My Dearest Gentle Reader
Before his premature death, Antonio Tabucchi was often cited as the successor of Italo Calvino. When Italo Calvino had passed away he was Italy’s foremost writer, of an international standard and reputation. Italo Calvino was known for his modernist and postmodernist fables that often had flights of fantasy; but were always grounded in the real world. When discussing fantasy Italo Calvino had this to say:
“That only a certain prosaic solidity can give birth to creativity: fantasy is like jam; you have to spread it on a solid slice of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing, like jam, out of which you can’t make anything.”
Antonio Tabucchi could be said to do a lot in the same fashion. Though were Italo Calvino wrote fables, and often dealt with flights of fantasy, in a dream like fashion with almost modernist and later postmodernist experiments; Tabucchi differed in another way. He was influenced more by an alien culture. A foreign place; west of Italy. It was a place where the white mists and fogs of the harbour, became wraithlike. Ashen and clammy, and blanketing everything in a moist cloud; it is a place, drenched in shadowy obscure mists. A place of nostalgia and wistful melancholia. It was there, that the young author would discover one of the most mysterious writers of Europe. It was in Paris that the world of Pessoa and Portugal were discovered. The aspiring author in the nineteen-sixties took a journey to travel Europe in the footsteps of the literary figures that he admired. While in Paris he discovered a poem by the elusive Pessoa titled “The Tabaco Shop,” or “Tabacaria.” With its mixture of pessimism and measured hope from the line – “I have within me all the world,” – that Antonio Tabucchi had discovered his lifelong obsession. It was because of Pessoa that Antonio Tabucchi began to translate not only Pessoa but other Portuguese authors into Italian, but also why Tabucchi decided to live in Portugal for half of the year. He even wrote “Requiem: A Hallucination,” in Portuguese; and the ghost of Pessoa makes an appearance. On his death the Portuguese culture sectary declared Tabucchi “the most Portuguese of all Italians.” But don’t be deceived so quickly; Antonio Tabucchi was an avid commentator on Italian politics and life. He was especially a harsh critic of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Whereas after World War II, Italo Calvino distanced himself from politics, and later left the Italian Communist party, over the atrocities that the Soviets had committed.
Pessoa on the other hand from, Italo Calvino; was a mad fiddler. A vessel of different creative voices and personalities; and he simply was the medium in which his fragmented inner world reached the wider public. In his short twenty three year career, Fernando Pessoa went practically unnoticed. He was also well aware of how close he was toeing the line to instability and mental anguish, and falling into the depths of insanity. Like so many others of his family. Yet he persisted; and his heteronyms all got their voice. Each one presented an entirely new aspect of their medium. Each one had a specific voice and tone. A style all their own. Yet it was Pessoa who they talked through. Along with Luís de Camões, Pessoa is often cited as a national poet of Portugal.
Even writing that though makes me feel like, I am talking of madness. When one talks of such matters like Pessoa’s heteronyms, or even how he came to create them, or how his/their different writing styles came to be; one treads a rather ambiguous and answerless space. Yet it is Pessoa’s fragmented identity, his mysterious personality and life, which have all but influenced Antonio Tabucchi – among other authors.
The Epistolary novel is by nature fragmented. It is forced to cycle, and criss-cross and re-cross already explored territory with a new perspective. It is a form that many authors may not actually be able to do right. One of my own pet peeves with this type of form, is when an author interludes, the form with actual dialogue. How can a highly biased form, of literature – a letter is always written from the point of view of the writer; be so clear or objective to remember the conversation word for word, able to transcribe that verbatim? Some will argue that, this is the author’s intention. They are intentionally playing with the concept of objectivity. My argument is that it comes across as forced. It’s out of place. In a minimalist house, one wouldn’t catch something that is overtly decorated – aka something of the arts nouveau. Those clean straight lines, which have done away with ornate styles, would have no use for the nature inspired swirls of curls of a whip. Sometimes the pastiche of complete opposites comes across as gluing wood to metal. It just refuses artistic merit; and therefore loses credibility. This comes with streams of dialogue with an Epistolary novel. It jars the reader. It’s out of place. This is why; I have always had an issue with the Epistolary novel. It appeared that writers were not able to do it correctly. Even when I retell an event to someone I am talking to, it never comes off exactly as may have happened. Sure the description of the tree that was swaying to the right was correct. Oh yes he most certainly was wearing a black scarf around his neck. And if you listened carefully – blocking the sounds of the howling winter wind; one could hear the cold clunky sound of the branches beating against each other. But when it comes to dialogue, the words are always open to the tainted editing of my memory. Depending on the circumstances and feelings toward each other, the dialogue that will be recounted will never be the exact same. They could never be a carbon copy.
In today’s world the art of writing a letter, has but all disappeared. It has been replaced by text messages, messengers and e-mails – phone calls also had a hand in its destruction. New ways in which people learn to communicate will always push the soon to become obsolete aside. Now day’s people can have a conversation via a computer, no matter how far away they are. As commutation technologies, evolve other forms dye out. Today cursive writing is being debated on whether or not it is useful. When I was growing up, it was one of the very skills that would make you a successful person. It was faster than printing and left your own significant calling card on it. It was personable and intimate way to communicate; just like reading a hand written letter.
Antonio Tabucchi however, has also done something entirely different with his novel of letters. They are not unified letters. They are connected more by thematic overlap, than by any attempt at a conscious attempt at a single narrative. Seventeen different men, write to their long lost lovers; a few are dead. Some are missing. But it becomes apparent that these men are not necessarily writing to the same woman. Most even realize that they are never going to be given a greeting. They recognize their futile attempts at communication. They know that rekindling the love affair is over. The ship has passed, and they are left on the dock waving goodbye, as that shadowy fading memory of her evaporates into time itself.
“I am sending you an impossible greeting, like one who waves vainly from one bank of the river to the other knowing that there are no banks, really, believe me, there are no banks, there is only the river…We worried so much about the banks, and instead there was only the river. But it's too late, what's the point in telling you all this?”
It would be safe to say that most of these senders; these heartbroken men, are in some way or another facing some sort of emotional crisis. In which they turn to her. A better time it must have been when they were with her. These men differ though in many ways. They are a composer, an actor, a theatre director, a Jewish harpist, a widower with two children; and so many more. Yet they are all connected; but not by their lovers; as I had first thought. They are connected by their crises. They are connected by their fall into the present; and look back with nostalgia; when life appeared happier.
Our dear senders also enjoy running into tangents. They discuss the soul. One even went so far as to theorize that the soul is in the blood. One crimson little tear, houses the human soul.
“[ . . . ] One of their heads, rotated by an internal mechanism, has turned to one side so that the public can clearly see the Pierrot-style tear that furrows its cheek, and the lighting engineers spotlight, like a knife point, pierces that tear, the crystal of a trinket that once served as a common woman’s earing that we bought at the flea market to stick on this cheek of the fake actors.”
However Tabucchi’s prose is not always lucid. These dear senders have their own tangents to discuss. Often referencing some obscure arcane source, or philosophy; or even discussing at times in the most banal language, an event, that becomes cryptic. This novel is impressionistic and moves with images both dreamlike and nightmarish; it can fall into poetics, and as a letter they often don’t reveal everything so easily. As a third person reading this letter, the events surrounding it or the past affair are all but shadowy references.
Still it is a good book. One that will certainly need to be re-read countless times. Each time, producing new results. It was an enjoyable read as well; not always entertaining and at times, a bit heavy on self-consciousness and philosophical discussions, but with anything Tabucchi had produced it became a wonderful experience, in looking into the world of a master who sees the world, and realizes that there is more than what meets the eye. Questions of identity are ever apparent in this novel. Each letter is another layer to this work; both individual on its own terms, but also revealing a new secret; answering questions, and asking more.
“Look, dear spectators, these are the real actors, they are mechanical marionette’s with tape recorders inside their wooden bellies, they have no innards, they have no heart, they have no soul, all they have is wood shavings and a magnetic tape that feigns their emotions.”
If one does not like experimental fiction, they will not like this book. That is a guaranteed. It is obscure; it is dense at times, it can become very frustrating. It does not reveal everything and a lot is left in the shadowy world of ignorance, and speculation. But to many degree’s that is what most fun about it. All the speculation, the feeling that there is a life had happened before this letter, and will continue long after it is written; will leave many unsatisfied. Answers are not given to a reader, with a silver spoon. Some questions may never be answered. Yet in the end, that is what makes this piece of work, such an interesting one at that.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M. Mary
