New
sufferings
‘But he´s a
decent chap,’said Svejk. ‘He´s only here because he didn´t want to joint up.
He´s against the war, belongs to some kind of sect and he´s been gaoled because
he didn´t want to kill people. He keeps God´s commandment, but they´re going to
make God´s commandment hot for him.Before the war there was a fellow called
Nemrava living in Moravia who didn´t even want to take a rifle on his shoulder,
and when he was called up he said that it was against his principles to carry a
rifle. Because of that he was gaoled until he was blue in the fase and then
brought up again to take the oath. But he said he wouldn´t do it as it was
against his principles and he held out so long that he got away with it.’
Svejk´s
Budejovice Anabasis
‘Excellent.
And you didn´t happen to ask them for example
how many men there would be in a regiment and how they were distributed?’
‘No, I
didn´t ask that because I knew it by heart ages ago.’
‘And so
you´re perfectly informed about the composition of our army?’
‘Of course,
sargeant.’
And the
sargeant now played his last Trump, looking around triumphantly at his
gendarmes:
‘Do you
speak Russian?’
Svejk batman to Lieutinant Lukás
And so it
happened that the Good soldier Svejk could report to the lieutenant when he
returnedfrom the barracks: ‘Humbly report, sir,I´ve fulfilled all the lady´swishes
and served her decently according to your orders.’
‘Thank you,
Svejk,’replied the lieutenant. ‘And did she have lots of whishes?’
‘About six,’
answered Svejk.’And now she is sleeping as though quite exhausted by the ride.
I did obey her slightest whim, sir.’
(Pag. 183)
Jaroslav Hasek describes with
delicate humor in this passage Svejk's idiocy or wisdom, depending on how you
look at it.
The brave soldier obeys his
superior's orders to the letter: You must behave gallantly and serve her
decently.
The orders he receives from the
lieutenant are precise and clear: Svejk must comply with the lady's wishes
'politely and tactfully', and the subordinate complies as best he knows how.
From my Borstal
LDR
The Good Soldier Svejk AND HIS
FORTUNES IN THE WORLD WAR.- Jaroslav
Hasek.- Penguin Books, London, 1973 (Translation from the Czech by Cecil Parrot
with the original illustrations by Josef Lada)
Do
not cry
The second part, the
disappointment.
All the hope that Albanians had
with the arrival of the new system was blown up overnight.
In exchange for a can of Coca Cola
and avoiding lines to get food, corruption and deceit, scam and fraud were
established in Albania. Young Lea saw with her own eyes that what the people
had dreamed of, that what her parents expected had been a chimera. Thousands of
families were ruined when a form of savings spread throughout Tirana and other
cities that was in reality a hidden theft that was only discovered — as is
usually the case — when this activity collapsed. An economic scheme that
everyone knows and in which, however, many continue to believe.
Democracy also brought to Leushka's
world the terrible and unjust Structural
Reforms, in capital letters, the loss of jobs and the bankruptcy of the
country; while she had her own torments…
My teenage
years were, for the most part, unblessed, something that was made even worse
whenever my family insisted on convincing me that I had no reason to feel that
way.
(It is clear that a teenager is not
helped, on the contrary, his feeling is reinforced by telling him that he has
no reason to feel bad.)
Tears came to my eyes when I read,
in this chapter, Lea's volunteering at the orphanage and the life of little
Ilir.
A great book.
From my Borstal
LDR
Lea Ypi.- Free. Coming of Age at the End of History. Allen Lane. London 2021
The
Coca Cola can
‘I
never asked myself what freedom meant until the day I hugged Stalin.’
This is how Lea Ypi's magnificent
book begins.
The first thing I thought was that
the author was really hugging, physically and in the flesh, the Soviet
dictator, when in reality she was hugging a statue of the man made of steel.
The first part of the book, its 150
pages with which the story starts, describes the life of a family and a girl,
Leushka, in the death throes of the communist regime in Albania.
A bright eleven-year-old girl that didn't understand why the statues of Stalin and Uncle Enver were being torn
down. But the most painful thing for the protagonist is that, with the
monuments, secrets and lies also fall; words are put to the silences and the
whispers gain volume until they become clearly audible in the living room of
the house... And she begins to distrust her family.
By the way, the fifth chapter describes a situation that I would say has a mix of surreal with a slight touch of magical realism that I leave to the reader's free interpretation. The spotlight goes to a disputed can of Coca Cola.
From my Borstal
LDR
Lea Ypi.- Free. Coming of Age at the End of History. Allen Lane. London 2021
Dove
l´Abate si mostra fiero delle ricchezze della sua abbazzia…
Until now I had never read anything
by Umberto Eco, but a trip to Tuscany gave me the opportunity to buy, in a
well-stocked and cozy bookshop in Pisa, Il
nome della rosa.
Today I have started the chapter
dedicated to the second day, nona
hour, and in the third paragraph I have found another example of the subtlety
and kindness with which the Piedmontese treats his attributed atheism. Ecco, in said paragraph and through the
mouth of the abbot, Eco describes the riches of the abbey: topaz, ruby,
sapphire, emerald, onyx, agate... and with total cleanliness, I would
say asepsis, the author convinces us, at least he has convinced me, that the
best way to glorify the name of God and to magnify the sacrifice he made for
men is to receive and offer blood in those wonderful chalices of gold and
precious stones.
I already assumed that this book
was going to be one of those that you cannot stop reading, because having watched
the film by J. Annaud, since then I had the lively desire to get hold of the
work and see if reading it would fill me with so much satisfaction like the
movie.
It´s true that it shouldn´t be,
that one thing cannot be compared with the other one. That the books have to be
compared, if the case arises, with the books and the movies with the movies
because they are two different arts.
As anyone who follows me already
knows, I am an unrecoverable atheist and I am not convinced by the abbot's
argument. As a reader I applaud the elegance and resources used by U.E.
From my Borstal
LDR
Il
nome della rosa.- Umberto Eco.- Tascabili Bompiani, LVII edizione
marzo 2010. Milano
The Remains of the Day
“That´s what we fought Hitler for,after all. If Hitler had had things his way, we´d just be slaves now. The whole world would be a few masters and millions upon millions of slaves. And I don´t need to remind anyone here, there´s no dignity to be had in being a slave. That´s what we fought for and that´s what we won. We won the right to be free citizens. And it´s one of the privileges of being born English that no matter who you are, no matter if you´re rich or por, you´re born free and you´re born so that you can express your opinión freely, and vote in your member of parliament or vote him out. That´s what dignity´s really about, if you´ll excuse me, sir.”
From Kazuo Ishiguro´s beautiful and
haunting The Remains of the Day, page
196.
Today we are in a situation that
could lead to a conflict similar to the one experienced in 1939.
With some frecuency, in history,
events tend to repeat themselves, although with different protagonists.
The current tsar is acting in the
same way as the Nazi Adolf. He started a few years ago changing laws and
appointing puppets in the government to stay in power, imprisoning or poisoning
dissidents and even invading nearby territories while we, condescendingly,
waited for it to stop at some point…
Now we find ourselves with the
encysted problema and on the verge of any unforeseeable outcome.
P.S.- Excuse me if I reserve what I
think may happen in a couple of years.
From my Borstal
LDR
The
Ramains of the Day.- Ishiguro, K. Faber and Faber, London, 1989
Social
Outcasts
Page 136 'The Road to Wigan Pier'
«It
was in this way that my thoughts turned towards the English working class. It
was the first time that I had ever been really aware of the working class, and
to begin with it was only because they supplied an analogy. They were the
simbolic victims of injustice, playing the same part in England as the Burmese
played in Burma. In Burma the issue had been quite simple. The whites were up
and the blacks were down, and therefore as a matter of course one´s sympathy
was with the blacks. I know realized that there was no need to go as far as
Burma to find tyranny and exploitation.»
Sorry for not giving you a
background, my dear chum, but without realizing it I´ve reached chapter IX of
'The Road to Wigan Pier' and I think I´ve discovered the pearl of this book, at least until what I´ve read.
(This, while apparently there´re
already more than 90,000 deaths on each side of the war in Ukraine, and the
joys and sorrows only come from the footballers of Qatar, that country that
trades with the rights of people based on money. It´s clear that morality is
like a seasonal garment: when you´re interested, you wear it; if you´re not
interested, don´t use it)
Page 137
«Therefore
my mind turned immediately towards the extreme cases, the social outcasts:
tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. These were ‘the lowest of the low’,
and these were the people with whom I wanted to get in contact.»
In these paragraphs of this chapter we find the germ of Orwell's best-known works: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
From my Borstal.
LDR
Orwell, G.- The Road to Wigan Pier. Collins Classics. London, 2021
You never have to look back
«Thank you very much for your words. Save those beautiful memories you
have of my brother because I don´t think you could talk to him. Mike has
memories, the problem is that he can hardly ever express what he feels because
he can´t find the words; this leads him to become frustrated and remain silent.
Finally,
thank you very much for your interest. I´ll tell Gertrude, and you receive my
best regards.»
This
was the terse reply I received from Johnny.
Johnny,
Mike´s brother, is four years younger than
him and we will have exchanged three or four words in our lifetime and that was
fifty years ago.
The message
(DM) has put me into a demoralised kind of mood. It´s curious how something
like that gets you down. I don´t know if it was a coincidence or what, but at
the moment I was reading the DM, a Barber adagio was playing on my stereo, I
don´t know which one, but it´s the saddest music I´ve ever heard in my life.
And
all for wanting to look back and step on the path — as the song says — that
shouldn´t be stepped on again. Because neither Mike nor I are the same dimwit
we were when we were just starting out.
From my Borstal.
LDR
The shadow of the tsar is long
«(i)três pessoas
organizam uma manifestação de apoio a Alexei Navalny, opositor de Putin,
acreditando que estão seguras em Portugal;
(ii)dão as suas
identificações à Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, certas de que é uma entidad séria,
fiável e que nunca as irá colocar em perigo;
(iii)a Câmara Municipal envía
esses dados pessoais para a Embaixada da Rússia sem cualquier base legal;
(iv)a Rússia não é um regome democrático. A Rússia intimida e persegue os seus opositores.»
Cleaning
out the drawer of magazines and newspapers, I found an opinion article by Nuno
Pereira da Cruz, dated June 16 of last year, and I had no choice but to stop
and reread it.
The journalist is very upset by the action carried out by the Lisbon mayor's office, which was none other than sharing personal information of human rights activists (names, ID, addresses, telephone numbers...) with the Russian regime.
«Assim, quando temos uma violação desta gravidade da liberdade, da segurança e das garantias básicas de um Estado de direito democrático, não interessa o nome do pobre funcionario que enviou os dados dos ativistas para a Embaixada da Rússia. Isso é poeira para os nossos olhos…»
This
was a year ago. Today — after the Russian invasion of Ukraine — the tsar's
shadow is even longer and suffocating, and his proselytes, wolves in sheep's
clothing, welcome Ukrainian refugees to extract strictly personal information
from them for the benefit of the Kremlin head honcho.
Could there be anything more demeaning?
From
my Borstal.
LDR
Diário de Notícias
Quarta-feira 16/6/2021
The left hand
Today I have seen for the first time the hand of an old man. It has been while reading one of the stories that Ishiguro has included in his ‘Nocturnes’.
Almost without realizing it, turning one of the pages, I have come face to face with the arid relief of my skin. On the back of my hand has appeared the senile hair that randomly populates the semi-toughen folds of this part of my body, as well as some accumulations — of fat according to the dermatologist — with the appearance of warts that have been established with total impudence between the knuckles and the wrist.
Porca vacca! I said to myself. I had to calm down and I have quickly thought that the texture that my left hand presents (I have not dared to compare it with the right one) is the result of the 2.5 dioptres that thicken the lenses of my close-up glasses. A little disappointed, I have taken off my optical aids and stopped reading.
From
my Borstal
LDR
Glasgow
There
was a Spanish poet who found Glasgow ugly and sordid. Now that I´m living in
this warm and open land, understand perfectly why he said that.
It´s
not the same to travel to a city for the mere fact of being retired and freely
use your time as you please, than to have to go jumping from city to city
because a civil war has been declared and you have to save your skin. You leave
behind not only the bullets but the most retrograde ideas of a country that had
been blown up. This is how Luis Cernuda appeared in the Scottish city.
He,
who is taken by British on more than one occasion, had a hard time adapting — and
it seems that he couldn´t — to the climate that reigns above 55º N. We must not
forget that he was born and lived his first years in Seville. If to this we add
the love disappointment that was dragging on, it´s quite easy to suppose that
not even the most trained spirit would endure a new uprooting.
I
write this because I have seen a documentary dedicated to the trajectory of the
Sevillian where — among all the things that were said — it startled me that the
poet and professor said, felt, that Glasgow stood out for its ‘ugliness and
squalor’. If you have ever been there, you will have seen that it rains a lot,
in all seasons of the year, that the stones of many of its buildings have a
strong nineteenth-century smell and that people are imbued with their tasks...
The
way I see it, no city is ugly. It's a matter of humour and finding the right
angle and seeing it cast in 'a silver grey shade'.
From my Borstal.
LDR
