MALAPARTE ~

 

R E A D   M E

     New York Review of Books

     2024

EDMUND WHITE ~

Nearing his eighties this might be Edmund White's

finest book. It's a little over 200 pages

and you would swear you've gone through

600 pages, thoroughly enjoying yourself.

As he closes one of the chapters,

"There is great imaginative energy in Malaparte, as there

is in Gabriel Garcia Marquez; everything is compact,

eloquent, and endlessly inventive."

White just described his own book.

Relish the essays on Jean Giono and Malaparte

since few readers today take the time

with these lively authors.

[ BA ]

Bloomsbury

2018

CURZIO MALAPARTE ~

 Xian of Eight Rivers

China is made of earth, of sun-dried mud.

In this part of China everything is made from the earth:

the houses, the walls around cities, and villages,

the tombs scattered over the countryside.

Even the people.

There are hills below that appear to be piles of mud

set out to dry in the sun, naked,

without a single tree or bush.

They crowd around the landscape

like the coils of bulging intestines

tossed on the ground outside butchers' shops,

slowly unraveling.

Sometimes we fly so low that we almost touch them.

And then I notice that the wind has brushed

some kind of pattern into the earth: a mysterious alphabet

written in the mud,

struggling to communicate something precise.

But there is not a single animal

or human being in the yellow desert below.

Not a single village.

 

Suddenly we are landing: Xian,

the geographic center of China,

where Chinese civilization was born,

in the cradle of the Yellow River.

 

In front of the terminal,

three children are playing with a lump of earth:

they are bundled up in jackets

and brightly printed cotton trousers.

I join them in their game

until a young woman comes out of the terminal

to call me in for dinner.

One of the children grabs me by my overcoat,

to keep me from leaving.

So do the other two, clinging to me,

asking me not to go.

 

The young woman comes out again,

and yells at them to stop.

 

They let go, disappointed.

One of them calls to me as I turn away:

Come back soon!

 

We eat quickly and then prepare to take off for Lanchow.

My three new friends wave goodbye to me. The littlest one

gives me a present: a pebble,

a precious gift.

In this part of China there are no stones.

You have to go to Karelia to find stone,

very far north; or to the Caucasus;

or to southern Siberia, along the slopes of the Pamir,

slanting toward the steppes of Central Asia.

 

I put the pebble in my pocket,

to take back home, to show what a precious gift

I was given by a little Chinese girl: a pebble

from the cradle of Chinese civilization.

 

A civilization made of earth,

a civilization without bones,

without a skeleton for support.

A civilization of assembled customs,

which suddenly unravel,

dissolving into thousands of separate gestures,

thousands of calligraphic icons,

thousands of smells, colors, flavors,

thousands of different shades. And then just as suddenly

they solidify again into tradition, memory, habit.

 

It is this absence of stone, of solid, durable material,

which makes China such an exquisite thing.

Everything is reflected:

an unimaginable number of movements,

of patterns, thoughts, images,

of which we see the copies in immense numbers,

but never the originals.

 

The originals were destroyed long ago.

 

Here are the four elements out of which China is made:

Earth, Wood, Porcelain, Silk.

The most durable of these is Silk.

 

I should add a fifth element: Poetry,

which is the most durable of all.

 ____________________________

translated by Walter Murch

( Counterpoint 2013 )

 http://filmmakermagazine.com/72060-walter-murch-on-editing-and-his-translations-of-curzio-malaparte/#.Vcp0CbeQk-M

EARTH ~

THINK BACK, PILGRIM (X)

Flourishing minds were at work during the filming of Contempt / Le Mepris (1963) — the French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard, his cameraman Raoul Coutard, actors Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, and an angel on my shoulder visitation by German director Fritz Lang, who plays a director in a film about a film about theater about an odyssey. It is probably Godard's most commercially successful film, loosely based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, with black magic ingredients injected by Godard. In this sequence shown we are located around Casa Malaparte — the home creation on the island of Capri by the Italian author Curzio Malaparte. He fired his architect and built this rock nest on rock with the stonemason Adolfo Amitrano. It's situated 32 meters above the sea overlooking the Gulf of Salerno. Its wholeness with nature reminded the author of his youth in Tuscany. Things got done by Malaparte, even during a world war (2) and maybe because of it. If lung cancer hadn't cut him short just shy of age 60, one of his dreams was to bicycle across America.

Curzio Malaparte with Zita

Photo courtesy Casa Malaparte archive