Farther than Anybody Dares to Dream


In The Shawshank Redemption, a film based on a Stephen King story, there is a scene where Andy, the protagonist, broadcasts a duet from Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” to the whole prison by connecting the record player to the PA system.

This is how Frank Darabont, the film's screenwriter, has Red, the narrator, recall that scene:

Red: [narrating] "I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

It’s no accident that The Shawshank Redemption is one of the most popular films of all time.

With writing of this quality, it is difficult to think how it could be anything else.

Alberico Collina

You Belong to Me Now


This is a brief excerpt from the opening pages of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.

It's about a stunning muse, who, on a rainy day, enters a Parisian cafe' to mesmerise a writer in full flow.

It's about where writing comes from, how it grows, and where it goes to die.

A girl comes into a cafe' when Hemingway is writing a story. She has "smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin"; the "sh" alliteration onomatopeically reminding us of water. The girl's hair is "black as a crow's wing", and this image is further reinforced by the description of her haircut.

He notices that she's waiting for someone, so he carries on writing, and thinks about putting her in his story. But it's the story that's in control of the writer, not the other way round. The following lines seem to say it all, and I never tire of reading them:

"I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil."

This mystery girl is imagination personified. She comes from water, which is life, and her hair is the colour of the crow, an omen of death. She appears out of nowhere, she seduces with her beauty, and she will soon disappear. When Hemingway finishes writing his story, and looks up, he won't find her in the cafe'. And he will feel an inexplicable sadness. Not because he has finished the story, but because imagination has fled.

"A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.

I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wished I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone. So I went on writing.

The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. I ordered another rum St. James and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink.

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

Then I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor know anything about the time nor think where I was nor order any more rum St. James. I was tired of rum St. James without thinking about it. Then the story was finished and I was very tired. I read the last paragraph and then I looked up and looked for the girl and she had gone. I hope she's gone with a good man, I thought. But I felt sad.

I closed up the story in the notebook and put it in my inside pocket and I asked the waiter for a dozen portugaises and a half-carafe of the dry white wine they had there. After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day."

True Composition

In the following chapter, "Our Studies", from The Notebook by Agota Kristof, translated by Alan Sheridan, the author has the twins, the narrators, describe how they study and how they write. And the description of their writing method is a vivid insight into how the author herself writes.

The twins' first rule of writing is that "the composition must be true" that is, it must be devoid of subjective considerations, hearsay, and hypotheses. Only the description of things, people, and places are true, while the description of feelings cannot be trusted, and there is no space for it in their prose. According to them, "Words that define feelings are very vague. It is better to avoid using them and stick to the description of objects, human beings, and oneself, that is to say, to the faithful description of facts."

Interestingly, the absence of any description of feelings in Kristof's writing actually functions to elicit all manner of sentiments from us, her readers. It's as if the author, through her narrators, is telling us: "This is how it is. This is where it happened. These are the people involved. This is what they did. This is how they did it. You be the judge. You decide."

This technique is powerful because it throws our belief system into question. We are not so sure about what is right and wrong, when this responsibility is placed almost entirely on our shoulders. After all, we're just readers wishing to be entertained. But Kristof doesn't let us off the hook, and she takes us by the throat through a moral gray land where things are neither all black nor all white. And this disorients us.

Reading The Notebook is not a comfortable experience, but it is a worthwhile one exactly because of it. It forces us, the readers, to exit our comfort zone and to suspend judgement. And in so doing, we become more human, by becoming more aware of our own moral shortcomings, of the limits of the tiny world from which we observe (and judge) others.

Ultimately, reading Kristof is a lesson in humility. And that's why it's sometimes painful but always rewarding.

"Our Studies

For our studies, we have Father's dictionary and the Bible we found here at Grandmother's, in the attic.
We have lessons in spelling, composition, reading, mental arithmetic, mathematics, and memorization.
We use the dictionary for spelling, to obtain explanations, but also to learn new words, synonyms and antonyms.
We use the Bible for reading aloud, dictation, and memorization. We are thus learning whole pages of the Bible by heart.
This is how a composition lesson proceeds:
We are sitting at the kitchen table with our sheets of graph paper, our pencils, and the notebook. We are alone.
One of us says:
"The title of your composition is: 'Arrival at Grandmother's.' "
The other says:
"The title of your composition is: 'Our Chores.' "
We start writing. We have two hours to deal with the subject and two sheets of paper at our disposal.
At the end of two hours we exchange our sheets of paper. Each of us corrects the other's spelling mistakes with the help of the dictionary and writes at the bottom of the page: "Good" or "Not good." If it's "Not good," we throw the composition in the fire and try to deal with the same subject in the next lesson. If it's "Good," we can copy the composition into the notebook.
To decide whether it's "Good" or "Not good," we have a very simple rule: the composition must be true. We must describe what is, what we see, what we hear, what we do.
For example, it is forbidden to write, "Grandmother is like a witch"; but we are allowed to write, "People call Grandmother the Witch."
It is forbidden to write, "The Little Town is beautiful," because the Little Town may be beautiful to us and ugly to someone else.
Similarly, if we write, "The orderly is nice," this isn't a truth, because the orderly may be capable of malicious acts that we know nothing about. So we would simply write, "The orderly has given us some blankets."
We would write, "We eat a lot of walnuts," and not "We love walnuts," because the word "love" is not a reliable word, it lacks precision and objectivity. "To love walnuts" and "to love Mother" don't mean the same thing. The first expression designates a pleasant taste in the mouth, the second a feeling.
Words that define feelings are very vague. It is better to avoid using them and stick to the description of objects, human beings, and oneself, that is to say, to the faithful description of facts."



Alberico Collina

Verve and Panache

The opening lines of Moby Dick are a bewitching blend of eloquence and humour. In them, Ishmael, the protagonist and narrator, launches into a surreal description of his innermost feelings, with verve and panache.

By translating thought into action, Melville conveys Ishmael's emotions and state of mind, with refreshing immediacy. There is a cinematic quality to his words, that is mesmerising. As you read them, you have the feeling you are watching a Charlie Chaplin masterpiece, where comedy and tragedy jostle for your attention. And where they both receive it.

Melville dazzles us with this opening. Before we know it, he puts us in Ishmael's shoes and has us walk around in them. And though we are not sure where they will take us, we know it's going to be one hell of a ride, so we hold on.

"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."


Alberico Collina

The Guilty Snowflake

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, 1909-1966, was a Polish writer famous for two collections of aphorisms: Unkempt Thoughts and More Unkempt Thoughts. He is original and witty, with a taste for the surreal, and a penchant for paradox. Here are just a few of his gems:

On denial - "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

On the agenda of politicians - "Politics: a Trojan horse race."

On the value of secrets - "An empty envelope that is sealed contains a secret."

On the dynamics of faith and understanding - "Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand."

On the danger of success - "On every summit, you are on the brink of an abyss."

On unfathomable ignorance - "Every now and then you meet a man whose ignorance is encyclopedic."
On the joy of relativity - "Hay smells different to lovers and horses."

On the contradictions of superstition - "If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?"

On progress and its shortcomings - "Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?"

On the eloquence of silence - "Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard."

On the freedom of the press - "The window on the world can be covered by a newspaper."

On being bias - "There were grammatical errors even in his silence."

On the transmission of ideas -"Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody."

On the vagaries of history - "When smashing monuments, save the pedestals. They always come in handy."

On aging gracefully - "Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art."



Alberico Collina

When Elegance Meets Eloquence


The Tartar Steppe (Il deserto dei tartari) by Dino Buzzati is one of those books with which I have a long standing love affair. I may neglect it for months, but then I have the irresistible urge to be seduced by it again.

Nobody writes like Buzzati. His use of figurative language and symbolism is never decorative; it is always strictly at the service of clarity.

In the following excerpt, which I translated from the original (it doesn't do it justice but I couldn't find another), Buzzati describes how his protagonist, Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo, home on leave from his military posting, realises his youth has come to an end.

Buzzati's skill is to have Drogo come to this abrupt and painful realisation not through something that happens, but something that doesn't take place. The absence of a maternal gesture he'd taken for granted; his mother waking up in the middle of the night to check that he'd finally come home safe.

Buzzati's mastery lies in having Drogo describe this critical moment as a reflection. By doing this, we witness the transformation with the main character, sharing his pain.

In the Tartar Steppe, Buzzati's words paint pictures that speak to our eyes, our ears, and ultimately to our hearts. It is a model of elegance and a triumph of eloquence; one that seduces and teaches in equal measure.


"There was a time when his footsteps would have reached her in her sleep as a set signal. All other noises of the night, even if loud, would not have woken her up, neither the horse carriage in the street, nor the wailing of a child, nor the howling of dogs, nor the owls, nor the shutters flapping. And not because he was noisy (Giovanni walked on tiptoes). There was no special reason for this, it was just because he was the son. But now alas, this was no longer the case. Now he had said "Hi!" to his mum like in the old days, with the same tone of voice, sure that, at the familiar sound of his footsteps, she would have woken. But no one had replied but the rumbling of a distant horse carriage. Nothing to worry about, he thought, it may just be a ridiculous coincidence. And yet, as he prepared to go to bed, he felt a bitter sensation, as if the affections she once had for him had waned, as if the time and distance between them had slowly drawn a veil of separation between them."

(original in Italian)
"Una volta i suoi passi la raggiungevano nel sonno come un richiamo stabilito. Tuttigli altri rumori nella notte, anche se molto più forti, non bastavano a svegliarla, né icarri giù nella strada, né il pianto di un bambino, né gli ululati dei cani, né le civette,né l'imposta che sbatte, né il vento dentro le gronde, né la pioggia o lo scricchiolaredei mobili. Soltanto il passo di lui la svegliava, non perché fosse rumoroso (Giovannianzi andava in punta di piedi). Nessuna speciale ragione, soltanto che lui era ilfigliolo. Ma adesso dunque non più. Adesso lui aveva salutato la mamma come unavolta, con la medesima inflessione di voce, certo che al familiare rumore dei suoipassi si fosse destata. Invece nessuno gli aveva risposto fuori che il rotolio dellalontana carrozza. Una stupidaggine, pensò, una ridicola coincidenza, poteva anchedarsi. Eppure gliene restava, mentre si disponeva a entrare nel letto, una impressioneamara, quasi l'affetto di una volta si fosse appannato, come se fra loro due il tempo ela lontananza avessero lentamente disteso un velo di separazione."


Alberico Collina

The Writer's Trinity

In this brief excerpt, Graham Greene describes the writing method that allowed him to produce a novel a year. It reveals a very disciplined individual who has learned to pace himself. One who writes five hundred words a day and stops mid-sentence, only to pick up the next day from precisely where he left off the day before.

In the evening, he reads the work written in the morning. He knows his mind will work in the background during sleep. He calls on his unconscious to counsel him because "...in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on paper." He does not appear to be afflicted by writer's block in any way since, as he says, "We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them."

It's the Writer's Trinity: talent, method, and discipline.

"Over twenty years I have probably averaged five hundred words a day for five days a week. I can produce a novel in a year, and that allows time for revision and the correction of the typescript. I have always been very methodical, and when my quota of work is done I break off, even in the middle of a scene. Every now and then during the morning’s work I count what I have done and mark off the hundreds on my manuscript. No printer need make a careful cast-off of my work, for there on the front page is marked the figure — 83,764. When I was young not even a love affair would alter my schedule. A love affair had to begin after lunch, and however late I might be in getting to bed — as long as I slept in my own bed — I would read the morning’s work over and sleep on it. … So much of a novelist’s writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious; in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on paper. We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them."



Alberico Collina

It's not the Story, it's the Storyteller


Told After Supper by Jerome K. Jerome is one of those books I dip into every now and again. Jerome's writing is deceptively effortless and his comic timing is immaculate.

Jerome's skill derives from his ability to put us in the protagonist's shoes and enable us to quickly visualise what he sees. His words make us feel we are the hapless raconteur, and we share his embarrassment. By varying the length of his sentences, and by clever syntax, we are given suspense, and an idea of the main character's ramblings.

Jerome is a cheeky virtuoso, a master storyteller who plays with us, the reader, while telling us he's doing so.
Look at this brief excerpt, in which he describes his alcohol-fueled efforts at telling a ghost story to fellow guests on Christmas eve. It's simply superb. And superbly simple.

"I started relating a most interesting anecdote, but was somewhat
surprised to observe, as I went on, that nobody was paying the
slightest attention to me whatever. I thought this rather rude of
them at first, until it dawned upon me that I was talking to myself
all the time, instead of out aloud, so that, of course, they did
not know that I was telling them a tale at all, and were probably
puzzled to understand the meaning of my animated expression and
eloquent gestures. It was a most curious mistake for any one to
make. I never knew such a thing happen to me before."


Alberico Collina

A Fireman's Conscience


The opening lines to FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury are manic and magical. Montag, the protagonist is a fireman with a difference. He doesn't put out fires, he burns books; 451 Fahrenheit being the temperature at which book paper burns. And he not only burns books, he gets a kick out of it.

Bradbury employs similes and metaphors to give us insight into Montag's disturbed mind. Montag's delusions of grandeur make him appear as "...some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies...". The hose he wields becomes a "...great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world...". The burning debris flying around him becomes "...a swarm of fireflies..." through which he strides.

But Montag's beginning to question what he does and why he does it. He's someone who, in the fury of a hungry fire, notices how "...flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house.". Someone who's developing a conscience. Someone who needs to be careful.

"It was a pleasure to burn it. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning. Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame. He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that. smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered."



Alberico Collina

Wors That Expand Our World

In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens describes the hunger that haunted and plagued the poor, by employing visually compelling metaphors. Hunger's a plant and its seeds are "ploughed" into the wrinkles of the young and the old, who age precociously working at the mill. It's "pushed out of tall houses" like an uninvited guest. It's "patched" into threadbare clothing. Hunger is everywhere. It's in the shortage of food on display in the shops. It's in the lack of chimney smoke and in the absence of offal refuse. Hunger's "dry bones" rattle inside "the roasting chestnut cylinder".

Dickens breathes life into things. He uses words to make them come alive. He gives physical attributes to feelings, and he gives feelings to physical entities - hunger has a skeleton while oil drops are "reluctant".
If language defines the limits to our world, reading Dickens is the equivalent of living inside a universe that expands with every line.

"...The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil."



Alberico Collina