Qualche giorno fa Kurt Vonnegut avrebbe compiuto 98 anni, chissà che cosa avrebbe detto della pandemia in atto e sul covid; soprattutto di tutte le ciance che si sentono e si leggono? Ma questa è un'altra storia... così va la vita!

Le sirene di Titano è il secondo romanzo scritto da Vonnegut, datato 1959, periodo post Seconda Guerra Mondiale ed in piena Guerra Fredda. L'autore delinea una storia di viaggi spaziali, interplanetari, cercando di scoprire lo scopo della vita insita nell'essere umano. I protagonisti sono molteplici e nessuno spicca su altri, perchè credo che l'intento di Vonnegut fosse rivolto al messaggio dietro alla storia, cioè: il ripudio della guerra, di qualsiasi guerra possibile ed immaginabile, un manifesto all'antimilitarismo, una satira sociale, politica e religiosa graffiante (ho trovato una scrittura molto più dura e sofferta, rispetto ad altri suoi romanzi scritti dopo, si sente lo spirito di rivolta insito nel periodo giovanile di ogni essere umano), ma vi è sempre e comunque quello stile e impronta umoristica che ti lascia prender fiato e che fa di Vonnegut un precursore del genere fantascienza umoristica, poi tanto usato negli anni successivi, per esempio da Douglas Adams. Quello che differenzia Vonnegut dagli altri, è quello strato sottile di malinconia che persiste sempre nei suoi racconti, fatto di speranza, ma anche di tristezza, verso l'avvenire!

Live at Tralfamadore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6MDC...

This, Vonnegut's second novel and a science-fiction classic, had me worried for the first 50 pages or so—I was actually rather underwhelmed. I didn't care very much for the protagonist, Malachi Constant, who is the richest, most impossibly lucky man on Earth, and a degenerate wastrel. The other main character—another very wealthy man named Winston Niles Rumfoord—has become caught in a space anomaly that makes him materialize at various points in the solar system at regular intervals, and also allows him to see into the future. What do I care about these fantastical rich boys? Answer: Not much—at first, anyway. However, if you want to redeem an incredibly wealthy, seemingly irredeemable character, the most effective way to go about it is to take away everything he has and give him amnesia, which is what Vonnegut allows to happen to poor Malachi Constant. As soon as Unk appears almost 100 pages in, I started to love this character and the book, and the feeling only grew until the last page was turned, concluding with a profound emotional payoff. I now understand the affection that so many people have for Sirens, as this is the best Vonnegut I've read so far.

Also, has anyone mentioned the influence that The Sirens of Titan must have had on Alan Moore's Watchmen? I was surprised by some of the similarities, such as having a character who, through an accident, is endowed with godlike omniscience and the ability to be in multiple places at one time. Or the idea of a character orchestrating events to carry out an interplanetary attack on Earth (or a simulation of one in Watchmen's case) in order to unite the people of Earth and bring about world peace. There are other parallels that can be drawn as well. I'm assuming it's an acknowledged influence?

اولین کتابی است که از وانه گات می‌خوانم. تخیل قوی، روایت جذاب، طنز تلخ و قصه گویی دلنشین او ستودنی است. ترجمه‌ی آقای بهرامی هم خیلی خوب بود. آخر کتاب پیگفتاری از مترجم درباره‌ی وانه گات و آثار او و همچنین مصاحبه‌ای با وانه گات آورده شده است که آنها هم خواندنی هستند.
********************************************************************************
عالم جای بی‌اندازه بزرگی است. و جا برای تعداد بی‌اندازه بزرگی از مردم باز است تا درباره‌ی امور جهان حق با آنها باشد و در عین حال با هم موافق نباشند. ص 19 کتاب
گاهی انسان سقوط می‌کند و به وضعی می‌افتد که چندان هم از وضع جانوران محترمانه‌تر نیست، و این گونه سقوط همیشه رقت انگیز است. و چه رقت انگیز‌تر است هنگامی که مرد سقوط کرده از همه‌ی امتیازها برخوردار بوده است. ص57 کتاب
رامفورد گفت: تکذیب، انکار- چه واژه‌ی زمان شناسانه‌ی به موقعی، البته به شرطی که چنین واژه‌ای وجود داشته باشد. من این حرف را میزنم، و بعد شما مرا تکذیب می‌کنید، آنگاه من شما را تکذیب می‌کنم، و آنگاه کس دیگری از راه می‌رسد و هر دوی ما را تکذیب می‌کند. رامفورد به خود لرزید. چه کابوسی است این، این که همه به صف می‌ایستند تا یکدیگر را تکذیب کنند. ص 61 کتاب
تا به امروز فقط یک چیز یاد گرفته‌ام و آن اینکه عده‌ای از مردم پیشانی دارند و باقی مردم پیشانی ندارند و حتی فارغ التحصیل دانشکده‌ی تجارت هاروارد هم نمی‌تواند بگوید چرا. ص 96 کتاب
گفت: "من قربانی مجموعه‌ای اتفاق بوده‌ام." و شانه‌هایش را بالا کشید و گفت: "همان طور که همه‌ی ما قربانی اتفاق بوده‌ایم." ص 235 کتاب
هیچ کاری که از آدمی سر می‌زند ظالمانه‌تر و خطرناک‌تر و کفرآمیز‌تر از آن نیست که کسی معتقد باشد – معتقد باشد که تقدیر آدمیان، چه خوب و چه بد، در دست خداوند است. ص260 کتاب
برای برخورداری از پشتوانه‌ی دوستی، پشتوانه‌ای که مناسب باشد، داشتن تنها یک دوست برای آدمی کافی است. ص 267 کتاب
چقدر طول کشید تا سرانجام فهمیدیم که یکی از هدف‌های حیات آدمی دوست داشتن دیگران است، دوست داشتن هرکسی که دور و بر ماست و می‌شود دوستش داشت، و هیچ فرقی نمی‌کند که کنترل حیات آدمی در دست کیست. ص 323 کتاب

i have never known such affection, have never loved a book so completely, with so much of myself that i can hardly tell where the text ends and where i begin. we are one, overlapping and interwoven, within and throughout. to love something, i think, is to be contextualized by it, to willingly stay in its orbit and let it define you through association. what am i without this book? i don’t care to know.

the sirens of titan is an exploration of the age old philosophical debate between fate and free will, cleverly framed by an absurdist narrative whose bounds extend far beyond earth. everything about it is outlandish and far fetched, but the distance is necessary; it gives us perspective, acts as both a mirror and a magnifying glass as vonnegut establishes his principal argument: that life is inherently without purpose and, as such, its purpose is merely what you make it. it is an exceptionally human trait to seek meaning in a life that is, at least in part, the byproduct of chance, to try and make sense of the arbitrary. but control isn’t entirely an illusion, and in our agency—however limited it may be—lies the glorious possibility of fulfillment. life does not have to be grand. perhaps we are here simply to do the things we love and spend time with the people we love. is that not more than enough?

in short, this was an absolute pleasure to read—addictive and funny and scathing and thought provoking. every word, every sentence, every page will live on inside me forever.

Щура книга. Гадно-прекрасна! Толкова накъсано и объркано ми вървеше, че на места се чудих дали нещо в превода е сбъркано. Постоянно се появяваха дълги отклонения и отплесвания. Научнофантастичното клонеше към абсурдното. Напомни ми Йонеско, който също изпили мозъка ми, но много харесах. На моменти сцените добиваха типичен сюрреалистичен вид. Луда работа. Това е най-странният Вонегът. (Повечето от нещата му съм ги чел като тийнейджър и подобно на войниците на Марс в романа, сякаш ми бяха изтрили паметта.) Вонегът сякаш се е опитал да събере и хване всичките си идеи в тази книга. Впрочем, доста изнервяща и трудна за четене на моменти. Няколко пъти, аха, да я оставя. Как да кажа..., все едно всеки абзац и всяка глава бяха парчета от фантастичен пъзел. Пъзел, пъзел, пъзел ... - трупат се, трупат се, имаш цяла купчина от тях и си казваш: Е, какво от това! Има яки моменти, ама какъв е този мега сбирщайн? И така, докато стигнеш финала. Ух, какъв финал! (Според мен, разбира се.) Мамка му!

За кой ли път стигам до произведение, в което краят е оформящ и решаващ. Съвсем скоро коментирах "60 разказа" на Будзати, донякъде в този смисъл. Разбира се, при разказите това изглежда да е много по-различно, а всъщност не е. Всъщност, сега мога по-точно да го кажа, за мен няма значение дали началото е тъпо и досадно, разтегливо или объркано, не е важно и краят да е невероятен и силен. Важното за мен е да се появи онова силно нещо, по което да познаеш, че си имаш работа с шедьовър. Не е от значение размаха на творбата и нейната "правилност" и елегантност на израза, художественост и изящност. Важен е именно моментът - моментът, в който добиваш прозрението, че си чел нещо истинско, а не менте на думите и историите. Все едно се се събрали Будзати, Калвино, Йонеско, звъннали са по телефона на Виан, и са му казали дай сега да влезем в главата на Вонегът и да го накараме да напише една супер яка и смислена идиотщина.

Убеден съм, че Дъглас Адамс се е вдъхновил именно от тази книга, за да напише "Пътеводител на галактическия стопаджия". Но при Дъглас Адамс историята за "търсенето на смисъла на живота" е написана толкова леко, забавно и уютно, докато Вонегът..., раз-прас с мачетето. Определено обича резките обрати и изненади.

Малко преди края ви очаква ИЗНЕНАДА! А, финалът..., изкушавам се да кажа, че е "лебедова песен" или по-скоро песен на сините птици от Титан, но е толкова тъпо. Не знам, на мен изключително силно ми въздейства. Спирам.

rope-a-dope is a boxing tactic of pretending to be trapped against the ropes, goading an opponent to throw tiring ineffective punches. rope-a-dope is a tactic employed by Winston Niles Rumfoord as he blithely controls the fates of his wife Beatrice, entrepreneur Malachi Constant, the buffoonish and warlike Martians, and of course all of the humans crowding up this planet Earth. they try to push back against this immaterial man, beamed to them with his hound of space Kazak for less than an hour, every few months, full of plans that will change their identities, change their ultimate destinies. they take their swings, throw their punches, they tire themselves out. they don't even see the knock-out coming.

Vonnegut employs his own sort of tactics. he's a playful author and a serious thinker. such a delightful tale; such darkness below the surface. this a breezy story about the dismantling of faith and religion as the only way to save humanity. this is a cheerful story about long-game manipulation, memories wiped, rape, friend killing friend, and genocide used to bring people together. this is an upbeat story about lives upended, dreams destroyed, and exile from all of your kind. the lovely sirens of Titan call to readers and characters, beckoning them to a place of delight; those lovely sirens live on Saturn's moon, statues submerged in a pool of green muck and murk, ignored.

As with Player Piano, I first read this one after having finished all of KV's other works up to that point (with the exception of Mother Night, which for various reasons I have yet to get to and will read next, finally), in 1994, and as I was dealing with some heavy, climacterical shit of my own just then, living and knowing sorrow but not reflecting upon much less understanding it in my still 20-something way, I completely missed the point of this book, and subsequently it was largely erased from my main memory banks the way nearly all of the Martians have their own brains mental-flossed herein..., and so approaching it now, and with some admitted diffidence, I imagined remembering it as mere, early, and relatively meh-ish, Sci-Fi-KV...



...Yet, judging from how often tears would form in my eyes while reading this over the past couple of days ("punctually"-speaking we are at the beginning of fall in 2022)...

n  William, are you grieving, over Goldengrove unleaving?n

...I simply could not have been more wrong. This is a fiendishly clever hijacking of sci-fi conventions by the unbridled imagination of one of the most feverishly inventive, compassionate, and deceptively humble writers of the twentieth century—all by way of posing a possible, if not necessarily sufficiently achievable, answer the question posed to the giant computer EPICAC in KV's first novel (Player Piano), namely, "What are people for?"

n  n    "... a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."n  n

In its spiral gyrations from the sun to Betelgeuse, in getting from its beginning to its end, it is, like T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets is an attempted fulfillment (to the extent that that is possible), in other words, of what Milan Kundera calls the novel's or any art's sole moral imperative: to explore new avenues which bespeak of the human condition. It is also KV's attempt to love us, and himself.

n  Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the gift you were born for,
It is everyone you mourn for.n

It was just the right book for me, at just the right time, then—but more.

(Apologies for the liberties taken w/ GM Hopkins)

به شدت رضایت‌بخش بود.
نه از این نظر که پایان خوشی داشت، نه از این نظر که باعث خوشحالی و شادی من شده باشه. بلکه از این نظر که به من مجموعه‌ای از اطلاعات و پرسش‌ها داد که هرکدوم پرسش جدیدی ایجاد کرد، به تعداد خیلی زیادی از این پرسش‌ها پاسخ داد و پاسخ بخش دیگه‌ای از اون‌ها رو به خودم سپرد، در جای درست تموم شد و یک حلقه‌ی باز و طولانی رو بست. رضایت‌بخش بود چون یک تصویر ناتمام رو برام تکمیل کرد.
افسونگران تایتان از اون دسته علمی‌تخیلی‌هایی بود که ارزش این ژانر رو اثبات می‌کرد. اثبات می‌کرد چرا باید علمی‌تخیلی خوب رو تحسین کنیم و هرگز این بخش عظیم و باشکوه دنیای ادبیات رو دست کم نگیریم.

This book is so fantastic and crazy, yet at the same time so thought inducing and relatable. More than any book it showed the pointlessness of human life and also life goal and aim.

The story felt flexible enough to allow it to be what the reader would like it to be. It felt like the reader could strengthen their beliefs by reading this book, no matter what your beliefs were - it was all there - free will or control, religion and search of meaning, inequality and envy.

I loved his style and the repetitiveness that sometimes appeared. It seemed so well placed and brilliant.

Oh and I thought this is a handbook Elon Musk must be living by.

The Sirens of Titan is one of Vonnegut's stronger works. The intentions of his absurdism can be difficult to pinpoint, but this book seems to offer a meta-analysis of this: "Either you understand at once what it is, or there is no sense in trying to explain it to you." Sirens takes on the idea of meaning itself, whether it's the meaning of a work such as this or life itself. It tells the story of an individual who sees beyond this search for meaning and takes advantage of the reality of things; while everyone is searching for meaning or awaiting divine instruction or intervention, this person is seizing the exact existence they have chosen to seize (and usually stepping over those others in the process - he even further establishes that this is not necessarily a bad thing). He does utilize the absurdity of religion to assert this point and deals also with the idea that greatness (even to divine scale) is primarily a matter of chance. This character understands what he has control over in each moment. There's a sort of angle about determinism versus free will as well, particularly with the Malachi Constant character.

One of the best aspects of Vonnegut's work is that while there is a deeper meaning if you want to look for it, the story is just as enjoyable if you don't think too much about it. Sirens of Titan does a really good job of presenting that balance that he would perfect in novels like Slaughterhouse-Five. The thing about revelations is that there will always be a new revelation, so what's the point in understanding any of it? In the final analysis, Vonnegut succinctly boils down the meaning of life to the reader in asserting that, "A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved." Don't wait for a better world, create it.

In a better Universe the author of the Bible is Kurt Vonnegut.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* the bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death

* What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She had overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.

* He was an anarchist, though he never got into any trouble about it, except with his wife.

* physically and morally unattractive

* If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.

* It was literature in its finest sense, since it made Unk courageous, watchful, and secretly free. It made him his own hero in very trying times.

* a phenomenon known as UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. UWTB is what makes universes out of nothingness – that makes nothingness insist on becoming somethingness

* Mars is a very bad place for love.

* There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

* [the harmoniums] The creatures cling to the singing walls of their caves. In that way, they eat the song of Mercury. [...] A dead harmonium looks like a dried apricot.

* At this point of the story it is mandatory, if an adult is reading the story aloud to a child, for the adult to ask the child with delicious hoarseness, „Who wuzza dog?“
Dog wuzza Kazak. Dog wuzza Winston Niles Rumford's great, big, mean, chrono-synclastic infundibulated dog.

* All I know is we're being tested somehow, by somebody or something a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have nice time till it's over.

* It was a Tuesday afternoon. It was springtime in the northern hemisphere of Earth. Earth was green and watery. The air of earth was good to breath, as fattening as cream. The purity of the rains that fell on Earth could be tasted. The taste of purity was daintily tart.
Earth was warm.
The surface of Earth heaved and seethed in fecund restlessness. Earth was most fertile where the most death was.

* real people in real hells

* ...because he used the fantastic fruits of his fantastic good luck to finance an unending demonstration that man is a pig... he did nothing unselfish or imaginative with his billions...

* one friend was all that a man needed in order to be well-supplied with friendship

* The atmosphere of Titan is like the atmosphere outside the back door of an Earthling bakery on a spring morning.

* The Great Wall of China means in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above: „Be patient. We haven't forgotten about you.“

* as irresistible as gravity

* „The machine is no longer a machine,“ said Salo. „The machine's contacts are corroded, his bearings fouled, his circuits shorted, and his gears stripped. His mind buzzes and pops like the mind of an Earthling – fizzes and overheats with thoughts of love, honour, dignity, rights, accomplishment, integrity, independence –“ [...] He killed himself out there. He took himself apart and threw his parts in all directions.

* ...in a Universe composed of one trillionth part matter to one decillion parts black velvet futility.

* ...damaged and roughly-used old lady... [...] To anyone with a sense of poetry, mortality, and wonder, Malachi Constant's proud, high-cheekboned mate was as handsome as a human being could be.

* ...a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

+ the Earthling joke: What have you done for me lately?

Every man's an island as in
     lifeless space we roam.
Yes, every man's an island:
     island fortress, island home.
- Bee's sonnet

The Sirens of Titan is about isolation.  It is one of the loneliest stories I have ever read.

It's peculiar, because in some ways it is a love story, in some ways it is about family, in others it is a moving depiction of friendship, and in yet others it's about the human relationship with the divine.  But in a fundamental way, each character is totally locked away within himself, inaccessible and all alone.

Vonnegut diagnoses the problem in the very first chapter.  Man does not yet know how to find the meaning of life within himself, so he ventures desperately outward, searching for a signal somewhere out there in the universe.  But all he finds is "a nightmare of meaninglessness."  There is no true connection, and no true meaning, because he is looking in the wrong place.

What follows from this opening is Vonnegut's typical blend of quirky satire, bizarre and senseless plotting, and a thinly-disguised howling distress call for all of humanity.  It's not as perfectly-constructed as  Cat's Cradle, or as paralyzingly profound as  Slaughterhouse-Five, but it may be the most deceptively simple Vonnegut novel I've yet read.  The layers keep peeling back in my mind, and I can't seem to get a handle on it at all.


Every man's an island...

A megalomaniac who accidentally smears himself across space and time, able to interact with millions and alter the course of history, but never able to truly connect with another.

A woman so obsessed with the idea of her own purity that she refuses to consummate her marriage.

A mindwiped man who spends his life searching for the best friend he doesn't truly remember and does not realize that he murdered.

A broken man who lives all alone on the planet Mercury caring tenderly for the harmoniums, the planet's beautiful but mindless native beings.

A sentient alien robot who kills himself upon learning that the secret message he'd been tasked with carrying to a distant star system at great peril actually contains but a single word: Greetings.

A boy who ditches his parents forever to live among the massive, terrifying birds of Titan - his cries still drifting to his parents' ears, occasionally, on the wind.

A religion that scorns "God the Utterly Indifferent" in the abortive hope that humans will stop seeking favor with the divine and finally - finally - start caring for each other.

...island fortress, island home.

(Original review date: 13 November 2013)