Tuesday, May 26, 2009
GILGAMESH AND ENKIDU
ON TADZIO, THE ADORABLE TEENAGER, AND T. MANN'S WORKS
ANACONDA
WHO IS THIS GUY AFTER ALL?
By inventing this old madman, Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra intended to write a parody on the cavalry books (the pink editions of those days), very popular among the readers... Alonso Quijano lost his reason by leafing through that kind of works.
Above: painting by Carlos Pereira da Silva.
DOJOJI'S KIYOKO
Possibly one of the dumbest characters Yukio Mishima may have created, on a passage of his «modern No Theatre plays»: Dojoji. Kiyoko's obsession for the cupboard in which her ex-lover died after betraying her is not the main reason for that dumbness, though. Actually, she wants to lock herself inside the cupboard until she becomes "old and awful".
Above: one of Ito Shinsui's pre-Second World War prints (Ohmi Gallery collection).
Kiyoko thinks her beauty and youth represent all her wealth... She hadn't noticed that Spring was around either, at least not before she threatened to spill acid on her face inside the same cupboard, which is now (we get to know) placed inside the shop of an antiques dealer. She gives up from such dramatic intent once she admires her own beauty on the cupboard's mirrors, and stops trying to bargain the price of the cupboard as well - she no longer wants to buy it. Finally, she goes away to meet a guy who will tear her heart apart (she knows it since the beginning...), just because she had noticed, with this episode, that her face will remain the same, independently of love's misfortunes (is that so?!). How superficial can a character be? The surprising answer is: maybe not quite as much as a real human being... Mishima seemed to know that.
THE WIND-UP BIRD
In Toru Okada's version, his wife Kumiko named the wind-up bird, the unfortunate sound of a mechanical cry which would follow him in his misadventures. Foretells for all those who heard the bird are not auspicious - we will know that ahead in the book. A Murakami's invention, the wind-up bird is a kind of invisible dark sorcerer specialized in characters who vanish and the (apparently casual) meeting of other characters. Demonic powers and their connection with the scars of the World War II in modern Japan are always present.
THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES AND THE PROBLEM OF NUDITY, CREDIBILITY AND POWER
BRAVE NEW WORLD'S LENINA CROWNE
THE BAHAMUT FISH
WHITE TEETH'S CLARA BOWDEN
INSPECTOR CHACALTANA
TÖRLESS, THE PUPIL
THE GREEN GODDESS
MACUNAÍMA: THE HERO WITH NO CHARACTER AT ALL
Curiously, the narrative path follows the inverse direction of the 16th century chronicists' narratives: from the woods to the big city, and then back to the woods - unlike the "navigators" who left the European civilization to "discover" the New World.
Painting: "The Baptism of Macunaíma", Tarsila do Amaral, 1956.
Thus Macunaíma as a hero is full of contradictions and happily enjoying them: he is the anti-hero also, the character with no character intended to represent and sinthetize some kind of national identity: Andrade wrote that the brazilian people, as a trait and general rule, had no character (not only in the moral and european sense of the word, but mainly in the sense that brazilians had no "century-old own civilization" nor a "tradition consciousness", still spontaneously acted as the rich inheritors of a yoruba civilization, an indigenous civilization and a european civilization). In fact, Macunaíma is an unpredictable character with no conscience dilemmas nor morality on the european traditional and religious sense of the word, he is free-minded as a 20-year old should be and acts accordingly: he is light and rich and full of opportunities, with all the surprisingly creative possibilities of a brand new society which is trying to build and invent itself.