Letters in Books: El arte de la ficción

David Lodge (1935) es un polifacético novelista británico que se retiró de sus labores en la facultad de inglés de Birmingham University en 1987, pero en 1991 consintió en escribir una serie de columnas para el suplemento de libros de The Independent, como continuación a las escritas por James Fenton con el título de "Ars Poetica".

"Siempre he considerado la narrativa como un arte esencialmente retórico; quiero decir que el novelista o el cuentista nos convence para que compartamos cierta visión del mundo mientras dure la experiencia de la lectura, con el efecto, de esa extasiada inmersión en una realidad imaginaria que Van Gogh capturó tan bien en su cuadro La lectora" (p.13)

"Este es un libro para gente que prefiere tomar la crítica literaria en pequeñas dosis, un libro para ojear y hojear, un libro que no intenta decir la última palabra en ninguno de los temas que aborda, pero que mejorará, espero, la comprensión y el disfrute de la ficción en prosa de los lectores, y les sugerirá nuevas posibilidades de lectura -o, quién sabe, incluso de escritura- en este género literario, el más variado y placentero de todos" (p. 14)

En El arte de la ficción (traducción de Laura Freixas) compila esos 50 artículos y los elabora un poquito más. Cada uno de ellos comienza con un breve extracto de ficción, que luego desarrolla, haciendo una deconstrucción del trabajo del novelista y analizando los mecanismos y engranajes de la ficción: la intertextualidad, el narrador, los cambios temporales, el flujo de conciencia, etc e ilustrando cada aspecto con un extracto de una novela conocida.

"... el comienzo de la novela es un umbral, que separa el mundo real que habitamos del mundo que el novelista ha imaginado. Debería, pues, como suele decirse, "arrastrarnos"" (p.19)

"... las cartas son la crónica de un proceso que está en curso; o, como lo expresó Richarson: "Mucho más vivo y conmovedor... será el estilo de aquellos que escriben en el momento álgido de una aflicción presente, con la mente atormentada por las punzadas de la incertidumbre... de lo que puede ser el estilo narrativo seco e inanimado de una persona que relata dificultades y peligros superados..."" (pp.46, 47)

"Para lectores poco familiarizados con la novela convertí así un efecto de suspense ("¿qué ocurrirá?") en un efecto de enigma o misterio ("¿cómo lo hizo?"). Esas dos preguntas son los principales resortes del interés narrativo, tan antiguos como el mismo arte de contar historias" (p.57)

"En un famoso ensayo publicado por primera vez en 1917, Victor Shklovsky afirmaba que el propósito esencial del arte es vencer los mortíferos efectos de la costumbre, representando cosas a las que estamos habituados de un modo insólito" (p.87)

"Pero la prosa de ficción es maravillosamente omnívora, capaz de asimilar discursos no ficticios de todo tipo: cartas, diarios, declaraciones, incluso listas... y adaptarlos a sus propios fines" (p.101)

"Los fenómenos meteorológicos se usan pues a menudo para provocar el efecto que John Ruskin llamó "la falacia patética", la proyección de emociones humanas sobre el mundo natural" (p.132)

"Una novela experimental es la que ostensiblemente se desvía de los modos habituales de representar la realidad - ya sea en lo tocante a la organización de la materia narrativa, o en el estilo, o en ambas cosas- para intensificar o para modificar nuestra percepción de esa realidad" (p.161)

Sin caer en el academicismo, hace un análisis persuasivo y accesible con un estilo periodístico fresco y lapidario. Es obvio que Lodge sabe mucho más de lo que demuestra, y por eso es un ejercicio tan loable. Define los términos del trabajo novelístico de forma precisa y sucinta, de tal manera que es una lectura placentera que podría ser libro de cabecera de muchas clases de literatura en la enseñanza secundaria o de teoría literaria en la universidad.

Las selecciones de los textos son variadas, con preferencia de los autores británicos, claro: Jane Austen, Ford Madox Ford, E.M. Forster, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, ...

Como lectora, me interesa saber qué convierte en un texto en grande, qué ingredientes ha usado ese wordsmith y qué combinación o fórmula mágica ha aplicado para que nosotros, ordinarios mortales sin muchos conocimientos de cómo funciona la gran máquina literaria, caigamos de tal manera en su red de palabras. David Lodge coge ese sueño y lo convierte en realidad animándonos a leer diferentes textos con un mayor aprecio por su técnica. Un libro para atesorar, y por eso doy muchísimas gracias a Dolores López por el descubrimiento.

The Heart in Books: O amor nos escuros días de Birkenau

Un artigo recente de The Independent falaba dos achados dun estudo da Emory University que mostraron que ler un bo libro aumenta a conectividade cerebral e provoca cambios neurolóxicos que persisten unha vez rematado o libro.  Eses cambios rexístranse no córtex temporal esquerdo, asociado coa receptividade da linguaxe. As neuronas desta rexión permítennos enganar á mente levándoa a crer que está a facer algo aínda que non sexa así, o que se coñece como "grounded cognition", igual que cando pensamos ir correr e ao facelo xa activamos as neuronas asociadas co acto físico. 

Ben, este estudo mostrou cambios neurolóxicos ata cinco días despois de ter rematado o libro, probando así que o impacto non só é unha reacción inmediata senón que ten unha influencia duradeira.

O amor nos escuros días de Birkenau (2016) é deses libros nos que segues a remoer unha vez rematado.  Trátase da segunda novela de Alberto Canal (1967), que presenta a Thomas Münch, perruqueiro berlinés e preso político en Birkenau (campo de concentración e exterminio do complexo de Auschwitz) e a súa busca de respostas ás preguntas que se presentan na sinopse: É o amor a mellor arma para loitar contra a barbarie da sinrazón humana? Pode alguén confiar na bondade dese sentimento nun lugar onde hai que pelexar cos seres máis queridos por respirar a última burbulla de osíxeno que fica nas cámaras de gas? Era realmente posible o amor en Birkenau?

Foto de Raquel Pastoriza

Un relato incrible e intensamente persoal, brutal e inhumano ás veces - non esquezamos que estamos a falar de Birkenau- e cheo de descricións claras e ben artelladas que nos poñen a pel de galiña. Malia estar contado en primeira persoa, as pasaxes narrativas, as introspectivas e os diálogos manteñen un equilibrio harmónico, e parece que chegamos á empatía case por accidente.

No mundo gris de Birkenau, sobrancean imaxes visuais de gran beleza, bastóns que nos apoian na travesía narrativa, coma a dos cabalos correndo polo outeiro (p. 57), o sol no ceo (p. 107),  a Swiatynia imaxinaria (p. 110) ou a busca da calor dos condutos da calefacción (p. 149).  Pero sobre todo hai tres motivos que constitúen o osíxeno no ambiente abafante do campo: un deles é a música, que prové combustible espiritual e emocional e mesmo mostra a faceta máis humana de personaxes coma a Besta.

"Un Stradivarius de fermosa feitura sobranceaba nun recuncho da sala sobre unha caixa que parecía agachar un aparato musical, achegando un pouco de orde á confusión xeral do cuarto. Semellaba unha pincelada de equilibrio no universo do caos, un berro desesperado no mundo do silencio, un aloumiño de vida nos cavorcos do nada" (p. 63)

"Sabes en que penso cando pasa iso? Penso na miña irmá tocando o violín, penso na música que saía das súas mans, a miña cabeza está coa música, e tamén a miña alma. Cada vez que pasa iso, eu son música, só música" (p. 92)

"En Birkenau a música era a mellor medicina para a alma" (p. 130)

"Moito gustou a Besta da interpretación das reclusas, que até esbozou no ar un compás da partitura, como se se sentise na pel dun director que coas mans conduce aos seus músicos á cerna dunha melodía que procura a beleza absoluta" (p. 134)

"A do macedonio era unha melodía interpretada nunha tesitura de notas saloucantes, impregnadas dunha tristura melancólica que, a medida que ían avanzando os compases, se transformaba nunha especie de salmodia suplicante que lle pedía á divindade a fin dunha situación de oprobio para o xénero humano" (p. 155)

"Unha delas comentoulle a un dos meus perruqueiros que tiña gana de volver tocar o piano, que as súas mans non foram feitas para fabricar proxectís, senón para sacarlle sonatas de primavera ás teclas de marfil do seu Petrov" (p. 284)

O segundo é a mirada, como vínculo de unión e alternativa á soidade e ao silencio:

"... e entón agarreime á mirada de Irene coma o náufrago se agarra ao único obxecto que nese momento sobrancea no océano" (p. 28)

"A mirada, sempre a mirada!" (p. 69)

"Chegou a ser tan hermética que as miradas insinuantes rebotaban na miña coma nunha parede de frontón" (p. 73)

"Miroume, mireina, e souben que aínda ficaban brasas acesas, porque a mirada foi longa e intensa até perderse entre un regueiro de persoas..." (p. 81)

"A mirada, sempre a mirada como alicerce no que se constrúen os mellores sentimentos" (p. 92)

"Pensei entón que o amor non se pode soster no simple efecto estético que provoca a mirada, e que este só chega a transcender se nesa mirada un pode descifrar as mensaxes que lle está transmitindo a outra persoa..." (p. 104)

(sobre Alex, o fotógrafo) "As instantáneas que realizaba non eran un simple retrato da realidade. Acadaban unha mirada propia, unha perspectiva chea de connotación que convidaba a reflexionar sobre que autor pretendía comunicar con aquel particular punto de vista" (p. 147)

"... un novo encontro con Irene no que, coa mirada, así o soñaba, nos prometeriamos amor eterno, ou cecais simplemente amor" (p. 149)

"... o noso proxecto de noivado limitábase ás miradas fugaces" (p. 150)

"Decateime entón de que xa non necesitaba un novo encontro íntimo con aquelas miradas nas que nos recoñeciamos como amantes para manter viva a paixón até que puidésemos fuxir daquel inferno" (p. 184)

E por suposto tamén o poder erótico da palabra para chegar ao corazón:

"Pecha os ollos da faciana e mantén abertos os do corazón. Quero que me sintas a través das miñas mans. Pode que haxa cousas que non sexan posibles neste lugar e neste momento, pero ninguén nos vai quitar que poidamos xuntar os nosos corpos e deixarnos levar pola imaxinación" (p. 167)

Thomas é un loitador, obviamente, pero esta non é unha epopea da súa loita pola supervivencia, xa nolo avisa o título, pero si unha oda á coraxe na completa entropía, a busca desesperada da motivación para seguir vivindo no medio da atrocidade. A esperanza de Thomas é expugnable, ás veces fraquea e mesmo cae, lonxe da rixidez ideolóxica e o heroísmo. Este é o tipo de exploración realista que nos fai falla: Os gañadores tamén perden e os fortes non sempre sobreviven.

Mesmo cando fala do inimigo, coñecemos todos os tons de alemáns: desde os Nazis verdadeiramente comprometidos coma a Besta ou a Cadela, pasando polo Supervisor e chegando ao propio Thomas, que tamén adoece do prexuízo. Non busca as nosas simpatías ou o perdón, pero Canal acéndenos un facho que ilumina a psique humana. 

O estado de Israel outorga o recoñecemento "Righteous Among the Nations" a aqueles non xudeus que salvaron (ou tentaron salvar) a xudeus. Cando rematamos de ler a historia de O amor... é inevitable sentirse como Baruch Sharoni, un membro do comité que entrega os Righteous, que dixo: "Vexo aos salvadores coma verdadeiras almas nobres da raza humana, e incluso cando os coñezo síntome inferior a eles dalgún xeito, porque sei que se tivese estado no seu lugar non sería capaz de tales accións". Esta é a impresión que nos queda despois de ler a novela de Alberto Canal.

Letters in Music: "I Was Young When I Left Home"

You will probably agree that Bob Dylan (1941) is a pop-culture colossus. 

Source: https://persimusic.files.wordpress.com

As Andy Gill pointed out in an article for The Independent, there are at least 70 reasons for his relevance, out of which I am selecting my favourites:

1. Because he wrote the song "Blowin' in the Wind".

2. Because he made teenagers interested in poetry again. He offered a route into symbolists like Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire, and City Lights beats like Ginsberg, Corso and Ferlinghetti.

3. Because when Martin Luther King Jr gave his legendary "I have a dream" speech, Dylan wasn't just in the audience, he was on stage a few feet from Dr King, having just sung "Only a Pawn in Their Game" and "Blowin' in the Wind".

9. Because of his unique mixture of gravity and comedy. Even on albums that included songs as serious as "Masters of War" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", there would always be room for a surreal, jokey talking blues or two.

10. Because he wrote "It Ain't Me, Babe", the world's first anti-love song.

13. Because he wrote "Mr Tambourine Man".

20. Because he refuses to let a lack of aptitude or technical competence prevent him from painting pictures, writing "novels" (Tarantula), or making films (Eat the Document, Renaldo and Clara).

28. Because he's the hardest working man in showbiz, with a Never Ending Tour that just goes on and on. Dylan plays between one and two hundred gigs worldwide every single year, with minimal fuss.

32. Because he wrote "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" when barely out of his teens, a string of apocalyptic images which altered the way topical singers thought about writing protest songs. He described it as a song in which each line was the start of an individual song he was fearful of not living long enough to write (this being the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Armageddon seemed just around the Bay of Pigs).

40. Because he made the harmonica fashionable, and showed pop culture how expressive an instrument it could be.

46. Because he wrote "Like a Rolling Stone", frequently voted the greatest single of all time, and a song whose seismic impact in the pop scene of 1965 was like the drawing back of a curtain.

47. Because of the way he constantly revises his classic old material in concert. Infuriating for some, this process of revision is a vital way of keeping the songs interesting for him, and for his audience. There's no danger that a Dylan show will just be a facsimile run-through of heritage tracks.

51. Because he brought an unparalleled – then and now – philosophical and artistic depth to the humble pop lyric, incorporating a wealth of literary, religious and historical references within surreal "chains of flashing images", as Allen Ginsberg described them. And unlike his imitators, he managed to make them mean something.

53. Because when he wrote a protest song, it made a difference. Thanks to "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", his powerful 1964 account of the death of a poor black serving-woman at the whim of a Baltimore society blade who served a derisory sentence, the killer in question, one William Zantzinger, lived the rest of his life in bitter ignominy.

64. Because, when Bruce Springsteen inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he said: "Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body – he showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual."

67. Because Tom Waits called him "a planet to be explored... for a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter".

70. Because he took the 2008 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power".

The song we have selected is"I Was Young When I Left Home", whose lyrics hold a great similarity with the song "500 Miles Away from Home". You can listen to Bob Dylan in a home recording here or in the cover by Marcus Mumford (1987) in the video link below. Enjoy!

"I Was Young When I Left Home"

I was young when I left home

An' I been out a-ramblin' round

An' I never wrote a letter to my home

To my home, lord, to my home

An' I never wrote a letter to my home.

It was just the other day

I was bringin' home my pay

When i met an' old friend i used to know

Said, "Your mother is dead an' gone

An' your sisters all gone wrong

An' your daddy needs you home right away.''

Not a shirt on my back

Not a penny on my name

But I can't go home this a-way

This a-way, lord, this a-way

An' I can't go home this a-way.

If you miss the train I'm on

Count the days I'm gone

You will hear that whistle blow hundred miles

Hundred miles, honey baby, lord, lord, lord

An' you'll hear that whistle blow hundred miles.

An' I'm playin' on a track, ma'd come an' woop me back

On them trusses down by Ol' Jim McKay's

When I pay the debt i own to the commissary store

I will pawn my watch an' chain an' go home

Go home, lord, lord, lord

I will pawn my watch an' chain an' go home.

Used to tell my ma sometimes

When I see them ridin' blind

Gonna make me a home out in the wind

In the wind, lord in the wind

Make me a home out in the wind.

I don't like it in the wind

I go back home again

But i can't go home this a-way

This a-way, lord, lord, lord

An' i can go home this a-way.

I was young when i left home

An' I been out a-ramblin' round

An' I never wrote a letter to my home

To my home, lord, to my home

An' I never wrote a letter to my home.

Susan Sontag's Letter to Jorge Luis Borges

Image by Grete Stern (1904-1999) - http://www.me.gov.ar/efeme/jlborges

Jane Ciabattari said in an article for BBC Culture that "reading the work of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) for the first time is like discovering a new letter in the alphabet, or a new note in the musical scale". 

Borges has been called the father of the Latin American novel, without whom the work of Mario Vargas Llosa, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes would not have been possible. 

Over the decades since his death in 1986, Borges’ global stature has continued to grow and today, on the anniversary of his birth, we recover two texts, one is his poem "El suicida", which can almost be considered a suicide note; and the other is a letter from Susan Sontag (1933-2004), an American writer and critic, who wrote it as a part of her essay Where the Stress Falls (2002), a decade after Borges's death. The letter is extracted from this article by The Independent.

El suicida

No quedará en la noche una estrella. 

No quedará la noche. 

Moriré y conmigo la suma 

del intolerable universo. 

Borraré las pirámides, las medallas, 

los continentes y las caras. 

Borraré la acumulación del pasado. 

Haré polvo la historia, polvo el polvo. 

Estoy mirando el último poniente. 

Oigo el último pájaro. 

Lego la nada a nadie.

Dear Borges,

Since your literature was always placed under the sign of eternity, it doesn't seem too odd to be addressing a letter to you. (Borges, it's 10 years!) If ever a contemporary seemed destined for literary immortality, it was you. You were very much the product of your time, your culture, and yet you knew how to transcend your time, your culture, in ways that seem quite magical. This had something to do with the openness and generosity of your attention. You were the least egocentric, the most transparent of writers, as well as the most artful. It also had something to do with a natural purity of spirit. Though you lived among us for a rather long time, you perfected practices of fastidiousness and of detachment that made you an expert mental traveller to other eras as well. You had a sense of time that was different from other people's. The ordinary ideas of past, present and future seemed banal under your gaze. You liked to say that every moment of time contains the past and the future, quoting (as I remember) the poet Browning, who wrote something like, "the present is the instant in which the future crumbles into the past.'' That, of course, was part of your modesty: your taste for finding your ideas in the ideas of other writers.

Your modesty was part of the sureness of your presence. You were a discoverer of new joys. A pessimism as profound, as serene, as yours did not need to be indignant. It had, rather, to be inventive – and you were, above all, inventive. The serenity and the transcendence of self that you found are to me exemplary. You showed that it is not necessary to be unhappy, even while one is clear-eyed and undeluded about how terrible everything is. Somewhere you said that a writer – delicately you added: all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. (You were speaking of your blindness.)

You have been a great resource, for other writers. In 1982 – that is, four years before you died – I said in an interview, "There is no writer living today who matters more to other writers than Borges. Many people would say he is the greatest living writer... Very few writers of today have not learnt from him or imitated him.'' That is still true. We are still learning from you. We are still imitating you. You gave people new ways of imagining, while proclaiming over and over our indebtedness to the past, above all, to literature. You said that we owe literature almost everything we are and what we have been. If books disappear, history will disappear, and human beings will also disappear. I am sure you are right. Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcendence. Some people think of reading only as a kind of escape: an escape from the "real'' everyday world to an imaginary world, the world of books. Books are much more. They are a way of being fully human.

I'm sorry to have to tell you that books are now considered an endangered species. By books, I also mean the conditions of reading that make possible literature and its soul effects. Soon, we are told, we will call up on "bookscreens'' any "text'' on demand, and will be able to change its appearance, ask questions of it, "interact'' with it. When books become "texts'' that we "interact'' with according to criteria of utility, the written word will have become simply another aspect of our advertising-driven televisual reality. This is the glorious future being created, and promised to us, as something more "democratic''. Of course, it means nothing less then the death of inwardness – and of the book.

This time around, there will be no need for a great conflagration. The barbarians don't have to burn the books. The tiger is in the library. Dear Borges, please understand that it gives me no satisfaction to complain. But to whom could such complaints about the fate of books – of reading itself – be better addressed than to you? (Borges, it's 10 years!) All I mean to say is that we miss you. I miss you. You continue to make a difference. The era we are entering now, this 21st century, will test the soul in new ways. But, you can be sure, some of us are not going to abandon the Great Library. And you will continue to be our patron and our hero.

Extracted from Where the Stress Falls by Susan Sontag