"O passado pulsa dentro de mim como um segundo coração."

Acho curioso que Banville opte por entrelaçar a trama deste seu O Mar em torno da arte e de Bonnard, pois é à luz da sua obra que leio este livro.
E é às águas de Bonnard, às cristalizações dos momentos que o artista escolhe retratar, que Max, recentemente viúvo, se recolhe, e a partir das quais tece o seu próprio retrato de memórias.

"A verdade é que as coisas vão resistindo ao passo que tudo o que é vivo desaparece."

E cruzando passados e presentes, reflete a vida, a morte, e a crueldade indiscriminada do destino.

"Aquilo não devia ter-lhe acontecido. Não devia ter-nos acontecido, nós não éramos esse género de pessoas. Os infortúnios, as doenças, a morte prematura, são tudo coisas que acontecem a gente boa, aos humildes, ao sal da terra, e não a Anna, não a mim. No meio do cortejo imperial que era a nossa vida em comum, um vadio inútil e trocista avançou dentre a multidão que nos aplaudia e, esboçando a paródia de uma vénia, entregou à minha trágica rainha a sentença de condenação."

Aquilo que Banville oferece não é um livro, é um pós-impressionista de pleno direito (não quis ir ver se o autor tem alguma ligação às artes plásticas ou à história da arte antes desta review, para não viciar a minha opinião, mas fá-lo-ei em seguida): um experiência com cores, formas e luz que no, final, resulta numa imagem algo difusa, meio etérea e inteiramente subjetiva do objeto que, tal como a musa de Bonnard, inspira e obceca o narrador.

"Os personagens do passado distante acabam sempre por vir ter connosco, para exigirem o que lhes é devido."

Apesar de o seu objetivo maior ser o de fixar a imagem da mulher amada e perdida, Max não resiste a reconfigurar o espectro da sua vida à luz do papel que essa mulher representa nela. Agarradas, se assim se pode dizer, à imagem de Anna, surgem as sombras de outras figuras femininas: Connie, Chloe, Rose, Claire que obrigam o narrador a saltos temporais que trazem com eles cenários, momentos, situações, pessoas que, no seu conjunto, compõem a figura do narrador.

"Estou a vê-los, aos meus pobres pais, movimentando-se rancorosamente dentro de casa, na infância do mundo. A infelicidade deles foi uma das constantes dos meus primeiros anos de vida, uma espécie de zumbido agudo e incessante mas inaudível. Não os odiava. Provavelmente, amava-os. Só que me obstruíam o caminho, obscurecendo a minha visão do futuro. Com o passar do tempo consegui ver através deles, através dos meus pais transparentes."

Mas a memória de Max não é fiável, e ele sabe disso. Como as vagas do mar, ela avança e recua apenas a seu prazer, e ele vai vogando sem controlo por esse mar adentro, acabado extenuado, à margem, arrastado pela força da rebentação.

"Há momentos em que o passado possui uma força tão grande que temos a sensação de que nos pode aniquilar."

Como narrador desta história, Max é absolutamente impotente perante os desígnios do destino, perante os caprichos da mente. Como o leitor, é um joguete nas mãos dos deuses.

"...em que momento, dentre todos os momentos, é que a vida não muda por completo até à derradeira e mais crucial de todas as mudanças?"

Porque se apercebe disso, a narrativa avança em direção à forma primitiva da existência, à conclusão que define a vida - Max, ao contrário de Bonnard, está destinado a terminar, não possui o "anátema da perpetuação" dos artistas e sabe que, quando encerrar a sua narrativa, isso será um fim em si mesmo. Anna não permanecerá se ele não a conseguir montar, como uma peça, no imenso puzzle da sua vida. E então, nada mais restará.

"(...)o que eu antevia para o futuro era de facto uma imagem que não passava de um passado imaginado. Poder-se-á dizer que mais do que antecipar o futuro me sentia nostálgico desse mesmo futuro, pois o que ia acontecer na minha fantasia na realidade já tinha desaparecido. E, inesperadamente, isso impressiona-me por ser de certo modo significativo. O que eu procurava era realmente o futuro ou algo para além dele?"

O Mar é um livro triste, sentimental, poético, claro, polido na sua forma e dotado de um estilo cristalino. A aproximação ao pós-impressionismo obriga à amputação do enredo: o subjetivo prevalece propositadamente, mas essa opção funciona muito bem, demasiado bem para admitir que é acidental. A ligação entre a pintura e a literatura não é só óbvia, é completa: da rapidez, à vivacidade, à expressão dos sentimentos. No final deve prevalecer a sensação provocada pelo todo em detrimento da análise do elemento técnico - só por essa razão não me alongo e alongo mais... Não é preciso.

"Afinal não passamos de pequenos botes de tristeza a vogar num silêncio lânguido por entre as trevas outonais."

Iako se proteže na nekih 180 strana nakon čitanja imam utisak da sam pročitao barem dvotomno delo.
Džon Banvil je sve samo ne običan i površan pisac. Čitaoci kada pristupaju njegovom delu kao da posmatraju strip ili album sa slikama - svaka scena je detaljno i istančano oslikana - do samih detalja, tako da čitaoci mogu da predstave sebi svaki momenat sa izuzetnom lakoćom.
Međutim, ono što je još dominantnije u romanu su osećanja kojima je ovo delo nabijeno: ljubav i tuga (pre svega zbog smrti bližnjih), Eros i Tanatos - večiti dualitet. A tu je negde i njihov večiti pratilac - sećanje. A sećanje je prevrtljivo i nemirno, "ume savršeno da se prilagodi ponovo viđenim stvarima i mestima iz prošlosti"... baš poput mora koje se uvek vraća istim obalama.
I ceo ljudski život je poput mora: plima i oseka, mirnoća i uzburkanost - sve se to ogleda u onome što doživljavamo. Samo što na lične talase koje doživljavamo svet "ravnodušno sleže ramenima" jer sudbine malih ljudi ne potresaju većinu.
Banvilovo More jeste istraživanje ljudskog unutrašnjeg mora, onog koje je mirno i tiho na početku, kada zagazimo u njega, ali kada stignemo do kraja shvatamo da su nas talasi mnogo puta izlomili i poklopili i da smo se nagutali vode...
Ovo delo je, dakle, zaranjanje u samu dubinu ljudske duše, flertovanje sa Erosom i poslednji ples sa Tanatosom. Predivno, toplo i tako ljudski.

The Miasma of Self-Regard

This brief note is in two parts: the first I wrote when this novel was younger, and Banville hadn't yet written detective fiction.

What does it mean to be able to write so gorgeously, to be apparently incapable of writing normally, like an ordinary novelist, and to perennially attract clichés like 'lush,' 'beautiful,' 'mesmerizing,' 'virtuouso' -- and yet be hopelessly, permanently incapable of giving a novel drive, impetus, force, tension, forward movement: and to know that you never can, and to make a virtue of that fault, constructing books that seem to require lassitude, torpor, mulling and meditation, and then, perhaps because of your fame and the insulation it produces, to be unaware that readers can see that for what it is, and not even take pleasure in its desperation?

This second paragraph was added after years of Benjamin Black novels, and even, as of 2020, new hybrid novels.

And yet Banville can wrote propulsive, plot-driven fiction, as his detective novels demonstrate. So this is a complex problem. If there is a limitaion to the plotlessness of books like "The Sea" it is a lack of distinction between kinds of stasis, motives for torpor.

And last: the problem of self-absorption is also a difficult one. I do not mind writers who ignore their readers, who write as if plausible readers do not exist. (Writers like the Joyce of "Finnegans Wake" or the Schmidt of "Bottom's Dream.") But I am insulted by writers who are cocooned in self-regard. (Writers like the late Bellow or Vila-Matas.) The self-regard in which Banville wraps his prose is evident in interviews and lectures, and it even spills into his Wikipedia page, which I would like to propose is either written by him, or by the kind of reader who has helped create his self-absorption. (Note the headings, as of 2021: "Crime and punishmen," "Diet and conduct toward animals," "The Nobel Prize.") I can't see through the swaddling to the coddled interior.

John Banville's novel, The Sea represents a wonderful prose-poem to memory & a book I enjoyed very much. It profiles a character, Max Morden, whose wife has just died & who exiles himself to Ballyless, a coastal town where he encountered people & had experiences as a youth that continue to define who the now-older man is.



Does Max hope to use the past to somehow reshape the future or merely to wallow in the vague comfort of a fragmentary memory of days past? With this thought I am reminded that Marcel Proust's multi-volume epic is either translated as a remembrance of time past or as time lost.

As Max phrases it, "The past beats inside me like a second heart." And here is just one example of the eloquent prose that John Banville employs to capture a sense of Max's past:

So much of life was stillness then, when we were young, or so it seems; a biding stillness; a vigilance. We were waiting in our as yet unfashioned world, scanning the future as the boy & I had scanned each other, like soldiers in the field, watching for what was to come.

We were led to believe that the tame, little seaside village had been of old, a place of terrors. The sign over the Strand Café, advertising cigarettes, Navy Cut, with a picture of a bearded sailor inside a lifebuoy, or a ring of rope--was it?--creaked in the sea breeze on its salt-rusted hinges, which for all I know is swinging yet, the sign creaking to this day, to this night, in my dreams.
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Max Morden is both enchanted & bewildered by his memories of another family (the Grace family) from a class in society well beyond his own and in particular a mother & her daughter, with the complex fascination gradually eliding from mother to daughter during a long-ago summer holiday with his parents.

This memory wavers before my eye at a fixed distance, always just beyond my focus, moving backward at exactly the same rate as I am moving forward. But since what I am moving forward into has begun to dwindle more & more rapidly, why can I now not catch up?

Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking new things--new experiences, new emotions--and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvelously finished pavilion of the self.

With the death of Max's wife Anna, life has become hollow & their house is now "a vast echo chamber." And so, Max flees to the seaside town where life seems to have stood still for him, taking residence in the place where the Grace family formerly lodged in summer, a place that is now a rooming house.



Max's dreams are chaotic and in one remembered dream, he is attempting "to type out his will with a machine that was lacking the letter I. Later, Max suggests that he is becoming his own ghost. I am aware that for many a novel about the flights of memory of an aging, lethargic widower may summon up a large yawn but the author's prose so very often lifts this novel well beyond most, reason enough for it to have been awarded the Booker Prize.

There are other characters in Banville's 2005 novel, The Sea including Max Morden's daughter Clair but this is primarily Max's story, one in which "memory dislikes motion, preferring to hold things still" and at novel's end, Max recalls being down at the sea, standing up to his waist...

in water that was perfectly transparent, so that I could plainly see below me the ribbed sand of the seabed & tiny shells & bits of a crab's broken claw & my own feet, pallid & alien, like specimens displayed under glass...when the whole sea surged with a smooth rolling swell that seemed to come up from the deep and I was lifted briefly & carried a little way toward the shore & then set down on my feet as before, as if nothing had happened. And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the world's great shrugs of indifference.

There are some fairly obscure words that Banville inserts more than occasionally, caduceus & craquelured among them, perhaps a minor complaint in the midst of a very uplifting experience with words.

*Within my review are 3 images of author John Banville, including #3 near the sea.

Fiquei fã das capacidades literárias de Banville, ainda que o livro não me tenha convencido totalmente. O livro é curto, ficamos a saber muito pouco sobre os personagens, ainda assim e sendo o foco do livro as memórias, o mais interessante acontece nas descrições dessas, em especial dos sentires evocados pelas memórias, sentires que nos dizem de que somos feitos, porque somos assim e não de outra forma.

"Tudo aquilo que realmente sempre desejei foi sentir-me defendido, protegido, resguardado, refugiar-me numa toca de tepidez uterina e ficar acocorado lá dentro, escondido do olhar indiferente do céu e das asperezas do ar agreste. É por essa razão que o passado constitui para mim um refúgio, que regresso a ele ansioso, a esfregar as mãos para afastar o frio do presente e o gélido futuro.”

"Antes da doença de Anna, suportava a minha existência física com uma repugnância amistosa, como acontece com a maior parte das pessoas — que suportam a sua existência física, não a minha, claro! —, necessariamente tolerante face aos produtos da minha humanidade tristemente inelutável, os diversos eflúvios, as eructações, o corrimento, a caspa, a transpiração e demais emanações comuns, incluindo aquilo que o Bardo de Hartford designa, de forma singular, por 'partículas das partes baixas'."

This novel was a puzzle of contradictions. Max Morden is a recent widower working through his relationship with his wife, Anna, and with his daughter, Claire, while also trying to understand some events from his childhood. Some readers appeared to find this story too bleak; I didn’t. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and their story. In fact, that was one of the problems for me. There was too little of the story and too much description for me. I found myself wading through description to get on with the story, and I typically enjoy good description. Max Morden was a man very confused about love. His relationship with his wife was not perfect, nor was it broken. Max loves his daughter, but doesn’t know how to express his love for her. And then there was Chloe.

I like how the story moves back and forth through time and events, relatively easily, representing for me Max’s shifting thoughts and attention. I enjoyed the elegance of Banville’s writing style, but also found it choppy and thus never really found the rhythm in the writing that is true enjoyment for me. Ultimately, I was as mixed up about my response to The Sea as Max Morden was about love. This was my first by Banville, and I have read that some have found other efforts of his more enjoyable, so I am motivated to try another at some point.

Είναι πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα η απόκλιση στις βαθμολογίες των βιβλιόφιλων για το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο. Προσωπικά, βρήκα την πλούσια πρόζα του Μπανβιλ σαγηνευτική, εμπνευσμένη, συχνά συγκινητική, ταιριαστή με την πλοκή και το δράμα του ήρωα. Η οξυδερκής και διεισδυτική ματιά του συγγραφέα στα πρόσωπα και στις καταστάσεις, εντυπωσιακη. Πρόκειται για ένα βιβλίο 230 σελίδων, οπότε ο αργος ρυθμός και η έλλειψη δράσης δεν αποτελούν πρόβλημα, ίσα ίσα βρήκα τον ρυθμό άκρως επιτυχημένο.

Σημαντικά θέματα, συναίσθημα αλλα και φιλοσοφικής πνοής ανάλυση, δουλεμενη μέχρι την τελευταία λέξη γλώσσα (με λίγες σχετικά στιγμές όπου αυτή ξέφευγε), για μένα ένα σπουδαίο βιβλίο.

Meh. For me this was an ok read. The story itself is fine. It's about a man who's wife dies and he goes back to the place he spent the summers of his childhood. It's where he first experienced love and death. Sounds good right? Many people give this high ratings but for me it was so overly written, for example - entire pages being one paragraph describing the sky. Blah blah blah. I agree with another reviewer that the author "probably had a thesaurus in his hand while writing". I don't mind looking up the definitions of words (I enjoy adding words to my vocabulary) but in this case I didn't care. I just wanted to finish and move on. Maybe I'm not highbrow enough for this one.

I have another book by Banville published under the name Benjamin Black - Christine Falls. Hope this is a better read for me.

This 2006 novel's main character is a widower who returns to the seaside resort he used to visit when he was a child. Banville's an author who focuses on the interior mental states of Max Morden, his main character, who was a timid child and who became a cautious adult. In this book, Banville swirls Max through mixed memories of the seashore when he was a child and of his courtship and marriage. The past holds a secret, which is finally revealed, a secret which seemed to me more dramatic than appropriate. The power of this book is bringing the reader so intimately into Max's interior mental life. For me one of the most carefully created characters is retired colonel who lives his very lonely life in retirement at the seaside resort. He lives a regimented life reading the paper and taking walks. At one point his daughter and her family are about to visit, and we see the colonel break out of his self-imposed rigid lifestyle. John Banville understands the way people create their own environments, and this book is a testament to that understanding.

This is sad in a rather gushing (and I know that is not the right word) sense. He seems a writer's writer. Way too framed in his word explosions and in his mood sense tone for me to enjoy. I could not connect to this story at all. The man was just off putting to me. There are several Irish writers who I find nearly identical in this "mood" and "emotive" futility of "down" category. He's another one.

Others appreciate their considerable skills far more than I do. This style and especially the protagonist's perceptions are not for me.

“O passado pulsa dentro de mim como um segundo coração.”

“Uma sensação de embaraço. Tinha a certeza de que a Anna tinha a mesma sensação. Embaraço, sim, um sentimento mesclado de pânico de não saber o que dizer, para onde olhar, como agir, e algo mais também, que não era exactamente raiva mas uma espécie de mágoa desabrida, um ressentimento amargo ante a situação terrível em que nos encontrámos. Era como se nos tivessem revelado um segredo tão vil, tão sórdido, que a presença do outro se tornava quase insuportável e, no entanto, não éramos capazes de nos separarmos, cada um consciente do horror que o outro conhecia e ligados uma ao outro por esse mesmo conhecimento. A partir desse dia tudo passaria a ser dissimulação e fingimento. Não havia outra maneira de conviver com a morte.”

“Mas em que momento , dentre todos os momentos, é que a vida não muda por completo até à derradeira e mais crucial de todas as mudanças?”

“Quando chegámos, fiquei agradavelmente surpreendido ao ver que a aldeia tal como eu a recordava permanecia quase na mesma, quanto mais não fosse para uns olhos que sabiam para onde olhar, como eram os meus. Foi como encontrar uma antiga paixão por detrás de cujas feições marcadas pelo tempo ainda é possível discernir nitidamente os contornos esbeltos tão amados noutros tempos.”

“Até então todas as suas experiências tinham sido temporárias. As tristezas tinham sido amenizadas quanto mais não fosse pelo tempo, as alegrias tornaram-se um hábito, o seu corpo sarara as pequenas maleitas. Isto, porém, isto era algo absoluto, uma singularidade, um fim em si mesmo, e no entanto era algo que não conseguia compreender nem assimilar. Costumava dizer que se houvesse dor, pelo menos haveria como que uma certificação, uma autenticação, algo que lhe dissesse que o que lhe tinha acontecido era mais real do que qualquer realidade que conhecera até então. Mas não sentia dores, por enquanto.

“Se tivessem perguntado àquela criança que sonhava junto do aparelho de rádio o que queria ser quando fosse grande, estou convencido de que aquilo que vim a ser era mais ou menos o que a criança teria descrito, ainda que de um modo titubeante. Acho que é uma coisa notável, mesmo considerando o meu sofrimento actual. A maioria dos indivíduos não está desiludida com o que lhe coube em sorte, definhando num desespero silencioso nas correntes que os prendem?”

“A sala estava tal como eu a recordava, ou parecia estar como eu a recordava, porque as recordações estão sempre ávidas por condizerem na perfeição com as coisas e os lugares do passado revisitado. “

“É impressionante a nitidez com que nos vejo ali, se me concentrar. Na realidade, uma pessoa quase podia reviver a sua vida desde que fosse capaz de fazer o esforço necessário para convocar as recordações.”

“O passado, estou a referir-me ao passado real, importa menos do que imaginamos.”

“A memória não gosta do movimento, prefere reter as coisas imobilizadas e, como acontece com tantas cenas evocadas, estou a ver esta como se fosse um quadro.”

“Talvez a vida não seja mais do que uma longa preparação para a partida.”

In The Sea the protagonist, Max Morden, is an observer in the truest sense of the word. The narrative is a journey through his eyes and thoughts. And through his memory. Memory is where the power of this novel lies, as he reminisces, we discover who he is and how his relationships developed. The memory novel that Banville handles here, coupled with what I can only assume is a love of the English language, results in a richly prosed narrative full of minute details and descriptions that gets my brains churning with admiration:

Now it was Chloe’s turn to draw her knees up to her chest – is it a thing all girls do, or did, at least, sitting that way in the shape of a zed fallen over its front? – and hold her feet in her hands.

But Banville’s skill goes further. Max seamlessly shifts through time back to his youth, his first crush on his new friends’ (the twins Chloe and Myles) mom: Mrs Grace. He watches her like a hungry owl watches a field mouse. He observes the stubble of her armpit, he sees the crevice in her underwear when she lies back and her legs lift up and her skirt parts way, he admires her breasts… these are the coming-of-age desires of a boy hitting puberty. And they are real. And natural. And just like that, like many of us are wont to ponder on the strangeness of desire and sexual transference, Max, we later learn on his next revisit to his past memory, is now interested in the daughter: Chloe. The shift from the unattainable mother figure to the more age-appropriate girl is complete.

Much of the novel juxtaposes the memory of his dying wife Anna with the memory of Chloe, his happier, innocent, youthful first love. The problem is that his wife became a secondary character that I did not feel much for. At times, I felt she was a burden to Max at his old age, being terminally ill. The passion of recounted scenes concerning Anna was a far distant emotional surge compared to Chloe’s. In this way, I came to dislike Max. He was after all another grumpy old man feeling sorry for himself and appreciating his past more than his present. But is that not one of the functions of a memory novel?

Banville has engrossed me with this story probably because Max is as objective as one can make such a character to be, considering the desires and crushes being discussed. It is not clinical objectivity, but a character who knows what he likes and what he desires. And his healthy skepticism of people in general made with those hawkish observations redeems him somewhat in my eyes:

Love among the big people. It was strange to picture them, to try to picture them, struggling together on their Olympian beds in the dark of the night with only the stars to see them, grasping and clasping, panting endearments, crying out in pleasure as if in pain. How did they justify these dark deeds to their daytime selves? That was something that puzzled me greatly. Why were they not ashamed? On Sunday morning, say, they arrive at church still tingling form Saturday night’s frolics. The priest greets them in the porch, they smile blamelessly, mumbling innocuous words. The woman dips her fingertips in the font, mingling traces of tenacious love-juice with the holy water. Under their Sunday best their thighs chafe in remembered delight. They kneel not minding the mournfully reproachful gaze the statue of their Saviour fixes on them from the cross. After their midday Sunday dinner perhaps they will send the children out to play and retire to the sanctuary of their curtained bedroom and do it all over again, unaware of my mind’s bloodshot eye fixed on them unblinkingly. Yes, I was that kind of boy. Or better say, there is a part of me still that is that kind of boy that I was then. A little brute, in other words, with a filthy mind. As if there were any other sort. We never grow up. I never did, anyway.

For Max, the sea and death are synonymous. With the most tragic and moving parts of the novel taking place at the sea. And while in his youth the sea was a source of trauma, one that affects Max even though he may be oblivious to it, the very same sea will relieve him at the end. It is a powerful allegory of the hold the two women have on him.

As I stood there, suddenly, no, not suddenly, but in a sort of driving heave, the whole sea surged, it was not a wave, but a smooth rolling swell that seemed to come up from the deeps, as if something vast down there had stirred itself, and I was lifted briefly and carried a little way towards the shore and then was set down on my feet as before, as if nothing had happened. And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world’s shrugs of indifference.

Banville has constructed a beautiful memory novel with an interesting, unlikable protagonist. My only reservation is that Anna was not explored in more depth, with some of the intensity with which Chloe was, so that their contrast and their effect on Max would have been clearer. But the novel is worth reading for the prose alone.