2024-05-06 23:20:43
Knowledge is the only moral of the novel”, wrote Milan Kundera in one of the essays contained in his “The Art of the Novel” (Adelphi), quoting Hermann Broch. The meaning is clear: the novel, which has accompanied man’s journey at least since the beginning of Modern Times, but which has its roots in classical literary forms, the epic, the tragedy, the comedy, is pervaded by the “passion of know”. The novel arises from the questions that man asks about himself and his existence, that is, about adventure, love, God, war, laughter, dreams, death. This is his mission, and this is also his landing place: more knowledge, but also new questions. The premise is necessary to talk about an author, Salman Rushdie, who recently published a new book “Knife. Meditations after an attempted assassination” (Mondadori, trans. Gianni Pannofino). The book was born from the attempted murder of which the author was the victim in 2022, at the hands of a man who wanted to execute the fatwa hurled against Rushdie by Khomeini in 1989, after the publication of the novel “The Satanic Verses” (Mondadori, 1988 , trans. Ettore Capriolo), deemed offensive towards Islam.
It is precisely that novel that I would like to point out today, because I think it is useful to try to understand what a book contains that caused, in the 20th century, nothing less than a death sentence, therefore something worse than a “simple” (so to speak ) censorship.
“The Satanic Verses” is a novel permeated with imagination, in the style of Rushdie and other authors of the so-called “magical realism” genre (often coming from non-Western literary traditions, and therefore probably less conditioned by the naturalist-realist canon of nineteenth-century European origin). At the same time it is a novel that addresses themes of a religious nature, inherent to Islam and as such difficult for us to understand in their entirety.
There are two main narrative paths: the first tells the story of Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, two Indian actors, one who became famous for having impersonated numerous Indian deities, the other as a voice actor, who fall from a plane bound for London due to a attack, but they don’t die. However, the two are also something else: the personification of the Archangel Gabriel and his satanic counterpart.
The second path is inspired by some verses of the Koran and tells how Muhammad, who came to Mecca to impose Islamic monotheism on a clearly polytheistic world, first decides, for reasons of opportunity, to welcome three pagan goddesses into his pantheon, but then returns about his decision.
The novel, in its infinite digressions, also deals with other things: the treatment reserved for illegal immigrants from England, for example, an imam who looks just like Khomeini, or a love story in Argentine Patagonia, Bollywood cinema and whatnot.
“The Satanic Verses”, in my opinion, and I say this as a reader in love with Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”, is not a masterpiece: it is dispersive, labyrinthine, exhausting, and as if that were not enough, filled with Indian words and expressions that we often don’t know. I don’t even know if it could be considered “blasphemous” by a believer, I think that few of his detractors, in Iran or elsewhere, have actually read it. But, of course, it is a novel that asks questions and sows doubts. And, as we said at the beginning, this is the novelist’s job. And as such, it is non-negotiable.
2024-05-06 23:20:43