Books & Reviews Archive

This short novel recalls a novella by Giuseppe Verga: *La Varanisa* (see the review of *Le novelle* on this site). The Sicilian writer admirably synthesizes the peasant condition by describing the feet of a wretched girl: > those feet accustomed to walking in the snow and on rocks scorched by the sun, to tearing themselves on thorns, or hardening on stones, could have been beautiful . In the same way, Amado repeatedly emphasizes the large feet produced by the harvesting and processing of cocoa on the vast Brazilian *fazendas*. > The cocoa was dumped into the troughs to ferment for three days. (...) Then, freed from its pulp, the cocoa was put out to dry in the sun in the drying trays. There too we danced on it and sang. Our feet grew broad, our toes splayed. (...) Jaca! Jaca! The children climbed the trees like little monkeys. The jackfruit fell—thud!—and they pounced on it. (...) Their broad feet were like those of adults, their bellies swollen, huge, from the jackfruit and the dirt they ate . The young Amado chronicles the lives of day laborers on the vast cocoa plantations: > that yellow fruit, with sweet seeds, which made them prisoners of a life of dried meat and jackfruit ; "a proletarian novel" imagined as written by a young man reduced to poverty by the greed of a capitalist uncle; exploited and humiliated in factory labor, he pursues a nebulous destiny of redemption among the field hands, among the *affittati*, forced to work like slaves for the great landowners. What drives him? To belong among the wretched of the earth, to break radically with the ambiguities of the bourgeoisie in order to discover that the future lies solely in solidarity among the poor, in their desperate and resolute resistance to exploitation and abuse of power. The narrative bears the stamp of the social novel: a sort of Brazilian Émile Zola, Amado intends to describe coldly—"naturally," as Boccaccio might say—the peasant condition and the transformation of the young narrator and protagonist into an experienced and wretched field hand. The stages of this transformation, both physical and mental, are marked by the grand themes of humanity: the environment, magnificent and violent; communal life, complete with its festive moments; friendships and loves; revulsion toward the ruthless, greedy master and his arrogant, amoral family; the gradual awakening of class consciousness; and ultimately, taking a definitive stand. The protagonist courts the owner’s daughter, who wishes to marry him. > We will do what cannot be undone. (...) You will become a master. I bowed my head to stare at the ground. I was piling up leaves with my hand. (...) No, Maria. I will keep working. If you want to become the wife of an *affittato* . One must not be deceived by the spare, almost investigative style. A certain sense of the fantastical, the unreal lingers, fed by an ambiguous relationship with cocoa, as though amid such wonder social redemption were inevitable. > Darkness enveloped everything. Guitars wept, birds chirped. The golden cocoa fruits and the serpents. Stars shone in the sky. The lanterns along the road looked like souls taking flight. Night on the *fazenda* is sad, gloomy, painful. It is at night that people think...(...) We looked at the cocoa plantation and could find no answer. The question that naturally arises upon reading *Cacao* is whether the human condition of the poor is not fundamentally the same across all latitudes. What difference is there between the characters of this novel and the protagonists of Verga’s *I Malavoglia*, Zola’s *Earth* and *Germinal*, or Steinbeck’s *The Grapes of Wrath* (see the reviews on this site)? Always the same desperate struggle for survival under the rapacious, ruthless weight of the rich? There seems to be no hope, leaving the intellectual with nothing but a resigned detachment: at times adopting a socialist rhetoric (see the "manifesto" section of *The Grapes of Wrath*), in other cases merely describing while invoking literary justifications, as with Verga’s *verismo*, and in still others withdrawing into a melancholic irony, as in Jorge Amado’s later books. It is as if the writer and the poet have accepted defeat, entrusting journalism with the task of reminding us, without exaggeration, that social suffering exists in the world, and not merely bourgeois torments. I read the book after the great lexical and imaginative binge of *Grande Sertão: Veredas* (see the review on this site), which makes Amado’s essential, linear style feel like fresh air—like plunging into clear waters over a sandy bed, free from the lights and shadows of deep, reef-strewn seas. The sentences are short, the adjectives few; the charm of the narrative relies on the events themselves, as if they spoke on their own. Yet, what nostalgia for the writing of João Guimarães Rosa! Why read it? A great social novel.

> I wish it were she who wrote about me. To gather thoughts about those years centuries away. To justify my cowardice, my need for certainty... I am a seeker of gold nuggets, I collect precious fragments, intersections of my life with hers, thoughts of her, sudden emotions that interrupted years of my heart's silence, years of absence. I stretch time so as not to reach the epilogue with which I cannot make my peace . The protagonist and narrator, Maria, recounts her life, but above all speaks of her sister, the indecipherable Isabella, with her stark white skin, her > fine hair of an indefinite shade between brown and red, greenish eyes like the bottom of a lake . The sisters possess "opposite natures," yet precisely because of this their bond is profound and troubled, a perpetual pursuit wrought with unspoken words, misunderstandings, and above all, regrets. Childhood sees them closely knit, with Maria fraught with dread over the trouble Isabella might cause—Isabella immediately revealing herself to be adventurous, reckless, and irreverent beside her elder sister, cautious, meticulous, and rational. It is only natural that Isabella should be the first to take an interest in the movements of 1968, dragging into this political chapter a recalcitrant sister and Marco, Maria’s fiancé. Rapidly, the roles are reversed. The mercurial Isabella abandons the revolutionary factions to roam the world, while Maria and Marco become committed activists.Maria’s verdict on those years, so momentous in the history of our country, is merciless. > They did not fundamentally alter the course of my life. They seem distant to me, the words hollow. We wanted to shoehorn the world into a century-old idea. There were no others to be found . Yet for Maria these are momentous years: she marries Marco, has a child, separates, and goes to live on her own. Why, then, is it an insignificant period? The sister's absence weighs heavily, a void she cannot fully bridge through caring for her child, through work and study. And Isabella resurfaces in a singular manner, true to her unpredictable nature. A Turkish man arrives at Maria’s door, sent by Isabella. Mehmet is a man, > built like a wardrobe.. dark eyes and a drooping mustache.. wearing a military overcoat of an undefinable color . A love affair ensues.«I spoke with him as I used to speak with you», Maria will one day say to Isabella, who has just confessed that she too had an affair with the Turk. > Except Mehmet had given himself to both of us by presenting opposite sides of himself. With me he had pretended to be a good husband, telling me I was a strong woman.. and to her, who instead loved taking the plunge, he had offered his experiences and his adventurer’s fantasies . And so the Turk’s coat becomes the metaphor for the relationship between the two women: united yet distant, ever seeking one another out, yet incapable of finding a serene stability in their bond. It takes very little to shatter a fragile equilibrium and lead the two sisters to say and do things they will regret. Isabella returns home pregnant just as Maria is herself expecting a baby girl with Marco, with whom she has reunited. First, Isabella, in a moment of fury toward her sister, causes a car accident that forces Maria into premature labor. Then Maria discovers that Isabella and Marco have shared a kiss. The outrage is such that it drives Maria to write a letter steeped in vitriol: «Stay away from me, you stink, you disgust me». She immediately regrets what she wrote, but fails to reach Isabella, who drowns during a boat trip. > I folded Mehmet’s coat into four and slipped it into a large plastic bag, along with the old clothes... in this anonymous room, on my table, her photographs have multiplied. Now only she lives here; I feel dead. It was not what I wanted . The novel addresses a relationship often left unexamined: that between siblings. Lovers and friends are, in some way, chosen; siblings are found «already given». Yet it is a bond that endures for a lifetime, even if from the intensity of childhood it subsequently wanes into a more distant, often deeply estranged dynamic. «We concealed nothing from one another, at least up to a point». These words, which the author places in Isabella's mouth, encapsulate with great precision the trajectory of a sibling relationship, just as the image of the coat, folded into a plastic bag to be discarded, symbolizes the conclusion—perhaps inevitable—of an «inheritance» of childhood. The new family, formed with a partner, becomes paramount. The prose is spare yet expressive, rich in poetic resonance. The narrative plot is taut, relying more on the description of events and situations than on dialogue—as if to signify the incommunicability that hallmarks the relationships between the characters, particularly between Maria and Isabella. Reflections are entrusted to dreams, introducing occasional yet evocative oneiric vistas. Why read it? A magnificent novel, concise yet intricate.

Journey, flight, and the quest for change constitute the themes of this novel, set in the arid Sicilian landscape and amid a thousand cities—real in name, yet fantastical and imaginary in their depiction. Two shepherds, father and son; a girl on the run, who finds refuge with an aging itinerant prostitute; two young newlyweds, perpetually traveling for reasons impossible to know; a father seeking to abandon his son in a welcoming city. Contrasting these characters forever in transit is an apparently motionless setting, yet one in truth awaiting profound social and economic shifts: an old woman, awaiting a death long in coming, observes the countryside and neighboring towns through a telescope, hoping for a transformation that might upend society. The characters cross paths throughout the narrative, but there is effectively no unifying thread other than the journey across these many cities. This is a distinctive novel, one that leaves a longing for change and a sense of freshness, born precisely of the presence of the young who are, despite it all, searching for something in the future.

The novel is set in the early twentieth century, at the close of the Meiji Restoration or Renovation: the prolonged era between 1867 and 1912 that began with the reassertion of imperial power over the Tokugawa Shogunate. This historical anchor serves not only to contextualize the narrative—centered on the ambiguous and complex relationship between two generations—but also to underscore its contemporary relevance; much like today, we find ourselves in a period of transition in political and social structures, as well as in consciousness and sensibilities. A young student meets an older man, identified only by the appellation of "master." He is captivated by him—drawn to his taciturn, gruff demeanor, his solitary lifestyle detached from society and fellow human beings, and his ever-cryptic musings on love, honor, and money. In an ambiguous fashion, the master exerts a kind of blackmail over the young man: the foreboding expectation of betrayal. > I am a lonely man, but in a sense, aren't you as well? (...) In meeting me, you probably feel a certain loneliness. But because I lack the strength to help you break free from it, you will now turn elsewhere and no longer come to see me. (...) "You may think I might drift away," (the young man replies). (...) The master seemed not to be listening to me. "Yet you must be careful, for there is guilt in love. If you stay with me, you will find no satisfaction, but neither will you run any danger." Few clues offer a glimpse into what lies behind the master’s misanthropy: he regularly visits the grave of a friend whose death reportedly transformed the man’s character, without the reasons or background of this change being disclosed. Following his graduation, the young man returns to his parents’ home while waiting to find employment. His father is gravely ill, already nearing the end. > My melancholy tended to shift alongside the shifting shrill of the cicadas, as though the destiny enveloping me were moving by degrees through a vast cycle of different existences. The young man is torn between filial affection and duty, which urge him to remain at his father's bedside, and the longing not to sever ties with the master. > To me, the master was a shadowed figure, and I would not have been satisfied until he revealed himself entirely. A lengthy letter, preceded by urgent telegrams, drives the young man to commit an unforgivable act: he abandons his dying father to rush to Tokyo to the master. What does the master write in this sort of ethical testament? It is as though the young man had fulfilled a hermeneutic function. > I would rather see my past erased along with my life than offer it to someone who does not desire it. In truth, had it not been for someone like you, my past would never have been known to anyone, even indirectly. To you alone, then, among millions of Japanese, do I intend to recount my past, because you are sincere. There is no need to delve into the master's expansive confession, which unburdens his guilt onto the young man’s fragile shoulders. Suffice it to say that he acted dishonorably—he who considered himself steeped in virtue. He drove a friend to suicide by laying bare the contradictions between the friend's spiritual aspirations for an ascetic life and his romantic longing for a young woman, who was also loved by the master. > And so, despite my earnest desire to pursue an honest life, I strayed from it. I was a fool, if you will, a cunning and arrogant man. (...) Inside me arose, like a vortex, the feeling that I had won by cheating, and that I had been defeated as a human being. In the fine preface, expressively titled "Soseki: Solitude as Art," Gian Carlo Calza retraces the author's personal and literary biography, defining *Kokoro* (*Il cuore delle cose*) as "a faithful account of the author's own life or destiny." When one considers that none of the novel's protagonists bears a name, and that already in a 1905 work (*I Am a Cat*, see review on this site) Sōseki had played upon two characters (the feline narrator and the tedious English teacher) to depict the different facets of a single personality, one might suggest that the young student, the master, and the friend represent distinct vantage points for probing the author’s character: the youth embodies the fragility of a hope-filled youth; the suicidal friend signifies the search for spiritual anchors in an era of transition; and finally, the master is Sōseki himself, now disillusioned, locked in individualism and a pessimistic vision of life and Japan. If we step away from the author's biography and make a bold leap into contemporary Italy, the relationship between the young man and the master seems to keenly capture the intergenerational crisis afflicting our country. We, the "baby boomers," are the bad mentors who dispense nuggets of wisdom and fine rhetorical phrases, yet like Sōseki's master, we are dishonest because we are manipulative—shielded by our pensions, our conduct far removed from our pompous pronouncements. The young are the student: naive, filled with aspirations, fleeing from the false guides in whom they no longer believe! This modern transposition is also hinted at by the theatrical adaptation of *Kokoro* (*Il cuore delle cose*) in Kenzaburō Ōe's work (see the review of *The Changeling* [*La foresta d'acqua*]), where the master is viewed as a "false educator" by the high school students attending the performance. In an elegant and lucid manner, the author investigates the psychological and moral entanglement between the master and the young man, as well as between the former and his suicidal friend. The narrative unfolds slowly, at times repetitively; the extended letter bears too heavily the hallmarks of a soliloquy to escape being prolix. Why read it? It prompts numerous reflections on the present.