Second year of the plague

We say goodbye to the second annual cycle of the plague while we are still celebrating the celebrations linked to the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of that abyss that said to be called Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoievksi, champion of excess and excess, prophet of terror and mystery, father and creator of some of the most unforgettable characters from a millenary history. We do it by looking in literature for that old fire, some hint of certainty, some evidence to resist, or perhaps, more humbly and stoically, a simple place of comfort, a space of rejoicing. From the bountiful harvest of foreign fiction, we glean here a handful of titles confident that they can guide readers toward a less inclement 2022.

Through the history of his metallurgical father, Alberto Prunetti offers us in “Asbestos” (Tin Sheet) the chronicle of the reconversion of the European proletariat into a de-ideologized middle class, brutalized with placebos and destined to be diluted without noise in the umpteenth social catastrophe of the century. In a broader physical setting, that of the inexhaustible sea, the adventures of the members of the Piteas take place, a five thousand-ton freighter whose crew stars in “La Guardia” (Trotalibros), the only and memorable novel that the poet and sailor Nikos Kavadías published in life.

In the deep “Arboleda” (Peripheral), Esther Kinsky investigates the fascination for Italy that has so many times captivated the spirits of the North to build a beautiful book of mourning, in which the author seeks to conjure the death of her husband and dialogue with the loss of the father. Although perhaps the revelation of the year, at least for this reader, is a dystopian narrative, “I never knew regarding men” (Alianza Editorial), by the Belgian writer and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Harpman, a stimulating dialogue with “The Castle” by Kafka, “Molloy” by Becket and “Extraterrestrial Picnic” by the Strugatski brothers, and without a doubt one of the most extreme texts that I remember ever reading.

Perhaps the revelation of the year, at least for this reader, is a dystopian narrative by the Belgian writer and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Harpman, a stimulating dialogue and without a doubt one of the most extreme texts I can remember ever reading.

Another radical immersion in the pain of being alive is constituted by “The crazy woman next door” (Transit), by Alda Merini, who by demolishing the myths of love, health and family, confirms that marginalization is also a social law and that poetry has been, historically (Blake, Hölderlin, Panero), one of the best administrators of that formidable capital that is madness. It is to another madness, to the collective, that Horst Küger appears in “The Wounded House” (Siruela), an almost legendary work in German literature of the second half of the twentieth century that investigates the million dollar question, the that so many novelists, historians and philosophers have been doing since the collapse of the Third Reich: how were indulgence with totalitarianism and the moral tepidity of a country possible, and to what sources should we turn to rescue several generations of Germans from unreason? and to verify the motives of a behavior that devastated a continent and supposed, for practical purposes, the cancellation of the efforts of Modernity and of the confidence in progress as a historical alibi?

How not to praise, once once more, the seduction of Jane Smiley, who has found a privileged space for her art in the scrutiny of heterosexual marriage and, by extension, the classical nuclear family, and who this year once once more corroborates her talent with “The best will” (Sixth Floor), a masterpiece when it comes to addressing the ideological (class, race, belief), psychological (guilt, shame, revenge) and emotional (love, compassion, solidarity) mechanisms that interweave our little lives. And to end with a breath of imagination, so necessary in these times of hospital statistics and contagion rates, it will be appropriate to read “The Prussian Bride” (Automatic), by Yuri Buida, an ideal work to delve into the writing of a a formidable author, worthy heir to that Gogol cloak from which Dostoevsky realized that all Russian literature came.

I never knew regarding men

Jacqueline Harpman Translation by Alicia Martorell

Alliance, 192 pages 18 euros

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