“FRIDAY RE-VERSO”
“…where your body announced […] its presence there, at the mercy of your laborious apprenticeship to the work of the world.”
On October 15, 2024, Antonio Skármeta died.
Many have seen “Il postino” starring Troisi, not as many have read that masterpiece of humanity and literature that is “Ardente paciencia”, translated into Italian as “Il postino di Neruda”. A few days before Skàrmeta’s death, excited by a chat about that title, we decided to start this collection of stories, mostly unpublished, published only a few months ago. Well.
First person: they are all stories in the first person. Thirteen voices, thirteen gazes – with one exception – young people, looking out onto life, its purest and most evident manifestation, a step before all the explanations, the gazes of those who still have everything “for possibility”. Boys, children, young men: it is a very masculine universe, which vibrates with adolescence and testosterone, with awkward gestures, funny nicknames, emotions that are not as easy to name as things are; there are nests to leave, disturbances that are not yet loves, intuitions. It is a whole world in progress, a book that has yet to be written (many of these “I”s write, would like to write, will write). There is Chile, everywhere, even in Rome or Portugal, there is the earth and that feeling, that warmth in the words. There are bodies made of unexplored and unknown parts, and fathers and grandmothers, and a fury to live but: joyful.
Each story contains a small epiphany, stops the heart on a fleeting and definitive illumination, a sort of premonition: like a sensation of having understood something, about how men work or about themselves or about the way in which one will walk in life from then on. A pause in the vibration of existence that precedes disillusionments and failures, in which everything, for a moment, becomes clear.
Childhood and adolescence in the words of Skàrmeta are not only traumas and lacerating worries. In these times of memoirs and very busy accounts of wounds, let us not forget that there exists in youth, regardless of the violence of events, an indomitable drive to the intensity of life, to the enormity of life. And it is such a big matter that in such a small body it can be overwhelming in its incomprehensibility; but when Guccini sings “because at twenty years old everything is still whole” he reminds us that even if we were sad or desperate young people, in that desperation there always burned a tremendous longing, as for happiness. Then they tear you to pieces, but at twenty years old…
Having to recommend – having to – to a young boy a few pages that help him understand himself a little, perhaps, together with the static confusion of the young Holden (who also cultivated a very sweet dream), we could really put these stories in his hands, as well as “The Postman”, where even sex is spontaneous, vital, that is, part of the richness of life, not always and only toxicity and fetishism. The urgency to talk about problematic issues should not deprive us of the memory of that little bit of beauty that lives within us. These stories reek of innocence and sweat, of beginnings and immense questions:
-What do you want? – I told him.
-Understand. – he said.
-Understand what? – I insisted.
-Everything.
Skàrmeta found light words (“Juan Carlos’s ass was an absolutely happy ass”), concrete revelations, no embellishments, he names life at its most overbearing moment, have the young people who still can’t explain how it feels read it, read it yourselves to feel a little less shattered.
Written by Delis
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Antonio Skármeta, I nomi delle cose, Einaudi, Torino, 2024
Original edition: Los nombres de las cosas que allí había, Alfaguara, Madrid, 2019