2023-09-08 18:38:04
by CLAUDIO MAGRIS
His sudden and rapid death was a face of the cruelty of life, which he was able to tell with ruthless harshness in his disturbing and incredible novels.
Javier Maras, in addition to being the great writer we know, was – it seems so strange to me to talk about him in the past tense, the reading of his masterpieces and also our friendship, our particular consonance are so intense – he was also a sovereign, the king of Redonda , a barren desert island in the Caribbean Sea, where it is almost impossible to dock and whose only possible possession may be a handful of guano. Already at the beginning of the last century an adventurer had proclaimed himself lord, striving to obtain recognition from the British Empire.
Maras, with the imagination that created incredible and disturbing novels, played with this idea. He wanted two categories of feudal lords, the Dukes and the Peers of Redonda, each of whom has the right and duty to choose the name of his own title. I chose Duca di Seconda Mano for myself, which he really liked. By conferring these titles, Maras regretted not being able to assign, as he would have been right, a fiefdom to everyone.
It was, a fascinating aspect of his personality, a playful irony that was all the more original because it was connected to the ruthless harshness with which in his great novels he recounted public and private life, the deadly political and love games, violence, disenchantment, betrayal, lies, cruelty. Probably once he had written a story or an episode of a novel, he would read and look at them too, surprised and disturbed by the ruthlessness that pervades human relationships, even those of love.
All this does not take away the seduction and tenderness of living, but political and existential failure are unavoidable. The passion that is in his books, like every aspect of life, is a face of Medusa.
He once told me that he had read the Corriere article in which I spoke about the Kingdom of Redonda with curiosity, as if it were not a story invented by him and simply reported by me, but with the curiosity with which one reads a detective story, impatiently to see how it ends.
Even his sudden and rapid death is a face of the cruelty of living. We have and will always have his books, but we miss him. Corriere della Sera also lowers its flag in front of the king of Redonda.
8 September 2023 (modified 8 September 2023 | 18:37)
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