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Summa kaòtica
Summa kaòtica i la Resta kaòtica representen un ampli calidoscopi literari, que podria comparar-se al que va dir-se del Guernica de Picasso: un brau que entra dins una botiga de cristall. D’aquesta manera, la narrativa de Ventura Ametller entra en piconadora sobre fets i idees i trinxa per obrir-nos les portes de noves percepcions. La Summa kaòtica és la biografia-història trifàsica de Protomorphus-Anamorphus-Metamorphus. La història comença quan el protagonista encara no ha nascut, i continua amb la seva infantesa, a través de la qual anirem contemplant els esdeveniments familiars i polítics del seu poble durant l’etapa republicana. La Resta kaòtica continua la història amb la cronologia de la derrota després de la Guerra Civil.
En ambdues novel·les, la narració defuig el tractament naturalista, interpreta la realitat i embolcalla el lector amb una enorme massa de referències culturals, màgiques, mítiques o filosòfiques, dóna la seva particular visió del món i salva de l’oblit fi gures i paisatges que l’autor va conèixer i recrea a través de la narrativa.
En ambdues novel·les, la narració defuig el tractament naturalista, interpreta la realitat i embolcalla el lector amb una enorme massa de referències culturals, màgiques, mítiques o filosòfiques, dóna la seva particular visió del món i salva de l’oblit fi gures i paisatges que l’autor va conèixer i recrea a través de la narrativa.
- GenresFiction
496 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1986
2 people are currently reading
283 people want to read
About the author
Ventura Ametller
8 books5 followersVentura Ametller (Pals, 1933), home polifacètic, veterinari i apassionat per la cultura, ha conreat quasi totes les arts, a més de les lletres en diversos gèneres literaris, com la poesia, la narrativa, l’assaig i la novel·la. Un dels grans amics de Josep Pla, també va conèixer Salvador Espriu, que va ser qui el va batejar amb el pseudònim de Ventura Ametller, i li va suggerir que tindria més sortida literària que el seu propi nom, Bonaventura Clavaguera Clavaguera.
Autor d’una llarga obra literària, molta de la qual roman encara inèdita, Ventura Ametller ha publicat l’assaig Teoria general de l’universalisme (1979), i els poemaris El primer quadern de Bel Dezir (1981), amb el qual va guanyar el Premi de Poesia Marià Manent, i Paradigmes esotèrics (1991). Publicà Summa kaòtica l’any 1986, novel·la que suposa la culminació del seu treball literari.
Autor d’una llarga obra literària, molta de la qual roman encara inèdita, Ventura Ametller ha publicat l’assaig Teoria general de l’universalisme (1979), i els poemaris El primer quadern de Bel Dezir (1981), amb el qual va guanyar el Premi de Poesia Marià Manent, i Paradigmes esotèrics (1991). Publicà Summa kaòtica l’any 1986, novel·la que suposa la culminació del seu treball literari.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 25, 2023
Another one of those Great Untranslated Classics, Ventura Ametller could be read as a sort of Catalan Cărtărescu. He has written a surreal, antifascist novel, or, as one critic put it, "translated Dalí's paintings into words". In the book, we get acquainted with Protomorphus-Anamorphus-Metamorphus, a little boy who looks at the world as a grown-up person would do. He is born into a wealthy Catalan family, but Francoism soon destroys everything they have. Ametller's novel clearly deals with the period of Spanish Civil War, but it is no realist depiction of it at all. Instead, all the places and characters have different names. Catalonia is "The Dissident Republic", the Catalan language is called "bacanard" (a term which means "lamebrained" and "resident of the town of Begur" at the same time, referring to Franco's rigorous suppression of Catalan language), and the dictator himself is "Nemesius". Reality has been transformed into a Rabelaisian powerhouse. Arcane sources are being consulted: black and white magic, mysticism, books of history... Clearly, this is a novel you first have to find your way into, but it is as rewarding as it is funny and moving.
February 13, 2024
Longlisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize
Dali meets Pynchon plus Cervantes and Sterne in a Surrealist Satire of Spain.
“Summa Kaotica” was published in Catalan in 1986, a decade or so after the death of Franco and in many ways a riposte to his supression of Catalonia and the Catalan language.
It has now been admirably and ambitiously translated into English by Douglas Suttle, who in his Translator’s note (and kudos to the publisher for including one) acknowledges the difficulties he faced.
It is published by the small press Fun D’Estampa which Suttle founded to “bring exciting, different Catalan language literature to an English speaking audience” and this book fits the aim of the press perfectly.
It purports to be a found manuscript of an “Antihistorian” Great Petter White O’Sullivan/Pere Blanc Suc D’Olives which tells the story both of the main character Protomorpuhs/Anamophus/Metamorphus (identities in this name are as shifting and as hard to pin down as what is actually happening) and of the Empire of Bacanardia (a kind of re-imagined Catalonia) and the suppresion of its society and language by the Holy Kingdom of Synaphia (Spain) under its leader Nemesuis (Franco).
The book itself has some of the bildungsroman qualities of a “Tristram Shandy” (including with the titular character starting as a spermatozoa), the episodic epic/yarn like adventures of Don Quixote (early on the characters fall into a quest to rescue some golden treasure from a fierce dragon which turns out to be sweetcorn guarded by a pig), the referential complexity of Pynchon, and the surrealism of a Dali painting (including unfortunately the rather questionable portrayal of sex).
And to be perfectly honest I did not really understand much if anything of it – despite an incredibly helpful guide to the original novel here (which as is obvious from the title of the blog pre-dates Suttle’s admirable translation and publication).
https://theuntranslated.wordpress.com...
An example (from the guide not the novel):
Bearing in mind that this is an “explanation” of the far more convoluted source text, and refers to only one small part of the novel, you may get an idea of the complexity and may wish to read the guide in full before deciding whether to embark on the novel; or if you start the novel whether to continue or like me to put it to one side.
SK is like a river. Its waters come from streams, brooks, drains, irrigation channels and tributaries... Some of the waters leave this river, never to return; others unexpectedly reintegrate themselves downstream... And all is mixed and circulated, chaotic, indiscernible... until the sea.
The geography: the static, perpetual, unchanging thing we were told about at school will be altered entirely. Names will be changed, longitudes and latitudes turned upside down, the landscapes and distances lengthened or cut short... All will be what it is, while simultaneously being something else entirely.
SK demonstrates the indetermination, relativity, inexactness, possibility, etc. of a world that has long wanted to present itself to us as logical, mathematical and unalterable... When it is not.
The actors: they are real beings; uprooted from the purest damned reality and who, set forth on this immense altarpiece, act antihistorically. They are beings the lives of whom have transcended their hidebound, miserable condition and who, through their acts and words, are now - hidden yet still visible - those they wished to be or could have been.
Dali meets Pynchon plus Cervantes and Sterne in a Surrealist Satire of Spain.
“Summa Kaotica” was published in Catalan in 1986, a decade or so after the death of Franco and in many ways a riposte to his supression of Catalonia and the Catalan language.
It has now been admirably and ambitiously translated into English by Douglas Suttle, who in his Translator’s note (and kudos to the publisher for including one) acknowledges the difficulties he faced.
It is published by the small press Fun D’Estampa which Suttle founded to “bring exciting, different Catalan language literature to an English speaking audience” and this book fits the aim of the press perfectly.
It purports to be a found manuscript of an “Antihistorian” Great Petter White O’Sullivan/Pere Blanc Suc D’Olives which tells the story both of the main character Protomorpuhs/Anamophus/Metamorphus (identities in this name are as shifting and as hard to pin down as what is actually happening) and of the Empire of Bacanardia (a kind of re-imagined Catalonia) and the suppresion of its society and language by the Holy Kingdom of Synaphia (Spain) under its leader Nemesuis (Franco).
The book itself has some of the bildungsroman qualities of a “Tristram Shandy” (including with the titular character starting as a spermatozoa), the episodic epic/yarn like adventures of Don Quixote (early on the characters fall into a quest to rescue some golden treasure from a fierce dragon which turns out to be sweetcorn guarded by a pig), the referential complexity of Pynchon, and the surrealism of a Dali painting (including unfortunately the rather questionable portrayal of sex).
And to be perfectly honest I did not really understand much if anything of it – despite an incredibly helpful guide to the original novel here (which as is obvious from the title of the blog pre-dates Suttle’s admirable translation and publication).
https://theuntranslated.wordpress.com...
An example (from the guide not the novel):
The other meeting is with a fellow called Ribas Barefoot (Descalç) who is compelled to crawl on hands and knees (antithetically to the upright-walking vampire dog) because of the damaged sacrum. The boy accompanies him to the house of the local alchemist Xarina in whose underground laboratory the ailing man hopes to regain the ability to walk normally. Xarina’s cellar with its alchemist and Kabbalistic incunabula, specimen jars, apothecary pots, astrological charts, owls and bats flying at large, and other esoteric paraphernalia is the source of two great dangers to humanity: atomic energy and Nazi apologia. The former lurks in the melting pot Atanor, in which Xarina hopes to generate wine that will never inebriate the drinker, but which, according to the great Jewish prophet Albert, will produce an alchemical egg with a terrible infant inside capable of transforming the whole world into a ball of fire. The latter threat is posed by the beer bottle with the soul of Erik Jan Hanussen, occultist and Hitler’s clairvoyant adviser. After a healing ritual interrupted by the restless Anamorphus, Ribas can stand again but is incapable of sitting down. In order to find out the solution to this problem, Xarina consults three talking heads (they might have served as the model for the prophetic head in Miquel de Palol’s novel "Igur Nebli"): the Cybernetic Head fabricated from leather by Gerbert of Aurillac, better known as Pope Sylvester II, the Celtic Head of a mummified druid presented to Xarina by the French alchemist Eugene Canseliet, and the Peabrained Head (Cap Cigrany) that used to belong to some local denizen. Believing that by giving the heads wine, he will be able to obtain valuable knowledge, Xarina provokes havoc as a result of which he ends up drinking the beer with the trapped soul of the Führer’s psychic and becomes Hhaannuusseenn-Xarina, the future personal magician of the autochthonous Führer Nemesius.
Bearing in mind that this is an “explanation” of the far more convoluted source text, and refers to only one small part of the novel, you may get an idea of the complexity and may wish to read the guide in full before deciding whether to embark on the novel; or if you start the novel whether to continue or like me to put it to one side.
February 5, 2024
Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2024, UK & Ireland
SK is like a river. Its waters come from from streams, brooks, drains, channels and tributaries ... Some of the waters leave this river, never to return; others unexpectedly reintegrate themselves downstream ... And all is mixed and circulated, chaotic, indiscernible ... until the sea.
The geography: the static, perpetual, unchanging thing we were told about at school will be altered entirely. Names will be changed, longitudes and latitudes turned upside down, the landscapes and distances lengthened or cut short... All will be what it is, while simultaneously being something else entirely. SK demonstrates the indetermination, relativity, inexactness, possibility, etc. of a world that has long wanted to present itself to us as logical, mathematical and unalterable... When it is not.
The actors: they are real beings; uprooted from the purest damned reality and who, set forth on this immense altarpiece, act antihistorically. They are beings the lives of whom have transcended their hidebound, miserable condition and who, through their acts and words, are now - hidden yet still visible - those they wished to be or could have been.
Summa Kaotica is Douglas Suttle's bravura translation of Ventura Ametller's novel, a surrealist re-telling of Catalan history around the time of the Civil War, a bawdy picaresque and sprawling tale. This is an fantastical and differently named Catalonia, a surreal anti-history - as one small example the 1929 stock market crash here is caused by a sudden shortage in the supply of feathers from flying cows.
Suttle has rendered the Anglo-reader a great service by bringing the novel into English, although the nature of the translation form does cause two issues.
The novel features copious play in its choice of names for places and people and Suttle has deliberately left the Catalan words untranslated. He’s done this out of respect for the language - whose preservation, in defiance of its prohibition, is one of the key themes of the novel - but it does mean that an otherwise riotous read is frequently interrupted by footnotes to explain puns.
An issue with reading translated literature can be delays in its publication in English. This was originally written in 1982, and its objectification of the female characters reads (being charitable) as of its time - or perhaps one could say of its literary precedents particularly Gargantua and Pantagruel.
I suspect Suttle felt rather like the fictional editor of the book which purports to be assembled from THE TYPESCRIPT OF THE GREAT PETTER WHITE O’SULLIVAN, ANTIHISTORIAN.
To recompile, arrange, clarify, transcribe - ever faithful to the text to the letter - the disordered mound of Petter White O’Sullivan's papers is a task as delirious as it is thrilling. Never have I come across such a concentration of sapiential energy immersed in such demented chaos. The multitudinous characters pile up, break, disperse, return and mingle, ceasing to be so much a people as to become masses that are governed or ungoverned by mysterious powers. A whole world of an irrationalism that has dominated the lives of the men of this century. Very few manage to stay true to themselves in terms of the necessary common sense. Very few remain an authentic, real people. Just as ambition for power dements, so the power of attraction of the mass is irresistible. Yet Petter White O'Sullivan, his parchments doused in miserable grandiosity, has succeeded in bringing to it a symphonic, epic tone that characterises the painful blend of peoples subjugated under this most horrible of catechisms.
A detailed summary of the novel can be found on the Untranslated blog - from 2021 before the English translation was known:
https://theuntranslated.wordpress.com...
SK is like a river. Its waters come from from streams, brooks, drains, channels and tributaries ... Some of the waters leave this river, never to return; others unexpectedly reintegrate themselves downstream ... And all is mixed and circulated, chaotic, indiscernible ... until the sea.
The geography: the static, perpetual, unchanging thing we were told about at school will be altered entirely. Names will be changed, longitudes and latitudes turned upside down, the landscapes and distances lengthened or cut short... All will be what it is, while simultaneously being something else entirely. SK demonstrates the indetermination, relativity, inexactness, possibility, etc. of a world that has long wanted to present itself to us as logical, mathematical and unalterable... When it is not.
The actors: they are real beings; uprooted from the purest damned reality and who, set forth on this immense altarpiece, act antihistorically. They are beings the lives of whom have transcended their hidebound, miserable condition and who, through their acts and words, are now - hidden yet still visible - those they wished to be or could have been.
Summa Kaotica is Douglas Suttle's bravura translation of Ventura Ametller's novel, a surrealist re-telling of Catalan history around the time of the Civil War, a bawdy picaresque and sprawling tale. This is an fantastical and differently named Catalonia, a surreal anti-history - as one small example the 1929 stock market crash here is caused by a sudden shortage in the supply of feathers from flying cows.
Suttle has rendered the Anglo-reader a great service by bringing the novel into English, although the nature of the translation form does cause two issues.
The novel features copious play in its choice of names for places and people and Suttle has deliberately left the Catalan words untranslated. He’s done this out of respect for the language - whose preservation, in defiance of its prohibition, is one of the key themes of the novel - but it does mean that an otherwise riotous read is frequently interrupted by footnotes to explain puns.
An issue with reading translated literature can be delays in its publication in English. This was originally written in 1982, and its objectification of the female characters reads (being charitable) as of its time - or perhaps one could say of its literary precedents particularly Gargantua and Pantagruel.
I suspect Suttle felt rather like the fictional editor of the book which purports to be assembled from THE TYPESCRIPT OF THE GREAT PETTER WHITE O’SULLIVAN, ANTIHISTORIAN.
To recompile, arrange, clarify, transcribe - ever faithful to the text to the letter - the disordered mound of Petter White O’Sullivan's papers is a task as delirious as it is thrilling. Never have I come across such a concentration of sapiential energy immersed in such demented chaos. The multitudinous characters pile up, break, disperse, return and mingle, ceasing to be so much a people as to become masses that are governed or ungoverned by mysterious powers. A whole world of an irrationalism that has dominated the lives of the men of this century. Very few manage to stay true to themselves in terms of the necessary common sense. Very few remain an authentic, real people. Just as ambition for power dements, so the power of attraction of the mass is irresistible. Yet Petter White O'Sullivan, his parchments doused in miserable grandiosity, has succeeded in bringing to it a symphonic, epic tone that characterises the painful blend of peoples subjugated under this most horrible of catechisms.
A detailed summary of the novel can be found on the Untranslated blog - from 2021 before the English translation was known:
https://theuntranslated.wordpress.com...
February 11, 2024
A surrealist Catalan novel which Douglas Settle, founder of the small press Fum d’Estampa, was recently mad enough to translate and publish, Summa Kaotica mocks both sides of the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent Franco regime through use of a zany inventive language and outlandish plot scenarios. Its enemy is the green froth of totalitarianism spread by fleas and potato beetles that enters by the ears and takes over the mind. It is a riposte to the proclamation of the new authoritarian regime: “chastity in zpectacle, books and publicazions. Nothing zpicy or zaucy!” It is overflowing with a wild creativity that makes it somewhat difficult to follow yet often quite compelling.
I found it best when following its child protagonist Anamorphus on wild adventures, which dominate Part One, beginning with a sequence of linearly told set pieces. Anamorphus goes on an adventure into the deep woods with a vampire-werewolf and its human doppelgänger who think they can seize a dragon’s treasure. He goes to a mad wizard’s lair where a sequence of events leads to an ancient talking head floating about causing trouble. Villagers hold a satanic mass in the local cathedral and prematurely burn it down around themselves. And so on.
It tended to weaken my interest when pulling back its focus to riff on wider political and societal happenings, giving the reader firehoses of language full of nonsensical proper nouns to refer to people and groups that may be clever in Catalan but lose references and meaning in an English version (this is in fact one of the book’s outstanding features, which seems destined to get lost in any translation). Part Two was more of this.
It is fully imaginative; partly, it is in bad taste, particularly in sexual matters in which there are uncomfortable elements of abuse. Is that sort of thing more permissible in a surrealist satire? And now I’m thinking of a quote from Nick Cave that has stuck in my head since I heard it twenty years ago: “How can the imagination be told how to behave?”. Amettler’s imagination is not on its good behavior in repeated cases, let’s stipulate to that.
The following passage may get across a suitable impression of all the above in a short bit. Anamorphus and his caregiver have walked to the city of Jobville, supposedly a utopian republican paradise but actually full of filth and starving people in a physical environment drawing from Dante’s version of Hell:
Recommended for readers who like a challenge. 3.5 for me with a bonus half point for originality.
I found it best when following its child protagonist Anamorphus on wild adventures, which dominate Part One, beginning with a sequence of linearly told set pieces. Anamorphus goes on an adventure into the deep woods with a vampire-werewolf and its human doppelgänger who think they can seize a dragon’s treasure. He goes to a mad wizard’s lair where a sequence of events leads to an ancient talking head floating about causing trouble. Villagers hold a satanic mass in the local cathedral and prematurely burn it down around themselves. And so on.
It tended to weaken my interest when pulling back its focus to riff on wider political and societal happenings, giving the reader firehoses of language full of nonsensical proper nouns to refer to people and groups that may be clever in Catalan but lose references and meaning in an English version (this is in fact one of the book’s outstanding features, which seems destined to get lost in any translation). Part Two was more of this.
It is fully imaginative; partly, it is in bad taste, particularly in sexual matters in which there are uncomfortable elements of abuse. Is that sort of thing more permissible in a surrealist satire? And now I’m thinking of a quote from Nick Cave that has stuck in my head since I heard it twenty years ago: “How can the imagination be told how to behave?”. Amettler’s imagination is not on its good behavior in repeated cases, let’s stipulate to that.
The following passage may get across a suitable impression of all the above in a short bit. Anamorphus and his caregiver have walked to the city of Jobville, supposedly a utopian republican paradise but actually full of filth and starving people in a physical environment drawing from Dante’s version of Hell:
In the light of a blurry full moon amidst the ghostly fog and in the company of skull-like stars, inhabited by evil thoughts, they arrived at the deepest point of the crater-puddle, the enormous, formless centre, the rotten heart of Jobville. Putrefactive materials, dried excrement, menstrual rags, placentas and aborted babies were being burnt everywhere in macabre fires that smoked out the smoky shadows. Night was day for the Jobville insane, and the no-space (no-streets, no-squares) were filled with half-naked spectres and utterly degenerate, infected whores who emerged from the brothels and venereal hospices in search of illusory food. From a recess where the stinking smoke made breathing impossible, a reptilian voice muttered: “If my eyes do not fail me, I would swear you are Gigi. But you are very well-dressed, like an Amazon Queen or Valkyrie and accompanied by a most handsome youth.” They turned and saw some manner of human mummy, nude and wrinkled.
“Hello, Asheverus!” said Kamil-la-Gigi-Minne.
Recommended for readers who like a challenge. 3.5 for me with a bonus half point for originality.
November 1, 2023
If you want the story of the author's (and Catalonia's) formative experiences before, during, and after the Spanish Civil War, told through the form of a surrealist, picaresque folk epic, full of comedy, tragedy and Dionysian revelry, then look no further.
An incredible text, the likes of which I've never read before, and probably won't be able to until Resta Kaotica is released in translation next year. Bring on 2024!
An incredible text, the likes of which I've never read before, and probably won't be able to until Resta Kaotica is released in translation next year. Bring on 2024!
July 21, 2022
Un dels llibres més originals que he llegit. Una descripció distòpica i màgica de la Guerra Civil. Una originalitat en el món literari català que ha passat més desapercebuda del que caldria.
Una troballa. No goso aconsellar que el llegiu perquè és molt especial i no tinc clar que tothom s'hi pugui posar. Si us agraden les propostes originals, no us le podeu perdre !
Una troballa. No goso aconsellar que el llegiu perquè és molt especial i no tinc clar que tothom s'hi pugui posar. Si us agraden les propostes originals, no us le podeu perdre !
January 12, 2025
passed joyfully over my head for the most part - indulged in the Boschian goodness with very little sense of the many layers of historical illusion, but had a wonderful time regardless. inspiring as an effort in language preservation, completely fucking deranged as a novel, overall really thrilled to have come across something so hugely singular amid the total dross of the library stacks!
February 4, 2024
I tried very hard to finish this and ultimately stopped 400 pages in. I'm sorry.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews