Leica Format

by Daša Drndić

Leica Format es una obra brillante, compleja y caleidoscópica que aúna, en un impresionante collage, hechos reales e historias de ficción a través de un entramado de personajes y lugares que nos conducen por el mapa mental de una ciudad en decadencia. En una continua superposición de relatos, Daša Drndić nos adentra en los mundos de diferentes protagonistas, a veces destinados a cruzarse, otras obligados a quedarse solo cerca: una pianista que no recuerda su identidad llega a una ciudad y, sin saberlo, regresa a su pasado; un hospital austríaco aún conserva en secreto los experimentos de eugenesia realizados bajo el dominio nazi; un médico recala en una ciudad costera en la que verá su futuro marcado para siempre; un hombre colecciona libros de El Principito; otro está obsesionado con los nombres; una mujer busca un lugar en su ciudad, donde siempre se sentirá extranjera.

Deambulando por Rijeka, entre ecos de Austria-Hungría, los años del Holocausto y los del fin de Yugoslavia, Daša Drndić arroja al lector a esta historia de historias; una obra poética y errante, una narrativa de saltos, fugas y secretos ocultos, que dialoga con algunas de las grandes obras de la tradición literaria occidental (de Pessoa a Calvino, de Sebald a Eliot, de Bernhard a Baudelaire) y da forma a una fina pieza de orfebrería en la que se entreveran los fríos datos de la investigación documental y las pulsiones de sus protagonistas.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, 21st Century

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Daša Drndić (1946-2018) was a distinguished Croatian novelist, playwright and literary critic, author of radio plays and documentaries. She was born in Zagreb, and studied English language and literature at the University of Belgrade. Drndić worked as an editor, a professor of English, and as a TV programme editor in Belgrade. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Rijeka in Croatia, where she later taught. She is the author of thirteen novels including Leica Format (2003), Sonnenschein (2007), Trieste (2011) and Belladonna (2012). Her works have been translated into many languages, and Drndić has won the International Literary Award “Prozart" in 2014, awarded to a prominent author for their contribution towards the development of the literature on the Balkans. Her work has also been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the inaugral EBRD Literature Prize.

Reviews

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This translation was first published in 2015, but has been out of print for a few years and second hand copies were getting rather expensive, so when Maclehose Press announced that they were issuing cheaper paperback editions of the four Drndić novels they had rights for, this was the only one I didn't already have. There are still more of her books that have yet to be translated, and although this one, Trieste, Belladonna and E.E.G. all share common characteristics and are to some extent complementary, I hope that Anglophone publishers will take an interest in the rest.

It is a little difficult to review this book in isolation - like the other three books I mentioned, it mixes history, personal stories and a little invention and cover a wide range of subject matter. The unifying theme of this one is introduced at the start - the three meanings of the word fugue. As in her other books, Drndić deals unflinchingly with Nazi atrocities and their after-effects in Croatia, this time the main focus of that is the use of humans in medical experimentation.

Another theme is the invention of modern Croatia - like many in the former Yugoslavia Drndić had a complicated mixture of Balkan nationalities, and spent much of her life living in the Yugoslav/Serbian capital Belgrade, which made her life after returning to the new Croatia challenging.

[Kansas · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Cuando a veces (cada vez menos) voy a visitar a mi padre a la que podríamos llamar mi ciudad de nacimiento, que al mismo tiempo me es absolutamente ajena, como lo es esta pequeña localidad en la que ahora resido, como lo son todas las ciudades por las que he deambulado esta última década, como se me ha vuelto ajena y extraña la ciudad en la que viví durante cuarenta años cuando hace poco volvi a visitarla..."

Esta cita define perfectamente el concepto de lo que Dasa Drndic quiere tansmitir con Leica Format. La ciudad es la gran protagonista de esta obra hechizante, una autora a la que no conocía y que desde ya forma parte de mis favoritas en lo que va de año. La ciudad como protagonista absoluta porque visibiliza de alguna forma las cicatrices del pasado, la huella que ese pasado ha dejado a su paso, así que aunque la autora pase de una historia a otra relatando las vivencias de sus personajes, la mayoría ya convertidos en fantasmas, realmente es la ciudad, el entorno y sus calles la auténtica superviviente, cicatrizada, destruida o renovada.

"A veces me preguntan: -¿Es usted serbia?-. Y a veces se inclinan sobre el mostrador y me dicen en voz baja: -Yo también soy serbia-. Entonces las dos sonreímos."

Dasa Drndic construye una obra que es como un mosaico de relatos, pero yo diría que es como un documental de pequeñas historias, y tal como indica su titulo, también podría ser una colección de fotografías guardadas en una caja, esperando que alguien las rescate del olvido. Dasa Drndic las desentierra y desempolva y las usa para visiblizar historias del pasado, algunas traumáticas, algunas pequeñas y personales y otras relacionadas con la historia: desde la huella dejada por la Segunda Guerra Mundial, pasando por el trauma de la desintegración de la antigua Yugoslavia en forma de gente desplazándose, en continuo movimiento, cambiando de lengua y de patria, al mismo tiempo que las relaciona con textos de Bernhard, Italo Calvino o Sebald, autores a los que tiene siempre presentes.

“No te fíes de tu memoria; tu memoria es una red llena de agujeros; el pasado y el presente la traspasan, todo traspasa tu memoria, tu memoria es un agujero.” (Georges Duhamel)

Buceando en la biografia de Dasa Drndic descubro que se vio obligada a abandonar Belgrado al principio de la década de los 90 debido a la llegada de los nacionalismos. En 1995 se mudó a Canadá con su hija, aunque posteriormente volvió. Todo esto está en Leica Format, una obra autobiográfica donde mezcla historias de su familia, de su tierra con hechos del pasado histórico. Leica Format es ante todo una obra obsesionada por rescatar la memoria del pasado a través de las pequeñas historias ya olvidadas, y para ello Dasa Drndic no permite en ningún momento ese olvido cuestionando la segregación étnica y el nacionalismo más radical, porque la historia se repite una y otra vez. La traducción es de Juan Cristobal Díaz.

"¿Kapucinski? ¿Sabe lo que dijo ese Kapucinski? Kapucinski, aquel polaco. Todo se repite, eso es lo que dijo. La repetición es la clave y el enigma, eso es lo que dijo. Sabemos que volverá a ocurrir lo mismo, aun cuando aspiramos a que se repita. Todo se reduce a lo siguiente: deseo de repetición y miedo de la repetición. El ritmo de la repetición. El hombre es un esclavo."

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

So says Thomas Bernhard. If he were alive, I’d propose to Thomas Bernhard, I’d propose, I’d say, Thomas, stay close at hand, Thomas, I like your fugue, show me how one goes away, and I’ll bring you little boxes for breathing.

Leica Format (2003), translated by Celia Hawkesworth (in 2015) from Daša Drndić's 2003 original, is the 5th of the author's novels. The novel's introductory paragraph, contrasting three different meanings of fugue, rather writes its own review.

Fugue – a medical disorder involving memory loss, long-term amnesia, during which mental capacity is not disturbed. The condition may provoke a headlong departure from familiar surroundings as the result of an insuperable, uncontrolled need to create a new life (in new surroundings). Following recovery, the sufferer does not recall the previous – pathological – state. From the Latin word fuga – flight, particularly flight from the homeland, persecution, but also expulsion.

Fugue – a polyphonic musical composition in which themes are repeated successively according to specific rules; an artistic form with a theme and response, which is not the case with these sketches that are in fact junk; they contain no response, because it is debatable whether they pose questions at all, any kind of questions. They are sometimes repeated, repeated according to “specific rules”, and they are sometimes also outside them, but they have nothing more to ask.

Fugue – a German architectural term, a joint between stones or tiles; a deliberate gap in the building process to obviate the possibility of the construction developing fissures; a crack, which might be a metaphor for this debris.

There is less of sense of one binding thread here than in Trieste / Belladonna / EEG, indeed the book that this most reminded me of was Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights, Drndic’s fugues serving a similar purpose to Tokarczuk’s constellations (as well as some similar themes):

Sometimes curious coincidences occur, those coincidences have nothing to do with this town, they are general coincidences, existential coincidences, overlappings, crisscrossings, chance happenings never fully resolved, little cosmic earthquakes, that is, neglected time, melted time, resembling literary fabrications, elusive.

One recurrrent theme however is that of medical experiments carried out on unsuspected or helpless suspects, including but certainly not exclusively, by Nazi doctors in WW2 (eg the Tuskegee experiments in the US on African-Americans with syphilis who were delibarately denied treatment so the progress of the disease through from 1932-1972):

Sixty years after the war, conscience was still carrying out a search of its own hiding places, it couldn’t rest, it dug through the archives and dossiers, through the memories of the survivors. Medical faculties and institutes, factories producing glass, cars, medicines, steel, banks, churches, museums, cemeteries throughout Austria and Germany hide the rotten corpses of historical remains, submerged in the muddy depths of the past, worm-eaten and deformed. The past refuses to sink, it floats on waters that spread a stench, but keep flowing on, here, there, throughout the world; the past attacks the memory, digs through recollections, endeavours to clean up its rubbish, the great junk heap of the world. This pathetically late effort, this nauseating human aspiration to obtain forgiveness for unforgiveable sins committed, this longing for purification from unpurifiable sins, is carried out in a whisper, with downcast eyes, half secretly, unwillingly and cravenly.

...

As far as experiments are concerned, why did history latch on to us, S.S. members? We had models to learn from. The Japanese, the Americans, multinational companies. Pharmaceutical factories all over the world are still carrying out experiments on people, they are producing new biological weapons. In the name of the future. In the name of progress.

And a sense of displacement runs through the book, including that of the narrator, exiled from Belgrade to the (now small) town of Rijeka by the Yugoslavian civil war, but, with her Serbian accent and vocabulary, also an exile within the now Croatian city.   

For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name.

The chronicling of the gradual decline of Rijeka, from its heights as a major port during the heyday of the Austrian-Hungarian empire to provincial irrelevance, also serves as a salutary lesson for Brexit.

As often, Drndic borrows freely from European literature, incorporating the voices and words of authors such as Pessoa, Italo Calvino, Charles Baudelaire, Kapuściński, Yeats, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Mirjana Stefanović, Wisława Szymborska and of course Thomas Bernhard.  

Overall, for me this suffered a little from reading in relatively close succession to three other Drndic novels.   The 3 star (3.5 rounded down) rating is relative to her other works, but she was a vitally important writer and I strongly recommend Trieste in particular and indeed all her (translated) fiction, complete with intertextual elements (characters from this reappear in Belladonna), and which blends into one overall 5 star work.

Daša Drndić and Thomas Bernhard

As she stated in an interview in 2017 on her most important influence:

What comes to mind immediately is Thomas Bernhard, because he gave me the courage, I saw that you can be angry, you don’t have to be polite, you can be nasty, you can criticize. And while reading him I was so happy that I had the right to be angry: with my country, with politics. Because during this old system I was just thinking now: you could talk softly against your country and the party at home. When you went abroad that was sort of forbidden. You weren’t supposed to criticize your country and also it was also preferable to drop by the embassy or the consulate and tell them you were there. And Bernhard said, when I read his first book translated into Serbian, it was „Frost” I think, some thirty years ago, then they discovered him in Croatia, so, when I first read him I thought: „This is wonderful, you can be angry, you can curse, you can really say what you think if you really know how to say it".

In this novel, quoting The Loser, translated by Jack Dawson:

Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it’s original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn’t born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death.

So says Thomas Bernhard. If he were alive, I’d propose to Thomas Bernhard, I’d propose, I’d say, Thomas, stay close at hand, Thomas, I like your fugue, show me how one goes away, and I’ll bring you little boxes for breathing.

Bibliography.

Daša Drndić's last 6 works of fiction were:

Doppelgänger (2002), translated into English as Doppelgänger ( 2018) by Celia Hawkesworth and SD Curtis
My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Shortlisted for 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize

Leica Format (2003), translated into English as Leica Format (2015) by Celia Hawkesworth
My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Sonnenschein (2007), translated into English as Trieste (2012) by Ellen Elias-Bursać
My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Shortlisted for 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

April u Berlinu (2009), as yet untranslated

Belladonna (2012), translated into English as Belladonna 2017, by Celia Hawkesworth
My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Winner 2018 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Prize and was shortlisted for the 2018 EBRD Literature Prize and 2018 Oxford Weidenfeld Prize

E.E.G (2016), translated into English as E.E.G. (2018), by Celia Hawkesworth
My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Guillermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeats, Pessoa, Calvino o Bernhard aparecen por sus páginas. Pero también Sebald, Beckett y Tokarczuk de una manera menos explícita. Daša Drndić es una escritora monumental y 'Leica Format' uno de los mejores libros que he leído este año.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Sometimes curious coincidences occur, those coincidences have nothing to do with this town, they are general coincidences, existential coincidences, overlappings, crisscrossings, chance happenings never fully resolved, little cosmic earthquakes, that is, neglected time, melted time, resembling literary fabrications, elusive."

Daša Drndić takes genre conventions and throws them out of the window, then chops up the mangled corpse into tiny pieces & sets them on fire before finally scattering leftover ashes to the four winds. The best way to talk about Leica Format is to call it "faction" and it defies the appellation of "novel". There is no plot, no narrative, no story. You cannot even call it a character-driven book. It's hybrid, a polyphonic chimera changing forms and widening its subjective scope.

The first person narrator is an older woman with a daughter who's forced into exile due to the Yugoslavian civil war from Belgrade, Serbia to Rijeka, Croatia. In part, the book looks at Eastern Europe in the 20th century, particularly Croatia and Serbia. Rijeka was reduced from an important port city to a minor town after the war and Drndić explores stagnation & destabilization, in the aftermath. So the narrator documents inter-ethnic tension, linguistic nationalism, provincialism & prejudice through her own & her family's lived experiences.

That is or course a small, if significant, part of the book. There are chapters on syphillis, tracing the disease through a presumed old now dead relative which then moves on to a chapter about US immigration in early 20th century from the PoV of the ship that takes them followed by the immigrants speaking about themselves, their hopes and dreams, the changes and scrutiny they'll have to go through.

In a larger sense, Drndić also talks of mutable borders and nations, migration and exile, movement and displacement. It also discusses medical experimentations on unsuspecting helpless human subjects, esp. small children. Nazi doctors, pharma companies, US and Japan, it covers lot of things. The horrific concentration camps, Tuskegee, and events in Eastern Europe.

Drndić opens with three distinct definitions of "fugue", and the novel links up with them in the way its written, structured, narrated & the subjects it covers, addresses, explores. Apart from this, there are no other concrete overarching arc or thread that tightly binds the book. This does make it challenging to read and it can get tedious. I don't imagine everyone loving it or appreciating it. There were sections that made me want to skim. Still, this rating you see is conservative and can go up when I read her two other books.

I quite appreciated the way Drndić borrows from other European writers, quoting them wherever necessary, mixing them together in a book that's public and personal history, invention and documentation. It is truly an extraordinary book. I am really impressed. I am a fan of her lists, a characteristic aspect of her writing. I can also see how she influenced Maaza Mengiste. This English translation by Celia Hawkesworth from the Croatian is exceptionally done.

[MargeryK · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a difficult, but rewarding book this is. I borrowed it on a whim from Whitehaven Library, because it looked intriguing. I got it home and googled it and still couldn't come up with any reviews that could tell me what it's about.

So what is it? It's a meandering examination of folk who have at one time or another lived in a largely unnamed town in Croatia. Some more googling revealed it to be Fiume. Or what used to be called Fiume. I can't recall the new name and am tired of googling. Do it yourself. It's that sort of book. Really, it doesn't matter.

There is a theme that runs through the book - that of man's inhumanity to man, especially in the name of science or eugenics. It also touches on epidemiology. It's not a light and breezy book.

As I wrote in one of my progress reviews, reading this is like watching a documentary, but one of those documentaries that doesn't deign to have a narrator. You must watch the pictures and piece them together yourself. This is a written version of one of those.

[Matthias · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a very personal collage about the author, a city, their past - full of quotations from other writers, newspapers, magazines. I felt reminded of Walter Benjamin's monumental and unfinished Arcade Project, of which Drndić quotes the most famous passage.

I find such collage works awkward to read: On one hand, I feel like trespassing on somebody's soul, or I feel plain ignorant when I cannot make connections. On the other hand, one comes across insights that make it hard to abandon the book - I feel I should know this person, this place, this book better.

[alessandra falca · Rating 4 out of 5]

All'inizio non sapevo se avrei continuato a leggerlo. Ma poi, la scrittura, i pensieri, i link, i passaggi, le storie raccontate da Daša ti fanno andare avanti. E scopri di leggere un libro profondo e molto bello. Una storia che è un insieme di storie sull'amore e la morte. Sulla malattia. Sulla guerra. Una follia linguistica. Una romanzo sulla perdita. E sullo scrivere. Non semplice, ma molto profondo.

[Hester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok . I admit it . I'm a fan girl .

Impossible to summarize this book is a deep dive into the way history , emigration, war and disease leaves a residue deep within a Croatian coastal town , once famed for its healing properties , it's lively nightlife and it's Bohemian residents , it's point of departure to the USA but now shuddering into poverty , forgotten and decaying.

There's no story , just one digression So after another as we experience the town through the eyes of the writer , herself exiled here after living in Belgrade but considered an outsider as she struggles with language and friendship . It's a bricolage , part history , part anecdote , fact and fiction , past and present , where human life is cheap and the outrages of medical experimentation in and beyond the Nazi regime hums under the surface of normality .

So much has been forgotten or reinvented , so much is senselessly repeated , so many people have been thrown into chaos by disease and war . But by focusing on the smallest details Drndic brings fragments of the past back into our emotional focus , giving life to the forgotten , to those whose lives were only of importance to a very few .

[María · Rating 5 out of 5]

«La repetición es la clave y el enigma (…) Sabemos que volverá a ocurrir lo mismo, aun cuando aspiramos a que se repita. Todo se reduce a lo siguiente: deseo de repetición y miedo de la repetición.»

«Una vez más queda demostrado que los hilos con los que se tejen las vidas humanas jamás se rompen del todo, esos hilos se entretejen, se enredan, hasta que finalmente se disgregan en una especie de sustancia protoplasmática indetectable a simple vista, en una sustancia viva que se mueve, se desplaza, en un protozoo ameboide que se extiende a nuestro alrededor, se retuerce, cambia de forma, se dispersa, hasta que nos circunda por completo a todos y nos engulle.»

[Justine Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ramblings on Leica Format by Daša Drndić (tr. Celia Hawkesworth)

Leica Format is a collage made up of snapshots of places and individuals, snippets of literature and history, stories both personal and invented.

The thread that weaves these sections together is at times imperceptible, especially early on, but as one reads on, themes, rifts, and motifs recur throughout the work, and it becomes clear that what connects these sections, large and small, are the atrocities and inhumanity that mankind is capable of committing against fellow humans.

Leica Format gracefully and seamlessly flows from one genre to the next, to the point where what is real and unreal no longer matters, because it all is so unbearably rooted in the cruel reality we have erected for ourselves.

At times, Drndić overwhelms the reader with a barrage of facts and images. It is easy to gloss over them, as we modern-day humans have become so adept at in the face of yet another atrocity, no longer able to internalize the significance of each fact, date, event, age, name, face. But Drndić doesn’t let the reader off so easy. She stops her stream of facts, she lets gaze of her words to rest on an individual, forcing the reader to see and remember the human that really lies there behind a name or statistic.

Drndić looks at the atrocities of history, never flinching or holding back. She deals with war, forced migration, concentration camps, medical experimentation. But most importantly, she exposes the cruelty not only of those carrying out mass atrocities but of everyone else-- those present and those born decades later-- who avert their eyes or worse, simply forget.

[Blazz J · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5. Profesionalni historiografi bi morali pri "zgodovinjenju" večkrat poseči v sestrsko leposlovje in se ne tako ihtavo držati plota historične metodologije. Meglo nad čistejšim videnjem spuščajo aktualni protagonisti (in ugrabitelji) časa, zapovedajoč servilnost. Rečanka Daša Drndić se bori proti pozabi nevidnih Mest, večno omrtvičenih in umirajočih toposov naše večne začasnosti v njih. Njena domača Reka je pozabila na D'Annunzia in fašistično-futuristični eksperiment, masovno migracijo Rečanov v Najnovejši svet... slast razkošja pozabe je neizmerna...

[Tadzio Koelb · Rating 3 out of 5]

From my review in the Times Literary Supplement:

"In this way, Leica Format seems to express not only anger, but guilt: on one hand at being abnormal among the normal, on the other at being an individual among the anonymous many. To overcome this involves both intense self-absorption and the need to disassociate. Thus the narrator is obsessed with secret illegal experiments conducted by pharmaceutical companies “in the name of peace, democracy and the progress of humanity”, and keeps a list of these experiments that unfailingly recalls the death of her mother while simultaneously dwarfing it into insignificance. In the end, it is Drndić’s anger that is more engaging, perhaps because it is easier to share."

[Bram · Rating 5 out of 5]

A kaleidoscopic Catherine Wheel of imagination and serious historical interrogation. Astounding.

[Queridobartleby · Rating 4 out of 5]

La escritora croata Daša Drndić falleció desgraciadamente en 2018. Había nacido en 1946 en Zágreb. Debido al conflicto de los Balcanes su pensamiento independiente, choco tanto con los nacionalismos croatas, como serbios; como bien apunta en su indispensable Prólogo, Miguel Roán:

«La historia de Drndić se suma, como otro triste caso más, a toda una serie de cazas y purgas políticas, más o menos expresas, como la de la actriz Mira Furlan, de origen croata y marido serbio, que se vio obligada a marcharse a Nueva York en 1991.»

Y prosigue Roán dado cuenta del talante independiente y estatura moral de nuestra autora:

«Drndić optó igualmente por marcharse de Belgrado, después de cuatro décadas viviendo allí: «me pusieron en una lista negra, perdí mi nombre y me convertí en croata y a mi hija le complicaron la vida, pero cuando llegué a la estación de trenes de Zagreb y vi que ponía “serbios, fuera”, el nacionalismo volvió a golpearme entre los ojos». Créanme si les digo que Daša Drndić renunció a los enormes réditos que podía haber obtenido si se hubiese promocionado ante el público en Zagreb como ‘una croata discriminada en Belgrado', pero no lo hizo. Esto da cuenta de su altura, especialmente cuando el victimismo abundaba y abunda en las sociedades locales.»

En cuanto al libro en sí. ¿Qué podemos encontrarnos?

No es fácil reducir el texto en unas directrices concretas. Según avanzamos en su lectura, constatamos un caleidoscopio diverso.

Por una parte, Daša habla de seres sin voz, seres que han sufrido opresión y persecución, sin posibilidad de escape, de «fuga»; término clave para la autora en la obra, o también seres que han tenido que exiliarse, que han sufrido desarraigo.

Este modo narrativo me recuerda en gran medida a autores referenciales como Danilo Kiš o Sebald. La inclusión de estas voces, como en los autores citados, se inspira en personajes que pueden haber sido reales y la ficción complementa su existencia.

Drndić atestigua la veracidad de su escritura. En el mismo Prólogo, Roán deja claro la postura de la autora: «Daša Drndić declaraba: «Cuando siento que un escritor está inventando todo, no le creo».»

Puede dar voz a una posible Antonia Host, que ha nacido sometida a la rígida educación religiosa de unos padres intolerantes y ha sufrido dolorosas pérdidas tanto en la familia como en su frustrado matrimonio; necesitando una «fuga» que le ayude a sobrellevar su dolor, donde inevitablemente la cruda realidad se presenta de nuevo como un ciclo circular sin posibilidad de escape.

O puede dar voz a esos seres con los que médicamente se experimentó a lo largo de la historia, culminando en el funesto período nazi:

«Yo soy Waltraud Haupl. Tengo la cartilla de mi hermana Annemarie de 1943. Annemarie fue internada en Spiegelgrund por alteraciones óseas propias del raquitismo. El Dr. Gross la incluyó en su programa de eutanasia de niños con discapacidad mental. En la cartilla se alude a un régimen terapéutico de inanición a base de café con leche y un pedazo de pan una vez al día. Mi hermana murió a los cuatro años. Pesaba nueve kilos. Aún no he recibido su cerebro. Quisiera que me lo dieran. Quisiera enterrar ese cerebro.»

Al principio, comente la relación que se detecta con la escritura de Danilo Kiš y Sebald, pero he de confesar que Daša Drndić tiene una voz propia diferenciada. Además de dar presencia a personas represaliadas o marginadas, ficciona historias conmovedoras, como el amargo devenir de Ludwig Jakob Fritz, con un componente profundo real. Opresión, desarraigo y exilio se tornan elementos inseparables en su narración. Por otra parte, hay una cuidada selección de fragmentos de autores que aprecia, muy en consonancia con los textos de la propia autora; plasma también una sagaz reflexión sobre múltiples aspectos de la vida en su país fragmentado e incluye detalles biográficos reveladores de las penurias de su familia y de su propia vida; todo ello marcado por un pensamiento independiente, crítico, mordaz.

Crítica completa: https://queridobartleby.es/dasa-drndi...

[Efímera Bonhomía · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leica Format es un conjunto de relatos de la escritora croata Dasa Drndic que infiere en una ciudad de su país natal llenando cada rincón de vida con sus escritos. En el libro, un nexo conductor acompaña a cada una de las historias: la ciudad en la que habitan. Llegando incluso a ser un canto de amor hacia ella y también la desesperanza de lo que se ha convertido con los años.

Lo más impresionante de este libro es esa manera de personificar la ciudad, a través de historias vividas, Dasa, abre al mundo una ciudad que parece estar sumida en un sueño del que no quiere despertar. La autocrítica, el sufrimiento e incluso la valoración como nación; aparecen en el libro como si el despertar fuera encontrar las historias que rodean a los edificios y el pasado de su memoria histórica.

Hay personajes, y muy buenos, pero sin duda lo que queda claro del libro es que pretende dar voz a los que coleccionan objetos, a los que se esconden de sí mismos, a los que hablan y escuchan a los demás hablar en su cabeza con tan sólo verlos. Dasa, en esta obra, llena la ciudad croata de personas que pasan desapercibidas pero que en realidad forman el hilo de vida que maneja todas sus calles.

Sin duda no es un libro que me ha dejado indiferente, pese a ser de relatos y no ser este tipo de obra la que más me atraiga.

"Una ciudad contraída donde la soledad es una epidemia y sus habitantes ignoran su deletérea existencia."

3,5/5

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

What the Art of Fugue really means

This is a dialog of texts and stories and people, but also of languages, moderated by exuberant, bittersweet, alien Daša, who sings her ode and blows off her steam on her town, her many towns, the world, and the many worlds now long gone.

This zoom-out technique starts in the opening chapter, which acts as a method statement: we are given three definitions of fugue, from psychology, music, and architecture. These variants of the fugue are then interwoven in a brilliantly written story, which could and should have been a short story of its own. Then the play of the three fugues is extended to many other stories and history itself, covering a motley of topics, many treated (too) journalistically.

Perhaps an overarching theme of the contrapuntal patchwork text is how mistakes are made over and over again, following a pattern drawn by an interplay of “the desire for repetition, the fear of repetition, the rhythm of repetition”. Thus the Art of Fugue becomes a method for living: run, or counterpoise, or fill the gaps.

Overall a so-so read, but this time it won an extra star thanks to the excellent translations (both the English and the Hungarian which I read in parallel).

Fuguester is my new favorite word.

[Felix Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Siento cierta atracción por las novelas que se desarrollan en la periferia de lo que suele interesar y se ambientan en lugares donde la bruma de la historia se adensa convirtiéndose en casi impenetrable. La vieja Yugoslavia, hija del anciano Imperio Austrohúngaro, es uno de esos lugares grises cuya historia suele pesar más que su presente y cuyas ruinas apenas han servido para construir países y naciones que no terminan muy bien de saber quienes son.

Ambientada en Rijeka, ciudad que no sabe muy bien si es croata, aún ex-yugoslava, italiana o quizá austrohúngara, y a través de retazos y piezas dispares donde la historia y la novela se dan la mano para desconcertar al lector metiéndole en un laberinto de testimonios que conforman una narración potente y compleja incapaz de dejar a nadie inmóvil o indiferente. A través de la bruma que recorre toda la novela haciendo que sus contornos sean difusos y que no se sepa determinar qué parte de la realidad y qué de la ficción de la autora croata, Drndic ha creado una obra netamente magnética aunque no siempre fácil de seguir o leer. Pero qué puede ser la literatura si todo fuera simple y sencillo...

[Karellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this one in three days lounging by a swimming pool whilst being ogled by German tourists. My third book by the late Croatian author, after “Trieste” and “Belladonna”. I bought this one last summer and finally got round to reading it.

An intriguing book - but I’m not sure whether it’s strictly a novel, more a fictionalised account of Dasa’s experience of living in Istria for the latter period of her life. It’s quite a fascinating read, in the course of which I learned a fair amount about the history of Yugoslavia and Croatia.

Okay, so it’s not quite the masterpiece that “Trieste” became, but this earlier book is still a rewarding addition to the literature of the Balkans. I probably need to continue now with “EEG” and “Doppelgänger”, her remaining works that have been translated.

Highly recommended.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a stream-of-consciousness narrative that almost achieves what it sets out to do. Drndic writes to commemorate the spectrum of humanity, from violated rights to the dullness of small-town living.
The intelligence to know and integrate such a range of cultural references is impressive, but the narrative flow inhibited my own understanding of what Drndic wanted to honour.
Perhaps if I were more literary, or just more determined, I would have got more out of this experience but as it is the effects of this testimony are a bit limited.

[Mary Byrne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a huge fan of writing that meanders interestingly, caring little for narrative arc. Drndic takes you with her on her wanderings and her sometimes vicious, sometimes hilarious, musings. Reading Drndic is like having a conversation with a fascinating person, a sharp judge of our modern world, a relentless reminder of our past and present idiocies. I’ve read a number of her books and will mourn when I’ve read them all (Drndic died last year, sadly), before reading them all again.

[Simon Barraclough · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to an interview in which Drndić said that readers in the UK didn’t take to this follow up to Trieste as enthusiastically as its forerunner. I think I might be in that sector, although I still found it fascinating, shocking, merciless and moving. It’s more diffuse perhaps, more loosely structured, less tightly stitched together. But my journey down Drndić Drive continues unabated. Bring on Belladonna.

[julucha · Rating 2 out of 5]

[2003] Es un collage o eso que los críticos te dicen “oh mira, un tour de force” bastante machacón, horroroso de largo, abusado de anécdotas y no muy estimulante de creencias (su anticatolicismo y antifascismo es indistinguible de cualquier universitaria milenial de pelo rosa)

Total que la señora escribe bien eso sí, tiene maneras y sabe de qué va la buena literatura, faltaría, pero no me ha impresionado mucho. Sonríe a la cámara y dí: pa-ta-ta.

[Tiana Ferenčić · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dosta teško za razumjeti ako nemate nikakvu pozadinu, miješaju se osobe koje pripovijedaju, iznose se svjedočanstva, stilovi pisanja se mijenjaju i ubacuju se poneki nebitni podaci.
Gledala sam predstavu pa mi je bilo lakše razumjeti tko o čemu, ali generalno ako možete, zaobiđite ovu knjigu.

[Marija Marković · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Ovo danas kao da je neki klonirani grad, ni posve star, ni posve nov, grad došljaka koji mijenjaju mu lice ne dotičući mu duh. Ovo je smrknuti grad. Od tuge i ostavljenosti.”

Mogla bih da čitam Dašu svaki dan i iznova. Ovo je knjiga za koju sam pošteno istrošila olovku podvlačeći čitave pasuse.

[A Yee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The discontinuous narrative made it a really hard read. But I overall liked it. The themes of memory and the past are up my alley.
One of those books where I will have to reread with notepaper beside me to try piece together the narrative.

[Stefano Mastella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Molto interessante anche se l'ho trovato un po' lento e di difficile lettura per alcuni riferimenti che mi mancavano e, probabilmente, per la mia stanchezza

[Bernard S Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another brilliant book be Dasa Drndic. Well balanced with a story that jumps and jumps.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shades of Olga Tokarczuk and Thomas Bernhard. A really interesting exploration of a city (Fiume/Rijeka) across time. Made me very much want to read Trieste by Drndić.

[Ivana]

Ja prosto neću prevazići ovakvu strukturu knjiga, da ne kažem 'tako te neke misli'. Nije mi bolna kao (najbolnije) Umiranje u Torontu ili Canzone di Guerra.