Jc Penny In Ontario Mills

HATE "The Leopard", an excellent text Javier Marias (Journal COUNTRY) Steven Soderbergh

http://www.elpais.com/ articulo/portada/El_Gatopardo/Odiar/Gatopardo/elpepuculbab/20110312elpbabpor_10/Tes

No book or any author are essential by themselves, and can ensure that the world would be exactly as if they had not been Kafka, Proust, Faulkner, Mann, Nabokov and Borges. May not be as well if none existed, but the lack of one is certainly not have affected the whole. So it's very tempting, tempting to, if you will think that the representative of the twentieth century novel is the one that had most likely not exist, and nobody would have missed (the end of the Kafka left a single work, and once it became known that there were others, besides Metamorphosis, any reader could afford "longing" or want to read them). Which in its day and was seen by many almost as an outgrowth or an intrusion, as something outdated and completely away from the "current" prevailing in his country, Italy, as in the rest of the globe. As a work superfluous, anachronistic and not "added" anything or "advanced" as if the history of literature was a progressive thing and in a sense like science, whose findings are being cast aside or removed as they are superseded or which demonstrates the bias, inadequacy or inaccuracy of each of them. When literature works rather the other way around: nothing that is added to delete or override anything already written, but, so to speak, is at your side and live with it. The oldest and newest breathe in unison, and sometimes it is conceivable if everything written is just the same drop of water falling on the same stone, and if the only thing that really changes is the language of the time.
must, of course, that old thing still encouraging despite the time elapsed since its creation or its appearance: of course there are works that are erased and canceled, and are the vast majority, but do so at their own expense, not because nothing comes to take its place or to supplant or to retire, languish and die by their low vigor or because -Just-birth aspired to be "modern" or "original", which helps them soon after the aging, or, as they say, be too "dated." "This is such period and only that" we say to read them out of their time, and with the irrepressible and ever-increasing acceleration of the world, "out of time" means at times today, only a decade after its birth. Some feel that even with the stories of the greatest contemporary authors, with Kafka, Faulkner, Borges sometimes with, usually with Joyce. Pure innovative, risky pure, pure proactive, pure or pure than ambitious may result, at times, slightly outdated, or, if preferred, only "dated".

not the case that with Isak Dinesen, nor with The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. This is by no means a nineteenth-century novel, as some, perhaps confused by the century when its action is situated, even claimed at the time. Is undoubtedly a contemporary novel of the writers mentioned, the author does not know the new techniques or the "progress" the genre, if you can call them that, and even had the modesty of a possible rule-count single day in the life of Prince Fabrizio Salina di-with the following sentence: "I do not know how to write Ulysses." But I did know, for example, do a masterful use of ellipsis, relatively patchy, emphasis and even without counting at all, leaving unexplained what the reader just a glimpse or guess, conduct enlightening and partnerships between disparate elements apparently secondary or merely anecdotal, combine without fatigue or trap what is said and thought just occurred to him (all much more typical of the twentieth century novel of the nineteenth century), especially observe, reflect, imply, qualified.
As is known, The Leopard may not be published, and in fact occurred to the author, who did not see it in print and few days before his death on July 23, 1957, received another rejection letter one of the best Italian publishers, who thus joined in his "clinical eye" to another no less prestigious. But not only that, but The Leopard may very well not be written: Lampedusa was not a writer, or was to be only after his death, and if in the last years of his life rushed his novel was apparently causes quite minor: the relative success of his late cousin the poet Lucio Piccolo, which led him to make the following remark in a letter: "With the mathematical certainty of being no more stupid, I sat at my desk and wrote a novel, another was received encouragement from his wife, Licy, who encouraged him to write, it is assumed that anything, unpretentious, and see if that activity is a little nostalgia appeased; third reason might be his loneliness: "I am very lonely," he said. "In my sixteen waking hours every day for at least ten take place in solitude. I do not mean, however, spend all that time reading, sometimes elaborate literary theories ...". The truth is yes he spent most of his life reading and carrying many more books than needed, in a portfolio during their daily routine runs through the city of Palermo. To read (he did five or six languages), read up on mediocre writers and second children, which he considered as necessary as the big ones: "You have to know to get bored," she thought. So little momentum and lack of ambition was behind The Leopard. Indeed it was very easy to never have existed, and Lampedusa himself had doubts about its timing and its value: "It is, I fear, a mess," he once told his disciple Francesco Orlando, and apparently it said without vanity and in good faith. At the same time I thought it deserved publication (which is not hard to believe, given all that was published in the twentieth century, good, medium and bad, let alone what it has now been published in the XXI). In his text of "last will be private," he wrote, "I want to make all efforts to the publication of The Leopard ... and of course, this does not mean it should be published at the expense of my heirs, would consider it a great humiliation. " There was a lot of momentum and a lot of ambition to start the task, at least it was something of pride to finish.
did not lack reasons for it to Lampedusa. The Leopard, free from servitude, critics fear, the stiffness that seizes some novelists sometimes by the mere fact of being responsible to themselves and their own previous record, free of pretensions and presumptions and desire for originality, without any intention to titillate or shock or "open new way, "reads more than fifty years after its publication and now in another century, as a solitary masterpiece by item fourfold: to be the only complete novel of the author, for having appeared when he was already dead and have driven to roll through the world without any accompaniment, so to speak, coming from a section of the literature island "public" until the end of his days and be extraordinarily original, not have aspired to it, too. On such a novel has written extensively in the time and it would be presumptuous of me to want to add anything. Sicilian novel, well, the novel of the unification of Italy, well, the end of an era and the decline of an entire world, according, a portrait of opportunism with the famous phrase of whose appointment has been so abused - " If we want everything to remain as is, it is necessary that everything changes ", or" ... for something to change "- and repeated ad nauseam that those who have never read The Leopard, by agreement, but that phrase is only anecdotal in whole book, a lucky element. For me it's over all a novel about death and preparing for her acceptance, even on some impatience for his arrival. Nothing so insistent, modest and respectful and subdued, almost like a part of life and not necessarily the most important death is haunting. Perhaps two of the most moving passages in the novel are contemplation, by the Prince di Salina, the brief agony of a rabbit just killed during a hunt, and the last paragraph, in which, nearly thirty years after Own the disappearance of Don Fabrizio, his daughter Concetta finally decides to throw away the stuffed dog that was his father and that he felt the weakness, blessing.
In the rabbit says, "Don Fabrizio was provided by two large black eyes, quickly invaded by a glaucous veil, looked at him without rancor, but as an expression of painful surprise was a reproach directed against the very order of things ; the velvety ears were already cold, the legs are contracted vigorously and rhythmically posthumous symbol of wasteful drain, the snake died an agonizing tortured by hope of salvation, imagining, like many men, he could still resolve the crisis, when it was sentenced ...". And Dog Bless Mummy reads: "While dragged away the wreck, the glass eyes stared at the humble expression of criticism of the things that are discarded, which is trying to shut ", and this leads the reader to remember another time, much earlier, in which, when talking about the world of Donnafugata, says:" ... lacking, then, even that remnant of power that still encourages every last thing ...".
Lampedusa knows that all it takes to fade, it all takes time, up to what is already "last thing" skulks and refuses to leave, until the old mummy of a dog that left the world for decades. And the slow disappearance, but disappeared at the end, only one dares to oppose a humble reproach to the very order of things, without even achieve a grudge. Who knows or senses that order gets used to the idea and the prospect, even has it as "salvation": "... the plot had succeeded in death they can enter into existence without sacrificing life," reads in another time and another: "While there is death there is hope ...". It is not just the places and animals, they do not understand (let alone understand that even the eyes are the eyes, but the taxidermist glasses that mimic Bless stuffed dog). It is also about people, most still ignorant and full of life, even in the belief that death is something that concerns others, and yet worthy of compassion. In the famous dance sequence says: "The two girls and they went giving way to other couples, less beautiful, but as heartwarming as they are, each immersed in his own fleeting blindness. Don Fabrizio felt his heart soften, the distaste had become fleeting compassion for those beings who were trying to enjoy the meager light beam whose grace had been granted between the two shadows: one that had preceded the cradle and the snatch after the last throes. How could one picking on those who, without doubt, going to die? ... Just have a right to hate what is eternal. "
Fifty or more years are only moment "in the domains where certainty reigns forever", as well as read at the end of the sixth. But it may be sufficient for all novelists still alive, still shooting, still blind and touching between the two dark, we're already earning the right to hate The Leopard.