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In the Heart of the Country
On a remote farm in South Africa, the protagonist of J. M. Coetzee's fierce and passionate novel watches the life from which she has been excluded. Ignored by her callous father, scorned and feared by his servants, she is a bitterly intelligent woman whose outward meekness disguises a desperate resolve not to become "one of the forgotten ones of history." When her father takes an African mistress, that resolve precipitates an act of vengeance that suggests a chemical reaction between the colonizer and the colonized -- and between European yearnings and the vastness and solitude of Africa.
A story told in prose as feverishly rich as William Faulkner's, In the Heart of the Country is a work of irresistable power. With vast assurance and an unerring eye, J. M. Coetzee has turned the family romance into a mirror of the colonial experience.
139 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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About the author
J.M. Coetzee
184 books5,266 followersJ. M. Coetzee is a South African writer, essayist, and translator, widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of contemporary literature. His works, often characterized by their austere prose and profound moral and philosophical depth, explore themes of colonialism, identity, power, and human suffering. Born and raised in South Africa, he later became an Australian citizen and has lived in Adelaide since 2002.
Coetzee’s breakthrough novel, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), established him as a major literary voice, while Life & Times of Michael K (1983) won him the first of his two Booker Prizes. His best-known work, Disgrace (1999), a stark and unsettling examination of post-apartheid South Africa, secured his second Booker Prize, making him the first author to win the award twice. His other notable novels include Foe, Age of Iron, The Master of Petersburg, Elizabeth Costello, and The Childhood of Jesus, many of which incorporate allegorical and metafictional elements.
Beyond fiction, Coetzee has written numerous essays and literary critiques, contributing significantly to discussions on literature, ethics, and history. His autobiographical trilogy—Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime—blends memoir with fiction, offering a fragmented yet insightful reflection on his own life. His literary achievements were recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.
A deeply private individual, Coetzee avoids public life and rarely gives interviews, preferring to let his work speak for itself.
Coetzee’s breakthrough novel, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), established him as a major literary voice, while Life & Times of Michael K (1983) won him the first of his two Booker Prizes. His best-known work, Disgrace (1999), a stark and unsettling examination of post-apartheid South Africa, secured his second Booker Prize, making him the first author to win the award twice. His other notable novels include Foe, Age of Iron, The Master of Petersburg, Elizabeth Costello, and The Childhood of Jesus, many of which incorporate allegorical and metafictional elements.
Beyond fiction, Coetzee has written numerous essays and literary critiques, contributing significantly to discussions on literature, ethics, and history. His autobiographical trilogy—Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime—blends memoir with fiction, offering a fragmented yet insightful reflection on his own life. His literary achievements were recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.
A deeply private individual, Coetzee avoids public life and rarely gives interviews, preferring to let his work speak for itself.
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February 23, 2022
IL CUORE DEL NULLA
Ecco Magda nella trasposizione cinematografica, la meravigliosa Jane Birkin. Il film si chiama “Dust”, è diretto da Marion Hänsel, ed è uscito nel 1985.
Mio padre crea assenza. Ovunque vada lascia dietro di sé un’assenza. L’assenza di sé soprattutto… E l’assenza di mia madre. Mio padre è l’assenza di mia madre, il suo negativo, la sua morte.
Magda è giovane oppure è una bambina vecchia?
Magda è bella (nel film lo è, bellissima), il padre e il servo dalla pelle bruna, come Magda chiama gli Ottentotti, desiderano il suo corpo, oppure è una brutta megera, una zitella inacidita, come lei stessa si definisce?
Magda è cresciuta insieme ai figli dei servi oppure avendo come compagni di gioco solo scarabei, formichieri e scorpioni?
Magda parla oppure tace? Magda scrive oppure pensa?
Magda odia il padre oppure ne è gelosa fino a diventare violenta? Oppure lo ama fino a ucciderlo per liberarlo?
Magda uccide il padre (due volte, la prima con l’accetta e la seconda con una fucilata) oppure lo accudisce e riverisce?
Il padre di Magda è morto oppure è vivo e invecchia accanto alla figlia?
Il padre di Magda è severo, ma giusto, oppure è uno stupratore seriale, per giunta incestuoso?
Magda vive in un’epoca senza tempo oppure vive sotto un cielo solcato da aerei?
Magda ha perso la madre alla nascita e il padre si risposa con una matrigna oppure non c’è nessuna seconda madre?
Magda è figlia unica oppure ha fratelli e sorelle che sono tutti morti di malattia?
Magda con il padre, l’attore inglese Trevor Howard.
Il libro non dice mai chiaramente cosa succede o cosa non succede a Magda: non è mai chiaro dove finisce la realtà e inizia la fantasia di Magda.
L’io narrante è un corpo inespresso, magro fino al rachitismo, specchio di un’anima taciuta al punto da essere rattrappita, da potersi esprimere solo nelle parole che fissa sulla carta raccontandosi nel monologo, a lei, e a noi.
La narrazione procede in prima persona per brevi capitoli numerati dalla stessa Magda, quasi in forma di diario, ma senza un ordine cronologico, facendo saltare la catena temporale, e anche quella logica.
A meno che non sia la logica di una follia.
Di un gioco di rimandi e rovesciamenti della verità, di mondi paralleli, di ambiguità e visioni, di delirio e scissione. Si perde il senso della certezza a favore del dubbio, Coetzee è bravo a dire e non dire, a restare indefinito
E Magda è brava a scrivere in modo che sembra stia parlando e viceversa, senza creare rumore, senza farsi sentire ma facendosi ascoltare, frammentando la realtà l’immaginazione e l’io.
E nonostante le parole, domina il silenzio.
È l’estrema desolazione del paesaggio che incide sulla mente di Magda?
È l’uomo bianco colonialista che si sta esaurendo mentre il suo regno gli si ritorce contro?
È la solitudine? È la distanza del padre? È la perdita prematura della madre?
È la verginità diventata zitellaggio, il non aver mai conosciuto fisicamente ed emotivamente un uomo, non aver mai liberato i suoi sensi?
È il silenzio della casa e del veldt?
Magda è troppo sofisticata per un’esistenza che appare così piatta e rudimentale? È il cuore del paese che è un cuore fatto di nulla?
Oppure, semplicemente, Magda è folle, è una mente malata?
L’incipit è notevole, da ricordare:
Oggi mio padre ha portato a casa la nuova sposa. Sono arrivati, clip-clop, dalla piana su un carro trainato da un cavallo con una piuma di struzzo ondeggiante sulla fronte, impolverati dopo il lungo tragitto. O forse era trainato da due asini impiumati, anche questo è possibile. Mio padre era in tuba e marsina nera, la sposa indossava un cappello da sole a tesa larga e un vestito bianco stretto in vita e intorno al collo. Altri dettagli non posso darne a meno di non cominciare a ricamarci sopra perché non stavo guardando. Ero nella mia stanza, nella penombra di smeraldo del tardo pomeriggio, con le persiane accostate, a leggere un libro o, più probabilmente, supina con un asciugamano umido sugli occhi a combattere un’emicrania. Io sono quella che se ne sta nella sua stanza a leggere o a scrivere o a combattere l’emicrania.
Le colonie sono piene di ragazze così, ma nessuna, credo, si spinge agli estremi quanto me. Mio padre è quello che misura le assi del pavimento, avanti e indietro, avanti e indietro, con lenti stivali neri. E poi, in più, c' è la nuova moglie, che rimane a letto fino a tardi. Sono questi gli antagonisti.
Ed ecco qua la sintesi della storia coloniale secondo Coetzee: la prima pecora merino arriva in Sudafrica via nave, viene sollevata e depositata mentre bela terrorizzata - fornirà la base economica per mantenere i coloni che passeranno il tempo ad aspettare che la lana cresca e raccogliere intorno a loro quel che resta delle tribù degli Ottentotti affinché taglino la legna, attingano l’acqua, siano in eterno pastori e servi in questa terra dove i coloni bianchi sono divorati dalla noia e strappano le ali alle mosche.
E certo questo bel romanzo è anche una parabola sul colonialismo.
Coetzee nutre molta cura per la forma, scrive in modo raffinato, lentamente, e taglia tanto. Chapeau, Maestro.
Ecco Magda nella trasposizione cinematografica, la meravigliosa Jane Birkin. Il film si chiama “Dust”, è diretto da Marion Hänsel, ed è uscito nel 1985.
Mio padre crea assenza. Ovunque vada lascia dietro di sé un’assenza. L’assenza di sé soprattutto… E l’assenza di mia madre. Mio padre è l’assenza di mia madre, il suo negativo, la sua morte.
Magda è giovane oppure è una bambina vecchia?
Magda è bella (nel film lo è, bellissima), il padre e il servo dalla pelle bruna, come Magda chiama gli Ottentotti, desiderano il suo corpo, oppure è una brutta megera, una zitella inacidita, come lei stessa si definisce?
Magda è cresciuta insieme ai figli dei servi oppure avendo come compagni di gioco solo scarabei, formichieri e scorpioni?
Magda parla oppure tace? Magda scrive oppure pensa?
Magda odia il padre oppure ne è gelosa fino a diventare violenta? Oppure lo ama fino a ucciderlo per liberarlo?
Magda uccide il padre (due volte, la prima con l’accetta e la seconda con una fucilata) oppure lo accudisce e riverisce?
Il padre di Magda è morto oppure è vivo e invecchia accanto alla figlia?
Il padre di Magda è severo, ma giusto, oppure è uno stupratore seriale, per giunta incestuoso?
Magda vive in un’epoca senza tempo oppure vive sotto un cielo solcato da aerei?
Magda ha perso la madre alla nascita e il padre si risposa con una matrigna oppure non c’è nessuna seconda madre?
Magda è figlia unica oppure ha fratelli e sorelle che sono tutti morti di malattia?
Magda con il padre, l’attore inglese Trevor Howard.
Il libro non dice mai chiaramente cosa succede o cosa non succede a Magda: non è mai chiaro dove finisce la realtà e inizia la fantasia di Magda.
L’io narrante è un corpo inespresso, magro fino al rachitismo, specchio di un’anima taciuta al punto da essere rattrappita, da potersi esprimere solo nelle parole che fissa sulla carta raccontandosi nel monologo, a lei, e a noi.
La narrazione procede in prima persona per brevi capitoli numerati dalla stessa Magda, quasi in forma di diario, ma senza un ordine cronologico, facendo saltare la catena temporale, e anche quella logica.
A meno che non sia la logica di una follia.
Di un gioco di rimandi e rovesciamenti della verità, di mondi paralleli, di ambiguità e visioni, di delirio e scissione. Si perde il senso della certezza a favore del dubbio, Coetzee è bravo a dire e non dire, a restare indefinito
E Magda è brava a scrivere in modo che sembra stia parlando e viceversa, senza creare rumore, senza farsi sentire ma facendosi ascoltare, frammentando la realtà l’immaginazione e l’io.
E nonostante le parole, domina il silenzio.
È l’estrema desolazione del paesaggio che incide sulla mente di Magda?
È l’uomo bianco colonialista che si sta esaurendo mentre il suo regno gli si ritorce contro?
È la solitudine? È la distanza del padre? È la perdita prematura della madre?
È la verginità diventata zitellaggio, il non aver mai conosciuto fisicamente ed emotivamente un uomo, non aver mai liberato i suoi sensi?
È il silenzio della casa e del veldt?
Magda è troppo sofisticata per un’esistenza che appare così piatta e rudimentale? È il cuore del paese che è un cuore fatto di nulla?
Oppure, semplicemente, Magda è folle, è una mente malata?
L’incipit è notevole, da ricordare:
Oggi mio padre ha portato a casa la nuova sposa. Sono arrivati, clip-clop, dalla piana su un carro trainato da un cavallo con una piuma di struzzo ondeggiante sulla fronte, impolverati dopo il lungo tragitto. O forse era trainato da due asini impiumati, anche questo è possibile. Mio padre era in tuba e marsina nera, la sposa indossava un cappello da sole a tesa larga e un vestito bianco stretto in vita e intorno al collo. Altri dettagli non posso darne a meno di non cominciare a ricamarci sopra perché non stavo guardando. Ero nella mia stanza, nella penombra di smeraldo del tardo pomeriggio, con le persiane accostate, a leggere un libro o, più probabilmente, supina con un asciugamano umido sugli occhi a combattere un’emicrania. Io sono quella che se ne sta nella sua stanza a leggere o a scrivere o a combattere l’emicrania.
Le colonie sono piene di ragazze così, ma nessuna, credo, si spinge agli estremi quanto me. Mio padre è quello che misura le assi del pavimento, avanti e indietro, avanti e indietro, con lenti stivali neri. E poi, in più, c' è la nuova moglie, che rimane a letto fino a tardi. Sono questi gli antagonisti.
Ed ecco qua la sintesi della storia coloniale secondo Coetzee: la prima pecora merino arriva in Sudafrica via nave, viene sollevata e depositata mentre bela terrorizzata - fornirà la base economica per mantenere i coloni che passeranno il tempo ad aspettare che la lana cresca e raccogliere intorno a loro quel che resta delle tribù degli Ottentotti affinché taglino la legna, attingano l’acqua, siano in eterno pastori e servi in questa terra dove i coloni bianchi sono divorati dalla noia e strappano le ali alle mosche.
E certo questo bel romanzo è anche una parabola sul colonialismo.
Coetzee nutre molta cura per la forma, scrive in modo raffinato, lentamente, e taglia tanto. Chapeau, Maestro.
January 24, 2020
It is a long time since I read any early Coetzee, and I had forgotten how intense and powerful his writing can be, for all the bleakness and despair of the situations he writes about. This one is full of violence and decay, but within a few pages it is clear that much, perhaps all, of the action takes place in the narrator's imagination. The narrator Magda, no longer a child, still lives with her widowed father on a remote farm, a life so dull and constrained that imagination is her only escape.
The book starts with her father arriving at the farm with a new wife, and almost immediately Magda describes murdering them in their beds with an axe, and wondering what to do with the bodies. The father soon reappears, and this time the woman being brought to the farm is the young bride of their farm worker Hendrick. The father shows more interest in this girl than in his daughter and soon seduces her. Another patricide follows, and for most of the rest of the book Magda explores the consequences, which eventually leave her alone on the farm descending further into madness.
The writing is intense and stylised, and this is far from being an easy read, but I suspect that it will prove a memorable one.
The book starts with her father arriving at the farm with a new wife, and almost immediately Magda describes murdering them in their beds with an axe, and wondering what to do with the bodies. The father soon reappears, and this time the woman being brought to the farm is the young bride of their farm worker Hendrick. The father shows more interest in this girl than in his daughter and soon seduces her. Another patricide follows, and for most of the rest of the book Magda explores the consequences, which eventually leave her alone on the farm descending further into madness.
The writing is intense and stylised, and this is far from being an easy read, but I suspect that it will prove a memorable one.
Read
June 5, 2023As I was saying in an update, Shakespeare's bastards and Doestovesky married. They gave birth to J.M. Coetzee.
I got more out of Disgrace the second time that I read it, I have read this intense dark monologue only once and don't have much more to say about it than to note Dostoevsky's underground man (notes from the underground )and "hurrah for bastards" from King Lear as among the direct ancestors of this tale. There's a splash of Crime and Punishment and brothers Karamazov too.
Even leaving aside the long standing commercial alliance between de Beers and the Soviet Union over diamonds. It doesn't seem so far from Russia to the Cape. Serfdom, racism, apartheid, judging by literature at least, there are similar psychological mechanisms involved, or perhaps that is simply the result of the inevitable violence, threatened or applied, to enforce the system.
I was tempted to read this after having watched an interview of a Dutch Journalist with Coetzee. This was both awful and pregnant. The journalist asking questions, Coeztee maintaining his right to reticence. The closest that he came to speaking freely, and even then, he referred to notes, was in talking about the landscapes of Africa generally and of the Cape of Good Hope in particular.
Arid Veld , on which somehow stands a farmhouse, is a powerful character in this story, it says nothing but it's voice is heard everywhere.
Moving Dostovesky's underground man from urban alienation to rural despair is oddly effective. Contact in either case is difficult. As in Disgrace there is a threat of sexual violence and of non-voluntary transfer of land ownership, but in this case the female voice is so self-hating that sexual violence is perceived as potentially liberating, at this time of day as I type with four fingers that strikes me as channelling the psychology of Dostoevsky's characters.
As a reader I am uncertain what, if anything, in the monologue was real in the confines of the novel, and that probably doesn't matter.
I got more out of Disgrace the second time that I read it, I have read this intense dark monologue only once and don't have much more to say about it than to note Dostoevsky's underground man (notes from the underground )and "hurrah for bastards" from King Lear as among the direct ancestors of this tale. There's a splash of Crime and Punishment and brothers Karamazov too.
Even leaving aside the long standing commercial alliance between de Beers and the Soviet Union over diamonds. It doesn't seem so far from Russia to the Cape. Serfdom, racism, apartheid, judging by literature at least, there are similar psychological mechanisms involved, or perhaps that is simply the result of the inevitable violence, threatened or applied, to enforce the system.
I was tempted to read this after having watched an interview of a Dutch Journalist with Coetzee. This was both awful and pregnant. The journalist asking questions, Coeztee maintaining his right to reticence. The closest that he came to speaking freely, and even then, he referred to notes, was in talking about the landscapes of Africa generally and of the Cape of Good Hope in particular.
Arid Veld , on which somehow stands a farmhouse, is a powerful character in this story, it says nothing but it's voice is heard everywhere.
Moving Dostovesky's underground man from urban alienation to rural despair is oddly effective. Contact in either case is difficult. As in Disgrace there is a threat of sexual violence and of non-voluntary transfer of land ownership, but in this case the female voice is so self-hating that sexual violence is perceived as potentially liberating, at this time of day as I type with four fingers that strikes me as channelling the psychology of Dostoevsky's characters.
As a reader I am uncertain what, if anything, in the monologue was real in the confines of the novel, and that probably doesn't matter.
June 9, 2017
There are two types of novels by J. M. Coetzee: the historical & the metaphysical.
The metaphysical ones include Summertime, Foe... The best of these is Elizabeth Costello. Historical: Life and Times of Michael K, Waiting for the Barbarians, Slow Man, Disgrace...And the best of these is THIS novel.
His unending obsession with the insufficiency/stupidity of words and language as well as the story's reliance on its components of beginning/middle/end finally strikes the reader as meaningful and ever-appropriate. Sharing many themes with his most successful work, Disgrace, this one absolutely chills the blood with its tense moments of violence, rape & murder.
The metaphysical ones include Summertime, Foe... The best of these is Elizabeth Costello. Historical: Life and Times of Michael K, Waiting for the Barbarians, Slow Man, Disgrace...And the best of these is THIS novel.
His unending obsession with the insufficiency/stupidity of words and language as well as the story's reliance on its components of beginning/middle/end finally strikes the reader as meaningful and ever-appropriate. Sharing many themes with his most successful work, Disgrace, this one absolutely chills the blood with its tense moments of violence, rape & murder.
January 4, 2015
The first-person narrator of this book is Magda, the daughter of an Afrikaner sheep farmer on a remote ranch in the South African veldt. Magda has grown up alone with her stern, patriarchal father and the servants. She is a bitter old maid, ignored and disregarded. By page ten, you figure out that Magda is kind of nuts. Somewhere along the way, you figure out that between one paragraph and another, sometimes within the same paragraph, Magda slips between fantasy and reality without warning. By the end of the book, she has completely lost her mind and you have to reevaluate everything you've read because it's not clear what really happened and what was Magda's imagination, fabrication, or delusion.
The story centers around Magda and her father and Hendrick, a black African servant who comes to work on the farm, and his wife Anna, whom Magda's father, living alone and wifeless out on the veldt, soon covets. Obviously this isn't going to end well, especially with Magda watching, judging, and resenting. The violence seems to be the point where Magda goes off the rails into complete unreliability. She tells multiple separate and conflicting stories over the course of the book, with no textual clue to the reader that they are not all part of one seamless narrative.
The imagery is stark and isolating as Magda and the handful of other characters scratch out a living in the scorpion and jackal-haunted boonies, but what's really stark and isolating is the relationship between the white farmer and daughter and the black servants, initially friendly and benevolent on the surface, but their every interaction is fraught with the weight of colonialism. The power dynamic between oppressor and oppressed switches several times over the course of the novel, which I think was probably Coetzee's intent. It is indeed a bleak and powerful tale.
That said, this is a book for readers who like literary prose, meaning sentences and paragraphs worked and reworked to artistic effect rather than to tell a story. Magda's internal monologue, even when it's not spinning off into crazy la-la land, is incessantly navel-gazing, dense, and verbose. In the Heart of the Country is one of those books where sometimes you have to reread a paragraph several times to figure out what is actually being said and what's going on. You would think a novel with as much sex and violence as this one packed into its sparse few pages would be more, well, interesting, but it's only interesting on the level of verbiage and literary analysis. It's the kind of book literature professors like to talk about and ask midterm questions like "Describe some of the metaphors the author uses for colonial and patriarchal relationships," blah bah blah.
Honestly, I don't understand people who read books like this for "fun." Literary, prize-winning prose is often not exciting, storytelling prose, and in this case it's almost like simple declarative sentences and a linear narrative are verboten. Yes, I understand the story, yes, I saw the hidden depths in Coetzee's book and I'm sure I could write a term paper about it as well as the next English major (even though I was never an English major), but boy did did it drag and unlike some other literary authors (like Cormac McCarthy and Haruki Murakami) who sometimes annoy me but also tell a story even when they are experimenting, and intrigue me enough to want to read more, Coetzee makes me want to stay away from anything else he's written because this book did not endear him to me.
That sounds like a pretty negative review, and if I were rating this based on my enjoyment of the book alone, In the Heart of the Country would probably get 1.5 or 2 stars. But I can't help but admire an author who puts words together in a way that most can't and manages to drag such powerful weight and layered meaning into such a small book. So I am bumping it up to 2.5 stars based on "literary merit," but rounding down because I still thought it was self-important dudeliness. I can't say I recommend it unless you are reading it for a specific purpose, though, or you just really like this kind of book.
The story centers around Magda and her father and Hendrick, a black African servant who comes to work on the farm, and his wife Anna, whom Magda's father, living alone and wifeless out on the veldt, soon covets. Obviously this isn't going to end well, especially with Magda watching, judging, and resenting. The violence seems to be the point where Magda goes off the rails into complete unreliability. She tells multiple separate and conflicting stories over the course of the book, with no textual clue to the reader that they are not all part of one seamless narrative.
The imagery is stark and isolating as Magda and the handful of other characters scratch out a living in the scorpion and jackal-haunted boonies, but what's really stark and isolating is the relationship between the white farmer and daughter and the black servants, initially friendly and benevolent on the surface, but their every interaction is fraught with the weight of colonialism. The power dynamic between oppressor and oppressed switches several times over the course of the novel, which I think was probably Coetzee's intent. It is indeed a bleak and powerful tale.
That said, this is a book for readers who like literary prose, meaning sentences and paragraphs worked and reworked to artistic effect rather than to tell a story. Magda's internal monologue, even when it's not spinning off into crazy la-la land, is incessantly navel-gazing, dense, and verbose. In the Heart of the Country is one of those books where sometimes you have to reread a paragraph several times to figure out what is actually being said and what's going on. You would think a novel with as much sex and violence as this one packed into its sparse few pages would be more, well, interesting, but it's only interesting on the level of verbiage and literary analysis. It's the kind of book literature professors like to talk about and ask midterm questions like "Describe some of the metaphors the author uses for colonial and patriarchal relationships," blah bah blah.
Honestly, I don't understand people who read books like this for "fun." Literary, prize-winning prose is often not exciting, storytelling prose, and in this case it's almost like simple declarative sentences and a linear narrative are verboten. Yes, I understand the story, yes, I saw the hidden depths in Coetzee's book and I'm sure I could write a term paper about it as well as the next English major (even though I was never an English major), but boy did did it drag and unlike some other literary authors (like Cormac McCarthy and Haruki Murakami) who sometimes annoy me but also tell a story even when they are experimenting, and intrigue me enough to want to read more, Coetzee makes me want to stay away from anything else he's written because this book did not endear him to me.
That sounds like a pretty negative review, and if I were rating this based on my enjoyment of the book alone, In the Heart of the Country would probably get 1.5 or 2 stars. But I can't help but admire an author who puts words together in a way that most can't and manages to drag such powerful weight and layered meaning into such a small book. So I am bumping it up to 2.5 stars based on "literary merit," but rounding down because I still thought it was self-important dudeliness. I can't say I recommend it unless you are reading it for a specific purpose, though, or you just really like this kind of book.
April 12, 2019
Faulkner and Dostoevsky in South Africa
Intriguing, bold, staggering, revolting, horrible... these are some of the emotions I experienced, while reading this short book. The young spinster Magda is the daughter of a sturdy but brutal farmer in a dark corner of South-Africa. Magda yearns for love and attention, especially that of her father. She gives us a very distorted view on reality, in endless repetitions and variations, not only very close to insanity but even far beyond.
This book is a true writing-experiment in the best of modernist tradition (it reminded me of Becket and of Faulkner). But it is also a relentless and gruesome exploration of the human psyche and human condition. Coetzee is a worthy successor of Dostoevsky.
Through the eyes and terrible acts of Magda we are confronted with the question of good and evil, but from a postmodernist perspective. And Coetzee's reflections upon the master-slave-relation (Magda and her father versus the black servant Jakob) give this book a real South-African flavour. In my opinion this is one of the best and most interesting books of the last quarter of the 20th Century.
Intriguing, bold, staggering, revolting, horrible... these are some of the emotions I experienced, while reading this short book. The young spinster Magda is the daughter of a sturdy but brutal farmer in a dark corner of South-Africa. Magda yearns for love and attention, especially that of her father. She gives us a very distorted view on reality, in endless repetitions and variations, not only very close to insanity but even far beyond.
This book is a true writing-experiment in the best of modernist tradition (it reminded me of Becket and of Faulkner). But it is also a relentless and gruesome exploration of the human psyche and human condition. Coetzee is a worthy successor of Dostoevsky.
Through the eyes and terrible acts of Magda we are confronted with the question of good and evil, but from a postmodernist perspective. And Coetzee's reflections upon the master-slave-relation (Magda and her father versus the black servant Jakob) give this book a real South-African flavour. In my opinion this is one of the best and most interesting books of the last quarter of the 20th Century.
April 6, 2021
” È possibile che io sia prigioniera non della fattoria isolata e del deserto di pietra bensì del mio pietrificato monologo?”
Una prosa incalzante e carica.
Il ved sudafricano ed una zitella farneticante.
Si entra da subito nella mente confusa di questa donna che rimane quasi per tutto il racconto senza nome.
Ed è proprio il tema del vuoto e dell'assenza ad essere perno del suo rapporto con l'ambiente (desolato ed isolato), con se stessa e con il padre.
È un libro di una bellezza che richiede grande concentrazione e sforzo.
Nulla è chiaro: cosa è successo? cosa sta succedendo?
La realtà e l'immaginazione si confondono ma quello che rimane solido e concreto è il luogo in cui tutto accade.
Un paesaggio sconfinato in cui una persona sola e non amata perde facilmente se stessa.
Come sempre Coetzee fa risaltare la Storia come ingrediente principale della vita coloniale sudafricana.
Il rapporto asimmetrico con i servi dalla pelle bruna e il loro ruolo di strumenti sia nel lavoro sia nel complicato mondo delle relazioni.
Prigioniera tra le mura ma in realtà prigioniera di sé stessa cercherà di aggrapparsi a quel poco che le rimane.
Con le parole cercherà di negare il vuoto della sua stessa esistenza.
Un pietrificato monologo.
” La ferita nel petto si apre. Se sono un emblema allora voglio esserlo fino in fondo. Sono incompleta, sono un essere con un buco dentro, significo qualcosa, non so cosa, sono muta, da una lastra di vetro guardo fuori in un’oscurità completa, che ha una sua vita, pipistrelli, cespugli, predatori e tutto il resto, che non mi riguarda, che è cieca, che non ha significato ma si limita a essere. Se premo più forte il vetro si spezzerà, scorrerà il sangue, il canto dei grilli per un istante cesserà e poi riprenderà. Vivo dentro una pelle dentro una casa. Non c’è atto di cui sia a conoscenza capace di fare di me un essere libero nel mondo. Non c’è atto di cui sia a conoscenza che porterà il mondo dentro di me. Sono un torrente di suono che scorre nell’universo, migliaia di migliaia di corpuscoli che piangono, gemono, digrignano i denti.”
Una prosa incalzante e carica.
Il ved sudafricano ed una zitella farneticante.
Si entra da subito nella mente confusa di questa donna che rimane quasi per tutto il racconto senza nome.
Ed è proprio il tema del vuoto e dell'assenza ad essere perno del suo rapporto con l'ambiente (desolato ed isolato), con se stessa e con il padre.
È un libro di una bellezza che richiede grande concentrazione e sforzo.
Nulla è chiaro: cosa è successo? cosa sta succedendo?
La realtà e l'immaginazione si confondono ma quello che rimane solido e concreto è il luogo in cui tutto accade.
Un paesaggio sconfinato in cui una persona sola e non amata perde facilmente se stessa.
Come sempre Coetzee fa risaltare la Storia come ingrediente principale della vita coloniale sudafricana.
Il rapporto asimmetrico con i servi dalla pelle bruna e il loro ruolo di strumenti sia nel lavoro sia nel complicato mondo delle relazioni.
Prigioniera tra le mura ma in realtà prigioniera di sé stessa cercherà di aggrapparsi a quel poco che le rimane.
Con le parole cercherà di negare il vuoto della sua stessa esistenza.
Un pietrificato monologo.
” La ferita nel petto si apre. Se sono un emblema allora voglio esserlo fino in fondo. Sono incompleta, sono un essere con un buco dentro, significo qualcosa, non so cosa, sono muta, da una lastra di vetro guardo fuori in un’oscurità completa, che ha una sua vita, pipistrelli, cespugli, predatori e tutto il resto, che non mi riguarda, che è cieca, che non ha significato ma si limita a essere. Se premo più forte il vetro si spezzerà, scorrerà il sangue, il canto dei grilli per un istante cesserà e poi riprenderà. Vivo dentro una pelle dentro una casa. Non c’è atto di cui sia a conoscenza capace di fare di me un essere libero nel mondo. Non c’è atto di cui sia a conoscenza che porterà il mondo dentro di me. Sono un torrente di suono che scorre nell’universo, migliaia di migliaia di corpuscoli che piangono, gemono, digrignano i denti.”
July 19, 2018
Il mio mezzo è la lirica, non la cronaca.
La narratrice ci racconta la sua storia con parole potenti, personali, crude. Ci descrive il caldo sole del Sudafrica che fa spaccare le pietre e i mille animali, insetti per lo più, che popolano il suo mondo. Un mondo, quello di Magda, più animalesco che umano. Compaiono più pecore, mucche, porcospini, cavalli, che uomini. Un mondo molto particolare, ricco di natura e polvere, frutti troppo maturi o sassi troppi bianchi. Un mondo che sa di sudore. Un mondo piccolo in un paesaggio immenso, una fattoria con poche persone e tanto terreno, ore intere prima che cali il sole, lunghe pause notturne per pensare. Un mondo, poi, interiore, visto attraverso le parole e i ricordi, le visioni della narratrice che, partita come poetessa, si ritrova a cadere nel baratro delle allucinazioni. O sono solo fantasie, le sue? Ci sta raccontando quello che vede o quello che immagina solo nella sua testa?
È tutto qui: un paesaggio scontroso, un gruppuscolo di uomini in una landa desolata, una mente in continuo movimento.
Magda è un personaggio che attira e, allo stesso tempo, mette apprensione. Non si sa mai quale sarà il suo prossimo passo, perché attraverso le sue parole non si riesce a capire come si muoverà nella storia. Una donna che ha vissuto sola, nella sua mente e nel corpo, per la maggior parte della vita. Rivive, sudando e faticando, solo nel momento in cui è costretta dagli eventi a mettere mano alla fattoria. E ne prova soddisfazione. Ma la mente, questo mostro che continua a toglierle le notti e la fa cedere continuamente alla paura, la indebolisce, l’annienta. E noi, poveri lettori, non possiamo che vedere questa “eroina” cadere sempre più nella negatività e nella pazzia.
Forse, però, non è tutta pazzia, visto che ci lascia con una delle frasi più belle he io abbia letto sul rapporto con il proprio ambiente naturale:
Sono corrotta fino al midollo dalla bellezza di questo mondo abbandonato.
Secondo incontro con Coetzee, dopo La vita degli animali, non posso non ammettere che lo scrittore ci sappia fare con le parole. Prende il lettore e lo strascina in nuovi mondi, lo scaraventa in differenti situazioni, sempre con un linguaggio esatto, ricco di sfumature e significati, ammirevole. Sarà ora di prendere un altro suo libro in biblioteca?
Libro letto per la all-around-The-world reading Challenge ✈️, per il Sudafrica 🇿🇦
La narratrice ci racconta la sua storia con parole potenti, personali, crude. Ci descrive il caldo sole del Sudafrica che fa spaccare le pietre e i mille animali, insetti per lo più, che popolano il suo mondo. Un mondo, quello di Magda, più animalesco che umano. Compaiono più pecore, mucche, porcospini, cavalli, che uomini. Un mondo molto particolare, ricco di natura e polvere, frutti troppo maturi o sassi troppi bianchi. Un mondo che sa di sudore. Un mondo piccolo in un paesaggio immenso, una fattoria con poche persone e tanto terreno, ore intere prima che cali il sole, lunghe pause notturne per pensare. Un mondo, poi, interiore, visto attraverso le parole e i ricordi, le visioni della narratrice che, partita come poetessa, si ritrova a cadere nel baratro delle allucinazioni. O sono solo fantasie, le sue? Ci sta raccontando quello che vede o quello che immagina solo nella sua testa?
È tutto qui: un paesaggio scontroso, un gruppuscolo di uomini in una landa desolata, una mente in continuo movimento.
Magda è un personaggio che attira e, allo stesso tempo, mette apprensione. Non si sa mai quale sarà il suo prossimo passo, perché attraverso le sue parole non si riesce a capire come si muoverà nella storia. Una donna che ha vissuto sola, nella sua mente e nel corpo, per la maggior parte della vita. Rivive, sudando e faticando, solo nel momento in cui è costretta dagli eventi a mettere mano alla fattoria. E ne prova soddisfazione. Ma la mente, questo mostro che continua a toglierle le notti e la fa cedere continuamente alla paura, la indebolisce, l’annienta. E noi, poveri lettori, non possiamo che vedere questa “eroina” cadere sempre più nella negatività e nella pazzia.
Forse, però, non è tutta pazzia, visto che ci lascia con una delle frasi più belle he io abbia letto sul rapporto con il proprio ambiente naturale:
Sono corrotta fino al midollo dalla bellezza di questo mondo abbandonato.
Secondo incontro con Coetzee, dopo La vita degli animali, non posso non ammettere che lo scrittore ci sappia fare con le parole. Prende il lettore e lo strascina in nuovi mondi, lo scaraventa in differenti situazioni, sempre con un linguaggio esatto, ricco di sfumature e significati, ammirevole. Sarà ora di prendere un altro suo libro in biblioteca?
Libro letto per la all-around-The-world reading Challenge ✈️, per il Sudafrica 🇿🇦
December 16, 2010
Well, that was just the feel-good read of the year, wasn't it?
Jesus.
I don't often read books like this, and, even now, I can't even begin to describe what that category actually is. I remember reading Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure and fucking hating it. It was so filled with misery without the slightest attempt of hope or reason or a remote coming-and-going of happiness. It read like an endurance test. And I noticed some similarities between the general depressing tone of Jude The Obscure and In The Heart Of The Country. But J.M. Coetzee succeeded where Hardy failed by making the protagonist strangely engaging and sympathetic. I don't know how he did it, because...that bitch was straight-up nuts. However, I have to admit that I was generally intrigued by Magda.
The narrative was very first-person, given that there wasn't much dialogue, and I find that that style usually ends up sounding like a long, long half-assed diary entry. It was way more tell than show and it only worked because of the poetry style of narration. If it had been a stream of consciousness of complaining, I would've considered taking vengeance on the novel. But, instead, it reads like a long, really good Emily Dickenson poem (and I never actually dug her work). It provided a stillness of life that I don't often observe or acknowledge. I can't imagine any of us raised in the city or the suburbs having the patience to live on that South African farm because there's so very little culture and entertainment. Seriously, she did nothing. All she had was her insanity. If she didn't have her insanity, she would have killed herself out of boredom. Her misery and insanity gave her something, which was actually a pretty intriguing concept. Kids can have imagination, sure, but what if you lived in a place where that wasn't enough? What if you had to have an imagination that was so uncontrolled to survive the boredom that it had to become absolute madness?
I certainly did find the book exhausting though. Oh my god. I would look at it like a chore I had to do. But then once I was reading it, I'd remember how oddly intrigued I was by the narrator and how spectacularly impressed I was with the writing. It was a give-and-take feeling. If I came home from a long day at work, I'd tell the book to go fuck itself and read something else. Really, that 138 pages felt like 1,000. The novella probably aged me. Coetzee can write though. That dude can seriously spin some words.
I don't know how well-developed I'd consider the character of Magda, as her past doesn't often make an appearance (though I really liked the end when she asks her dead father if he remembers her favorite moments on the farm). I would've liked to know more about her childhood, but maybe that would've taken away from the main theme of feeling like goddamn crap. But one of the best moments of the book is when she talks about how happy she was playing with Arthur (page 48). You know every thought she has, sure, but how she came to be her wasn't really there. Then again, maybe who she used to be was always who she is so it didn't matter. I don't know, people. I'm not a fucking scientist.
BEST PART OF THE BOOK: My favorite part of the book was only two pages, I think. It's towards the end when the Spanish voices start coming from above. It lasts for a while, but she's still insane when she's dissecting what they mean and how the messages are relevant. However, there's, like, two pages where she starts yelling back and it seems like she's the sanest in that instant because she believes she's refusing the messages. But there's a speech coming from the "sky-gods" and she screams, "Spanish filth!" It was so relieving to see Magda divide herself up into two minds, one crazy and one sane. After spending the entire book in misery and isolation, she comes into her own sanity for a brief moment and refuses the crazy within her and she does it with gusto. It gave me a rather quick instant of awesome hope. I was honestly stoked for her. Her insanity actually cured her madness, I thought! But...it was short-lived.
I give this book three stars too because, honestly, Coetzee wrote an entire novella on misery and made it refreshing. However, I can't imagine why I'd ever reread this book unless I was tucked away in a cabin for the winter and wanted to get weird. I enjoyed an in-depth look at a character's constant feelings, but there wasn't too much of a plot for me to get into.
RANDOM LINES I FOUND INTRIGUING:
"I am not a happy peasant. I am a miserable black virgin, and my story is my story, even if it is a dull black blind stupid miserable story, ignorant of its meaning and of all its many possible untapped happy variants." (page 5) - I thought this sentence summed her up the best, and it was the first instance where I thought, this bitch is gonna be trouble.
..."whom I would vow to bend to a little lower, slave for a little harder than another woman in the dark, so as not to alarm him, and arouse, if the arts of arousal can be learned, and guide to the right hole, rendered penetrable with a gob of chickenfat from a pot at the bedside, and endure the huffing and puffing of, and be filled eventually, one expects, with seed by, and lie listening to the snoring of, til the balm of slumber arrive." (page 42) - She's as awkward horny as you can get and this description of sex was very...her. It made me feel awful inside.
"I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life." (page 43) - It's one quiet moment where she admits she's unhappy and wants to be happy in a way that weighs more on the joy than the desolation.
"The sex is smaller than I thought it would be, almost lost in a bush of black hair straggling up to the navel: a pale boy, a midget, a dwarf, an idiot son who, having survived for years shut away in the cellar, tasting only bread and water, talking to the spiders, singing to himself, is one night dressed in new clothes, set free, made much of, pampered, feasted, and then executed. Poor little thing." (page 69) - I was pretty impressed with this description of a man's junk. This also made me feel terrible.
Jesus.
I don't often read books like this, and, even now, I can't even begin to describe what that category actually is. I remember reading Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure and fucking hating it. It was so filled with misery without the slightest attempt of hope or reason or a remote coming-and-going of happiness. It read like an endurance test. And I noticed some similarities between the general depressing tone of Jude The Obscure and In The Heart Of The Country. But J.M. Coetzee succeeded where Hardy failed by making the protagonist strangely engaging and sympathetic. I don't know how he did it, because...that bitch was straight-up nuts. However, I have to admit that I was generally intrigued by Magda.
The narrative was very first-person, given that there wasn't much dialogue, and I find that that style usually ends up sounding like a long, long half-assed diary entry. It was way more tell than show and it only worked because of the poetry style of narration. If it had been a stream of consciousness of complaining, I would've considered taking vengeance on the novel. But, instead, it reads like a long, really good Emily Dickenson poem (and I never actually dug her work). It provided a stillness of life that I don't often observe or acknowledge. I can't imagine any of us raised in the city or the suburbs having the patience to live on that South African farm because there's so very little culture and entertainment. Seriously, she did nothing. All she had was her insanity. If she didn't have her insanity, she would have killed herself out of boredom. Her misery and insanity gave her something, which was actually a pretty intriguing concept. Kids can have imagination, sure, but what if you lived in a place where that wasn't enough? What if you had to have an imagination that was so uncontrolled to survive the boredom that it had to become absolute madness?
I certainly did find the book exhausting though. Oh my god. I would look at it like a chore I had to do. But then once I was reading it, I'd remember how oddly intrigued I was by the narrator and how spectacularly impressed I was with the writing. It was a give-and-take feeling. If I came home from a long day at work, I'd tell the book to go fuck itself and read something else. Really, that 138 pages felt like 1,000. The novella probably aged me. Coetzee can write though. That dude can seriously spin some words.
I don't know how well-developed I'd consider the character of Magda, as her past doesn't often make an appearance (though I really liked the end when she asks her dead father if he remembers her favorite moments on the farm). I would've liked to know more about her childhood, but maybe that would've taken away from the main theme of feeling like goddamn crap. But one of the best moments of the book is when she talks about how happy she was playing with Arthur (page 48). You know every thought she has, sure, but how she came to be her wasn't really there. Then again, maybe who she used to be was always who she is so it didn't matter. I don't know, people. I'm not a fucking scientist.
BEST PART OF THE BOOK: My favorite part of the book was only two pages, I think. It's towards the end when the Spanish voices start coming from above. It lasts for a while, but she's still insane when she's dissecting what they mean and how the messages are relevant. However, there's, like, two pages where she starts yelling back and it seems like she's the sanest in that instant because she believes she's refusing the messages. But there's a speech coming from the "sky-gods" and she screams, "Spanish filth!" It was so relieving to see Magda divide herself up into two minds, one crazy and one sane. After spending the entire book in misery and isolation, she comes into her own sanity for a brief moment and refuses the crazy within her and she does it with gusto. It gave me a rather quick instant of awesome hope. I was honestly stoked for her. Her insanity actually cured her madness, I thought! But...it was short-lived.
I give this book three stars too because, honestly, Coetzee wrote an entire novella on misery and made it refreshing. However, I can't imagine why I'd ever reread this book unless I was tucked away in a cabin for the winter and wanted to get weird. I enjoyed an in-depth look at a character's constant feelings, but there wasn't too much of a plot for me to get into.
RANDOM LINES I FOUND INTRIGUING:
"I am not a happy peasant. I am a miserable black virgin, and my story is my story, even if it is a dull black blind stupid miserable story, ignorant of its meaning and of all its many possible untapped happy variants." (page 5) - I thought this sentence summed her up the best, and it was the first instance where I thought, this bitch is gonna be trouble.
..."whom I would vow to bend to a little lower, slave for a little harder than another woman in the dark, so as not to alarm him, and arouse, if the arts of arousal can be learned, and guide to the right hole, rendered penetrable with a gob of chickenfat from a pot at the bedside, and endure the huffing and puffing of, and be filled eventually, one expects, with seed by, and lie listening to the snoring of, til the balm of slumber arrive." (page 42) - She's as awkward horny as you can get and this description of sex was very...her. It made me feel awful inside.
"I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life." (page 43) - It's one quiet moment where she admits she's unhappy and wants to be happy in a way that weighs more on the joy than the desolation.
"The sex is smaller than I thought it would be, almost lost in a bush of black hair straggling up to the navel: a pale boy, a midget, a dwarf, an idiot son who, having survived for years shut away in the cellar, tasting only bread and water, talking to the spiders, singing to himself, is one night dressed in new clothes, set free, made much of, pampered, feasted, and then executed. Poor little thing." (page 69) - I was pretty impressed with this description of a man's junk. This also made me feel terrible.
September 25, 2019
Romance, narrado em pequenos textos, numerados de 1 a 266, por uma mulher infeliz e solitária. Vive numa fazenda, na África do Sul, com o pai e nas suas loucas fantasias imagina assassiná-lo.
Não gostei. Achei maçudo e confuso.
_____________
Prémio Nobel da Literatura 2003
John Maxwell Coetzee nasceu na África do Sul em 9 de julho de 1940.
Não gostei. Achei maçudo e confuso.
_____________
Prémio Nobel da Literatura 2003
John Maxwell Coetzee nasceu na África do Sul em 9 de julho de 1940.
January 20, 2015
Magda is a white spinster who loves to keep her thoughts to herself. This whole book is all about what's going on in her mind as she is a self-absorbed, self-centered, unfriendly and thinks of herself as a victim of the people around her. So, instead of speaking to her father and their family's servants, she just keeps her thoughts to herself.
When her father seduces Anna the wife of their farmhand Hendrik, Magda resents it and the narration becomes more confusing as if it mirrors her mind. When her father dies, Magda sees it as a way to freedom. However, she does not have money to run the farm and the household, so Hendrik takes her as his mistress.
This is a difficult read because if you don't slow down, you will not know what's being said and what's going on. Magda is definitely an unreliable narrator and you just can help marvel on how Coetzee, this being just his second novel, was able to second guess the mind of an intelligent yet a bit crazy woman. This is my 5th book read by him and he definitely does not rewrite himself. Although most, if not all, of his books are set in South Africa, they speak to me maybe because I am also from a third-world country and Philippines was also colonized by Spain, US and Japan for many years.
And oh, the prose. The prose is scintillating and I can not help wonder how Coetzee was able to put all those beautiful and meaningful phrases and seemed to just go on and on.
Overall, I liked this book. Thin plot. Metaphor is obvious: Magda is the colonized African country and his father represents the native people who embraced the colonizers. Hendrik is the colonizer and the races are reversed just to put a nice spin on the usual race-colonizer roles.
When her father seduces Anna the wife of their farmhand Hendrik, Magda resents it and the narration becomes more confusing as if it mirrors her mind. When her father dies, Magda sees it as a way to freedom. However, she does not have money to run the farm and the household, so Hendrik takes her as his mistress.
This is a difficult read because if you don't slow down, you will not know what's being said and what's going on. Magda is definitely an unreliable narrator and you just can help marvel on how Coetzee, this being just his second novel, was able to second guess the mind of an intelligent yet a bit crazy woman. This is my 5th book read by him and he definitely does not rewrite himself. Although most, if not all, of his books are set in South Africa, they speak to me maybe because I am also from a third-world country and Philippines was also colonized by Spain, US and Japan for many years.
And oh, the prose. The prose is scintillating and I can not help wonder how Coetzee was able to put all those beautiful and meaningful phrases and seemed to just go on and on.
Overall, I liked this book. Thin plot. Metaphor is obvious: Magda is the colonized African country and his father represents the native people who embraced the colonizers. Hendrik is the colonizer and the races are reversed just to put a nice spin on the usual race-colonizer roles.
January 5, 2023
Đọc lại cảm giác thích hơn lần đầu. Bản dịch đọc hay quá, một nhà văn nam viết sách với lời thủ thỉ của người phụ nữ mà không hề thấy gượng gạo, khó chịu.
March 13, 2024
Quanti sono quei libri che ti lasciano svuotata e stanca ma allo stesso tempo sono dei piccoli gioielli?
"Nel cuore del paese" è uno di questi. Coetzee racconta una storia senza alcuna speranza, piena di solitudine e, a tratti, d'orrore. La racconta, però, magistralmente e la usa come grimaldello per aprire tantissime finestre sulla mente umana: qual è il ruolo delle relazioni? L'essere umano è davvero tale se non ha nessun confronto con l'altro? Che cosa ci differenzia dagli animali?
Coetzee ci racconta la storia di Magda, figlia non sposata di un fattore del veld sudafricano. È Magda a parlare sempre, è lei a raccontarci la sua storia mediocre in una specie di diario. Non è un personaggio gradevole, non lo è nessuno in questo libro, ma è un personaggio reale come hanno detto alcuni compagni del gruppo lettura. La storia, forse inverosimile, è estremamente reale perché densa di sentimenti umani.
Non riesco a consigliarlo come lettura a cuor leggero perché seppur scritto bene è un libro faticoso e difficile.
"Nel cuore del paese" è uno di questi. Coetzee racconta una storia senza alcuna speranza, piena di solitudine e, a tratti, d'orrore. La racconta, però, magistralmente e la usa come grimaldello per aprire tantissime finestre sulla mente umana: qual è il ruolo delle relazioni? L'essere umano è davvero tale se non ha nessun confronto con l'altro? Che cosa ci differenzia dagli animali?
Coetzee ci racconta la storia di Magda, figlia non sposata di un fattore del veld sudafricano. È Magda a parlare sempre, è lei a raccontarci la sua storia mediocre in una specie di diario. Non è un personaggio gradevole, non lo è nessuno in questo libro, ma è un personaggio reale come hanno detto alcuni compagni del gruppo lettura. La storia, forse inverosimile, è estremamente reale perché densa di sentimenti umani.
Non riesco a consigliarlo come lettura a cuor leggero perché seppur scritto bene è un libro faticoso e difficile.
November 3, 2021
"Language is no medium for desire. Desire is rapture, not exchange. It is only by alienating the desired that language masters it."
Coetzee at his best.
"These are not my tears, they are merely tears that pass through me, as the urine I pass is merely urine."
"My woes are leaving me. Small stick-like creatures, they crawl out of me and dwindle.
"Certain things seem to be forever irrecoverable. Perhaps that proves the reality of the past'
Coetzee at his best.
"These are not my tears, they are merely tears that pass through me, as the urine I pass is merely urine."
"My woes are leaving me. Small stick-like creatures, they crawl out of me and dwindle.
"Certain things seem to be forever irrecoverable. Perhaps that proves the reality of the past'
July 29, 2011
How can you commet on Coetzee? Everything he wries is extraordinary. This is no exception. Brutal, hits you in the guts with some of the most amazing images created in the modern novel, i'd say. Check out the scene when the aeroplane flies over head. Until that moment, I thought the book was set in the C19th. And of course, that was Coetzee's point. If you want to know about South Africa, read this book.
February 19, 2016
I read this book in one single sitting. It took me 5 hours, bloodshot eyes and a splitting headache, and I'd do it all over again just to experience the emotional torpedo it is.
Coetzee's work is bedazzling. His command of language - razor sharp, Lycra tight; the sheer muscle force of his imagery, and the tight, vide-like grip he holds over every word on a page is the stuff of masters.
This book is startling.
Coetzee's work is bedazzling. His command of language - razor sharp, Lycra tight; the sheer muscle force of his imagery, and the tight, vide-like grip he holds over every word on a page is the stuff of masters.
This book is startling.
November 22, 2024
Someday I will buy all of Coetzee's books and take a long-ass vacation where I will read each of them and contemplate the craters each of them leave inside me. This one is nothing short of a psychological horror, and the literary merit being off the charts makes it even more depressing. Dostoyevsky meets László Krasznahorkai in Cormac McCarthy's world. It's quite obvious, though, why this one isn't as popular as Coetzee's others, being heavily experimental and borderline-ambiguous.
December 15, 2019
3/5stars
I was so lost for so much of this book LOL I pride myself in loving weird books and challenging books that keep you on your toes but this one was so difficult to figure out. The narrator would switching mid sentence between reality and her dream world. She was lying literally in the first paragraph and kept telling us something and back tracking PAGES later so I was constantly just wondering where the heck in the story we were. Coetzee is a really wonderful and unique writer though so it was quite an interesting ride!
I was so lost for so much of this book LOL I pride myself in loving weird books and challenging books that keep you on your toes but this one was so difficult to figure out. The narrator would switching mid sentence between reality and her dream world. She was lying literally in the first paragraph and kept telling us something and back tracking PAGES later so I was constantly just wondering where the heck in the story we were. Coetzee is a really wonderful and unique writer though so it was quite an interesting ride!
March 7, 2013
Difícil de definir e classificar. É assim que considero este livro.
Este romance não é, de todo, uma criação que nos transporta para lá da nossa respiração mas, porém, ainda nos faz suspirar. A sua narrativa, a sua estrutura e a forma como está escrito fornecem-lhe um interesse relevante. Digamos que, de algum modo, é genuíno e incomum – valorizando, obviamente, o facto de este livro ser escrito no início da carreira de Coetzee.
Sendo o carácter geral deste livro um romance (quase em monólogo) onde alguém nos relata uma série de acontecimentos e suposições, apreciei, em parte, o facto de a narrativa desenrolar-se pausadamente, apresentando, em corrimento, uma escrita pormenorizada que permite ao leitor perceber e aproximar-se do interior da personagem principal (Magda) - ora com momentos intensamente densos e fluídos, ora, por outro lado menos positivo, com momentos demorados e penosos que, por me cansarem enquanto leitor, me pareceram ser desnecessários e em demasia, como por exemplo as longas linhas de cepticismo que marcam a personagem principal. Devido a estes momentos menos bons é que considero que se este romance fosse mais conciso poderia ser mais vantajoso e ajustado ao seu carácter literário, e, assim, mais interessante, intenso e profundo, visto que estes três aspectos parecem-me ser as suas qualidades-mor.
Nos momentos mais interessantes encontram-se filosofias e perspectivas de vida profundas que, por vezes, chegam a roçar a loucura, o excesso do sentido do amor, o desespero de alguém que se quer ver e (re)conhecer, e quer ser visto e ser (re)conhecido. E, depois das várias interrogações sobre um mundo silencioso e silenciado, no qual a personagem principal considera a sua existência uma nulidade - em parte por ser mulher, o que nos revela um mundo onde as diferenças de género são muito presentes -, conclui-se que a essa existência foi uma auto-escolha. Manter-se inexplicada e inexplicável foi, pura e simplesmente, uma opção de Magda, porque aquela existência, apesar das infelicidades e dúvidas, era a que, no fundo, Magda não desejava mas construiu para si. Nessa existência, Magda encontra um conforto na solidão e na infelicidade:
“Vivo, sofro, estou aqui. Com astúcia e perfídia, se necessário, luto para não me transformar numa das esquecidas da história. Sou uma solteirona com um diário fechado a sete chaves, mas sou mais do que isso. Sou uma consciência agitada, mas também sou mais do que isso. Quando todas as luzes se apagam, sorrio na escuridão. Por incrível que pareça, os meus dentes luzem.” (pp: 11)
Como disse, não é uma leitura excepcional, mas tem pormenores muito interessantes como por exemplo o facto de terminar-se o livro e ficar-se com a sensação de que tudo ou nada do que foi lido pode, ou não, ter acontecido. Como Magda diz: “Só enterrando os nossos segredos dentro de nós é que os conseguimos guardar(…)invento tudo para que me inventem”.
Nós, leitores, não temos acesso a tais dimensões, sendo os segredos lidos possivelmente inventados que, por sua vez, inventam o romance de uma personagem que tem sempre algo a desvendar.
Este romance não é, de todo, uma criação que nos transporta para lá da nossa respiração mas, porém, ainda nos faz suspirar. A sua narrativa, a sua estrutura e a forma como está escrito fornecem-lhe um interesse relevante. Digamos que, de algum modo, é genuíno e incomum – valorizando, obviamente, o facto de este livro ser escrito no início da carreira de Coetzee.
Sendo o carácter geral deste livro um romance (quase em monólogo) onde alguém nos relata uma série de acontecimentos e suposições, apreciei, em parte, o facto de a narrativa desenrolar-se pausadamente, apresentando, em corrimento, uma escrita pormenorizada que permite ao leitor perceber e aproximar-se do interior da personagem principal (Magda) - ora com momentos intensamente densos e fluídos, ora, por outro lado menos positivo, com momentos demorados e penosos que, por me cansarem enquanto leitor, me pareceram ser desnecessários e em demasia, como por exemplo as longas linhas de cepticismo que marcam a personagem principal. Devido a estes momentos menos bons é que considero que se este romance fosse mais conciso poderia ser mais vantajoso e ajustado ao seu carácter literário, e, assim, mais interessante, intenso e profundo, visto que estes três aspectos parecem-me ser as suas qualidades-mor.
Nos momentos mais interessantes encontram-se filosofias e perspectivas de vida profundas que, por vezes, chegam a roçar a loucura, o excesso do sentido do amor, o desespero de alguém que se quer ver e (re)conhecer, e quer ser visto e ser (re)conhecido. E, depois das várias interrogações sobre um mundo silencioso e silenciado, no qual a personagem principal considera a sua existência uma nulidade - em parte por ser mulher, o que nos revela um mundo onde as diferenças de género são muito presentes -, conclui-se que a essa existência foi uma auto-escolha. Manter-se inexplicada e inexplicável foi, pura e simplesmente, uma opção de Magda, porque aquela existência, apesar das infelicidades e dúvidas, era a que, no fundo, Magda não desejava mas construiu para si. Nessa existência, Magda encontra um conforto na solidão e na infelicidade:
“Vivo, sofro, estou aqui. Com astúcia e perfídia, se necessário, luto para não me transformar numa das esquecidas da história. Sou uma solteirona com um diário fechado a sete chaves, mas sou mais do que isso. Sou uma consciência agitada, mas também sou mais do que isso. Quando todas as luzes se apagam, sorrio na escuridão. Por incrível que pareça, os meus dentes luzem.” (pp: 11)
Como disse, não é uma leitura excepcional, mas tem pormenores muito interessantes como por exemplo o facto de terminar-se o livro e ficar-se com a sensação de que tudo ou nada do que foi lido pode, ou não, ter acontecido. Como Magda diz: “Só enterrando os nossos segredos dentro de nós é que os conseguimos guardar(…)invento tudo para que me inventem”.
Nós, leitores, não temos acesso a tais dimensões, sendo os segredos lidos possivelmente inventados que, por sua vez, inventam o romance de uma personagem que tem sempre algo a desvendar.
February 2, 2023
Wow!! Dar ce carte!
Coetzee m-a lăsat fără cuvinte.
Subiectul a fost weird pentru mine, recunosc că unele fragmente m-au cam șocat, dar afirm că scrierea este una extraordinară.
Este o carte jurnal despre nebunie, crimă și singurătate în mijlocul pustiului.
Coetzee m-a lăsat fără cuvinte.
Subiectul a fost weird pentru mine, recunosc că unele fragmente m-au cam șocat, dar afirm că scrierea este una extraordinară.
Este o carte jurnal despre nebunie, crimă și singurătate în mijlocul pustiului.
January 4, 2020
2.5 Stars. A dark, brutal story about the daughter of a South African farmer during colonial times. Magda, a spinster, has only ever had contact with her cruel Father and the African workers on their farm. Over time she being to lose her mind. I found it hard to distinguish between reality and fantasy in this story and found it really depressing. Thanks to Text Publishing for my paperback copy.
February 21, 2022
4.5
Really exceptional. Language that feels bereft of time. It is as if the nineteenth century stylist merged with the modernist technician and birthed a gory but very much alive insane baby. Coetzee luxuriates in the mind of a colonial woman on the brink of madness. Magda is on the verge of a nervous breakdown but, unlike the Almodovar film, in a deeply uncomfortable and noncomic fashion. She imagines murder, imagines the barren landscape of the South African countryside as a hellish space of epiphanies and pillagings, truths and deceptions, to the point that she becomes the voice of the endlessly unstable reality of white South Africa in the 70s. How does a group respond its forefathers' frightening dominations? Murder them? Imagine them dead? Take care of them to their dying day? How do people growing up in the colonizer's homestead relate to black South Africans? Bring in some psychosexual dynamics, and the book attempts to complexify it all. Thrilling, intense stuff.
My only qualm is that there is a section during which Magda hears voices, and what they say to her are quotes from Robespierre, Simone Weil, Hegel, and Rousseau, but I really do not understand the necessity of such a section. It made Coetzee's pitch-perfect balance of abstract and concrete description tip more to the former side to a degree of opaqueness I could not begin to ascertain. I could understand the quotes, whether I had come across them before or not, but the meaning remains elusive.
Really exceptional. Language that feels bereft of time. It is as if the nineteenth century stylist merged with the modernist technician and birthed a gory but very much alive insane baby. Coetzee luxuriates in the mind of a colonial woman on the brink of madness. Magda is on the verge of a nervous breakdown but, unlike the Almodovar film, in a deeply uncomfortable and noncomic fashion. She imagines murder, imagines the barren landscape of the South African countryside as a hellish space of epiphanies and pillagings, truths and deceptions, to the point that she becomes the voice of the endlessly unstable reality of white South Africa in the 70s. How does a group respond its forefathers' frightening dominations? Murder them? Imagine them dead? Take care of them to their dying day? How do people growing up in the colonizer's homestead relate to black South Africans? Bring in some psychosexual dynamics, and the book attempts to complexify it all. Thrilling, intense stuff.
My only qualm is that there is a section during which Magda hears voices, and what they say to her are quotes from Robespierre, Simone Weil, Hegel, and Rousseau, but I really do not understand the necessity of such a section. It made Coetzee's pitch-perfect balance of abstract and concrete description tip more to the former side to a degree of opaqueness I could not begin to ascertain. I could understand the quotes, whether I had come across them before or not, but the meaning remains elusive.
August 27, 2018
Coetzee es una garantía. Garantía de sobriedad, de profundidad, de estilo. De ambición literaria, ni más ni menos. "En medio de ninguna parte", como se ha traducido en España su novela "In the Heart of the Country", fue su segunda obra publicada, pero en ella ya se percibe esa habilidad especial de Coetzee para penetrar en los recovecos más profundos e ignotos del alma humana. No importa mucho lo que se nos cuenta, al fin y al cabo desvaríos mentales de una mujer apartada en buena medida del contacto humano, perdida en la inmensidad del desierto sudafricano, sometida por un padre del que apenas sabemos quién es, qué hace, cómo vive, ni siquiera si aún vive, hija de un régimen racista y criminal del que ella misma es, en buena medida, su más viva representación. Son los sentimientos, las ambiciones, los anhelos, absolutamente trasladables a cualquier otra circunstancia, lo que prima; es el ansia por vivir, por ser, unido a la imposibilidad de escapar de ese mundo reducido donde está recluida. Es la lucha básica de todo ser humano, una lucha que las circunstancias cercenan las más de las veces. El gran Coetzee pone el dedo en la llaga una vez más.
March 20, 2015
Las novelas de Coetzee no son pan comido. Es bastante común que en ellas, en un momento dado, se exija del lector un gran esfuerzo: que recorra un trecho particularmente árido dónde la acción queda inhibida dentro un ambiente introvertido y decadente. La declinación final de Elizabeth Costello. Michael K sólo y perdido en medio de Ciudad del Cabo. Este esfuerzo se asume confiando que Coetzee sabe como lograr que al cerrar el libro el lector experimente algo fuera de lo convencional. Alguna idea. Alguna escena. Alguna imagen. En esta ocasión el esfuerzo exigido resulta excesivo porque no creo que exista tal compensación. Después de finalizar con la última línea en ningún momento he encontrado nada que valga la pena recordar o que me haya sorprendido.
Y es que en buena parte del texto, Coetzee renuncia a la acción, a construir una trama y a los diálogos. Lo único que ofrece es recorrer el torbellino mental de la protagonista, una mujer que sufre algún tipo de trastorno mental. Todo muy Beckettiano y Kafkiano. Pero se trata de una enajenación muy particular, dado que se expresa mediante simbolismos y figuras poéticas, cosa que, ya de entrada, me suena a prosaico. No percibí el estar inmerso en los fondos de la locura, pues ningún momento suena verosímil, tan sólo el estar presenciando los esfuerzos de un escritor por resultar muy literario. Por más páginas que aguardes, lo máximo que encuentras son decenas y más decenas de metáforas acerca de complejos físicos y obsesiones varias. No pongo en duda que estudiado en una aula universitaria el texto tendrá su interés, pero no es lo que yo busco en un libro. Y, de cualquier forma, en resumidas cuentas, su abstrusa construcción, su desarrollo monótono y su tono depresivo me han provocado un hastío considerable. Y ya estoy demasiado viejo y cascarrabias como para aguantar.
Siendo lector asiduo de Coetzee, sé que es capaz de crear textos complejos (moral e intelectualmente) sin caer en ese tipo de jugadas, que me parecen más propias de poetas pedantes. Sólo le recomendaría esta lectura a quien guste de Rimbaud o Verlaine, quien en cambio desee probar con un Coetzee más accesible, le recomiendo cualquier otro libro, incluso los que todavía no he leído. Por mi parte, no sé, supongo que ahora podría continuar con "Diario de un mal año" que a juzgar por el título tiene pinta de ser también muy alegre.
October 7, 2012
J. M. Coetzee burst onto the literary scene in 1974, with his novella Dusklands. That work, which told two unconnected stories: the first was about a US government agency worker, Eugene Dawn, losing grip on reality due to the psychological toll of his work – he has been responsible for deaths in the Vietnam War – and stabbing his son. The second, and to me more interesting one, told the narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, and his interactions and conflicts with Namaqua tribe in eighteenth century South Africa. Both pieces, however, revealed a preoccupation with lives lived on the periphery, where psychological instability becomes a norm.
Coetzee’s second novel, In the Heart of the Country, published in 1976, continues this preoccupation. Magda is a young white woman who lives on an isolated farmstead with her father, and their two servants, Hendrik and Anna. The novel, a solipsistic narrative, probes the depths of Magda’s unravelling psychology with insight, depth, and a language of rich poetry. Despite it’s brevity, the Vintage edition I read clocked in at just 151 pages, In the Heart of the Country contains so much it feels a novel twice its length.
It is a difficult novel to discuss without spoiling much of what makes it so powerful – so let us just say that there is a tragedy and that the consequences of it causes the three remaining lives to free-fall. The relationship between master and slave is tested, and ultimately broken, as personal, physical and sexual boundaries are crossed, or shattered in with brutal force. The natural world, which has impinged upon the sanctuary, consumes them all, and Magda is left howling at the desert wind, lost and alone.
This is a novel in which every word seems carefully considered and placed. There is not a wasted word. It is precise, razor sharp in its execution. Its heady atmosphere completely overwhelms you; it is a novel that threatens to destroy you. For a second novel this is very good indeed, and further proof, is it were needed, that J.M. Coetzee was one of the most interesting novelist in the western world. He still is.
Coetzee’s second novel, In the Heart of the Country, published in 1976, continues this preoccupation. Magda is a young white woman who lives on an isolated farmstead with her father, and their two servants, Hendrik and Anna. The novel, a solipsistic narrative, probes the depths of Magda’s unravelling psychology with insight, depth, and a language of rich poetry. Despite it’s brevity, the Vintage edition I read clocked in at just 151 pages, In the Heart of the Country contains so much it feels a novel twice its length.
It is a difficult novel to discuss without spoiling much of what makes it so powerful – so let us just say that there is a tragedy and that the consequences of it causes the three remaining lives to free-fall. The relationship between master and slave is tested, and ultimately broken, as personal, physical and sexual boundaries are crossed, or shattered in with brutal force. The natural world, which has impinged upon the sanctuary, consumes them all, and Magda is left howling at the desert wind, lost and alone.
This is a novel in which every word seems carefully considered and placed. There is not a wasted word. It is precise, razor sharp in its execution. Its heady atmosphere completely overwhelms you; it is a novel that threatens to destroy you. For a second novel this is very good indeed, and further proof, is it were needed, that J.M. Coetzee was one of the most interesting novelist in the western world. He still is.
September 4, 2011
In the Heart of the Country is a staggeringly goddamn powerful novel. An espresso: short and dark and intense. And it'll keep you awake once you've finished it.
I can't fault the quality of the writing. (Of course I can't: Coetzee is a brilliant writer.) But I would say: this is not his most ambitious novel. Why? Because it's all couched in the first person — in the (extreme, vibrant, crackling) voice of a character who is deeply troubled, mentally unstable. This has been done before (albeit not in this context, imbued with the racial tensions of colonial South Africa). And, as voices go, it is perhaps *slightly* easy. Because it is so extreme.
Subtlety is harder. Normality — mundane, humdrum normality — is harder. And what I *really* admire (and what Coetzee gives us, incidentally, in a novel like Disgrace) is literature that illuminates — and I really mean *illuminates*: literature that sets a halo around the stuff of everyday humanity. Without ever having to resort to extreme subject matter.
Because a great artist can make beauty and drama out of the most humble constituent parts.
That said, Coetzee inhabits his narrator's hysterical voice with outstanding skill. He is very convincing indeed.
Which means that this is an horrific novel — in its bleakness, its darkness. Sad, harrowing, terrifying.
I can't fault the quality of the writing. (Of course I can't: Coetzee is a brilliant writer.) But I would say: this is not his most ambitious novel. Why? Because it's all couched in the first person — in the (extreme, vibrant, crackling) voice of a character who is deeply troubled, mentally unstable. This has been done before (albeit not in this context, imbued with the racial tensions of colonial South Africa). And, as voices go, it is perhaps *slightly* easy. Because it is so extreme.
Subtlety is harder. Normality — mundane, humdrum normality — is harder. And what I *really* admire (and what Coetzee gives us, incidentally, in a novel like Disgrace) is literature that illuminates — and I really mean *illuminates*: literature that sets a halo around the stuff of everyday humanity. Without ever having to resort to extreme subject matter.
Because a great artist can make beauty and drama out of the most humble constituent parts.
That said, Coetzee inhabits his narrator's hysterical voice with outstanding skill. He is very convincing indeed.
Which means that this is an horrific novel — in its bleakness, its darkness. Sad, harrowing, terrifying.
February 15, 2012
I didn't review this one at the time but it's certainly stuck with me since. Having recently tackled a lot of McCarthy I've found myself coming back to Coetzee's desolate veld as a comparison to McCarthy's bleak landscapes. In another life I'd love to do a thesis on the textual violence in these two authors' environments. Coetzee presents such a sparse style here, really all interiority as far as narrative, giving the environment, by contrast, more ominous weight. Of course brutality has often been explored in terms of externalities - the elements, raw landscapes, forces of nature - so it's quite a feat to give so much space to an interior monologue, especially through the muddied voice of fantasy, in exploring malice and cruelty. It's not always clear where our narrator is in her own narrative, whether we are being asked to understand something that really happened or whether we are abetting a deceit. And of course the whole thing is fiction so does it matter anyway? Coetzee's great skill here and in much of his work is that he goes beyond the unreliable narrator and makes the text itself problematic (something he gets into more deeply in Foe). Definitely one of his strongest works, but also one of the most enjoyable to read.
June 3, 2021
One of the weirdest books I’ve ever read
April 22, 2018
Op zich is het concept van dit boek uitstekend: een vrouw (eenzaam, met duidelijke nood aan een man of vrouw) vertelt over hoe ze samenleeft met haar vader en bedienden, afgezonderd op een landgoed in Zuid-Afrika. Maar omdat er overduidelijk een hoek af is, is de monoloog die ze afsteekt weinig betrouwbaar: als lezer weet je nooit wat echt is en wat niet. Je kan dit boek honderd keer opnieuw lezen, en honderd keer iets anders geloven.
Helaas wordt dit (sowieso al moeilijk) concept gecombineerd met een zéér literaire schrijfstijl. Ik ben zeker niet vies van wat literaire mooischrijverij, maar hier is het too much: te hoogdravend, monoloog na monoloog waarbij alle mogelijke natuurelementen aangehaald worden, te veel "kijk-eens-wat-ik-kan"-schrijverij. Het resultaat is een doorgedreven stijloefening (toegegeven, uitstekend uitgevoerd) waar ik me doorheen heb moeten worstelen. En dat voor een boek van nog geen 150 pagina's.
Voor literatuurstudenten is dit boek goud, aan alle andere "gewone" lezers raad ik aan hun kostbare leestijd aan een ander boek te spenderen.
Helaas wordt dit (sowieso al moeilijk) concept gecombineerd met een zéér literaire schrijfstijl. Ik ben zeker niet vies van wat literaire mooischrijverij, maar hier is het too much: te hoogdravend, monoloog na monoloog waarbij alle mogelijke natuurelementen aangehaald worden, te veel "kijk-eens-wat-ik-kan"-schrijverij. Het resultaat is een doorgedreven stijloefening (toegegeven, uitstekend uitgevoerd) waar ik me doorheen heb moeten worstelen. En dat voor een boek van nog geen 150 pagina's.
Voor literatuurstudenten is dit boek goud, aan alle andere "gewone" lezers raad ik aan hun kostbare leestijd aan een ander boek te spenderen.
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