Ernesto SábatoBesprekingen

Problemi kryesor praktik i një shkrimtari argjentinas? Sigurimi i jetesës pa porostituar letërsinë. Do t'i këshilloja të rinjtë që asnjëherë të mos përpiqen të jetojnë prej saj, dhe aq më pak nga gazetaria, ku punohet dhe shkruhet jo për të shprehur botën tënde, por botën (zakonisht të korruptuar dhe të rreme) të drejtorit të një gazete.

For once, this is a well-known Latin-American book that doesn't get cited as a precursor of the "Boom". We're not in magic-realist territory here at all, or even in the realm of political history: this is a full-on existentialist novella in the Camus tradition, where we never leave the disturbing world of the inside of the protagonist's head.

Like Camus' most famous protagonist, the painter Castel is a convicted murderer reflecting on the circumstances of his crime. Falling in love with María, the one person with whom he has established real communication through one of his paintings, has broken through his radical alienation from society for a while, but then he starts to become obsessed with the idea that her love for him is not exclusive. Castel is not a sympathetic person, and it's not a very pleasant psychological journey we share with him, but Sábato doesn't give us much choice: we're compelled to stay with him to the end, even though we know where this is going. Powerful stuff, which has a lot of relevant things to say about the way we interact with the world even if we find the premise of the inevitability of jealousy-killing unpleasant and artificial.

One of the best books I have ever read.

Terminé la saga que comencé por el final. Me ha encantado cada entrega y el universo que ha creado Montero.

Scores points for its existential viewpoints and its dark ponderings that swings between immense, obsessive love and how small our lives are in the grand scheme of things. Where it fell short for me was in its misogyny and sociopathy of its narrator, a man who essentially stalks a woman and ends up killing her. There was a distastefulness about this perspective, and his intellectual picking apart things in everyday life. It needed to have some other layer or gone in a different direction with its story for me to enjoy it.

Quotes:
On isolation:
“…and that the whole story of the passageways [parallel tunnels] was my own ridiculous invention, and that after all there was only one tunnel, dark and solitary: mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my entire life. And in one of those transparent sections of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had naively believed that she was moving in a tunnel parallel to mine, when in fact she belonged to the wide world, the unbounded world of those who did not live in tunnels; and perhaps out of curiosity she had approached one of my strange windows, and had glimpsed the spectacle of my unredeemable solitude, or had been intrigued by the mute message, the key, of my painting.”

On lost love:
“More than ever I felt that she would never be wholly mine, and that I must resign myself to fragile moments of communion, as sad and insubstantial as the memory of certain dreams or the joy of certain musical passages.”

On meaninglessness:
“There are times when I feel that nothing has meaning. On a tiny planet that has been racing toward oblivion for millions of years, we are born amid sorrow; we grow, we struggle, we grow ill, we suffer, we make others suffer, we cry out, we die, others die, and new beings are born to begin the senseless comedy all over again.
Was that really it? I sat pondering the absence of meaning. Was our life nothing more than a sequence of anonymous screams in a desert of indifferent stars?”

And:
“I watched out the train window as the train sped toward Buenos Aires. We passed near a small homestead: a woman standing in the shade of a thatched roof looked up at the train. An opaque thought crossed my mind: ‘I am seeing that woman for the first and last time. I will never in my lifetime see her again.’ My thoughts floated aimlessly, like a cork down an uncharted river. For a moment they bobbed around the woman beneath the thatch. What did she matter to me? But I could not rid myself of the thought that, for an instant, she was a part of my life that would never be repeated; from my point of view it was as if she were already dead: a brief delay of the train, a call from inside the house, and that woman would never have existed in my life.”

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Con una escritura hermosa y conmovedora, Ernesto Sabato nos entrega en este libro de memorias su valor, su persistencia incorruptible, su pasión y su lucha ante las adversidades, la solidaridad de cada gesto suyo con los más desposeídos, su total entrega al arte y su permanente esperanza en los jóvenes. El mítico Parque Lezama, la infancia y los años de juventud, los recuerdos felices y los abrumadores, su esposa Matilde y la muerte de su hijo Jorge, la difícil decisión de abandonar la ciencia, los interrogantes sobre la existencia de Dios, los desastres de la clonación y los productos radiactivos, los excluidos del sistema, el consumo visto como sustituto del Paraíso, la robotización del hombre, desfilan por estas páginas. Testimonio, epílogo, legado, testamento espiritual: Ernesto Sabato, como un Kafka de fin de siglo, indaga sobre la perplejidad y el desconcierto del hombre contemporáneo arrojado a un universo duro y enigmático. Este es su título más reciente, un libro de memorias Antes del fin.

Esta es la segunda novela de Ernesto Sabato, que profundiza la senda iniciada por El túnel. Una obra, considerada uno de los mejores libros del siglo, que indaga en las zonas más oscuras del espíritu

Obras completas

Ernesto Sabato con su nueva obra nos encanta y nos define como seres humanos. Una reflexión sobre la pérdida de valores en la sociedad occidental y una invitación a crear una nueva cultura humanística.

Abaddón el exterminador cierra la trilogía iniciada en El túnel y proseguida en Sobre héroes y tumbas. Desarrollando en su más amplio registro la metáfora del «Informe sobre ciegos», esta insólita y profunda novela hace ingresar a Ernesto Sabato en el ámbito mismo de la escritura, y lo incorpora como personaje en una compleja construcción técnica cuyo juego de perspectivas remite a la vez a la realidad de un tiempo de apocalipsis y a las simas anímicas donde bucea el poder visionario del acto creador. Así, en la cúspide de su grandeza, esta vasta obra totalizadora culmina y comprende todo el arte sabatiano y la hondura de su indagación existencial. Abaddón el exterminador fue galardonado en París como el mejor libro extranjero publicado en Francia en 1976.

Një libër që ngërthen në vete të gjitha llojet e romaneve, nga ai gotik te sentimentali, nga romani filozofik te satira sociale, por që më në fund mund të cilësohet vetëm siç e ka përshkruar Gombrowicz-i, 'i llojit plot me dyshime, nga ato romane që lexohen me një frymë, dhe [që] kur i mbarojmë së lexuari vërejmë se ka ardhur ora katër e mëngjesit'.

No me gustó ni un poquito ya en la primera lectura, cuando era adolescente y era un libro que si te movías en ciertos círculos "tenías" que leer, ni cuando intenté una segunda lectura hace pocos años (esa vez ni siquiera lo terminé). Aprendí con los años a que me importe un bledo los "debe", leo lo que me da la santa gana y al que le guste bien y al que no también.

Respeto enormemente a Sábato, el hombre público. Pero como escritor (de ficción al menos, tengo algunos ensayos pendientes e lectura) no conecto ni con su estilo ni con su pesimismo.

Me marcó.

De los primeros libros que leí.

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Literatura romántica

A massively overlooked, under-analysed work of madness, yet, also, genius. Really enjoying analysing this novella for my dissertation

Un libro bien hilvanado entre sus historias interconectadas, es mejor que el tunel y a su vez lo mejora en el espacio que le dedica a la historia de Castel presentándote un punto de vista nuevo aunque surrealista, quizás presentado por la locura de uno de los personajes o quizás no.
Leia reviews y a muchos les aflora una muy buena prosa para hablar bien de este libro, me parece que es un poco musa sobre héroes y tumbas.

Exquisito y sin desperdicio el capitulo donde habla de literatura, genial la historia familiar en torno a Lavalle. Los temas tratados aqui como la soledad, la tragedia, la obsesion y la locura se sienten en serio, en una forma de narrar con metáforas atractivas y hasta crudas.

Muy buen libro, lo recomiendo

I guess existential pieces are not my cup of tea. They basically dabble with the same themes that I find dull, uninteresting, and somewhat annoying. What I liked here was that we were barely force-fed any existential jibber-jabber. Rather, we were first-hand witnesses to a stream of unfolding events as told by Juan Pablo Castell, the main character.

In this book, and in my personal opinion, the psychological detailing of Juan Pablo's psyche was really interesting. His obsessive and analytic over-thinking is something I can definitely relate to. Compared to Camus's The Stranger, this is where this piece really shines. Motives were presented and one can understand the main character's actions, thereby making the story somewhat more plausible, and the existential traces much more solid; something I found annoyingly absent in The Stranger.

My personal main takeaway from this novel was that you should prize and appreciate those whom you love, and stop reading too much into their actions, for doing so might deprive you of the most important joy of all; their presence. Having been through similar experiences as Castell (not as intense, though), it was nice sitting back to watch a summarized version of what consequences Castell's actions/thoughts will ultimately lead to.

Although I gave this a 3-star rating, it was more of a 3.5 than a 3 (when will Goodreads add half-star ratings?).

Parece una de esas obras que te fascina o te repele. Bueno, a mí ni una cosa ni la otra. El núcleo argumental principal, que centra las partes primera y segunda, es la historia de amor (o así) entre el adolescente Martín, huido de unos padres que no le quieren y sobreviviendo a base de amigos por Buenos Aires, y Alejandra, última representante de una rancia familia argentina caída en la locura (la familia, y ella casi también). Antes de todo, Sabato nos informa de que Alejandra terminará incendiando su habitación con ella dentro después de matar a a su padre de dos tiros. Su historia se mezcla con la narración de la retirada del general Lavalle, ancestro de Alejandra, en un famoso episodio de las guerras civiles que siguieron a la independencia de Argentina. La tercera parte la ocupa un alucinante "Informe sobre ciegos" en el que Fernando (que aparece aparentemente de forma colateral en la historia de Martín y Alejandra) persigue a una secta de invidentes que, según él, domina el mundo. La última parte nos cuenta el destino de Martín, de nuevo mezclado con el del general Lavalle, tras la muerte de Alejandra y Fernando.

Yo creo que, en realidad, Sabato reflexiona aquí sobre la locura. La de Alejandra, un tanto genética y relativamente leve, la de su familia, empezando por el insensato general empeñado en seguir una guerra que ha perdido y terminando en un bisabuelo chocho y un tío-abuelo obsesionado por el clarinete, pero sobre todo la de Fernando, cuya relación con Alejandra es mejor que no explique aquí, y cuyo "Informe sobre ciegos" es simplemente el escrito de un loco. Eso sí, tengo que reconocer que es la parte más subyugadora de toda la obra. De hecho, se ha publicado como obra independiente.

Pero, con todo, no he acabado de verle la profundidad a este libro. Trufado de discursos políticos y morales (que, por otro lado, a veces están bastante bien), a ratos se me ha hecho demasiado grandilocuente e incluso hay momentos de verborrea innecesaria. Me han gustado más algunos personajes secundarios, fundamentalmente los que ofrecen algún refugio y calor humano al pobre Martín, que serán también los que al final aporten algo de esperanza. También me ha gustado mucho la forma en que Sabato utiliza el español argentino (porteño, más bien), al estilo que, por ejemplo, hace Fernando Quiñones con el habla de Cádiz: sin transcribirlo literalmente porque sería incomprensible, pero sin traducirlo tampoco al español estándar, que sería traicionarlo.½

For my next book I decided to tick a country off of my 'World Challenge' so where better to start than at the start of the alphabet with Argentina. For this I reserved a copy of The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato at my local library. This book gets pretty good reviews and the synopsis sounds like the kind of twisted book I would like.

It is only a short book (140 pages) and after only about 15 pages I started to think that I would struggle to get through it. The writing style was easy to get through but there was just something about it that I didn't get on with. I put the book down for half an hour and when I came back to it the problem seemed to have largely gone. There are sections of prose that I really liked but others which I found a bit turgid.

I like dark nasty stories and this has to be up there with the nastiest of them. I found myself at times rooting for Castel and then 2 pages later being disgusted by him. I couldn't help but feel as though some of the book passed me by and I think that it would benefit from a reread in a year or so. It's certainly got my mind going in much the same way as Crime & Punishment did after I had finished it.

I give this 3/5 with the caveat that a reread later may increase that rating.

Una novela donde Ernesto Sábato plantea toda su carga ideológica. Centrada en el personaje de Martín, un hombre en busca de sí mismo, el escritor argentino expone su particular visión sobre la soledad, tema clave en su narrativa. Cercana a ciertas obras del existencialismo francés despertó la admiración de Camus.