“Any Where Out of This World,” by Antonio Tabucchi – From “Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,”
In his introduction, of this short story collection, Antonio Tabucchi had lamented how on certain stories, he had wished that other authors had written them. Such as “Waiting for Winter,” in which he wished that Henry James had written it instead of himself. With “Any Where Out of This World,” Antonio Tabucchi laments the fact with great modesty borderlining shyness, that he wishes Charles Baudelaire one of the greatest French poets, who had little success in his own life time, had written it in the style he had written “Le Spleen de Paris.” The work itself comprises of fifty one short prose poems. It was published posthumously in the year eighteen sixty nine, by his sister. It has been reported, that Charles Baudelaire had said that he read Aloysius Bertrand’s “Gaspard de la nuit,” which is considered to be the first concept and example of prose poetry; which Baudelaire had read twenty one times. Though Baudelaire was inspired by Bertrand, he decided to use contemporary Parisian life as the background for this work, rather than medieval work which was the subject of Bertrand’s “Gaspard de la nuit.”
Charles Baudelaire had described the work as: “These are the flowers of evil again, but with more freedom, much more detail, and much more mockery.” “Les Fleurs du mal,” or “The Flowers of Evil,” caused quite a stir on its initial publication. Both the publisher and Charles Baudelaire were prosecuted under the laws of the Second Empire, with its insult to public decency. Six of the poems alone were supressed and were not uncensored and banned until nineteen forty nine. These six poems were “Lesbos,” “Femmes damnés,”/”Women Doomed,” “Lethe,” “To Her Who is Too Gay,” “The Jewels,” “The Vampires Metamorphoses.” Victor Hugo on reading this book, was so impressed that he called it a “new shudder, and a new thrill.”
There a few notable works in “Paris Spleen,” one of them being “Let us beat up the poor,” in which Baudelaire makes a parable about the economic and social equality: no one is entitled to it. In the end it belongs to those who can win it and keep it. This is a quick distinction between Baudelaire and Tabucchi. Whereas Baudelaire is cynical to the extreme, mixing his bitterness with a gallows humour and sarcastic philosophy, that speaks about how society itself is doomed to devour itself and the individual and then implode on itself in which Baudelaire would lament in elegiac fashion of the mess that would need to be cleaned up. Tabucchi on the other hand, has a sense of positive understanding of the human condition. Rather than take anything just at its face value, Tabucchi is willing to look further and see the possibilities, and see that all men are capable of great deeds, and even equality of an economic and social scale, at least in some respects. Though there is no denying Baudelaire’s claim, of the dream of it truly possibly being fulfilled would never actually happen, to its idealized form by Marxists.
“At One in the Morning,” Baudelaire sets this prose poem up like a diary entry. Making a run down of the day to day events; and comes to the conclusion that he lives in a society full of hypocrites. This in some ways explains his concept of “modern and abstract living.” Where his (and everyone else’s) individual self becomes “blurred . . . by a hypocrisy and perverseness which progressively undermine the difference between the self and others.” In the end even Baudelaire himself was not immune to his own cynical criticism.
“Paris Spleen,” does not deal with the actual organ of the body. Which looks like a sea creature in the chasm of the body. Best described as a worm of a coloured maggot happily snuggled in the body and festering and devouring the poor carcass from the inside out. Though not a vital organ the Spleen itself does play a very peculiar and interesting role in the human body and most of all vertebrae animals. It recycles and removes old red blood cells, and holds storage of blood in case of hemorrhagic shock. No instead of discussing the Spleen of Paris (which I can assure you it most likely does not have) Baudelaire uses the spleen as a metaphor for: “melancholy with no apparent cause, characterized by disgust with everything.” In most ways Baudelaire’s attitude in general and yet this contributed to him being a great poet.
Antonio Tabucchi’s short story “Anywhere Out of This World,” takes on the definition of the spleen, with some slight adjustments. He is certainly melancholic if anything, but for the most part there is no real sense of disgust for everything. In fact there is not even a sense of dysthymia with the narrator. If anything he is quite content with himself. He does not feel a sense of spleen towards anyone. His life is banal, and rather normal if anything. He works, and in the beginning of this story is contemplating enjoying a film. Though he admits that an intellectual and experimental film by novelist and filmmaker Marguerite Duras will most likely not be up his alley. Which on a personal note it is not something I could possibly comment on because I have never watched a Marguerite Duras film before. However while he continues to read the paper, he makes observations of the world around him. A bus that crashed into a shop, because the driver and operator of the vehicle that had crashed had a heart attack. These little actions and observations are what make the story what it is. It is what make the story grounded in reality. It is grounded in the banal and the common day. Where every day tragedies just happen, and are dealt with a sense of pity, but not really any sense of rage or sympathy. Empathy can only happen when the tragedy has finally made it to such a cataclysmic disaster. However in such cases that reality is soon replaced with rage and questioning anger. It is not until the end of the newspaper and until the end of the story that one really does get to see the narrator’s melancholic expression and the nervous shake of his world where in the personal adds there is an add with the title: “Any Where Out of This World.” This message and personal ad reminds the narrator of a recent loss, and in some ways cuts open his own spleen, shattering the previous world thought.
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“The Exterminator,” by Ersi Sotiropoulos – From: “Landscape with Dog: and Other Stories,”
Ersi Sotiropoulos stories of recent in this collection are getting shorter. Shorter, but with the same subject matter with far less detail in the exploration then some of the previous stories that have come before it. “The Exterminator,” is a story about a woman who is also an aspiring writer, and has decided to go out onto an island, and rent a house for the summer with the intended goal of writing a novel. All of this is to be done in solitude. Isolation is the key the aspiring author wishes to finally make as a writer. She works on a fictionalized biography of two English artists, who create art together as if they were a single person, rather than two individuals who composing a piece of art work in collaboration. However there art work in the end becomes something disgusting, and Ersi Sotiropoulos uses the visceral and grotesque images as a way to sum up the very existence of human beings and the life of the general population of people:
“She had almost finished the first draft of her book when she got stuck on a single line. ‘“We eat, we spit, we urinate, we defecate,”’ one of the artists had said during an interview, and she wasn’t sure if she should take it literally or as somewhat cynical metaphor for the cycle of life. The fact that their final series had involved photographs of urine and sperm samples, magnifies under a microscope, supported the second supposition but wasn’t enough to resolve her doubts. She had seen the photographs; some of them showed fascinating shapes, exquisitely simple and original, like Paleolithic cave drawings. It was astonishing how much beauty there could be in strangers’ revolting urine and sperm; she shivered in her chair at the thought, and new, more complex interpretations raced through her mind. She rose and was pacing rapidly up and down the room, trying to assess these new ideas, made dizzy by the possibilities opening up before her, when she noticed an equally beautiful shape, abstract and minimalist, on the floor in the hall. It took her five minutes to figure out it was a pile of mouse droppings.”
The mice and the cockroaches of this short story are the nasty little creatures. The nightmares in which the narrator and aspiring author must confront. The very scum of the animal world. The pests. The scavengers of the home distress her. They too become symbols of the human condition. Whereas Gregor in Kafka’s metamorphosis and his transformation was a transcending act that showed the human races impoverishment in human psychology, in regards to the changing of circumstances – for example being transformed into a cockroach. In the case of Gregor Kafka redefines the act of mercy and the acts of justice, not to mention what is human and humane. Gregor being reduced to the mere miniscule form of a pest a lowly inferior creature to the human shows the injustice of life. Even though Gregor has been reduced to the physical form of a cockroach he is in the end, in mind and being human. In doing so Gregor shows the reader what a real human is. He is a complex individual. He hates and detests his daily job; yet realizes that it is a necessity to his life and to his family’s well-being. He has hopes and dreams. Wishes to be responsible and to relate to people in general. However Gregor is transformed into his hideous new body. He becomes a cockroach, in all physical manifestations. A symbolic punishment for his inability to stand up for his own needs and individuality, in the face of the tyranny and need to take care of his family, who now detest him and his new physical form. Unwilling to accept the new form, they quickly lose sight of humane treatment and quickly detest him as if he were a cockroach. Gregor and his unusual condition becomes a symbol of man’s conformity. A loss of individuality, free will, and the constant dirge of the human condition. Even when Kafka turns his character Gregor into an insect, the furthest creature from an actual human being, Kafka retains the fact, the very sole fact that Gregor even in his new condition and repulsive body is human. This allows him to transcend the boundaries of what it means to be human. In his new form, Gregor learns compassion, mercy but also suffering. As his family – the ones that once loved and depended on him now turn cruel. His father smacks him with the newspaper for one, and causing damage and pain. In Ersi Sotiropoulos pests become nothing more than what they are. Stuck in corporeality, they are nothing more than pests. No symbolism of god, or of human races insignificance or almost god like power.
In the end they are simply taken at face value. They are not known as if anything else. However when the exterminator comes a long, to get rid of such creatures, our writer comes face to face with the reality that she herself has already depicted in the above passage. That as human beings, there is nothing special about them. They are born, they live, they age, they die. There is no poetic sensuality. No philosophical hidden meaning, that leads to a profound sense of discovery of what it means to a human being let alone what it means to exist. In that concept Ersi Sotiropoulos almost mocks the hopeful dreams of the writer. Her attempt at using two artists in her fictional biography, and their work, to provide and understanding of human existence and life in general and its riddle, leads to the conclusion. Which shows that Ersi Sotiropoulos prefers to ask open ended questions, and allows the reader to find interpretation and grey shaded answers, to be preferred.
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“Sleeping Beauty and The Airplane,” by Gabriel García Márquez the Nobel Laureate in Literature of nineteen-eighty two – From “Strange Pilgrims: and Other Stories,”
Gabriel García Márquez’s writing career has reportedly ended, because of dementia. It had been my understanding that the Nobel winning author, had retired from writing. Then it was reported that the author had the writing itch once again, and was going to finish his autobiography and a new novel reportedly titled “We’ll Meet in August,” which is also from my understanding finished, but a release date has yet to be announced. However it appears that Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s writing career has finally ended, not by his choice however. It has been theorized by his brother that his dementia has been brought on by the treatment he received for lymphatic cancer that had brought the author to near death, earlier. It is a sad, realization. Another great author who, for generations of readers a like, and recognized around the world of one of the greatest authors of world literature. One of the most popular authors of the Nobel Prize for Literature back in nineteen-eighty two, Gabriel Garcia Márquez had brought Latin America to the world stage and a forefront of world literature. Which makes the tragedy of the author losing his memory, rather severe. The author himself has become an icon of Latin America, and its literature. Becoming something of a child’s favourite grandfather, with the exception that his grandchildren are entire continents, and he is loved and adored because he helped instill a sense of pride in their culture and traditions.
Gabriel García Márquez had proven to the people of Latin America, South America, and the Caribbean along with other authors like Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges, and Julio Cortazar helped create the Latin American boom, and showed the world and literary world that this part of the world was not some backwater place of septic culture that has been colonized and forced to change. However these writers proved otherwise. They show their part of the world as a place of magic and mystery. Though political turmoil is evident in their culture, with violence, kidnappings, revolutions, rebellions, and dictators all populate these works. Yet they exist alongside angels, ghosts, holy miracles and other such works of magic.
“Sleeping Beauty and The Airplane,” is about the most beautiful woman the narrator has ever seen or encountered. It’s evident and clear, with its own self-mocking pleasure that the story was influenced by Yasunari Kawabata (a fellow Nobel Laureate) and his short story “House of the Sleeping Beauties,” about older bourgeoisie Japanese men who go, and lay with younger beautiful woman who sleep – and are most likely drugged. The story is a subtle prose that with refinement, show sexual desire is a flirtatious act with death. Which is much more different then this current erotica trend of superficial sexual intimacy rather than probing any deeper as such authors have done before them. Though I suppose smut is smut, and pornographic pieces of work have always been something that people would want to read. The realization and concept that other share in their own fantasies and need to make them public, has always been like an act of voyeurism. But it can never compare to the sensual and more shaded novels like Yasunari Kawabata, Jane Austen and others. This short story follows the same path as Yasunari Kawabata, but with less philosophical depth.
There is a word in French called “La Douleur Exquise,” is a word that describes that heart wrenching pain that one cannot have. For some woman in today’s world that would be the ‘grey,’ man from the mommy pornography book. The same word can be described for the narrator and the sleeping beauty, who rides the airplane. She sleeps for the entire trip from Paris to New York, the narrator then admires the beauty from affair, but there is the gentle heartache of the narrator, who looks and watches the sleeping beauty and can do nothing but watch. The realization that she will not have him and that he cannot have her, only allows him to look at her with adoration.
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“Melody,” by Bei Dao – From: “The Waves: and Other Stories,”
There was a line in this short story that said, in a frank way; that all marriage is, is a step in life. No different then birth, growing up or aging or dying. It is just a part of life that one does if they choose to. Under the communist dictatorship of The People’s Republic of China, it becomes a bureaucratic and legal process, run by the government. With this story Bei Dao (I speculate) creates a metaphor for Communism in China and Communism in general. Much like Gao Xingjian’s play “The Bus Stop,” was a metaphor or analogy for the promises of the Communist Party to the Chinese people that never came. Much as the ominous bus like the shadowy Gadot never comes, but is expected.
The same can be said with “Melody,” by Bei Dao. With it, a marriage is not working out. Though it is just going to have to do. The first scene in this short story is the wife, has gone out and bought lemon toilet water – as the author put it so eloquently. Translated in layman’s terms its perfume; or more specifically it is cologne as it is a gift for the husband. A heavier drinker and a miserable drunk at that. The contemplation of how fights and making up after them, the initial awkwardness of blame placed on one individual who at first thought they would be the better person by buying the gift and admitting their mistake. What ends however with this couple is what is expected. A bribery of insincerity is tossed to the ground. Shattered and displayed for all to see, the confrontation fueled by past agitations, and misadventures as well as disagreements become weapons. Used to pinch and snare the other, in a trap of their own filthy sense of being. Yet what only happens in the end is just physical destruction. Anyone who has truly lived knows full well the physical sensation of picking up an object. Just any object. It just happened to be in the way. It just happened not to work. It was the last straw to be picked. It is tossed. Beaten and smashed. Placed in a state of no recognition. Any recovery of what has lost already welcomed into oblivion. What follows is exhaustion. Inebriated by exhausted and a faded adrenaline, and the smoldering coals of a anger far from dead, caused one to retreat away from the current situation. Retreating away from the stage without even taking a bow one is forced to depart from the stage. Curtains drawn. The audience on the other side of the walls think to themselves, what entertainment. At least it’s not us.
From there of crawling into one’s own sense of regret and anger – as well as one’s own complicated sense of guilt about the damages they too have partaken in. Further frustrating an already complicated situation. Which is then justified by blaming it on the other. “If they had not pushed me.” “If she had not said that.” “If he would just do something.” It is these justifications. These reasons, these approvals that one gives their own actions, by reasoning that the action themselves were simply caused by the others own words, and actions. This allows for at least a shaky sense of palliation. A shallow satisfaction.
How does this compare though to China and the Chinese people, and the Communist Party of China? The marriage that the two characters find themselves in, is not working. However it has its reasons, that the two decide to put up with each other: Housing. They both have married for the simple fact of housing. As the main character meets and see’s others she begins to see the reasons or anchors that keep the marriages intake. For one it is a child. Such a common reason. Unhappiness for a ‘couple,’ is abound, and what ties them together in their holy matrimony and unhappy life together. While thinking not of their own needs, but that of a third party (in this case a child) they had thought best to stay together to provide the illusion of a home life. To offer the sense of family ties and home and union. When in reality they have done nothing but in the end to ruin the child’s life. For in the long run the child eventually begins to perceive and make out the proposed illusion. In the end all parties loose. The child discovers that the whole reason that the parents had stayed in their miserable relationship was because that they had them to think of. This in the end makes the child feel guilty. Everyone loses.
Other reasons are abound, as the main character in this story tells the reader. For example she stays with her husband simply because of housing. The old couple simply stay together because of its routine. Which is also an adequate description of life. Life happens. We stay in horrible situations, because the unknown or the alternative looks far more bleak then the current situation. When I heard the description of the old couple, who do the same routine, and must stay together out of sheer fact of routine it made me think of the story as itself an adequate description for life, but also as an adequate description of China and its one party system and how it survives. We all get trapped in the repetitive cycles of life. We all get trapped in the understanding of routine and understand that, the comforts are not something we want to give up.
Other people are better off. Other people appear happy. Other people have more freedoms, happy families. It always comes down to other people. The mirrors and the comparisons of the people to our own situation always leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The walls all of a sudden look like they are covered in mould. There is a strange smell in the house – the smell of mildew. The food in the fridge has rotten. The fruit on the cupboard is not ripe yet. The bills are stacking up. A light bulb burns. All these events. All these small moments of dreadful failure, eventually begin to add up. They begin to become mocking malicious smiles. Giggling at your own failed life. Stuck in a rut. The continual routine. Over and over again. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow is going to be a better day. Tomorrow turns out to be the same as today.
This whether or not intended, what lead me to think of this story not as an attack on China’s Communist Party but rather sympathetic understanding of the Chinese people. Why they accept the conditions of their lives. Why they accept the minimal wage of their factory job. Why the fear the government – or at least respect them, out a sense of ominous understanding, of the consequences. In the end there is only a handful of Bei Dao, Herta Müller’s, and so many others. If there wasn’t then the world would not have fallen and dictatorships would not be still in practice. However if the world was full of them, we would not be able to recognize their courage.
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“Everyone’s Right,” by Peter Stamm – From: “In Strange Gardens: and Other Stories,”
“Publishers Weekly,” states it clearly about Peter Stamm’s writing style. “Stamm derives his narrative power from absence and void.” When discussing his grim novel “Unformed Landscape,” by the Swish-German author they state they compare it to these stories, and derive the following conclusion: “this collection of 20 something short stories features an ill-assortment of emotionally shallow characters moving through similarly textureless landscapes. “ This conclusion hits the nail on the head – as the saying goes. For Peter Stamm there is no difference between people. From Manhattan, New York City to the wilderness of some unidentified country on a river canoeing trip there is no difference between the characters. Each one’s life is extraordinary in their own right. Yet on the opposite side of the spectrum the extraordinary becomes the banal. A zoo keeper who feeds a lion, the act of seeing one of nature’s amazing creatures feast and dine on the carcass of some poor unfortunate other creature, simply becomes routine after a while. A person who lives under a dictatorship, and learns how to flee, dissolve into the cement walls, become a motionless statue simply becomes a reality – not a nightmare. A person who lives in a crowded world where violence is apparent and runs rampant like a uncontrolled disease simply witnesses murder and gang violence as a fact of life, not as something abnormal. Peter Stamm recognizes. He understands the elusiveness of people. The enigmatic and abstract behavioral patterns of individuals. Why a woman for example, and a man who have a strictly platonic relationship based on a past encounter where one confesses his love, and the other shoots him down, and she can place her hands in his groin. These acts themselves to a complete stranger – and in this case as a the reader, one is the stranger – they are out of place. Shattered and fragmented slivers of glass mixed amongst the beach, on an over cast sky, on a cool November day when a ocean breeze kicks in cold ocean waves.
One thing that is noticeable after a while is how Peter Stamm uses weather as a backdrop. How the weather is more than just some simple scenic backdrop like that of a photograph. When the weather turns for the worst, in this short story about people who go on a canoeing trip – camping trip is probably a more adequate description; it becomes symbolic in its scenic description. Whe4n the rain starts to pour and both the characters are forced to huddle up together, and share the last bit of reserves of food that they have, and the rain outside become such a blanket and a curtain of water, that one is unable to see the rest of the world. It is in this scene that one gathers the closeness of two individuals. The feeling of warmth and heat; isolation, alienation and seclusion. Under Peter Stamm’s cool gaze it does not become something of untouched romantic love, but rather in the end it becomes something that is described, as simply that.
Peter Stamm, at times however does become a bit of something stereotypical of something of a German author. His prose is emotional detached. Extremely natural is the way to go. His characters are shallow, and are more of puppets on strings, to whom Stamm can grow bored with and toss back in to the trunk; hang on the branch of a tree; or toss and let the river take them drifting along down the river. With intense brooding light green eyes that shimmer with the greenness of a fresh river with the cool autumn on the horizon and the first deserters of the leaves already falling in, he at times even has the appearance of the stereotypical Swiss-German author. However Peter Stamm is his own author, his own individual. His prose is bare and natural. Dry and depicts the banalities of life. Showing people for what they are.
Failed dreams, failed goals, lives gone astray. Peter Stamm writes about the lives of characters during periods in their lives, depicting the life before the “shit hits the fan,” or life happens and he displays life after life happens or “shit hits the fan.” Stamm’s prose are like small stones in by the river shore. They are small and unassuming. Quiet in their appearances and do not stand out. Though in an ironic twist of events they are diamonds in the rough. They do not glitter though. They are not full of gold or fool’s gold to give the one appearance of a lustrous prose. They are individual pebbles unique in their own right. One may have a sedimentary like appearance. The next a metamorphic. Each one unique4 in their own right; as well as a treasure to be held. Some skip across the water. Other sink fast. Some are placed in the pocket and can weight one down, as they walk out to the void. Others are picked up, examined and absent mindedly dropped and forgotten.
This is the beauty of his prose. The neutrality and cold precision of his own eyes, and focus on the characters in an emotional constipated landscape. It is this reason they themselves are emotional enigmas, or emotionally shallow and awkward. Why their gestures and their actions almost appear out of place. Why they may be so jaded, or why they do the things they do. In the end they themselves don’t truly think too much about them. They just do. Their hormones get the better of them, or their impulses do. But to say that their emotions get the better of them is a statement far from true, because the author himself avoids sentimentality and sensationalism, by allowing his characters to become emotionally stunted. In the process they become wooden but also allow for some interesting insight. On a personal note I’d like to give Peter Stamm’s more longer prose a try and see how it compares.
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“A journey with the cows,” by Italo Calvino – From “Marcovaldo: or The Seasons in the City,”
Already summer is ending. The days have become longer. Shadows creep along the ground farther. The beginning of autumn can be felt in the air. It stirs the leaves. Causing them to turn red, orange, yellow and eventually brown. Where once was green is now turning to gold. Golden fields of barley, wheat and canola. Pumpkins grow large orange and round, perfect for pumpkin pie. The air becomes crisp. The light slowly turns from a golden haze at dusk, becomes crisper and clear. The world is able to see through eyes unclouded. Whereas in the summer the heat, cause illusions waves in the air, and pollution becomes large grey blue hazy clouds, that hang over the horizon and the city. In winter the clouds are low, and white, where the sky and the earth tend to almost touch each other. But the light is grey. The nights are unbearably dark. However in some odd way the air inside the homes further down the road become more festive. Brightly coloured lights can be seen decorating houses. Pine tree’s (if they are real) fills a home with the smell of mint sap. Than the panic stricken with the consumerist by now, get this now, great present for this person or that person. The attitude of I want and I need to get, is unmistakable at that same time. But on that special day, it all changes. The house is full of a celebratory feeling. The very traditions of each household become sacrosanct, though not conservative or boring in routine. Each time it’s a new adventure with a roughed out concept. There will always be the smell of a warm cooking turkey dinner. The feeling of togetherness and fraternity as well as family bonds are never stronger it seems than in Christmas. Maybe it’s because everyone is trapped in a house together. Spring is muddy and dirty. The windowpanes get covered in condensation and dripping with water, that slithers and scurries down the glass. Yet the earth smells fresh. Rejuvenated and clean. After the raining months have passed and the sun comes out, the world starts to green up again. Flowers bud and blossom. Tree’s become thick and full of leaves. It is this time that barbeque season starts, and when summer truly begins. Each season Italo Calvino writes about with such, amazement and wonder. The natural world is beautiful and wonderful, and full of delights. Marcovaldo the poor uneducated and rather unskilled proletariat, is the man who though dues the grunt labour. However his ear and his eyes are trained to the natural world around him. No matter how small or large, Marcovaldo sees it.
However Marcovaldo is a bit of a disillusioned character. He has a great admiration and love for the natural world. That being said he is not a man who sees the reality of the natural world. This can plainly be seen when Michelino goes off with the cows, which are being herded through the city one hot summer evening, to go and graze up in the alpine mountains. Marcovaldo does worry about his son, though he thinks the journey itself and the end result will be fantastic. He imagines his son lazing around the meadows with the grazing cows. He pictures him under a fir tree, a piece of grass hanging out of his mouth whistling. Marcovaldo almost feels a sense of envy with his son, as he is stuck in the sweltering oven of the city. Moving away constantly in his continual manual labour, only to return home, and deal with his children and his hysterical wife who always thinks about her son, who is up in the mountains, and who she is dreadfully missing.
However when his son returns, it becomes clear that life was not some pastoral dream. It was hard work on a different line. Anyone who has grown up on a farm or an acreage will tell its hard work. Yes there are moments of such enjoyment that they will last a life time, but those moments are earned, and are rewards for hard work. Cow needs to be milked. Fields need to be tended. Gardens need to be watered and weeded. Plants need to be taken care of. Animals need to be fed. Repairs may need to be made. It is a hard life, but it is also a good life. A life of rewards and skills learned. A hard and good work ethic is instilled into the character of a person. On a personal note, I never grew up on a farm or an acreage. Though in many ways I was fortunate enough (in some ways) to have grown up in a small town. Where it was located was close to a river, and a provincial park. So nature’s beauty was never far away. Of course there was always a sense of isolation. Which always made trips to the city exciting and adventurous – except only for so long.
This story resonated with me personally, because of the connection of the cows, have with my own hometown. Their cries in the summer night echoing with that of the coyotes. Their languid lazy looking eyes, always with a sense of contempt for their lives, and for the ones that will eat them eventually. But also the gentle nature of cows. Just the memory of walking by them when I was younger, and how you could touch them if they were close to the fence. Their fat bellies swollen. Their patience immense and almost never ending. This one of the stories that shows Italo Calvino at his best.
