"It was to be two and a half weeks of travelling before the Dauphine was officially handed over to France. Marie Antoinette would in effect cross the whole of central Europe in her passage from Vienna to Versailles. She spent a great deal of this time cooped up in her velvet-and-gold carriage; sometimes the day's journey would last over nine hours. Essentially she was a royal package, sealed with the double-headed eagle of the Habsburgs and the fleur-de-lys of the Bourbons." (Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette)

A Real Princess

Photo: Tim Walker

ONCE upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess. He travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted. There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out whether they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real princess. One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.

It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind had made her look. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real princess. “Well, we’ll soon find that out,” thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.

On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept. “Oh, very badly!” said she. “I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It’s horrible!” Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds. Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that. So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess; and the pea was put in the museum, where it may still be seen, if no one has stolen it. There, that is a true story. (The Princess and the Pea, by Hans Christian Andersen).

Love.

A few weeks later on the Saturday he threw all Stoutamire's dirty horse blankets into the back of his pickup and took them down to the Quik Stop Car Wash to turn the high-pressure spray on them. When the wet clean blankets were stowed in the truck bed he stepped into Higgins's gift shop and busied himself with the postcard rack.
"Ennis, what are you lookin for rootin through them postcards?" said Linda Higgins, throwing a sopping brown coffee filter into the garbage can.
"Scene a Brokeback Mountain."
"Over in Fremont County?"
"No, north a here."
"I didn't order none a them. Let me get the order list. They got it I can get you a hunderd. I got a order some more cards anyway."
"One's enough," said Ennis.
When it came -- thirty cents -- he pinned it up in his trailer, brassheaded tack in each corner. Below it he drove a nail and on the nail he hung the wire hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it. He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stinging tears.
"Jack, I swear -- " he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind.

Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking about getting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.
There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it. (Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx).

Silence

THERE is a silence where hath been no sound/There is a silence where no sound may be/In the cold grave under the deep, deep sea/Or in wide desert where no life is found/Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound/No voice is hush'd no life treads silently/But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free/That never spoke, over the idle ground/But in green ruins, in the desolate walls/Of antique palaces, where Man hath been/Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls/And owls, that flit continually between/Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan/There the true/Silence is, self-conscious and alone. (Thomas Hood)

Poetry*

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

I felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke free on the open sky.

(Pablo Neruda)

*It sounds so much more beautiful in spanish.

It's a sad sad world

Import/Export (Austria, 2007) - Olga is a nurse who lives in a small apartment with her mother and her baby in Ukraine until she decides to move to Austria alone. Pauli is an unemployed austrian man who decides to move to Ukraine. They have one thing in common: to pursue a better life. In the beggining of the film, the camera documents Olga's daily life, and then exchanges to Pauli's. East and West look so similar that it's hard to distinguish one from the other, except from one small detail like language. When the roles are inverted and each of the protagonists start living a new reality, the similarities are even more frightening. Olga begins a journey of one unpleasant job after the other, ending up as a cleaning lady in a institution for old people. Pauli joins his step-father in the extra company of booze and young prostitutes. In both worlds, human relations are dominated by coldness, indifference, jealousy and despise. Olga's daily winter walk to the hospital she worked in Ukrania was tough, but much colder is her new life in Austria. I praise the film's critical idea in embracing two characters in order to show how different worlds at the first sight might have so much in common, however, I'd rather see one single film about Olga, as Pauli's story wasn't as appealing. Most of the time I wished the attention was directed to her, wondering more about her life and thoughts. It never happens, one will never know about her past, but can guess what's left in her future. The film ends without quite ending, without giving a solution or making judgements, and in this sense, it's clearly pessimistic.

I have recently read Blindness (Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira in the original portuguese title) by José Saramago, and I was speechless, although completely moved by the honesty of his words. It's not every day one embraces a contemporary author and doesn't want to let the book go for a second, I literally slept with it and woke up with it by my side, allowed by a temporary sedentarism of my life. It's one of the books that you try to read slowly, so the pages will last longer that you can enjoy it for one more day, although you wonder so much about that world and those characters that you can't help swallowing one line after the other until you're completely done with it, and that makes you sad. Then, of course, you wanna know everything about the author, and read more by him. When the reading was complete, it was time to reflection, and even now I find myself thinking about us, the human race. I have no quotes from the book to share, as I read the original in portuguese, but there's a trailer above from the movie adaptation, which opens soon in some countries.

A documentary film that shocked me deeply, Sharkwater, should be distributed in every single place of the world. I don't know where I have been, or perhaps, how the media has been irresponsible for "hiding" certain facts (again!), but it seems like 100 million sharks are killed a year, so stupid rich people can enjoy a tasteless shark fin soup at dinner. They catch the animal, cuts off its fin, and then throw the carcass back in the ocean, so it can bleed slowly for days until its complete death. The worst of all: all this killing will affect our own very lives in the future. Sometimes I wake up and I think, how hard it is to believe we'll be here tomorrow.

Inside the Rabbit House

By this time she had found her way into a tidy little room with a table in the window, and on it (as she had hoped) a fan and two or three pairs of tiny white kidgloves: she took up the fan and a pair of the gloves, and was just going to leave the room, when her eye fell upon alittle bottle that stood near the looking- glass. There was no label this time with the words ‘DRINK ME,’ but nevertheless she uncorked it and put it to her lips. ‘I know something interesting is sure to happen,’ she said to herself, ‘whenever I eat or drink anything; so I’ll just see what this bottle does. I do hope it’ll make me grow large again, for really I’m quite tired of being such a tiny little thing!’

It did so indeed, and much sooner than she had expected: before she had drunk half the bottle, she found her head pressing against the ceiling, and had to stoop to save her neck from being broken. She hastily put down the bottle, saying to herself ‘That’s quite enough— I hope I shan’t grow any more—As it is, I can’t get out at the door—I do wish I hadn’t drunk quite so much!’

Alas! it was too late to wish that! She went on growing, and growing, and very soon had to kneel down on the floor: in another minute there was not even room for this, and she tried the effect of lying down with one elbow against the door, and the other arm curled round her head. Still she went on growing, and, as a last resource, she put one arm out of the window, and one foot up the chimney, and said to herself ‘Now I can do no more, whatever happens. What will become of me?’ Luckily for Alice, the little magic bottle had now hadits full effect, and she grew no larger: still it was very uncomfortable, and, as there seemed to be no sort of chance of her ever getting out of the room again, no wonder she felt unhappy.

’It was much pleasanter at home,’ thought poor Alice, ‘when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet— it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairytales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one—but I’m grown up now,’ she added in a sorrowful tone; ‘at least there’s no room to grow up any more here.’

’But then,’ thought Alice, ‘shall I never get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way—never to be an old woman— but then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like that!’ (Lewis Carroll)

Photos & Illustrations: (1) Alice in Wonderland (1951) - Disney film version, (2) John Tenniel's classic 19th century illustration, (3) Natalia Vodianova by Annie Leibowitz and (4) Julia Fullerton-Batten's Teenage Stories series.

"He felt the warm sun shining...

"...and heard the lark singing, and saw that all around was beautiful spring. Then the young bird felt that his wings were strong, as he flapped them against his sides, and rose high into the air. They bore him onwards, until he found himself in a large garden, before he well knew how it had happened. The apple-trees were in full blossom, and the fragrant elders bent their long green branches down to the stream which wound round a smooth lawn. Everything looked beautiful, in the freshness of early spring. From a thicket close by came three beautiful white swans, rustling their feathers, and swimming lightly over the smooth water." (from Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling)

*Coming back tomorrow with more details about my sunny weekend. Photo taken this afternoon in Hillerød.

Ian McEwan's Atonement

"Briony had her first, weak intimation that for her now it could no longer be fairy-tale castles and princesses, but the strangeness of the here and now, of what passed between people, the ordinary people that she knew, and what power one could have over the other, and how easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong."

Those lines above are decisive for everything else that is going to happen in the novel Atonement. Briony Tallis is a 13-year-old girl who is already committed to the life of a writer. The story starts in a hot day in the house of family Tallis, located somewhere beyond London. The romantic minded Briony has written a play - The Trials of Arabella, to welcome her older brother Leon, home. As her 9-year-old twin cousins are coming home due to their parents' split (a scandal in 1935 England), Briony decides to direct the poor things and her 15-year-old ginger-haired cousin Lola on the play, with Briony herself playing the lead character. The first impression you might have of Briony is that she's a spoiled little brat, who annoyingly bosses the poor twins around in endless rehearsals that soon will come out as discouraging, especially when Lola gets the leading role, leaving Briony insecure about the success of her play. Then, she refuses to go on with the act and storms off to her room in tears. But something will happen in between.

From her window, Briony will witness a scene no one else will see in that sultry summer day. In clear lines, she will see her older sister Cecilia who stands on the Triton fountain, undressing to her underwear in front of Robbie Turner, the charlady's son, the boy whose father left earlier and never came back, and whose studies have been sponsored by a generous Mr. Tallis along the years. Robbie has a brilliant future. He wants to go to medical school and nothing seems to stop him on that. Ok. So, suddenly, Cecilia jumps into the fountain bringing back a piece Briony can't clearly see. She witnessed those two figures by the fountain, their acts and facial expressions, but she couldn't hear any of what they said to eachother.

In her fertile imaginative childlike mind, Briony will decide for herself what happened there, it's a turning point in her 13-year-old life. She will misinterpretate what she has seen, she thinks that her poor sister was forced to take her clothes off by that creepy man. From this moment on, the book will get more and more intriguing and it's impossible to stop reading one page after the other.

"This was not a fairy tale, this was the real, the adult world in which frogs did not address princesses, and the only messages were the ones that people sent."

When her big brother Leon arrives with a friend, Paul Marshall, a future millionaire who has recently discovered a formula for chocolate bars, a party is about to begin. Robbie Turner is one of the guests. Once again, Briony will witness alone another scene, this time, in the house's library. She will see her sister making love to Robbie, but please notice, Briony is completely sexually clueless. She thinks the maniac is raping her poor sister. And this time, the two lovers will notice her voyeuristic presence. Now everyone is on the table and dinner is served. In the meanwhile, the twins disappear, they have run away. It's time for leaving the house and looking for the children. It's a hot summer night, the narrative voice never stops mentioning it.

Something more serious will happen. A rape. Lola is raped and Briony is the only one to witness the dark shade of the man who will violate her cousin. She can only hear his moanings. It's the same kind of sound Robbie had made in the library. She's sexually clueless and her writer's imagination is sure of who committed the crime. It was him. It was Robbie. Everyone will believe her. Everyone but Cecilia and Robbie's mother. The lovers are separated. And then, there's time to war. I confess the war lines lacked the same quality as the rest of the book. Sometimes, it even bored me a little, but everything else, with its mix of drama, psychologícal development and thrilling curiosity caught me. Don't get me wrong, i'm very interested in anything that concerns WW2, but in this case, the war itself is nothing but a period of time McEwan will use to develop his narrative and characters.

Written purposely through a self-conscious voice, Atonement is one of the most interesting, well-developed, brilliant, original and nevertheless, greatest novels i've ever read. As many of you know at this point, the book has been adapted to the big screen, and has already premiered for a very selected audience. Something tells me that this film will lack the book's greatness, but let's see.

Three books, Three movies - part 1

The Hours

by Michael Cunningham

"To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away".

I read the book before i saw the movie, actually, right before i saw it back in 2002. The lines were fresh in my memory and the images, the sounds, the feelings, it all became perfectly real in the cinema screen. It was too much to absorb in such a short time: words, images, piano melodies, madness and lives. Three lives of three women, in different times, united by a single book - Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa is in New York in the 1990s, she wakes up and she's going to organize a party in honor of a beloved friend. Laura lives in a LA suburb in the 1950s, she has what people would call the perfect family, but the perfection doesn't suit her. At last, there's Virginia Woolf, placed in the british country side writing the already mentioned novel. It gives me goose bumps every time i see one of the first scenes in the film where the characters are beggining to be intertwined, the scene that evolves the decision of buying flowers at early morning. And what to say of Philip Glass soundtrack? I'm speechless. Listen to it here.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

"What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. And it was then Cecilia gave orally what was to be her only form of suicide note, and a useless one at that, because she was going to live: "Obviously, Doctor," she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl."

I read the book after i saw (and loved) the film, despite the fact i never really understood the point of the story. But reading the book didn't give me any further answers, the book lies in mystery, as the story of the five voiceless Lisbon sisters are narrated many years later by the boys who never really knew their deepest inner secrets, who desperately tryed to penetrate their isolation, but failed. The most original thing about this book is how it's narrated by a group and not by a single character or by an author's judgemental look. The story takes place in an american suburb in the 1970s, where people seemed to live in a bubble, a bubble that was about to burst. I think the essence of the book was very well captured by Sofia Coppola. Those who didn't like the movie shouldn't waste their time reading the book, then.

Little Children

by Tom Perrota

"It's the hunger, the hunger for an alternative and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness."

When i first watched Little Children trailer last year, i immediatly thought this was going to be my darling movie of the year. Soon i started reading the book, and as the book was very good, and the trailer was the best trailer of last year (in my opnion), i was expecting to watch a masterpiece. It wasn't the case. The book is SO MUCH better. In the story, Sarah, an ex-bissexual, and now a married woman and mother of a little girl, is trapped in her american suburban life, which she never dreamt for herself. There's also Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad, whose good looks earned him the label "The Prom King", by the moms of the local playground.

Both frustrated and trapped, the two young adults are going to start a torrid love affair that will go further than either of them could have imagined. There's a second plot that follow throughout the book, a former "child molestor" who recently moved back to the quiet suburb, provoking the anger of a particular parent and the collective concern of others. What disappointed me in the movie wasn't the fact the child molestor's character was portrayed as an innocent little kid, for example, but the fact the director concluded the film in a moralistic, judgemental and a sort of overdramatic way. The essence of the novel lies in irony, from its beggining to its end. But of course i'm not going to describe its last lines here and spoil it to you.