The Birdcage Archives

Thursday 22 March 2018

Little Misunderstandings of No Importance


Hello Gentle Reader

A hallmark of a great writer is their undying testament and willingness to resist the corrosive winds and sands of time. Even when all their books have been read and consumed, reviewed and analyzed, there is still a secret enjoyment between writer and reader to recreate the initial experience of reading them for the first time, in which they read and re-read continuously chasing the fleeting spark and magic of the first time. The late Antonio Tabucchi is that kind of writer. Every time I review and take stock of my books; trace my fingers along their spines, as if they were piano keys—they always hover and linger on Antonio Tabucchi. On restless nights, when I survey the books in their scattered disorganized manner, I find myself always pulling out a Tabucchi to sit down with. The other night I pulled “Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,” and begun to read the stories once again, whereupon they delight and enthrall as they did originally oh so many years prior. I had initially reviewed many of the short stories collected in “Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,” for the now defunct “The Short Story Review.” I have never reviewed the entire collection as a whole. After sitting don periodically and re-reading the short stories collected, I had decided to review the collection as a whole.

Two-thousand and twelve was a cataclysmic year for losing great writers. Among the great writer who passed were: Wislwa Szymborska, Carlos Fuentes, and of course Antonio Tabucchi. Their absence on the literary scene can still be poignantly felt. However, in a superficial and even limited manner, they are immortal. Though their last breath had passed their lips, their words, their stories, their narratives, thoughts and poems still live on. It’s not the same, as if they still existed; but inside every story, novel, essay, and poem exists a sliver of the writer who had put pen to paper and wrote and composed the finished product. Antonio Tabucchi’s work has always been imbued with the light touch of a magician, and the smoke and mirror perspective of the illusionist, wherein he is able to conjure the spectacular sensation in an otherwise mundane setting. His works (stories and novels) show how individual perspective influences the world, how chance, misunderstanding, belated comprehension, perceived divine intervention creates narratives and stories which escape and transcend history and time; as well ask some of the most unique philosophical ponderings pertaining to the human condition.

When mentioning Antonio Tabucchi one cannot escape the author’s love of Portugal, and its most famous poet: Fernando Pessoa. It was in fact, Fernando Pessoa, who influenced and inspired Tabucchi to learn Portuguese, become a scholar of its language, culture, and literature, and in doing so would spend half the year in Portugal and other half in Italy. The story goes, when Antonio Tabucchi was in Paris he came across the poem “The Tobacco Shop,” by Fernando Pessoa, with its pessimism and measured hope, a young Tabucchi became instantly interested in the writer and the sad and nostalgic world and language he inhabited. Inspired as ever by Pessoa and the Portuguese language, Tabucchi even wrote a short novel “Requiem: A Hallucination,” in Portuguese, in which he envisions an imaginary meeting between himself and the late poet Fernando Pessoa.

Antonio Tabucchi is often renowned for his novels, specifically speaking: “Pereira Declares,”—a political novel, about an overweight apolitical editor and journalist, who is awakened from his apathetic stupor by a young revolutionary, who seeks to fight and rebel against the dictatorship of Salazar. The novel granted Antonio Tabucchi continental success, and was picked up at home in Italy to use as protest against Silvio Berlusconi, who used his media companies to gain political influence and power. Despite his love and interest in Portugal, Antonio Tabucchi had a keen eye on Italy’s political and social situation, and was not above giving commentary on the situations, or dishing criticism out either. He was ever social and politically aware and conscious writer, and used this awareness and his writings to bring injustices to light, and protect freedoms of speech and expression in a world completely against contrary opinions.

“Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,” portray the melancholic longing of middle age and time. The characters within the short stories, each grapple with memory and times progressive march, they suffer fits of nostalgia and longing. They desire to correct youthful mistakes, or seek to comprehend how their life ended up in its current predicament. They seek to share their stories with those who have an ear to offer, and time to spare. In his introduction, Antonio Tabucchi discusses ambiguities and the baroque writers who sought to utilize their incomprehensible nature as a metaphor of divinity and life. Tabucchi, however, confesses he is not looking for a grand metaphor of divinity and life, but rather that he seeks out these: “misunderstandings, uncertainties, belated understandings, useless remorse, treacherous memories, stupid and irredeemable mistakes,” as addictive and irresistible substance, which is distributed amongst all lives, and all people are afflicted and suffer from their trivialities and crisis all the same. Alas, there is no cure; but they do make for a great romp and poignant narrative and story. In the titular story a group of friends enter university and joke about ‘little misunderstandings,’ but as youth wanes and time ages each of them the same, the frivolity and youth is replaced with the concrete horrors of mortality and earthly justice. Where at one point this group of youthful cohorts would describe themselves as friends, over time they become more and more dislocated and disconnected, before a ‘Little Misunderstanding,’ of the past of no real importance, becomes a awkward and twistedly cruel reality. Fate as ever in Tabucchi’s hands has a malicious idea of irony, exercises it with metallic conviction.

In “Spells,” two children find themselves joking about the supernatural, magic, witchcraft and the devil himself. A young boy visits his aunt and his cousin, who is distrustful of her new stepfather—she believes he killed her father, by turning him into the Nazi’s and having him shot. She calls him the devil himself. Yet the boy himself finds it difficult to believe; after all this new man (Uncle Tullio) comes every weekend bringing cheer to the solemn and oppressive home. He brings ice cream, and trips to open air theatres, and even a cat—who his cousin despises, as she views the four legged intruder as a spy and a harbinger of her stepfathers wickedness. It’s a lovely story which explores the childhood ability to explore both the real world and the imaginary world to explain the odd happenings in the summer house, but as well adapt to change and life itself.

“Rooms,” is another striking tale of familiar difficulties, but this time through the power struggle and neglect of siblings. A sister now cares for her brother, who was once a renowned and respected academic, but his health has since fallen into miserable tides. Her earlier neglects and living in his shadow have caused her to feel greater resentment and bitterness towards her ailing and invalid brother, who now suffers at the rage of her own pity at him and resentment of her own life.

The final story “Cinema,” is perhaps the most melancholic and nostalgic of them all. It traces the failed careers and personal lives of two actors, who once again meet to remake the film, which twenty years earlier had spring boarded their careers into hopes of starlight and glamour. However, glitter wares and glamour tarnishes over time, and when it’s all said and done with, neither leading actor’s lives or careers amounted to much beyond their breakthrough film. The regret and resentment runs deeper between the two, as at one point one was romantically interested in one, while the other evaded these romantic advancements to which she swooned over another. The relationship between herself and the other man, however, did not last. Now remaking the film of their youth, the two middle-aged actors recount former glory, love, and loss—and in an melancholic ending goes off script, complete with the Tabucchi monologue discussing loss, nostalgia, and the chance at changing the course of time and clearing history.

“Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,” is an early collection of short stories written by Antonio Tabucchi. It shows the precious and unyielding influence of Portuguese language and culture, as well as Fernando Pessoa, in how the themes of fate, misunderstandings, chance, and belated epiphanies create and influence the perceptions and lives of the characters within the collection. Yet, it does have Tabucchi’s one preoccupations, such as his use of allusions by writers he has admired, philosophical discursions, and the authors own keen eye for social and political situations and scenarios. The collection as a whole is masterful. At times its melancholy is wistful and dreadfully oppressive, lingering to long on the pages, while at other times its ascents the philosophical topic and questions being proposed by the writer, and at its best its poignancy its piercing and enlightening. Antonio Tabucchi was ever a masterful short story writer; and a great writer (period). His work is never dull or mundane, drab or tedious—it always carries an air of curiosity and a playful delight in ambiguity, but is not riddled pomp or pretentiousness. His work is always keen to flex the mind, and pull the heart from its hibernation; while retaining political and social conscious attitudes. If anything, “Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,” are jeweled dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies and moths, each one flapping their own seasonal tint regarding time, place, and memory. They are subtle in depiction, but linger like cobwebs far after the final story or last page has been turned, and the book shelved. Tabucchi has always been a delight of a writer to return to time and time again, “Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,” is of no exception, and is a great introduction into a marvelous magician of a writer who died too soon.

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

M. Mary

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