Claudio Magris Livres

L'auteur descend le Danube et décrit en érudit la culture de la Mitteleuropa; le voyage au gré du fleuve est une fresque des siècles passés. ©Electre 2022

A writer for whom the journey has always mattered reinvents the very form itself in this inviting collection of in-the-moment impressions of his journeys

From one of Europe's most revered authors, a tale of one man's obsessive project to collect the instruments of death, evil, and humanity's darkest atrocities in order to oppose them

A collection of brief, but intimate meditations on life and culture ranging from controversial matters to private moments

In the tiny borderlands of Istria and Italy, from the forests of Monte Nevoso, to the hidden valleys of the Tyrol, to a Trieste cafe, Microcosms pieces together a mosaic of stories - comic, tragic, picaresque, nostalgic - from life's minor characters.

Early this century Enrico, a young intellectual, leaves the city of Gorizia with its abundant population and culture, to spend several years living on the Patagonian pampas, alone with his ancient Greek texts, his flocks and, every now and then, a woman.

Boris Pahor, a Slovene from Trieste, spent the last fourteen months of World War II as a prisoner and medic in the camps at Belsen, Harzungen, Dachau, and Natzweiler. His fellow prisoners comprised a veritable microcosm of Europe - Italians, French, Russians, Dutch, Poles, Germans. Twenty years later, he visits a camp in the Vosges mountains which has been preserved as an historical monument. Images of the camps come back to him: corpses being carried to the ovens; emaciated prisoners, in wooden clogs and ragged, zebra-striped clothes, struggling up the steps of a quarry, or standing at roll call in the cold rain; the infirmary, reeking of dysentery and death. Pahor gives a stirring account of his attempts to render medical aid in the face of utter brutality and mass death. And of the ineradicable guilt he feels, having survived when millions did not.

Apparso agli inizi degli anni Sessanta, questo libro ha avuto il merito di indagare tra i primi un tema che avrebbe poi goduto di una fortuna ininterrotta. Nel mito absburgico confluiscono molte componenti: l'idealizzazione dell'Impero come armonica entità sovranazionale e universalistica; il senso dell'ordine e della gerarchia; l'imperatore Francesco Giuseppe, che di quell'ordine era simbolo e garante; una visione edonistica ed epicurea della vita, con epicentro Vienna... Intrecciando storia, cultura e costume, Magris ha ricostruito le ragioni storiche di questo mito e la sua presenza nelle opere letterarie, dall'epoca Biedermeier ad autori come Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, Kraus, Rilke, Roth, Werfel, Zweig, Musil, Doderer, la cui adesione al proprio tempo ha assunto la forma, tipicamente austriaca, dell'ironia, della critica disincantata e beffarda.