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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
‘El mar, el mar’ es un novelón de Iris Murdoch. Más de 700 páginas. Y aún así, como se suele decir, se lee rápido, engancha de lo lindo. Es el primer libro que leo de esta escritora y me ha encantado el dominio que tiene del tempo narrativo, los sorprendentes giros argumentales que dan una fuerte sacudida a toda la trama, y la creación de una atmósfera que bascula entre el realismo típico de los novelones del siglo XIX y un aire de pesadilla onírico-fantástico muy particular y original.
El protagonista de ‘El mar, el mar’ es un director teatral que, después de una vida de éxitos y amoríos varios se retira a una casita de un pequeño pueblo costero con la intención de escribir sus memorias. Allí encontrará a su amor de adolescencia, aún no superado, porque a lo largo de los años se ha dedicado a idealizarlo hasta el absurdo, de modo que se emperrará en recuperarlo, por más que ella se haya convertido en un ama de casa casada algo anodina.
Pero este antiguo amor no será la única persona del pasado que se le aparecerá al protagonista; todo lo contrario. Se vuelve a encontrar con tantos fantasmas del pasado que llega un momento en que su casita parece el camarote de los hermanos Marx. El protagonista se reencuentra por casualidad con tantos conocidos en ese pueblo dejado de la mano de Dios que a veces resulta algo inverosímil. Y creo que esta sensación de inverosimilitud es buscada.
En un momento de la novela el hermano del protagonista (un soldado budista, poeta aficionado y esteta; Murdoch es una crack a la hora de crear personajes raros y aparentemente contradictorios) cuenta que algunos tibetanos creen que las almas de los muertos, mientras esperan la reencarnación, vagan por una especie de limbo donde se les aparecen visiones o demonios que dependen de la vida que ha llevado el muerto en cuestión. Algo parecido le pasa al protagonista en este pueblucho: se le aparecen demonios del pasado, reencarnaciones de viejos arrepentimientos o frustraciones. Y así se le presenta la oportunidad de quedar en paz con ellos o de volver a cagarla.
El protagonista de ‘El mar, el mar’ es un pájaro de cuidado, misógino hasta la médula y egocéntrico y egoísta hasta límites insospechados. En general, todos los personajes son bastante despreciables y sus motivaciones son enmarañadas y contradictorias. Pero es precisamente así como me gusta a mí; me parece más real. Además, como se trata de una novela en primera persona, sólo tenemos el punto de vista del protagonista y no se tiene que ser muy avispado para darse cuenta de que no nos podemos fiar de él, que probablemente nos está engañando, por la sencilla razón que también se está auto-engañando a si mismo. Pero esto también me encanta, porque me da la sensación que la autora me propone entrar en un juego y a mí me pirra jugar.
Se termina la novela y aún quedan muchas cosas en el aire, el protagonista no nos lo ha contado todo, y la historia no deja de tener un punto de ambigüedad casi fantasiosa. No creo que esté arruinando la novela a nadie si digo que el protagonista llega a ver un extraño monstruo marino. Es una novela extraña: sigue muchos de los cánones de la literatura realista más clásico y luego tiene ramalazos oníricos de lo más atípicos, hasta el punto en que ocasiones podemos llegar a dudar de lo que es realidad y lo que es fantasía. Pero creo que esto es uno de sus mayores encantos, lo que la hace original y duradera.
El protagonista de ‘El mar, el mar’ es un director teatral que, después de una vida de éxitos y amoríos varios se retira a una casita de un pequeño pueblo costero con la intención de escribir sus memorias. Allí encontrará a su amor de adolescencia, aún no superado, porque a lo largo de los años se ha dedicado a idealizarlo hasta el absurdo, de modo que se emperrará en recuperarlo, por más que ella se haya convertido en un ama de casa casada algo anodina.
Pero este antiguo amor no será la única persona del pasado que se le aparecerá al protagonista; todo lo contrario. Se vuelve a encontrar con tantos fantasmas del pasado que llega un momento en que su casita parece el camarote de los hermanos Marx. El protagonista se reencuentra por casualidad con tantos conocidos en ese pueblo dejado de la mano de Dios que a veces resulta algo inverosímil. Y creo que esta sensación de inverosimilitud es buscada.
En un momento de la novela el hermano del protagonista (un soldado budista, poeta aficionado y esteta; Murdoch es una crack a la hora de crear personajes raros y aparentemente contradictorios) cuenta que algunos tibetanos creen que las almas de los muertos, mientras esperan la reencarnación, vagan por una especie de limbo donde se les aparecen visiones o demonios que dependen de la vida que ha llevado el muerto en cuestión. Algo parecido le pasa al protagonista en este pueblucho: se le aparecen demonios del pasado, reencarnaciones de viejos arrepentimientos o frustraciones. Y así se le presenta la oportunidad de quedar en paz con ellos o de volver a cagarla.
El protagonista de ‘El mar, el mar’ es un pájaro de cuidado, misógino hasta la médula y egocéntrico y egoísta hasta límites insospechados. En general, todos los personajes son bastante despreciables y sus motivaciones son enmarañadas y contradictorias. Pero es precisamente así como me gusta a mí; me parece más real. Además, como se trata de una novela en primera persona, sólo tenemos el punto de vista del protagonista y no se tiene que ser muy avispado para darse cuenta de que no nos podemos fiar de él, que probablemente nos está engañando, por la sencilla razón que también se está auto-engañando a si mismo. Pero esto también me encanta, porque me da la sensación que la autora me propone entrar en un juego y a mí me pirra jugar.
Se termina la novela y aún quedan muchas cosas en el aire, el protagonista no nos lo ha contado todo, y la historia no deja de tener un punto de ambigüedad casi fantasiosa. No creo que esté arruinando la novela a nadie si digo que el protagonista llega a ver un extraño monstruo marino. Es una novela extraña: sigue muchos de los cánones de la literatura realista más clásico y luego tiene ramalazos oníricos de lo más atípicos, hasta el punto en que ocasiones podemos llegar a dudar de lo que es realidad y lo que es fantasía. Pero creo que esto es uno de sus mayores encantos, lo que la hace original y duradera.
Murdoch could have named her book "The Director Retires" or "The Loves of Charles Arrowby". But she didn't. She called it "The Sea, the Sea." And, indeed, the sea feels like a character. It is always there, by Charles' little house, and it is always described in his journal so explicitly that it feels you can see it. Maybe it's because the location is somewhat remote and so nature becauses a companion. (Maybe those of us who dwell in cities should take the same notice of our own surroundings instead of passing them by quickly in a car!). At any rate, the sea is simply the atmosphere of the novel and it envelopes you in its power.
That isn't to say there isn't a story. There certainly is, and it, too, draws you into its power. As Charles unfolds this strange interlude of his life in a memoir that records his pursuit of his first love, the reader will wonder who is mad here - the characters of whom he writes or the writer himself.
That isn't to say there isn't a story. There certainly is, and it, too, draws you into its power. As Charles unfolds this strange interlude of his life in a memoir that records his pursuit of his first love, the reader will wonder who is mad here - the characters of whom he writes or the writer himself.
Super long read but a very deep experience. I like the way Murdoch makes charles horrible, but I still can perceive him as simply human. He was still the despicable man, but life is life and one should be entitled to the consequences of one's own doing. The thing is, we read from charles' perspective, which is heavily unreliable. We never really know the true character beside charles, especially of Hartley and Ben. The only character beside Charles that I seem to have a clear grasp on is James.
funny
reflective
slow-paced
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Siento que es un libro que no te lees si no te gusta realmente la literatura. Combina un relato en primera persona íntimo y existencialista con acontecimientos dramáticos e inesperados. Las primeras cien páginas son difíciles de digerir pero una vez superas este inicio se produce un efecto de inmersión muy logrado, donde sientes que estás dentro de la mente del protagonista.
Es una novela que reflexiona sobre la literatura dentro de la propia literatura y se asemeja a una obra teatral en el sentido de que se desarrolla prácticamente en un mismo espacio o escenario e introduce unos personajes muy bien caracterizados y diferenciados entre sí, casi caricaturescos.
Creo que es un gran libro con ese toque de misticismo / realismo mágico que a mi, personalmente, me encanta. Sin embargo, no es un libro que le recomendaría a una persona que no tenga un hábito sólido de lectura.
«La luz de la caverna no procede del fuego; es la luz del día. Quizá sea la única luz verdadera de mi vida, la que revela la verdad. No es de extrañar que temiera perder la luz y quedarme para siempre en las tinieblas. Allí estaba todo el temor ciego de un niño, el miedo que desde tan temprano me inspiró mi madre: el del beso que se niega, el de la vela que se llevan».
«El problema es que el drama, la tragedia, pertenecen a la escena, no a la vida. Es el alma lo que falta. Todo arte desfigura la vida, la representa mal, y el teatro más que todas las otras, porque parece tan semejante, porque en él ves gente que camina y habla de verdad […]. Es una prueba viviente de que no queremos hablar de cosas serias, y probablemente no podemos.»
Es una novela que reflexiona sobre la literatura dentro de la propia literatura y se asemeja a una obra teatral en el sentido de que se desarrolla prácticamente en un mismo espacio o escenario e introduce unos personajes muy bien caracterizados y diferenciados entre sí, casi caricaturescos.
Creo que es un gran libro con ese toque de misticismo / realismo mágico que a mi, personalmente, me encanta. Sin embargo, no es un libro que le recomendaría a una persona que no tenga un hábito sólido de lectura.
«La luz de la caverna no procede del fuego; es la luz del día. Quizá sea la única luz verdadera de mi vida, la que revela la verdad. No es de extrañar que temiera perder la luz y quedarme para siempre en las tinieblas. Allí estaba todo el temor ciego de un niño, el miedo que desde tan temprano me inspiró mi madre: el del beso que se niega, el de la vela que se llevan».
«El problema es que el drama, la tragedia, pertenecen a la escena, no a la vida. Es el alma lo que falta. Todo arte desfigura la vida, la representa mal, y el teatro más que todas las otras, porque parece tan semejante, porque en él ves gente que camina y habla de verdad […]. Es una prueba viviente de que no queremos hablar de cosas serias, y probablemente no podemos.»
Somehow, this ended up being my least favourite Murdoch thus far, though still a solid piece of literature. The twists and turns this time around unfortunately failed to create any real shock or impact. However, the novel's greatest sufferings, in my opinion, lay in the drawn-out length and its central character's unbelievable and unreliable reasonings and actions. There were several intriguing side-characters that would rather have warranted such a lengthy, novelistic spotlight (Clement, James or Wilfred. Wth was the deal with Wilfred?)
Still, I remain an absolute Iris Murdoch stan, so onto another one of her shorter, more obscure works then.
Still, I remain an absolute Iris Murdoch stan, so onto another one of her shorter, more obscure works then.
'Oh stop, can't you just think of something better and want it?'
'One can't do that to one's mind. You don't understand people like me, like us, the other ones. ... You move, you look about you, you want things. There are others who live on earth and move just a little and don't look -'"
The sea is the governing rhythm of this novel, an impermeable mystery, a slate-coloured restlessness vacillating from tempting calm to roiling distress. Its turmoil-and-tranquility mimicking the repetitive motions of heaving and pulling back, giving, declaring and withholding, yielding and protesting possession, that the characters go through. Their personal illusions are gossamer, shimmering, definitely resolute, so full-mouthed and youth-ripe one moment and then the next, faltering, unsure. The protagonist is the histrionic Charles Arrowby - not in expression but certainly in temperament, regardless of what he may claim. He may have retired from the glittering business of theatre but finds himself unable to escape the business of cutting loose from his old friends, with whom it is clear he has tales (relationships) that are far from finished. It is a glimpse of his lost childhood sweetheart, married and weathered by time, that sets him off to recover a curtailed love, clutching at the dangled promise of recovering the sweetness of youth and the purity of that love...but at the cost of snatching her from her seemingly unhappy marriage? But, is she truly unhappy?
In true Iris Murdoch fashion, emotion is the pulse of the novel but the true core of it is a moral quandary. Her characters find themselves in situations that they respond strongly to with their hearts but also feel the weight of obligation, of behaving adequately or properly in their circumstances. Her people have been described as 'hysterical', having emotions far too intense for plausible daily life, but this reader imagines that the space of The Sea, The Sea demonstrates how affection and nostalgia can transmute into darker forms of delusional possession, or lead irresponsible lives and draw everyone into their mess. Murdoch does it all with unflinching precision.
How to account for an emotion that one seems so sure of but eventually repents of? How to act? How to be responsible for peoples lives and one's own? Especially when one has acted heartlessly? Can we ever see people clearly, as they are? Imagine others vastly different from ourselves? Arrowby's attempts to diagnose his lady love's distress and create a solution of bliss for them both comes up repeatedly against an idea he writes in his diary but I think never fully accepts - that she does not want this, does not want more. Moving on, accounting for that rather ridiculous moment of effusive, chaotic rashness, is a process of shifting of blame, like one shifts a weight from one foot to the other: in order to absolve or explain, the other has to be a 'liar'. How to try to explain ourselves, to explain away in hindsight an embarrassment. The presumptuous things one has to do to achieve a state of comfort living in the world.
The perceptive point is the end of knowledge of the other, the suggestion that despite what everyone has to say, and what the protagonist himself has to say, no one is fully trustworthy, official biographer. Hartley is rock, promise, a 'dead thing' to be resurrected, a damsel in distress, a liar, an image lost forever. Lizzy is ageing, beautiful like a schoolgirl, trusting, fearful, lively, stricken, full of love and waiting for that moment - as Arrowby imagines it with no less self-indulgence - where the object of her affections will give up and fall into her loving arms, or maternal and self-confident. Gilbert is generous, weak, amusing, someone Arrowby sees as beneath him and his actions seem to affirm that. Arrowby sees everyone and is quite sure of his opinions of them, but they still surprise him, but he still thinks he knows them. The reader knows not to trust these pompous readings of character.
Where the black mark of death could have caused an awakening, here it makes a stain, not quite a black hole, and the event passes and life moves along with it darkening the water. Here, to quote Seamus Heaney, there are no 'diamond absolutes' ("Exposure"). There is in time only the ever-changing waves of the sea, the sea.
'One can't do that to one's mind. You don't understand people like me, like us, the other ones. ... You move, you look about you, you want things. There are others who live on earth and move just a little and don't look -'"
The sea is the governing rhythm of this novel, an impermeable mystery, a slate-coloured restlessness vacillating from tempting calm to roiling distress. Its turmoil-and-tranquility mimicking the repetitive motions of heaving and pulling back, giving, declaring and withholding, yielding and protesting possession, that the characters go through. Their personal illusions are gossamer, shimmering, definitely resolute, so full-mouthed and youth-ripe one moment and then the next, faltering, unsure. The protagonist is the histrionic Charles Arrowby - not in expression but certainly in temperament, regardless of what he may claim. He may have retired from the glittering business of theatre but finds himself unable to escape the business of cutting loose from his old friends, with whom it is clear he has tales (relationships) that are far from finished. It is a glimpse of his lost childhood sweetheart, married and weathered by time, that sets him off to recover a curtailed love, clutching at the dangled promise of recovering the sweetness of youth and the purity of that love...but at the cost of snatching her from her seemingly unhappy marriage? But, is she truly unhappy?
In true Iris Murdoch fashion, emotion is the pulse of the novel but the true core of it is a moral quandary. Her characters find themselves in situations that they respond strongly to with their hearts but also feel the weight of obligation, of behaving adequately or properly in their circumstances. Her people have been described as 'hysterical', having emotions far too intense for plausible daily life, but this reader imagines that the space of The Sea, The Sea demonstrates how affection and nostalgia can transmute into darker forms of delusional possession, or lead irresponsible lives and draw everyone into their mess. Murdoch does it all with unflinching precision.
How to account for an emotion that one seems so sure of but eventually repents of? How to act? How to be responsible for peoples lives and one's own? Especially when one has acted heartlessly? Can we ever see people clearly, as they are? Imagine others vastly different from ourselves? Arrowby's attempts to diagnose his lady love's distress and create a solution of bliss for them both comes up repeatedly against an idea he writes in his diary but I think never fully accepts - that she does not want this, does not want more. Moving on, accounting for that rather ridiculous moment of effusive, chaotic rashness, is a process of shifting of blame, like one shifts a weight from one foot to the other: in order to absolve or explain, the other has to be a 'liar'. How to try to explain ourselves, to explain away in hindsight an embarrassment. The presumptuous things one has to do to achieve a state of comfort living in the world.
The perceptive point is the end of knowledge of the other, the suggestion that despite what everyone has to say, and what the protagonist himself has to say, no one is fully trustworthy, official biographer. Hartley is rock, promise, a 'dead thing' to be resurrected, a damsel in distress, a liar, an image lost forever. Lizzy is ageing, beautiful like a schoolgirl, trusting, fearful, lively, stricken, full of love and waiting for that moment - as Arrowby imagines it with no less self-indulgence - where the object of her affections will give up and fall into her loving arms, or maternal and self-confident. Gilbert is generous, weak, amusing, someone Arrowby sees as beneath him and his actions seem to affirm that. Arrowby sees everyone and is quite sure of his opinions of them, but they still surprise him, but he still thinks he knows them. The reader knows not to trust these pompous readings of character.
Where the black mark of death could have caused an awakening, here it makes a stain, not quite a black hole, and the event passes and life moves along with it darkening the water. Here, to quote Seamus Heaney, there are no 'diamond absolutes' ("Exposure"). There is in time only the ever-changing waves of the sea, the sea.
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes