" Everything here is full of nostalgia, maybe because there are few countries in the world where this feeling is so repetitive.
To the first Spaniards, because they missed their homeland from afar, then to the Indians, because they longed for the lost freedom, the very meaning of their existence ; and finally, to immigrants, because they missed their homeland, their wonderful habits, the Christmas holidays next to the fire ".

It is a book I read before " The Tunnel ", but to which I had some reluctance to make a synthesis, maybe you will understand .

" Héros et Tombes " - is a tunnel-book, with an obsessive background, and that arouses obsessions. It is dense and intense, misty and distressing, it is not for every mood.
It can be seen that he came out of an intellectual and spiritual ferment in great tumult.
A dynamic book, in which one thing and its opposite are tried and presented as options. A book full of devils, of devil's advocates, and of beings tormented by them, who try, in their own way, to find not a mausoleum, but à shelter .
To make everything even more complicated, towards the middle of the novel, Sabato inserts a completely strange, disconcerting section - Report of the Blind - a confession that describes in détail borderline experiences that would accumulate evidence for the existence of a conspiracy of the blind - the source of Absolute evil. (...) This part of the book , revolting through all sorts of radicalisms, continues with a series of apocalyptic visions and nightmare passages, all rendered from the perspective of a paranoid. It functions as a kind of black heart of the book, in which all the poisons circulating in the life and thoughts of the characters are metabolized.
There is also a love story, which consolidates a mystifying mythology of the troubled woman, a woman who disturbs, a destructive and self-destructive being.
Sometimes, over the years, such books arouse the fear of the one who was overwhelmed by them at the first reading, of the one who introduced them into his system maybe at more immature ages.
As a memory, this novel stuck in my mind as a collage of ghostly images of Buenos Aires, the bitterness of a shattering sad love story, and a taste for ultimate discussions, always nocturnal.

باز خوبه تا نصفش رفتم تا بفهمم جدا نه. برای من نه!

L-am ales pe Sabato pentru buna impresie pe care mi-a lăsat-o "Tunelul".
De altfel, "Despre eroi și morminte" este o continuare a aceleia, dar mult mai tenebroasă și sinistră, dacă se poate așa ceva.

Cartea este împărțită în 4 părți și are diverși naratori, prezentând mai multe planuri narative: cel al ciudatei iubiri dintre Alejandra cea tainică și Martin cel neintegrat; cel al lui Fernando cel absurd cu bizare fixații pentru orbi, tatăl Alejandrei; cel al lui Bruno, unul dintre naratori, martor al întâmplărilor din carte și liantul comun al celorlalte personaje; iar intr-un cadru secund, planul descriptiv al Argentinei, al evoluției ei și al poporului de emigranți care a format statul actual.

Mi-a plăcut mult scriitura, Ernesto Sabato este un scriitor colosal, m-a plimbat printr-un tărâm tainic şi nesănătos, absurd şi efemer ca visele, la fel de înspăimântător precum coșmarurile. M-am simțit de multe ori ca în universul lui Zafon, un alt scriitor gothic, pe care îl plac foarte mult.
Cu toate acestea, ceva nu s-a legat, parcă aș fi citit un pic de Joyce în plin delir, un Kafka în universul lui absurd, iar multe pagini, deși s-au citit ușor, au curs in van.

"Pentru că, din fericire, omul nu este plămădit numai din disperare, ci și din credință și speranță; nu numai din moarte, ci și din dorința arzătoare de a trăi; și nici doar din singurătate, ci și din momentele de comuniune și de dragoste."

"Cât de mult și-ar fi dorit furtuna celor mai proaste momente ale ei, decât acest calm cenușiu fără speranță."

کتاب چند لایه با شخصیت پردازی بسیار قوی
دوستش داشتم بخاطر، عصیانگری و تنهایی آلخاندرا ، سادگی و عاشق پیشگی مارتین و پارانوئیک و هزیان گویی فردینان، این دیوانگی فردینان چنان شوکه کننده و در بعضی جاها دردناک است که می خواهی از ترس این رنج فریاد بکشی، همه چیز گنگ و دیوانه کننده است و همین است که این شخصیت .پارانوئیک را جذاب و ترسناک می کند( یاد بیانیه اش درباره عدالت می افتم که اگر قرار بود عدالت مطابق این دیدگاه اجرا بشه بدا به حال قانون شکنان
ساباتو چنان زیبا این شخصیت روان پریش را به تصویر کشیده که آدم حیرت می کند، خیالبافی ها، هزیان گویی ها و از همه مهم تر کابوس های ترسناک فردینان چنان جذاب است که گاهی اوقات از وحشت خیس عرق می شوی، شاید این کتاب کابوس هایی است در بستر یک جامعه کابوس وار، در واقع ساباتو این دیوانگی و پریشانی را در بستر این جامعه جست و جو می کند، جامعه ای فاسد و از هم گسیخته که انسانهای اون هم دچار از هم گسیختگی و بی هویتی شده اند.

“It was as if the prince, he thought, journeying through vast, lonely regions, had at last found himself before the cavern where the beauty is sleeping guarded by the dragon. And as if, moreover, he had become aware that the dragon was not a menacing creature there at her side watching over her, as we imagine him in the myths of our childhood, but instead, and much more frighteningly, a creature inside of her: as if she were a dragon-princess, an unfathomable monster, at once chaste and breathing fire, at once innocent and revolting: an absolutely purehearted child in a communion dress, possessed by the nightmares of a reptile or a bat.”

A young man by the name of Martín reflects thusly on the lovely lady at the center of Sabato's extraordinary tale - Alejandra.

It's a Saturday in May, 1953, and Alejandra makes her presence felt to seventeen-year-old Martín for the first time when he was sitting on a bench near the statue of Ceres in Parque Lezama in downtown Buenos Aires. Martín was reflecting on what his mother told him, that he existed only because she was careless; that if only she had the courage, he would have ended up in the sewer. Ever since, he has always thought of her as the “sewer mother.” Martín continued reflecting on how he sees himself as awkward, ugly, dull-witted, and that he is terrified of human beings since they are all perverse and filthy.

Just then, Martín senses someone standing behind him, attempting to communicate. The voice belongs to a woman. "But what if none of that is true?" When Martín turns, he sees her carefully scrutinizing him, like a painter observing his model. A short dialogue follows. She tells him he's more than just a young kid; he's an individual with depth and a rare physical type - tall with a very narrow build, reminiscent of an El Greco figure. She continues and at one point says, "I know you're an angelic being. Besides, as I've already said, I don't know whether that's what pleases me about you or whether it's what I hate most."

After a few more words are exchanged, she walks away. Martín takes a good look at her: tall, long black hair, a book in her left hand, and walking with a certain nervous energy. Martín realizes the profundity of this meeting. He will never be the same person again.


The section of Parque Lezama where Martín first meets Alejandra

Martín was excited for many days afterward. Each afternoon Martín waited for her with the mixed feelings of fear and hope. Then, finally, one day she appeared by the same bench in Parque Lezama, wearing all black. And it seemed to Martín even her eyes were black, although afterwards he could see they were dark green. Her smile was cruel and sarcastic and her laughter and all her movements violent. Martín tells his friend Bruno, “She fascinated me like a dark abyss.”

Martín is completely infatuated. He eagerly anticipates a third meeting with beautiful Alejandra. However, days, weeks, even months go by, and no Alejandra. Martín sinks into a deep despair. Alejandra does eventually appear and she invites Martín to join her on a trip to her family's mansion on the outskirts of the city.

Oh, Martín, now you're really in for it. As soon as they enter, the sound of a clarinet can be heard. “What's that?” Martín asks. “Uncle Bebe, the madman,” Alejandra explained. Martín is treated to more episodes from the family history, including a Major Bonifacio who was beheaded in 1852 where the head was thrown into the parlor, whereupon Bonifiacio's wife died of the shock and and another member of the household went mad. It's with good reason Alejandra tells Martín directly, “Don't you realize? This is a family of crazy people.” More craziness spills forth. Alejandra leads Martín to the room where her great grandfather, age ninety-five, relates a detailed account of 19th century history, events the ancient geezer has been continually replaying in his mind for many years. And, by the way, her great grandfather's room is where the head of Bonifiacio is still kept in a box on a shelf.


Alejandra belongs to an old aristocratic family and lives in the crumbling family mansion on the outskirts of Buenos Aires

Craziness and mind-bending wildness are ratcheted up even more when Alejandra speaks of her own past, beginning when she, at age eleven, found her father sleeping with a woman some years after her mother died, a traumatic experience that propelled her to run away from home. What follows is for each reader to explore but I will share a quote from the text: That freckled-faced little girl is Alejandra: she is eleven and her hair has reddish glints in it. She is a thin, pensive child, but a violently and cruelly pensive one, as though her thoughts were not abstract, but crazed, burning-hot serpents. It is that child who has remained intact in some obscure region of her self. (author's italic).

While reading Sabato's novel, I had to ask myself: Who from the world of literature does Alejandra remind me of? The only person I could think of was Ms. Nicola Six from Martin Amis' London Fields, where I describe Nicola as “a modern day Helen of Troy, X-rated femme fatale and manifestation of goddess Kali all rolled up into one – everything you always wanted and everything you never wanted, your most cherished dream and your most dreaded nightmare, complete with Eastern European accent, mysterious Middle Eastern origins, Ms. World face and figure, shiny dark hair and even shinier dark eyes.” However, unlike thirty-something Nicola, Alejandra is only eighteen. But, and this proves a critical point, a part of Alejandra possesses, as Sabato puts it, “the frightful wisdom of an old man.”

Alejandra leaves Martín hanging when it comes to two murky, untouchable subjects: Fernando and The Blind. There's also a question Alejandra poses to Martín, a question that is foreshadowing with a cruel vengeance: “Don't you think there's something uncanny, something sacred about fire?”

On Heroes and Tombs fulfills Sabato's vision of what authentic literature should be: deep, profound, "created with blood," a work addressing the big questions of life and death within our intense, immediate, all too human existential condition.

The novel also features many reflections on Argentine literature, especially those tales written by Jorge Luis Borges. Actually, Borges himself makes a cameo appearance out on a city street. "The features of the man's face seemed to have been sketched in and then to have been half rubbed out with an eraser." Any guesses as to Sabato's opinion on his illustrious contemporary?

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the famous section of Sabato's masterpiece: REPORT ON THE BLIND (all caps for emphasis). I urge you to read On Heroes and Tombs to discover how this diabolical report ties in with Alejandra, Fernando, and...fire. One of the most gripping novels I've ever encountered.


Argentine author Ernesto Sabato, 1911-2011

Ha ragione Gombrowicz, è uno di quei libri che non ti lascia scampo e ti tiene sveglio la notte. Il Rapporto sui ciechi è una delle cose più estreme, assurde e ipnotiche lette recentemente. L'Inferno di Dante che incrocia Suspiria. Pensieri sfocati, svenimenti e nervi distrutti. Caos e solitudine sottovuoto.
Ambientato in una Buenos Aires scurissima: cieli grigi, nottate, stanze chiuse, sotterranei.
Non adatto se siete alla ricerca di certezze. Altrimenti imperdibile, non fosse che per possedere questa edizione monocroma Einaudi di rara bellezza.

[84/100]

Grandísima narrativa.
Pero mucha, mucha historia. Tres partes un tanto dispares que nos alejan de la columna vertebral y de los personajes iniciales. La tercera parte, muy espesa, de datos históricos argentinos que a veces me son ajenos. Me quedo con el personaje de Alejandra y el de su padre, sin duda de los más interesantes que he conocido este año lector. Por ellos vale la pena quedarse hasta el final.

Considerada la mejor obra argentina del s. XX y una de las obras cumbres de la literatura hispana. Me ha costado mucho leerlo. Confieso que en su primera mitad en estado tentado varias veces de abandonarlo. No me arrepiento de haber seguido.

Una primera parte del libro, la mitad justa, narrada en tercera persona, de forma muy muy lenta y enrevesada, dándole vueltas continuamente a los mismos hechos e historias, consiguiendo destacar de esta forma el tema principal de esta parte, según mi modo de ver, La Obsesión. Esa obsesión enfermiza que todos tenemos o hemos tenido, empeñarnos continuamente en avanzar hacia lo dañino, buscar miles de argucias y disculpas para explicar, para justificar algo que no tiene razón de ser, sólo es. La obsesión de Martín con Alejandra.

Luego llega el 'Informe de ciegos'. La narración en primera persona hace que el relato coja un ritmo increíble apenas unos párrafos antes. La insana paranoia con los ciegos de Fernando Vidal, padre de Alejandra; obsesión por los ciegos, que sin llegar al grado del protagonista, parece que compartía el autor.

El final del libro es la caída de los Vidal-Olmos, el fin esperado y anunciado ya en el corto primer capítulo.

Con un trasfondo histórico la obra es veces realista, a veces existencialista y con toques surrealistas es una obra de estas que todos deberíamos hacer el esfuerzo de leer.

'¿Cuándo empezó esto que ahora va a terminar con mi asesinato?' Recomendable.

ad un terzo del libro, senza fiato, decido che ricomincio da capo. Intensità e potere d'analisi direi denudanti
In queste pagine fitte, senza interlinee che alleggeriscano il pensiero, si ha la sensazione che Sabato abbia inserito con ordine e consapevolezza e con la volontà e quasi necessità di condividere comunicando, tutto ciò che aveva da dire, ciò che ha pensato in una vita. Sabato è vissuto cent’anni - 1911-2011 - e "Sopra eroi e tombe" è stato pubblicato nel 1961, giusto nel mezzo del cammino della sua vita.
Si trovano splendide riflessioni sui più svariati argomenti che riguardano l’animo umano e tributi diretti di stima a grandi “analisti di interni” quali Proust, Dostoevskij, Faulkner, Borges. La narrazione non trascura però fatti e accadimenti. C’è la storia completa dell’Argentina, il desiderio di indipendenza, le guerre civili, l’anarchia e il comunismo, la repressione dittatoriale, la fame, la povertà, il significato che può assumere il concetto di patria in un paese così commisto. Poi la storia di amore totale e acerbo di Martìn, le stranezze, le manie, la realtà alternativa e proibita di Fernando e Alejandra, il viaggio onirico, il passato eroico, il presente scialbo, e poi il dramma, la sensazione di pace e amarezza.
Lettura impegnativa e appassionante, un viaggio nelle pieghe dell’animo e nella storia di un popolo.

[Frammenti di tempo possono racchiudere intere esistenze, mostruosi e vasti come i secondi di un incubo.
Tutti stiamo sognando]


Alle 4 di Sabato mattina mi alzo, mi metto sul divano e finisco Sopra Eroi e tombe
Fuori il silenzio, la notte e l'inverno

Il libro non parla di Martin, il protagonista pezzo di pane ammollato nel latte caldo, né di Alejandra, una Marla Singer più loquace e fastidiosa di cui Martin si innamora.
Il libro non parla della loro storia d'amore(?) tentennante.

Su tutto il romanzo c'è una patina di fiaba nera, un cielo plumbeo sotto al quale le vicende galleggiano su un'inevitabilità rassegnata. Tutto è sospeso, surreale e misterioso: la trama, i rapporti, i pensieri degli stessi personaggi. Tutto è insondabile e spettrale.

Più ti addentri nella lettura più senti il peso dell'ineluttabilità che oltre ai personaggi sta schiacciando anche te. Tutto è senza peso ma al contempo orrendamente pesante. È un incubo dai contorni sbiaditi in cui le tue gambe non vogliono muoversi.

Il libro non parla della meschinità dell'invecchiare.
A vent'anni hai coraggio e ideali. Sai che non sei Keats né Baudelaire. Capisci che non potresti esserli mai. Affoghi nell'alcool del discount, cerchi nelle ragazze un'ancora che non può essere salvifica perché, per natura, cerca il fondale.
Sai che nulla pesa e l'unico senso sta nel lasciare un segno, fare parte di qualcosa di grande, ma al contempo sei schiacciato dall'evidenza di non essere in grado di lasciare niente di abbastanza significativo. La certezza è una sola: bruciare in splendida fiamma cangiante fino all'esplosione che termini le tue pene.

Ma il tempo passa e ti dici che puoi vivere bene lo stesso.
Così ti ritrovi 40enne sul divano. E più invecchi più sei inutile patetico rottame che si attaccherà a qualunque stronzata pur di dare valore alla sua esistenza, uguale a quella di altre sette miliardi di persone ma incredibilmente ricca e unica.

Quando la delusione e il tempo non avevano compiuto le loro opere devastatrici>

Il libro parla di

On Heroes and Tombs is a story of the great young blinding love and it is a story of the great love mystery.
And there is a great dark story within the love story: Report on the Blind.

• God does not exist.
• God exists and is a bastard.
• God exists, but falls asleep from time to time: his nightmares are our existence.
• God exists, but has fits of madness: these fits are our existence.

That is the hypothetical nature of our existence according to the gospel of the blind.
Reading it I thought of Jorge Luis Borges who, despite being blind, could see much further than the others.
On Heroes and Tombs is the book of the Conscious and the Unconscious… And it is a painstaking exposition on the subject of human existence:

Sometimes they are relatively young men, individuals thirty or forty years old. And – a curious thing, worth pondering – the younger they are the more pathetic and helpless they seem. For what can be more frightful than the sight of a youngster sitting brooding on a bench in a public square, overwhelmed by his thoughts, silent and estranged from the world round about him? Sometimes the man or the youngster is a sailor; at other times he is perhaps an emigré who would like to return to his country and is unable to; many times they are beings who have been abandoned by the woman they love; others, beings who are out of step with life, or who have left home forever, or are brooding about their loneliness and their future. Or it may be a youngster like Martín himself, who is beginning to realize, to his horror, that the absolute does not exist.

Page by page Ernesto Sabato is gradually opening a door into the great unknown.
There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors…

An Argentine story in the labyrinthine tradition of the author’s countryman, Borges.



The last descendants of an old oligarchical family of Buenos Aries reside in a decaying center city mansion now in the midst of a factory and warehouse district. The family and the house are disintegrating.

The house is occupied by a spinster aunt who hasn’t been out of the attic in half a century, a mentally challenged nephew who constantly plays the flute, and a 90-year-old man who is still reliving the wars of the 1800s. And did I mention a mummified, severed head of one of the ancestors? What’s that little keepsake worth on Antiques Roadshow?

A young man, still in his teens, runs into the one quasi-functioning person who lives in the house; a young woman who is an epileptic, a drug addict (laudanum in those days), and an alcoholic. And did I mention bipolar? Obviously this young man never saw the movie “Fatal Attraction.”

“The world is filth… and I’m garbage…” she tells him. How does that work for you as a pick-up line? You can’t say she didn’t warn him.

Another crazy paranoid character, the young woman’s father, does not live in the house but writes a Stephen Kingish treatise about how “The Blind” have a secret conspiracy to control the world. I wonder if Sabato meant this as a metaphor for the types of slanders that were said of Jews during WW II? One the old man’s lines is “See that blind man across the street? I told you they were following us.”

Tied up in the story is a lot of local color of Buenos Aires in the 1950s and 1960s and a search for the “Argentine national character,” if we believe in such things anymore. Through stories from the old man and others, we hear about the wars of Argentina’s independence from Spain and the quasi-civil wars between liberals and conservatives fought over the years that the echo the Spanish Civil War and that continue to plague Latin American nations even today. We read of the Communist and anarchist movements of the 1950s and the military dictatorships.

It fascinates me as a geographer to see, as in some other Latin American stories, the motif that “our family tree is written on the street names of the capital.” It’s a poem by Borges and it’s also in Spilt Milk by Chico Baraque (a Brazilian book).

We are treated to deep thoughts:

“…we hope for great happiness, some enormous, total happiness. And as we wait for this phenomenon to take place we let the little happinesses, the only real ones, pass us by…”

For Argentina, a nation of immigrants: “In the end that had proved to be the real America for the immense majority: poverty and tears, humiliation and pain, homesickness and nostalgia.”

On our masks: “…we are never the same person for different conversational partners, friends or lovers…”

This is a long, dense book, almost 500 pages, sparse dialog, and occasional paragraphs that run more than a couple of pages. All in all, a heavy-duty read, but worth it.



Sabato was a physicist who worked at the Curie Institute in Paris and at MIT. After WW II, in his 30s, he lost interest in science and started writing. Sabato burned all his work except for three novels, saying that he did not want to be remembered for mediocre work. All three have been translated to English and he is best known for The Tunnel (also translated as The Outsider). His third novel is The Angel of Darkness. Sabato was born in 1911 and died at 99 in 2011.

Top photo of the abandoned Nazar Anchorena House in Buenos Aires from reddit.com
Argentina stamp honoring the author from ebay.com