A Firmino, Oporto sólo le evoca los callos y la odiosa sopa de col verde de la tía Pitú en las navidades de su infancia. Ahora, cerca de su treintena, pero no tanto como desearía, el protagonista regresa a esta ciudad a intentar esclarecer el misterio de un cuerpo decapitado para traducirlo en crónica sensacionalista que luego será publicada en el periódico O Acontecimiento.

Vuelvo a leer este libro, muchos años después de su primera lectura, esta vez como guía de la ciudad en la que se desarrollan los acontecimientos de la novela. Pero a pesar de ello he disfrutado más la narración de los hechos y las disquisiciones de Tabucchi, puestas en los parlamentos del abogado Loton, sobre el poder, la tortura, la Grundnorm, que está en la base de todo, "solo que la llamada "base" que ocupa la norma es el vértice de una pirámide invertida. Un policía viola la ley? ¿Una SS mata a los judíos? Estos son casos de Grundnorm: "Lo hice porque el sargento lo ordenó, a lo que el capitán lo ordenó, a lo que él lo ordenó .... (de esta manera) Hitler, a quien le ordenó ... a Dios ". Y todo está justificado.

Tabucchi escribió el libro tras la aparición del cadáver decapitado de un ciudadano portugués, asesinado en circunstancias poco claras en una comisaría de las afueras de Lisboa en los años 90. “Cuando un crimen ofende la naturaleza humana, nos ofende también personalmente. Te sientes al mismo tiempo escandalizado y culpable. Mi emoción, mi sensibilidad y mi imaginación como escritor fueron conmovidas por este hecho”

Pese al aparentemente inacabado fin, la novela, casi thriller, con un periodista que quiere investigar sobre literatura, el abogado Lotón, un sabio cansado pero no vencido, esa guía de la ciudad de Porto, la sutil descripción del carácter portugués, Manolo el gitano, prácticamente un refugiado expulsado de España y Dona Rosa, un personaje al que Tabucchi debería haber dedicado una novela para ella solita, no estará a la altura del Sostiene Pereira del mismo autor, pero se le acerca mucho. ( )

Un feroce assassinio. Il giovane inviato di un giornale popolare. La voce dolente e nostalgica di un vecchio zingaro. Un bizzarro avvocato ossessionato dalla Grande Norma Giuridica. E, per sfondo, l'antica e affascinante città di Oporto. Un romanzo che sotto le vesti di un'inchiesta giornalistica propone una riflessione sull'abuso e sulla giustizia.

Once upon there was a guy, me, who used to just seemed to dislike novels that took the piss out of philosophies (or at least any I liked)… “Candide” was a good piss-take, - and in fact very bleak about humanity rather than cheerily commonsensical. Even though Swift wasn't atheist, it seemed to me that Candide had much in common with Gulliver's Travels... I don't think there is a useful category to be termed "philosophical fiction"....there is more just that baggy old category, "the Novel of Ideas", and even that breaks down when one considers that most "great works" of fiction have quite a strong relationship to ideas of their time, including sometimes philosophically elaborate ideas (Proust influenced by Bergson, Tolstoy doing ""philosophy of history"- but fortunately not only that, in “War and Peace”, Thomas Mann influenced by Jung - despite denials, etc., etc...). Sorry. I missed that epistemology class where the criterion of truth was determined to be cultural greatness, presumably because I was busy thinking for myself, and comparing the subtlety of Leibniz to the crassness of Voltaire (in that work). To be fair to Voltaire, he did not have sight of all the philosophical papers Leibniz kept hidden from the world during his life for very sensible reasons, but even so, enough could be established to see where Leibniz was driving from and just how astonishing some of his ideas were. It's that kind of thinking for oneself that Voltaire was trying to support with the work. Leibniz however, perhaps second only to Spinoza, was a "thinker for himself" of the first order - autodidact, he had to work stuff out for himself and experienced the joy of self-determined understanding. It got him into trouble when he showed off his discoveries only for someone else to say they had already found it - part of this was Leibniz's own excitement about what he was doing off his own back. Perhaps he should have just kept nodding to cultural "greats" like so many of his German contemporaries.

Also, love Sartre - and Simone de Beauvoir...and Camus. There was an affinity between Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, who mentions D's Notes from Underground. What about Swift? Could he be considered a philosophical novelist? Or George Eliot? I suppose the 19th Century, being such a time of intellectual change, with the novel as a primary form of communication, entertainment and debate, was a time when novelists were very engaged with ideas.

And where is Antonio Tabucchi’s “The Missing Head of Dasmaceno Monteiro” in all of this? There’s more wisdom in Tabucchi’s Portuguese milieu (in this case Oporto) than in the light beams delineated by dust moats of 18th/19th Century literature. I like reading novels which engage with contemporary ideas - through the medium of the characters and their relationship with the world -which can make the ideas and concepts come alive. Dostoyevsky was driven to debate ideas which he saw as fundamentally important - engaging with authenticity and empiricism and rationality, individual freedom and mass culture and socialism, Christian faith and alienation- in his work. Thus, he often argues against himself, questions his own views, through the medium of fiction, and this gives his work its great power. Yes, Tabucchi like Leibniz, and Nietzsche were original thinkers, if that is what we mean by 'thinking for ourselves.' Of course my criteria of truth began and ended in God as instigator of the best possible world within which our freedom and will is self-determined.

As soon as I saw there was an English version of this Tabucchi, I snapped it up. A quote taken from the English version which I also took from my Portuguese edition:

“For his piss he had chosen a massive oak that cast its great shadow over a grassy clearing just on the verge of the pines. Who knows why it gave him a sense of comfort to piss against the trunk of that tree, perhaps because it was very much older than he was, and Manolo liked to think there were living things in the world older than him, even if they were only trees. The fact is that it made him feel at his ease, and filled with peace, in harmony with himself and with the universe. So he walked up to the great trunk and urinated with relief. And at that moment he saw a shoe.

(“…Para mijar tinha escolhido um grande carvalho que espalhava a sua sombra sobre um campo à beira do pinhal. Não sabia porquê mas dava-lhe prazer mijar contra aquele carvalho. Talvez por ser uma árvore muito mais velha que ele, e o Manolo gostava que no mundo houvesse seres vivos mais velhos do que ele, mesmo que se tratasse de uma árvore. A verdade é que se sentia bem, como se uma serenidade o invadisse enquanto fazia as suas necessidades. Sentia-se em paz consigo próprio e com o universo. Aproximou-se do carvalho e urinou com alívio. E nesse momento viu um sapato” in the Portuguese edition).

When I was young I also liked to piss against light poles, particularly in Festas dos Santos Populares in the Summer in Lisbon where we couldn’t find a bathroom even if our lives depended on it… packed Bon Vivants thronging the streets in Lisbon…

This is Tabucchi at his best. I can feel what Manolo feels, I can empathise with Loton’s speculations and with Firmino’s literary interests…

Bottom-line: Tabucchi is dead. He got rid of the restlessness. We, among the restless and the nonconformists, continue reading his books to appease our own restlessness. It is the least consolation that we deserve I’d say. ( )

Quelle belle langue ! Un livre comme je les aime. Un meurtre prétexte pour une entrée en littérature. Entre la dénonciation politique et la scène de moeurs.

Firmino, journaliste dans un quotidien de seconde zone, doit aller enquêter dans une ville de province portugaise suite à la découverte d'un corps décapité. Il rencontrera un avocat pittoresque avec lequel il échangera des propos métaphysiques.

Du bien bel ouvrage. Je recommande. ( )