This is the third in the series of reviews of books of those authors who received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Patrick Modiano won the 2014 prize.
I have read the following (originally published in French before having received the Nobel prize):
After the circus (originally published in 1992; translation by Mark Polizzotti Yale UP, 2015),
Little Jewel (originally published in 2001, translated by Penny Hueston, Yale UP, 2015),
In the café of lost youth (originally published in 2007, translated by Chris Clarke, The New York Review of Books, 2016),
The Black Notebook (originally published in 2012, translated by Mark Polizzotti, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).
Let’s start with general impressions. While I was reading (and this is true for all the books), I was on the edge of my seat to find out and figure out what happens to the characters whose lives contain mysteries to be discovered. Furthermore, the prose is flowing, clear, fast, the narrative is deceivingly simple, and the books themselves are pretty short: I got through After the Circus in one day. Interestingly, having finished reading, the characters and actions remain in a sort of haze, as if a slight mist enveloped them. If this was Modiano’s purpose, then he succeeded elegantly and marvelously.
Now the specifics. All the books have common elements, and here are only some which strike me as essential:
Intradiegetic (first person) narrative
All four books are written from the first person point of view. This person is a protagonist of sorts since he (male in the majority of cases) narrates what he is looking for, which displaces the protagonist role on to the person/event/place he is searching for. The search is done from the perspective of an older person, about 30 years after the facts happened to a youthful self. The narrator often complains about his inability to remember certain crucial details of the past post factum (i.e. when he knows what exactly occurred), as well as being sorry not to have noticed these details while life was going on. As the narrator says in After the Circus, “When you are young, you neglect certain details.” (p. 53) These four books, therefore, point to the fact that as much as we would like to, we really cannot grasp the full characteristics of events and persons, and, above all, of our own self while life is going on. We can only form a fleeting image (hence the fog?) which is forever engraved in a gesture, in a smell, and, above all, for Modiano, in a place. The main thrust of the novels is to attempt “to gather up the scattered pieces of a life” (After the Circus, p. 75).
The role of topography
These four novels are also tours of Paris, its subway system, its bars and restaurants, its characteristics of right and left bank as well as of arrondissements, its hotels, parks, roads, avenues and dead ends. Not having visited Paris, the meaning of these topographic details is impenetrable to me. And yet, they have significance for they shed light on the characters’ movements, and the position of their living quarters with respect to those of the protagonist. In After the Circus, the narrator explains additional effects: “…topographical details have a strange effect on me: instead of clarifying and sharpening images from the past, they give me a harrowing sensation of emptiness and severed relationships.” (p. 44) . More often than not, the topographic details are either obscured by time or completely disappear on account of demolition, new construction, abandonment. This perhaps ties to the “eternal return” in 4. below.
Reference point
The above point may have one obvious reason for being so frequent in the books: the narrator is often looking for a “reference point” which most of the time is topographical. This point would help him disentangle the mysteries he encounters in the lives of those characters who he associates with.
Eternal return
Not only retracing his steps topographically, the narrator tries to return to people and circumstances which he lived through when young.
Things are not as they are given, especially names
Generally, characters in the four books either do not have names or have given themselves various names or are called by nicknames given them by others.
Relationship ties unclear
In most cases, the relationship between the narrator-protagonist and his female friend is not stated in an obvious fashion: they sleep, eat, walk, go to see movies together, but there is no attempt to describe the feelings and desires which characters may have for each other. When the female character dies or disappears, there is no drama or trauma expressed by anyone.
In conclusion, the narrators of these four novels give an impression of someone who forever endeavours to understand the relationship that exists between narrating his own life and narrating other people’s lives. Is there a connection between, on the one hand, the manner in which one narrates and, on the other, how one views one’s life? It seems that Modiano vacillates between what Strawson calls Diachronic and Episodic narration and he cannot, for the lack of details, settle on one or the other (see Gallen Strawson, “Against Narration” in Ratio (new series) XVII 4 December 2004, pp. 428-451 https://filedn.eu/lSmbVOH8OJnh8q06rNwVmqS/public.library/2020-11/against_narrativity.pdf).
This, perhaps, is the greatest strength of Patrick Modiano’s novels.
This is the second in the ongoing series of reviews of books by authors who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. V. S. Naipaul won the prize in 2001.
I have read three books by this author: one written and published before he received the prize and two published after the event.
A Bend in the River (New York, The Modern Library, 1997, first published in 1979) shows the author’s mastery in weaving together colonialism, race, imagination, religion, slavery, individual psychology, social dilemmas, as well as cultural transformations in migration situations. At the outset, the narrator, Salim, lives on the east coast of Africa, and being a descendant of Indian migrants, lives a particularly troublesome interior life. His loyalty is not certain: he is not wholly “African”, and he is not wholly “Indian”, and yet he is both. The colonial and internecine wars and battles force him to move and set up a shop in the central part of Africa, in a town at a bend of a river: it is a commercial site, where goods from afar travel deep into the bush and are exchanged together with opinions, traditions, biases, food, insecurities and hates. He is alone and he is lonely; the town offers only superficial connections and relationships. Through Salim we meet a number of fascinating characters, such as the marchande Zabeth, the Belgian priest, his ex-servant, and others; but the bond between them and Salim is tenuous. The first person narrative allows Naipaul to delve deep into the soul of a man who is experiencing transformations in all aspects of life around him: the rulers are no longer white, the President is becoming an autocrat, the local tribes use violence to deliver their wants and needs, everyone tries to make the best of a shaky situation. Everything is up for grabs: history, education, new Africa, values, civilization, ambition. Whereas Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart illustrate the dismantling of the local African culture from the point of view of one village dweller, A Bend in the River elaborates on the dismantling adding the cultural and religious layer of Indian Muslims living in Africa. This is a profoundly pessimistic novel, because at the end, it seems that despite the battles, the deaths, the victims and heroes, people are unable to create more positive and joyful lives. In the words of one character (Indar), if you travel back to the same place (in this case the east coast of Africa) often, “You stop grieving the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn’t exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. This is the way we have to learn how to live now. The past is here.” (p. 167) Salim’s stance is interesting, objective, but not really useful: “In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the army nor the rebels. As it turned out, both sides lost.” (118). If it is the case that the past (and therefore all the culture, religion, traditions it carries with it) does not exist, and no new culture, traditions, religions are created, the result is living in a limbo of insubstantial connections to tangible remnants of a past life. The book can therefore be read metaphorically – beyond the troublesome situation of migrants living on a foreign soil – as a warning about humanity’s inability to create new inclusive culture, traditions, religions.
Magic Seeds (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, the illustration above shows part of the jacket) continues the theme of an Indian born in Africa, studying in London. But this time this Indian travels to Germany and then to India to become – cajoled by his sister – a revolutionary fighter for one of the guerrilla groups in India. He abandons his wife in Africa after 20 years of marriage. Although the reasons for Willie’s joining a terrorist group are murky, Naipaul the omniscient narrator throws us crumbs of possible causes for becoming a guerrilla fighter: a cuckolding wife, weakness of mid-life, revenge oneself on the world, seeking a kind of asceticism or sainthood. The theme of slavery appears again, but this time as a historical force which debases people to such an extent that they do not think for themselves, and the void is being filled by guerrilla fighters. “The old lords oppressed and humiliated and injured for centuries. No one touched them. Now they’ve gone away. … They’ve left these wretched people as their monument.” (p. 43) Willie is left to his own devices in the guerrilla group, which, by some unforeseen circumstances, is the enemy of the one he really wanted to join. It is significant that he does not try to cross over to the enlightened group which does not believe in violence to achieve their goal of freeing people from a life of wretchedness. No amount of boredom, starvation, deprivation makes him try to leave; in fact, he thinks “I must give no sign to these people that I am not absolutely with them.” (p. 52). The group he joined makes the villagers kill the richest person of the village. He thinks of one group of village people as “survivors”: “Perhaps this exposure to human nullity will do me good, will make me see more clearly.” (p. 68). After incredible vicissitudes, he is arrested and then freed thanks to a lawyer-acquaintance of his from his life in London. He starts a new life in London, learning to write for an architectural journal. The last quarter of the book deals with the story of marriage infidelities of both the lawyer and his wife (with whom also Willie has sex). This is also a sadly pessimistic novel, and can be described as a metaphor for the individual’s search of the meaning of life. This search is boring, tragically twisted, leads to the individual’s learning about himself, but really to no purpose. The words of the title are inscrutable, since they refer to something received by an egg-seller in a village market “who exchanges everything for a handful of magic seeds” (p. 242). This book was disappointing after the mastery of A Bend in the River.
A Writer’s People (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007) is not, according to Naipaul, literary criticism or biography. “I wish only, and in a personal way, to set out the writing to which I was exposed during my career. I say writing, but I mean specifically vision, a way of seeing and feeling.” (p. 41). It is unclear why a writer would write such a book, unless he wanted to re-affirm for himself certain ways of seeing and feeling. There is no doubt that Naipaul’s “people” are varied, from colonial or post-colonial and other situations, and some well-known. However, the book describes, in an interesting way, the present way of being for a writer. First, an European writer: by 1930, (after Balzac, Tolstoy, Dickens) “little about these great European societies had been left unsaid. The societies themselves had been diminished for various reasons – war, revolution; and the world around these once unchallenged societies had grown steadily larger. A society’s unspoken theme is always itself; it has an idea where it stands in the world. A diminished society couldn’t be written about in the old way, of social comment.” (p. 62) Therefore, writers have to find another perspective, such as fairly-tale or romance. Among the colonial and post-colonial authors (Naipaul’s father plays a prominent role) who caught the eye (and perspective and feeling) of Naipaul are Gandhi and Nehru (autobiographies). A different way of looking is an elaboration on history, to which Naipaul reserves many pages. Specifically, Flaubert’s elaboration of the mercenaries’ war in Carthage after 241 BC, based on Polybius’s account. Naipaul parallels the descriptions of mercenaries given by Polybius with the treatment Flaubert gives them in Salambo.and prefers the ancient Greek historian’s version. It is shorter, “drier, but profounder…more full of true concern” (p. 135). Naipaul touches also upon the difficulties of reading literature. From the perspective of a young man born in Trinidad, living in “the half-world in the privacy of an extended family” (53), clearly, reading about the court of Luis XIV was like reading a fairy-tale. “What was a court? What were the courtiers? What was an aristocrat? I had to make them up in my mind, though for the most part I left them as words. … I lived in a cloud of not-knowing.” (54) “But the writers I couldn’t read were also partly to blame. …[Graham Greene in The Quiet American] hadn’t made his subject clear, He had assumed that his world was the only one that mattered.” (54) Naipaul praises Maupassant because he made his far-off world complete and accessible, even universal (54).
The conclusion? A Bend in the River is truly magnificent, and the part of Magic Seeds which deals with Willie’s life of a terrorist is likewise fascinatingly written. Naipaul’s literary world is, however, peopled by lonely men who take up occupations (trader, guerrilla fighter in these two cases) seemingly without thinking, and who don’t find even a smidgen of joy in any activity they are engaged in.
This is a new series, entitled NPL (Nobel Prize for Literature), in which books of those authors who won the Nobel prize in literature are reviewed. An attempt is made not to spoil the reading for those who intend to delve into these books.
The first in this series is the review of Jose’ Saramago’s The Lives of Things (translated by Giovanni Pontiero, London: Verso, 2013) and Death with Interruptions (translated by Margaret Jull Costa, New York: Harcourt, 2008). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.
Content
Saramago’s strengths are both in content and in style, as both of these are interesting, fresh, and highly entertaining. To be more precise, for example, the story entitled “The chair” describes the form and substance of chairs, but it is specifically about a chair that stopped doing what it ought to, and is collapsing, together with the person sitting on it. Besides dealing with the possible reasons for the chair’s demise, and the consequences of the fall of the person sitting on it as it buckles, this short story is above all a brilliant metaphor for writing: authors have to depict/photograph in words elusive actions and unknown quirky characters in fieri, i.e as these are imagined, and we, the readers, have the chance to follow the linguistic descriptions of these actions and characters and engage with them in our minds. If the depiction is felicitous, then happiness reigns, and this is the case with Saramago’s writing, because reading it brings joy, thoughts, and chuckles. The content of three stories in the collection deals with the reaction of a character (male) to unpredictable (and therefore difficult) circumstances the setting of which is usually some type of bureaucratic state attempting a type of control: “Embargo” (lack of fuel), “Reflux” (moving the human remains from one cemetery to another), “Things” (things acting in strange ways). The last two contain very different contents: the lyrical story “Centaur” imagines the life of a centaur who has lived for millennia and has been attempting to find the place of his origins, and “Revenge” looks at sex from two perspectives.
In the novel Death with Interruptions death is the main character both acting and being acted upon.The author analyzes the consequences of the fact that in one country no one dies. He skillfully, ironically and profoundly narrates the need for death (and therefore the utter dismay when no one dies) on the part of ecclesiastical authorities, funeral homes, and medical profession, as well as some common people. As death returns (with conditions), one person, a musician, does not come under her authority. The novel ends with a lyrical possibility that even death could fall prey to if not love, at least feelings of tenderness. Memorable are the pages that discuss the philosophical musings (by some characters) on death, tackling questions such as “Is there one Death (of the universe) or many deaths (of humans, animals, plants, etc.)?”, or “Is death more powerful than god?”. Although the movement Humanity + has been pursuing the possibility of humans not needing to die, or at least living for a very long time, it bases its futuristic predictions on human biology and the possibility of connection between biology and technology. Saramago’s death is very different. It simply is, and although he describes her at first according to the usual European iconography as a skeleton with a scythe dressed in a long cape, she possesses the ability to transform herself. There are two ironic views which are followed in parallel in the novel: on the one hand, there is the fact that humans live with the thought of death, but not really thinking deeply of the time when death comes to them, and on the other, so much of what humans do is dependent on death. Life without death is really unthinkable, but it is also uncomfortable. We are trapped in this tug-of-war, but it si also what makes us human.
Style
Saramago’s linguistic expression is noteworthy. I would love to be able to read him in the original Portuguese. Especially in the novel, his syntactic constructions can be compared, as a complete opposite, to the style of Ernest Hemingway, but not in the vein of Henry James. Reading his sentences leaves the reader almost breathless, and yet wanting to read on. But reading his sentences is not like reading stream of consciousness, it is more like catching up with the developing asides which lead to other ideas but the thematic centre of the sentence is still discernible. Furthermore, now and then the author shows his self-awareness as writer answering questions that careful readers ask as they read, and his comments are witty. Two quotations precede the beginning of the novel. The first one is from the Book of Predictions: “We will know less and less what it means to be human”. The second one is from Wittgenstein: “If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in so doing, you did not encounter new images, new linguistic fields.” Both obviously refer to language, and Saramago’s writing shows he thought about linguistic expression in depth.
In conclusion, these two books brought me full joy, entertainment, and inspirational ideas which I will treasure for a long time.
Il quarantunesimo volumetto della collana Superfluo Indispensabile, intitolato Lingua Estetica della soglia di Valeria Cantoni Mamiani (FEFÈ editore, 2021) fa esattamente quello che un libro avvincente deve fare: offrire delle idee affinché ogni lettore possa costruirsi una particolare mappa dell’argomento. La lingua viene presentata mediante i due significati in italiano: 1) il sistema verbale di comunicazione e 2) l’organo anatomico. Nell’Introduzione viene spiegato che la trattazione è composta di spezzoni autobiografici, di letture, di intuizioni, il tutto senza ambizioni scientifiche. L’autrice insiste sull’importanza della meraviglia, “della partecipazione stupita al gioco del cosmo e della vita”.
Basta elencare qui i titoli dei capitoli perché il lettore possa farsi l’idea della complessità dell’argomentazione dell’autrice:
I. L’organo ambiguo
2. La lingua che scarta
3. In viaggio con la lingua
4. Lingua e seduzione
5. È tutta questione di gusto.
Lo stile della scrittura va spesso per elenchi i cui particolari sono poi trattati separatamente. Per es., “Gioia, piacere, dolore, seduzione, articolazione, relazione, conflitto, comprensione, la lingua è tuttoquesto e molto di più.” (p.18) Inoltre, l’autrice prende in esame alcuni casi molto specifici di personaggi il cui apporto alle discussioni approfondite sulla lingua è innegabile: Elias Canetti, Noam Chomsky, Hanna Arendt, Paul Celan, Primo Levi, Umberto Galimberti, Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Demostene, Cicerone, Platone, Agota Kristoff, e altri.
Valeria Cantoni Mamiani non ha paura di avanzare giudizi che esprimono la sua prospettiva. In particolare, l’ancora di tutto il trattamento sulla lingua è quella della situazione europea e italiana, contraria a quella della “cultura statunitense omologata e omologante”, soprattutto per quanto riguarda i dialetti. Ma non solo. Secondo l’autrice, il linguaggio sui social è “uniformato, sincopato, poverissimo, semplicistico”. Purtroppo, la situazione si presenta in realtà, come sempre, molto piùcomplessa di quanto non appaia a prima vista (lingua scritta, parlata, trasmessa, ecc.). Si corre il rischio di ripetere le stesse solite formule. Dire che il dialetto esprime il sentimento e la lingua esprime il concetto (con buona pace di Camilleri e di Pirandello) è semplicemente continuare a sopprimere le possibilità che il dialetto contiene, come ogni lingua, per esprimere tutte le funzioni comunicative. E dunque si continua a svalutare il dialetto.
Sebbene le posizioni di una persona come Valeria Cantoni Mamiani la cui formazione è orientata all’ermeneutica e non alla linguistica (p. 44) siano interessanti, queste sfociano nelle spiegazioni poco approfondite di fenomeni a cui la linguistica offre chiarimenti ormai accettati dagli specialisti e, in questo caso, anche dagli insegnanti delle lingue seconde. La vita creativa di Agota Kristoff che non si è ambientata nella cultura e nella lingua francese e che continua a soffrire quando non scrive nella sua lingua materna illustra la situazione di moltissime persone che si trovano a dover a che fare con una lingua che non è la loro. Il suo è un caso spiegabilissimo con l’uso del concetto di “affective filter”, i.e. di una difficoltà di apprendimento di una lingua straniera dovuta a un ostacolo psicologico di non volersi avvicinare alla nuova lingua. Ora, una cosa è non sapere la lingua in un modo che permetta la produzione del lavoro letterario soddisfacente (per chi lo crea), un’altra cosa è la situazione in cui la persona continua a voler creare letteratura nella seconda lingua nonostante non si senta a suo agio in quella lingua. Dire che “La seconda lingua è la lingua del logos, privo di inconscio, perché non è la lingua dei sogni e neppure dell’immaginario…la si domina, freddamente, a distanza” (p. 92) vuol dire chiudere la via a altre possibilità di conoscere la seconda lingua e in effetti, di conoscersi.
L’ argomento più scottante ma anche più difficile da sbrogliare è quello della responsabilità della classe intellettuale. L’autrice si chiede infatti dove sono oggi gli intellettuali, dove sono finiti i filosofi, i giuristi in grado di difendere i principi fondanti della liberta`? Chi sono i nuovi intellettuali? (p.29) Se, da un lato, esiste una lingua inaridita “in un fraseggio funzionale a essere adatto ai social”, dall’altro, l’autrice chiama “alla responsabilità nell’uso delle parole, per lo meno della nostra lingua, l’italiano, lingua vivissima, ricchissima, composta da strati di tante culture, proprio come la nostra cucina, lingua aperta ad accogliere nuovi pensieri e nuove parole, a stare nella complessità e a leggerla”. Ma a quale lingua si contrappone la lingua “semplicistica” e “inaridita”? L’autrice da` una rispostainteressante, ma poco adatta all’appoggio dell’italiano più “complesso”:
“Mi sento responsabile per quello che dico o per quello che gli altri comprendono? Questa domanda porta con se’ la consapevolezza del senso primariamente sociale e relazionale della lingua. E va assunta, senza menzogne.” (p. 30) Per qualcuno che guarda la situazione linguistica eculturale italiana dal di fuori, è difficile giudicare “quale” versione della lingua italiana è quella che risponde alla necessità di complessità. La cultura letteraria rinascimentale e illuministica offre esempi di scrittori italiani che oggi sono letti poco perché “difficili” (Pietro Bembo, che scrive per i posteri; Giambattista Vico che offre una Scienza Nuova). Ma la cultura letteraria è stata soppiantata dalla cultura multimediale (non solo in Italia) in cui la lingua gioca un ruolo minore, se non minimo. La svalutazione del modo di comunicazione verbale fa sì che altri modi di comunicazione occupino il terreno che prima è stato il campo preferito della lingua. A chi spetta lo sforzo di far riacquistare alla lingua almeno parte di quel terreno? Una risposta punta sui libri, non troppo difficili, ne’ troppo facili, di argomenti svariatissimi trattati a modo: ma solo se è vero che la gente legge. Allora in quel caso si spera che tantissimi prendano in mano e leggano questo volumetto affascinante. Affascinante, ma arduo da recensire, perché, secondo l’autrice, “Nulla di ortodosso, tassonomico e scientifico in queste pagine per chi si aspettasse un trattato filosofico, letterario, gastronomico, artistico, psicologico. Nulla di tutto questo nello specifico, ma tutto questo preso nel suo insieme.” (p. 5-6)
Il quarantesimo volumetto della collana Superfluo indispensabile della casa editrice Fefe’, intitolato Cuore storia, metafore, immagini e palpiti di Claudia Pancino (2020, pp. 209), offre un viaggio sorprendente e significativo attraverso la storia e i vari ambiti temporali, psicologici, fisiologici, metaforici, simbolici in cui si trova la parola “cuore”.
Il libro, corredato di numerose illustrazioni di cuore, è diviso in 3 capitoli e chiude con “Testimonianze e documenti” (cioè, con degli esempi concreti di descrizioni tratte da pubblicazioni che includono gli ambiti presi in esame nel libro).
Nella Premessa, l’autrice si sofferma sul fatto che il significato del “cuore” è stato prima quello ideale legato all'amore, anche se si sapeva già nell’antichità che il cuore è il fonte della vita. Dunque, l’espressione “essere senza cuore” non significa essere morto, ma non poter amare. La premessa introduce le 3 domande a cui il libro vuole dare delle riposte concrete:
Cosa unisce le diverse rappresentazioni contemporanee del cuore?
Qual è la loro storia?
Cosa le unisce all’organo pompante?
Capitolo I, intitolato “Cuore: parola, organo, simbolo”, presenta la visione del cuore sia come l’immagine (un simbolo) che come l’organo stesso. Le rappresentazioni visive di tutt’e due questi significati hanno una storia complessa. Per esempio, le testimonianze grafiche antiche sono ambigue o non esistenti fino al XIII secolo, ma abbiamo una data precisa da cui parte il significato del simbolo “cuoricino” (oggi universale) come “I love”, cioè il 1977. Per quanto riguarda la rappresentazione visiva dell’organo, si parte dal mondo vegetale (Giovan Battista della Porta che trova strette relazioni tra la pianta somigliante al cuore e le proprietà terapeutiche di questa pianta). Poi, le testimonianze visive accettate come possibilmente cuoriformi passano dall’elefante di Pindal, agli arazzi, alle illuminazioni nei manoscritti, alla Cappella degli Scrovegni di Giotto (dove la Carità offre a Dio un cuore con la punta rivolta all’insù che riprende la descrizione del cuore fatta da Galeno), ecc. Tutte queste rappresentazioni hanno un legame con l’organo pulsante che però indica sentimenti, anche se non è chiaro quali sono i sentimenti che si trovano in questa sede, anche perché la simbologia non sembra essere universale. Per i Sumeri, il cuore significa compassione anche vulnerabile (il fegato è la sede dei sentimenti), per gli antichi Egizi il cuore è il centro delle attività intellettuali, per gli antichi Greci il fegato e i polmoni sono dotati di spiritualità superiore. Nella Bibbia, il cuore abbraccia sia le forme della vita intellettiva che quella delle emozioni, e nel Nuovo testamento il cuore diventa la radice dell’atteggiamento religioso e morale, cioè la natura interiore dell’uomo. Gli Aztechi offrivano il cuore del nemico agli dei (cannibalismo cardiaco azteco). I cuori mangiati sono presenti in letteratura (per es., nelle fiabe e nei racconti folclorici, Boccaccio, Calvino).
La storia ideologica del cuore sottolinea l’incessante ricerca di paragoni tra il cuore (nel duplice significato di sentimenti e di organo) e oggetti materiali o meccanismi, specificamente, il cuore come un orologio, o il fatto che i musicisti legano la velocità/la lentezza delle pulsazioni alle cadenze musicali. Solo con l’invenzione dello stetoscopio (19mo secolo) si riesce a sentire il vero rumore del cuore, sebbene il ticchettio cardiaco di tipo meccanico continui a sentirsi nelle canzoni. Il cuore umano nel pensiero medico presenta 3 fasi di conoscenze: 1. Dalle origini remote al Rinascimento, 2. Dal Rinascimento al 1967 (il primo trapianto del cuore), 3. Dal 1967 ad oggi.
Nel Capitolo II (“Cuori trafitti e cuori scambiati”) viene illustrata la storia del ruolo del cuore nelle estasi cardiache, nel misticismo cattolico, nelle devozioni al Sacro Cuore di Gesù, negli ex-voto, e nel desiderio/nella necessità di seppellire il cuore dopo la more in un luogo diverso da quello del resto del corpo. Il cuore, come oggetto di intensa devozione cattolica al Sacro Cuore di Gesù, ottiene anche una funzione politica, unendo la pietà religiosa a uffici militari, politici, sociali sia in Francia che in Italia, in Germania, in Austria.
Il Capitolo III (“Storia del cuore nelle immagini”) ripercorre l’immagine del cuore sia come simbolo di sentimenti che come l’organo nelle rappresentazioni visive. Ci sono i cuori cortesi, i cuori anatomici non medici, i cuori amorosi e i cuoricini. Ci sono anche i cuori infranti e cardiopatie. La più antica immagine del cuore amoroso è del 1275 (nel manoscritto del Roman de la Poire, in cui la dama dona il suo cuore a Dolcesguardo, ma il cuore qui è ancora capovolto). L’autrice si sofferma sul fatto che il cuore non è rappresentato prima del XIII secolo; le ipotesi di questa nascita tardiva puntano sulla sacralità o sulla bruttezza dell’oggetto. Nel medioevo la rappresentazione simbolica include foglie (lilla`, edera, da cui il cuoricino) pigne (a volte rovesciate). Le illustrazioni “sentimentali” sono diverse da quelle mediche, ma spesso tra di loro esiste il corto circuito. In particolare, negli anni 2000 il cuore anatomico esce dal contesto medico/religioso per diventare un simbolo (su T-shirt, nelle sculture, ecc.). In altre parole, c’è una tensione tra il cuoricino e il cuore anatomico per quanto riguarda l’espressione visiva che da metaforica (vaga) vuol diventare realistica (essenza delle cose). La rivoluzione “emotica” riguarda l’uso del cuoricino in rete che fa parte del mutamento della comunicazione che privilegia i pittogrammi in moltissime funzioni comunicative mediate dalla rete. L’autrice nota che non è possibile sapere come saranno comunicati gli affetti: “in quali modi la generazione digitale sarà capace di comunicare senza l’ausilio della rete?” (p. 117). Inoltre, il cuore come sentimento e come organo si stanno avvicinando nel pensiero medico: sono venute a gala le corrispondenze tra il cuore metaforico/emotivo e il cuore pompante perché il cuore biologico è sensibile al sistema emotivo. In questo capitolo vengono menzionati anche i cuori letterari, soprattutto di Conrad e di Bulgakov.
Nella sezione “Testimonianze e documenti” vengono pubblicati brevi brani dei seguenti autori: Giovan Battista della Porta, Andrea Vesalio, Renato G. Mazzolini, William Harvey, Johann Jacob Scheuchzer, Noel Chomel, Denis Diderot, Michael Bulgakov, Mathias Malzieu, Vittorio Zucconi, Christian Barnard, Katy Couprie, Marco Politi, Gianfranco Ravasi, Savvas Savvopoulos, Sandeep Jauhar, e un articolo senza autore del National Geographic.
Cosa si può dire di un trattato sul cuore che presenta questo argomento con sapiente emozione? L’autrice ha risposto a tutt’e tre i quesiti che si era posta in un modo esaustivo, intelligente e soprattutto pieno di spunti per una riflessione che spesso manca quando si parla del cuore. Da un lato, il libro sottolinea la dicotomia cuore-mente (ricordare e rammentare), da cui partono i concetti che separano, invece di unire, questi due aspetti dell’essere umano. La tensione tra la scienza e l’immaginario è partita lasciandoli divisi, ma sembra che la scienza cominci ad avvicinarsi al cuore nel suo valore sentimentale perché gli affetti hanno un effetto sul corpo fisico e vice versa. E` istruttivo sapere che se San Valentino viene festeggiato ormai ovunque, la giornata dedicata al cuore (World Heart Day) non ha questa risonanza; ma forse il futuro avvicinerà questi due significati del cuore anche nell’immaginario popolare. Dall’altro lato, prendere in esame il cuore come uno dei simboli più ovvi del nuovo modo di comunicare per immagini faciliterà la risposta a molte incognite per quanto riguarda l’evolversi dei modi di comunicazione in rete. La questione della superiorità dell’arte figurativa su quella verbale (sostenuta anche da Leonardo da Vinci) deve ancora essere approfondita.
In conclusione, come sempre, è molto difficile in una recensione dare un’idea soddisfacente di tutti gli aspetti di un libro, soprattutto quando questo è pieno di informazioni fertili per allargare l’orizzonte dei lettori.
Cosi` come molte altre lingue, anche l'italiano offre vari modi per potersi riferire alla parte della testa che ci guarda: faccia, volto, viso. Nell’agile volumetto di Antonio Marturano, intitolato Faccia. Identita` e deformita` (Fefe` Editore*, 2021, pagg.132), la faccia e non il viso ne` il volto e` al centro dell’attenzione soprattutto intesa come “elemento distintivo di un individuo all’interno dei rapporti sociali portarice dell’identita` personale”. Nell’Introduzione viene spiegata questa scelta molto saggia perche` lascia all’autore la liberta` di trattare della parte materiale del corpo, visibile, tangibile, e piena di significati sociali e personali. Due sono le linee centrali che guidano il pensiero dell’autore: da un lato, viene sviscerata la questione sociale e i rapporti umani che riguardano le reazioni pieni di pregiudizi degli altri dimostrati alla faccia, soprattutto se questa e` in qualche modo non “normale”, deturpata da malattie e ferite. D’altro lato, si prende in esame il ruolo identitario della faccia, vista come l’elemento centrale dell’identita` personale.
I quattro densi capitoli ripartono la materia in questo modo:
Pragmatica della faccia
Qui viene descritto il ruolo istituzionale della faccia in quanto la “vera” imagine di essa appare su documenti istituzionali che poi rafforzano l’idea dell’identita` personale (per es., la carta d’identita`). In questo caso, una persona e` “puramente una costruzione sociale” (p. 21). L’italiano abbonda di metafore e modi di dire che ruotano intorno alla faccia: perdere la faccia, metterci la faccia, faccia d’angelo, (viene menzionata la faccia verde e ‘ngialluta in napoletano). Nel capitolo si fa anche menzione della tecnologia dell’intelligenza artificiale che si occupa del riconoscimento facciale e dell’interfaccia nella computeristica.
Topica della faccia
Questo capitolo prende in esame alcune malattie che risultano in malformazioni e patologie facciali che provocano in altri un senso di repulsione e causano nell’individuo che ne soffre una forzata reclusione e privazione di rapporti sociali normali. L’autore esamina 3 casi: quello di Remy De Gourmont, quello di Joseph Merrick (the Elephant Man), e quello dell’esperienza personale. La consapevolezza di essere repellenti e la consequente mancanza di rapporti sociali separano brutalmente l’individuo dalla vita “normale”. Qui il gioco e` anche la “trasfigurazione” della faccia, cioe` l’interazione tra la brutezza esteriore e la bellezza interiore (dio/diavolo): sia De Gourmont che Merrick, nonostante le loro facce fossero deturpate da malattie orribili, trovarono amici o medici che furono capaci di intravvedere i valori umani al di fuori delle loro malformazioni facciali. Il caso personale di Antonio Marturano riconduce il discorso alla forza motrice della discriminazione nei riguardi di chi e` “diverso”, ma anche alla forza della gentilezza e dell’amore materno che superano quelli che sarebbero visti come ostacoli alla vita “normale”. Viene anche ricordato il fatto che la chirurgia maxillo-facciale arriva solo dopo la I Guerra Mondiale dopo la quale i reduci i cui visi furono distrutti poterono usufruire delle cure particolari per la prima volta.
Prostetica della faccia
La possibilita` di subire interventi chirurgici per risanare le sfigurazioni dovute alla guerra schiude altre problematiche, quali l’inclusione/l’esclusione sociale, il riconoscimento o l’orrore della propria faccia dopo l’intervento, la difficolta` di acquistare l’integrita` personale. Il caso dell’autore stesso che soffre della Sindrome Treacher-Collins (o Franceschetti-Zwahlen-Klein) sottolinea il problema di quelle malattie che portano non solo deturpamenti alla faccia, ma che sono accompagnate da altre patologie (che compromettono la respirazione, l’alimentazione, l’udito, il linguaggio): tutto questo provoca effetti negativi nelle relazioni sociali tra l’individuo e la societa` che in tanti casi si presenta intollerante, e piena di pregiudizi nei riguardi di chi e` “diverso”. L’autore, la cui malattia viene descritta come disabilita` di tipo medio-leggero, ha potuto costruirsi, dopo molte sofferenze, una vita piena di soddisfazioni grazie anche alla moglie Cinese e al figlioletto adottato Indiano. Inoltre, questo capitolo tratta l’argomento scottante dei nostri giorni dovuto alla pandemia: quello delle mascherine, le ragioni del loro rifiuto, e le spiegazioni del loro uso. In teoria, tutti dovrebbero avere gli stessi diritti, ma e` palese che la realta` si rivela ancora lontana da questa visione.
Conclusioni. La bellezza non salvera` il mondo
I pregiudizi estetici nei riguardi di chi ha la faccia deturpata da malattie o da ferite non solo sopravvivono ma vengono amplificati dalla sfrenata corsa all’uniformita` forzata dai sistemi produttivi capitalistici. L’autore fa appello a non lasciarci cullare dalla pigrizia mentale dell’uniformita` in modo che la biodiversita` culturale sia preservata e incoraggiata. Bisogna non solo uscire dalla conformita` e confrontarsi con la diversita`, ma soprattutto e` indispensabile uscire dall’incapacita` di “estirpare l’idea dell’equipolenza tra carattere e forma della faccia”.
Questo libro si e` rivelato uno di quelli che bisogna leggere piu` di una volta, perche’ i pensieri, le idee, i suggerimenti inclusi in esso fanno volare la mente in varie direzioni, tutte fruttuose. Prima di tutto, la forma, la foggia, della nostra faccia, volente o nolente, incita a una reazione sociale e personale. Questa reazione sociale non e` innata, e` creata dalla cultura in cui viviamo ed e` spesso esito di secoli di affermazioni estetiche senza fondamento. La reazione personale, come ci vediamo noi stessi, soprattutto oggi, e` pure finzione di un meccanismo economico e non ha basi solide su cui costruirsi un’identita`. In secondo luogo, il libro sottolinea la tensione ghettizzatrice fra la voglia di passare inosservati e la voglia di essere riconosciuti veramente: questa tensione esiste sia in chi ha deformazioni facciali sia in chi nasce con quello che si intende per belta` oggi (anche se, per ovvi motivi, il libro non tratta questa situazione). La malattia puo` diventare anche una fonte di forza, di autocoscienza piu` profonda: chi ha il volto deturpato osserva il mondo da una prospettiva che apre le riflessioni e stimola “ad andare oltre i limiti che la societa` a tutti i costi, con la sua logica da darwinismo sociale”, vuole imporre a tutti (p. 113). Inoltre, l’autore cita, sempre a proposito, vari autori (Arendt, Berlin, Kant, Lavater, Lombroso, Rodota`, ecc.) le cui idee arricchiscono il ragionamento offerto. Interessantissime sono pure le illustrazioni di facce prese da pittori (Escher, Salvador Dali`, De Chirico, Haisler, ecc.), ognuna delle quali potenzia gli argomenti trattati.
In conclusione, la lettura di Faccia. Identita` e deformita` di Antonio Marturano regala un godimento intellettuale che vale la pena assaporare a lungo.
*Il libro fa parte dell’affascinante collana intitolata “Oggetti del desiderio” in cui trovano posto Lingua, Cuore, Palpebre, Bocca, Orecchio, Naso, e molti altri.
Never have I read a subject treated with such tenderness and unabashed partiality as shown by Peter Berresford Ellis in A Brief History of The Celts (London: Robinson, 2003, 235 pp.). If the saying that “history is written by the victors” rings true, this book certainly contradicts it. Even though the individual Gauls and Celtic tribes are gone, the Celts/Gauls are still alive today in languages, the DNA, in arts, in myth. The author wrote this handy history of the ancient Celtic peoples to dispel in fact some erroneous myths and views about them, propelled by the historical urge of the winners to belittle the vanquished, in this case, the victorious Romans and the defeated Celts.
The contents of the book are divided into 15 chapters with titles such as “The Origins of the Celts” (Chapter 1), “The Druids” (Ch. 4), “Celtic Warriors” (Ch. 5), “Celtic Women” (Ch. 6), “Celtic Farmers” (Ch. 7), “Celtic Cosmology” (Ch. 9), Celtic Artists and Craftsmen” (Ch. 11), “Early Celtic History” (Ch. 15). The author relies on factual documentation usually presented by historians, or, better still, of history before it has been written down by the Celts. Hence, his sources are Greek and Roman historians (obviously biased, and this bias has been underlined numerous times; “bowdlerise” is a verb that the author uses for Roman history of the Celts), writings from the Middle-Ages (usually Christianized Celts, so, too, their view of Celtic history is skewed), archaeological finds mostly from Britain and Ireland, found in museums of various countries, and settlements dug up even as recently as the early 2000s. What follows does not recap the corrective process of setting straight the erroneous beliefs about the Celts. It is clear that the Celts were not “drunken, childlike barbarians, only one step removed from animals” (p. 199, a view held by the Romans). Their achievements were numerous, and their inventions helped the world to move forward, even if it was thanks to the Romans who appropriated themselves of these inventions (such as the Celtic rectangular shield, instead of the round Roman one, since the rectangular one was more useful to form the testudo). Rather, there are three questions of clarification I would ask the author, and these are elaborated on below.
What determines the success of one people over another? Why did the Celts, who were smart, politically savvy, and spiritually strong, succumb to the Roman armies? The author does not offer an overt answer to this question, although there are indications of some reasons for the defeat of the Celts. These include pressures from the Germanic and Slavic peoples who were encroaching on the Celts’ territories, tribal wars among the Celts themselves, the Celts’ relatively peaceful lifestyle, and a lack of unified Celtic nation.
There are a number of occasions which warrant, according to the author, a comparison with the ancient Indian civilization parts of whose knowledge, compiled in the Vedas, seem to proceed on a parallel trajectory to the Celtic civilization. What is the reason for this similarity between the ancient Indian Rajputs and Celtic Riglach (young warriors recruited only from the sons of kings)? Or why is it that only in the Celtic and ancient Indian societies the sick were cared for in what may be termed the first hospitals (whereas other ancient cultures tended to abandon the sick and the aged)? Or why is it that the Celtic god Cernunnos, and the Hindu god Shiva/Prasupati, were both called “Lord of the Animals”? Is their origin indeed common, as is claimed by Prof. Dillon? As far as the Celtic belief in the immortality and the Greek one is concerned, Berresford Ellis states clearly that “the Celts did not borrow their philosophy from the Greeks, nor did the Greeks borrow it from the Celts. The evolution of the doctrine of immortality of the soul was a parallel development in several Indo-European cultures, and might originate from an earlier common belief.” (p. 171).
The Druids were clearly a group (caste?) set apart form the rest of the Celtic population. Was their oral-only transmission of knowledge a hindrance to open-up their discoveries to all the people? Why were they so loath to put in writing what they knew? Although the ancient Indian civilization, too, was based on oral transmission, especially of the chants, it did, after all, end up putting in writing the sacred texts. Not so the Celts. What was the reason for this reticence?
This book, more than any other historical account of vanquished peoples, underlines the fact that history in general, and ancient history in particular, is much more complex than meets the eye. The author succeeded in making the readers much more open to question their beliefs about the Celts, and to see them in their human, frail, and yet realistic form. To illustrate this, one endearing fact will suffice: the Celtic law allowed the wife to divorce her husband if he snored. It seems that snoring was and is an aggravating aspect of marriage…
In conclusion, the book deserves to be read because the author insists on reliable sources, and presents his subject in an accessible manner.
Nella cultura letteraria italiana, periodicamente capita “il caso”, detto anche “l’autentico caso”, o, più recentemente, “il fenomeno”. Si tratta di un avvenimento condizionato dal profitto e limitato nella sua durata temporale, eppure con strascichi culturali imprevedibili e duraturi. Il “caso letterario” nasce quasi di botto, senza preavviso, e può essere definito come la salita nella popolarità di uno scrittore anche alle prime armi che riesce a diventare popolare (spesso senza l’aiuto dei critici accademici), vende moltissimi libri (e così solleva dai debiti la fortunata casa editrice), appare come ospite in moltissimi programmi televisivi, e, se ha carisma, diventa il beniamino dei mass media. Tutto questo offre delle condizioni perfette per dare sfogo a schieramenti di parte, a polemiche anche spietate, e a esternazioni inaspettate.
Uno dei personaggi emblematici di questo intreccio tra popolarità e macchinazioni mediatiche è senza dubbio Andrea Camilleri (1925-2019). Non c’è bisogno qui di percorrere la sua carriera di regista e di scrittore. Basti dire che la sua opera letteraria spazia vari generi, diversi stili e lingue: di sicuro, i più conosciuti sono i gialli, inoltre, ci sono i romanzi storici, saggi di storia e di letteratura, i romanzi poetici (la trilogia delle metamorfosi), e altri. Le trasposizioni dei gialli a sceneggiati TV hanno raggiunto altissimo numero di spettatori, per di più, non sono le uniche trasposizioni delle sue opere letterarie (se veda la più completa miniera di informazioni sullo scrittore e sule sue attività offerta da Camilleri Fans Club sul sito http://www.vigata.org/).
Chi guarda il fenomeno Camilleri da una certa distanza si può rendere conto del fatto che questo scrittore ha portato tre valori significativi alla cultura italiana contemporanea:
1. Soprattutto i suoi gialli hanno (ri)avvicinato moltissimi italiani alla lettura. Ci sono varie testimonianze di questa magnifica funzione dello scrittore agrigentino sia nei programmi televisivi che sui social media. Nel paese che non vanta l’assiduità alla lettura come una delle caratteristiche culturali, questo fatto è notevolissimo.
2. Le opere di Camilleri hanno offerto una rivalutazione dei dialetti italiani, in specie del siciliano. Nel momento in cui la letteratura italiana stava perdendo il sostegno della lingua letteraria, era inevitabile che uno scrittore di un certo retroscena sociologico guardasse all’indietro e usasse gli attrezzi linguistici a lui cari, che si sarebbero rivelati cari anche alla maggioranza dei lettori non siciliani e non accademici. Sulla lingua di Camilleri esistono molti interventi, e, come capita sempre con un “fenomeno”, i detrattori e i lodatori propongono i fatti che comprovano le loro posizioni. L’analisi di Luigi Matt descrive in profondità le posizioni opposte (“Lingua e stile nella narrativa camilleriana” https://www.camillerindex.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Quaderni-camilleriani-12.pdf#page=41 )
3. Il terzo pregio di Camilleri è stato quello di costringere gli Italiani a guardarsi dentro di sé e intorno a sé con più attenzione per capire chi sono, quali caratteristiche dimostrano, come si comportano, come parlano. È noto che Camilleri stesso ripeteva che vorrebbe che i suoi lettori ridessero di meno e pensassero di più. Questo desiderio non è stato accolto dai detrattori dello scrittore perché continuano a ripetere: ma i Siciliani non sono cosi, nessuno parla come i personaggi dei romanzi, la Sicilia descritta è superficiale, folkloristica, sorpassata (si veda Francesco Merlo, Roberto Cotroneo, Giulio Ferroni, ecc.). Le analisi dei detrattori non fanno progredire la conversazione oltre queste generalizzazioni. È più che evidente che ai detrattori dello scrittore agrigentino non piace come scrive e cosa scrive, e allora le loro conclusioni continuano a separare la cultura “alta” da quella “bassa”, mettendo le opere di Camilleri nel mucchio basso perché contiene cliché ormai sorpassati, esagerando la dualità della cultura italiana. Camilleri si è difeso dicendo che è ‘un artigiano della scrittura’, ma l’ironia sottile del suo atteggiamento non sfugge ai membri del Camilleri Fans club, che lo chiamano, con affetto, “il Sommo”. Che la popolarità sia alla base dei giudizi così polari non c’è dubbio (si veda a questo proposito il mio articolo intitolato (“I test della (im)popolarità`: il fenomeno Camilleri sulla rivista Quaderni d’italianisticahttps://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/qua/article/view/9344/6297 )[i].
Sarà troppo presto per tirare le somme dell’importanza o meno di Camilleri per la cultura italiana, ma due sono i fenomeni che ci costringono a fare delle considerazioni preliminari: da un lato, c’è la scomparsa di Camilleri nel 2019, e, dall’altro lato, la pandemia del covid-19. La morte di uno scrittore segna la fine del suo lavoro, ma non la fine dei convegni accademici virtuali, delle relazioni ufficiali pubblicate e non, dei raduni virtuali che hanno come scopo la discussione dei temi, dei personaggi, della lingua nelle opere letterarie. Questo è vero anche per Camilleri, e la prova sta nelle iniziative che sono elencate sia sul sito vigata.org, che sui vari social network. La pandemia, pero`, ha fermato l’aspetto sociale, il passaparola di presenza, perché tutto avviene ora nel mondo virtuale. Questo fatto rende la conoscenza delle tendenze sociali profonde molto difficile e lascia spazio ai vari specialisti di comunicazione di massa di promuovere, forzare, originare le tendenze.
È indubbio che Camilleri ha guardato all’indietro, perché apparteneva alla generazione che ha vissuto la seconda guerra mondiale (è stato chiamato anche “il nonno”), ha visto il susseguirsi dei governi, ha imparato le nuove tecnologie che però non sono protagoniste dei suoi romanzi. Comunque, la pandemia ci induce a guardare in avanti. In questo senso, le opere di Camilleri sono una testimonianza del tempo immaginario che fu, piena di lingue particolari, di ironia, di tristezza, di amore, di odio, di leggerezza e di profondità, e di umorismo: la testimonianza è viva finche` ha lettori. Questo è vero per tutti gli scrittori che pubblicano opere letterarie. La pandemia sta rafforzando però quell’aspetto della tecnologia che non si basa sulla scrittura: i vari programmi (Zoom, Team, ecc.) fanno dell’oralità la regina.
Cosa ne è rimasto della auto-definizione degli Italiani? Nunzio La Fauci suggerisce che Camilleri sia “una nobile varietà dell’arcitaliano” (https://www.doppiozero.com/materiali/andrea-camilleri-un-arcitaliano?fbclid=IwAR1WFPyjY8y4hXRpmWu1g3KaCZTc4u5go9IiDJY0SzQ1ekToQAHoczHm76o). Ma ha ancora senso cercare una definizione di “Italiani/Italiane”? La pandemia sta sgretolando il senso di appartenenza a una nazione (a meno che non sia forzato per motivi economici – si veda il piano europeo di sussidi agli stati), e sta chiudendo gli individui in un guscio ancora più piccolo di un paese. Nel periodo di transizione tra l’Italia folkloristica che cerca di diventare qualcosa d’altro e l’Italia sotto pressioni multinazionali capitalistiche, la fragilità dell’individuo ne fa una vittima facile. La consapevolezza della fragilità, e le sue possibili soluzioni, staranno soprattutto nella rilettura di autori italiani, incluso Camilleri.
[i] È d’obbligo menzionare che i diversi livelli di popolarità esistono in Italia e anche fuori dall’Italia. Ci sono paesi che hanno dimostrato l’interesse abbastanza profondo nelle opere di Camilleri: basti notare addirittura versioni diverse di più traduttori (tedeschi, francesi, spagnoli). Dall’altro lato, le opere di Camilleri non sono attecchite sul suolo nordamericano, nonostante le rispettose e rispettabili traduzioni di Stephen Sartarelli. Ma questo è un argomento a parte.
In the article “Human Culture and Science Fiction: A Review of the Literature, 1980-2016”, Christopher Benjamin Menadue and Karen Diane Cheer* write that “There is evidently a relationship between science, science fiction, and the cultural imagination, and the significance of this relationship should be assessed; however, reviews of academic literature on this subject were not located.” In fact, as regards national cultures and science fiction, academic research has not placed its telescope in that direction. It is more than ever important to ask whether and how national cultures are interwoven into science fiction literature and vice-versa. Clearly, the answers must rely on a wealth of published material, which has been growing but perhaps has not reached the critical mass yet. This is why Future Fiction’s purpose to publish short stories from various regions and nations is of crucial importance, in that these stories form the basis on which the juncture of culture, science, and science fiction can profitably be analyzed.
Avatar – अवतारContemporary Indian Science Fiction/Fantascienza contemporanea indiana, edited by Tarun K. Saint and Francesco Verso (Future Fiction 2020) is a bilingual English-Italian collection of nine science fiction stories by authors of Indian background. Well-established and up-coming authors who write in English were asked to write a story on one or more of given topics (of a wide range: biopolitics, big data, prosthetics, risks of technology, Avatar afterlife, treat of climate change, etc.). Only some of the themes were chosen, but all of them point to a lively, original and entertaining reading. Two of the 9 stories were published elsewhere before.
The stories are preceded by a short introduction by Tarun K. Saint which addresses the title, traces a short history of Indian science fiction writing, and gives glimpses of the stories themselves. In the book, the avatar notion appears as a “hybridized variant” embodying “new reflections on critical questions with a contemporary flavor” (p. 5). Tarun K. Saint suggests that Indian science fiction came into being in the nineteenth century, and through time, the writings deal with anti-colonial issues, emancipatory potential of science, had pedagogical thrust, and underpinned ideas of self-reliance. Recently, more self-reflexive and skeptical views of science and technology from critical gender and ecological perspectives find their way into publications.
The collection opens with Anil Menon’s “The Man Without Quintessence” (“L’uomo senza quintessenza”), elaborating on the philosophical notion of the definition of a unique and permanent identifier of a human being. Clearly, once such identifier is found, possibly in the iris, technology takes over and slots all citizens into easily manipulated “patriots”. Moreover, and this is what the story underlines, if an individual cannot be identified using this technology, he (Ringo Singh Mann) is cut off from everything that the technology reinforces: from simple ordering a meal from a take-out restaurant to finding a suitable home, well-remunerated job, etc. And to find such a person requires more than technological skills: quick wits and people skills are necessary. This story offers various possibilities of further profound discussions on the meaning of identity and its interaction with technology.
S.B. Divya’s “Microbiota and the masses: A Love Story” (“Microbiota e le masse: Una storia d’amore”) delves into the life of a young woman, Amma, a scientist who suffers from immunodeficiency from pathogens found in the air, water, soil, food, etc. Her wealth allows her to construct an air-tight home, and years of isolation made it possible for the microbiota in the soil in her home to produce the most natural environment for her as well as her plants. However, her isolation cannot last forever, and she is forced to interact with a technician who comes to repair a window air-leaking problem. The technician happens to be interested in water remediation. As the relationship between the two grows, her pathologies reappear, but at the end love conquers all. The writing is notable for its language which uses similes and metaphors from biology throughout the narration.
“Communal” (“Comunitario”) by Shikhandin explores the possibility of an evolution during which humans are turned into unpredictable and unpredicted species. Distrust of nature made nature stronger, allowing new classes of biological entities to appear. The story is a slice of time during which humans metamorphosed into vine/tree-like beings, “green entities”. These are able to communicate, have relationships, feel sensations, just not the way humans do. The result is that “There is no anger, no fear. No greed or hate. Nothing negative. … Mother earth smiles a lot these days. … Soon another transformation will take place.” (p. 66) This story attempts to put into a concrete perspective human-made disasters which transform the earth but in the transformation, even when humans are gone, something else remains still alive.
Vandana Singh’s “Indra’s web” (”La rete di Indra”) grapples with the energy problem and offers the possibility of a Suryanet, an energy grid in Ashapur, Delhi, made up of towers capped by sun-tracking petals of biomimetic material containing suryons (artificial cells) that drink up photons. The story traces the development of this web by Mahua, a scientist suffering from acute apophenia. Troubles with the old towers, and unforeseen problems with the new make her team work out the possible solutions. The story puts emphasis on why there is more humane living in renovated slums, why science provides clear and real answers to questions about life. Mahua “loves this marriage of the traditional and the new, the forest and the city, this great experiment, this marvel that is Ashapur, City of Hope.” (p. 77)
Rimi B. Chatterjee’s “Replacement” (“Sostituzione”) tackles the eventuality of the hold of reproductive technology by an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company which has repercussions on the biological make up of women. The protagonist, Aiyzeh, is not beautiful according the standards of her time – i.e. according to men’s view of how a woman should look. After winning the argument with her brothers who want to marry her off, she goes to study receiving a grant to attend the university of New Singapore. Her quick thinking, and vast knowledge of medical science relating to reproductive systems help to avoid a great scandal for the pharmaceutical company which owns the university. In the process, she is made their spokesperson, but only after her appearance is altered. Therefore, ironically, technology is the medium which makes discrimination by gender even more prevalent.
“Upgrade” (“Upgrade”) by Manjula Padmanabhan is a tongue-in-cheek look at the possible way humanoid technology can alleviate solitudes of old age. In a society where families are no longer living together, and children with their children are sometimes a great distance away, grandmothers must face living alone. After a fight to accept a humanoid robot from her granddaughter, Mrs. Ganapathy learns to live with the form of the humanoid robot she chooses. Of course, upgrades are necessary, and this grandmother acquires the know-how to make the upgraded robot suit her needs and desires, even unbeknown to her family. This story highlites, in an entertaining way, the initial reticence but final positive attributes of robotics for the elderly.
Shovon Chowdhury’s “Mother” (“Madre”) describes a state completely run by an artificial intelligence: the “Mother”, supported by a powerful WiFi connection and built-in cameras everywhere. “Mother” takes care of all the needs of all the citizens, reminding the protagonist to do his exercises, constantly fixing him up with ladies on a matchmaker site. Of course, he is taken by surprise by the latest choice, an unruly, “Mother”-cussing, rude woman who makes him break all the rules. Despite their attempt to outwit “Mother”, the AI is just too powerful for them to cut the connection to it. In a world where hobbies are compulsory and bowel movement is under analysis, nothing can be hidden.
“Paused” (“Messo in pausa”) by Priya Sarukkai Chabria tells of a world far, far in the future, when evolution has gone in different directions and humans (“the hairy ones”) are just a tiny element in the course of the transmutations of life. The lifeforms of whom there are only pods left, given a great upheaval of climate are very special: they decide on what they evolve into after initiating life. They are self-generated beings who plan the form and function of their bodies. The problem arises when they have to decide which part of their pod-formed “embryo” they can eat in order to grow. The story faces some crucial philosophical questions, such as “Will intelligence invariably patterns itself into consciousness?”, or Can telepathy command and control all life forms? Or, even, Is loneliness a common feeling of every living being?
“The Silk Route” (“La via della seta”) by Giti Chandra follows two time-lines: one, AD 2241, the other, 241 BC. These intersect as a scientist attempts to invent a new resistant material for tents to be used on colonies on Moon, and an imperial runner brings gifts of silk from China to India and Egypt and Greece. The crisis on Earth is at a breaking point: wars, climate change, oceans rising, lack of time and money. The solution may be coming from an unexpected source, the lowly silk worm. This story is the only one that has a self-aware author intervene in the narration addressing the reader and making fun, tongue-in-cheek comments.
The translation, as in the other Future Fiction publications, are first-rate. Gabriella Gregori, a scientific and literary translator, succeeded in re-creating the fun, entertaining, and also thought-provoking Italian version of the English originals.
In conclusion, science fiction stories are always enjoyable to read, and, if they also create, such as this collection of them does, room for new musings and views, that’s all the better. One aspects of this musing is of course the question whether there is nowadays such a thing as a “national/regional” science fiction.** What in these stories is in fact “Indian”? Most of the authors write in English, live or have lived or studied outside of India. In Avatar – अवतार, there are glimpses and mentions of cultural aspects of Indian life, such as the cast system, fixed gender roles and discrimination, “Pushing through the crowd to be first. We are Indians after all.” (p. 58), caring for the elderly family members, living and speaking many languages. The effect of technology or science on these aspects is clearly felt in most of the stories. In some, technology exacerbates the difficulties of life given these cultural aspects, in other stories, technology is given the duty to improve them. All the stories, in one way or another, respond to the third one of Asimov’s fictional scenarios, that of “if this goes on”. And they do it authoritatively and confidently.
True to its main aim, the publishing house Future Fiction keeps giving new authors from a variety of cultural and geographical backgrounds a platform from which their worthy and amazing works can find yet a wider readership. Rich Larson’s Ghost Girl / La ragazza fantasma is a perfect example of this (multi)cultural endeavour. Published in 2018, the slender volume contains four of Larson’s stories, previously published elsewhere, and collected here together with their Italian translations.
As usual, I do not give the plot away, but some spoiler alert remains. My review here deals with the intricate sorts of dependencies and power relations between technology and human foibles as these are evinced from Larson’s stories.
The eponymous story “Ghost Girl”, set in Bujumbura in an unspecified period, but after a political and economic upheaval of great magnitude, when criminals and police try to prevail in a disastrous situation. The society seems intent on getting the most gain out of any situation. Individuals who exhibit unusual features command high prices on the international market, and hence the “ghost”, i.e. albino girl who is highly sought-after. The advanced technology serves first and foremost the military. But there is a ray of hope in what could be called a souped-up drone/robot who has been modified from a killing machine to a protector and more. The drone then, in capable and good hands, can overcome the programming of violence for its own sake. But the story proposes that in certain conditions, also humans can abandon their thirst for revenge.
“Let’s take this viral” should be a compulsory reading for all those who are taken in by the amazing possibilities offered by the ideas of Humanity + (ex-Transhumanism). The story takes place in a very distant future on an unspecified planet inhabited by units partly biological, endowed with amazing IQ, surrounded by all kinds of energy sources, whose every desire, whim, need can be easily fulfilled in kiosks, booths, vending machines. They do not worry about getting sick, about being broken, or malfunctioning, since there is a quick and easy solution to everything. They may upload to a probe to roam the universe. However, most of all, the units thrive on social recognition by other units, vie for being the first to start a trend, party as hard as they can, have sex anytime and almost anywhere, and get high on dope for days. Trying new things is their most desired activity. Cosmetic viruses are the prominently fashionable novelty, and the more visible and virulent the virus, the more desirable it is. Technology, then, is not a problem, what is problematic is the predictability of everything and the possibility of experiencing everything that is driving the lives of the units. Under these conditions, can there be an ultimate experience? The story offers one possible answer.
The third story entitled “Meshed” deals with the tug of war between a for-profit company (Nike) and a young athlete who exhibits a talent not seen before. The company needs to engage this young man in order to mesh him, i.e. to connect his nerves into a mesh which lets all those connected to it feel what the athlete feels when his muscles twitch and flex, when he scores a basket, in other words, to engage the audience neurally. Technology drives the profit, but it needs ever new sources, i.e. remarkable people of exceptional talent, capable of stretching the entertainment even further. Technology also allows those who hunt these new sources of entertainment to use all kinds of unseen aids (such as biofeedback) to understand the prospective advertising idol. The nerve mesh makes it possible to override the central nervous system and not only track the person who is meshed, but also command it to speak or to be silent, to kill on command. But it also allows millions of other people to watch what the athlete sees and feel what he feels. Kids may dream about having their face plastered on a billboard and releasing their own signature shoes, but is there a limit to what they would be willing to do to sell themselves? The story gives one example of an answer to this question.
“Your own way back” toys around with forms of survival after death: will the deceased’s consciousness continue as part of a clone, a digital hologram, a chip to be uploaded into a living relative? And who will make the final decision on the form in which the deceased will keep on being? Clearly, money is still an issue, even in a technologically advanced future: not everyone can afford a clone that is a close replica of the deceased relative. And, if the link between the dead grandfather and a living grandson can be embodied through a chip implant, is the decision-making process easier? The possibility of consciousness surviving has have the option of the deceased to make the final decision himself/herself. What will that decision be? What are the criteria on which this decision is made? The story allows just for such a possibility.
The language of the stories is true to the settings: police and rebel slang, business communication, techno-cool in-group vocabulary, young person’s expression. It is, however, deceptively simple: it hides connections and relations which make the stories rich and profound.
The Italian translations, prepared by Lorenzo Crescentini (a published author of sci-fi in his own right), do justice to the original stories. Of course, it is always difficult when one language has a specific meaning for a word which does not exist in the other, and it would be too easy to quibble with the translator’s choice. A case in point is the English word “scavenger” meaning “a person who looks for useful items in a trash heap”. Crescentini opts for cercatore and spazzino. Or “basement” which could be, but probably is not, seminterrato as far as the second story is concerned. A bit more problematic is the translation of some sentences with broken English, translated using standard Italian. A question that cannot be decided once and for all, is whether to translate personal names or not. In the second story, the protagonist’s name is Default (lots of choices in Italian: mancato, inadempiuto, difettoso, predefinito), the meaning of which is an integral part of the character’s behaviour. Perhaps the English term’s frequency of use in computer language makes the significance clear to the Italian reader. It is inevitable that some idioms may trick the translator, such as “bird’s eye view” which in the case of the second story, with all probability means (visuale) panoramica, not dagli occhi degli uccelli. The title “Your own way back” is rendered as Il ritorno, but perhaps Il ritorno a modo tuo would give a closer interpretation of the original. But these are just suggestions, and since translation is also a re-writing, the translator’s art must be taken into consideration.
In conclusion, it is hoped that these four stories by Rich Larson find a multitude of readers both in English and in Italian. They are worth it for their enjoyment value, for their novelty, and for the interpretations of possible and probable futures we can look forward to.
Reading rascal 