“The Angel Game”, by Zafon: the most Gothic of the Barcelona saga, between love, death and warrior religion
The third chapter of Zafon's Barcelona saga (which is actually the second), in the opinion of the writer, is perhaps the most beautiful, obviously without detracting from the progenitor, "The Shadow of the Wind" , with which the Catalan writer had the worldwide success it deserved. Here there is a gothic atmosphere embellished by a character, the writer David Martin, probably the most successful. There is a city where its shadows are longer, its rains thicker and its streets more threatening. Where winter is king, where the sea that bathes the Barcelloneta and the port is a messenger of misfortune and melancholy but always veiled by that magical aura that only Zafon was able to give to his city. Here then there is a suggestive and in some ways brilliant idea of the plot. The writer Martin, terminally ill, is approached by the one who, in effect, presents himself as a kind of demon who promises him healing in exchange for his talent. For what? To write what he wants to become a new sacred text on which he will base his religion; it seems that the devil has chosen one of the many poor christs full of talent but lacking in opportunities and forced him to sell the soul that has become a commodity, or his creative writing.
The greatness of Zafon, then, lies in the development of the sacred text, of this Lux Aeterna that Martin discovers has already been written by someone before him, fallen, like him, into the trap of this demon who who knows how long he has been going around through the narrow streets of Barcelona to harass failed writers (and to kill those who stand against them). The sacred text can only include the coming of a messiah that is anything but peaceful. Martin invents for his boss, for his sinister patron, a warrior god who wants to subdue infidels with violence (reminds you of something recently related to current events?). He is a god who wants obedience, who imposes blind faith and who points to the enemy in one who does not conform to a system of values. Nothing new under the sun, of course. But after thousands of years in which the monotheistic religions (and today one in particular) continue to impose this stuff here, it is a little effect to hear it blurt out like this, especially if the client of such great faith is the one who in the Cabala is called the Adversary .
Martin, obviously, macerated by the love of an elusive woman who comes and goes, from a life as a bohemian writer and the fear of losing his health, despises himself for what he has agreed to do and at some point he brings out his pride and rebels against its client. We stop here with the plot, of course. But the advice is to get lost in these almost 700 pages in which you will find the Sempere family of booksellers, including Daniel, the protagonists of "The Shadow of the Wind" and then of the "Prisoner of Heaven" and the last of the saga, "Il labyrinth of the Spirits ” (which we will obviously talk about in due course). The advice is to let yourself be captured by the charm of a Barcelona of the 20s of the last century in which the author makes the characters move, struggling with a technological revolution at the dawn, with the universal exhibition, with the prodromes of Francoism and with a crackling humanity as only Hispanic literature can describe. A novel in which, even more than in the previous ones, the love for books, stories and popular literature spread all the pages. A novel within a novel, a novel within a novel. Which makes us understand even more when we lost with the untimely death of this extraordinary Catalan writer. To which, scandal of the scandals, Hollywood has not deigned to devote even the slightest attention. Will the Spanish productions at least understand that they have a priceless treasure in their hands, indeed for the eyes of who knows how many viewers?
The post "The Angel Game", by Zafon: the most gothic of the Barcelona saga, between love, death and warrior religion appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/recensioni/il-gioco-dellangelo-di-zafon-il-piu-gotico-della-saga-di-barcellona-fra-amore-morte-e-religione-guerriera/ on Sat, 14 Nov 2020 03:33:00 +0000.