“Were someone to ask me why I wrote this story in
Portuguese, I would answer simply that a story like this could only be written
in Portuguese; it's as simple as that. But there is something else that needs
explaining. Strictly speaking, a Requiem should be written in Latin, at least
that's what tradition prescribes. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be up to it
in Latin. I realised though that I couldn't write a Requiem in my own language
and I that I required a different language, one that was for me A PLACE OF
AFFECTION AND REFLECTION”.
In “Requiem” by
Antonio Tabucchi
Affection and
reflection: with these two words, Tabucchi defined his book better than any
reviewer would be able to. "Requiem" is a small masterpiece of
contemporary literature, from which one can only complain about one thing: it
ends too soon for those who are taking delight in it.
It's a very
subjective thing, but when you read something that impresses you as language,
regardless of its meaning, that seems to be so perfectly expressed that no one
could have written it better, that makes you want to telephone a friend at 4AM
and read it aloud, then you're probably reading a great prose stylist. I also
pay attention to a writer's ability to create interesting, appropriate and
original metaphors, similes, etc. A few top off-the-top-of-my-head's examples
of what I would call great prose stylists, really the greatest of the great, and
they’d be Shakespeare, Proust, Walter Pater, Frank Kermode, Gibbon’s “Decline
and Fall”, Faulkner, Antonio Lobo Antunes, Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” and “To the Lighthouse”,
William H. Gass, William T. Vollmann, Cormac McCarthy, John Donne in his
sermons (which are enjoyable purely as prose), and many, many others. Again,
it's all very subjective, and everyone who cares about this stuff probably has
a different list. Hell, I would have a different list if I made it two minutes
from now...
Having said
that, let me fanboy on Tabucchi as hard as I can, and on “Requiem” in
particular.
This is a
tribute to the dead, a fictional Tadeus (the narrator’S best friend), Isabel (his
lover), and Fernando Pessoa. But it is also a tribute to a city almost dead,
the old Lisbon that the Europeanization of Portugal had been destroying.
Tabucchi is passionate about ancient Lisbon and describes it with affection for
the all 12 hours during which the main character goes out in search of his
ghosts.
On the last
Sunday of July, the anonymous narrator is reading "The Book of Disquiet" by Fernando Pessoa under a mulberry tree in a farm in Azeitão, when he suddenly
finds himself at the Lisbon dock waiting for the "dude" with whom he
realizes he suddenly had a scheduled appointment. The "dude" is
Fernando Pessoa. While trying to figure out how to fulfill his commitment to
the poet, the narrator wanders through an almost deserted Lisbon (people have
been refreshing themselves on the beaches), following clues that lead him to
the Museum of Ancient Art, the House of Alentejo, the Cemetery of Pleasures,
Brasileira do Chiado Café and other traditional points of my Lisbon.
This is one of
my favorite books. It is an anti-novel, or a perpetually-in-progress-work. Upon
re-reading it, I still find it greatly disturbing, and disquieting, because it
makes me reflect about life, about myself, about what is to be a writer/reader,
about what is to be a human living in a world that makes little sense and that
will crush you in a split second and that will never miss your presence in it.
It is about temporality and “atemporality”. It is a masterpiece in prose by one
of the finest writers that has ever lived. If you are in any way absorbed by
Tabucchi’s work, do so in Lisbon itself - where Tabucchi's narrative feels
almost palpably real in inverse correlation, or so it seems, to the unreality
of his characters.
Best of all,
find a seat in the Miradouro de Santa Catarina, looking out over the
whitewashed walls & orange pan-tiled roofs towards the hazy Tagus, and read
in the company of Reis, Pessoa, Soares, Campus, and Saramago. Later, you'll
probably want to wander over to the Noobai Café for a “bica”, or an “imperial”...
Being old
enough, it's impossible to me to go look for the young and the hip in
Literature. I'm, however, interested in the emptiness of it, the
meaninglessness of it. The void it creates. I am interested in Tabucchi's tears
because I find incredible beauty in them. I'm interested in the incredible
beauty that lies away from Literature - everything that is left behind. The
terror it creates?
3 comentários:
"that seems to be so perfectly expressed that no one could have written it better, that makes you want to telephone a friend at 4AM and read it aloud, then you're probably reading a great prose stylis"
Or you're drop dead drunk and need to sleep it off. Thankfully, none of my friends who drink have ever drunk dialed me, but if they did, there would be hell to pay...
Sometimes what we're reading is so good that it feels like being drunk. And I promise npt to call you in the hour of the wolf...
*wipes brow*
Well, there's one worry off my mind then! :-D
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