Sapore di mare

Probabilmente ho iniziato a leggere questo libro con l'approccio sbagliato, o forse semplicemente senza lo stato d'animo giusto. Fatto sta che io e il libro ci siamo separati quasi subito; dopo una decina di pagine la mia mente vagava, la noia cresceva, la comprensione scemava, l'impazienza montava, il mare l'avrei prosciugato con l'atomica e ogni parola era un'occasione per criticare ferocemente libro e autore. Uno sforzo enorme, come si può facilmente immaginare, arrivare alla fine.

Alla fine cosa potevo fare? Valutare il libro una stella e scrivere un commento che esternasse il profondo schifo che mi aveva suscitato la lettura?

No, non l'ho fatto. Non so come e non so perché ma mi sono fatto scrupoli e l'ho semplicemente ricominciato da capo.

E... luce fu.

Il libro si regge su una portante malinconica, su un ostinato sottofondo di tristezza dovuta principalmente alla lenta elaborazione di un lutto. Il protagonista rivede la sua vita passando in continuazione tra la sua infanzia, il suo presente, il suo passato prossimo con un effetto molto coinvolgente, ma solo a patto di cogliere quella portante dolorosa di cui accennavo prima. Tutto diviene malinconico se ci si concentra su ciò che poteva essere e non è stato e se lo sguardo è rivolto esclusivamente all'indietro, al nostro passato.

"Forse tutta la vita non è altro che una lunga preparazione a lasciarla"

Raffinato, elegante, colto, delicato, equilibrato, malinconico, sfumato, introspettivo, cupo, emotivo e emozionante, terso e freddo come una giornata al mare in inverno.
Un libro bellissimo, se letto nel momento giusto.

"Il passato mi batte dentro come un secondo cuore.

Come funziona la memoria? La memoria può essere pensata come ad un'onda che entra nella nostra coscienza e repentinamente si ritira, sovrastata da un'altra onda più potente, più imperiosa, più violenta che cambia assetto a tutti i segni, i residui lasciati sulle incerte sabbie mobili del ricordo?

Il mare del romanzo di Banville, è un mare livido, autunnale. Freddo e terso come la sua scrittura. Il sentimento descritto è un dolore cristallizzato, il dolore di un uomo che non riesce ad elaborare un lutto (o dei lutti), la fine di un amore importante (o la fine del primo amore).

Max è un uomo solo, pensionato dalla vita e dai sentimenti, che vive nel passato, un passato che prende forma attraverso l'intersezione di ricordi remoti e ricordi prossimi.
Il luogo in cui si ritira è una vecchia villa, la villa dei Cedri, sul gelido mare d'Irlanda, un luogo fisico, ma soprattutto un luogo della memoria, di iniziazione all'amore e al dolore. E alla perdita.
Un luogo cui esporsi alle ondate dei ricordi, in cui ritirarsi per elaborare l'abbandono. Un luogo in cui perdonarsi per essere sopravvissuti. Deputato a presidiare il ricordo.

"qualcosa di noi resterà, una fotografia sbiadita, una ciocca di capelli, qualche impronta digitale, una spruzzata di atomi nell’aria della stanza in cui abbiamo tratto l’ultimo respiro, eppure nulla di tutto questo sarà noi, quel che siamo e siamo stati, ma solo la polvere dei morti."

E alla fine, non rimane che la pacata constatazione della ineluttabile e prosaica stranezza del destino dell'uomo: "Essere qui, così, e poi non esserci più." Dolore come ghiaccio che sublima.

Ah, dimenticavo. Siamo dalle parti del flusso di coscienza, astenersi refrattari. A me è piaciuto proprio tanto.

I think there's a big difference between literature and fiction, and this book is a perfect example - as is obvious from the number of negative reviews posted on this website! Some books can be read purely for their entertainment value. We like reading them because the plots and settings and characters capture our interest. That's what fiction does. But some books provide an additional dimension for readers who are willing to put a little more time and thought into what they are reading and who enjoy digging a little deeper below the plot line to think about the things that motivate the characters to behave the way they do. Those of us who who are looking for more than plot and characterization in a good book, tend to be intrigued by the way authors use language and amazingly enough we actually enjoy discovering new words even though it means looking them up in a dictionary!! Banville's writing is going to be lost on a lot of readers because it's much more than a work of fiction. But for the rest of us, it's a great example of why we love to read in the first place....it's because we love to see our language used so beautifully in the hands of a writer who has such deep insights into some of the great themes that good literature has always dealt with. This is one of those books. It's a profound reflection on love,loss,regret, and the role memory plays in the grieving process. Those who love to read because they enjoy thinking about the insights to be found in books that are beautifully written will most likely love this book. Obviously not everyone reads for that reason, which is fine for them....but for the rest of us it's easy to see why Banville is considered such a fine writer.

"And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination."Livro do desassossego, Fernando Pessoa

“Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it” proclaims Max Morten, narrator and main character of The Sea, after his wife Anna passes away victim of a long and enduring illness.
Drowning in the grief which comes with the vast and ruthless sea of loss, he decides to seclude himself in the little coastal village where he spent his summers as a boy. A flood of unavoidable memories charged with haunted emotion and digressive meditations recreate that dreamy atmosphere that only childhood can nurture. New found memories which serve to wash away his conflicting emotions between the impotence of witnessing life quietly fading away and the cruel complacency of ordinary things allowing death to happen indifferently.

But as Max invades his frozen memories he awakens ghosts long gone though never forgotten and the unsettling and seductive Grace twins, his childhood friends, will become sharply delineated on the wall of his memory, prompting unintended recollections about the strangeness and dislocation of one’s own existence and the immortal burden of being the survivor.
”You are not even allowed to hate me a little, any more, like you used to” says Anna to Max with a sad, knowing smile. Isn't it true that we can’t help hating the ones we love the most? We are human beings after all. And the guilt and the anger and the violence which come after our beloved have been irrevocably usurped from us, leaving us alone with all that self-disgust, with no one to save us from ourselves, hating them, the gone, even more.

Banville threads a complex pattern between the gratuitous dramas of memory, past traumas and an intolerable present which engages in eternal conflict with the enduring intensity of the natural world which, with all its ruthless beauty and nonchalance, mocks at our human insignificance. And it is precisely when we are devastated by this insurmountable, catastrophic truth that Banville's crafted poetry starts delivering rhythmic tides of controlled pleasure, dropping pearls of beauty, easing the sting of the meaningless words, holding us together, creating a new pregnant life full of wonder and possibilities.
I’m aware Banville's style might not appeal to every reader, he doesn't rush, he digresses languidly, teasing and eroding your perceptions relentlessly, his mortally serious ways can seem overdone, but I responded to his uncompromising tone, so graceful and precise. Poetry in prose.

Memories may say nothing but they are never silent, pulling and pushing, futilely turned the wrong way, urging us to be drowned and get lost in them, never to return. But somehow these little vessels of sadness, these sinking boats we all are, sailing in muffled silence in this hollow sea of impotence and disregard, manage to catch the smooth rolling swells coming from the deeps only to be lifted and carried away towards the shore as if nothing had happened. And as our feet touch the ground we realize that our lives have been, in spite of everything, in spite of ourselves, acts of pure love and only for that, they are worth living.

(…) and it was as if I were walking into the sea.

This is a Booker Prize winner. The language in this short novel is very, very rich, evocative and annoyingly, sent me to the dictionary far too many times for comfort. Banville is just showing off, descending into literary affectation perhaps. Two time-lines interweave as Max, a retired art critic, now living at The Cedars, a grand house of note from his youth, recalls those days when he lived with his family in much more modest surroundings and peered longingly into this place. Of course, it was not wealth per se that drew his 11 year old interest, but the presence of The Graces, not a religious fascination, but a family. A pan-like, goatish father, Carlo, an earth mother, Constance, white-haired (and thus summoning Children of the Damned notions) twins, a strange mute boy, Myles, who is sometimes comedic and sometimes sinister, a maybe-sociopathic girl, Chloe, and another girl, Rose, who appeared to be a mere friend, but was their governess. That this is left unclear for much of the book seems odd. Young Max enjoys the social step up he gets by hanging out with the twins, and is quite willing to go along with their cruelties to subservient locals, but is most taken with Constance Grace, pining for her in an awakening sexual way, until, of course, his heart, or some bodily part, is stolen by Chloe. There is a scent here of Gatsby-ish longing, and Max is indeed a social climber.

Death figures very prominently in The Sea. “They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide,” is how it opens, and goes on very briefly to summon an image of a rising sea intent on devouring all. I will spare you the final death scene, but Max does indeed cope with death, the passing of his wife, Anna, contemplation of his own ultimate demise and how death, as personified by the sea, not only affected his life, but seems always with us.

This is I suppose a novel of coming and going of age. Banville is quite fond of deitific references, finding a different god or goddess for each of his characters. And his art-critic narrator sprinkles the narration with references to paintings. Sadly for me, I am completely unfamiliar with the works noted, so may have missed key references. Max is not a nice person. He engages in cruel behavior as a child and appears to lack a strong core of humanity, confessing that he doesn’t really know his daughter very well, and not seeming to care much.

I was almost satisfied with the ending, which recalls the most significant event of his youth, but I felt that it left unsatisfactorily unexplained the reasons for its occurrence. I was also frustrated by the slowness of the book. Although it is a short novel, it seemed to take a long time to get going. And the central characters do not call out for any of us to relate to them. All that said, while I might not award it a Booker, I would recommend it. The language is sublime (tote a dictionary while you read. You will need it.) and the payoff is good enough to justify the slow pace.


PS - for a very different and fascinating take on the novel be sure to check out Cecily's review

A mixed bag for me. This is a remarkable and intriguing book, sure, but somehow it didn't really resonate. Language and style are very distilled, almost poetic; I even suspect that the book comes into its own when you read it aloud, it 'sounds' just beautiful. But behind this, there's an obdurate story and an ingenious construction of which I do not know what to think. The narrator, Max Morden, an elderly man has just lost his wife to cancer and flees the world, back to a place on the Irish coast where he regularly spent the summers of his youth. There he came under the spell of the wealthy family Grace - the gods, he calls them - and this acquaintance, together with a dramatic incident, will scarr him for life. In his endless monologue Morden jumps constantly through time and only piecemeal we get more information. Max appears to be a very shy and disagreable man who is angry with his wife who left him and he obviously never overcame his youth trauma. He comes back to the sea hoping to find solace in the past.
"Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world’s wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. (…) that is why the past is just such a retreat for me. I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet”
This novel is ingeniously constructed, but at no time I was really captivated by the story, it felt a little too artificial. Moreover, the melancholic yearning for a paradisiacal past and the beatific admiration for the Grace family reminded me very strongly of similar novels ( Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, Brideshead Revisited by Waugh and also The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani). Despite the stylistic merits, and some strong passages on the power of remembering and the pervasiveness of the past in the present, Banville in this book a bit overplayed his hand, I think. But I remain in doubt, there's a lot of meat on the bone, here, perhaps inciting the need for a second read. Rating 2.5 stars.

The Sea is one of those rare books that I not only gave up on, but actually sold to a second-hand shop afterwards. Booker Prize winner, highly lauded in rec.arts.books and a handful of internet forums that I frequented in those days, and a pastel pastiche of hyper-pictorial pablum. Frankly, I don't remember a whole lot of this very brief excursion into Banvillea other than the endless, and I do mean endless descriptions and depictions of the sky—the shape and color of the clouds, whether it was enlivening or forbidding, whether wind-swept or barren, stark blue or multi-hued. Meanwhile, what passed for the story itself advanced, to no seeming purpose, the poncy reminiscences of a thoroughbred arsehole about his relationship with his empty space of a daughter. Normally I will be quite indulgent in allowing the author ample room in which to run up a full head of story steam—but this particular book, shuffling its feet and lazily whistling whilst running out one bit of sky puffery after another—got under my skin in record time.

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.

Banvil je baš dobar stilista, ili izuzetno posvećen pisac, svejedno. Mogao je da stane bilo gde, ne bi se mnogo izgubilo. Štaviše, možda mu onaj rasplet nije bio neophodan, za malo da pređe granicu patetične melodrame.
Vidi se da poštuje Džojsa, ali za izraz bira tok misli, ne svesti, pa se nema šta zameriti.
Obične stvari, obični ljudi (obične su i smrt i ljubav - to mi se posebno dopalo - ništa tu mnogo ne pršti i ne buči). Svakako je najjači utisak kako toliko seciranje (hrabro, na crti i Kafki i Prustu) ni jedne sekunde nije dosadno. Pedantno i hiruški precizno, odličnim jezikom.
Pošto nisam s primorja (galebovi mi uglavnom grakću imaju oštre kljunove i nekontrolisanu probavu, ni najmanje poetično) more sam doživela kao etalon iskonske Sebičnosti, u afirmativnom maniru. Zato mi se i sviđa.
I, da dobar prevod Nenada Dropulića.

VICINO E LONTANO VEDO SEMPRE IL MARE



La vita era soprattutto silenzio allora, quando eravamo piccoli, o almeno così sembra adesso, un silenzio sospeso, uno stato vigile. Aspettavamo nel nostro mondo informe, scrutando il futuro allo stesso modo in cui il ragazzino e io ci eravamo scrutati a vicenda, come soldati sul campo, in attesa degli eventi.


L’omonimo film è del 2013 diretto da Stephen Brown.

Max, il protagonista io narrante, ha da poco superato i sessanta, da dodici mesi seppellito la moglie Anna, ha una figlia, Claire, alle cui telefonate preferisce non rispondere per concentrarsi meglio sul suo lutto.
E per dedicarsi meglio anche all’attività principale che sostiene l’intero romanzo.
Visto che Max è tornato nel luogo sulla costa irlandese dove ha passato le sue estati dell’infanzia – e in particolare una, quella dove conobbe e frequentò la famiglia Grace, i cui figli gemelli erano sua coetanei e la ragazzina, Chloe, è stata il suo primo amore - l’attività principale consiste nel rievocare ricordi.
Tirare fuori dalla scatola della memoria cartoline del passato, senza neppure ricorrere alle occasionali madeleine proustiane, ma semplicemente camminando per i luoghi di mezzo secolo prima, facendo confronti tra ieri e oggi, cercando di sostanziare il suo doloroso oggi con quello struggente ieri.


I coniugi Grace sono Rufuss Sewell e la magnifica Natascha McElhone.

Continuamente avanti e indietro nel tempo, ieri e oggi, oggi e ieri, ricordi memorie rimpianti nostalgia.
Elegante, raffinato, evocativo, ricercato: ma qui e là la costruzione traspare un po’ forzata e il risultato è di una certa artificiosità. Tutto sommato, sostanzialmente noiosino. Non il primo incontro con Banville che avrei sperato.


Ciarán Hinds è Max. Sua moglie Anna è interpretata da Sinéad Cusack. La padrona della villa I Cedri è Charlotte Rampling.

The title says it all: the main character is neither the narrator, his late wife, nor Rosie; the plot is not (only) one that unfolds over the pages. No, the main point of this novel is the sea. The sea and the tides. The ocean and its threat, the sea and its beauty, and its sounds.
After the death of his wife, Max returns to the scene of his childhood, summer in particular. He made friends with a neighboring family: two children, twins, a young housekeeper, and the parents. Everything is going well, almost. John Banville delicately captures the little things that break the apparent harmony: a sleeping woman, a girl too far away, and unexpected confidence. And the drama we feel is not the one we believe.
It is a novel to be tasted softly, of high sensitivity, which makes you want to discover the author's other books.

n  The Sean - All that water, perhaps, that inexorable slow flood, or perhaps, that relentless ambulatory constant, is one that consumes time, more like dedimentionizes time, if that's a word, provides a cathartic shoulder, and stands remorselessly tall as if symbolizing an indifferent eternity. It cries within like a whimpering child as if it is made purely of emotions, and it roars in insurmountable outrage at the shore which is in a constant tussle to bind it. But it also retreats like a capricious child and sometimes shimmers like a model posing for a portrait. Not only in the photographs, but also in our lives it acts as a backdrop, tailoring a distinct bookmark for each of our memories. Or so it happened with Max Morden and his implacable past that beat in him like a second heart.

The story here really doesn't make an impact because that's not where we are allowed to focus even for one second in this marvelous little book. For, when we are in the mind of a character and sifting through his memories anachronistically, we only see the still images speaking to us from various corners. For example, An old empty eatery by the sea with sun rays slashing through an open window as if trying to brighten the somber air and a gush of wind pushing a stray piece of paper across the floor for someone to pick up and make a conversation. Or a bright sunny day on the beach when a child lying on sand looking at the idiosyncrasies of a family who came out for a picnic, a stern-disinterested father reclining listlessly on a chair, a pair of little twins going about their own adventures, a provocatively beautiful mother/wife looking for something to catch her fancy, and an enigmatic figure of a young nanny sitting with her knees to her chest and hands wrapped around, looking far into nothingness.

Such are the images I am left with after putting this book down. There were times when I read about one of Max's memories and somehow time traveled to one of mines finding myself lost in it and having read a few pages of which I had no recollection. I found answers to certain questions in the form of crude revelations as if I always knew them but never thought of them in such a pristine manner. For example: Max's dying wife:

n  'You are not even allowed to hate me a little, any more, like you used to'. She looked out at the trees a while and then turned back to me again and smiled again and patted my hand. 'Don't look so worried,' she said. 'I hated you, too, a little. We were human beings, after all.' By then the past tense was the only one she cared to employ.n

Doesn't it sound like a perfect manifestation of love towards each other? And when Max tries to explain how his identity was defined through his wife in a relative way like a rose is red only for the eyes that sees it, or like if a tree falls in a forest, the sound is heard only by the dwellers and no one else.

He also made me realize that memory is quite precarious, it gains its strength only by retelling or reminiscing. It also has an element of fantasy with the actual which makes it a little iffy because it vanishes or amends itself whilst encountering the reality again. But most of all, it most assuredly has a character of its own, like a person living in our heads.

This day when I find myself indulged so completely in my memories and how similarly or differently I look at them as compared to Max, I realize the multitudes of spaces, dimensions, emotions, and time that we are capable of traversing and transcending. It is truly overwhelming.