Sabato’s The Tunnel (1948) resembles Camus’ The Stranger (1942), for both are spare, short novels featuring murderer-protagonists as first person narrators, men who are profoundly alienated not only from their societies but also from any meaningful personal relationship. But the two protagonists are very different from each other too. Camus’ hero Meursault, a shipping clerk, is an unimaginative man alienated from his own emotions; Sabato’s hero Castel, a well-known painter, experiences his emotions intensely but projects them all onto a woman, the only woman—he believes—who can ever fully understand him. Meursault’s alienation leads to a murder of indifference, Sabato’s to a murder of obsession.

The reader watches in growing frustration and horror as Castel poisons what might have been a brief, sweet dalliance with a married woman who notices something in one of his paintings he believed only he and his ideal woman could ever see. His relentless, all-consuming hunger for her absolute devotion devours each romantic encounter, draining it of joy, and further intensifying his isolation. Then one day, that isolation blossoms into crime.

This is a fine book about the desperate loneliness of romantic obsession. If such an obsession has ever touched your life, you should find this short novel both disturbing and fascinating.

So why is it called The Tunnel? Sabato—and Castel--explains this metaphor toward the end of the book:

n  ...it was if the two of us had been living in parallel passageways or tunnels, never knowing that we were moving side by side, like souls in like times, finally to meet before a scene I had painted as a kind of key meant for her alone, as a kind of secret sign that I was there ahead of her and that the passageways finally had joined and the hour of our meeting had come...What a stupid illusion that had been!...that the whole story of the passageways was my own ridiculous invention and that after all there was only one tunnel, dark and solitary: mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my entire life.n

این کتاب رو 10 روز بعد از بیگانه ی کامو خوندم و حیرت و تحسین تمام قدم برای این دو نویسن��ه بود که تونستن پستی بلندیها، گره ها، خلا ها و تمناهای روح و شخصیت قهرمانهای قصه و ماجراها و اتفاقاتشون رو در کمتر از 200 صفحه، به این زیبایی در ذهنم حک و برام ملموس کنن؟ تجربه ای که درمورد کمترین کتاب کم حجمی داشتم، معروترینش مسخ کافکا! اما برخلاف نظر خیلی از دوستان، تونل برای من یادآور بیگانه نبود گرچه هر دو بر بستر دیدگاه اگزیستانسیالیستی روایت میشن. شاید به دلیل رویکرد متفاوت شخصت های اصلی دو کتاب. کاستل به شدت عملگراست و جاه طلب و دستخوش احساسات مختلف شور، عشق، تمنا، خشم، حسادت، نفرت و... برخلاف مورسو که هیچ میلی به پیشرفت نداشت، منفعل بود و "برایش فرقی نمیکرد"


تونل ماجرای پیچیده ای نداره و اونچه که باهاش مواجهیم عشق، آشفتگی، جنون و نیاز فزاینده ی یک نقاشِ تنها و منزوی به زنی مرموزه. چیزی که بیش از همه منو در طول داستان جذب خودش میکرد قضاوت ها و تحلیل ها و استنتاج های کاستل بود که گرچه مبنا و اصالتشون مبهم و شاید حتی غیردرست بود اما برای یک ذهن شوریده، تسلسل قوی و فرآیند منطقی و نتیجه ای متقاعد کننده داشت. اونقدر متقاعد کننده که با خلا درونی وعقده ها و کمبودهای اون آدم دست به یکی کنن و فرمان قتل معشوق رو صادر.
چه قضاوت ها و استنتاج هایی از این دست که هر کدوم از ما تو زندگی نداشتیم و چه آدمها که بخاطرش نکشتیم! حالا یکی کمتر یکی بیشتر

I hope to never say that I can understand, that I possibly have something in common with a stalking murderer, but that hope was smashed the moment I read The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato.

Do you like art?

The story of Juan Pablo Castel, the introverted and misanthropic painter turned murderer, meeting at one of his art exhibitions a woman with whom he swiftly becomes obsessed, is interestingly equally terrifying as it is hilarious.

As comedic as especially his initial reactions to this new situation of being in love turn out to be, they more than serve the purpose of building a connection between reader and this problematic, sick character. That feeling of being connected, of rooting for a protagonist undergoes a quick metamorphosis which leaves us oscillating between terrified and highly amused, as Castel’s feelings descent into furious and dangerous misogyny the more they transcend his passionate love. Said connection becomes interrupted, if not completely destroyed once the direction of his dark delirium is set.

… after all there was only one tunnel, dark and solitary: mine…

If nothing else, Castel is at least brutally honest to us, right from the first sentence. And what the novel starts with is what is left in the end too - a deeply sad man, petrified by his own solitude into which he sinks the more he tries to get away.
This was very touching in a dark way, I need to let it sink in too.

پیش از هر چیز به‌نظرم مقدمه مترجم را جدی نگیرید‌ هر کس جزئیات تجربه‌های درونی زندگی را بازگو کرد لزوما اگزیستانسیالیست از نوع سارتر و کامو نیست، گرچه شباهت‌هایی داشته باشد. از متوسط بودن ترجمه هم که بگذریم، با توجه به محتوای داستان احتمالا با اثر پرسانسوری روبرو هستیم

من دو بعد در اثر می‌بینم، بدون تلاش برای لو دادن داستان. یک بعد روان‌کاوانه که تلاش می‌کند درونیات انسانی را با تمرکز بر تناقض‌های کلام و عمل انسان موشکافی کند، و دیگری برخی جنبه‌های وجودی در مواجهه با تنهایی مغرورانه که فرد را در مقابل جامعه قرار می‌دهد. و اثر راهش را آنجا از اگزیستانسیالیسم جدا می‌کند که بجای پرداختن به وضع وجودی و مواجهه‌اش با دنیا در قالب تصاویری زنده و تجربه زیسته، تاکید بسیاری بر کلام دارد، حرف و حرف و حرف. گفتگوهای پرشمار بین دو کاراکتر اصلی که در لحظات اندکی حس شگرف تجربه‌هایی وجودی می‌دهد، مانند صحنه نشستن در کنار آب و خیره شدن به زیبایی که در کلام نمی‌گنجد و عدم پایداری آن، و علم به بازگشت به همان زندگی راکد نوعی رنج اگزیستانسیال تحمیل می‌کند.

Oh yeah, mid-20th-century existentialist novel. You’ll be forgiven if you open this book to a random page and think that you’re reading Sartre’s Nausea – but you’ll soon realize that it’s not as good as Nausea. There’s murder here, and it will remind you of the other famous existentialist novel – The Stranger – except that it’s not as good as that one either. But the message is all the same: Oh, what a heavy burden it is to find yourself living in a universe that is void of any meaning and purpose!

I think this book came to me a bit late. I probably would have loved it even a few years ago. I’ve given a lot of five stars here to books like this. The ratings reflect how I felt when I read those books. I’m not sure how I’d like them if I read them now. I held on to “the rage” long after my teenage years, but I tell you people, once ennui fully sets in, even existential angst becomes boring.

There are times I feel that nothing has meaning. On a tiny planet that has been racing towards oblivion for millions of years, we are born amid sorrow; we grow, we struggle, we grow ill, we suffer, we make others suffer, we cry out, we die, others die, and new beings are born to begin the senseless comedy all over again.

YAWNS.

Was that really it? I sat pondering the idea of the absence of meaning. Was our life nothing more than a sequence of anonymous screams in a desert of indifferent stars?

A sequence of anonymous screams in a desert of indifferent stars! There was a time that I could have masturbated to that sentence. This is not to say that I now disagree with you, Mr. Sábato. It really is a senseless comedy, and we really are racing towards oblivion. That’s why it’s so much better – not to mention so much more difficult – to say something that offers hope and beauty. Despair is far too easy – and boring.

You know I was going to review this book but then it occurred to me that I would never know if you have read my review. I mean yes, I do get likes but suppose people are liking them without reading them. Of course, why would anyone do that? Two possibilities seem to suggest themselves – either they want to make a fool of me by making me keep writing reviews that no one reads or to distract me from something. Of course, that in itself calls for a mass conspiracy because so many people from so many countries will be liking my reviews – unless of course, it is one person with many fake accounts. Now that I think about it the possibility seems very real…

…. The above is how our protagonist might have started a review. But now to proper review:
I don’t know if it can be defined that way but all art – whether it be painting, writing, singing etc, all art forms seems to be tools, of communication – of communicating in superior ways. It is like that teenager boy writing poems to his sweat-heart sort of thing – or making albums, quoting great poets when one doesn’t feel gifted oneself – because our normal everyday language isn’t enough to express what we feel.

But what about artists? What yearnings must they have in themselves to make it their profession to develop those tools; to be on constant look out, at just the right word, phrase, color etc? Why should MB write, leave alone his manuscript of Master and Margarita’ leave alone keep them knowing that they are as good as their death warrant? ‘Manuscripts don’t burn’ one hears in the answer but why don’t they? Is it that they live in constant fear of being misunderstood like Kafka was?

Perhaps getting the message right in itself not enough, there must also need be the person who can understand the message. And thus, Nabokov’s irritation at wrong interpretations of his works and Van Gogh’s sorrow, who though created most beautiful paintings, never found a pair of eyes in which that beauty is reflected. Perhaps that is why artists seek posterity and immortality – to carry to their death bed the hope that what they have to say will be one day be heard in just the way they wanted. The protagonist in the ‘Invitation to a Beheading’ by Nabokov gives his writings to his executioners in desperation and asks them not to destroy them as long as he is alive so that he could at least have a theoretical chance of finding a reader.

So, is it for that theoretical chance of finding someone who will understand him that keeps the artist going? It seems to be true in the case of Juan Pablo, our protagonist here, for whom the whole life was like a dark tunnel (yes that explains the title) where he lived in solitude because, as he puts it, ‘no one understood him’.

The trouble begins when he finds a woman does understand him. And he discovers that he has a lot more to say than that single painting. She wants that too – because the need for understanding is mutual. It doesn’t matter who paints and who reflects. Only our guy can’t have enough – his overt-thinking, over-analytical, pathological brain can’t believe his good fortune. Like Anna Karenina, he needs constant assurances of her fidelity – as is often the case of those who fell in love when they had long given up on any chance of finding it. Like her, he too dwells over suicide but rather prefers killing his girlfriend.

Camus commissioned its publishing – and the narrator here too finds himself a stranger in his world but his solitude because he is a nihilist but rather because of his misanthropy. It also shows similarity to ‘Lolita’ in that Juan Pable might be putting his own version and suppressing the voice of his victim.

Genial. Este é o adjetivo que me ocorre quando tento classificar esta obra do argentino Ernesto Sabato, miseravelmente a primeira que dele leio. Juan Pablo Castel é um personagem incrivelmente bem construído, o mais triste exemplar do homem só, desconfiado porque incapaz de comunicar, obcecado por uma mulher que acaba por matar. Castel narra, ele próprio, a história do seu crime, explica, com pormenores, o processo mental que o conduz à decisão de assassinar Maria Iribarne, a única pessoa que parecia capaz de o compreender. Na verdade, Castel sente que percorre um túnel que, algures, se cruza com outro túnel, e sofre a impossibilidade de uma interseção, de um caminho comum para o entendimento. Nesse sentindo, experimentamos, na leitura, uma certa claustrofobia existencial, um deslizamento solitário para a loucura da incompreensão do outro e pelo outro.
Sabato deita o ser humano no divã e o resultado é assustador, mas, insisto, genial.

It should be sufficient to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed María Iribarne.

That is how the story unfolded itself. It began with that one sentence - a simple, staightforward confession.

After I finished the novella, it felt like waking up from a dream. Not just a normal dream but a nightmarish one. The kind that leaves you dazed as its after effect.

There was one person who could have understood me. But she was the very person I killed.n

It's no secret that Castel was the one who killed María Iribarne. This is a book about his coming out with the truth behind his terrible actions but that was it. He made no mentions of justifying his deeds nor does he shows much remorse over the dead woman he loved.

It was... disturbing.

But then again, everything about this painter is. It's horrifying to read through what goes on in this madman's mind. He had this hatred toward humanity boiling inside him and he purged it out heatedly in his words. In his eyes, all human beings are assholes. He even view them (us) as hypocritical, ass-kissing bastards. The way he wrote it, you can almost feel this hate-passion of his in your heart.

I scorn all humankind; people around me are vile, sordid, stupid, greedy, gross, niggardly. I do not fear solitude; it is almost Olympian

Then he'd go deep on the subject that makes you ponder - really ponder over the meaning of it all. It's infectious and... wonderful.

n
On a tiny planet that has been racing toward oblivion for millions of years, we are born amid sorrow; we grow, we struggle, we grow ill, we suffer, we make others suffer, we cry out, we die, others die, and new beings are born to begin the senseless comedy all over again.

. . .

Was our life nothing more than a sequence of anonymous screams in a desert of indifferent stars?

It is his total cynicism toward man that draws me in to him. I confess, I agreed to some of his opinions. Hell, I could even find myself relating to him and for that I am deeply disturbed...

When he got obsessed with María and started to stalk her everywhere at anytime. I was way more than disturbed. I was fucking terrified. When he gets passionate over someone or something, he fully dedicate himself to it - to the point of nearly reaching the brink of madness, and when he finally broke, the outcome was terrible.

The relationship portrayed was very abusive, very cruel... I nearly couldn't stomach it and wanted to stop but this book would never let me. Besides.. How can I stop when I'm addicted to what Castel has to say? How can I leave this book when I can clearly see that he is getting sicker in his head and madder in his actions? The answer is simple - I simply can't.

This book isn't for everyone, I can guarantee that. You'll be sickened and haunted by it and perhaps, you may even find yourself in Juan Pablo Castel. Maybe that will make you hate the book for it but in my case, I am awed.

In the end, it all comes down to the questions. Did he killed María Iribarne out of love or hate? Was María really what he perceived her to be?  The Tunnel is open to your own suggestions.


Pre-review

What a psychotic book this was. It feels like waking up from a terrible nightmare. So crazy, it's good.

See more reviews on books of all kinds of genres at...
n  n

رواية مدهشة


“كان هناك شخص واحد يمكنه أن يفهمني، لكنه كان بالتأكيد، الشخص الذي قتلته”.

إرنستو ساباتو.

Dark book. Inside the mind of a derranged obsessed man. Not a pleasant read but well written.

از خوانند‌ه‌ی اراجیفم نه، من از خودم بیزارم
اگر علاقه‌ای به جنون در ادبیات ندارید از این کتاب فاصله بگیرید.
مدت‌هاست که اینجا ننوشتم و نمی‌دونم چند کتاب از سنم گذشته، بگذریم...
همیشه به دنبال فضایی برای ارضاء سرگردانی‌های روحم بودم، تا به تونل ورودی افکار ساباتو و سه‌گانه‌اش (تونل، قهرمانان و گور‌ها و فرشته ظلمت) که میشه بهش گفت: دروازه‌ی مالیخولیا رسیدم.
همان اول کار که هم زمان با ساباتو ناخوداگاه فریاد زدم «من خوان پابلو کاستل هستم نقاشی که ماریا ایریبارنه را کشت»
من؟ ارنستو؟ یا خوان کاستل‌؟در آخر کتاب همه‌ی این‌ها بودم
وارد تونل ذهن ساباتو شدم،
« خوان پابلو کاستل» کسی که ماریا را به طور کامل برای خودش می‌خواست، با ذهن مریض و پر تشویش، می‌خواهد برای خودش ماریا‌ی مقدسی بسازد اما خود را از هر چیزی مبرا می‌داند.
جایی در کتاب اشاره می‌کند« گاهی وقت‌ها می‌شود که یک نفر احساس می‌کند ابر مرد است،و فقط بعد پی می‌برد که او هم پست و خیانتکار و شریری بیش نیست»
خوان پابلو ، تحقیر می‌شود
خوان پابلو نادیده گرفته می‌شود
و این بدترین آفت برای شخصیت پارانوئید هست
چراغ جنونش روشن می‌شود
و ماریای مقدسش... آه

Rečenica: >Vrijeme koje je prošlo bilo je bolje< ne znači da se ranije događalo manje zla, nego da srećom ljudi to zaboravljaju.

Ernesto Sabato je lovac. Kao što smrt vreba svoj plijen tako Sabato vreba svoj. Postavljajući zamke koje su često uznemirujuće i nose jednu gorčinu sa sobom, on se sapliće i pada u njih. Taman kada izađe iz jedne, pada u drugu i sve tako. Da bi prekinuo jedan takav krug on se pridružuje drugom lovcu koji se zove smrt. Zajedno, jedan u svojoj maniji, a drugi po prirodi stvari - pobjeđuju.

Ovo je ispovijedajuća naracija kojom Sabato kroz protagonistu Kastel nastoji da izanalizira ponašanje individue (sebe u svojoj opčinjenosti i očaranosti) i osobe prema kojoj tu istu opčinjenost i očaranost gaji. Oslikavajući jedan prozor on gradi paralelan svijet koji se gleda kroz taj prozor. Takvu umjetnost skoro niko ne razumije, sem jedne žene. Ta žena razumije taj prozor i ona će proći kroz njega. U tom svijetu psihološka tortura jednog biće na uštrb drugog.
Sabato je jako uspiješan u svom kolebanju ispitivanja sopstvenih grešaka i grešaka drugog. Ovo se čita bez pauze. Tako kratka knjiga, a tako mnogo rečeno, ostavljajući prostora da čitaoci sami protumače način rezonovanja u određenim često suprotno nasilnim situacijama.