Saturday, December 19, 2009

Parole dette al vento - Niente narrativa dal 1971!

Un paio di settimane fa su Internazionale (n.824 – 4/10 dicembre 2009) è uscito un articolo di David Randall, un autorevole giornalista britannico, intitolato “Ho smesso di leggere i romanzi”.

Randall sostiene di non leggere un’opera di narrativa dal 1971 e di leggere solo ed esclusivamente saggistica. La cosa sconcertante non è tanto che David Randall preferisca la saggistica alla narrativa, ma che accantoni la narrativa con la motivazione che se i personaggi sono plausibili, non vale la pena leggere un’opera uscita dalla fantasia di uno scrittore.

Visto l'argomento del mio blog, non potevo che non essere d'accordo. Non leggere narrativa è un po’ come dire “non mi piace la fotografia d’autore perché conosco già com’è fatta la realtà”. La letteratura è una forma d’arte come la pittura o la scultura, come il cinema o, appunto, la fotografia. Secondo me i romanzi ci offrono punti di vista alternativi ed originali, a cui altrimenti non avremmo mai accesso. Un’opera di narrativa può scandagliare la mente umana in modi che i saggi scientifici non faranno mai, perché indaga le emozioni da un punto di vista personale, soggettivo, e non sempre affidabile (vedi per esempio “Il Giro di Vite” di Henry James). La narrativa fa riflettere sull’esistenza umana, sulla complessità e la vastità dei sentimenti e delle esperienze umane, ci fa conoscere parti del mondo e categorie di persone che altrimenti ci sarebbero inaccessibili.

Se per esempio leggiamo un saggio di storia sulla Londra vittoriana, avremo davanti ai nostri occhi una serie di dati e la consapevolezza, per esempio, dell’estrema povertà di un certo strato sociale di Londra, la presenza endemica di orfani e del lavoro minorile. Ma la storia, oltre a fornirci dati sulle masse, ci racconta quasi solamente dei grandi personaggi: la regina Vittoria o al massimo il suo consigliere prediletto. Per entrare nella vita delle persone comuni, per esempio di un ragazzino dell’epoca vittorian, e capirne le sofferenze e le emozioni non possiamo fare altro che leggere Dickens. Ho studiato a fondo la guerra di secessione americana e le sue cause, legate allo schiavismo e all’abolizionismo, ma posso dire di aver “capito” che cosa volesse dire essere uno schiavo nel profondo sud americano – se si può affermare di poter capire una cosa talmente orrenda - solo leggendo “Amatissima” di Toni Morrison! Ho pianto lacrime amare leggendo quel libro, cosa che non mi è mai capitata leggendo un libro di storia sull’argomento. E un'ultima cosa vorrei aggiungere, che tra l'altro calza a pennello perché ho appena citato Toni Morrison, che è una scrittrice dalla prosa a dir poco "poetica". La letteratura è spesso poesia! Il modo in cui vengono usate le metafore, le sinestesie, le allitterazioni... e poi l'ironia, il sarcasmo, la satira. C'è tutto e ancora più di tutto nella letteratura: c'è la sociologia, la psicologia, la storia e la politica.

PS: Mi sono ricordata che circa un anno fa avevo dato vita ad una serie di post intitolati
"Parole dette al vento", scritture volanti rigorosamente in italiano dove intrecciavo autori che amo e parole o poesie nella speranza che qualcuno le "cogliesse" come le avevo colte io. Ne ho scritti solo due (e uno su Toni Morrison!) e poi me ne ero dimenticata, ironia della sorte. Ora ho rimesso il tag, ma credo che ci fossero altri post che potrebbero essere taggati con quel nome...

PS2:
il link ad un'altra opinione sull'articolo di David Randall, da parte di un blogger di nome Patassa.

Monday, December 14, 2009

37. “Sostiene Pereira” di Antonio Tabucchi



Anno di prima pubblicazione: 1994
Genere: romanzo storico
Paese: Italia

In English: Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi (or Declares Pereira)



Antonio Tabucchi is one of our greatest writers. If you want to read more Italian authors you could try this book. Tabucchi is on the same level as Calvino or Baricco in my opinion. It is set in Portugal in the 1930s, but those who know Italy will recognize some hints at things we have experienced in the past (or are we experiencing it now?). It is an existentialist novel, but not in an annoying way. It's also a novel about literature: Pereira, the director of the literary page of a newspaper hires Monteiro Rossi, a young boy to write some obituaries, in case some important writers like Gabriele D'Annunzio might die. However, what Monteiro Rossi writes is impossible to publish, because it is all imbued with politics. In Salazar's dictatorship, few people had the courage to express their opinions and the young boy is one of them.


Sull’autore: Antonio Tabucchi è nato a Pisa nel 1943. Studia per un periodo a Parigi, dove per caso compra in una bancarella un libro del poeta portoghese Fernando Pessoa e si innamora della sua poesia. Inizia così una vera e propria passione per il Portogallo e per la sua letteratura, tanto da diventare docente di lingua e letteratura portoghese a Bologna e il più importante studioso dell'opera di Pessoa in Italia. Il suo primo libro è Piazza d’Italia (1975) a cui fanno seguito molti altri romanzi e raccolte di racconti. Uno dei suoi romanzi più importanti, oltre a Sostiene Pereira, è Notturno Indiano (1984), storia di un uomo che sta cercando di rintracciare un suo amico scomparso in India. Nel 1994, quando viene pubblicato Sostiene Pereira, l’opposizione all’entrata in politica di Silvio Berlusconi si stringe intorno a questo libro, nonostante Tabucchi ribadisca che si tratta di un libro più esistenzialista che politico. Tabucchi, tuttavia, è attivo anche dal punto di vista politico (collabora per esempio con Il Fatto Quotidiano, il giornale “di opposizione” fondato nel 2009 da Antonio Padellaro ed ha partecipato alla trasmissione di approfondimento politico Annozero).


Da Sostiene Pereira è stato tratto anche un film, con Marcello Mastroianni come protagonista.


Tuesday, December 8, 2009

36. “The Glass Palace” by Amitav Ghosh


Year of first publication: 2000
Genre: novel, historical novel, family saga
Country: India (the author is Indian, but the novel also has strands in Burma and Malaysia)

In italiano: Il Palazzo degli Specchi di Amitav Ghosh, edito da Neri Pozza (2007), € 14,00

Plot: The novel begins in Mandalay, Burma, in 1885, when the British are about to seize the city with a powerful army of Indian sepoys. The Burmese royal family will be sent into exile in a small Indian village and the royal palace ravaged. Rajkumar, a Bengali orphan boy, has a chance to enter the “glass palace” during the chaos following the fall of the Ava Kingdom, and there he meets one of Queen Supayalat’s maid servants, a breathtakingly-beautiful young girl called Dolly. Rajkumar will make a fortune with teak and finally marry her. In the meantime, the royal family is “incarcerated” by the British in a place called Ratnagiri, on the western coast of India, almost forgotten by the Burmese and everyone else. They make friends with their jailers nonetheless: Uma Dey, the District Collector’s wife, and Dolly become close friends. When her husband dies, Uma reinvents herself as an activist for Indian independence and has a chance to travel to Europe and America. Another strand follows Uma’s nephew Arjun, a dedicated officer in the British Indian Army, who has a conversion and starts to fight for India’s own side after realizing the contradictions of being a colonial and fighting for the British. The novel follows three generations and three families across borders, giving us a multi-layered portrait of colonial and post-colonial India, Burma and Malaysia. The novel spans more than one hundred years, finally ending in the 1990s, when Rajkumar’s grand-daughter Jaya embarks on an internet search to find her long-lost uncle Dinu, who now lives in Rangoon. Burma, now called Myanmar, is no longer the “golden country” it used to be: bad politics, famines and the selfishness of its rulers have turned it into an impoverished land, where the military junta has seized the power and incarcerated opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Some thoughts: This is a superb and unique novel. There is so much in this book that I don’t know where to start. It’s a book that will stay with me for a long time. Once again Ghosh confirms his gift for storytelling, giving life to unforgettable characters such as Rajkumar, Uma or Dolly.
He demonstrates that South East Asia in the 19th and early 20th century could be as multicultural as cities like New York or London are today. Ghosh’s novel has nothing to envy from multiracial family sagas set in the late 1990s or early 2000s as written by Zadie Smith or Hanif Kureishi. Rajkumar is a Bengali-born peasant who makes his fortune in Burma and feels more at home in Mandalay or Rangoon than in Calcutta, whereas Dolly is an attendant of the royal family, a Burmese by birth who ends up feeling more at ease in India than in Burma. Saya John, Rajkumar’s mentor in the teak trade, is a Malay raised by Catholic priests, whereas Uma is an upper middle-class Indian widow who lives between New York and the subcontinent. Their nephews, children and grand-children Neel, Dinu, Arjun, Manju and Alison are part Indian, part Burmese, part Malay and part American. All of these characters cross borders between countries and social classes, having multiple identities that Ghosh loves to explore. Rajkumar’s rags to riches story is only an example of social mobility in the novel, but there are many others (for example Mohan Sawant, a coachman, who ends up marrying one of the exiled princesses, but keeps leading a modest life). Ghosh wants to demonstrate how common it was at that time to float between borders of social class (the novel is obviously highly-researched). The theme of multiculturalism and social mobility in the British Raj is also featured in Sea of Poppies, Ghosh’s latest novel.
A lot is devoted to reflections on British colonialism in South East Asia. For example, when Uma criticizes Dolly for her faith in Queen Supalayat because she is believed to have had a lot of people killed, Dolly answers that she is scared by the picture of Queen Victoria hung at Uma’s, instead. She reminds her friend of how many people have been killed in the name of Queen Victoria. Uma starts to be more conscious about the injustices of the British rule while she is travelling abroad. Initially, her point of view is that of the Indian Independence League, but later in the novel she becomes a supporter of “the velvet glove”, that is to say a supporter of Gandhi. Her nephew Arjun has a slower transformation from officer of the British Indian Army to revolutionary fighter for the independence of India. Ghosh details the doubts of Arjun’s fellow soldiers: they swore to be loyal to their country but which one is their country, India or the British Empire? They resent the fact that they are sent to Malaysia to defend the British Empire, which prevents them from defending India, their own country. Uma debates with Rajkumar’s youngest son, Dinu: shall India fight in the Second World War with the British and against the Nazi or shall India fight only with a concrete promise of self-rule? Uma thinks that fascism and colonialism are both evil and she doesn’t see much difference between them. Uma and Arjun’s transformation equals that of Indian people from subjugated colonials to fully independent members of a big democratic nation.
The Glass Palace is an ambitious novel, with vivid descriptions and complex characters. It has a “gloss” of history without being boring or difficult and it’s multi-layered, packed with details and undoubtedly cinematic. It has some minor flaws nonetheless. Sometimes Ghosh alternates tales of war and distress with accounts of sappy relationships including sex scenes on the beach, falling into the stereotypes of Bollywood movies too often. Towards the end it feels like it’s several novels edited into one (I think it’s inevitable when you write such a long book, unless your name is Lev Tolstoj!). Ghosh is not able to leave his characters to their faith, telling us exactly what happened to each one of them. Sometimes years pass in a paragraph and characters who where children are suddenly grown up. Also, the ending is a bit rushed and sloppy: Ghosh wants to comment on the current situation in Myanmar, where the democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi is at house arrest, but it all feels a bit too sketchy, also considering the details crammed in the rest of the novel.
Something curious and albeit interesting about The Glass Palace: the book was a regional winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, but Ghosh, unaware that the publishers had submitted his book, withdrew the novel from the competition, objecting to the idea of his work being classified as “Commonwealth literature” when the prize is only open to books written in English. By doing this, he didn’t betray the spirit of the novel, which criticizes British colonialism quite harshly.
Ghosh also wrote a non-fiction book, Incendiary Circumstances: A Cronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times (2006) where there is an essay on Burma called "At Large in Burma". Here he writes about an uncle who used to live in Burma and was probably the inspiration for one of the characters in the book.


About the author: read this post or follow this link.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Writing about Africa and not for Africa


How many occasions do we have for celebrating famously inflation-racked Zimbabwe, a country run by somebody defined by many as a tyrant? Well, now we have at least one. Petina Gappah’s collection of short stories about her home country, Zimbabwe, has won the Guardian First Book Award. An Elegy for Easterly has been praised by many critics and I’ve read a great deal about it. Even though the country is living in a permanent economical depression, life still goes on there: people are falling in love, getting married and having children. We should think more often about that.

The author is a Zimbabwean lawyer who now lives in Geneva, Switzerland, and was partly educated in the UK. She said that she doesn’t want to be labelled as “the voice of Zimbabwe” and that she doesn’t write for Zimbabwe but about Zimbabwe. I really want to read this book. Maybe for Christmas I could have it posted from the UK…

By the way…

Some weeks ago an article appeared on The Guardian website telling us that Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian writer, had rejected the definition of “father of modern African literature”* on the grounds that “there were many of us”. Now a new article, written by Ghanian author Nii Ayikwei Parkes, has some interesting thoughts on the matter. Apart from the fact that it is obvious that there cannot be only one father of African literature as African literature is diverse and written in many different languages, he reflected on the meaning of the expression “father of modern African literature”. Immediately after reading the piece, he googled “father of European literature” and “father of primitive African literature”, thus underlining the eurocentric undertone of the aforementioned expression!

This made me wonder at the way we still "patronize" Africa, we consider it as a whole, even when we are sponsoring what we call "postcolonial literature" (without thinking that this label also implies an eurocentric point of view).


* This expression was coined by Nadine Gordimer in a completely different context. The original sentence was "Chinua Achebe's early work made him the father of modern African literature as an integral part of world literature".