K. Dick, which I bought because I was interested to read a Philip K. Dick novel.  It was a great choice and I was hooked from the minute I started readig; it was the kind of book that makes you remember why you love reading so much.

It’s an alternate history novel set in an America following a Second World War which was won by Germany and Japan.  The Axis powers have carved the globe up between them, and this includes North America – the east coast belongs to Japan and the west to Germany.  This kind of premise could have carried out very heavy handedly, but Dick shows an incredibly subtle touch.  We see this unfamiliar world through the eyes of ordinary people and so the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis are only ever discussed third hand.  This makes them seem only more sinister.

In addition to this is a whole subtext about the nature of reality.  Many of the characters are reading a novel-within-a-novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which is in itself an alternative history in which the Allies won the war – which is a reality subtly but significantly different to our own.  There are moments in the story when one reality appears to blend in to another, but it is done in a way that you are unsure as to whether it happened or not.  What is true and what is false? There are no answers here but the questions are certainly interesting.

I first heard of The End of Faith (F.C.) by Sam Harris a few years ago, primarily because he is a pal of Richard Dawkins, and that is always a good recommendation.  It’s a devastating attack not only on religion but on the nature of faith itself.  To be fair, and pardon the pun, he is already preaching to the converted, so luckily there was even more food for thought.  For example, he poses the question as to whether torture be ethical, and asks if pacifism is immoral.  It’s a very well written, intelligent book, but towards the end he lost me a bit with his thoughts on spirituality as they, superficially at least, seem to conflict with his otherwise rational arguments.  It’s pretty brave of him to go down that road though.  A further, petty criticism is the amount of end notes – I didn’t know whether to skip them or not.

My final book of the month was the rather unusual choice of Buying and Running a Florist Shop (B.H.L.) by Alan Peck.  You’d be forgiven for thinking that it was a wacky women’s novel, but it is actually a manual on buying and running a florists shop.  In case you’re wondering, I didn’t buy the book and I won’t bore you with the details on how I came to own such a book.  Strangely, I actually found it to be an enjoyable read. It’s a slim, straightforward volume that gives an insight in to what it must be like to run a small business.  The main thing I took from it is that when you consider the low pay, long hours and undue pressure, being a florist is a thankless task.  I suggest you go out and buy a florist some flowers today.

Books Acquired

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark – Bookmooch – This had been on my ‘wish list’ for years.  I think I remember seeing a programme about it as part of the BBC’s Big Read, but I cannot remember anything about why this made me want to read it.

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett – Salvation Army shop – I decided a while ago to start reading the Discworld novels and then, fortuitously, someone at work gave me a load of them.  Sadly, there were omissions and so any books that are not contiguous in the serial are not on my official TBR pile.  This was one of the missing and so I was very glad to see it.  It was 50p.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad – Salvation Army shop - It was slim, I’d heard of it and it was 50p.  Why wouldn’t I buy it?

Books Given Away on Bookmooch

How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker – I bought this from the British Heart Foundation even though I knew that there was a good chance that I already had it.  It’s the kind of book that you don’t see all that often in a charity shop, so I bought it anyway.  Of course, I already had it at home sat in my TBR pile.  It’s a weird feeling to give away a book that I haven’t read yet.

Result

Books Read 5 – Books Acquired 3, result – A WIN!!!!!

I never thought I’d see the day that I’d record a win in Reading Habits, so it’s champagne all around (if you happen to be in my house as I type this).  Everything is looking rosy – except that we’re already half-way through the current month and I know it’s going to take a miracle for it not to be a big loss.  Fingers crossed.

Der nigerianische Schriftsteller Chinua Abebe wendet sich gegen das ihm angehängte Etikett als “Vater der modernen afrikanischen Literatur”. Nadine Gordimer hatte ihn vor zwei Jahren so genannt, als er mit dem Internationalen Man Booker Prize ausgezeichnet wurde. Davor und danach ist er oft so apostrophiert worden. Doch Abebe widersprach “sehr, sehr heftig”: “Ich glaube wirklich, daß es für jeden gefährlich ist, etwas so Großes und Bedeutendes wie die afrikanische Literatur für sich zu reklamieren … Ich möchte nicht als Einzelner damit verbunden werden, denn wir waren viele – sehr viele.”

Bei dem Anlaß sprach er auch über Joseph Conrad, dessen Roman “Heart of Darkness” er “durch und durch rassistisch” nannte, und über die Probleme Afrikas: “Zum Beispiel das Problem des Regierens – ein Hauptproblem – Präsidenten, die sich nicht zurückziehen wollen, wenn ihre Wahlperiode um ist, manipulierte Wahlen, Gewalt bei Wahlen… Was auch immer wir machen, es schlägt fehl. Nigeria ist seit 50 Jahren unabhängig, und wo stehen wir?” / Guardian 12.11.

"Roi des Belges," the steamer Conrad took up the Congo in 1890

“To the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous.”

—Joseph Conrad, “An Outpost of Progress”

Conrad understood those two distinct, neatly joined facets of a European man’s deterioration in central Africa.  All that was comfortable melted away; all that was alien grew grotesque and disturbing.

His 1898 story “Outpost of Progress” takes up the subject in an anecdotal way.  Of course the word “Progress” is ironic.  The two ill-prepared traders who are set down at a station by the river gradually learn that their trade involves the selling of men as well as the buying of tusks, and they sink into a moral cesspool, then destroy each other.  The story could have been told over gin on a colonial verandah, much as Somerset Maugham’s tropical characters did two decades later.

Heart of Darkness (1902) takes the same subject but blurs the edges, as J.M.W. Turner did in his landscapes of the Thames.  And Conrad’s novella about the murk of the Congo is wrapped inside a glimmering outer story set on a boat on the Thames.

"The Fighting Temeraire" by J.M.W. Turner

But no one could have described the moral desolation of Kurtz over a gin and tonic.  Conrad had to get us all into a trance, and he repeats himself, backtracks, elaborates. He wears on our nerves.  But we’ll never get rid of the image of the heads on stakes around the house in the midst of the jungle— and those words “The horror! The horror!” will never go away even if they’ve nearly become a joke.

I can see that Heart of Darkness is the greater work, but I recommend “An Outpost of Progress” for anyone who wants to understand the simple mechanics of what happened to those employees of the “Societe Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut-Congo.”

- Marpiccolo – 2009 – ♥♥ e 1\2 -

di

Alessandro Di Robilant

E’ stato da molti definito il Gomorra Tarantino l’ ultimo lavoro di Alessandro Di Robilant. Per alcuni versi è anche meglio (detto da chi come me ha sempre ritenuto il film di Garrone un lavoro decisamente sovrastimato), anche se non di certo per il valore moralistico e dottrinale che soprattutto nella parte finale vorrebbe comunicare agli spettatori. Al contrario del film tratto dall’ ormai celebre romanzo di Saviano Di Robilant si concentra su una sola storia, su un unico protagonista: Tiziano (interpretato superbamente dal giovane Giulio Beranek) e i suoi amici e familiari. La Taranto di Marpiccolo è una città dove non è facile crescere. Sommersi dall’ inquinamento dell’ Ilva la criminalità sembra l’ unica scappatoia per “sopravvivere”. La fotografia del film (i toni sono sempre contraddistinti dal grigio) mette ben in evidenza lo stacco che c’è appunto tra questa scelta di sopravvivenza criminale e quella che rappresenta il sogno di vivere andandosene via da un posto che non permette neanche di respirare. Il rosso del vestito della ragazza di Tiziano e l’ arancione della sua moto sono gli unici colori accesi di tutto il film, simbolo degli unici due elementi “puliti” e vivi in una città che sta affondando nelle malattie che i suoi stessi abitanti hanno originato. Il film fa del suo punto di forza l’ approccio psicologico ai personaggi. I personaggi sono infatti ben delineati. Soprattutto il protagonista Tiziano è ben disegnato nei suoi rapporti familiari con la madre impavida lottatrice di cause comuni come l’ abbattimento di una torre ripetitore, con la sorellina piccola amatissima e con il padre fallito e giocatore disperato di videopoker. Tiziano prova a voler scappare da quel mondo ma ne viene risucchiato, forse in maniera fin troppo didascalica e prevedibile, costretto ad eseguire gli ordini del manipolatore boss di quartiere ( interpretato dal molto convincente Michele Riondino). Risultano estremamente forzate le allusioni alla cultura come possibile via d’ uscita dal mondo della criminalità che la professorina Valentina Carnelutti sembra insistentemente voler far capire al nostro Tiziano regalandogli il Cuore di Tenebra di Joseph Conrad. Così come è fin troppo moralistico l’ invito dell’ educatore interpretato da  Giorgio Colangeli a non lasciarsi prendere in giro da un mondo che mette l’ uno contro l’altro anzichè trovare nella cooperazione la via comune di miglioramento. Peccato per tutte queste forzature o alcuni erroracci, molti anche sceneggiativi (Tiziano uccide il suo uomo e dopo fugge a piedi anzichè in moto).  Sono complici della non totale completezza di quest’ opera nostrana che vanta sicuramente di un ottimo realismo grazie soprattutto al suo notevole, ma non noto, cast.

( Omicidio e fuga a piedi con la moto appena dietro le spalle...errore grossolano!)

( Le pericolose uscite estive in riformatorio)

Last night was my one and sadly only visit to a Suspense Puppetry Festival event; though I love puppets, I only heard about it after my theater calender had pretty solidly filled up. My choice was Movingstage Marionette Company’s “Out of the Heart of Darkness.” I thought it would be great to see such a seminal work of literature on the small stage: imagining Marlon Brando (of Darkness redo “Apocalypse Now”) at 1/10th size cracked me up.

But I also wanted to go because my husband has a fascination with colonial Africa and the way the West wrecked the culture and the lives of the people living there (reading books like King Leopold’s Ghost and Casualty of Empire), some of which I’ve absorbed. This production, set deep in the heart of blood diamond country, had full awareness of the literary background, the colonial baggage, and the modern day tragedies of the Congo. The frame was the wife of exiled dictator Mobuto Sese Seko asking the narrator to aid her in getting her hands on her family’s frozen assets; and the enigmatic man Kurtz, at the heart of the story’s orbit, runs a diamond concern with the ruthlessness so many in this position, in that land, have displayed.

Sadly, the production never succeeded in conveying the mystique of Kurtz in a compelling way, despite the fact that most of the characters spoke about him at length; this left it all feeling a bit like a “waiting for Godot” where after the big buildup you actually do find Godot and he’s about as impressive as the Wizard of Oz. On the other hand, perhaps Wizard is a better comparison altogether, as both stories are really about the journey and the changes wrought in the travellers by taking it; the human inciting the trip is a bit of an afterthought. I am convinced, however, that Kurtz is in no way meant to be an afterthought. I will have to read Conrad to be sure. And the overall effect was really diminished by having all of the dialogue and music provided as a recording. I realize that getting the right effects for this show (about five male characters and two female) must have been difficult with a troupe consisting of about four women and one man – but the recording took away the spontanaeity of the show and really created barriers to engagement with the story for me.

That said, I must praise the technical execution of this show. Aside from the lovely puppets and their graceful manipulation, the show also had the best set design I’ve seen on the small stage – a lovely series of fore, back, and middle ground set pieces, with a backdrop that could change color to express mood (not surprising for regular theater but notable for puppets). In addition, there was a fun drop in the shape of binoculars to show the audience what the narrator was seeing, and some silliness involving the bottom half of puppets dancing. Finally, I have to especially commend them for depicting Kurtz as a puppet with an eye hole bored straight through his head – the otherworldly feeling this created nicely captured his disconnection with reality.

In short, this was a good evening, but not a brilliant one, good for lovers of puppets, Africa, or Joseph Conrad. I do hope that next year there is another puppet festival and I’ll have a chance to pick from a series of shows like this one again.

(“Out of the Heart of Darkness” continues through Sunday, November 8th, 2009.)

When I was 17, I wanted to be two things.  Joseph Conrad and this:

Not much has changed.

Kot Przybora, prezes agencji reklamowej PZL, współautor obsypywanych nagrodami kampanii reklamowych będzie gościem 1. Międzynarodowego Festiwalu Literatury im. Josepha Conrada. W piątek (6 listopada) o godz. 18.00 w krakowskim Kinie Pod Baranami opowie o reklamie jako literaturze. Otwarte dla publiczności spotkanie poprowadzi Michał Kuźmiński z Tygodnika Powszechnego.

Reklama, sięgając do systemu odniesień swoich odbiorców, chętnie cytuje, przetwarza i dialoguje z motywami kultury, także kultury wysokiej. Jest także działaniem na słowach. Dziś chyba nawet bardziej niż jakakolwiek inna dziedzina twórczości rozbudowuje zasoby języka, nadając słowom nowe znaczenia, przebudowując ich dotychczasowe sensy, wreszcie – tworząc zupełnie nowe konstrukcje języka. Reklama jest sztuką sprzedawania. Jest także sztuką przekonywania, uwodzenia, a więc w sensie ścisłym – wypowiedzi. Jak więc spojrzeć na reklamę jako na literaturę? Co się kryje za kreacją tekstu reklamowego, a z drugiej strony – za lekturą reklamy? Na te i inne pytania związane z reklamą jako formą literacką opowie, podczas 1. Międzynarodowego Festiwalu Literatury im. Josepha Conrada w Krakowie, Kot Przybora.

Kot Przybora pracuje w branży reklamowej od lat 80. Z wykształcenia jest anglistą. Wspólnie z Iwo Zaniewskim założył agencję PZL, w której pełni funkcję prezesa i dyrektora kreatywnego.

Agencja PZL powstała w 1999 r. Stworzyła kreacje takie jak m.in. kampania Plus GSM z udziałem kabaretu Mumio, Żubr, Alior Bank, Allegro, Tesco. Prace PZL wyróżniają się m.in. przywiązywaniem wagi do słowa i kreatywności językowej. Kilka dni temu, za kampanię wprowadzającą na rynek Alior Bank, agencję PZL nagrodzono Grand Prix konkursu Effie Awards 2009.

O festiwalu:

Przez sześć dni festiwalowych w mieście gościć będą wybitni twórcy z zagranicy, m.in.: Pascal Quignard, Etgar Keret i Per Olov Enquist, a także doborowe grono polskich pisarzy m.in. Olga Tokarczuk, Marek Bieńczyk, Stefan Chwin, Andrzej Stasiuk, Jerzy Pilch, Jacek Dukaj oraz czołówka polskich reportażystów m.in. Wojciech Jagielski i Mariusz Szczygieł.

W programie, oprócz spotkań z pisarzami, zaplanowano również projekcje filmów, spektakle teatralne, debaty, wystawę fotografii, koncerty. Dla młodzieży szkolnej przygotowano też lekcje czytania – seminaria młodych czytelników z literaturoznawcami poświęcone konkretnym dziełom literackim.

Impreza potrwa do soboty, 7 listopada.

Festiwal Conrada zbiegnie się w czasie z Targami Książki w Krakowie, które rozpoczną się w czwartek, 5 listopada i zakończą w niedzielę.

Organizatorami Festiwalu są Fundacja “Tygodnika Powszechnego”, Krakowskie Biuro Festiwalowe oraz miasto Kraków.

Joseph Conrad’s the Heart of Darkness, takes place in a world within a world. It is a microcosm that contains dark places of the human soul (a region that Conrad vividly explores). At the ‘heart’ of this ‘planet of darkness’ is a rebel who has thrown away society as he knew it. This metaphoric ‘heart’ applies gravity to the plot. The ‘heart’ is epitomized in the character Kurtz.

Kurtz, the European ivory trader, has cast off his ties with the outside world, and has taken it upon himself to control and master his surroundings (including the natives). Kurtz represents man’s tendency to revert to animal instincts, and to exploit the weaker, (or ignorant) of the species. He becomes God to the natives, undoubtedly expanding his already crazed ego to the point of explosion. For most of the story, Kurtz is the unseen legend or myth.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in separate worlds apart from our own. It supplies (however limited) an in-depth look at an intricate sub-world of our planet. Conrad may not exhibit the intricateness of such authors as C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien, but he definitely delves deep into the realm of creativity and human sub consciousness. Untold darkness lies within the mind of man.

Foot note:  The plot for the famous film set in Vietnam (“Apocalypse Now”) is based on Heart of Darkness.

Joseph Conrad

Como buen marino, suelo releer con cierta frecuencia las extraodinarias novelas de Joseph Conrad. Para mí Conrad es uno de los grandes autores de todos los tiempos, y en los últimos meses he disfrutado de nuevo con Lord Jim, El Corazón de las Tinieblas, El espejo del mar y Crónica personal. Tenía la intención de escribir algo sobre alguna de ellas, pero casualmente cayó en mis manos Damn! A Book of Calumny cuyo autor es H. L. Mencken, otro grande de las letras mundiales y ferviente admirador del escritor anglo-polaco.

H. L. Mencken

Conrad es caudaloso como el océano, y sus obras son sabrosos frutos de mar pescados por quien llegó a ser capitán de un barco mercante. La prosa de Conrad no es directa, recta, limpia. Está plagada de meandros, contradicciones, subterfugios, descripciones, paradas bruscas, bandazos. La historia, en la mayoría de sus libros, se va formando poco a poco, como un puzzle.

A Henry Louis Mencken –conocido como el “Sabio de Baltimore” y considerado uno de los escritores más influyentes de los Estados Unidos durante la primera mitad del siglo XX– le encantaba Conrad. En su conocido Libro de los Insultos, este polémico y heterodoxo escritor habla sobre Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce y Joseph Conrad. Casi nada. Y fíjense lo que dice de este último: “Tenemos que considerar El Corazón de las Tinieblas como el arquetipo de toda su obra y la piedra fundamental de su sistema metafísico. Aquí tenemos todas las aspiraciones y esperanzas humanas imaginables, reducidas a un denominador común de locura y fracaso, y tenemos una pieza de humor infinitamente perspicaz y mordaz.” (…) The end of the tether, traducido en España como Con la soga al cuello, “es una de las mayores narrativas, largas o cortas, en lengua inglesa, y con Los herederos y El Corazón de las Tinieblas compone la mayor obra literaria e imaginativa del Siglo XX.”

Y continúa Mencken: “Pero ningún otro de sus libros, ningún otro, me parece conservar de modo tan firme el alto nivel, tan satisfactorio y maravilloso, como El Corazón de las Tinieblas. Hay en esta obra una perfección que sólo se encuentra rara y milagrosamente en la prosa de ficción. Casi podríamos decir que pertenece más a la música. No consigo imaginarme la falta de una única frase en la novela sin dejar un fallo visible; es tan esquiva y agotadora, de principio a fin, como una huída. Y tampoco puedo imaginármela añadiéndole una sóla frase sin causarle daño. Es austeramente perfecta, como el lento movimiento de la Sinfonía Inacabada.”

“Lord Jim no es –hablando de otra de sus grandes novelas– una opera prima por casualidad, una montaña aislada. Al contrario, es una unidad en una larga serie de obras extraordinarias y casi incomparables, una serie que brotó, de golpe y con arrebato, desde su Almayer’s Folly (La locura de Almayer), desafío a la nobleza y a las clases cultivadas, magníficamente planeada y construída meticulosamente. A cada lectura, se acrecienta su valía. Si no es una obra de un genio, entonces no existe ninguna otra obra de un genio en nuestro planeta.”

Así habló H. L. Mencken de Conrad, y yo se lo agradezco. Por cierto, si alguien no ha tenido todavía la ocasión de bucear en el mar de las palabras de Conrad puede ver, al menos,  Apocalipsis Now, película inspirada en El Corazón de las Tinieblas. En ella Marlon Brando interpreta el papel de Kurtz, el gran personaje que vivía en el corazón del bosque. O, si se prefiere, en el de las tinieblas.

From The Times:

After 38 years with Hodder & Stoughton, John le Carré has defected to Penguin, breaking an association that brought the publisher 16 novels and the author a sizeable fortune and a second wife.

In keeping with le Carré’s fiction, the move was unexpected, enigmatic and meticulously plotted with one eye on his literary heroes Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad.

John le Carré defects to world’s paperback superpower – Times Online

“Destino. Meu destino! Que coisa estranha a vida é – esse arranjo misterioso de uma lógica sem piedade em função de um propósito fútil. O máximo que se pode esperar dela é um pouco de auto-conhecimento, – e isso vem tarde demais – um pedaço de arrependimentos inapagáveis. Eu lutei com a morte. É a luta menos excitante que se pode imaginar. Acontece num cinza impalpável, sem nada sob os pés, nada ao redor, sem platéia, sem gritos, sem glória, sem um grande desejo de vencer, sem um grande medo de perder, numa atmosfera doentia de um cepticismo morno, sem muita fé nos seus próprios direitos, e ainda menos nos do seu adversário. Se esta é a maior forma de sabedoria, então a vida é um enigma ainda maior do que alguns de nós pensam.”

JOSEPH CONRAD

Pra mim, as aulas de Literatura são as mais difíceis, mas ao mesmo tempo são as minhas preferidas. Começamos um novo livro sempre comigo pensando “dessa vez eu não entendo nada e tiro notas baixas mesmo”, passa por dias e dias em que apenas sentamos lá e ouvimos nossa professora ler com aquele sotaque britânico *lindo de morrer* dela, e termina comigo geralmente amando o livro do qual eu falei muito mal antes de começar a ler. Se alguma coisa, aprendi com isso que não só não se deve “julgar um livro por sua capa”, mas também que não se deve julgar um livro por sua sinopse.

Heart Of Darkness, por exemplo, conta a história de Marlow e sua viagem pelo rio Congo, na África. Pensei que seria mais um clássico entediante, que relataria os horrores da escravidão – e é, com a exploração dos nativos como plano de fundo para a trama e muitas vezes descrições enfadonhas que te fazem querer largar o livro e não ler mais. Olhando, ou melhor, lendo mais profundamente, percebemos que é também uma obra-prima sobre o auto-conhecimento, a ganância e o propósito humano, cheio de metáforas brilhantes que captam a essência da jornada que todos fazemos para sabermos quem realmente somos. Em outras palavras, apaixonante. Entrou pra minha lista de livros preferidos.

Outro aspecto que deixou boquiaberta foi saber um pouco mais sobre o autor, Joseph Conrad. Nascido Jósef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, em Dezembro de 1857 em Berdichev (atual Ucrânia), Inglês era sua terceira língua, na qual ele só se tornou fluente depois dos seus vinte anos de idade – e foi nela que ele escreveu os romances que viriam a se tornar clássicos da Literatura Inglesa. Impressionante, e um exemplo absurdo de vida pra mim.

Um dia eu ainda vou ser a tradutora de vários clássicos Ingleses ainda não publicados em Português. Podem esperar!

Brenda Nepomuceno

Lanying was nagging me to finish my novel again this morning. She didn’t know that I’d been writing for a few hours while she was asleep. “You have to publish it while the technology is current,” she said. She meant the social networking sites through which the characters get to know one another. “Technology moves so fast.”

But the relationships in my novel aren’t tied to the technology. It’s the relationships that interest me, not the media through which the characters communicate. I have never been much interested in novels that try to catch  a trend.

I am writing about modern romance, which these days is conducted over the internet using blogs, networking sites, instant chat, SMS and Twitter. These things do change the dynamics of relationships. Nowadays it is so easy to be unfaithful. It is so easy to get your desires fulfilled. You can have an affair with someone in another country just as easily as with someone in another town. Novelists have to take account of all these things if they are writing a love story today. But infidelity and inconstancy have always been a feature of romantic relationships. Technology hasn’t changed the way people feel.

In some ways my novel is a bit like a European version of Sex and the City but I can’t stand Sex and the City, although I’ve seen nearly every episode at least twice. Lanying was telling me one of the plot lines in Candace Bushnell’s latest novel this morning and I thought it was riddled with the same moral vacuity as the TV series. None of the characters in my story would express moral outrage at the loss of a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes during a visit to a friend’s party.

I like to think my novel has more in common with Middlemarch.

I have always felt an affinity with writers like Joseph Conrad and George Eliot who took up writing novels late in life. Even at the age of 19 I never anticipated being able to write anything worthwhile until I was at least 40.

Conrad and Eliot are giants of literature so it is easy to forget how hard they struggled to get their work written and published. George Eliot’s first draft of Middlemarch concerned only Tertius Lydgate, the young doctor, whose pretty young wife was, like Carrie Bradshaw, more interested in shoes than science. Her extravagance nearly bankrupted him and he had to sacrifice his academic interests in order to pay the bills. Yet George Eliot couldn’t find the right form for this promising material and started writing a different story. This was the story about Dorothea Brooke, whose aspirations towards spiritual and emotional fulfilment came into collision with grim reality in the suffocating person of her scholarly husband, Edward Casaubon.

When she eventually decided to join the two stories together with additional material about Fred Vincy and Mary Garth and the financier Nicholas Bulstrode, she realised she needed four volumes instead of the usual three. The proposed publishing scheme of half-volume bimonthly parts would drive up the total cost to two pounds, which was double what readers normally paid for an instalment novel like those of Dickens and Thackeray.

Yet the publisher agreed, and the world is grateful.

The themes that are present in Middlemarch are still very much relevant today and it is acknowledged to be among the best novels ever written by anyone interested enough to compile such a list. This is why you should always write the novel you want to write, not what the publishers ask for or what someone tells you is fashionable.

My novel is not as good as George Eliot’s, of course, but it is, like hers, a medium for serious social, psychological and moral enquiry and, I like to think, quite a bit funnier too.

Another writer who inspires me is William Shakespeare. There is so much good material in his plays. These words spoken by Troilus and Cressida and written four hundred years ago still resonate with humour, pathos and wicked irony and are more interesting to me than anything in Sex and the City.

TROILUS. O, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all Cupid’s pageant there is presented no monster.

CRESSIDA. Nor nothing monstrous neither?

TROILUS. Nothing, but our undertakings; when we vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed. This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined, that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.

CRESSIDA. They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able and yet reserve an ability that they never perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and discharging less than the tenth part of one. They that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are they not monsters?

TROILUS. Are there such? such are not we: praise us as we are tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit crown it: no perfection in reversion shall have a praise in present: we will not name desert before his birth, and, being born, his addition shall be humble. Few words to fair faith: Troilus shall be such to Cressid as what envy can say worst shall be a mock for his truth, and what truth can speak truest not truer than Troilus.

Anon – Fifty Masterpieces Of Mystery (Odhams, nd.  [1937])

Crime Stories

Dorothy L. Sayers – The Learned Adventure Of The Dragon’s Head
Austin Freeman – The Magic Casket
H. C. Bailey – The President Of San Jacinto
Anthony Berkeley – Outside The Law
The Baroness Orczy – The Regent’s Park Murder
Margery Allingham – They Never Got Caught
J. J. Connington – Before Insulin
Stacy Aumonier – The Perfect Murder
G. K. Chesterton – The Shadow Of The Shark
O. Henry – The Marsonettes
F. Britten Austin – Diamond Cut Diamond
Augustus Muir – Murder At The Microphone
Milward Kennedy – Death In The Kitchen
Freeman Willis Croft – The Vertical Line
Edgar Wallace – The Clue Of Monday’s Settling
Gerard Fairlie – The Ghost Of A Smile
Bertram Atkey – Sons Of The Chief Warder

Strange And Horrible Stories

Seamark – Query
Ralph Straus – The Room On The Fourth Floor
A. E. W. Mason – The Wounded God
Lord Dunsany – The Electric King
A. J. Alan – Charles
John Metcalfe – The Funeral March Of A Marionette
W. W. Jacobs – The Interruption
C. D. Heriot – Nobody At Home
Agatha Christie – The Blood-Stained Pavement
Mrs. Belloc Lowdnes – St. Catherine’s Eve
F. Marion Crawford – The Screaming Skull
Joseph Conrad – The Idiots
Sydney Horler – The Vampire
Saki – The Interlopers
L. P. Hartley – The Travelling Grave
E. A. Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
H. Spicer – The Bird Woman
W. Fryer Harvey – The Dabblers

Ghost Stories

Vernon Lee – Marsyas In Flanders
Eleanor Scott – The Room
Marjorie Bowen – Florence Flannery
Ernest Bramah – The Ghost At Massingham Mansions
Norman Matson – The House On Big Faraway
Naomi Royde-Smith – Madam Julia’s Tale
L. A. G. Strong – Sea Air
Ann Bridge – The Buick Saloon
May Sinclair – The Token
Oliver Onions – The Cigarette Case
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch – A Pair Of Hands
H. R. Wakefield – Blind Man’s Buff
Algernon Blackwood – The Man Who Was Milligan
Richard Hughes – The Ghost
A. M. Burrage – The Room Over The Kitchen
J. S. LeFanu – Mr. Justice Harbottle
Anonymous – The Dead Man Of Varley Grange

Includes:

Eleanor Scott – The Room: “I’m not going to try and tell you what it was … I’d as soon try to describe the most loathsome surgical operation or the most indecent physical illness. And if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Thank Heaven, we haven’t made the word for what I saw.”

A room in Massingham’s house has the reputation of being haunted, so when five of his friends answer his invitation to stay with him, naturally they decide to each take a turn at spending a night in the creepy chamber and “do down the spook!” By the time Amery the Parson gets to take his turn, it’s clear from the state of Grindley and Vernon that whatever is in there is far more powerful and evil than a mere ghost. By the following morning, the Parson is a broken man, but Reece, the ’simple’ little curate, is insistent that he’s not going to be denied the experience. Although we’re never told outright what each man endured in the room – the closest we get is with Amery who is confronted by the past crimes of his Church – it hardly makes the goings-on any less unsettling. Not quite as striking as Randall’s classic Celui-La but very deserving of your attention i’d have said. “There must be an amazing amount of goodness somewhere when here is such a quantity of unspeakable evil in men like us, who thought ourselves decent fellows enough.”

John Metcalfe – The Funeral March Of A Marionette: On a snowy, bitterly cold November 4th, budding entrepreneur Alf and little George drag a trolley along the Millbank, collecting a small fortune in coppers from admires of their uncannily lifelike Guy. Unfortunately, old Gus the tramp isn’t equip to handle the sub-zero temperatures ….

A. M. Burrage – The Room Over The Kitchen: A weary rambler arrives in Penhiddoc, his one thought to get a room at the inn for the night. In the doorway, he’s accosted by a fellow who he takes to be the local harmless lunatic who implores him not to take the room over the kitchen. It transpires that twenty years ago, four Oxford students stayed at the inn. For a chuckle, a trio of these fellows, in cahoots with the landlord, convinced the nervous young Mr. Farney that his room was haunted. They pushed the joke too far ….

C. D. Heriot – Nobody At Home: Frank and Maurice have drifted out of each others lives since Oxford, and now the former, learning his old pal has fallen on hard times, is keen to put the friendship back on course. Maurice has tried to make a go of it as a poet, but as soon as he arrives at the decrepit old schoolhouse that serves as his home, Frank realises it’s gone very badly for him. At first, Frank is angry that he may have made a wasted journey as no-one replies to his knocks at the door. But when he takes a look through the letterbox ….

Henry Spicer – The Bird Woman: A young lady answers an advertisement for a position as carer to “an invalid, infirm or lunatic person” at a dingy-looking house which has the reputation of being haunted. “Having little fear of anything human and none at all of apparitions” she’s confident that she’ll be able to cope with her charge – until she actually claps eyes on the owl-like travesty she’s expected to look after.

Sydney Horler – The Vampire: Two Roman Catholic priests discuss the case of a man of whom everyone seemed to have an “instinctive horror”. When a terrible murder is committed, leaving the victim minus most of her throat, the shunned individual confesses to Father ——, who, of course, he is powerless to pass on the information to the police. Sometimes published as The Believer

Richard Hughes – The Ghost: Told from the perspective of Millie, who’s just had her head bashed in by cheating husband Johnny. Having spent her life terrified of ghosts, now she’s evidently one herself Millie intends to haunt the murderer, especially as he doesn’t seem the least perturbed about what he’s done.

H. R. Wakefield – Blind Man’s Buff: Aylesbury, Herts. Mr. Cort learns why none of the locals will approach Lorn Manor after nightfall. In pitch darkness, He loses himself within a few feet of the front door and is pursued about the old house by unseen entities.

W. W. Jacobs – The Interruption: With his wife dead at last Spencer Goddard can get his hands on all of her lovely money! How happy he is! For all of twenty seconds. Hannah, his cook, wastes no time in letting on that she knows more about her late mistress’s “illness” – and his part in it – than he’d prefer and neither is she slow in turning the situation to her advantage. Should she die suddenly – like poor Mrs. Goddard for example – she’s left a letter with her sister , the contents of which he should regret being made known to the police. Now he must think of a way to save his neck and see hers stretched he opts for a high risk solution …

Anonymous – The Dead Man Of Varley Grange: Westernshire. When young Henderson takes over the Grange, he unwisely invites eight friends to spend the Christmas holiday with him. Prior to his arrival the property had remained vacant for years due to the dreadful family curse as it is reputed that, some centuries ago, Captain Varley murdered his sister after she fled the Convent and ran off with her lover. Now their phantoms stalk the Grange and if you’re unfortunate enough to see the dead nun’s face you die within the year!

I’m back from being ill at the beginning of the week, and swamped yesterday! Getting my head back together, I caught up with my calendar and came across the quote from yesterday that I’m gonna share:

I don’t like work — no man does — but I like what is in work — the chance to find yourself.
- Joseph Conrad

El terror se convierte plano a plano, en algo sumamente abstracto: es la angustia ante lo desconocido.

Sigourney Weaver.

“ALIEN“ es un film muy british a todas luces, con ello quiero decir que no sólo es que esté realizado en Gran Bretaña, no, con ello quiero decir que está realizado muy al gusto de los británicos, aterroriza pero prácticamente sin una gota de sangre, eso es porque profundiza en la narrativa de Alfred Hitchcock, por eso funciona tan bien como thriller o largometraje de suspense, como queráis denominarlo. Así que pasemos a analizar diferentes aspectos de la película que son muy importantes, esos pequeños detalles que están ahí, que parecen irrelevantes, pero no dejan de ser lo que le otorga mayor enjundia al film de Scott.

Saul Bass, gran maestro de ceremonias, y genial introductor, por no decir, diseñador y creador de los más famosos títulos de crédito del cine norteamericano, supo entender muy bien los diseños de Hans Rudi Giger y eso se deja ver en los rótulos iniciales del largometraje a pesar de que no está acreditado. En tan sólo dos minutos nos hará un gran resumen de lo que será el núcleo de este particular viaje espacial. Los motivos por los que no está acreditado, no nos interesan, para mí son meramente anecdóticos, pero lo verdaderamente curioso es la estructura que poseen. Comienza de la forma más inquietante que puede arrancar una película con una pantalla casi en negro, porque nos pone el universo de fondo, comenzamos el viaje de lo general a lo particular, porque acabamos viendo un planeta de fondo.  Todo ello acompañado por la suite creada, por Jerry Goldsmith para marcar este efecto, con instrumentos de viento y cuerda para ir de la mano con Bass e ir de lo dulce y placentero a lo estridente y peculiar.

Gran amante de la geometría, este diseñador apuesta por una tipografía mecánica, que realza el sentido de ciencia-ficción y futuro, y juega con ellas para ir desvelando poco a poco el título del film, juega con la idea de suspense, y nos va adentrando poco a poco en el universo del largometraje. Pero es más, va jugando con otra regla de oro del diseño, la simetría. Pensad que un rostro simétrico es bello, ese es nuestro canon.

La simplicidad otra de las reglas de oro del diseño se deja ver claramente en estos rótulos porque sólo hay un movimiento de cámara, es un travelling, que va de izquierda a derecha, en un plano americano que no deja ver por completo la forma real del planeta que aparece en el fondo de la imagen, homenaje al gran maestro Alfred Hitchcock, obliga al espectador a imaginar si es un planeta o un huevo, así de esta manera llegamos a otra de las características de los rótulos de crédito de Bass y es que es capaz de resumir absolutamente el espíritu del film en dos minutos. Pero no olvidemos que el cine es Gestalt, luego hay que hablar de aspectos psicológicos, nosotros leemos de izquierda a derecha, la música comienza con sólo instrumentos dulces de viento, todo para que el espectador se sienta cómodo a pesar de estar viendo una pantalla casi en negro. Pero el tono de los acordes irán cambiando a medida que el travelling sobre el ecuador del planeta llegue a la mitad del movimiento, allí nos toparemos con a medio camino de un increíble in crescendo que lleva de la mano al espectador. Y es el momento en el que ya tenemos todos los instrumentos (cuerda, viento y percusión), que se correlaciona con el momento justo donde tenemos en pantalla el punto de origen de la criatura. Y cuando Bass nos desvela el título del largometraje por completo, en ese mismo instante nos hallaremos en el clímax del crescendo de la suite de Goldsmith, a caballo entre lo romántico y lo barroco, entre la belleza, el misterio ante lo desconocido. Creando un paroxismo curioso, que se difumina rápidamente a medida que volvemos al universo en general y mediante un encadenado aparece la Nostromo en cuadro en la parte izquierda del fotograma y arranca verdaderamente la película.

No puedo evitar contaros una coincidencia cósmica, Saul Bass había coincidido con Helen Horton, que en “Alien” presta su voz al ordenador central a “Madre”, en un film que dirigió en 1974 llamado “Sucesos en la cuarta fase” e intepretaba en esa ocasión a Mildred Eldridch, y también coincidiría con John Barry, el director de fotografia no el músico, del que hablaremos en “los hijos bastardos”.

LA LARGA MANO DE JOSEPH CONRAD

Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, más conocido como Joseph Conrad, es un célebre autor de novela de aventuras, y cuya bibliografía ha conocido más de una adaptación cinematográfica. Tanto Gordon Caroll como Ridley Scott son dos grandes admiradores del autor, eligió para su debut en la pantalla grande “Los duelistas”, que realizó de la mano del célebre productor David Puttnam, todo un cazatalentos, y la acción nos trasladaba a las guerras napoleónicas donde podíamos asistir a un duelo sin fin protagonizado por Harvey Keitel y Keith Carradine. Así que ponerle el nombre de “La Nostromo” a la nave es un homenaje más en su filmografía a la obra de Conrad. Esta novela de Conrad ha conocido alguna ambiciosa adaptación televisiva, en la que actores de la talla de Colin Firth, Albert Finney,  Brian Dennehy, Joaquim de Almeida, Lothaire Bluteau o Claudia Cardinale, acompañaban a Claudio Amendola que daba vida al famoso personaje que da nombre a la serie y a la novela, pero que en su momento pasó sin pena ni gloria. Lo verdaderamente curioso es que la novela se centra en un país imaginario sudamericano llamado Costaguana, y Sulaco es el nombre de la ciudad portuaria, y no podemos dejar de pasar por alto que el nombre de la nave en “ALIENS”, segunda parte de esta franquicia dirigida por James Cameron, no es otro que el de la citada urbe ribereña, y en la novela es donde se centra la vida de los personajes y la acción fundamental. Y Ridley Scott no deja de construir un relato de terroríficas aventuras espaciales de siete personaje, en la que el viaje sideral marcará a fuego al personaje principal. Pero hay coincidencias con el universo de Conrad. Un importante dato es que el escritor ucraniano vivió la época álgida del colonialismo, la lucha contra las corporaciones y el capitalismo, y todo ello se haya como telón de fondo de esta aventura peculiar. Idea barajada tanto en Nostromo como en ”El corazón de las tinieblas”, donde reflejará la barbarie del universo colonial africano del siglo XIX, y en el que veremos como el personaje realiza un viaje y lucha contra una corporación. Francis Ford Coppola la adaptó libremente al cine en su célebre film bélico “Apocalypse Now”.

LO COTIDIANO

Scott juega con la vida cotidiana al igual que pasa en alguno de sus antecedentes, pero el lo lleva un paso más allá. Así, en primer lugar elimina el machismo de versiones previas e introduce otros problemas como las reivindicaciones salariales, como cuando Brett le comenta a Dallas durante el desayuno que no está de acuerdo con lo que van a cobrar o cuando le pide una gratificación monetaria por ir a investigar la señal desconocida llegando a una acalorada discusión con el capitán de la nave.

Inclusive las actitudes de los trabajadores, como la que muestra personajes como Parker, absolutamente insubordinado, crítico con las decisiones de los mandos, mostrando una actitud cínica hacia la empresa,  llegando incluso a tomarles el pelo, diciendo que tiene que emplear más horas de lo debido para terminar de arreglar la nave.

El racismo, como en la escena en la que Parker le hace levantar a Ash de su asiento y lo limpia con la mano o la introducción de terminología marítima como cuando utilizan los términos virar a babor o a estribor en la escena del aterrizaje o aeronáutica, en la anterior escena podemos escuchar ”llegando al apogeo orbital”, “recoger el tren de aterrizaje”, “conectar la gravedad artificial” o “turbulencias”.

Otro ejemplo lo encontramos cuando están tratando de averiguar en que punto del espacio Kane manda a Ripley que contacte con control de tráfico:

Esta es la astronave comercial “Nostromo”. Número de registro 180924609. Me reciben. Astronave comercial “Nostromo” de las Islas Solomon. Me reciben. Número de registro 180924609. Espero contestación…llamando a Antártica, control de tráfico.

NARRATIVA FÍLMICA

El film arranca con múltiples travellings de carácter descriptivos, con amplios planos generales que nos ubican en el entorno, nos describen con todo tipo de detalles como es la nave por fuera, por dentro, nos muestra sus largos corredores. Así Scott, saca partido a todo el diseño de Jean Giraud, más conocido como “Moebius” y Ron Cobb, creadores de todo este particular universo de aspecto industrial, recordad que los personajes de la trama no dejan de ser mineros espaciales. Moebius procedía del mundo del cómic y escribía para la revista “Metal Hurlant”, mientras que Cobb  procedía de la serie B y había colaborado previamente con Dan O’Bannon en una inmensa gamberrada espacial dirigida por John Carpenter llamada “Dark Star“, para la que hizo los diseños y los efectos especiales. Os dejo enlace a un gran artículo sobre los diseños de Cobb aparecido en Microsiervos.

Para pasar a primeros planos, todo dentro del mismo travelling, y mostrarnos la recepción del mensaje, que hará despertar a la tripulación, y les embarcará en esta barroca aventura.

Scott da mucho dinamismo a la cámara, sobre todo cuando los personajes suelen tender a estar estáticos en el espacio y viceversa. Así suele fusionar  panorámicas a los travellings, y todos son a contra lectura, para generar desasosiego en una escena cotidiana de la vida mediante la incomodidad física de la lectura. Eso da idea de la exquisita planificación que posee de la escena, al margen de sus conocimientos como cineasta. Así, la secuencia del desayuno se erige como todo un gran ejemplo de la técnica narrativa del director británico afincado en EEUU. Hace un barrido del comedor de izquierda a derecha para acabar centrando el foco de atención en Kane, que posee una línea de diálogo muy profética, al decir que se siente que está muerto.

Uno de los múltiples aciertos de Scott frente a sus predecesores es dotar a las transiciones en las que podemos ver como pasa la nave por delante del encuadre, de un verdadero sentido narrativo dentro del largometraje. Así pues, serán verdaderos puntos y seguidos, que otorgan un cierto alivio a la intensidad de la narración, pero que no dejan de otorgar dinamicidad a la narración. Llegados otra vez  a este punto debemos de hace hincapié en el desarrollo de movimiento. La nave siempre ira a contra lectura, con lo que el alivio es menor, porque inconscientemente marca un stress de lectura al espectador, generándole una cierta ansiedad.

Pero será tras la muerte de Kane que estas transiciones se harán de otra manera, esto es debido que ahora servirán para dar respiros en la intensidad de la narración realmente, pero siempre marcando un punto y seguido. Para ello, siempre veremos pasar la nave pero ya no será un movimiento a favor o en contra de la lectura, es decir de derecha a izquierda o viceversa, ahora será de atrás a delante, siempre alejándose en el sentido del eje de la x espacialmente, bien sea viendo la superior a vista de pájaro o…

la parte inferior de la nave.

Esta película posee una narración muy intensa, por todo lo anteriormente expuesto más que su director abusa intencionadamente de dos recursos: primeros planos y los planos americanos. Es como si en un texto comenzara a poner muchos adjetivos y adverbios tanto a los sustantivos como a los verbos. Puede llegar a ser extenuante, pero que en este caso es eficaz. Pero además le sirve por un lado para no mostrar completamente a la criatura, por otro juega con el fuera de campo, lo que se encuentra fuera del cuadro, obligando de estas dos maneras al espectador a usar la imaginación, y a veces aterroriza más lo que uno se imagina que lo que uno ve realmente. Pero, quiero destacar que usa de una manera muy hitchcockniana los primeros planos calificando a la criatura mediante una herramienta de montaje llamada efecto kuleshsov, y que gracias a Redrum podréis acabar de entender en que consiste.

HITCHCOCK EXPLICA EL RECURSO DEL PRIMER PLANO

Pero que sea intensa no quiere decir que sea rápida, y es ahí donde encontramos otro de los grandes aciertos, el ritmo pausado de la narración que le permite a Terry Rawlings montador y a Scott, poder elegir cuándo y cómo asustar al espectador, y crear así un ambiente idóneo donde sustentar el thriller.

Así pues, es prácticamente imposible que el espectador desconecte del film, aquí hay que hablar del montaje realizado por el siempre genial Terry Rawlings, montador de las tres primeras partes de la franquicia, y que en este particular caso hace un trabajo soberbio al saber gradar muy bien los momentos de tensión que había planificado con anterioridad el director al otorgarle toda una serie de elementos con los que poder jugar, porque no debéis olvidar que en la sala de montaje no puedes rodar lo que no tienes, ese momento ya pasó. Y a veces, sobran cosas, que no aportan mucho más y pueden hacer perder ritmo al film. Así llegamos a la versión del director, que particularmente opino que nunca debería haber existido, las nuevas escenas, eliminadas por Rawlings en su momento, están bien quitadas, porque hacen perder ritmo al metraje y tampoco es que aporten nada novedoso, como si lo hizo Cameron con la idea de la Reina. Sobre todo, porque este film juega un poco a ser un relato de Agatha Christie, y al igual que “La cosa” de John Carpenter, juega a ser una variante de “Los diez negritos”, porque desde el principio sabemos quién es el asesino, pero al final sólo quedan la víctima y el verdugo, Ripley y Alien llevándonos a un duelo espacial muy particular, en el que los personajes apenas carecen de armas, y deberán jugar con la astucia, sobre todo la teniente para poder defenderse.

El recurso de la grúa en el film sólo lo usa en una ocasión, se trata de la secuencia que tiene lugar en el interior de la nave alienígena, con el que consigue pasar de un plano americano de Kane a un plano general del interior en contrapicado para realzar más la idea de lo pequeños y vulnerables que son los tres protagonistas.

El lector y espectador de esta magnífica película no debe olvidar que está gestada a finales de la década de los setenta, los gustos narrativos dentro del género estaban en plena evolución, y la corriente del gore cobraba cada vez más fuerza, como ya habíamos visto en películas como “No profanar el sueño de los muertos”, de Jorge Grau. Pero Scott en un giro de tuerca, llega a estilizar el gore, y mostrarlo con una gran dosis de asepsia quirúrgica. Las pinceladas son escasas pero contundentes, tres serán las escenas donde podamos apreciar planos que podamos catalogar como gores. Para la primera esperará hasta el minuto 49 de metraje de la versión del director para ofrecérnosla en una verdadera orgía hemoglobínica cuando irrumpe en escena el octavo pasajero procedente del interior de Kane…

, y los otros dos planos se hayan en la muerte del Brett y Parker.

La bibliografía es extensa y variada que avala esta idea, pero el mayor testigo de todo ello es Ivor Powell, productor asociado del film y mano derecha del realizador británico, reconoce en el documental de Lauzirika que el cineasta impuso al equipo ver “La matanza de Texas” de Tobe Hooper realizada en 1974, máximo referente del género gore y obra de culto, sin albergar la menor duda.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE-TOBE HOOPER-1974

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