Status Updates From To Those Gods Beyond

impressioni a caldo: un Calvino più barocco e con meno verve

"Forse taluno considererà questa un'immagine faticosamente barocca; ebbene, egli non è re; e pertanto di ciò non darò altra spiegazione."

I understand why Alastair Brotchie's afterword was, well, after the rest of the book. All I can say is that I'm glad it wasn't at the beginning, as the tenuous, yet overwrought analysis of Manganelli's work wouldn't have spoiled the joy of "To Those Gods Beyond" so much as polluted it utterly. I'd rather it just not have been a part of this volume.

The lengthy and exhaustive essay "Disquisition on the Difficulty of Communicating With the Dead" is precisely what the title promises. Where does one begin searching to find the dead, seeing that we have no way to measure those who have no body? Where are they hiding? And what language would we or should we use when communicating with them, once found? More importantly, do they even care? Or are they just stupid?

In hindsight, it's plain to see that the title of the book: To Those Gods Beyond derives, in tone and principal, at least, from the story "An Impossible Love". Here, Hamlet (deceased) finds means to communicate with the Princess of The Princess of Cleve (also deceased) by means of a verbal catapult that launches missives across realities. But what is between and behind those realities?

"Ignominy" sees the (yet another) dead protagonist slowly reason themself into the state defined by the title. The self-awareness of The Dead leads them to disappear in the ever-diminishing (or, rather, spreading thin to near-infinity) of the self. Ignoring, it seems, is both ubiquitous and inevitable for those without a body and, hence without a firm place in space and time. All dissolves into near-nothing.

"A Few Hypotheses Concerning My Previous Reincarnations" is exactly what it purports to be, which is a baffling thing for any reader. Suffice it to say that the "S" word (-uicide) figures prominently in the narrative as the author tries to piece together his past life. It's a whimsical and tragic examination of identity and the twisted roads one can go down when reflecting on the self.

"Simulations" takes the narrator from kingship to poverty to being a renegade and, finally, to nothing but a "child's hallucination". Manganelli, like Beckett in his famous trilogy, breaks down the character to the point of less than nothing, a mere figment of imagination. The last paragraph is a masterful paradigm shift from the observer to the observed; an existentialist epiphany.

"A King" may be an existentialist shudder from the whispering of death or it may be a eulogy to solipsism itself. But why not both? In any case it is as bold and majestic as the titlliberally.

I absolutely see why Calvino praised Manganelli's work and why Atlas published this book. The first 50-ish pages alone are worth the price of entry. Far more, if you ask me.

NTS: quote p. 54-55 libreally.

Manganelli's essay "Literature as Deception" flatters the writer's vanity, crowning him buffoon, but in the sense of The Fool in the tarot. The foolishness is freedom and the buffoonery wisdom. The writer is, in essence, the trickster god of words and semantics. I wholeheartedly agree with his assesment. At least I flatter myself thusly.

‘Suffering is nothing more than a means for language to organise itself: it is how it functions.’