Le Café Suspendu by Amanda Sthers

 Le Café Suspendu

by Amanda Sthers is a new book by Grasset. It's intriguing and it must be read; through this one in fact there is the fascination for a city, Naples, a city everyone should visit before to die, and its people.

But...Why café suspendu? In particular in Naples, a person can leaves in a bar money for a second coffee, for a person in difficulty and the most beautiful thing: completely unknown to him/her. A tradition this one started during the last world war. The barist in general knows his customers and the ones living a problematic moment.These ones are the people of the so-called: caffè sospeso.

The multiformity of people met by the author is incredible: the narrator, first of all is Jacques Madelin, 62 years: french, he changed his existence, starting to live in Italy, Naples, because of love: once love over, he enjoys to spend time observing people at le Café Nube. 

Enchanting and favolistic characters creates this universe of short stories.The story of Fernanda and Silvia is emblematic. Fernanda notices that the husband is not anymore as in the past. The man fell in love for Silvia and Fernanda, a very rich and practical lady, will reach an economical compromise with the young girl, buying the future with her beloved husband and making happy Silvia, who will leave Italy forever.

The story of the chinese doctor, is maybe the most beautiful one. I just adore it: chinese medicine tries to help people before that they fall sick. To Chinese medicine there is an harmonic fusion between yling and ylang, the best and baddest part of our body and soul and this equilibrism help the person to maintain his/her health. When this harmonic pact is over, a person falls ill. It will be thanks to his patients, that also the chinese doctor, after all, will heal.

Agrippina was a very old lady and the grand-daughter wants to try to understand what happiness is, if only her grand-mother would tell her. Then, one day she meets along the street and unknown man...

The book spans through legends and real stories, in a fresco that it is at the same time fresh and meditative.

Highly recommended.

 

I thank Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Countries that Don't Exist by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Edited by Jacob Emery and Alexander Spektor

 Countries that Don't Exist

by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Edited by Jacob Emery and Alexander Spektor is a collection of superlative essays. If you are in love for literature, writing, if you are interested in the process of birth of a play, experimentalism, this beautiful book is for you.

Sigizmund describes the Soviet literature as a literature that tries to plumb the dephts of life, to listen to its breathing. The author in the essay Country that Don't Exist portrays the imaginary worlds created in literature by western authors, more than Russian ones: Swift, Cervantes...

Jules Verne stayed at home, tranquil (as did Emilio Salgari, not mentioned by Sigizmund but a good comparison) when invented his imaginative trip around the world: Sigizmund speaks of giants, often defeated by little creatures more sly than not them: although big they have a little brain: Sigizmund was in love for Baron Munchausen a man realistically existed, in fact, who spent time in Russia some time and was known for his favolistic intimate world and the fantastic stories he told to everyone. The comparison with Perogrullo known because he fought with value at the Battle of Pavia in 1521-1526 is evident Perogrullo was known because incredibly honest intellectually: he told always the truth: he didn't have any kind of imagination.

Sigizmund won't miss in another essay to study more closely a writer who started to make the difference: Egard Allan Poe. An interesting writer, someone with a wide dictionary, wrote Sigizmund, although a master in short tales: the one of Poe was an astonishingly writerly technique.

In Love as a Method of Cognition an essay on the description of Love, with a great example: our native Saint Francis of Assisi: the saint decided to love everyone and everything, inglobating every creature on Earth in his Love, calling them brothers and sisters. It's the best love, admits Sigizmund. Loving another person can be more limitative but there is anyway the extension of a love and wellness regarding other people: the same companion, love is blind, is seen only positively: lacks, or characteristics not too beauty are removed by the mind of the lover: our capacity of loving is measured by the way in which we have known and experienced love. Sigizmund writes that "The most insignificant vibration of the soul deposites into consciousness particles of experience, often imperceptible ones, and, accumulating one after the other, they later become visible and comprehensible as a certain truth of the world." An essay is written on George Bernard Shaw: I didn't know this, Shaw was a great estimator of Stalin. The author, takes in consideration the writing of the same Shaw but also his character and tastes: from the musicians he loved a lot, starting from Mozart, to past writers appreciated like Shakespeare, read and reread by Shaw successfully. Lev Tolstoy, differently, reports Sigizmund became always more irritated when reread Shakespeare. 

A book for every writer, reader, passionate. Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky a Russian born in the South, Kiev, was a fine man of letters although his production hasn't known the light entirely when still alive because of some censorship problems.

Highly recommended book.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Polidor!

 There is a special place in Paris, frequented by the protagonists of La libraia che salvò i Libri, latest book on Shakespeare and Co. and it is called Polidor Restaurant.

Opened at first as a cheese store by Bléry Polidor later became a restaurant thanks to the intuition of Froissard. Intellectuals of all sorts have spent some time there. Julio Cortazar wrote on the Polidor an entire chapter in "Maquette à Monter": Roger Leenhardt mentioned Polidor when wrote a book on the post-war  atmosphere of Saint-Germain des Prés. 

Caricaturists like Cabu and Wolinski, painters as Perot and Botero enjoyed the Polidor.

Till the 19th century the restaurant has been frequented by artists. The pennieless poet Germain Nouveau is an example, but also intellectuals, politicians from the closest neighborhoods.

Now it's more than 175 years that the Polidor welcomes the students of La Sorbonne, intellectuals visitors, tourists. The people of the Collège de Pataphysique enjoyed to eat and discuss topics at the Polidor. Eugene Ionesco, René Clair, Paul Valéry, Robert Vian. Polidor has welcomed also other writers:  Rimbaud, Jean Jaures, Ernest Hemingway, who mentions the Polidor in his book "A Moveable Feast", James Joyce, André Gide. 

As writes someone: entering the Polidor it's like opening a door to History. 

What is, after all the Polidor if not a stop in the tumultuous existences of these men and women?

The restaurant has been also protagonist in several movies, but where the Polidor has played a big role was in Midnight in Paris, directed by Woody Allen, where a writer in search of inspiration, in his midnight walks in the french capital, enters in the past, meeting the most important protagonists of the 1920s: Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein...

Recently the restaurant welcomed some actors (Instagram page Ulysses100project) , fans of James Joyce, for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Ulysses, recreating a scenario only seen in 1922:

Polidor continues to be a temporal passport to the most beautiful and creative past seen in Paris.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Pictures from the Fb page of Polidor and Instagram page of @Ulysses100project. 

Sisters of the Cross by Alexander Remizov translated by Roger Keys and Brian Murphy

 Sisters of the Cross

by Alexander Remizov translated by Roger Keys and Brian Murphy published by Columbia University Press is a book of shocking beauty! 

It will be because the atmosphere is suspended in a sort of diluited time, where patriotism, God, the Holy Russia, religion, superstitions, legends, existences,human miseries, will play a big role in a fusion with myth, reality, dreams.

The book is set in Petersburg and as a male protagonist we see Piotr Alekseevich Marakulin, who, once accused of having stolen a large amount of money was fired by the trading company where he was working with success with. Alone, unemployed, he lost soon all the rest. He finds a new home in the Burkov House a microcosm populated by the most different, diversified, accentric people that you can think at. 

There is a general, a barrister, a merchant of different stalls called Gorbachov, and a lot of adorant girls in love for him but he can't see the sight of children. Burkov House is a place where everything can happens 

In the house of Lebedeva there is a missing fur winter coat but no one guessed who the stealer was; maybe just the stove? Then there are Sheveliov and Khabarov: they appeared as two innocent students, while they were two thieves, and simply one day they discovered that the flat completely empty; anyway they were arrested...

A girl was brought in a hotel without to know that that one was a hotel, with the promise to receive a regular job while she was abused, and continued to be abused by everyone.

Adoniia Ivailovna dreams...She dreams of her land where she was born and the rivers she knew so well, the Onega, the Davina, the Pinega: she dreams of the heavy brocade of the old Russian costumes, whales and seas, fairy stories, epic tales, the midnight sun. 

Akumovna differently every day tells fortune to whoever asks her to do that, but her dreams are not so tranquil like the ones of Adoniia, no. She dreams of destructions, robbers, reptiles, whatever you can imagine of negative, she dreams it.

The best dream is flying...Flying away.

There are clowns and circus artists in this microcosm.

Vera, once for Christmas sang this heroic poetry "on the seven wild oxen and their mother" telling "how seven oxen with their golden horns were going along by the blue sea, how they swam across the blue sea to come out on the famous island of Buian." In that place they encountered the great oax, the mother. The young told her "How they had chanced to go past Kiev, past God's Church of the Resurrection." The young described the miracle seen there: a maiden came out of the church carrying a golden book on her head, how she waded up to her waist in the River Neva. This lady laid the book on a burning white rock reading the book and started to weeping.  The mother ox explained that the Maiden was Saint Mary reading the Gospel "and while she was reading she wept, hearing the misfortune befalling Kiev and the whole of Holy-Russia." 

In the while Marakulin started to make friendship with several girls...One day  he was put in jail for a short time. There he dreamed that someone told him that the only chance was to cut his head: that man would have done it. But, although headless, Marakulin could hear and feel whatever he wanted. Then he became a bee, patriotic views,  terrorized, because people could kill him, at the same time the lucidity to see in the future.

An amazing work this one, wonderfully translated from Russian, Remizov, dear writer, was an expatriate. He lived most of his existence in Paris. During his life hasn't had a lot of luck and only once dead and after 15 years he has been published in Russia. As all the Russians expatriates, to me there is this dream, hallucination, clearity, ecstasy of a fantastic land where they won't return anymore. Dostoevskij wrote in The Idiot that Russians when in other lands are like fantasy.

Highly recommended book. 

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy.

Anna Maria Polidori 

  

La Libraia che Salvò i Libri by Kerri Maher

 La Libraia che Salvò i Libri

by Kerri Maher is a new and suggestive novel published by Garzanti.

The story of Sylvia Beach the founder of Shakespeare & Co. is pretty detailed and includes a lot of informations on his private life. Sylvia lived in Princeton USA, when decided to move to Paris a city more tranquil and open. Here, with the sister will soon meet the companion of many decades of her existence: Adrienne Monnier, the owner of a famous parisien bookstore. Only after the departure of Adrienne's companion the two will start to live together. 

At the same time, Sylvia didn't want to return to the USA, but wanted to build an existence in Paris, opening where possible a bookstore for Americans, with english titles. There was in fact in Paris a large presence of Americans because of the prohibitionism. Most of them searched for a different freedom and a different atmosphere, more relaxed than not the American one.

It was thanks to her mother, if Sylvia opened her bookstore, concretizing a dream: Sylvia was a passionate of literature so kept many many books. She was, also, an estimators of James Joyce's books.

It was the meeting with Joyce that marked her professional existence: Sylvia didn't see the obscure side of this writer, and his egoism: Sylvia, just loved what he wrote, and if, today the Ulysses is considered an important book in the international panorama, it's just thanks to her.

Sylvia was devoted to Joyce, also when Joyce treated her coldly, distantly. I previously read and reviewed the letters sent to Sylvia by Joyce and he was extremely cold with her. I can't believe possible that that lady supported him so much.

To me it is still the extreme gesture of someone in love for a book, after all, more, maybe than the author himself. Joyce had eye's problems and Sylvia found a doctor for him: developed problem with some teeth and Sylvia was still there, listening to him.

The good luck of Joyce was that a lady in love again for literature sent him regularly wagons of money that then spent in the most expensive restaurants of the city where he was in for eating and drinking. The Joyces lived at long in Italy: they were pretty fluent with our language, although the wife of Joyce was uninterested on literature and what her husband was doing.

To Joyce the devotion of Sylvia Beach has meant everything: if Sylvia wouldn't have been loyal, the Ulysses wouln't never been published. A book this one that divided the intellectuals. When Sylvia, in fact offered to Joyce the possibility to publish the book with the imprint of Shakespeare & Co, Gertrude Stein didn't lose a moment and asked to be removed from the owners with a card, thinking that this idea was a bad one. In fact was a bad one, because, if at first the book was released, there is to say that more or less immediately in the USA someone tried to steal the work done by Sylvia, at the end...Winning. Joyce sent also a letter to Ezra Pound. He had to convince her that this book wasn't of her property, after all... Joyce has always considered Sylvia Beach a sort of secretary and nothing, nothing else.  

Sylvia suffered immensely although she remained affectionated to the idea of James Joyce and his books, deciding, after all to set free this book, that later was published by Random House, for the joy of James Joyce who became incredibly rich and would have spent many more time in exclusive restaurants, drinking and eating: for sure, when Sylvia asked for financial help he didn't help her, this immense little woman who changed his destiny.

If you notice a polemic touch, it is real. 

Another character met by Sylvia Beach, completely different from Joyce was Ernest Hemingway, in Paris to search for some success: he was a journalist, Sylvia helped him in every possible way but same did the beloved writer pretty social and in Paris with Hadley his first wife: he brought them to see boxings, and helped Sylvia with the purpose to introduce in the USA the Ulysses.

Life slowly slowly changed in Paris as well. Ernest left Hadley for Pfeiffer, other people changed a lot their existence, and the magic atmosphere built during the 1920s soon evaporated, with the dreams, most of them realized, of these protagonists.

Where possible Sylvia needed to cope with the depression of her mother, unexpected: her mother tried to open a store in California, leaving the husband, and helped by Sylvia's sisters, but ended up killing herself, a story this one that marked the existence of Sylvia. Privately Sylvia started to suffer of migraines, and once, when she was somewhere else, her beloved companion of a life, Adrienne started a new affair with someone else. Although the two ladies still were in contact, it is not known if they re-started a love-affair. Anyway, Adrienne killed herslef as well and this one was a new trauma for Sylvia.

Sylvia, during the war spent some time in a french camp, never re-opening after the war the bookstore, 

Shakespeare & Co. anyway resuscitated thanks to the genial idea of Walt Whitman in the 1950s, a communist bostonian in Paris, who realized his biggest dream: a sort of a commune, utopistic world in a bookstore, living of culture, few food and keeping the outside world as distant as possible. Sylvia was not just enthusiastic of this project, but accepted also to call this bookstore Shakespeare&Co. when Whitman asked for the permission. Whiteman created a café close to the bookstore, a dream that Sylvia hadn't realized yet, where to share informations, speaking of literature while eating, and drinking something good.

He also called his daughter, the current owner of Shakespeare & Co. Sylvia.

I personally prefer the english titol: The Paris Bookseller, because yes, Sylvia "saved" a book, theoretically from the obscurantism but story has been much much more complicated.

The cover is beautiful!

Highly recommended book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Catherine the Great Selected Letters Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Andrew Kahn and Kelsey Rubin-Detlev

 Catherine the Great Selected

Letters Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Andrew Kahn and Kelsey Rubin-Detlev is an Oxford Classics released by the beloved publishing house in 2018.

Immense, important character, this Empress changed the face of Russia for better. She started her reign in 1762 for dying in 1796. 

Legislator, diplomat during the Seven Years War, she played also an active role the years that followed the French Revolution and a new order. 

Having lived in a period of great literary fertility, she was a woman of literary ambition and a voracious letter-writer. 

Letter-writing for Catherine meant a sort of autobiography and a literary delight.

Catherine although assisted by some people, always replied personally to monarchs and diplomats. Her correspondence included generals, aristocrats and doctors. Catherine wrote to 220 people during her existence. If we consider that the Russian court took in consideration correspondence with 400 people, the work of letter-writing of Catherine has been simply amazing. 

It's also thanks to the correspondence with a lot of people that we can understand the complexity of her character. At that time letter-writing was the direct reflection of the literary fertility caused hy the High Enlightenment. Born Princess Sophia Augusta Fredericka of Anhalt-Zerbst, she left for Russia in 1744 to marry Karl Peter Ulrich Holstein-Gottorf, future Emperor Peter III.

This man was the son of Peter the Great and named future emperor of Russia by the aunt Elizabeth Petrovna. Sophia, after the acceptance of the Ortodox religion became at court Ekaterina Alkseevna.  

It wasn't at all a happy marriage the one of Catherine with Peter III: she also didn't find a gentle environment at court at first. With the time she became a self-made woman. After that Peter III was removed from the throne she consolidated her position, modernizing Russian institutions, governance. Catherine conquered during her reign Ottoman lands, annexed Crimea, and many more lands. 

Divided in six parts and treated chronologically, these letters wants to be also a historical trace pretty real, of the Empress.

Enjoy the reading!

Highly recommended book.

I thank Oxford Press for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

L'Aurora Boreale by Theodor Daubler Edited by Luigi Garofalo

 L'Aurora Boreale

by Theodor Daubler Edited by Luigi Garofalo is a masterpiece of the German Expressionism, still not known in Italy and published by Marsilio. 

This book inaugurates the new series of Marsilio called Firmamenti devoted to European culture, thanks to Maurizio Bettini, Massimo Cacciari and Luigi Garofalo. 

The purpose is to focus on that writings, old or pretty modern that marked or are marking the western thought.

This book, a ciclopic book with more than 30.000 verses, was firstly published to Monaco di Baviera in 1910. The author started to write this book close to the Vesuvio. In 1921 and 1922 released in Lipsia. It's this version that it is published by Marsilio. 

The purpose of the author with this work is to try to hugh all the past anticipating at the same time the future inspired by the Aurora Borealis. This myth speaks of the surviving of the sun inside a land that it is part of it; the sun wants to to rejoin the land! The myth means also the perennial path of the humanity with the purpose to win the spirit. 

But...Who wasTheodor Daubler? Born in the Trieste still under the domination of Austria and Hungary, in 1897 with the family afforded to Wien during his 20s living a bohemien existence: Paris, Berlin, Dresda, Florence, Rome, Gineva and Athen, the main cities where he stayed acclaimed in the most interesting intellectual places because of his original thought. He died in 1934 forgotten by everyone, because his works not appreciated.

Highly recommended bool.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori