Este é o segundo livro que leio de J. M. Coetzee e é com este pequeno livro que Coetzee confirma que merece um lugar de destaque nas minhas estantes. Em "No Coração Desta Terra", fui surpreendida por uma personagem feminina extraordinária e difícil de esquecer. Neste "A Idade do Ferro", temos novamente uma mulher que me vai acompanhar durante uns tempos. :) Coetzee é bom com as personagens femininas, estou a ver. Aliando a isto histórias muitíssimo bem contadas, a leitura dos seus livros só pode acabar por ser uma experiência muito intensa.

Em "A Idade do Ferro", Coetzee leva-nos até à África do Sul do Apartheid. Um país que, à semelhança de muitos outros países africanos, tem tudo para ser líder mas, quando escolhem o caminho da ignorância, da injustiça e da desigualdade, perpetuando atitudes racistas e desumanas, geram violência, medo e morte e zero de liderança e desenvolvimento.
Na Cidade do Cabo vive Mrs Curren, uma senhora idosa, que está a morrer com cancro. No dia em que o médico que lhe diz que não irá sobreviver à doença, conhece Vercueil, um sem-abrigo que escolheu o seu jardim para se abrigar. A idosa vive sozinha, a filha emigrou para os EUA, amargurada e desiludida com o país que deixou de reconhecer como seu. Partiu e nunca mais regressou. Quando Mrs Curren encontra o desconhecido no seu jardim, a primeira atitude é expulsá-lo da sua propriedade, no entanto a reacção do homem é de total indiferença e apatia, o que deixa a velha senhora sem reacção.
Sem que ninguém o pudesse prever, inicia-se ali uma relação estranha entre os dois a que só podemos chamar de amizade mais para o fim do livro. Ela vê nele uma companhia para a sua solidão, despertando nela curiosidade. Vercueil intriga-a e mantêm-a interessada na vida. Acredita, até ao fim que Vercueil foi enviado para a ajudar a morrer, para tornar a sua despedida do mundo menos dolorosa. No que a ele diz respeito, não se percebe muito bem o que ele quer. Inicialmente, talvez tenha visto nela segurança, no entanto, à sua maneira, acaba por gostar dela e da sua crescente loucura. Talvez vá ficando porque se sente útil na cada vez maior fragilidade da senhora. Na realidade é muito difícil não gostar dela... :)

Numa longa carta que decide escrever à filha, onde relata os seus últimos meses?, semanas? de vida, vamos descobrindo o estado a que o país chegou. A crescente revolta dos negros com a natural violência que isso acarreta. Os jovens negros que lutam, com as armas que têm e conhecem, por uma vida melhor para todos e que, à conta disso não têm infância, crescem demasiado rápido, tornam-se frios e distantes, perdendo valores como o respeito pelos mais velhos. São quase orfãos todos eles... São no entanto o orgulho dos pais que vêem neles a esperança de dias melhores, mesmo que isso signifique perde-los na luta. São heróis para a comunidade negra e uns arruaceiros para a comunidade branca que governa o país. Mrs Curren é confrontada com esta realidade, da qual se conseguiu manter afastada quase toda a sua vida, quando Florence, a sua empregada, traz para sua casa o filho adolescente, Bheki, com o intuito de o afastar das zonas de maior violência.

Paralelamente a isto, Mrs Curren vai descrevendo à filha a sua crescente degradação física e mental, com momentos de pura confusão e alheamento, devido à medicação forte que toma para deixar de sentir dor. Esta é uma mulher extraordinária que vale a pena conhecer. Só nos seus piores momentos perde a vontade de viver, numa luta perdida à partida, contra a morte.
É um relato apaixonado e muitas vezes incómodo, do caminho que é feito até ao dia em que a morte a decide levar. E é, também, um relato impressionante de uma luta desigual que condenou à morte muita gente, que permitiu conquistas que são, ainda hoje, tão frágeis. Um relato contado na perspectiva de alguém que, vivendo ali nunca se tinha apercebido da dimensão do problema.

Gostei imenso deste livro que, sendo tão pequeno consegue falar de coisas tão grandes e importantes. Gosto muito da escrita de Coetzee, gosto muito das histórias que conta e gosto muito das personagens que cria, principalmente das personagens femininas.

Gosto e recomendo sem qualquer reserva.

Boas leituras!

Coetzee is surely one of the coldest writers who ever lived, yet something about his descriptions of life and death draws me back again and again. He's one of the few writers by whom I'd read absolutely anything. This book is probably the closest I'll ever come to being able to imagine what it'd be like to live in South Africa in the 80s, as such massive changes were underway.

coetzee külliyatında dördüncü kitap
hoşlanıyorum,
bazen sesi tekdüze gelse de anlattıklarını dinlemek gerçekten hoş...

„I have fallen and he has caught me. It is not he who fell under my care when he arrived, I now understand, nor I who fell under his: we fell under each other, and have tumbled and risen since then in the flights and swoops of that mutual election.“

The book is also an exploration about an unlikely relationship, with much of its nuances unwritten, yet understood by the reader. Coetzee avoids stereotypes when describing the characters and their interactions. It helped me realise once again that human interaction is complex and never ever one-dimensional, never only love or hate.

I've discovered that I'm incapable of getting past the first few pages of any Coetzee book. They immediately strike me as bullshit, the archetype of what is labeled "literary fiction," a witless "style" exercise consisting mainly of awkward phrasing and diction, infused heavily with the essence of self-aware importance, without a hint that I should look forward to anything new or non-obvious... but I think I'm supposed to care.

Well, maybe I'm about to miss out on something, but I'm jumping ship once again! (I think I made it to page 3).

E' un romanzo sotto forma di lettera indirizzata alla figlia, emigrata negli USA e quindi persa per sempre, da una anziana e colta signora, affetta da un cancro terminale, nella povertà del Sudafrica oppresso dall'apartheid.
Una riflessione sulla solitudine, sulla responsabilità di aver contribuito a creare, seppur passivamente, una società violenta e ingiusta, sul tempo che usura corpi e cose, e sul destino dello spirito. Una prosa magnifica che offre una lettura profonda, drammatica, inquietante, piena di rabbia, di disperazione, ma anche con un gran fondo di speranza.
È facile amare un bambino, ma com’è difficile amare quello in cui il bambino si trasforma. Un tempo, con i pugni stretti sulle orecchie e gli occhi serrati nell’estasi, anche lui fluttuava nel ventre di una donna, suggeva il suo sangue, la pelle contro la sua. Anche lui è passato attraverso quel cancello di ossa al bagliore di fuori, anche a lui è stato concesso di conoscere l’amore materno, amor matris. Poi, nel corso del tempo, ne è stato escluso, costretto a camminare da solo, ha cominciato a inaridirsi, a curvarsi, a indebolirsi.

In my somewhat limited experience, Coetzee writes a couple kinds of books, and this is from what is to me his less desirable style: the story comes across as an elaborate mouse trap, with events coming along in kind of mechanical fashion to put the character in some sort of no-hope situation. In this book, that's the case of the older female narrator: confronted with death from bone cancer, she finds her home invaded first by a homeless man and his dog, and then the family of her domestic who make her complicit in political struggle. It's a little bracing and also a little arbitrary the way that Coetzee structures the chapters, as if it is a five act play, or something similar. The thematic material is close to _Disgrace_, I think, in the sense that it's explicitly interested in the disposition of property and justice after Apartheid, but I like _Disgrace_ a bit more: it goes a little further into the darkness, and the narrator there is repulsive in the same ways this narrator is a little too nice.

It's good still, of course: Coetzee is insightful and engaging, and he writes very well, as his narrator here enacts a deathbed writing style, taking it down to zero, in a fashion that I think means to echo Beckett's _The Unnameable_ and other similar books. But I think I like the other Coetzee better, the one who spring loads his books with aesthetic traps and reversals that capture the reader as much as the plot twists capture the characters.

Extremt lurig. Konstigt skrivet om kvinnokroppen, apartheid men typ bara som en orsak till white tears och konstiga associationer. Nej tack.

Is JM Coetzee even capable of writing a single imperfect word? Not as far as I can see. He, more than almost any other writer, makes me want to be a writer, makes me believe in the power of fiction... but he also, more than almost any other writer, makes me double back upon myself in fear because I know I will never have the kind of wisdom and precision that he writes into his books.

I want to read every word he has ever written.

This having been my first excursion into Coetzee, I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised about his ability to make a story that is "about" apartheid be a fuller, more complex story than something that's merely "about" apartheid. He veers only occasionally (by comparison to others I've read) into playfulness, which I suppose is a good thing, given the subject-matter. The rarity of these occurrences encourages the story to keep pace, but still permits some of his (arguably her) personality to show, fostering the reader's ability to more fully identify with the writer (arguably, character). There was candor, a restrained bit of grit, and an insightful, meditative quality to his writing. Here and there, he dashed in some psychological splashiness, as in the case of aging in general, of drug-induced mind-numbness, and of temporal perception. There is much here about hindsight, foresight, and the wisdom and doubt of senescence. I look forward to reading more of what he's written, which I find surprising somehow. Some might read one dreary statement re apartheid and have had their fill, but after this, not I. His statement is intricate and yet frank enough to warrant further exploration, with the assurance that I'll not get bogged down by the heaviness of what he's discussing.

Side note: I was drawn into this book after having read first pages and then having set down Kipling, Woolf, Tolstoy, Malamud, Steinbeck, Plath, and Lawrence. That he was able to catch my eye amidst that crowd is quite a damn thing. That I'm that indecisive (or undisciplined) about what to read is also...quite a damn thing *sigh*.

Al principio me ha costado engancharme a la lectura y me parecía extraño y un caos, pero después de unas páginas he empezado a entender y a disfrutar, si es que se puede usar esta palabra.

Es una historia de decadencia tanto del país como de la protagonista que con el pretexto de escribir una carta a su hija nos cuenta cómo son sus últimos días y cuáles son sus reflexiones más profundas.

Una historia que nos enseña cómo aprendemos a amar a las personas que nos rodean aunque no sea nuestra elección y como en los últimos momentos de nuestra existencia descubrimos quién está realmente a nuestro lado.

Nos hace un retrato real, crudo y detallado de la situación que se vive en Sudáfrica durante el apartheid y el infierno que tiene que vivir la comunidad negra. Todo desde un punto de vista de la protagonista, una señora blanca que desde su situación de “privilegio” es capaz de ver la barbarie y la injusticia que se está viviendo en el país.

edit: this book is probably the most well-written book i have ever read. however the more i think about it, the more i find myself growing wary of the narrative choice of mrs curren. she’s supposed to be unlikable yes, - but the tired ramblings of a privileged white woman become nonsensical in face of the apartheid context the book follows. her guilt and shame from being part of what is being done to the black citizens seems more perverted to me the more i analyse this, and i’m not sure i hold the same naïve admiration for the book that i once did. don’t get me wrong, i still believe this is a fair book, but maybe it’s a little dated, maybe a little white-washed and i’m sure there are far better books that have been published by now (written by black authors in a narrative voice of a black person’s) for people to read about this context.

• Grief past weeping. I am hollow, I am a shell. To each of us fate sends the right disease. Mine a disease that eats me out from inside. Were I to be opened up they would find me hollow as a doll, a doll with a crab sitting inside licking its lips, dazed by the flood of light.


• Ugliness: what is it but the soul showing through the flesh?


• We sicken before we die so that we will be weaned from our body. The milk that nourished us grows thin and sour; turning away from the breast, we begin to be restless for a separate life. Yet this first life, this life on earth, on the body of earth – will there, can there ever be a better? Despite all the glooms and despairs and rages, I have not let go of my love of it.


• Who cares? When I am in a mood like this I am capable of putting a hand on the breadboard and chopping it off without a second thought. What do I care for this body that has betrayed me? I look at my hand and see only a tool, a hook, a thing for gripping other things. And these legs, these clumsy, ugly stilts: why should I have to carry them with me everywhere? Why should I take them to bed with me night after night and pack them in under the sheets, and pack the arms in too, higher up near the face, and lie there sleepless amid the clutter? The abdomen, too, with its dead gurglings, and the heart beating, beating: why?


• I tell you this story not so that you will feel for me but so that you will learn how things are. It would be easier for you, I know, if the story came from someone else, if it were a stranger's voice sounding in your ear. But the fact is, there is no one else. I am the only one. I am the one writing: I, I. So I ask you: attend to the writing, not to me. If lies and pleas and excuses weave among the words, listen for them. Do not pass them over, do not forgive them easily. Read all, even this adjuration, with a cold eye.


• I thought, when I began this long letter, that its pull would be as strong as the tide's, that beneath the waves beating this way and that on its surface there would be a tug as constant as the moon's drawing you to me and me to you: the blood tug of daughter to mother, woman to woman. But with every day I add to it the letter seems to grow more abstract, more abstracted, the kind of letter one writes from the stars, from the farther void, disembodied, crystalline, bloodless. Is that to be the fate of my love?


• Blood on the floor, blood on the benches. What did our timid thimbleful count for beside this torrent of black blood? Child snowdrop lost in the cavern of blood, and her mother too. A country prodigal of blood.


• As long as I pinched tight I could hold in most of the flow. But when I relaxed blood poured again steadily. It was blood, nothing more, blood like yours and mine. Yet never before had I seen anything so scarlet and so black. Perhaps it was an effect of the skin, youthful, supple, velvet dark, over which it ran; but even on my hands it seemed both darker and more glaring than blood ought to be.


• “He is not a rubbish person," I said, lowering my voice, speaking to Florence alone. "There are no rubbish people. We are all people together."

*read for h2 eng lit syllabus