A Different Sea

by Claudio Magris, M. S. Spurr (Translator)

Overview

An illuminating portrait of a world in ferment after the First world War, and a man seeking an authentic life.

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. He has been taught by his closest friend, Carlo, a philosopher/poet who commits suicide in his early twenties, to search for an authentic life, free of social falsehoods. But in his search for this unattainable goal, Enrico destroys every chance he has of a normal existence. This is portrait of a world in ferment, a decaying empire shaken by war and revolution, and a life-long search for meaning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781446475294
Publisher:	Random House
Publication date:	05/31/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	665 KB

About the Author

Claudio Magris is the author of Danube, a work described as a masterpiece by a great number of critics, and which has been translated into most major languages. He previously taught German at the University of Turin. He has translated the works of Ibsen, Kleist and Schnitzler and currently lectures in the faculty of Literature and Philosophy at Trieste University.

Editorial Reviews

Like its protagonist, this enigmatic novel yields pleasures grudgingly, with an unwillingness that borders on the perverse. In 1909, Enrico Mreule leaves the town of Gorizia in ''his small corner of the Danubian Empire'' and boards a steamship to Argentina-partly to escape military service, partly on a philosophic quest. While this taciturn dreamer spends the next 13 years as a solitary gaucho in Patagonia, a world war takes place and his best friend from childhood-a philosopher named Carlo who idealized Enrico-kills himself. By the time Enrico returns home, in fact, so much has changed that he feels as if ''he has left rather than returned.'' Resenting the expectations he senses others have for him, Enrico continues to the end of his days estranged from himself and those around him, a virtual misanthrope. Magris (Danube) writes vividly and learnedly, but readers will have difficulty sharing Carlo's vision of Enrico-he may instead appear more a cantankerous eccentric than ''a confident and dignified conscience.'' For all its philosophical posturing, this book offers little genuine wisdom. (Feb.)

EBOOK COMMENTARY

Like its protagonist, this enigmatic novel yields pleasures grudgingly, with an unwillingness that borders on the perverse. In 1909, Enrico Mreule leaves the town of Gorizia in ``his small corner of the Danubian Empire'' and boards a steamship to Argentina-partly to escape military service, partly on a philosophic quest. While this taciturn dreamer spends the next 13 years as a solitary gaucho in Patagonia, a world war takes place and his best friend from childhood-a philosopher named Carlo who idealized Enrico-kills himself. By the time Enrico returns home, in fact, so much has changed that he feels as if ``he has left rather than returned.'' Resenting the expectations he senses others have for him, Enrico continues to the end of his days estranged from himself and those around him, a virtual misanthrope. Magris (Danube) writes vividly and learnedly, but readers will have difficulty sharing Carlo's vision of Enrico-he may instead appear more a cantankerous eccentric than ``a confident and dignified conscience.'' For all its philosophical posturing, this book offers little genuine wisdom. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Switching the symbolism of water from river, in the critically acclaimed "Danube", to sea, in this new work, Claudio Magris successfully navigates the watery depths of society, the currents of history, and the tidal flux of human longing. The early twentieth century, with all its restlessness, uncertainty, and searching, is filtered through Enrico, a young intellectual. Following the teaching of his mentor friend and poet, Carlo, he seeks a life unfettered by social convention and uncompromised by falseness. Leaving his family and friends for the Patagonian pampas, Enrico submerges himself in philosophical and ancient texts, has various sexual encounters, tends sheep, performs bloodletting on sick horses and himself, all as attempts to discover life's purpose, while consciously draining true feeling and destroying connections. Even Carlo's suicide barely disturbs his self-imposed numbness. As he returns to the Istrian seashore, he floats further away from love and living toward isolation and nihilism. He is buoyed by life's tides, powerless. Lyrical, fluid, and mysterious, this book is wavelike in its advance and retreat. Magris has written an unusual story, one that rather than forming, slowly dissolves. The reader truly feels a hollow space open, and the vast sea, still unknown and human, still so much within us, swells forward, tempting us under.

Janet St. John

"Magris successfully navigates the watery depths of society, the currents of history, and the tidal flux of human longing." —Booklist

From the Publisher