Poems of the Night contains a number of poems (around 50, I would say. I couldn’t be bothered to count them) written by Borges from 1922 to 1985, dealing with ‘the night’ in its broadest sense. Apart from the night itself, issues like death, blindness (as you know, Borges went blind when he grew older) and religion.

That alone makes for an interesting collection of poetry. The fact that it was all written by Borges, whom I now think is a superb poet, only makes it better. Borges brings just the right mix of cultural and literary allusions, strong emotions and perplexing imagery in his poems. Granted, not all of them are great. Some really didn’t do much for me at all. I have marked a couple of my favourites though. Here’s my own personal favourite (I think; it’s a difficult choice to make):

I think it’s really beautiful. I don’t like trying to explain it.

And here’s another little quote, because we’ve got a nice little post for the collection now:

I was very much moved by the collection as a whole and as far as I can judge, the translations are superb. The results are very good at any rate and they seem to stay very close to the original. So, with some reservations due to my inexperience with poetry: five stars.

As it borrows the structure from William Faulkner’s masterpiece As I Lay Dying, I found the novel to be quite hard to follow at times. It jumps on the timeline quite more often and more irregularly than usual and the blatant unreliability of the first narrator kept me in doubt. However, once I got into the story, I found it to be fast-paced, exciting, but still very thought provoking. Often I was left with the feeling that I had just read a passage that needed some time to think about, while the story was so exciting and demanding of my curiosity that I didn’t want to take said time.

One of the main strengths of the novel is its non-chronological build-up, in my opinion. The story wouldn’t have been that great, had it been told in a more conventional way, but as it as details are revealed gradually and information given is always questioned, I wasn’t able to figure out the characters’ motives, personalities and actions until the very end. Even after the last page, you’re left with the feeling that maybe, just maybe, you’re wrong after all, and you’ve trusted the wrong narrators.

All in all, I think I can safely recommend this book to anyone looking for a good read. It may not be as famous as the Cairo Trilogy and it’s probably out of print by now, but if you do come across it, it shouldn’t be left unread.

Next time, another Mahfouz! Huzzah! (We all know he’s a fantastic author and that you really can’t go wrong with any of his novels)

Le Mur especially is an excellent short story in which one of the key elements of existentialism, which I won’t give here, is used to great effect. The result is a story that was responsible for some of the most epic mood swings I’ve ever encountered. It really is quite magical. Even if you’re not willing to invest time in reading the whole collection, Le Mur is a story you simply can’t avoid. It must be read. Honestly.

Then there are two short stories on marriage and related issues. Again, Sartre’s revolutionary insights – it may not have been that new, but Sartre certainly was the one who brought it to the greater public through his fiction – in human nature and behaviour, make for some very good stories, but I’m left with the feeling I somehow missed out on a lot with these. They also slightly freaked me out.

Herostratus, the third of the short stories (it’s positioned between the two marital stories) is a relatively straight-forward, but striking short story following a misanthropist with Herostratic tendencies. It’s a good read and there’s no reason to skip it when you’re reading the collection, but I wouldn’t pick it up especially for this one.

Finally, the novella L’enfance d’un chef is a very realistic, but at the same time alienating, bildungsroman, with Sartre’s almost trademarked existentialistic angst. Very interesting read and the reason I now must pick up Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry.

All in all, something reading. If Sartre’s other works are anything like this, I shall have to read his entire oeuvre. I would have no other choice.

There are a million eloquent ways to describe the feeling I had when I read the last word on the last page and the above definitely isn’t one of them, but at the moment it feels like the only one truly apt.

Because it is quite a fantastic novel. Of course, when I picked it up, I wasn’t completely unaware of its status as Kundera’s greatest work and one of the finest novels in existentialist fiction, but what I didn’t know was that Kundera portrays thought and emotion masterfully. I’d have to compare the two more thoroughly, but I daresay that Kundera is (almost) on par with Naguib Mahfouz in this respect. Naguib Mahfouz being, as you may know, my favourite author of all time.

But what is the novel about, I hear you ask? Simply put, it’s about life, but since a good chunk of the world’s better literature is, simply put, about life, that won’t get you anywhere, so I’ll go into more details. It’s the story of Tomas, a Czech surgeon and intellectual, his wife Tereza and one of his many mistresses – although she must be his favourite – Sabina. That’s as much story as I’ll give as, if you’re going to read it, story is the last thing you’ll care about. It’s not a novel you would read for the exhilarating plot. It’s a story you read for the characters and their philosophical musings.

And they, being artists (Tereza is a photographer, Sabina a painter) and intellectuals, have many philosophical musings. Kundera shows exceptional skill in going from narrative to such musings and while the story, objectively speaking, is very fragmented, it’s dead easy to follow the basic storyline of their lives. Occasionally Kundera himself will even stop the narrative to say something, which in all times adds significantly to the storyline as it’s written and is at no point irritating.

If I had to name downsides, which is a difficult task to begin with, it would be that a lot of the novel’s content may go over the heads of those completely unversed with Nietzsche or existential philosophy (or both!), which would be a shame.

Yes, that’d be it. Excellent novel.

(and a wikilink for added easiness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being)

The name of the rose is the best whodunnit you could wish for, except that it’s not set it in London’s suburbs, doesn’t have a detective with a funky Scottish accent (actually, that may not be true) and there are no firearms, drug dealers or dead prostitutes involved. Actually, no nevermind about that.. What it does have is a band of god-fearing brothers, a magnificent abbey (to which many pages are dedicated, very many pages indeed), a startlingly aggressive polemic between reviewers of a Scripture of some sort, expert architecture for dummies and a spicing of medieval erotica.

That doesn’t give you a very good image of the novel. A new start: The name of the rose is a historical novel narrated by the old Adso of Melk, who recounts a series of events he was part of in his youth. Adso of Melk, a young Benedictine novice, and William of Baskerville, a Fransiscan friar, come upon a magnificent Italian abbey somewhere in the mountains of the peninsula, where people started dying just the day before they arrived. Sherlock Holmes time!

But like I said, that’s not nearly everything. There’s so much in this novel it would take an essay twice, thrice the size of the book itself to discuss everything. As a blogger, I haven’t got quite so much space and as a student, I haven’t got quite so much time either.

And maybe that is the reason why I wouldn’t recommend this novel to anyone. There’s so much in it, readers will have to be willing to invest the required effort in the novel. If you don’t care about heretical movements in the fourteenth century, religious architecture and art in the same century, literary traditions at that point, herbalism, theology or ethics, you’ve still got a decent detective novel, but you will most likely be put off by the endless dialogue and description of the aforementioned topics. You’re better off investing your time in another novel, as we all know time is scarce and there’s plenty of goodness out there.

If, on the other hand, you find the heretical tradition of Fra Dolcino, the faithless (or so some of the monks at the abbey tell me) avarice of the Popes of Avignon, the incredible symbolism and fine artistry in the door of the abbatical church’ door and endless dialogues (or monologues for that matter, these monks practice introspection too) on theology and ethics, then this novel might just a be gem for you. It was for me, because although I wouldn’t say I’m hugely interested in any of these topics, I found The name of the rose a very interesting read and Eco’s skill such that even the dustiest of subjects came alive.

All in all, a very informative and a very enjoyable read.

“Kut!”

“He! Dat wil ik niet meer horen.” zei Zoë tegen haar kleinere broertje. Het jongentje kijk haar rebels aan en liep toen snel weg, het struikgewas in. Zoë en ik zaten stil op de zandheuvel. Ze was ongeveer mijn leeftijd.

“Maar als ik het zeg is het wel goed?” vroeg ik. Het was een oprechte vraag toen, maar ergens wist ik dat ze het alleen maar had gezegd omdat ze een hekel aan haar broertje had. Ze dacht even na.

“Natuurlijk, maar jij bent David. Jij mag alles zeggen.” Triomfantelijk bleef ze zitten, terwijl ik opstond. Vrijheid. De hel.

Ik liep naar het dichtstbijzijnde bosje dode takken en brak er een af in de vorm van een Y. Ik ben atheïstisch opgevoed. Mijn moeder hield niet van de Heilige Vader. De Heilige Vader, zoals hij zichzelf noemde, hield niet van god. Op de ochtend van de zomerdag waarop ik met een wichelroede het hele dorp achter me aan zou krijgen, had ik voor het eerst een kerkdienst bijgewoond, samen met Zoë. Voor haar was het routine, maar ik heb me verwonderd over de wonder van de gekruisigde. Wie had dat toch bedacht?

Ik pakte de twee armen van de Y vast en begon met de tak te trillen. Gevonden.

“Het is me gelukt! Ik heb een religie gesticht! Waar zijn mijn Apostelen?”

Eerst keek ze me wat vreemd aan, vanaf de zandhoop. Toen zei ze dat ik niet gekruisigd was. Ik antwoordde dat ik Jezus niet was, en dat een Y toch ook goed was. Daarop zei ze niets.

Ik begon rondjes te lopen rond de zandheuvel, maar al snel verveelde ik me. Ik had volgelingen nodig.

“Kom, oh mooie Zoë, laten wij de Keizer en Keizerin van de Hemelen zijn!”

Ze knikte kort en liep naar dezelfde struik, om ook een stok af te breken. Nu liepen we samen een paar rondjes rond de zandhoop, de takken hevig trillend. Na drie keer zes rondjes waren we uitgeput. God is echt dood.

Soms klopt het. Nu?

Overthrow them and let rise amongst your ranks the spirits of Nezāmi-ye Ganjavi, Hakīm Abu’l-Qāsim Firdawsī Tūsī and Queen Scheherazade, whose virtuoso poetry will guide all onto a magic carpet to lift us to higher planes of existence. Let rise amongst your ranks the spirits of  Confucius, Laozi and Sunthorn Phu, whose wise words will calm our minds and enlighten our spirits. Let rise among your ranks the words of works innumerable, whose eloquent prose and poetry shines with not just a picture of Man, but with a diorama of mankind.

I call the revolution.

Drama aside, I’m not kidding. Non-western literature is massively underrated and often, worse still, overlooked. Sure, Japan has got a few authors known in the west. I’m thinking Murakami, Endo, Oe and the likes. Orhan Pamuk and Naguib Mahfouz both won a Nobel Prize, too, and from sub-Saharan African there is Wole Soyinka. It’d also be foolish to deny the impact both Anglican and Latin America has made on western literature.

So there, you would say, there’s more than enough from all continents.

But there isn’t, I would answer. The one thing all these authors have in common, whether they hail from East Asia or Chile or any other part of the world, is that they write western literature. Mahfouz stated as his influences Balzac, Dickens and Tolstoy. Soyinka studied English literature at Leeds University. Endo is a Catholic in Japan, he studied French literature at the University of Lyon.

It seems to me no less than obvious that, despite their place of birth, these writers fit into a western literary tradition, not into the literary tradition of their country. See what I mean? Non-western literature is practically ignored.

A revolution, we need one.

I wrote it in Dutch originally, which is a bloody shame for all English readers, because my ‘Exercise in Translation’ is, in my opinion, which I consider worth mentioning in this situation, not quite as much a success.

And that’s more than enough, here you have it:

“Dat is dan negenhonderddrieenzeventigeuroennegenennegentigcent. Wilt u contant betalen (of heeft u gelukkig ook een pinpas of creditcard of iets dergelijks, want ik heb liever geen negenhonderddrieenzeventigeuroennegenennegentigcent in mijn kassa)?”

Mijn portemonnee lag op bed, twee infusen aan zijn linkerflap. Door het ene buisje stroomde een lichtzilveren vloeistof, door het andere eenzelfde soort vloeistof, maar deze was diep goud. Naast zijn bed zat een ver familielid, wiens stiksel al los aan het laten was. Echter, ze was nog vrij robuust en haar was een langer leven gegeven, zo schatte ik in. De wegen van de Grote Uitgever zijn ondoorgrondelijk, zoveel wist ik wel. De stilte was ondraaglijk. Of eigenlijk, het monotone gepiep van  de grijze doos naast het bed van mijn geliefde portemonnee was ondraaglijk. Zijn mooie, zwartleren huid begon rood weg te trekken. Zijn portemonnee, zijn lieve, kostbare portemonnee.

“Hoeveel zit er nog in mij?” vroeg het zachtjes, de rits nauwelijks openend. Het lag daar te creperen en het enige wat ik kon antwoorden was veertien cent. Veertien cent! Ik kon wel janken! Hoe had ik het ooit zo ver kunnen laten komen? En het was nog niet afgelopen, het was nog niet gedaan. We hadden nog een lange weg te gaan, het en ik. Rode cijfers dropen over het leer, langs maar ook over de geblokkeerde pinpassen en de nutteloze Bonuskaart, de lege Ov-jaarkaart. Wat kon ik doen? Niets! Helemaal niets! Klunend, waar gewone middelen niet meer toerijkend waren, ging ik over het ijs dat niet was. Heb medelijden, oh Grote Uitgever! IJzingwekkend was Zijn blik, Mijn blik, op zijn zwarte gelaat, waar de rode striemen als eindeloze getallenrijen overheen liepen. Marcherend naar de ondergang, vrolijk zingend, want parasieten zijn blij als ze weer eens kunnen verhuizen. Maar het was nog niet te laat, nog veertien cent! Veertien cent! Ik kon wel janken! Hoe had ik het ooit zo ver kunnen laten komen? Het is mij toch gelukt.

Wakker geschud door het stoppen van het gepiep, antwoordde ik:

“Nee hoor, creditcard graag.”

And for the non-Dutch:

“That’ll be ninehundredandseventythreepoundsandninetyninepence. Do you wish to pay cash (or would you be the happy owner of another means of payment, just like every other sane person, because I really don’t want ninehundredandseventythreepoundsandninetyninepence in my cash desk)?

Between the white hospital sheets, my wallet murmured some vague words I didn’t catch, an infusion on either side of his left flap. A light silvery fluid ran through the first of the tubes. The other tube was filled with a similar substance, but it was a radiant gold instead of the weak silver. I couldn’t tell what way the substances flowed. Next to his bed, on an uncomfortable plastic hospital chair, some old purse sat, whose stitching seemed to be looking at the last days of its being, contemplating the past. But she was still firm of body and I foresaw a longer life to be hers. The ways of the Great Spender are unfathomable, I knew. The silence was unbearable. Or rather, the monotonous beeping of the grey box next to the bed of my beloved wallet was unbearable. His beautiful, black leather skin began to pale red. His wallet, his sweet, costly wallet.

“How much is left in me?” It asked quietly, barely moving its zipper. As it laid dying, the only I think I could do, I could answer, was fourteen cents. Fourteen cents! Oh God, smite me! How could I have let it get out of hand like this? And it wasn’t over yet, the story was yet to be fully told. We had a long way to go, it and me. Red numbers dripped down the leather, past, but over too, blocked bank passes and worthless discount cards. What could I do? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Meyering, where normal means were no longer adequate, I used powers I had not. Have mercy, oh Great Spender! Sparkling was His gaze, My gaze, on his black hide, bloodied with red streams of endless numbers running across. Sprinting to oblivion, singing merrily, parasites rejoice when they are finally free to move and find themselves a better life. But it wasn’t too late, fourteen cents left! Fourteen cents! Oh God, smite me! How could I have let it get out of hand like this? I did succeed.

Released from my thoughts by the abrupt ending of the beeping, I answered:

“I’ll pay by creditcard.”