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Y nuestros rostros, mi vida, breves como fotos
Prólogo de Manuel Rivas.
Este inclasificable libro une con lucidez la profundidad del trabajo ensayístico de John Berger sobre el arte con la riqueza emocional de su trabajo narrativo y poético. Por primera vez se sirve de sus modos de ver para examinar su obra, sus emociones, y cuestiona aspectos trascendentes como las razones que nos llevan a amar. Las respuestas de Berger, misteriosas por su sutileza, son esperanzadas y necesarias. En este libro, posiblemente su obra más íntima, el autor pasa revista a una serie de experiencias que son tan esenciales, tan familiares (el amor y el tiempo, la ausencia y la distancia, el arraigo y el alejamiento) que casi hemos olvidado la manera de sentirlas en nuestra vida.
Como señala Manuel Rivas en su hermoso prólogo para esta edición, «toda la obra de John Berger es un laborioso avance por la incerteza, merodeando, sin pisar. Y eso es lo que permite ver lo imprevisible, pero también crear lo jamais vu, otras especies, otras realidades. El realismo de Berger consistía en ir más allá de la realidad».
Este inclasificable libro une con lucidez la profundidad del trabajo ensayístico de John Berger sobre el arte con la riqueza emocional de su trabajo narrativo y poético. Por primera vez se sirve de sus modos de ver para examinar su obra, sus emociones, y cuestiona aspectos trascendentes como las razones que nos llevan a amar. Las respuestas de Berger, misteriosas por su sutileza, son esperanzadas y necesarias. En este libro, posiblemente su obra más íntima, el autor pasa revista a una serie de experiencias que son tan esenciales, tan familiares (el amor y el tiempo, la ausencia y la distancia, el arraigo y el alejamiento) que casi hemos olvidado la manera de sentirlas en nuestra vida.
Como señala Manuel Rivas en su hermoso prólogo para esta edición, «toda la obra de John Berger es un laborioso avance por la incerteza, merodeando, sin pisar. Y eso es lo que permite ver lo imprevisible, pero también crear lo jamais vu, otras especies, otras realidades. El realismo de Berger consistía en ir más allá de la realidad».
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
109 people are currently reading
5874 people want to read
About the author
John Berger
241 books2,618 followersJohn Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a college text.
Later he was self exiled to continental Europe, living between the french Alps in summer and the suburbs of Paris in winter. Since then, his production has increased considerably, including a variety of genres, from novel to social essay, or poetry. One of the most common themes that appears on his books is the dialectics established between modernity and memory and loss,
Another of his most remarkable works has been the trilogy titled Into Their Labours, that includes the books Pig Earth (1979), Once In Europa (1983) Lilac And Flag (1990). With those books, Berger makes a meditation about the way of the peasant, that changes one poverty for another in the city. This theme is also observed in his novel King, but there his focus is more in the rural diaspora and the bitter side of the urban way of life.
Later he was self exiled to continental Europe, living between the french Alps in summer and the suburbs of Paris in winter. Since then, his production has increased considerably, including a variety of genres, from novel to social essay, or poetry. One of the most common themes that appears on his books is the dialectics established between modernity and memory and loss,
Another of his most remarkable works has been the trilogy titled Into Their Labours, that includes the books Pig Earth (1979), Once In Europa (1983) Lilac And Flag (1990). With those books, Berger makes a meditation about the way of the peasant, that changes one poverty for another in the city. This theme is also observed in his novel King, but there his focus is more in the rural diaspora and the bitter side of the urban way of life.
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June 25, 2025
C'ERA UNA VOLTA IL TEMPO E LO SPAZIO
Tutto bello, a partire dal titolo.
Berger si conferma un critico della cultura contemporanea con cui ha ingaggiato un confronto serrato, frontale ma non polemico, complesso ma anche sottile.
Conferma di possedere e saper proporre un punto di vista sempre diverso.
Sotto forma di lettere alla propria amata, diventa presto un messaggio diretto al mondo intero, universale ma ancor più sociale.
Un percorso tra immagini e canzoni, riflessioni frammenti poesie.
Tra spazio e tempo, tra disegno e scrittura, tra parole e rappresentazioni, tra generi e stili.
È un libro che parla di molte cose, di pensieri, ma anche d’intensità emotive. Direi che a dominare è l’interrogarsi sul senso della perdita.
È un diario, un libro sulle concezioni del tempo, sulla pittura (Caravaggio, Rembrandt), sulla sessualità, una riflessione sul vedere, ma anche sul tema dell’emigrazione.
Per Berger sono tutte storie da raccontare, sia un uomo in viaggio che una lucciola presa nel pugno.
Composto di poesie e di prose che si mescolano e si succedono senza un ordine prestabilito.
Se Berger vuole parlare di alcune cose che gli stanno particolarmente a cuore, passa dalla prosa alla poesia, senza stacco e senza avvertire. Ma accade anche l’opposto, dai versi al saggio. La poesia si dimostra più immediata della prosa, più diretta, ma anche meno comprensibile, più misteriosa, più criptica, come sempre è l’espressione in versi.
È come non avere mai visto Van Gogh o Caravaggio prima di aver letto queste smilze cento pagine, refrattarie a qualsiasi genere letterario: ma dopo, è come conoscere Van Gogh o Caravaggio in un altro modo, più profondo e indimenticabile, aver acceso una nuova luce sulle loro opere.
John Berger a 36 anni, nel 1962
Berger, uomo che ha abitato i confini, sa illuminare di luce nuova e profonda un filare di alberi, una finestra, un quadro, una fotografia, una frase di Pascal - le cose 'alte' e quelle 'basse'.
Raccontando sotto forma autobiografica l’amore e il tempo che passa, Berger torna su quelli che sono i suoi grandi temi: sradicamenti, migrazioni, lotta per l’affermazione dei diritti umani…
La prosa è molto più fiduciosa della poesia: la poesia parla alla ferita aperta
Un ringraziamento speciale a Maria Nadotti, ottima traduttrice e curatrice. Grazie, davvero.
Tutto bello, a partire dal titolo.
Berger si conferma un critico della cultura contemporanea con cui ha ingaggiato un confronto serrato, frontale ma non polemico, complesso ma anche sottile.
Conferma di possedere e saper proporre un punto di vista sempre diverso.
Sotto forma di lettere alla propria amata, diventa presto un messaggio diretto al mondo intero, universale ma ancor più sociale.
Un percorso tra immagini e canzoni, riflessioni frammenti poesie.
Tra spazio e tempo, tra disegno e scrittura, tra parole e rappresentazioni, tra generi e stili.
È un libro che parla di molte cose, di pensieri, ma anche d’intensità emotive. Direi che a dominare è l’interrogarsi sul senso della perdita.
È un diario, un libro sulle concezioni del tempo, sulla pittura (Caravaggio, Rembrandt), sulla sessualità, una riflessione sul vedere, ma anche sul tema dell’emigrazione.
Per Berger sono tutte storie da raccontare, sia un uomo in viaggio che una lucciola presa nel pugno.
Composto di poesie e di prose che si mescolano e si succedono senza un ordine prestabilito.
Se Berger vuole parlare di alcune cose che gli stanno particolarmente a cuore, passa dalla prosa alla poesia, senza stacco e senza avvertire. Ma accade anche l’opposto, dai versi al saggio. La poesia si dimostra più immediata della prosa, più diretta, ma anche meno comprensibile, più misteriosa, più criptica, come sempre è l’espressione in versi.
È come non avere mai visto Van Gogh o Caravaggio prima di aver letto queste smilze cento pagine, refrattarie a qualsiasi genere letterario: ma dopo, è come conoscere Van Gogh o Caravaggio in un altro modo, più profondo e indimenticabile, aver acceso una nuova luce sulle loro opere.
John Berger a 36 anni, nel 1962
Berger, uomo che ha abitato i confini, sa illuminare di luce nuova e profonda un filare di alberi, una finestra, un quadro, una fotografia, una frase di Pascal - le cose 'alte' e quelle 'basse'.
Raccontando sotto forma autobiografica l’amore e il tempo che passa, Berger torna su quelli che sono i suoi grandi temi: sradicamenti, migrazioni, lotta per l’affermazione dei diritti umani…
La prosa è molto più fiduciosa della poesia: la poesia parla alla ferita aperta
Un ringraziamento speciale a Maria Nadotti, ottima traduttrice e curatrice. Grazie, davvero.
April 8, 2017
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08kttjwDescription: Simon McBurney - a close friend of the late art critic and writer who died in January - reads John Berger's most personal book: part essay, part poetry collection, part memoir & love letter. McBurney also shares memories of Berger and the house and landscape that inspired the book in the early 1980s. Harriet Walter reads Berger's poetry.
Today we meet Berger in his beloved Haute-Savoie mountains, as he crosses the frontier into Italy and begins a rumination on human conceptions of time, memory, poetry and art, specifically the paintings of Rembrandt.Berger meditates on art, love and mortality - specifically how paintings depict time and how we understand the physical landscape around us, illustrated by sketches from the islands of Scotland and Berger's beloved Haute-Savoie mountains.Berger explores the psychic impact of mass migration and how, once lost, the sense of a true home can rarely be regained. Berger considered the twentieth century "the century of banishment" and today he continues his exploration on the psychic impact of mass migration where for migrants home is no longer a dwelling place but the untold story of a life being lived.Berger explores the work of his favourite painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.5* Ways of Seeing
5* And Our Faces
March 30, 2008
this was my first book of Berger's and still the one i love the most. his passions illuminate my own, or open me up to new ones.
it is a combination of poetry and prose that mirrors those elements in everyday experience, everyday willingness to experience as fully as possible.
in my own day to day i wander in and out of the past, the lines of reference and connection sometimes so demanding and yet so ephemeral i wonder if everyone lives this way and how do we bear it?
berger articulates the music of time, space, objects, people and the chords we are part of.
i could not be more grateful
it is a combination of poetry and prose that mirrors those elements in everyday experience, everyday willingness to experience as fully as possible.
in my own day to day i wander in and out of the past, the lines of reference and connection sometimes so demanding and yet so ephemeral i wonder if everyone lives this way and how do we bear it?
berger articulates the music of time, space, objects, people and the chords we are part of.
i could not be more grateful
July 22, 2022
reading berger feels like watching ducks swim across a clear lake & tracing the ripples they leave behind in the water. spacious. clarifying. and so so beautiful. i will treasure this book forever.
“[Poems] bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been…that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experience which demanded, which cried out.”
“In all poetry words are a presence before they are a means of communication.”
“Poetry can repair no loss but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by a continual labour of reassembling what has been scattered.”
“What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together…It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.”
“[Poems] bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been…that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experience which demanded, which cried out.”
“In all poetry words are a presence before they are a means of communication.”
“Poetry can repair no loss but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by a continual labour of reassembling what has been scattered.”
“What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together…It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.”
August 31, 2015
Each pine at dusk
Lodges the bird
of its voice
perpendicular and still
the forest
indifferent to history
tearless as stone
repeats
in tremulous excitement
the ancient story
of the sun going down
Stirring combination of personal essay, art criticism, and poetry that examines and undermines received ideas about time, space, love, migration, nature, class, painting, and much more. Berger's poetry here is the biggest revelation - distilled, lyrical, haunted. This short book defies categorization, leaping between subjects with intuitive ease, recounting its stories in a tone both serious and tender.
Lodges the bird
of its voice
perpendicular and still
the forest
indifferent to history
tearless as stone
repeats
in tremulous excitement
the ancient story
of the sun going down
Stirring combination of personal essay, art criticism, and poetry that examines and undermines received ideas about time, space, love, migration, nature, class, painting, and much more. Berger's poetry here is the biggest revelation - distilled, lyrical, haunted. This short book defies categorization, leaping between subjects with intuitive ease, recounting its stories in a tone both serious and tender.
February 8, 2016
I'll read pages and pages of Berger thinking, what utter madness - what is this man on about at all.
And then, all of a sudden and at once, I'll find something not perception shifting, but perception giving: I see something, not differently, but new.
Apart from A Fortunate Man - which is to my mind an masterpiece - that is why I go back to him again and again: not because I enjoy his books from cover to cover, but because inevitably somewhere between those covers I'll find something utterly profound.
And then, all of a sudden and at once, I'll find something not perception shifting, but perception giving: I see something, not differently, but new.
Apart from A Fortunate Man - which is to my mind an masterpiece - that is why I go back to him again and again: not because I enjoy his books from cover to cover, but because inevitably somewhere between those covers I'll find something utterly profound.
July 11, 2020
"The boon of language is not tenderness. All that it holds, it holds with exactitude and without pity, even a term of endearment; the word is impartial: the usage is all. The boon of language is that potentially it is complete, it has the potentiality of holding with words the totality of human experience—everything that has occurred and everything that may occur. It even allows space for the unspeakable. In this sense one can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man." (95)That very last paragraph, though.
May 24, 2025
کتاب را روز سوم یا چارم عید گرفتم. از همان موقع شروع کردم به خواندنَش، ریزریز. تا الان کشید. کتاب عجیبیست. زیرعنوان کتاب «جستاری در زمان و فضا»ست و بخش اول کتاب دربارهی زمان و بخش دوم دربارهی فضا نام گرفته. ولی موقع خواندن قطعههایی پیش رویمان قرار میگیرد گاهی کوتاه و گاه بلند؛ گاهی خاطرهای عاشقانهست از فراق یا از وصال؛ و گاهی تدقیقی در کاروُبار یکی از نقاشان باروکی ـــ الحق چیزهایی که دربارهی کاراواجّو میگوید آدم را میخکوب میکند؛ گاهی هم فلسفی یا سیاسی میشود. جناب برجر در همهاش استاد است. این وسط کلی شعر هم پراکنده در جایجای کتاب.
برجر مثال حیّوُحاضر این حرف بارت است: «قطعهنویسی: هر قطعه سنگیست قرارگرفته دور یک دایره: خودم را میپراکنم: کل جهان کوچکم در قالب سنگریزه؛ در مرکز دایره چیست؟»
ترجمهی کتاب هم کاری شجاعانه بوده. هم از لحاظ انتخاب چنین متنی، هم انتخاب لحن و برابرنهاد کلمات مختلف. بهنظرم کار خوبی شده. جاهای معدودی را تطبیق دادم البته. دم مترجمش گرم.
یکسری از جاهاش در خاطرم خواهد ماند.
برجر مثال حیّوُحاضر این حرف بارت است: «قطعهنویسی: هر قطعه سنگیست قرارگرفته دور یک دایره: خودم را میپراکنم: کل جهان کوچکم در قالب سنگریزه؛ در مرکز دایره چیست؟»
ترجمهی کتاب هم کاری شجاعانه بوده. هم از لحاظ انتخاب چنین متنی، هم انتخاب لحن و برابرنهاد کلمات مختلف. بهنظرم کار خوبی شده. جاهای معدودی را تطبیق دادم البته. دم مترجمش گرم.
یکسری از جاهاش در خاطرم خواهد ماند.
January 11, 2009
Weaving between prose and poetry, John Berger manages to get to the heart of love, distance, and loss. An amazing read. At least monthly, I pick it up to reread my favorite parts.
May 3, 2019
"Con te riesco a immaginare un luogo dove essere fosfato di calcio mi basta".
Tra prosa...
«Ciò che più di ogni altra cosa mi riconcilia con la mia stessa morte è l’immagine di un luogo: un luogo dove le tue ossa e le mie sono sepolte, gettate, messe a nudo, insieme. Vi sono disseminate alla rinfusa. Una delle tue costole poggia contro il mio cranio. Un metacarpo della mia mano sinistra si trova all’interno del tuo bacino. (Contro le mie costole spezzate il tuo seno simile a un fiore). Le cento ossa dei nostri piedi sono sparpagliate come ghiaia. È strano che questa immagine della nostra prossimità, pur parlando di semplice fosfato di calcio, debba procurarmi un senso di pace. Eppure è così. Con te riesco a immaginare un luogo dove essere fosfato di calcio mi basta».
...e poesia
Il mio cuore nudo alla nascita
era fasciato di ninnenanne.
Più tardi da solo si è vestito
di poesie.
Come camicia
ho portato sul dorso
la poesia che avevo letto.
Così ho vissuto per mezzo secolo
finché privi di parole ci siamo incontrati.
Dalla camicia sullo schienale della seggiola
scopro stanotte
per quanti anni
di studio a memoria
ti ho aspettata.
Tra prosa...
«Ciò che più di ogni altra cosa mi riconcilia con la mia stessa morte è l’immagine di un luogo: un luogo dove le tue ossa e le mie sono sepolte, gettate, messe a nudo, insieme. Vi sono disseminate alla rinfusa. Una delle tue costole poggia contro il mio cranio. Un metacarpo della mia mano sinistra si trova all’interno del tuo bacino. (Contro le mie costole spezzate il tuo seno simile a un fiore). Le cento ossa dei nostri piedi sono sparpagliate come ghiaia. È strano che questa immagine della nostra prossimità, pur parlando di semplice fosfato di calcio, debba procurarmi un senso di pace. Eppure è così. Con te riesco a immaginare un luogo dove essere fosfato di calcio mi basta».
...e poesia
Il mio cuore nudo alla nascita
era fasciato di ninnenanne.
Più tardi da solo si è vestito
di poesie.
Come camicia
ho portato sul dorso
la poesia che avevo letto.
Così ho vissuto per mezzo secolo
finché privi di parole ci siamo incontrati.
Dalla camicia sullo schienale della seggiola
scopro stanotte
per quanti anni
di studio a memoria
ti ho aspettata.
April 15, 2017
If we are trapped, my heart, it is not within reality.
*
In the country which is you I know your gestures, the intonations of your voice, the shape of every part of your body. You are not physically less real there, but you are less free.
What changes when you are there before my eyes is that you become unpredictable. What you are about to do is unknown to me. I follow you. You act. And with what you do, I fall in love again.
*
The opposite of to love is not to hate but to separate. If love and hate have something in common it is because, in both cases, their energy is that of bringing and holding together—the lover with the loved, the one who hates with the hated. Both passions are tested by separation
*
With your appearance everything changed. Everything from the passage under the railway tracks to the sun setting, from the Arabic numerals on the board which announced the times of the trains, to the gulls perched on a roof, from the invisible stars to the taste of coffee on my palate. The world of circumstance and contingency, into which, long before, I had been born, became like a room. I was home.
*
In the country which is you I know your gestures, the intonations of your voice, the shape of every part of your body. You are not physically less real there, but you are less free.
What changes when you are there before my eyes is that you become unpredictable. What you are about to do is unknown to me. I follow you. You act. And with what you do, I fall in love again.
*
The opposite of to love is not to hate but to separate. If love and hate have something in common it is because, in both cases, their energy is that of bringing and holding together—the lover with the loved, the one who hates with the hated. Both passions are tested by separation
*
With your appearance everything changed. Everything from the passage under the railway tracks to the sun setting, from the Arabic numerals on the board which announced the times of the trains, to the gulls perched on a roof, from the invisible stars to the taste of coffee on my palate. The world of circumstance and contingency, into which, long before, I had been born, became like a room. I was home.
December 9, 2018
Included in video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l31F...
October 30, 2017
Ya son varias las reseñas y artículos que en Détour hemos dedicado a John Berger y siempre que vemos un libro nuevo editado suyo no queremos, ni debemos, dejarlo escapar. Aunque Y nuestros rostros, mi vida, breves como fotos, ya se editó anteriormente, Nórdica no ha querido dejarlo pasar y ha sacado una edición preciosa e ilustrada, gracias a Leticia Ruifernández, que nos acerca la obra del autor como si quisiéramos darle de comer migas de pan a los pájaros mientras estamos en el parque.
Como dice Manuel Rivas en el prólogo, toda la obra de John Beger es un laborioso avance por la incerterza, merodeando, sin pisar, y eso le permite ver lo imprevisible. De este modo, Berger siempre deja una entrada al misterio, a pesar de mirar y explicar la realidad. En este libro encontramos rastros de poesía y de ideas, de evocaciones y pensamientos. Todo ello de manera tenue, calma y breve. Breve como las fotos, como dice el libro y como son los instantes y momentos.
El mundo doméstico y cotidiano se ve aquí reflejado. Vemos otro aspecto de Berger en las letras, aunque no ande muy lejos de sus ensayos o sus dibujos. Sus cuentos son imaginación y son semillas de pequeños mundos sumergidos bajo lo cotidiano, entre el tiempo y la conciencia. Entre el día a día y la paciencia. «Lo que nos asombra / no puede ser el vestigio / de lo que ha sido. / El mañana aún ciego / avanza lentamente. / La luz y la visión / corren a encontrarse / y de su abrazo / nace el día / con los ojos abiertos, / alto como un potro.»
Fragmentos lúcidos y perennes que tienen cobijo en el corazón y que son elocuentes. Es destacable la lucidez que atraviesa el libro, como si de un rayo de luz a través de una cortina que se mueve entrara en nuestra habitación que es nuestra mente.
Berger recoge la realidad con las manos. La mirada y el tacto aquí lo son todo, aunque las ideas estén sobre las cosas. «Lo visible siempre ha sido y sigue siendo la principal fuente humana de información sobre el mundo. Uno se orienta a través de lo visible.» El autor además ahonda en la muerte y la bordea sin llegar al abismo. Corre y camina, camina y corre por los senderos dolorosos que la muerte tiene.
El libro es un tratado emocional sobre el tiempo y el lugar, el cual se divide en estas dos partes y ofrece al lector un pequeño acondicionamiento para que observemos desde la mirada de Berger. Este utiliza la poesía como búsqueda. Búsqueda del amor y de lo que es ser humano. E incluso utiliza la naturaleza para hallarse a sí mismo. Al igual que la pintura, de la cual expone sus preferencias, dedicando una gran parte a Caravaggio, su pintor favorito.
De este modo, estamos ante un libro poético y narrativo, ilustrado y bellísimo, sobre la forma de ver de John Berger. Un libro que no puede faltar en nuestra biblioteca si estamos interesados en su pensamiento, su poesía y su dialéctica.
Como dice Manuel Rivas en el prólogo, toda la obra de John Beger es un laborioso avance por la incerterza, merodeando, sin pisar, y eso le permite ver lo imprevisible. De este modo, Berger siempre deja una entrada al misterio, a pesar de mirar y explicar la realidad. En este libro encontramos rastros de poesía y de ideas, de evocaciones y pensamientos. Todo ello de manera tenue, calma y breve. Breve como las fotos, como dice el libro y como son los instantes y momentos.
El mundo doméstico y cotidiano se ve aquí reflejado. Vemos otro aspecto de Berger en las letras, aunque no ande muy lejos de sus ensayos o sus dibujos. Sus cuentos son imaginación y son semillas de pequeños mundos sumergidos bajo lo cotidiano, entre el tiempo y la conciencia. Entre el día a día y la paciencia. «Lo que nos asombra / no puede ser el vestigio / de lo que ha sido. / El mañana aún ciego / avanza lentamente. / La luz y la visión / corren a encontrarse / y de su abrazo / nace el día / con los ojos abiertos, / alto como un potro.»
Fragmentos lúcidos y perennes que tienen cobijo en el corazón y que son elocuentes. Es destacable la lucidez que atraviesa el libro, como si de un rayo de luz a través de una cortina que se mueve entrara en nuestra habitación que es nuestra mente.
Berger recoge la realidad con las manos. La mirada y el tacto aquí lo son todo, aunque las ideas estén sobre las cosas. «Lo visible siempre ha sido y sigue siendo la principal fuente humana de información sobre el mundo. Uno se orienta a través de lo visible.» El autor además ahonda en la muerte y la bordea sin llegar al abismo. Corre y camina, camina y corre por los senderos dolorosos que la muerte tiene.
El libro es un tratado emocional sobre el tiempo y el lugar, el cual se divide en estas dos partes y ofrece al lector un pequeño acondicionamiento para que observemos desde la mirada de Berger. Este utiliza la poesía como búsqueda. Búsqueda del amor y de lo que es ser humano. E incluso utiliza la naturaleza para hallarse a sí mismo. Al igual que la pintura, de la cual expone sus preferencias, dedicando una gran parte a Caravaggio, su pintor favorito.
De este modo, estamos ante un libro poético y narrativo, ilustrado y bellísimo, sobre la forma de ver de John Berger. Un libro que no puede faltar en nuestra biblioteca si estamos interesados en su pensamiento, su poesía y su dialéctica.
March 17, 2018
Incandescent. What is a world without John Berger? I can't imagine a world in which he hadn't existed.
Before almost anything else, and in almost alarmingly cute retro phrasing, this book informs its reader that it has two parts: "Part One is about Time. Part Two is about Space." And it's true enough, given that what follows is an extended meditation on questions of love, home, death, and humanity, split into the fractured modern conflict between quantified and experiential heuristics of time and the alienation from home that displacement, emigration, and distance impose on people today. It's also, and I think this is the most important bit, an earnest and intimate meditation on the space and time spent apart from his love, which inflects every observation. Nothing is abstract beyond reach; nothing is ponderous and inflated.
Altogether, this is beautiful in the way that only Berger could write. See, for instance, his receipt of a letter from his absent lover:
There are also, of course, memories of Vincent van Gogh and Caravaggio, other friends and poets, and much more than what I can replicate here. But I think that what this book shows so well, like A Seventh Man did before it, is the way that Berger was always thinking of the most precarious of contemporary lives: those who are displaced, who emigrate, who move for work or safety and who find themselves adrift in the rubble of late capitalism. Much more than a critic of art, a novelist, or a theorist, Berger was attuned to humanity.
Before almost anything else, and in almost alarmingly cute retro phrasing, this book informs its reader that it has two parts: "Part One is about Time. Part Two is about Space." And it's true enough, given that what follows is an extended meditation on questions of love, home, death, and humanity, split into the fractured modern conflict between quantified and experiential heuristics of time and the alienation from home that displacement, emigration, and distance impose on people today. It's also, and I think this is the most important bit, an earnest and intimate meditation on the space and time spent apart from his love, which inflects every observation. Nothing is abstract beyond reach; nothing is ponderous and inflated.
Altogether, this is beautiful in the way that only Berger could write. See, for instance, his receipt of a letter from his absent lover:
Perhaps it did not have to travel far; the distance between your voice and my ear was infinitesimal. But reality should never be confused with scale, it is only scale that has degrees.Or see his meditations on emigration, which are heavy with truth:
Emigration does not only involve leaving behind, crossing water, living among strangers, but, also, undoing the very meaning of the world and – at its most extreme – abandoning oneself to the unreal which is the absurd.Simple, clear, and movingly compassionate.
Emigration, when it is not enforced at gunpoint, may of course be prompted by hope as well as desperation. [...] The poverty of the village may appear more absurd than the crimes of the metropolis. To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted by one's fellow countrymen. All this can be true. But to emigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.
There are also, of course, memories of Vincent van Gogh and Caravaggio, other friends and poets, and much more than what I can replicate here. But I think that what this book shows so well, like A Seventh Man did before it, is the way that Berger was always thinking of the most precarious of contemporary lives: those who are displaced, who emigrate, who move for work or safety and who find themselves adrift in the rubble of late capitalism. Much more than a critic of art, a novelist, or a theorist, Berger was attuned to humanity.
June 7, 2013
A first read of a great book that I think on subsequent readings will get even more important for me. A letter to a lover, a meditation in the way of Spinoza or other non-Rationalist philosophers, on art, love, language, poetry, photography, politics, art.... with sections on favorite artists like Carvaggio, and interspersed through it are poems, pretty wonderful poems. I'll keep this one by my bedside and add to this review as I read and reread and reflect. Much of what i appreciate about the book is its multi-genre approach, to weave philosophical reflections with stories with poetry. Why not?
March 2, 2024
“*Öncelik her zaman ruhundur ve yeri bir başka zamanın aktığı çizgidedir.
*Yalnızca damakta acı bir tat vardır hâlâ. Açıklanamayan neden açıklanmaz bir biçimde kaybolmuştur.
*Göç sadece geride bir şeyler bırakıp denizler aşmak, yabancılar arasında yaşamak demek değil, aynı zamanda dünyanın anlamını yerle bir etmek, en sonunda da insanın kendisine saçma, gerçek-dışı bir dünyaya bırakması demektir.
*İnsanlığın bütün öbür acıları şu ya da bu tür ayrılıklardan doğar. Şiirin “dindirme” yöntemi daha dolaysızdır. Şiir hiçbir kaybı onaramaz, ama ayrılığa yol açan uzama karşı koyabilir.
*Sen ve ben acıdan bir dağız, sen ve ben
bu dünyada bir daha hiç karşılaşmayacağız.
Hiç olmazsa gece yarıları
bir selam gönderebilsen yıldızlardan.
*Seninle olduktan sonra, kalsiyum fosfat bile olmanın yeteceği bir yer düşünüyorum.”
—————————
Rembrandt’dan önce resimlerinde ustalıkla ışık-gölge kullanan Caravaggio ile beni tanıştıran bu kitabın, ilkin adına tav oldum ‘Ve Yüzlerimiz, Kalbim, Fotoğraflar Kadar Kısa Ömürlü’.
Engin Geçtan’ın İnsan Olmak kitabını henüz okumuşken şunu anladım ki; ben psikanalize inanmıyorum, şiire inanıyorum.
İnsanlara bir matematik problemi imişcesine benzer değerlerin verilerek genel geçer sonuçlara varıldığı kuramlar beni bayağ bayağ irrite ediyor. Ama her kitaptan öğreneceği bir şey oluyor insanın.
Önceleri arkadaşlarla uzun uzun tartıştığımız; Çerkezlerin ve Bulgaristan’dan bu topraklara gelmek zorunda olan insanların, bu topraklarda doğup büyüyen, hiç göç etmek zorunda kalmadığı halde öyleymiş hissi taşıyan torunlarındaki psikolojik etkinin genetik alt yapısı olduğunu öne süren bir teori halihazırda varmış zaten:) Kolektif bilinçdışı…
Öğrenecek, düşünecek ne de çok şey var, kısa ömürlü şu dünyada.
*Yalnızca damakta acı bir tat vardır hâlâ. Açıklanamayan neden açıklanmaz bir biçimde kaybolmuştur.
*Göç sadece geride bir şeyler bırakıp denizler aşmak, yabancılar arasında yaşamak demek değil, aynı zamanda dünyanın anlamını yerle bir etmek, en sonunda da insanın kendisine saçma, gerçek-dışı bir dünyaya bırakması demektir.
*İnsanlığın bütün öbür acıları şu ya da bu tür ayrılıklardan doğar. Şiirin “dindirme” yöntemi daha dolaysızdır. Şiir hiçbir kaybı onaramaz, ama ayrılığa yol açan uzama karşı koyabilir.
*Sen ve ben acıdan bir dağız, sen ve ben
bu dünyada bir daha hiç karşılaşmayacağız.
Hiç olmazsa gece yarıları
bir selam gönderebilsen yıldızlardan.
*Seninle olduktan sonra, kalsiyum fosfat bile olmanın yeteceği bir yer düşünüyorum.”
—————————
Rembrandt’dan önce resimlerinde ustalıkla ışık-gölge kullanan Caravaggio ile beni tanıştıran bu kitabın, ilkin adına tav oldum ‘Ve Yüzlerimiz, Kalbim, Fotoğraflar Kadar Kısa Ömürlü’.
Engin Geçtan’ın İnsan Olmak kitabını henüz okumuşken şunu anladım ki; ben psikanalize inanmıyorum, şiire inanıyorum.
İnsanlara bir matematik problemi imişcesine benzer değerlerin verilerek genel geçer sonuçlara varıldığı kuramlar beni bayağ bayağ irrite ediyor. Ama her kitaptan öğreneceği bir şey oluyor insanın.
Önceleri arkadaşlarla uzun uzun tartıştığımız; Çerkezlerin ve Bulgaristan’dan bu topraklara gelmek zorunda olan insanların, bu topraklarda doğup büyüyen, hiç göç etmek zorunda kalmadığı halde öyleymiş hissi taşıyan torunlarındaki psikolojik etkinin genetik alt yapısı olduğunu öne süren bir teori halihazırda varmış zaten:) Kolektif bilinçdışı…
Öğrenecek, düşünecek ne de çok şey var, kısa ömürlü şu dünyada.
April 8, 2017
From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Simon McBurney - a close friend of the late art critic and writer who died in January - reads John Berger's most personal book: part essay, part poetry collection, part memoir & love letter. McBurney also shares memories of Berger and the house and landscape that inspired the book in the early 1980s. Harriet Walter reads Berger's poetry.
Today we meet Berger in his beloved Haute-Savoie mountains, as he crosses the frontier into Italy and begins a rumination on human conceptions of time, memory, poetry and art, specifically the paintings of Rembrandt.
Abridged and produced by Simon Richardson.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08kttjw
Simon McBurney - a close friend of the late art critic and writer who died in January - reads John Berger's most personal book: part essay, part poetry collection, part memoir & love letter. McBurney also shares memories of Berger and the house and landscape that inspired the book in the early 1980s. Harriet Walter reads Berger's poetry.
Today we meet Berger in his beloved Haute-Savoie mountains, as he crosses the frontier into Italy and begins a rumination on human conceptions of time, memory, poetry and art, specifically the paintings of Rembrandt.
Abridged and produced by Simon Richardson.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08kttjw
March 28, 2018
"with you i can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough."
January 7, 2021
3.5 — a mix of science and poetry and love
December 16, 2024
‘—Lying on our backs, we look up at the night sky. This is where stories began, under the aegis of that multitude of stars which at night filch certitudes and sometimes return them as faith. Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity. The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What changed was the way people read the night sky.’
Had a conversation with a friend who works in an art gallery recently about Berger. And she said something about how she is pretty sure she has heard of him/his name mentioned by someone we both know which made me laugh ((full of prejudice, I don’t know him well enough) I feel so sure that the only books he’s read by him are probably the two that ‘art’ students usually read/have read; I could be wrong, feeling fully like a biblio-snob). I ‘laughed’ because she relayed the story with such an unexpected ‘sass’ (but zero ill-intent). This event probably doesn’t hold much meaning to anyone involved and/or otherwise, but it made me revisit this book by Berger again even though I’ve only read it very recently. Still super fucking brilliant, in my opinion. I had no doubts about loving the text again, because whoever writes about Caravaggio the way he deserves to be remembered and more, I love.
‘Poetry makes language care because it renders everything intimate. This intimacy is the result of the poem’s labour, the result of the bringing-together-into-intimacy of every act and noun and event and perspective to which the poem refers. There is often nothing more substantial to place against the cruelty and indifference of the world than this caring.’
‘In reality we are always between two times: that of the body and that of consciousness. Hence the distinction made in all other cultures between body and soul. The soul is first, and above all, the locus of another time.’
‘Supposing that the universe is an expanding universe, its maximum diameter, the limit of its possible extension, has been calculated as being 25,000 million light years. One light year is 5.8784 × 1012 miles. Such an extension is beyond our imagination because of the terms in which it is expressed. There is a double separation: that of the statement and that of the numerical isolation. Elsewhere—in our hearts—we learn the proposition that the force by which space was created may have been an alternating force of expulsion and attraction, extension and passion. This is why, in every language, love is found quoting the stars. But it is also why every cosmology returns to sexuality. The “cosmic egg” of modern physics and the proposed single original substance of ylem—of which one cubic centimeter would weigh, 1,000,000,000,000 kg, and from which all other matter was born—are variants of a theme to be found in most creation myths. Only the nouns change.’
‘All theories about origin are either naive or despairing, from Genesis to Darwin. Yet perhaps one misunderstands their purpose. All origins are unattainable—just as, on a personal scale, it is impossible to imagine a self before conception. Theories of origin are attempts to explain our ongoing relation to the so-evident energy of the universe around us. The energy of our consciousness in all its concentration is continually trying to define itself by and against the energy of the universe in all its incomprehensible extension. Every form of interrogation of the stars has been about this, and every theory of origin is a story invented to describe the experience of being here. In the beginning was the creator. What followed—if there was to be any story at all—was deployment, extension, space, separateness. Ma femme.’
‘To break the silence of events, to speak of experience however bitter or lacerating, to put into words, is to discover the hope that these words may be heard, and that when heard, the events will be judged. This hope is of course at the origin of prayer, and prayer—as well as labor—was probably at the origin of speech itself. Of all uses of language, it is poetry that preserves most purely the memory of this origin.’
‘What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place—It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.’
August 16, 2022
aaaaaa fotoğraflar resimler edebiyat şiir aşk ev ne ararsan var bu kitapta paket şeklinde bayıldım
Read
August 19, 2020I remember buying this slim thing five years ago and taking it with me on a flight to Sofia, then giving up halfway through the flight because I didn’t feel it was getting the attention it deserved. Not sure it got that attention now but so it goes. There is a certain claim to universality and totality that doesn’t always sit easy with me (Berger was a Marxist), especially when he writes about poetry. It’s slightly uncanny - and also interesting - to find such dedication to materialism in these very lyrical and fragmented vignettes.
But there are a lot of things to like here, such as this one, preceding my favourite section which talks about emigration, displacement, and alienation:
Lilacs are native to Eastern Europe and were only imported into the West in the 16th century, Berger notes. He calls lilacs “a Slav flower” and it’s possible he wrote this bit because he is talking to a woman (his second wife was Russian) but he adds snapshots of the play of light at sunset and lilacs in a mirror: the immensity and illumination of feeling. It’s a brief balm, a caring interlude, before he moves to the loss of that centre which, once, used to mean home.
But there are a lot of things to like here, such as this one, preceding my favourite section which talks about emigration, displacement, and alienation:
Lilacs are native to Eastern Europe and were only imported into the West in the 16th century, Berger notes. He calls lilacs “a Slav flower” and it’s possible he wrote this bit because he is talking to a woman (his second wife was Russian) but he adds snapshots of the play of light at sunset and lilacs in a mirror: the immensity and illumination of feeling. It’s a brief balm, a caring interlude, before he moves to the loss of that centre which, once, used to mean home.
May 4, 2017
I had to fight with this book at first: whole swaths of it I found opaque, evocative but not clear. Then it just opened up for me, catching me totally off-guard. It turned from an intellectual undertaking into a love-letter that had me reading with my hand over my mouth in the middle of a cafe.
I understood this book more on the expressive plane where I know exactly how it made me feel, but I don't have a solid grasp of all of the underlying technical elements. I most enjoyed the meditations on consciousness, on the construction of time, on language, Van Gogh, emigration and displacement, and love. I finished it and thought, I should re-read this. But Berger has written so much that perhaps I should just keep going with his other work instead.
I understood this book more on the expressive plane where I know exactly how it made me feel, but I don't have a solid grasp of all of the underlying technical elements. I most enjoyed the meditations on consciousness, on the construction of time, on language, Van Gogh, emigration and displacement, and love. I finished it and thought, I should re-read this. But Berger has written so much that perhaps I should just keep going with his other work instead.
October 21, 2012
Immagini
Questo libro, dono di una carissima amica, mi segue... anzi mi sta accanto, da diversi mesi ormai. E' lì appoggiato per terra vicino al letto ed ogni tanto la sera, tra un romanzo e l'altro o comunque quando ne sento la voglia, lo riprendo in mano e leggo o rileggo qualcosa. Ci sono brani o meglio, "immagini" che ho letto e riletto più volte e che rileggerò ancora, perché mi affascinano e mi commuovono e non saprei neanche dire perchè:
un gattino completamente bianco,
la foto di cinque operai turchi,
un dipinto di Rembrandt...
due corpi che fondendosi in un abbraccio definitivo si decompongono.
Questo libro, dono di una carissima amica, mi segue... anzi mi sta accanto, da diversi mesi ormai. E' lì appoggiato per terra vicino al letto ed ogni tanto la sera, tra un romanzo e l'altro o comunque quando ne sento la voglia, lo riprendo in mano e leggo o rileggo qualcosa. Ci sono brani o meglio, "immagini" che ho letto e riletto più volte e che rileggerò ancora, perché mi affascinano e mi commuovono e non saprei neanche dire perchè:
un gattino completamente bianco,
la foto di cinque operai turchi,
un dipinto di Rembrandt...
due corpi che fondendosi in un abbraccio definitivo si decompongono.
April 10, 2018
It's so hard to categorize this book, which is one of the many things I love about it. It's part poetry and part prose, is about poetry and art and art-making and being awake in the world. And it is perfectly beautiful, both at the level of sentences and words and because of the ideas it contains and points toward. It's really impossible to summarize (yet another thing I loved). It's the first John Berger book I've read, and it's just right to start with, for all of the above reasons, plus the fact that it's brief - it feels in length much like a collection of poems: profound and resonant but compressed.
December 4, 2023
“The walls of the house are thick, for the winters are cold. On the window embrasure, close to the windowpanes, hangs a shaving mirror. As I look up now, I see reflected in the mirror a sprig of the lilac branch: each petal of each tiny flower is vivid, distinct, near, so near that the petals look like the pores of a skin. At first I do not understand why what I see in the mirror is so much more intense than the rest of the branch which, in fact, is nearer to me. Then I realize that what I am looking at in the mirror is the far side of the lilac, the side fully lit by the last light of the sun.
Every evening my love for you is placed like that mirror.”
Every evening my love for you is placed like that mirror.”
June 8, 2019
4 1/2. It is a book to be savoured, slowly. Although some of the subject matter wasn't of greatest interest to me, the rest was pure wisdom, from a man who thought deeply about the world, and with great empathy.
November 21, 2021
Ci sono molti modi di spiegare l’amore, ma a chi mai verrebbe in mente di farlo attraverso spazio e tempo?
Compendio filosofico e poesia; questo libro è una follia di pensieri e dediche, riflessioni e storia, tutte intrecciate in un marasma allo stesso tempo etereo e profondamente umano
Compendio filosofico e poesia; questo libro è una follia di pensieri e dediche, riflessioni e storia, tutte intrecciate in un marasma allo stesso tempo etereo e profondamente umano
January 10, 2023
Kim methetti de satın aldım bilmiyorum. Sayfaları karıştırmadan online almış olmalıyım. Şiir, resim, fotoğraf, hayat, ölüm vsvs ortaya karışık fikir uçuşmaları. Toplam 30-40 satır için okunur mu, sanmıyorum.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 3, 2022
Aşktan, göçten, evden, fizikten, entropiden şiire, öyküye, zamana ve uzama kadar her şeyden biraz biraz düşündürüyor Berger bu kitapta. Bazı bölümler gerçekten çok etkileyiciydi.
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