Time Ages in a Hurry

Hello Gentle Reader

What is it that keeps one up at night? Maybe it is the mundane stresses. The slow melancholy of day to day living. The workplace politics perhaps. The overdue credit card and the slow accumulation of interest. Perhaps it’s the bills, or the rent requiring to be paid. In another vain, maybe it is the paper due, or an exam coming up. Mothers worrying about their children. Fathers concerned about the future of their jobs. These concerns grow, in the warm beneath the blankets. They are rotated like a pillow. When one rolls to the other side, or onto their back, these palpitations of life, shift their perspective as well. No amount of breathing changes them. No music evicts them from ones skull. Yet these squatters remain through it all. Though as Anton Chekhov himself had stated:

“Any idiot can face a crisis – its day to day living that wears you out.”

Insult or compliment? Neither really. Chekhov simply gave his diagnosis in regards to life: it wears you out. Whether one likes it or not, it wears you out. Eventually even the happiest person on the planet will be worn out by life. Those who can sleep well at night are the ones who are envied. Yet sleepless nights visit all, at some point or another. Yet, be it compassion or consideration, each of us ask: “how did you sleep last night?” or remark upon the weary appearance of another. Yet upon offering a remark – an attempt at communication or connection, each one, opens themselves up to hear the story of another; or to be told a lie. What keeps me up at night? Memories, it seems as of late.

Memories: Sanctuary and hell. Their inability to be coherent, or stay coherent, is a continual frustration. They meld and melt into each other. Past reminiscences of years past, lurk in present thoughts. Guilt and grief are continual seeds that grow in these corners of the mind. Insomnia itself does not grow in the sun. It grows in the blue light of the television; snow filling the screen; or just beneath a forty watt bulb; it is fertilized by the white noise of dead televisions; or the seconds of a clock marked by the insistent ticks. Yet despite ones memories, swirling about like bats, always keeping sleep at bay; there is no greater surprise than a memory surfacing in the brain, when a particular scent passes one by, and a fleeting emotion swells up inside. The clearest brightest memories are perhaps tinted with imagination – and they maybe false in some details are always welcomed. Without ones memories, one is nothing more than a husk. No more than a ghost.

Before his untimely death in two-thousand and twelve, Antonio Tabucchi was considered one of Italy’s most renowned writers. For many, Tabucchi had picked up the mantle that Italo Calvino had left behind, upon his own passing. Yet Tabucchi had Calvino, are two different writers, who view the world in different aspects. Tabucchi’s work became greatly influenced by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, even becoming his Italian translator. Upon his death, Tabucchi referred to himself, more as a scholar of Pessoa, and academic than a writer. Yet despite his own insistence, of being an academic over a writer, Tabucchi is still regarded as one of those great writers, to have entered the English language, and is still one of my favorite writers. When a new novel or collection of stories, is due to be released by Tabucchi, it is a celebratory event, by such a cosmopolitan writer. When I had learned that archipelago books had planned on publishing two more books by Tabucchi, after their previous publications by the writer: “Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico,” and “The Woman of Porto Pim,” – I was ecstatic! Though at the time, Archipelago Books could not verify a date when the works would receive publication, the dream, of adding more Tabucchi books to my collection, was a dream that would indefinitely be made a reality. When publication dates were finalized, I set out pre-ordering “Time Ages in a Hurry,” and upon receiving the book, set about reading it immediately.

Reading a Tabucchi story is akin to unwrapping a small gift, or a long lost candy from another time. There is both a sweetness, and a misplaced melancholy from another time. Such as the story: “Yo me enamoré del aire.”

The title of the story comes from a traditional Sephardic Jewish folk song; about falling in love. From the book, the two translated stanzas:

“I was in love with the air/with the air of a woman/ Because the woman was air/ I was left with a handful of air/ Air that carries off the air/ Air that carries off/ Because she went so quickly/ I couldn’t talk with her/ As if she were lifting a skirt/the air swayed her.”

“Yo me enamoré del aire,” is the shortest story of this collection, and my favorite. The story is ambiguous and opaque, but is not dense, and made overtly complicated. The story is shrouded in ambience. It is an investigation into a world that has been lost. A rather personalized world. Though the surface states, the man is looking for the botanical gardens, he is in search of a home, dated with the art nouveau architecture. The significance of the home is never stated, or elucidated upon any further. Yet the home, the song, and the women singing, each cause turbulence in the world of the man.

This is the world in which Tabucchi depicts. It is a world of ambiguities, uncertainties, and rambling memories, which are treated with distrust; and yet each character, each narrator in one manner or another, confronts these memories, and their lost worlds. They challenge their deeply personal or political burdens; they share their stories, yet question their own soliloquies. Yet the short story collection goes beyond anonymous narrators attempting to understand the passage of time, the nature of memory, and all other theories that surround each other, and how it reflects and impacts their lives. The short stories themselves vary locations: from Bucharest, to Tel Aviv, to Crete, and Berlin. Despite the varying locations, the political and the personal upheavals, the pains of the past, the calmness of the present, and the desolate futures; these stories are each acutely connected by the acute theme, which runs throughout the entire collection – the process of remembering and the passage of time. Yet as Tabucchi makes quite clear, memories can only be told, experiences can only be shared; neither one can be transmitted or transfused. They are a personal ordeal: both sanctuary and hell.

Whenever there is a new novel or (even better at times) a short story collection, by Antonio Tabucchi, going to see a debut English language release, I am overcome with joy and excitement! Antonio Tabucchi was one of those writers, that I had the fortunate fate of stumbling upon (thanks to him for being a perennial Nobel contender) and when I had given him a chance, I was not disappointed with what I had discovered; and soon Tabucchi rose to be one of my favorite writers. Antonio Tabucchi is a master of the short story, and the short novel or novella. His preoccupations vary from the political, to the past, to memories, passages of time, to identity. Yet it is all wrapped up in Tabucchi’s fitting prose that moves between frontiers; and shows the influence of both of his languages and cultures, that had come to influence him; but also his skepticism of how art is supposed to console our lives; but appears to fail at changing the realities themselves.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary