Scan barcode
nini23's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Originally published in 2011 in Catalan as Jo Confesso, this novel has won numerous literary awards including the 2012 Premio de la Crítica, 2012 Premi de la Crítica Serra d’Or, 2012 Premi de Narrativa Maria Àngels Anglada, 2012 Premi Joan Crexells de l’Ateneu Barcelonès and the 2013 Prix Courrier International. Jo Confesso is celebrated Catalan author and philologist Jaume Cabré’s tenth novel and took him eight years to write. Confessions was masterfully translated by Mara Faye Lethem to English in 2014.
Quite a weighty tome at 770 pages, Confessions is an intricately constructed masterpiece about evil, humanity, memory, art, history, theology and linguistics. Utmost concentration and patience is required and rewarded handsomely to follow the labyrinth of stories and families through time and geography. We follow one skein only to find ourselves suddenly in the middle of the sentence or paragraph entangled in altogether another era and culture, narratives switch abruptly from first to third person and back. This is deliberate on the part of Jaume Cabré and as he explains in an interview https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/jaume-cabre-barcelonas-literary-superstar-1520871: "I could put all the characters and periods together and play God. It was great fun. The trick is to make it comprensible to the reader.” So "I began writing about an Inquisitor in the 14th century, because to me the Inquisition is the absolute personification of evil because they are unable to feel compassion to their victims. And as I was writing it, that character turned into Rudolf Hoss, the Auschwitz commandant. And then I realised, they’re the same character five centuries apart. But all of that is so distant to my own experience that I needed something closer to it. So I came up with Adria, and brought him up here in Eixample, sent him to my old school and sat back to see what happened. Because now I can be an even bigger God." Lest that sounds pompous, it is worth noting that Cabré lived through Franco's reign where he persisted in writing in Catalan even though it was banned.
Adrià Ardèvol is the character that anchors the story in late twentieth century Eixample district of Barcelona, Spain. His father Felix Ardèvol is an antique shop owner and collector who comes by his rare acquisitions in unorthodox and unethical ways. Adrià is drilled relentlessly from young to attain perfection in violin and various languages like German, Latin, Aramiac, Hebrew, French. The acquisitions such as a Storioni violin and a painting of a monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri de la Sal by Urgell, fascinate young Adrià and play a pivotal role. I really loved how Cabré traces the provenance of each object like the Vial violin all the way back hundreds of years, to the tree it was made from, the blood that stained the wood, its Cremona maker in the 17th century and owners through the years; it's reminiscent of my favourite movie The Red Violin. No less poignant is the story of the closure of monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal in the 15th century, its last two monks and connection to the Spanish Inquisition. We're also whisked to a stoning of a young Arab woman Amani Alfalati in the village of Al-Hisw in early 14th century. The Holocaust and the horrifying medical experimentation that occurred in concentration camps like Birkenau features prominently.
I know where Evil is. Absolute Evil, even. Its name is Himmler. Its name is Hitler. Its name is Pavelić. It is Luburić and his macabre invention in Jasenovac. Its name is Schutzstaffel and Abwehr. The war highlights the most beastly part of human nature. But Evil existed before the war and doesn’t depend on any entelechy, but rather on people.
when I was a peasant monk. I always came to the maddening conclusion that God is guilty. Because it can’t be that evil only resides in the desire for evil. That’s too easy. He even gives us permission to kill the evil: dead dogs don’t bite, says God. And it’s not true. Without the dog, the bite continues to gnaw on us from inside, forever and ever.
'We are a community that lives on a rock that sails through space, as if we were always searching for God amid the fog.’
After Auschwitz, after the many pogroms, after the extermination of the Cathars, of whom not one remains, after the massacres in every period, everywhere around the world … Cruelty has been present for so many centuries that the history of humanity would be the history of the impossibility of poetry ‘after’.
Quite a weighty tome at 770 pages, Confessions is an intricately constructed masterpiece about evil, humanity, memory, art, history, theology and linguistics. Utmost concentration and patience is required and rewarded handsomely to follow the labyrinth of stories and families through time and geography. We follow one skein only to find ourselves suddenly in the middle of the sentence or paragraph entangled in altogether another era and culture, narratives switch abruptly from first to third person and back. This is deliberate on the part of Jaume Cabré and as he explains in an interview https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/jaume-cabre-barcelonas-literary-superstar-1520871: "I could put all the characters and periods together and play God. It was great fun. The trick is to make it comprensible to the reader.” So "I began writing about an Inquisitor in the 14th century, because to me the Inquisition is the absolute personification of evil because they are unable to feel compassion to their victims. And as I was writing it, that character turned into Rudolf Hoss, the Auschwitz commandant. And then I realised, they’re the same character five centuries apart. But all of that is so distant to my own experience that I needed something closer to it. So I came up with Adria, and brought him up here in Eixample, sent him to my old school and sat back to see what happened. Because now I can be an even bigger God." Lest that sounds pompous, it is worth noting that Cabré lived through Franco's reign where he persisted in writing in Catalan even though it was banned.
Adrià Ardèvol is the character that anchors the story in late twentieth century Eixample district of Barcelona, Spain. His father Felix Ardèvol is an antique shop owner and collector who comes by his rare acquisitions in unorthodox and unethical ways. Adrià is drilled relentlessly from young to attain perfection in violin and various languages like German, Latin, Aramiac, Hebrew, French. The acquisitions such as a Storioni violin and a painting of a monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri de la Sal by Urgell, fascinate young Adrià and play a pivotal role. I really loved how Cabré traces the provenance of each object like the Vial violin all the way back hundreds of years, to the tree it was made from, the blood that stained the wood, its Cremona maker in the 17th century and owners through the years; it's reminiscent of my favourite movie The Red Violin. No less poignant is the story of the closure of monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal in the 15th century, its last two monks and connection to the Spanish Inquisition. We're also whisked to a stoning of a young Arab woman Amani Alfalati in the village of Al-Hisw in early 14th century. The Holocaust and the horrifying medical experimentation that occurred in concentration camps like Birkenau features prominently.
I know where Evil is. Absolute Evil, even. Its name is Himmler. Its name is Hitler. Its name is Pavelić. It is Luburić and his macabre invention in Jasenovac. Its name is Schutzstaffel and Abwehr. The war highlights the most beastly part of human nature. But Evil existed before the war and doesn’t depend on any entelechy, but rather on people.
when I was a peasant monk. I always came to the maddening conclusion that God is guilty. Because it can’t be that evil only resides in the desire for evil. That’s too easy. He even gives us permission to kill the evil: dead dogs don’t bite, says God. And it’s not true. Without the dog, the bite continues to gnaw on us from inside, forever and ever.
'We are a community that lives on a rock that sails through space, as if we were always searching for God amid the fog.’
After Auschwitz, after the many pogroms, after the extermination of the Cathars, of whom not one remains, after the massacres in every period, everywhere around the world … Cruelty has been present for so many centuries that the history of humanity would be the history of the impossibility of poetry ‘after’.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide and Violence
More...