Narrator reveals himself to be irredeemably and incoherently conflicted almost immediately: “in everything I quickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal, the irony, the paradox” (9). Though a misotheist in wanting to “meet Him calmly and spit in His face” (9), he is “indifferent; I could afford to be good” (10) regarding virtue. That said, he easily casts his own ethnic group into judgment: “my people were entirely Nordic, which is to say, idiots. Every wrong idea which has ever been expounded was theirs” (11).

Much of the book is a jeremiad, such as how

“It would have been better if, like the mad Czoglosz, I had shot some good President McKinley, some gentle, insignificant soul [!] like that who had never done anyone the least harm [!!]. Because in the bottom of my heart there was murder: I wanted to see America destroyed, razed from top to bottom. I wanted to see this happen purely out of vengeance, as atonement for the crimes that were committed against me and against others like me who had never been able to lift their voices and express their hatred, their rebellion, their legitimate blood lust. I was the evil product of an evil soil. If the self were not imperishable, the ‘I’ I write about would have been destroyed long ago. (12-13)

Curious that he wishes to act in representative capacity, on behalf of others, and does not except himself from judgment (as with the condemnation of “Nordic” peoples, supra). This jeremiad continues throughout: “the continent is full of buried violence, of the bones of antediluvian monsters and of lost races of man” (41). Ultimately, though, it sounds like all that is solid melts into air:

even when a town becomes modernized, in Europe, there are still vestiges of the old. In America, though there are vestiges, they are effaced, wiped out of consciousness, trampled upon, obliterated, nullified by the new. […] Even a war does not bring this kind of desolation and destruction. […] In America the destruction is complete, annihilating. There is no rebirth, only a cancerous growth, layer upon layer of new, poisonous tissue, each one uglier than the previous one. (217-18)

In dealing with all this nastiness, the narrator presents a good example of how Foucault’s disciplinary measures escape the institution of their initiation and generalize across other practices:

This caring too much—I remember that it only developed with me about the time I first fell in love. And even then I didn’t care enough. If I had really cared I wouldn’t be here now writing about it: I’d have died of a broken heart, or I’d have swung for it. It was a bad experience because it taught me how to live a lie. It taught me how to smile when I didn’t want to smile, to work when I didn’t believe in work, to live when I had no reason to go on living. Even when I had forgotten her I still retained the trick of doing what I didn’t believe in. (15-16)

He may not be a full lumpenized antisocial nihilist because of this, but it is a close question. Rather, like Svejk, he goes along to get along:

I said Yes to everything. If the vice-president decreed that no cripples were to be hired I hired no cripples. If the vice-president said that all messengers over fort-five were to be fired without notice I fired them without notice. I did everything they instructed me to do, but in such a way that they had to pay for it. When there was a strike I folded my arms and waited for it to blow over. But I first saw to it that it cost them a good penny. The whole system was so rotten, so inhuman, so lousy, so hopelessly corrupt and complicated, that it would have taken a genius to put any sense or order into it, to say nothing of human kindness or consideration. I was up against the whole system of American labor, which was rotten at both ends. (19-20)

He displays some revolutionary sentiment in the belief that “beneath the terrible poverty there is a flame, usually so low that it is almost invisible. But it is there and if one has the courage to blow on it can become a conflagration” (27). The crisis and pre-revolutionary situation soon presents itself, when the boss cuts wages and hundreds quit: “I sat there and without asking a question I took them on in carload lots—niggers, jews, paralytics, cripples, ex-convicts, whores, maniacs, perverts, idiots, any fucking bastard who could stand on two legs and hold a telegram” (28). As a result, “the service was crippled, constipated, strangulated” (29). Sounds like quite an industrial sabotage plan, adopting the capitalist’s requirements to destroy the system that renders those requirements inexorable—but it is sadly vitiated by the narrator’s personal opportunism: “the best thing about the new day was the introduction of female messengers”—to “promise them a job but to get a free fuck first” (29).

It is not a one-time aberration; the narrator’s main focus throughout the text is misogynistic presentation of sex acts: “she was so drugged with sleep that it was almost like working on an automaton. I could see too that she was enjoying the idea of being fucked half asleep […] It was difficult to know how to put her to sleep again without losing a good fuck” (82); “you ever take a good look at her ass . . . how it’s spreading, I mean? In five years she’ll look like Aunt Jemima” (86); “into each and every one of them, as I shuffle about, I throw an imaginary fuck” (104); “one can remember many things about the woman one loved but it is hard to remember the smell of her cunt” (133); “like all the others she had a cunt too, a sort of impersonal personal cunt which she was unconsciously conscious of” (181); “bushy cunt […] juicy crotch […] best fuck I ever had” (182); “because she had such a marvelous ass and because it was also damned inaccessible I used to think of her as the pons asinorum” (187); “suddenly I felt she was coming, one of those long drawn out orgasms such as you get now and then in a jewish cunt” (212); “I look her right in the eye, and I press my knees still further into her crotch. She grows uneasy, fidgets about in her seat, and finally turns to the girl next to her and complains that I am molesting her” (222); “She had an enormous cunt and it had been well reamed out” (266).

It's fair to conclude therefore that “I am hardly a person—I am more nearly an animal” (151). (It’s not just the narrator; it seems to be a general phenomenon: “it was the most natural thing in the world, at the end of the evening, for him to say—‘come on upstairs a minute, I want to show you my cock’” (95), which is reminiscent of a recent judicial confirmation hearing.)

We see that the jeremiad and the misogyny come to coincide without remainder:

it always happens that way to a peaceable people. One day they run amok. In America they’re constantly running amok. What they need is an outlet for their energy, for their blood lust. Europe is bled regularly by war. America is pacifistic and cannibalistic […] Superficially it looks like a bold, masculine world; actually it’s a whorehouse run by women. (42)

He drops additionally into lumpenization: “I begin the voyage of my rootless self” (228); “I have no goal: the aimless wandering is sufficient unto itself” (id.). “I don’t have the feeling of being an American citizen any more” (310). “I quickly lost all sense of responsibility” (311)—but since when did you have any?

Despite the sexual opportunism, he retains some awareness otherwise, such as when his boss wants “someone to write a sort of Horatio Alger book about the messengers” (30):”I will give you Horatio Alger as he looks the day after the Apocalypse” (31). He notes the cosmopolitanization of the workforce:

Except for the primitives there was scarcely a race that wasn’t represented on the force. Except for the Ainus, the Maoris, the Papuans, the Veddas, the Lapps, the Zulus, the Patagonians, the Igorots, the Hottentots, the Tuaregs, except for the lost Tasmanians, the lost Grimaldi men, the lost Atlanteans, I had a representative of almost every species under the sun. (31)

And he notes also the lumpenization of workforce:

I heard men beg for work who had been Egyptologists, botanists, surgeons, gold miners, professors of oriental languages, musicians, engineers, physicians, astronomers, anthropologists, chemists, mathematicians, mayors of cities and governors of states, prison wardens, cowpunchers, lumberjacks, sailors, oyster pirates, stevedores, riveters, dentists, painters, sculptors, plumbers, architects, dope peddlers, abortionists, white slavers, sea divers, steeplejacks, farmers, cloak and suit salesmen, trappers, lighthouse keepers, pimps, aldermen, senators, every bloody thing under the sun, and all of them out of work. (32)

This should be regarded as the normal process.

All that said, “nobody could have slept more soundly than I in the midst of this nightmare. The war, when it came along, made only a sort of faint rumble in my ears” (42)—which is similar to the lovestruck jerk in Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.

Worse than being an animal, “I was definitely outside of their world as a cannibal is outside the bounds of civilized society” (54). That said, “I was filled with a perverse love of the thing-in-itself—not a philosophic attachment, but a passionate, desperately passionate hunger, as if in this discarded, worthless thing which everyone ignored there was contained the secret of my own regeneration” (id.), which is not really the same as being animalistic. He turns Heraclitean in believing that “all is flux, all is perishable” (64). He is concerned how “you get the statistical itch, the quid pro quo of the interactive, interstitial, ectoplasmic quantum of bodies jostling in space like the stars” (98). He cogitates upon how “beyond despair and disillusionment there is always the absence of worse things and the emoluments of ennui” (106); he refers to a “simulacrum of nothingness” (id.). He recognizes that “confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood” (176).

Again, the irredeemably conflicted incoherence is on display, in unreflective rightwing imagery: “from the top of the empire State Building I looked down one night upon the city which I knew from below: there they were, in true perspective, the human ants with whom I had crawled, the human lice with whom I had struggled” (69). Similarly, “the world is divided into three parts of which two parts are meat balls and spaghetti and the other part a huge syphilitic chancre” (106).

The pessimism becomes acute: “there is no redemption, the city itself being the highest form of madness” (121). “I have gained nothing by the enlargement of my world” (145). It is “sadness encrusted with disillusionment” (165). He believes that “facts mean nothing” and has "no concern about the future” (339). Does this develop a plausible anagnorisis? That’s difficult to decide; despite all of the conflicted presentation, there is a sense of resolution, in that “I knew very well I’d have to make a break some day” (279); eventually a “change of heart took place. I got myself married over night, to demonstrate to all and sundry that I didn’t give a fuck one way or the other” (312). Ultimately, he concludes that “Up to the present I traveled the opposite way of the sun; henceforth I travel two ways, as sun and as moon” (347).

Recommended for those born with a crucifixion complex, persons who prefer prolonged snakelike copulation during which they smoke a cigarette or two, and readers who studied the art of masturbation.

The concluding novel of the trilogy, Tropic of Capricorn, continues the tradition of fierce, anarchic prose that began with Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring. This novel is a chaotic, autobiographical stream of consciousness, filled with reflections on life, art, sexuality, and philosophy. Miller's language is rough, sharp, and candid, making his style both inimitable and provocative.

One of the key aspects of the book is its critique of social morality and standards. Miller rebels against societal routines, striving to break free from conventions. He asserts the right to freedom of expression, both in art and life, even when it defies societal norms.

Additionally, the novel’s philosophical reflections—particularly its engagement with the ideas of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky—are immensely captivating. It was intriguing to trace references to mystics such as Pyotr Uspensky, adding another layer of intellectual depth to Miller's already multifaceted narrative.

What makes Miller's writing truly liberating is his disregard for traditional structure and whether his work will be understood by every reader. He teaches us that each book has its own reader, and his prose boldly reflects this freedom—challenging conventions while inviting only those who are ready to dive into its chaotic beauty.

Henry Miller is grotesquely farcical and cynically truthful…
What does it take to become a writer? First of all a person must find one’s true self. And the process of searching can be very cynical. And true selves can be very different.

Everything that happens, when it has significance, is in the nature of a contradiction. Until the one for whom this is written came along I imagined that somewhere outside, in life, as they say, lay the solutions to all things. I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of life, seizing hold of something which I could bite into. Instead I lost hold of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to – and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for – myself.

The narration comes as a rave of a cynical lunatic… And this madman abides in the hallucinatory world of his own making.

I was walking again in Dreamland and a man was walking above me on a tightrope and above him a man was sitting in an aeroplane spelling letters of smoke in the sky. The woman hanging on my arm was pregnant and in six or seven years the thing she was carrying inside her would be able to read the letters in the sky and he or she or it would know that it was a cigarette and later would smoke the cigarette, perhaps a package a day.

And the narration comes as an obscene prayer to the goddess Astarte… Capricorn is a lascivious goat after all… And tropic is a gateway to the hottest and wettest equatorial zone…

My eyes are useless, for they render back only the image of the known. My whole body must become a constant beam of light, moving with an ever greater rapidity, never arrested, never looking back, never dwindling. The city grows like a cancer; I must grow like a sun. The city eats deeper and deeper into the red; it is an insatiable white louse which must die eventually of inanition. I am going to starve the white louse which is eating me up. I am going to die as a city in order to become again a man. Therefore I close my ears, my eyes, my mouth.

Truth is a rare merchandise because it brings angst and anxiety but it is a merchandise any authentic writer must deal in.

La difficoltà di questo romanzo sta nel non sottovalutarlo, nel riuscire a passare incolumi - specie se donne, secondo me - le pagine in cui Miller ha come obiettivo massimo l'infilare l'uccello in un buco, e cosa o di chi sia quel buco non gli interessa. Tropico del Cancro conteneva le stesse descrizioni abbrutite da una specie di mal di vivere, ma poiché si trattava più un romanzo che un'autobiografia, alla fine ci si poteva passare sopra. La difficoltà, dicevo, è nel non considerare Tropico del Capricorno solo una squallida autobiografia di una persona non in pace con sé stessa, uno scrittore diventato tale solo per caso, oltre che una copia in chiave autobiografica del predecessore. La bellezza di questo romanzo, di questa vita, si apprezza concludendolo, masticandolo piano, perché il surrealismo (quasi non voluto) che pervade ogni pagina è insieme squisito e lercio, incide nella memoria parole e immagini inclassificabili, oniriche, distinte e indistinguibili da tutta la porcheria che le racchiude.
La vita di Miller è difficile, forse non apprezzabile a prescindere, però è pur vero che un libro piace a seconda della sensibilità di chi lo legge, e io l'ho trovato perfetto nel suo squallore, nella sua difficoltà.

1. Bisogna leggere capolavori

1.1 - Un mio amico dice che lui legge solo capolavori. Se si parla di cinema, dice che lui vede solo capolavori. Una volta gli ho chiesto: «Perché?». Lui ha risposto: «Perché esistono».
1.2 - Non so se sia possibile leggere o vedere solo capolavori. Forse la mente ha bisogno di scemenze per apprezzare i capolavori, un po' come lo stomaco ha bisogno di junk food per apprezzare l'alta gastronomia.
1.3 - L'essere capolavoro potrebbe essere proprietà relazionale, non assoluta.
1.4 - Il problema fondamentale dei capolavori non è la loro necessità o precedenza, ma la loro esistenza

2. I capolavori, come la verità, amano nascondersi

2.1 - La verità si nasconde fra le pieghe della realtà, i capolavori si nascondono fra i moti ondosi della memoria
2.2 - Il mio amico aveva a casa un capolavoro e non lo sapeva
2.3 - Gli ho consigliato Henry Miller: mi ero completamente dimenticato di Henry Miller e mi ero completamente dimenticato di consigliarlo al mio amico
2.4 - Il mio amico è andato a comprare Tropico del Cancro, che io ho letto anni fa, mentre io prendevo a prestito dal suo scaffale Tropico del Capricorno

3. I capolavori stanno all'ombra di altri capolavori

3.1 - Quando la gente parla di Henry Miller, parla solo ed esclusivamente di Tropico del Cancro: è come se lui non avesse scritto altro
3.2 - Tropico del Cancro getta un'ombra troppo lunga sull'opera straordinaria di Henry Miller
3.3 - Inoltre, quando la gente parla di Henry Miller, parla delle sue scopate, delle sue porcate, di quante volte dice cazzo, di quante volte dice fica.
3.4 - Da 2 e da 3.3, ne consegue che alcuni capolavori si nascondono in sé stessi.

4. I capolavori parlano fra di loro

4.1 - Henry Miller ha ereditato il suo modo di scrivere da Céline
4.2 - Céline ha pubblicato Viaggio al Termine della Notte e poi una specie di prequel, che sarebbe Morte a Credito; Miller ha pubblicato Tropico del Cancro e poi una specie di prequel, che sarebbe Tropico del Capricorno; ma Tropico del Capricorno è diversissimo da Morte a Credito
4.3 - Bukowski ha ereditato il suo modo di scrivere ubriaco da Henry Miller, che ha inoltre ispirato molti della Beat Generation, che a loro volta ispireranno i post-modernisti
4.4 - Céline è il padre della letteratura americana

5. Chi scrive capolavori, parla coi morti

5.1 - Tropico del Capricorno è un delirio surrealista, ed è bellissimo
5.2 - Henry Miller cita esplicitamente i surrealisti
5.3 - In Tropico del Capricorno ci sono anche citazioni ed omaggi indiretti: Miller è un'omicida come Hemingway, ma più incosciente, perché bambino e puro
5.4 - Chi scrive capolavori deve parlare coi defunti usando il linguaggio della menzogna, perché la verità è solo una minima parte della realtà (cfr. 2.1)

6. Chi legge capolavori, guarda in faccia la morte

6.1 - Ho letto Tropico del Capricorno come Henry Miller leggeva i surrealisti francesi: come in un sogno in cui capisco alcune cose di me
6.2 - Come Alfred Hitchcock acquisì dignità cinematografica grazie agli studi critici di Truffault e degli altri registi della Nouvelle Vague, così Henry Miller deve la sua fortuna ad Anaïs Nin e a Parigi
6.3 - Henry Miller fece fortuna a Parigi perché questa città ha il volto della morte
6.4 - Gli Stati Uniti, New York e soprattutto Broadway sono la morte, ma fanno finta di non saperlo

7. Su ciò di cui non si può scrivere è meglio lasciarci una pagina bianca

ومع أني لم أنتهي من الكتاب، إلا أني أجدني مدفوعا برغبة غامضة للكتابة. مع العلم أني لم أقرر بعد هل سأكمله أم لا..
بالأمس، كنت في حالة من عدم الاتزان؛ حالة ذهنية ونفسية شديدة السوء، لم تداهمني من قبل، ربما الاكتئاب هو السبب. المهم وأنا في تلك الحالة، وبينما أجوب شوارع وسط البلد مع صديقة لي، ضاع الكتاب. نعم ضا ع مدار الجدي في مكان ما. سأحكي لكم: صليت الظهر في زاوية صغيرة، ثم قابلت صديقتي. سألتني: كتاب جديد؟ قلت: لا. قديم، لكني أقرأ فيه. هنري يلهمني وأنا أكتب. كلمتها عن أهمية الكتاب، ثم ذهبنا وتناولنا الغداء، ثم إلي المقهي، ثم إلي مكتبة شهيرة؛ نتنزه وسط الكتب، ثم وقعت عيني علي نسخة معروضة من الكتاب، فجأة تذكرت. أوه.. أين الكتاب؟ كان معك (أجابتني) وخرجنا نبحث عن الكتاب. وأنا في حالة من الضياع والتشتت. وكأن ابني تاه مني. كنت قد تجاوزت 65 صفحة فقط من الكتاب. كنت أقرأ بتأن واستمتاع بالغين. هنري يسب أم أمريكا ويلعن من خلفوها. هذه هي فاتحة الكتاب. ويبدو أن هذه هي تيمة الكتاب كله. هنري حزين جدا في مدار الجدي علي حال الانسان المنسحق من فوق، ومن الآلة، ومن الشغل، ومن المخدرات، والجنس..
هنري يبكي حاله، وحال أميركا، وحال العالم..
هذا أول كتاب يضيع مني يا هنري، ماذا أفعل؟ سأذهب لدلتا فينوس كتاب صديقتك نن..

Racist. Sexist. Let's move on.

Ca un carusel. Un montaigne rousse pe care pleci agale, ridicându-te pe culmi și apoi coborând amețitor prin tot felul de rotații, alte șuișuri și coborâri adânci și abrupte. Asta aș putea spune despre Tropicele lui Henry Miller.

Privind retrospectiv ambele lecturi, mă simt ca și coborât dintr-un astfel de monstru de distracții. Pline de adrenalină, de trăiri, de gânduri, de filozofie jucăușă, cu erotism dus la obscen, cu efuziuni de lirism și imagini puternice, printre care se strecoară diferite contradicții tipic dadaiste. Iată mașinăria milleriană.

Pentru Miller, unde ai zice că-i autobiografie în cazul ambelor cărți, este de fapt o distorsiune a realității și ficțiunii, o punere a acestora într-un malaxor din care iese o compoziție cel puțin ciudată.

Tropicul Capricornului vine în susținerea celuilalt tropic (Tropicul Cancerului) publicat în 1934. Apărut în 1939, după romanul Primăvara Neagră, după așezarea lui la Paris, Miller exploatează prima parte a vieții acestuia, cea de dinainte de marea mutare pe vechiul continent, unde descoperă marea menire, marea descătușare, marea plecare. Privind atipic modernismul și facerile modernității, naratorul se detașează prin trăiri intense, făcând uz de realitate pentru a o străpunge prin cele mai sensibile puncte, mai ales cele morale.

Restul aici: http://adispune.ro/henry-miller-tropi...

Henry Miller says he’s inhuman, superior to humans – the Nietzschean Übermensch, if you will – and I believe him. Because few authors have me captivated by their every word (“the,” “and,” and “I” included), my attention fixated on every turn of phrase and comma and full stop, and literally mouthing “oh my god” after each sentence. Never have I seen creativity flowing through a text like it does in his books. I’d love to ask him how it felt to capture the perfection of his thoughts – or if maybe, like all us writers, it didn’t look so perfect to him.

He’s THE artist. And he puts into words exactly what it means to be one. He doesn’t care to know if you’re following along because, if you aren’t, he’s really not talking to you. But if you are, he lets you know you’re just like him; now let’s suffer together. I’ve been going through several things lately, between my life and my art, and, I’ll be damned, he addressed it all in this book. You should’ve seen me whispering to the pages in front of me, “How can you hear me if I never even talked?” If reading Proust is a daily meditation, Miller is transcendental meditation. Yes, the one David Lynch raves about. He’s spiritual and artistic awakening. He talks to the soul you keep locked in your bookcase and sets it free.

Sure, in the wrong hands he sounds awfully crass and misogynistic, perhaps even a little antisemitic and warmongering – and I do beg you to stay away if you’re easily impressed by this sort of candid talk – but those who truly read his words know he’s only pursuing the absolute truth of living. And they will also see his deep love for life and humans through these raging statements. He’s the truest narrator I’ve ever read, not setting a fixed character for himself but rather showing the incoherent complexity of human consciousness. And his reflections on the world still ring true today, after almost a century. He can rant all he wants and try to alienate me with his sexual ventures; I’ll still read him. And I know after that I’ll be underlining 50 straight pages. Because “art ought to be something funny and a trifle boring.”

Not much else I can say about him; it’s all in his books. Go read them.

هذه إحدى روايات الكاتب هنري ميللر؛ التي مُنعت في الولايات المتحدة؛ لأكثر من ثلاثين سنة؛ بسبب ما قيل عن احتوائها على ألفاظ خادشة للحياء.... لمن قرأ مدار السرطان؛ لنفس المؤلف؛ يجد أن هناك تقارب في بعض العبارات؛ ووصف لثقافة العاهرات، إلا أن مدار السرطان؛ كان غالبها سرد لرواية؛ وتحتوي على بعض الفلسفة... إلا أن رواية مدار الججدي؛ يغلب عليها الطابع الفلسفي؛ حتى كاد تمل من القراءة؛ لثقل العبارات، ومفاهيمها على العقول... لكنها في الأخير وصف لأمريكا النصف الأول من القرن العشرين، وما تحويه من ثقافات؛ مختلفة؛ كنظرة السود للبيض، والعكس، ونظرة الجنس؛ التي تكاد تكون العمود الفقري لحياة الأمريكيين؛ في ذلك الوقت، وربما استمرارها حتى اليوم... ما قيل من منع هذه الرواية، وغيرها؛ بسبب الفحش الكلامي؛ مجرد تغطية؛ لنقد الكاتب هنري ميللر لحقيقة أمريكا، وحياة الأمريكيين... نقداً يمس الأسس، والاعتقادات؛ التي تقوم عليها أمريكا؛ بل إنه يلعن أمريكا؛ وهو بالمناسبة مواطن أمريكي؛ ويُظهر حياة شخص؛ غير مبالي بالحياة، ومتطلباتها؛ إلا أنه بعد واجه؛ اضطر للبحث عن عمل؛ حتى وجد عملاً؛ اعتبر نفسه؛ كأنه آلة؛ يُملي عليه رجال الإدارة العليا أوامرهم....الرواية تستحق القراءة؛ رغم ما فيها من عبارات؛ لكنها في الأول والأخير؛ سرد، ووثف لثقافات متعددة؛ ما كنا لنعرفها؛ لولا هنري ميللر...

Escrita después de Trópico de Cáncer y publicada también en París 4 años después de la primera. En esta novela fuertemente autobiográfica, Henry Miller narra sus años en Nueva York, antes de venir a Europa, mientras trabajaba para una compañía postal. Más enrevesado que Trópico de Cáncer, supongo que porque el autor rememora hechos pasados más antiguos, no tan frescos en su memoria, la narración no sigue un orden cronológico y salta de la narración de hechos al monólogo interior donde se manifiesta el infierno personal del escritor, sus traumas infantiles, su inconformismo y, porque no decirlo, su locura. Intensa, polémica, y personal, esta novela (junto con el otro trópico), revolucionó la literatura moderna y he ejercido una influencia tremenda sobre generaciones posteriores. Ambientada en la Nueva York de la década de 1920, la novela es la historia del despertar espiritual de su protagonista y narrador, Henry, empleado de la división de personal de la compañía telegráfica «Cosmodemonic». Gran parte de la trama gira alrededor de sus años conflictivos con su mujer June Miller, y el proceso de encontrar su voz como escritor. No obstante, aunque las experiencias de su alter ego narrador, con el que comparte el nombre, son muy cercanas a las que pudo tener el propio Miller cuando trabajó para la compañía telegráfica Western Union, la novela se considera una obra de ficción.

Zor bir kitap "Oğlak Dönencesi".

Yazarın "Yengeç Dönencesi"ni okuduğum yakın zamanda, Henry Miller'ı keşfetmemin ne kadar geç kaldığını anladığımda büyük bir panik hali yaşamış ve en kısa zamanda "Oğlak Dönencesi"ni okuma kararı almıştım. Ancak "Yengeç Dönencesi"nde ki oburluğum burada kendini gösteremedi. Kitap yordu beni bir noktada. O yüzden yarısında ara vermek ve araya birçok kitap sokmak durumunda kaldım. Bu, aslında Miller'in değil, benim densizliğim. Zira Miller tempolu bir hayat içerisinde, dikkatinizi vermeniz gereken onca başka şey varken okunacak eserler yazmıyor. Haliyle ben zamanı yanlış seçmiştim.

Henry Miller olay odaklı ve kronolojik bir anlatım benimsemediğinden okuması hayli zor ve meşakkatli oluyor. Okuyucusunu belirleyen bir yazar Miller. Proustvari bir edebiyattan da bahsetmiyorum. Çok daha başına buyruk, savruk, kavramsal bir dili var Miller'in. Altını çizebileceğiniz çok fazla pasajla karşılaşıyorsunuz. Düşüncesini anlatma şekli çok özel ve özgün. Okurken farkına varıyorsunuz, diyorsunuz ki 'bu adam boşuna çağın en önemli yazarlarından biri olmamış'.

Tabulara karşı sanatın her dalında karşıtlık oluşturan eserlere hayranlık duyan benim için "Oğlak Dönencesi"ni beğenmem kaçınılmazdı. Bataille tarzı grotesk ve gündelik hayatın içine yedirdiği bir yaklaşımı var olaylara. "Oğlak Dönencesi" müstehcenlik gereğiyle uzun yıllar yasak kalmış bir kitap ancak bence tabulara, erk sistemin getirmiş olduğu genel-geçer ahlaka vurulmuş bir darbe olduğundan, korkudan yasaklanmış bir kitap. Yazarın dili bazı kesimlerce fazla erkek egemen bulunuyor. Ben buna katılmakla beraber kadınlarla bir sorunu olduğunu kabul etmiyorum. Zira yazar inanılmaz dürüst. Miller'in sadece kadınlarla değil, toplumla, erkeklerle, insanlarla, hayvanlarla, tanrıyla ve her şeyle benzer problemleri olduğunu gözden çıkarmamak gerek.

Çeviriyi beğenmeyenlerle de karşılaştım daha önce ama yine bana göre Avi Pardo'nun Miller çevirileri, Roza Hakmen'in çevirileri ile yarışacak düzeyde. Çoğu noktada çevirmenin hakimiyetine ve gücüne hayranlık duydum.

Kafanızın ve zamanınızın boş olduğu bir zamanda, kallavi bir edebiyat eseri okumak istiyorum diyorsanız, "Oğlak Dönencesi" güzel bir tercih olacaktır.

10/8