Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), celebrated Cuban poet, fiction writer, playwright and literary critic. When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 Sarduy managed to achieve a grant to study art in Paris, although never considering himself to be an exile or an immigrant he became a French citizen but is quoted as saying “I am a Cuban through and through, who just happens to live in Paris”, unfortunately he never returned to his native Cuba, dying as a result of complications from AIDS in 1993.His obituary in “The Independent” says that in a 1986 interview Sarduy declared “I write only in order to make myself well. I write in an attempt to become normal, to be like everybody else, even though it's obvious I am not. I am a neurotic creature, a prey to phobias, burdened with obsessions and anxieties. And instead of going to a psychoanalyst or committing suicide or abandoning myself to drink and drugs, I write. That's my therapy.” The same article also quotes his as saying “Language, the desire to give life to things through words, is what makes us human.”And “language” is the striking point as soon as you enter the world of Firefly, from page one, rich with such depth, you feel that every single word is of value, there is not a single shred of wastage here, a meticulous use of style, which can be challenging throughout, however I imagine nowhere near as challenging for us as readers compared to Mark Fried the translator.Around a fountain, as if drawn by its cool waters, the feverish patients lie under archways on wobbly cots with no more accoutrements than a few mosquito nets of course tulle rolled up on spindles during the day and unfurled at night to reach the brick floor.Beside the beds stand large copper pitchers for their ablutions, as well as bowls, enema hoses, white ceramic jars with green unguents, a sieve of vein-hungry leeches swimming over one another, and an archipelago of cotton swabs stained with pus, saliva, and blood. Farther off, an amphora of wine. A crystal vase with an iris.Muscular nuns with ruddy cheeks and severe mannerisms make their rounds under the archways in a perpetual scurry and always in the same direction, collecting refuse and tendering salves and consolation, or little wool sacks with camphor stones, which they slide brusquely under the pillows.Carefully, they close the eyes of the moribund and tie their jaws up with white cloths so that rigor mortis will not catch them by surprise; they give the thirsty salt to suck; they oblige those suffering boils or anemia to gulp a gelatinous and searing fish soup, which they shove at them with an enormous wooden spoon.So heavily starched are the edges of their polyhedral cornets that the patients fear getting sliced open when the nuns go rushing by, busy as leaf-cutter ants throughout the night.For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/
