About book The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels (1997)
Toughening exercises....resistance....a composition.War.....mortal solitude.....a compositionLove....objectivity.....a composition.Truth.....lies....a composition.Words.....immortality.....a composition.The sharpened graphite moves silently in the dark attic on naive white paper sheets, reciting nightmarish trepidation. Every thought, every word emitting a chaotic soul finds refuge in the scribbling of the graphite. Amid the sirens of an air raid, it moves zealously. New pages are explored as the skeletons swing to the sad tunes of a harmonica like couple of wind chimes. It does not fear the stomping of the soldiers, the shots of a rifle, the abuse of an old lady. The pencil is fearless. It seeks truth, it endures lies. It keeps on moving even as agonizing cries of a rape fills the air, as pigs grunt to the sight of a shimmering knife and fresh graves are born under the vegetable beds in the garden. The pencil writes the darkest desires, the chaos of solitude. As the houses are destroyed, streets get vacant; the notebook overflows. While Harelip embraces the dog on her bare skin; Lucas writes. Claus writes. As Clara embraces Thomas; Lucas writes. Young Mathias writes too. Victor wants to write. To the sound of the detective movie Klaus . T. writes. Writing helps. Words release the excruciating pain that does not find a listening ear or an obliging mouth.She says, “Yes. There are lives sadder than the saddest of books.”I say, “Yes. No book, no matter how sad, can be as sad as lifeIt is the universal truth; nobody wants a war. Wars begin on a lie. It further creates a complex mesh of lies. The lies then slowly seep into the innocent lives and become a concrete part of the living. Wars arise from the world of Utopian delusions. People live in a deluded world that the war has gifted them. If a war is commenced to bring happiness to the land, then why does the land become a grave to happiness. Lives that find death cruel for being denied the frosty embrace, plead other lives to bless them with death. To ask a life to release another life is not the liberation that a war should seek. Kristof with her lucid text makes it crystal clear, that a war- torn land can be reconstructed and restored to normality; as if it has been untouched by conflict. Sadly, it is the shattered lives that do not get the respected privilege. The wounds of the war breathe with the people as long as they live, which at times can seem forever. The war may restore the buildings, but it cannot restore the dead. Laws can exonerate the innocent lives that were executed. But, can it restore Clara’s grey hair to its original sheen? Can the war restore the lost youth that it ravenously swallowed? The only gifts that war ever bestows on the privileged citizens are the art to kill and an impassive life, dwelling in the abyss of mortal solitude. Lucas/Claus knew the exact precision of killing a life. War had taught them the skill. At times, they would offer a vulnerable life the gift of death; if one mercifully begged. It was not something they sought to do, but absolutely needed to do. The brothers had triumphed over every aspect of pain, be it heat, hunger, cold or anything that causes soreness. They never cried even when their grandmother abused them or people in the streets heckled them with tortuous condemnations. They could defend themselves just as they defended Harelip. The war had taught them. The war had become their school. Mathias did not cry either. The war had taught him too. Kristof meticulously brings a world where one is fortunate to glimpse the next sunrise or the magical sunset. People do things not because they desire to; it is absolutely needed to. A place where nauseated absurdities thrive in normality. A place where humanity wanes in a treacherous barter system. "Two or three hundred of them pass by, flanked by soldiers. A few women are carrying small children on their backs, or cradled against their breasts. One of them falls; hands reach out to catch the child and the mother; they must be carried, because a soldier has already pointed his rifle at them."Kristof’s trilogy which begins with the twins arriving at their Grandmother’s house in Little Town, is a war in itself. Alongside the periphery of the country’s war, each of Kristof’s characters is a casualty of a simmering private war. The atrocity of the external war trickles down bringing an internal chaotic conundrum. Fear and grief become the only recognizable sentiments. For some of the characters the war had begun much before their country knelt to the brutal conflict. Lucas becomes an integral part in this trilogy. His life explores the inconsistent terrains of war, communist acquisitions, counter-revolution and later on the capitalist environments. It is evident when later Claus confirms the doubts by declaring, “It is a society based on money. No place for questions on life." Although, Lucas is an interesting character; it was the characterization of Harelip, Mathias and the ‘Officer’ that intrigued me the most. Harelip’s desperation of finding love ; Mathias struggle to find a place in “societal regularity” and the isolation of the Officer from his asphyxiated love , made me ponder on whether if given a chance would they hold a placard pronouncing , “Don’t come in the world of mine.” Akin to her characters, Kristof’s prose if simple yet convoluted. Maybe, even equating to the onset of a war. Eventually, a war finds its conclusion. A war victim never gets that privilege. A war creates heroes of men, but, has the war ever thought about the women and children who have been victims and will live in deathly solitude and eternal pain. As life progresses, memories may fade, pain may diminish, but it does not disappear. Are men the only heroes of the war? Kristof audaciously makes this point.“It’s like an illness. A sort of illness of the soul.....excessive solitude”.‘Mortal solitude’ becomes a major salient feature of the war. Kristof gives the ‘state of solitude’ a demonic personality. The desperation that stems from loneliness blurs the lines between fact and fiction. Truth and lies amalgamate into an obnoxious lattice of desire and loss. The dead are woken up by stubborn memories that never fade; sex becomes a lucrative trade in the ongoing barter system, forlorn emotions seek refuge in objective love; the panic of old wounds reopening and the skepticism over validity of the dead that are found everywhere and nowhere. It is in this curse of solitude that one seeks the comfort of a grave. --- “The best place to sleep was the grave of someone you have loved.”Lucas, Claus, Victor and the others struggle to free themselves from the ugly depths of solitude; nonetheless it was only seclusion what they searched to write their nightmares. Peace was a rare commodity in their lives. Is death then a better option? As one of the twins says, “I tell him that life is totally useless, that it’s nonsense, an aberration, infinite suffering, and the invention on a non-God whose evil surpasses understanding."All is not lost, as Kristof elucidates that beneath the ruthless layers of desperation, there lies the strongest bond of love which survives the atrocities of the war.“Love is not a reliable word.......It lacks precision and objectivity.”Kristof evaluates the idea of the so called “normality of love”. In the incongruous world of war could ‘normal love’ ever survive? All the characters in the book are in a frantic struggle to find love and be loved. The burgeoning solitude leads to the desperation of desiring a sense of belonging. With abandonment comes the wish for of a touch, an embrace; irrespective of the methods and act of achieving the idea of love. The pain of promiscuity, incest and at times even rape takes a backseat when it comes to being “loved”. Kristof compels you to question the normality of love. Who is to decide the regulations of love? Who is to define rationality of love? The soldier who rapes numerous women and goes home to a loving wife and a child? The men who fathered bastard children who were left at the orphanage? Or those who suffocate homosexuality? If you ask Victor or Lucas or Harelip or Clara or Yasmine or even the Officer who listened to the gramophone while desiring death, they may probably tell you that in the absurdities of love one seeks its normality, similarly as one seeks humanity in the inhumanity of the war.“I’m convinced---that every human being is born to write a book......he who writes nothing is lost, he has merely pass through life without leaving a trace.”Stories perish beside the bodies in the grave. While death justifies the treachery of life, it fails to recognize the agony of its journey; words are then needed bestow immortality. In this saga of love and separation, Kristof bequeaths the said honor to the lives of the anonymous war victims by immortalizing their plagued existence through her genuine words. I jot down couple sentences, stare, cry, smile and then go back to those words as if they were mine. Clutching the pages, I walk down the empty streets , the songs of the harmonica still lingering in the cafes, the blue building priding the street, the bookseller’s shop is open ; Joseph’s horse-drawn wagon lurking at the door. The desk is vacant, not a soul in sight. Next to the stack of books, a set of blank pages blush to the flirtatious breeze. A note: - ‘Chapter title - eternal words.’ The pencil in my hand smiles: - Ágota Kristóf.
"Dico al mio compagno:- Morirà presto, il mio albero.Dice:- Non faccia il sentimentale. Tutto muore."Parte prima: quello che pensi di capire di un libro non corrisponde quasi mai a quello che il libro vuole farti capire.Ancora adesso, non sono sicuro che la mia interpretrazione sia corretta. Ho preso il libro, mi sono messo tranquillo a leggerlo. Ho impiegato tre giorni effettivi di lettura, perché non si può smettere realmente di leggerlo. Lo stile ha un incedere tale che ti lascia senza fiato, e l'unico modo per tornare a respirare è finirlo. Agota Kristof ricorda modo la tendenza stilistica degli scrittori americani postmoderni, minima ed essenziale. Con questa prosa asciutta e incalzante ci porta in un paese dell'est, in mezzo agli orrori di una guerra, presumibilmente la seconda guerra mondiale, a cui seguirà poi l'occupazione sovietica. Non posso spiegare nei minimi dettagli come sono giunto alla conclusione che l'elemento portante del romanzo è la solitudine, perché anticiperei eventi fondamentali. Fatto sta che all'inizio pensavo che il messaggio della Kristof fosse il semplice quadro della miseria umana in tempo di guerra, che non lascia mai scampo e penetra con forza nella vita di ognuno. Il primo volume che compone il romanzo è, infatti, inquietante, macabro, volgare e crudo fino all'inverosimile. Il secondo volume è triste e basta. Il terzo è commovente. Ed è nel terzo che ho pensato che fossimo tutti soli al mondo. Ho pianto due o tre volte, ora non ricordo bene, ma avevo addosso un'angoscia incredibile. Forse è il romanzo più triste che abbia mai letto. C'era un personaggio, Clara, che continuava a parlare del marito giustiziato ingiustamente da "loro", (i sovietici, immagino), e che non faceva altro che parlare di Thomas, suo marito, a chiunque intrattenesse una conversazione con lei. Clara amava solo Thomas. Lo amava anche dopo che era morto."- Oggi ho ricevuto una lettera. Una lettera ufficiale. È là, sulla scrivania, la può leggere. Mi comunica la riabilitazione di Thomas, la sua innocenza. "Loro" mi scrivono: "Suo marito era innocente, l'abbiamo ammazzato per errore. Abbiamo ammazzato varie persone innocenti per errore, ma ora tutto entra nell'ordine, ci scusiamo e promettiamo che simili errori non si ripeteranno". "Loro" assassinano e "loro" riabilitano. "Loro" si scusano, ma Thomas è morto! "Loro" possono risuscitarlo? "Loro" possono cancellare quella notte in cui i miei capelli sono diventati bianchi, in cui sono diventata pazza? Quella notte d'estate ero sola nell'appartamento, il nostro appartamento, di Thomas e mio. Ci stavo sola da molti mesi. Da quando avevano imprigionato Thomas, più nessuno voleva, poteva, osava venire a trovarmi. Ero già abituata a stare sola, non c'era niente di insolito nell'essere sola. Non ho dormito, ma neanche questo era insolito. La cosa insolita è che quella notte non ho pianto. La sera prima, la radio ha annunciato l'esecuzione di varie persone per alto tradimento. Tra quei nomi, ho chiaramente sentito il nome di Thomas. Alle tre del mattino, l'ora delle esecuzioni, ho guardato la pendola. L'ho guardata fino alle sette, poi sono andata al lavoro, in una grande biblioteca della capitale. Mi sono seduta alla mia scrivania, ero addetta alla sala di lettura. I colleghi, uno dopo l'altro, si sono avvicinati, li sentivo sussurrare: "È venuta!" "Avete visto i capelli?" Sono uscita dalla biblioteca, ho vagato per strada fino a sera, mi sono persa, non sapevo più in che quartiere della città mi trovavo, eppure conoscevo molto bene quella città. Sono tornata a casa in taxi. Alle tre del mattino, ho guardato dalla finestra e "li" ho visti: "loro" impiccavano Thomas alla facciata dell'edificio di fronte. Ho urlato. Sono venuti dei vicini. Un'ambulanza mi ha portata in ospedale. E adesso, "loro" dicono che era solo un errore. L'assassinio di Thomas, la mia malattia, i mesi d'ospedale, i capelli bianchi erano solo un errore. Allora che "loro" mi rendano Thomas, vivo, sorridente. Il Thomas che mi prendeva tra le braccia, che mi accarezzava i capelli, che mi teneva il viso tra le mani calde, che mi baciava gli occhi, le orecchie, la bocca."Solitudine e mancanza, queste le due voci che emergono prepotenti dalle pagine del romanzo. Senza qualcuno che condivida i loro dolori e le loro sofferenze, tutti i personaggi non riescono ad andare avanti. Hanno bisogno dell'altra loro metà. Della moglie. Del marito. Dei figli. Del fratello, della sorella, della nonna, dell'amante. La guerra li ha distrutti, e ora sono soli. Si raccontano bugie l'un l'altro per andare avanti. Con le bugie riescono ad affrontare ogni giorno, fino a che non ce la fanno più o la morte decide per loro.Parte seconda: l'importanza di essere bugiardi.Quando ero piccolo e stavo imparando a parlare, i miei genitori mi hanno insegnato che non si devono dire le bugie. E non è servito a niente. Come per tutti, immagino. Perché con le bugie a volte riusciamo a modellare la realtà. Non definitivamente. Ma un po' sì. Cambia per noi, si piega al nostro volere. Se la realtà è troppo brutta, ben vengano le bugie. Se la realtà ci fa impazzire, che piovano le bugie! Che cadano su ogni tetto e su ogni famiglia! Due terzi del libro della Kristof è una menzogna. Una bugia. Una montatura. Per rendere la vita migliore e per sopperire alla mancanza di qualcuno. Ci si inventa una vita intera pur di non stare soli. Stare soli è così doloroso. Stare soli è reale.Interludio: quando non si è più soli, se sono passate decine di anni non ci rendiamo conto che la nostra solitudine è terminata, e quindi non riusciamo ad accettare la sua fine, tornando quindi a essere soli. Nel caso di partenza, la tristezza è generata dalla solitudine, quindi dalla mancanza di qualcuno, no? È possibile abituarsi alla solitudine se la si elegge a compagna della nostra vita inconsapevolmente, anno dopo anno, lodandola e odiandola, finendo per amarla. Non essere più soli sarebbe ancora più distruttivo che esserlo. Meglio tenersi la solitudine. Meglio non cambiare, quando al dolore gli siamo quasi riusciti a voler bene. Fine interludio."Se uno ci pensa, non può amare la vita".Parte terza: intercambiabilità.Lucas è l'anagramma di Claus. Claus e Lucas sono lo stesso nome. Sono due gemelli. Tra di loro c'è un legame presente fin dalla nascita, un legame che parte da cique lettere e prosegue con gli incubi. Se allontani Lucas da Claus, Claus sta male. Se allontani Claus da Lucas, Lucas sta male. Essi sono un'unica persona. Le due metà di ognuno di noi. Ma anche nelle loro vite non c'è altro che solitudine. Per combatterla, scrivono poesie, riempiono quaderni di scuola di menzogne, una bugia tira l'altra, tante bugie piano piano costruiscono una vita, un mondo. Sembrano volerci dire che il mondo stesso è una menzogna. Che noi abbelliamo tutto. Che tralasciamo la realtà e preferiamo vivere in sogni. Nei sogni non siamo soli. Negli incubi sì. Per sognare dobbiamo dire le bugie. Se le bombe cadono sulle nostre case dobbiamo dire le bugie. Se le bombe distruggono ciò che amiamo dobbiamo dire le bugie. Se ci distruggono le bugie, moriremo per il dolore. Ma finché abbiamo le bugie e la possibilità di confidarle a qualcuno e ascoltare le bugie di questo qualcuno, così, come uno scambio, allora forse saremo salvi.
Do You like book The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels (1997)?
Contains spoilers By the time I had finished this trilogy of novels I had no idea what had happened. I though of Escher's famous drawing in which one hand draws another hand drawing the other hand. Except to properly represent the procedure Agota Kristof adopts in these short novels one of the hands should contain an eraser and be in the process of eliminating the hand that is drawing it.In the fractured society she creates; in the dislocated time in which these characters have to live and in the desolate location where the twin boys who are central to this story are brought to live, there is no certainty, except the usual one: death. Those two boys - names unknown in 'The Notebook' - tell a story that is frequently startling in its plainly told brutality. They narrate in the first person plural (like the boys in The Virgin Suicides) and so we are there with them, horrified that we can begin to see and comprehend the world as they do. We begin to feel included and implicated in their "we". Kristof's great skill is to always be convincing as she brings us through the process by which - to better survive the wartime situation of which they are unavoidably a part - the twins rid themselves of all instinctive feeling and manage, by a series of exercises, to locate all pain outside of their bodies. By this method they can be witness to the most distressing events and be, apparently, unaffected. They have an anthropologist's detachment in viewing the circumstances of their own lives: they beg, for example, not for money, but "to observe people's reactions". It also means that they are prepared to aid others in what, in other circumstances would be thought to be acts of empathy and kindness, but are in the boys world-view merely practical solutions to a dilemma of which they have become aware. The extent of their detachment is made especially clear in a final act of stark, numbing nonchalance.And then..."we" becomes "he" and one boy is lost and one boy is lost without him. The he has a name now, Lucas, a young adult, functioning to some degree in society and displaying some sense of humanity by giving shelter to a young woman and her baby. He evinces little warmth however and as the baby becomes a boy he is savagely protective of him, but lacks any understanding of the boy's need for assurance and that element so little seen in this trilogy: love. It seems absent too in Lucas' relationships with women. How could it be otherwise? The consequences of this lack, more than any other, are horrific. Not since seeing the throat slitting scene in Haneke's 'Hidden' have I gasped as I did when Lucas is presented with the results of his neglect of the boy Mathias. By the end of 'The Proof' we are forced to ask questions we should have asked earlier. Who is writing this? What is the significance of those notebooks of which we have heard so much? How can this narrator see everything? A brother returns and everything becomes unclear.And then...we are lost. "He" has become "I" and nobody is where they should be. Twins or one boy alone with his imagination? Parents dead or alive, or one dead and one alive? Who crossed the border, father or unknown soldier? This is all deftly done, the shifted reality is clear and convincing, like the minute alterations that signal some momentous changes in 1Q84. This unstable, perturbing narrative is less fraught than much of what has occurred before but it does still demand our acceptance. Nothing is easily given in this extraordinary trilogy and this is a wonderful way to conclude it. We should be bewildered by all we have experienced. There can be no certainty, no consolation, no resolution. There can only be doubt (and I doubt all of the above).
—Declan
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels. My copy is published under "The Book of Lies". My first book of 2012 is a favorite. I am a lucky dog. I never wanted to stop reading them. You may have heard this a lot (I definitely have as I am an identical twin) about twins being two halves of a whole. That you don't know where one ends and the other begins. I don't know where this story ends and where it begins. Where the thread of influence ends, if the tug on my line is going to reach some bottom of some well or go on falling forever and I'll wait to hear the telltale splash. I can't stop thinking about it and it feels like I am still reading it. I'm waiting to tell if it is a truth or if it is the lie. It is waiting to hear what you cannot live with as a truth. The lie is to yourself. The truth about what it means to be alone and if you can ever be another person. I love you. You don't love me. You love me. I don't love you. It's okay. We're going to kill everyone who stands in our way. Lucas. Claus. Claus-Lucas. An anagram. The twins could be the kind of anagram like how evil can be live. Or vile. Mix a letter and presto it is the same? It is interesting to be an identical twin. It is the closest you can get to knowing how it feels to be another person. People you meet who will treat you one way because of how you look. The same upbringing and the same genetic one in a million lottery chances. How enough light could photo synthesis this shit to want to live. Nature and its backhanded complimentary nurture. Enough bad days. Starvation. Feeling enough that you're not alone when you look around the faceless. This other face you could see in the mirror. Or the little bit you have to go feels too far because you get to thinking it should be coming to you.I don't know how to explain the feeling I had. It was a kind of faith that wasn't really faith, if that makes sense. Like being under water and trying to sing anyway and all of the words come at once and they mean so many different things. The words come out bubbles (by the time they float to the top they probably aren't bubbles anymore). More like a supplanted desire. All I ever want from a story is to be there and judge for myself from the community of expressions, movement, actions and words. Is there more behind it? Could it be anything more if only I could take it and run (away) with it? It means everything to me to have all the working parts to figure it out for myself with what mother nature (the, er, author) has given me. Agota Kristof is the answer to my prayers. Or was it just my dreams. (Please forgive my questioning mood. These books were fairy tale like to take me back to a childhood of the hows, whys and good and evil not sorted into their respective edges yet.)Lucas and Claus present as one person. They live with their "witch" grandmother in a fairy horror of Nazi occupied Hungary. This might be bad of me (I haven't decided yet) that I was on their side in their exploits and experimentations. I was one of them. (What are we going to do, my twins? I'll hold my breath. That's character building.) Were they, really? Was it Lucas or was it Claus severed at the conjoined will? Did he lose his might. (The image of one twin heading off the frontier and the other going back to grandmother's house in communist Hungary haunts me. Please don't let it be true.) Was any of it love and when will the will return? If no one can know another person than this is the under the bridge version of that. The belly of that is the same. It has to be filled with the same guts. (Do I not bleeeeeeeed?) The lie or the truth did the mother leave them, was one a poet and the other less. I feel like it could all be true and it's the anagram thing of switching out the letters. The whole needing anybody else. The distance (whole or otherwise). I feel like Agota Kristof showed me how that happens and what the other side of the distance feels like. I have only known my own. My letters. And I have no clue how to arrange those to communicate to anyone else why this book meant so much to me. So if you can believe me... (I could talk about moments that haunted me. When Lucas listens to record with the little girl. He has forgotten how to live and now he's forgotten how to let go. The notebook written in for the other to finish.)Lie to me.P.s. Nate's review is the best. Thank you, Nate! Goodreads is the best website ever.P.s.s. And the writing of war and communist Hungary is some kind of magic. It is! Is it what no body wanted? (One day I am going to write one of those amazing reviews other people write. Why can't I write them for books like this? I'm a Lucas. The notebook pages have a space to fill. You can write in it.)
—Mariel
Lo stile elementare, inizialmente, apparenta questo romanzo alle favolette che si raccontano ai bambini perché non facciano i capricci a tavola e considerino quanto affamati e sfortunati siano i loro coetanei che abitano in paesi di guerra – seguendo questo ragionamento, la madre che le racconta non dovrebbe azzardarsi a comprare neanche un paio di scarpe, visto che nei paesi del terzo mondo le donne non hanno di che vestirsi, ma questa è un’altra storia.E forse di una favoletta si tratta, posto
—Sakura87
