And yet.
Questo romanzo - bellissimo e scritto in modo speciale - ha per protagonista un libro ("The History of Love"), ma di questo libro non conosciamo che piccoli estratti come questo:
The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people's hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely. During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less.
Leo Gursky lo ha scritto da giovane, dedicandolo ad Alma Mereminski, il suo amore perduto: Three times he asked her. She shook her head. I can't, she said. She looked down at the floor. Please, she said. And so he did the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life: he picked up his hat and walked away.
Zev Litvinoff lo ha pubblicato a suo nome: He learnt to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it. It was like living with an elephant. His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom.
Charlotte Singer lo legge, lo adora e lo traduce, e dà a sua figlia il nome della protagonista, Alma.
...and when I said I was going up to my room she'd call after me, "What can I do for you, I love you so much," and I always wanted to say, but never said: Love me less.
Alma Singer (la figlia, appunto) ricostruisce il tutto.
The first woman may have been Eve, but the first girl will always be Alma.
Così si potrebbe sintetizzare la trama. And yet.
C'è molto altro, spesso racchiuso, e nascosto, in quegli and yet.
Perché il libro, in realtà (ma anche il romanzo), parla di questo:
LAUGHING & CRYING & WRITING & WAITING
"The fact that you got a little happier today doesn't change the fact that you also became a little sadder. Every day you become a little more of both, which means that right now, at this exact moment, you're the happiest and the saddest you've ever been in you whole life."
"Of course I am." "Why?" "Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you."
Carico i commenti... con calma
