It was the case between nine that brought me
and ten o'clock on a Sunday morning
turning to a bridge, one of many, to the right
along the semi-freeze of a canal. And not
this is the house, but only
- a thousand times already seen -
on the disused sign: “Anne Frank House”.
My partner said later: that
Anne Frank's doesn't have to be, it's not
privileged memory. There were so many
who collapsed from hunger alone
without the time to write it.
She, it is true, wrote it.
But at every turn at every bridge along every canal
I kept looking for it without finding it anymore
always finding it.
This is why Amsterdam is an unfathomable one
in its three four variable elements
which merges in many recurring units, in his own
three four sodden or unripe colors
that how big is its perpetual space,
soul that irradiates firm and clear
on thousands of other faces, germ
everywhere and sprout of Anne Frank.
This is why Amsterdam is on its dizzying canals.
Vittorio Sereni
CLASSICS
WHY READ THE CLASSICS
In 1981 Calvino published a short essay on why to read the classics (and on what is meant by a "classic").
1. The classics are those books about which you usually hear "I'm re-reading ..." and not "I'm reading ..."
2. Classics are those books which constitute a wealth for those who have read and loved them; but they constitute one no less richness for those who have the good fortune to read them for the first time in the best conditions to enjoy them
3. The classics are books that exert a particular influence both when they impose themselves as unforgettable, and when they hide in the folds of memory, camouflaging themselves as a collective or individual unconscious
4. Every re-reading of a classic is a reading of discovery like the first
5. Every first reading of a classic is actually a re-reading
6. A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
7. The classics are those books that come to us carrying on them the trace of the readings that preceded our ecstasy behind them the trace they have left in the culture or cultures they have crossed (or more simply in language or costume)
8. A classic is a work that incessantly provokes a dust of critical speeches about itself, but continuously shakes them off.
9. The classics are books that the more you think you know by hearsay, the more you really read them
they find new, unexpected, unpublished.
10. Classic is a book that is configured as equivalent of the universe, like the ancient talismans.
11. "Your" classic is the one that cannot be indifferent to you and that you need to define yourself in relation and maybe in contrast with him.
12. A classic is a book that comes before other classics; but who has read the others first and then read that, he immediately recognizes his place in the genealogy.
13. Everything that tends to relegate current events to the rank of background noise is classic, but at the same time this background noise can not do without.
14. It is classic that which persists as background noise even where the most incompatible current events dominate.
Italo Calvino. From "Why Read the Classics", 1981
====================
On reading:
The decalogue of the reader's rights
I haven't read it and I don't like it
Contortions of a reader
Survival techniques of a common reader
The art of not reading
conspiracy against America
by PattyBruce
"The conspiracy against America" - Philip Roth - Einaudi ET - pp. 410 - €. 12.80
Philp Roth engages in the uchronic novel, the genre that could be called "fantasy" because it reinvents the
History through the modification of some events, which give way to a chain of possible consequences, which in reality they never occurred (another famous example of a Ukronic novel is "The Swastika on the Sun" by PKDick).
United States 1940: CA Lindbergh, a well-known isolationist and pro-Nazi (and hero of the air force that first flew the ocean aboard the "Spirit of St. Louis") wins a landslide victory against FD Roosevelt, who is running for his third presidential term. From this moment the ordeal begins for American Jews, and little Philip's family is overwhelmed by a series of chain tragedies.
All plausible, all possible, told from the point of view of a child and his very common Jewish family
Americans, who are and feel as Americans as anyone else and live their simple existence strictly
linked to their neighbors in Newark, in a neighborhood almost entirely inhabited by Jews.
Reflecting, I thought that if I hadn't known anything about the history of the last 68 years, I would have believed this was a true story, testimony of those who lived a particularly dark and dangerous period. As always, Roth's ability to create and describe extraordinary characters in their simplicity, enchants me, and his style of writing literally transports me to other places and times.
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