There was about a minute when I was a little girl when I wanted to play baseball with the boys, and my dad was trying to teach me some stuff. I was about five when this happened, but I remember one of the first things he said to me was that, “You can’t always swing for the fences.” Which was good advice, because not only did I miss the ball most of the time, but given the size and the velocity at which I swung the bat, more often than not I ended up flat on my butt. But the boys were watching and I wanted to beat them, so I swung for the fences anyway. Cycle, rinse, repeat.In the prose and subject matter of Ocean Sea Baricco seems to have adopted a somewhat similar mentality. Granted his goal is probably a bit more noble. Rather than beating neighborhood boys, he wants to provide a meditation on the idea of the sea, what it has meant, what it used to mean and what it has become, and most importantly, what possibilities it holds for people who need it. Given that I’ve just spent a semester reading about the Mediterranean, the Mare Nostrum, the “Middle Sea,” the fault line of conflicts for a thousand years, and now possibly the most overdetermined space in the history of ever, I was interested to hear what he had to say. I think possibly his best idea, which he didn’t spend enough time on, is how the meaning of oceans changed in the 18th and 19th century. Their original status- and of course we must keep in mind that I’m talking about status among Europeans- was as threatening, Other spaces where monsters dwelled and Satan ruled, but when the English started an empire that was based on the sea, it could not be a “free space” given over to pirates any longer. No, the sea had to be made something respectable, where proper Englishmen could (and should) go to find glory and make a living. The sea had to be tamed, in other words. And what better way to do this than by allowing, nay, advising women to go to the sea- in fact having medical doctors say that the sea was healthy for you? If this was a space where weak women whose honor must be protected could go (though of course with prescribed limits), well then who could not approve of it? Baricco has a wonderful few pages where he describes women at the sea, and in particular the curtained “sea baths” that allowed them to take part in its healing properties while staying within respectable boundaries: “women. The sea suddenly seemed to have been waiting for them forever. To listen to the doctors, it had been there, for millennia, patiently perfecting itself, with the sole and precise intention of offering itself as a miraculous unguent for their afflictions of body and soul. Just as, while sipping tea in impeccable drawing rooms, impeccable doctors-weighing their words well in order to explain with paradoxical courtesy- would tell impeccable husbands and fathers over and over that the disgust for the sea, and the shock and the terror was in reality a seraphic cure for sterility, anorexia, nervous exhaustion, overexcitement, menopause, anxiety and insomnia. An ideal experience inasmuch as it was a remedy for the ferments of youth and a preparation for wifely duties. A solemn baptism for young ladies to become women…… we could think of a woman-respected loved, mother, woman. For whatever reason-illness- brought to a sea that she would otherwise never have seen… Her hair hangs loose and she is barefoot and this is not a mere detail, it is absurd, along with that little white tunic and the trousers that leave her ankles exposed, you could imagine her slim hips, it is absurd, only her boudoir has seen her like this, and yet, like that, there she is on an enormous beach, where there is no one of the viscous, stagnant air of the bridal bed, but the gusty sea breeze, bearing the edict of a wild freedom removed… and it is clear: she cannot feel it……They were drinking the sea water, things had gone that far, the water that until the day before had been horror and disgust, and the privilege of a forlorn and barbarous humanity… Now they were sipping it, those same divine invalids who waled along the water's edge imperceptibly dragging one leg... It was the same world as ever that had suddenly been transferred, for wholly medical purposes, to the edge of an abyss abhorred for centuries and now chosen as the promenade of suffering... The wave bath the doctors called it… a kind of patented sedan chair for getting into the sea, it was for the ladies obviously to protect them from indiscreet eyes. … Only science can do certain things, this is the truth. To sweep away centuries of disgust- the horrendous sea womb of corruption and death- and invent that idyll little by little spreading to all the beaches of the world…”I liked this part. I think he's right about a lot. I loved the way that Baricco wrote about the sea as a negotiation between civilization and freedom, and saints and madmen, between tradition and the possibilities of the future, as a place where things are erased, where there can by definition be no firm foundations, where everything changes and nothing does, where time seems to stop because of its very repetitiveness. I think Baricco is getting at an argument that is only now coming to the fore in the many studies of the sea that have been released in the last few years. Maybe it is fitting that it took an Italian- an Italian who would include a priest in his cast of characters, to do it. However, the unfortunate part is that he didn’t really live up to these ideas. The swinging for the fences prose, first of all. The part I quoted above was probably the best part, and I liked it. But the vast majority of it… he was going for poetry, that much was obvious. Unfortunately, when you go for that in print, I think that you have to go about it in a particular way. Either you’re Nabokov and you can do what the hell you want, or you have to mix it in with other things. Your metaphor may be flowery or unusual, but you must surround it with plain or unobtrusive prose that leads up to it and away from it. And most of all, there must be a point to it. For example, at one point, Baricco writes: “Only after a little did the gardener’s footsteps engrave themselves on the silence.” First of all, I think I wrote that when I was 15. Second of all, the metaphorical word choice there serves absolutely no purpose except to show me that Baricco spent far too much time thinking of a better way to say, “he walked away.” Thirdly, shut up. There was also another pretty unbearable sex scene where he uses the structure of the inexorable waves to explain the different reasons why a young girl and a middle aged man would want to have sex with each other. Now there’s a subject that one more man definitely needed to rhapsodize badly about (“sighs, sighs in Elisewin’s throat-soaring velvet, sighs at each new step in that world that crosses mountains never seen and lakes with forms unimaginable…whoever would have said that by kissing the eyes of a man you could see so far away- by caressing the legs of a young girl you could run so fast and escape-escape from everything to see so far away…” VOMIT. If you’re going for the oldest subject in the book you better bring it, man). I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Overwrought, overly dramatic, and once he’s finished expressing his few ideas about the sea, all he’s got left is filling in the blanks by repeating himself in more and more fanciful ways.I also thought the structure was both weird and off putting. It starts off with a section that is half straightforward prose, half impressionistic, but leans strongly towards the impressionism by the end of it. He’s big on ellipses, on not identifying speakers, on not finishing sentences and wise children who can read your mind (VOMIT, again). They volley minimalistic profundity back and forth to each other and almost never reach a place that goes deeper than that- with few exceptions. The ocean bit I talked about above, and there’s another lovely bit about Elisewin’s father arranging her journey to the sea. I liked when he started to veer into fully formed fairy tale, I hated when he tried to turn his prose into poetry. In a wincingly literal fashion at times- one or a few words per line, stopping paragraphs and starting them in the middle of the next, etc. Ugh. Didn’t we leave this novelist poet envy back in the 18th century? There was a part that ALMOST worked with a priest who wrote unusual and specific prayers (“A Prayer for a Little Boy Who Cannot Say the Letter R,” “Prayer for a Man Who Is Falling into a Ravine” –“obviously it is very short”-), but then he felt the need to write out the prayers rather than just tell me the wonderful titles and let me imagine it for myself. And unfortunately, the execution did not live up to the imagination. As with most of this book.The next section was stream of consciousness, set up in a mockingly twelve days of Christmas sort of incantation, with a conflict that’s clearly drawn from the shipwreck that inspired this Gericault painting and a scandal that became an enduring part of French history. But the conflict set up because of it was obvious and banal. I hate this thing writers do where they put their otherwise flimsy tales into the context of some great historical event- World War II stories of any kind, all those Regency romance writers who use the Napoleonic wars- to try to give their stories some sort of weight and get prizes. Using the shield of historical events that are virtually off limits to criticism to block criticism of your writing by giving you some sort of impenetrable moral superiority is pretty cowardly and lazy. I don’t mind the use of big events, but either tell me something more interesting than “Hitler is bad,” or write your book in such a way that, “Hitler is bad,” seems new again. Baricco did not accomplish this. Which meant that his closing section, which was essentially an extended epilogue, had no emotional impact at all (except for perhaps the chapter about the “seductress”- as the book jacket calls her- who wrote a long letter to her lover begging for the freedom to be by herself. Which of course, he ignores. And THAT ends super well. Argh, MEN.) And then, on top of all that, as if this whole exercise weren’t already incredibly self-indulgent and pointless, he felt the need to insert himself into the last chapter for no reason whatsoever? Other than to establish.. what? He wrote this by the sea? He is finished contemplating the sea? Yes I saw that there were only a few pages left. Why did we need this announcement? It’s hardly heart rending when you saw to it yourself that most of the characters were vague and representative rather than fully formed humans- in fact at every point where they seemed almost human, where I almost formed a picture of someone I knew, you stopped abruptly and wrote another terrible poem. You know what this was like? It was like someone deliberately trying to write a book consisting only of things he doesn’t know very much about, in styles he’s not very good at. Every time something natural to him came out, he quashed it, ruthlessly. Was this book an experiment of some kind? A punishment? Why would he keep swinging for something and landing on his butt? I don’t know, but in the end, I think that Baricco should have let himself breathe a bit. I think we all would have enjoyed ourselves much more.
Un matin de fin du monde. Le ciel bas, empesé de nuages, recouvre la ville de son manteau couleur myosotis noyé d'améthyste. C'est une aube rimbaldienne, poétique, dangereuse et saisissante. L'esprit encore ensommeillé se prépare à affronter l'assaut tentaculaire de la vie urbaine: moteurs vrombissants, musique tonitruante s'échappant d'écouteurs dont la forme rappelle parfois la structure de certains coquillages, valse des corps dans les rames du métro qui tourne parfois à la mêlée. Les paupières se ferment, le silence revient, et apparaît alors l'immense Océan Mer. Voici Plasson devant son chevalet, fixant la mer avec intensité pour en faire le portrait. Mais elle est insaisissable, changeante, joueuse et entêtée. Elle ne peut être représentée avec des pigments, elle ne peut être définie avec des mots. Cela est un bien grand mal pour Bartlebloom qui tente tant bien que mal de terminer la rédaction de l'entrée "mer" de son Encyclopédie des limites. Elle rit, la mer à cette idée car elle n'a pas de limites. L'étreinte de deux corps dans la nuit du monde, c'est encore l'Océan Mer. Deux âmes qui se noient et qui se raccrochent l'une à l'autre pour ne pas disparaître dans les profondeurs du monde. L'une se nomme Elisewin, fragile et forte comme une rose dans les frimas; l'autre se fait appeler Adams (ou Thomas) aussi violent, impétueux et inconstant que le vent. Oui, elle rit la mer.Ann Dévéria sait cela mieux que personne. Combien les vagues du désir peuvent vous porter loin des rivages de votre existence, jusqu'à vous briser par grande tempête. Mille bateaux jetés à la mer ne suffiraient pas à porter secours à cet être qui a goûté aux charmes du voyage ("intérieur le voyage, si vous voyez ce que je veux dire. Bon, bref", précise l'ami de Bartlebloom), celui on l'on se rencontre soi-même comme Ulysse dans l'Odyssée (précisons qu'une fois encore, nous voilà confrontés à l'insaisissable Océan Mer). La beauté lunaire de la jeune femme, son charme foudroyant ont ensorcelé bien des hommes, mais Ann Dévéria n'a chaviré que pour un seul d'entre eux, un médecin-marin d'eaux troubles aux mains si douces et aux lèvres si tièdes qu'elle en perd le cap. Pour elle, point de cercueil étroit mais l'étreinte de l'eau enveloppant son corps et son âme comme un linceul liquide. Le père Pluche a songé à écrire une prière pour toutes ces âmes, mais il appert après mûre réflexion, qu'il est lui-même particulièrement ébranlé dans ses convictions. Il regarde le ciel, puis la mer, depuis la fenêtre de la pension Almayer située entre ces deux mondes, et il est chamboulé. C'est qu'elle murmure la mer. Elle chante et conte des histoires pour Dira, Dood, et les autres enfants de la pension ; elle revêt ses plus beaux atours pour le portraitiste longtemps aveugle aux vérités du monde. Et elle reflète la voûte céleste comme pour nous rapprocher de Dieu. Alors le père Pluche tente sa chance et admoneste le Seigneur, véritable coup de tonnerre dans un verre de lait. Alessandro Baricco bouscule les limites du roman et nous offre une oeuvre qui oscille entre le conte initiatique, le théâtre et le roman. L'ensemble déborde de poésie et est construit comme une symphonie. L'écriture est soumise à un rythme changeant, de l'allegro moderato à l'andante, comme pour faire écho au mouvement des vagues qui viennent caresser la surface du sable avant de refluer vers cette envoûtante immensité bleue qu'est l'Océan Mer. Une leçon édifiante sur l'être humain, sur ses peurs et ses désirs, ses espoirs et ses doutes et sur son incroyable capacité à rêver. Un miracle.
What do You think about Ocean Sea (2000)?
Perché un pretesto per tornare bisogna sempre seminarselo dietro, quando si parte.Ebbeh, sì, è il primo di Baricco che leggo. E so benissimo che è uno scrittore amato e acclamato dai più, ma... questo libro mi ha lasciata più confusa che persuasa. Ci sono molti bei pensieri e riflessioni a dir poco incantevoli, ma lo stile di Baricco è fin troppo confusionario. Ma davvero troppo, in una maniera che, alla lunga, diventa terribilmente irritante. Più che un romanzo sembra un lungo e (fatemelo dire) monotono, per quanto poetico, flusso di coscienza. Per quanto riguarda la storia, e più in generale in libro in sé, non mi ha lasciato nulla di particolare. Però sono curiosa di leggere altri libri di questo stesso autore, in futuro.
—Simona Bartolotta
This is one of those books I always return to - be it I'm feeling a tad melancholic, or happy-beyond-words, or sad-beyond-a-doubt. Baricco's lyrical style and the ease in which his sentences flow is very similar to the river and the metaphor of the ocean/sea he uses in this work (and others). You feel kind of lulled by the language, taken on a slow, magical journey - and the emotions it invokes are also as diverse and as "soft". I don't know how better to describe it, but this book has so much beauty it's simply overwhelming. I understand this may not appeal to some readers and there are times when his imagery and descriptions could be said to be a bit self-indulgent, but I didn't really mind these one or two moments because on the whole, the book was stunning. The story itself (stories, that is) is also dream-like and sort of airy, there isn't a lot that happens per se, not in the usual sense. For me, it mostly felt like reading someone's letters (and in some cases, that was the case), or diary, or just seeing flashbacks from a person's past. The book has a very surreal quality to it, and as such, I think it should be regarded more as poetry or a painting because it invokes that kind of a sentiment - that of a brilliant piece of art.
—Mia
Alessandro Baricco è un autore italiano criticato, solitamente con accuse di stile pretenzioso e ridondante. Baricco non scrive in maniera semplice, il suo linguaggio è accurato ed attento, non si limita a scrivere di getto e si vede che tutto ciò che fa ha subito limature e correzioni. E allora? Si vede benissimo che sa quello che sta facendo, che non ha aperto a caso il dizionario alla ricerca della prima parola utile, si vede che è un uomo pieno di cultura. E c'è bisogno di accusarlo per questo? Baricco può piacere o non piacere, ma accusarlo di non essere un bravo scrittore è un altro paio di maniche. Forse è un po' troppo blasonato, è vero, ma non siamo davanti a Stephenie Meyer che si addormenta dopo aver letto il diario del vampiro e casualmente sogna Twilight. Non fatevi impressionare dalle critiche, Baricco è un autore tra i più validi del panorama italiano e non solo, e Oceano Mare ne è la conferma. E' un romanzo che è poesia, un romanzo che va sentito dentro, capito certo, ma più che capito va sentito. E poi, Dave Eggers dice "Citati non è obbligato ad apprezzare Baricco, ma dovremmo gioire le rare volte in cui la letteratura entra nel mainstream, non rinfacciarle la popolarità." E se lo dice Dave Eggers ci si può fidare.
—eleonora -
