We Are More than What We Own


The opening lines of The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett tell us all we need to know.

Almost.

They give us an insight into the personality of the two principal characters Mr. and Mrs. Ransome.

They give us the setting - their house.

They give us the nature and extent of the conflict taking place - their house has been burgled and whoever burgled it took away everything, leaving no clue as to their identity.

And ultimately these lines whet our appetite for discovering what, if any, resolution there can be to such a surreal state of affairs.

In this novel, Alan Bennett shows us how our lives are dependent on property to give it meaning.

And by sympathizing with a couple who are suddenly stripped of all their possessions, Bennett reminds us that we too live in a fool’s paradise. One where we take comfort, not from who we are, or from what we do, but from that which we own.

And this would be a bitter pill to swallow if it weren’t for Bennett’s humour, which permeates all and reminds us that the ability to laugh at ourselves is probably our most valuable possession.


Alberico Collina

"The Ransomes had been burgled. "Robbed," Mrs. Ransome said. "Burgled," Mr. Ransome corrected. Premises were burgled; persons were robbed. Mr. Ransome was a solicitor by profession and thought words mattered. Though "burgled" was the wrong word too. Burglars select; they pick; they remove one item and ignore others. There is a limit to what burglars can take: they seldom take easy chairs, for example, and even more seldom settees. These burglars did. They took everything."
Opening lines of The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett

A Disappointing Fit


In the opening lines of The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati, the author paints an almost impressionist picture of the book’s protagonist and his state of mind.

We slip inside Giovanni Drogo’s “lieutenant’s uniform,” which he wears for the first time, and from which he does not find the “expected joy.”

And we catch Drogo at the decisive moment, when he contemplates that his “real life” is about to start.

It’s still dark outside, and he hears his mother in the next room, getting up to say goodbye to him.

And in those precious minutes, he looks back on his harsh Academy days and the sacrifices he had endured to study.

But this new life, like his new lieutenant’s uniform, is a disappointing fit.

And in his heart, he wonders if sacrificing the best years of his life has been worth it.

He knows his past, and he wants to get away from its squalor.

But the present starts with a veiled disenchantment, a possible foreshadowing.

Since, in his heart, he must fear that the future, like his past, will be spent “counting one by one the days to which there seemed to be no end.”


Alberico Collina



“One September morning, Giovanni Drogo, being newly commissioned, set out from the city for Fort Bastiani; it was his first posting.

He had himself called while it was still dark and for the first time put on his lieutenant’s uniform. When he had done, he looked at himself in the mirror by the light of an oil lamp but failed to find there the expected joy. There was a great silence in the house but from a neighbouring room low noises could be heard; his mother was rising to bid him farewell.

This was the day he had looked forward to for years – the beginning of his real life. He thought of the drab days at the military Academy, remembered the bitter evenings spent at his books when he would hear people passing in the streets – people who were free and presumably happy, remembered winter reveilles in the icy barrack rooms heavy with the threat of punishment. He recalled the torture of counting one by one the days to which there seemed to be no end.”

Opening lines of The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (translated by Stuart Clink Hood)

 

 
(in the original Italian)
“Nominato ufficiale, Giovanni Drogo partì una mattina di settembre dalla città per raggiungere la Fortezza Bastiani, sua prima destinazione.

Si fece svegliare ch'era ancora notte e vestì per la prima volta la divisa di tenente. Come ebbe finito, al lume di una lampada a petrolio si guardò allo specchio, ma senza trovare la letizia che aveva sperato. Nella casa c'era un grande silenzio, si udivano solo piccoli rumori da una stanza vicina; sua mamma stava alzandosi per salutarlo.

Era quello il giorno atteso da anni, il principio della sua vera vita. Pensava alle giornate squallide all'Accademia militare, si ricordò delle amare sere di studio quando sentiva fuori nelle vie passare la gente libera e presumibilmente felice; delle sveglie invernali nei cameroni gelati, dove ristagnava l'incubo delle punizioni. Ricordò la pena di contare i giorni ad uno ad uno, che sembrava non finissero mai.”

Incipit - Il Deserto dei Tartari di dino Buzzati

Unburdened by Revenge


I can’t throw away books.

I’ve tried.

I’ve put them in the rubbish bin in the evening, only to rescue them just before the refuse collector turns up in the morning.

Some books I’ve saved this way many times over.

One book in particular holds the record.

It’s a paperback version of Autumn Quail by Naguib Mahfouz, which I bought when I was working in Cairo.

I want to throw it away because it’s falling apart, but I can’t throw it away since I have yet to replace it. And so I read it gently, laying out one detached page at a time like a sacred text, of which there is only one copy.

Autumn Quail is a small masterpiece. It chronicles the fall from grace of Isa, a high-ranking bureaucrat, with immense social and political ambitions, who becomes collateral damage when the 1952 Egyptian revolution erupts.

His life will undergo changes that will take him far from his comfort zone.

He will see the world that he believed in, and which gave him power and influence, crumble around him.

And once he gets over the shock, he will rediscover his country, its people, and, above all, himself.

His is a rapid descent down the Cairo social ladder, which brings him to Alexandria and to an existence that is light years away from the one he had in Cairo.

And through this fall he will lose much, but he will learn more.

Mahfouz is a master at describing a man that loses status and possessions but rediscovers life in the process.

Time, that muse that had always eluded him in his climb to the top now gives herself freely to him.

And Isa begins to appreciate those things that he’d been all too ready to see fly past him before.

His senses begin to take over.

He begins to see, to hear, to smell, to taste, and to feel again.

And this will take him to a place he would never have dreamed.

A place where there is no right or wrong, where people forgive the sins of the past and run towards a future unburdened by revenge.



Alberico Collina

Every Word Counts


There’s a passage in Agota Kristof’s “The Notebook”, where the twins, the narrators, describe their grandmother.

I have seldom read anything with such raw energy and directness.


Kristof's sentences are short, bare, and in your face.

Kristof may not be to everybody's taste.

She can take you to some very dark places sometimes.

And if you’re in the wrong mood, there’s a danger you may linger there.

But her talent is indisputable.

When you read Kristof, you realize that we are bigger than what happens to us, that our mistakes do not define us, and that, whatever else, we all have a story to tell.

And every word counts.


Alberico Collina


"Grandmother

Grandmother is Mother's mother. Before coming to live in her house, we didn't even know that Mother still had a mother.
We call her Grandmother.
People call her the Witch. She calls us "sons of a bitch."
Grandmother is small and thin. She has a black shawl on her head. Her clothes are dark gray.
She wears old army shoes. When the weather's nice, she goes barefoot. Her face is covered with wrinkles, brown spots, and warts that sprout hairs. She has no teeth left, at least none that can be seen.
Grandmother never washes. She wipes her mouth with the corner of her shawl when she's finished eating or drinking. She doesn't wear underpants. When she wants to urinate, she just stops wherever she happens to be, spreads her legs, and pisses on the ground under her skirt.
Of course, she doesn't do it in the house.
Grandmother never undresses. We have watched her in her room at night. She takes off her skirt and there's another skirt underneath. She takes off her blouse and there's another blouse underneath. She goes to bed like that. She doesn't take off her shawl.
Grandmother doesn't say much. Except in the evening. In the evening, she takes a bottle down from a shelf and drinks straight out of it. Soon she starts to talk in a language we don't know. It's not the language the foreign soldiers speak, it's a quite different language.
In that unknown language, Grandmother asks herself questions and answers them. Sometimes she laughs, sometimes she gets angry and shouts. In the end, almost always, she starts crying, she staggers into her room, she drops onto her bed, and we hear her sobbing far into the night."
from The Notebook by Agotha Kristof (translated by Alan Sheridan)

Night in Town is a Pocket that has Been Turned Inside Out


Erri DeLuca is a naepolitan writer with a gift for vivid metaphors.

In this short description, taken from his novel  The day Before Happiness, we get to smell, taste, listen, watch, and feel what nights where like in post-war Naples.

And we gather that night was everything the day was not.

In his words “Night in Town is a Pocket that has Been Turned Inside Out”.


Alberico Collina

“The city is beautiful at night. There is danger but also freedom.  In the streets roam those without sleep, artists, murderers, players, and the taverns, the fry-up kitchens, and the cafes are open. Among those who live by night, you greet each other, you get to know each other. People forgive your vices. Daylight accuses while the darkness of the night confers absolution. The transformed, men dressed as women because that is what nature tells them, can come out and nobody bothers them. No one asks you to explain yourself at night. It’s when the maimed, the blind, and the clubfooted come out, having been rejected during the day. Night in town is a pocket that has been turned inside out. Even dogs come out, those without homes. They wait for the night to find scraps, these dogs manage to survive without anyone looking after them. At night, the town is a civilized place.”

(from The Day Before Happiness by Erri DeLuca – my translation)

The original (in Italian)

“È bella di notte la città. C'è pericolo ma pure libertà. Ci girano quelli senza sonno, gli artisti, gli assassini, i giocatori, stanno aperte le osterie, le friggitorie, i caffè. Ci si saluta, ci si conosce, tra quelli che campano di notte. Le persone perdonano i vizi. La luce del giorno accusa, lo scuro della notte dà l'assoluzione. Escono i trasformati, uomini vestiti da donna, perché così gli dice la natura e nessuno li scoccia. Nessuno chiede di conto di notte. Escono gli storpi, i ciechi, gli zoppi, che di giorno vengono respinti. È una tasca rivoltata, la notte nella città. Escono pure i cani, quelli senza casa. Aspettano la notte per cercare gli avanzi, quanti cani riescono a campare senza nessuno. Di notte la città è un paese civile.”

(Il giorno prima della felicità di Erri DeLuca)

A Lifeline of Books


In this passage from Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger, Mr. Antolini explains to the young Holden the merits of an education.

He knows Holden thinks school is pointless and teachers are phonies.

But he also senses Holden is aware of his inability to adequately express his thoughts and feelings.

And he uses this to eloquently convey to Holden the notion that books are a lifeline because we learn from the mistakes and vicissitudes endured by their writers.

And if we're lucky, and we have the talent, maybe one day we can think of helping other people by writing about ours.


Alberico Collina


"And I hate to tell you," he said, "but I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school. You'll have to. You're a student – whether the idea appeals to you or not. You're in love with knowledge. And I think you'll find, once you get past all the Mr. Vineses […] you're going to start getting closer and closer – that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it – to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

The opening lines of Sylvie by Gérard de Nerval propels us inside the mind and heart of its listless protagonist.

A man who frequents the theatre and finds solace in an actress whose "vivid appearance illuminated the empty spaces, and, with a breath and a word, summoned the shadowy figures of the actors back to life.".

The object of his desire is a woman who "showed her simple beauty against a curtain of shadows...".

Nerval paints a compelling picture of a man whose obsession for beauty injects colour back into his life, and lends shape to the shadows that populate his world.

His quest for beauty will take him, and us, on a sentimental journey through the places of his childhood.

A landscape of magical places inhabited by hauntingly attractive individuals, who take us by the hand through a landscape of memories and dreams.

A landscape where reality is but a detail that recedes in importance as our protagonist's and our imagination takes flight.

A landscape that consumes and seduces us in equal measure.


Alberico Collina


"I left the theatre where I sat every evening in a stage box, dressed with the elegance and care befitting my hopes. Sometimes the house was full, and sometimes empty, but it mattered little to me whether my eyes rested upon thirty or forty deadheads in the pit and upon boxes filled with old-time caps and dresses, or whether I found myself part of an enthusiastic audience, crowding every tier with color and the gleam of jewels. The stage awakened my interest no more than did the house, except, during the second and third scene of the tiresome play, when a vivid appearance illuminated the empty spaces, and, with a breath and a word, summoned the shadowy figures of the actors back to life.

I felt that I lived in her, and that she lived only for me. Her smile filled me with infinite contentment, and the resonance of her voice, now soft, now vibrating with emotion, made me tremble with joy and love. She understood all my enthusiasms and whims; for me she possessed every perfection – radiant as the day, when the footlights were tuned down and the rays of the chandelier showed her simple beauty against a curtain of shadows, like one of the divine Hours carved on the sombre background of the frescoes of Herculaneum."

Language Cocktail


In this passage from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip's "guilty mind" conspires with the environment to give him the impression that everything and everybody is aware that he has taken food from his sister's larder.

The mist "run(s) at him" and the gates, dikes, and banks "came bursting through the mist" as if chasing after him.

And at the pinnacle of paranoia, Pip mistakes "a black ox with a white cravat" for a priest with his dog collar, to whom he confesses his crime.

It's a perfectly balanced cocktail of language, psychology, and humour.

Pure Dickens.


Alberico Collina


"The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dikes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebody's else's pork pie! Stop him!" The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, "Halloa, young thief!" One black ox, with a white cravat on,--who even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air,--fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, "I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't for myself I took it!" Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail."

Mouth to Mouth


The following story is an interesting take on how one of the most pleasant activities known to humans may have developed.

But it's anything but romantic.


Alberico Collina




THE FOOL WHO INVENTED KISSING by Doug Long


He clubbed her and dragged her off to the cave.

She hated him.

He washed her face, untied her, and gave her the last meat from the fire.

That was better.

Hungry himself, he licked her greasy fingers, then her face. His lips brushed hers, paused, touched again.

Tomorrow, he would kill meat for her.


from World’s Shortest Stories Of Love And Death, a collection of fifty-five word stories compiled and edited by Steve Moss and John M. Daniel

Lovely Mute Ghosts


In this passage from The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, a speech by Don Fabrizio Salina, the protagonist, gives us a precious insight into Sicilian mentality and its heritage.

The monuments of Sicily's past invaders are disturbingly described as "lovely mute ghosts" who are "standing around us".

A vivid picture of a haunting Past in which Sicilians are trapped.

Lampedusa also shows his knowledge of rhetoric in this speech:

• The Use of Contrast - "...magnificent yet incomprehensible..." monuments "...not built by us and yet standing around us..." and "...works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we understood only too well..."; and
• The Rule of Three - "This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension..."; the rulers who were "...at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood..." (contrast and rule of three combined).

Lampedusa has a delayed effect on me.

Hours or days after rereading The Leopard, my admiration for the man and his work grows.

And I smile at the modest way his immense talent slowly reveals itself in new and unforeseen ways.


Alberico Collina


“For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilizations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call our own. 

This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing round us like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind.”