Ενας υπέροχος Χένρι Μίλλερ μ' ένα έργο που γράφτηκε πριν στη δεκαετία του '30 και ξαναγράφτηκε στη δεκαετία του '50 (1956).
Δεν είναι ο μύθος που λατρεύεις στο συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο, είναι οι περιγραφές του Μίλλερ, είναι η διάχυτη σεξουαλικότητα, είναι το α-ρομαντικό και συνάμα τόσο θελκτικό. Αν τις "Ησυχες μέρες στο Κλισί" διαβάσει ένα νεαρό παιδί (15-20), τότε στα σίγουρα θα στιγματίσει τη ζωή του, ίσως και την κοσμοθεωρία του για το τι είναι έρωτας, σεξ, ανθρώπινες σχέσεις, πραγματική καθημερινή ζωή.
Για έναν ενήλικο είναι μια γερή γροθιά πιο κάτω από το στομάχι.

Will I ever read a work by Miller I don't fall in love with? Seems unlikely.

The painter Agnes Martin once said something to the effect of, "With music, people are prepared to accept pure emotion. In art, they demand meaning."

If this is true for the painter, even more so than for the writer. The key to Miller lies not in his philosophical ramblings, nor the erotic scenes (and don't move to call them pronographic!) which constitute so much of his work, and for which he is, for better or worse, so well known. What Miller achieves, through the blend of both the base and cerebral experiences of life, is a vivid emotion, perhaps explemlified best in the opening of this novella.

"As I write, night is falling and people are going to dinner. It's been a gray day, such as one often sees in Paris."

That gray stains the following 90 pages of "Quiet Days in Clichy." (see the "Grau" paintings of Gerhard Richter)

Will I ever read a work by Miller I don't fall in love with? Seems unlikely. He always leaves me feeling something, something...

My favorite Henry Miller. It's like a short outtake from Tropic of Cancer--just some of his amazing adventures in Paris. He gets drunk, chases whores, finds dinner in the garbage can, bums food and smokes, and because it's Miller, it all sounds like the greatest life you could ever hope to live.

I always enjoy Henry Miller. Here's a passage that I liked: "There are hotels in the side streets leading off the boulevard whose ugliness is so sinister that you shudder at the thought of entering them, and yet it is inevitable that you will one day pass a night, perhaps a week or a month, in one of them. You may even become so attached to the place as to find one day that your whole life has been transformed and that what you once regarded as sordid, squalid, miserable, has now become charming, tender, beautiful."

QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY-HENRY MILLER
✒"....Luxembourg seemed like just the right place to go to at six o'clock in the morning"
✒"Now I know what makes the world civilized: it's vice, disease, thievery, mendacity, lechery."
✒"I might say, in passing, that my life seems to have been
one long search for the Mara who would devour all the others
and give them significant reality."

Vet inte vad jag ska säga om den här boken...? Det var jättejättebra språk men inte så trevlig handling jag hade velat ge språket 5 och innehållet 0 typ

need to stop thinking ‘this will be right up my street!’ about literally any book set in paris.

It's not a love letter to the city as the only part that can be described like that is the first, quite beautiful, paragraph. The rest is bullshit written by the asshole who in his 40s thinks that's quite alright to fuck a 15-year-old girl whom he even called a child.
The language is mediocre, constant repetition of vulgar 'cunt' and more comic 'boobies' were of a poor taste.
Constant descriptions of sex with many stupid, dull, simple, crazy, sometimes 'cheerful as cow' but always dense women treated only as sexual object have no value except shocking one but with so many almost the same sexual intercourses they just lost me in the first few pages.
And why is the author an asshole? Because his 'shocking' sex and treating other people as 'sheeps' and 'cows' and mindless idiots has no deeper value. There is no quality in his writing. I didn't get anything from his book, except the forced by the author himself idea of him being so great, so bohemian and so intelligent and clever.
And don't get me wrong I have no problem with descriptions of shocking, disgusting or pervert actions. I didn't even blink when the author describes how he wipes his ads with his sandwich and then eats it or how he compare hot vagina to steaming manure. But it needs to have its purpose and in this case I could see none.
Maybe, Henry Miller really redefined the modern novel with his 'Tropic of Cancer' but this book is just a pile of steaming manure.

هل كانت حقًا هادئة؟ لو كانت كذلك, فكيف هي أيامه الصّاخبة؟
هذا ما فكّرت فيه و أنا أنهي الكتاب, و لم يكن – بالنسبة لي على الأقل- سوى أيام داعرة، مترعة بالسفلس و زجاجات النبيذ. غمرني شعور عارم بالشفقة على كل من قاسمنه و صديقه "كارل" هذا الهراء، بدءًا بـ "نيس" التي كان لها "صوت امرأة سعيدة بأنها لا تزال على قيد الحياة" و انتهاءً بـ "كريستين"، الدنماركية التي يلائم اسمها بقرة أو حصانًا مصابًا بورم" ، لكنه – و الحق يقال- هراء مكتوب بشكل رائع يثير الغبطة.

يكتب "ميللر" بالطريقة التي أحب. راقني كثيرًا أسلوبه السردي و وصفه الدقيق و تحليله للشخصيات؛ كنت أعيد قراءة الأسطر التي يتوقف فيها عن سرد الأحداث ليتأمل و يفكّر و يحلّل، قبل أن يستأنف السرد بمهارة و خفّة كاتب محترف. لفتتني أيضًا قدرته المدهشة على التعبير عن نفسه بوضوح شديد، و تدفّقه في أفكاره دون أدنى اعتبار، و لا عجب، " فالرطانة المهذّبة المتأنقة تستنزف قوة المرء، و تجعل كل شيء عقيمًا, معقمًا بلا معنى".

ليس هناك الكثير للحديث عنه في هذا الكتاب؛ في 93 صفحة من القطع المتوسط، يحكي "ميللر" عن حياته المشتركة مع صديقه الكاتب، في شقة صغيرة في كليشي. يتحدّث حينًا عن مشكلة الطعام و عدم توفّر النقود، وباقي الأحيان عن مغامراته الجنسية و ما يسبقها من تمهيد عاطفي, رومانسي, ساحر "يخفي به الحقيقة السافرة القبيحة للانقضاض الجنسي" .

يقول عن أيامه هناك: "عندما أتذكّر تلك الفترة, عندما كنّا نعيش معًا في كليشي، فإنها تبدو لي و كأننا كنّا نعيش في الجنّة"! وأعلّق أنا في داخلي بما قاله هو في موضعٍ آخر: "من الغريب أن يغرق المرء في الحثالة و يظنّ أنه في الجنّة" :)

كانت هذه أولى تجاربي مع الكاتب، أحببتُ - فضلاً على ما ذكرته سابقًا- لا مبالاته بما قد يدور في أذهان الآخرين بمن فيهم قارئيه؛ لم تكن هناك أي محاولة للتبرير أو إشعار ضمني بأنه كان أو سيكون أفضل حالاً مما هو عليه في أيامه الصاخبة تلك. و أخشى -بتوالي التجارب- أن يكون فعلاً "الرجل الذي يؤلف الكتب الفظيعة" كما قالت إحدى فتياته عندما عرّفها بنفسه في سهرة راقصة.

على كل حال، و مهما يكن من أمر، لا يسعني في النهاية، و بعد قراءة بعض التعليقات المستهجِنة، إلا أن أقول ما قاله هو عن فرنسا (بتصرّف): هكذا هو "ميللر", و إذا لم تتعوّد عليه و تقبله كما هو، فإن قراءتك له ستكون مزعجة للغاية.

الشكر كل الشكر لـ "خالد الجبيلي" على الترجمة الدقيقة.

it feels like he just wrote down whichever (inappropriate) words were on his mind. sometimes he described a situation very beautifully, but in the next moment he got to explicit. it wasn’t bad, but i often felt external shame for some sentences. not my cup of tea :( (also it’s quite old so i guess that explains why it is written like that)

Дві повісті, що видаються на викинуті з фінальної редакції «Тропіку Рака» шматки

I thought, while spending a year overseas, I would read books about people who were living far from home. I was reading "Shogun", but after a few weeks, I needed a break from James Clavell's straight-forward, no-frills prose. So, I thought I would give Henry Miller a try. (Going from 1600s Japan to 20th century Paris would be a fun shift, too.)

I had started Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" years ago, but never got more than 50 pages into it because it was just so dense with philosophy, dream-like imagery, and Miller's devil-may-care personality. At the time, I just wasn't in the mood for it, but thought I'd give it another go, figuring it would be a good antidote to the plot-rich/poetry-weak book I had been reading. Unfortunately, "Tropic" wasn't available on Kindle, so I thought I'd go with this book, which some reviewers had said was an easier read than his more famous work.

This was a true assessment. This was an easy read, and I finished the book in less than a week, but there's not much to it. Some nice writing from time to time, but hardly the dense poetic ruminations I had hoped to find. Instead, this book is really just some meandering memories of women (most of them prostitutes) by some expat American author. There are some vivid moments throughout, a nice essay on the color gray, and a fun dream sequence at the end of the 1st half, but it all amounts to a fairly forgettable read of booze, smut, a couple interesting characters, and no-regrets glibness.