In medias res: the proverbial expression, coined by Horace (
Ars poetica, vv. 148-9)
to eventum festinat Semper et in medias res / non secus ac notas auditorem RAPIT (the good writer) "always heads straight to the climax, dragging its reader / in the middle of events almost already know them. "
The attack on the novel by Joy is a classic incipit
in medias res : projecting the reader to the dramatic center of Acme which opens the Mexican adventure narrating ego. It produces exactly that effect of empathy, of identification with the character and history (in this case, with a protagonist who is found in every chapter of the book, every single scene of the narrative) Horace recommended as a technique to catch the fly's attention, interest, participation of the reader: "almost (those events) already know them." This
of alienation, of being uprooted from the ordinary reality of her own life and transplantation in the narrative context, I experienced it myself since the first reading of what I assume was a few years ago, a primitive drawing. That is the very first page, since that stormy first line ("From the north, the wind suddenly covered even my pant"), I've been thrown up there on the "sacred summit of the Sierra Nayarit. Next to the young executive who tells firsthand. Indeed, already almost-corporate and in-animated him. I, Mark Beck, in the skin of this bold trekker who is about to be hit by a storm at 2200 meters high, on a remote mountain in the heart of central Mexico. Self, only occasional and short-haul travelers, who have never set foot in the New World. Just that I was a boy I climbed up to the top of the Campo dei Fiori. Just about Mexico that I have terrible gaps not only tourists but also geopolitical and, worse yet, cultural. I have read only a few poems of Octavio Paz, Puerto Escondido
Pino Cacucci and a couple of books on the conquest of Tenochtitlan by Hernan Cortes, I immediately identified with ... By the way, as you call the protagonist? Be ', here's a little challenge from joy to his readers sift the volume from end to end and see if you can give a name and a last name to our hero.
Another game, a stimulating intellectual exercise may be to identify the respondents, the assonance or consonance between the fine, subtle poems as epigraphs or markings placed on the threshold of each of the twenty chapters and topics that they are being unraveled.
Already this first chapter,
chasms, announces the polysemic character of the writing of Walter Joy, the simultaneous presence of real meaning, metaphorical and metaphysical, psychological and metapsychical. The mountain, the ascent: physical reality of a company, which produces a physiological fatigue described accurately. But at the same time, the metaphor of an inner journey exhausting straining the search for truth, an initiatory path towards the goal of an identity and an ever-elusive balance. In the background, the inevitable paradigm of the biblical Mount Sinai, the ascent of Moses and Elijah on Mount Horeb, encounter the divine mystery. And on a purely allegorical, mystical ascent of the route traced by St. John of the Cross Ascent of Mount Caramel in
. Throughout the novel, moreover, unfolds a web of echoes, intertextual allusions, the astute reader is invited to discover. But even the less aggressive, but without going into these deeper layers, will secure enjoyment dall'incalzante succession of events compelling, exciting, sometimes cutting film.
A new ascent to the sacred mountain of the Sierra, to the pre-Columbian ruins of a temple, will take place towards the end of the novel and will be marked by the encounter with a mysterious shaman, a curandero
that seems to be moving on very thin dividing line between reality and unreality, immanence and transcendence. But the stay of the protagonist in that enchanted land is, in essence, marked by climbing on the steep slopes of mountains, symbolic, sacred or profane. Climbing initiation of strong, that all contribute to the rehabilitation of young inner leader, to heal his wounds psychophysical: the suspicion of a serious lung disease, panic attacks, the aftermath of the crisis in child and adolescent in the family, problems business, bankruptcies sentimental.
Initiation exploration of the unconscious through a shamanistic ritual shared with a peasant couple, Francisco and Clara, of enchanting wisdom, simplicity and generosity, is a kind of dizzying descent to the peak of a mountain upside down, what is the tangled psyche of the protagonist. It should be immediately added that these dips in "psychotherapy" Gioia's prose touches the top of unsettling visions. But then he also knows how to dig with compassionate insight into the past of the two elderly
campesinos, as far back injury that also did not destroy their relationship, but paradoxically cemented their union, their serenity contagious.
Then there is the rugged mountains that social and ethical stands on the path of the hero with the whole mass of matter relating to the exploitation of Indians
in deadly tobacco plantations managed by greedy unscrupulous landowners in the shadow of the multinationals. Here his fellow travelers are a brave agronomist, Pyramus, engaged in an impossible battle against the local mafia and his minions, and some young workers from the ethnic
Huicholes : a people oppressed, marginalized, threatened with extinction along with its wealth of indigenous culture. In the search for a new existential horizon, that definition of anthropological and moral conscience for the protagonist has a secondary value.
Another guide accompanies the European traveler in another climbing symbolic: the goal is to reach the peak of a higher sense perception, that can lead to a clearer vision of the world and themselves. This is the so-called "friendly eyes," which appears as the teacher Enrique, imaginative intellectual and former teacher of philosophy.
But what is really crucial is to climb the mountain of love, embodied by
doña Carmen, owner of the posada
, central perspective of the entire novel. Beauty stranger to media charges, a sort of Venus "Callipigia" triumph of irrepressible femininity, a lover with sensual, delicate, a personification of eros that ennobles sexuality (as well as the noble language of Walter Joy)
doña Carmen is a of the most compelling female characters that may be found in the literature. And maybe, for the more fortunate in life. The fates, both injured, the young Italian and inexorably intertwined for young Mexican end. The future of the protagonist - salvation or damnation - depends on the outcome of the last game you play with her, with the "princess of the wind." The outcome of the encounter / clash between "the rock and the tsunami," between "the mountain and the storm."
Mark Beck
