Beloved

Beloved is not as easy to read as, say, To Kill a Mockingbird, but it is easy to get used to, and once the reader begins to distinguish among the elements, they fall into place quite clearly. As it opens, Sethe, in her late thirties, is living with her 18-year-old daughter, Denver, in a house that the neighbors avoid because it is haunted. The time is the early 1870s, right after the first wrenching dislocations of the civil war and its aftermath. Sethe and Denver live in an uneasy truce with the ghost until the arrival of Paul D, one of Sethe's fellow slaves on her former plantation in Kentucky. Paul exorcises the ghost, but then a mysterious female stranger shows up. She is 20 years old and strangely unmarked - she has no lines in her palms, for example, and her feet and clothing show no signs of hard travelling. She calls herself "Beloved ", and Sethe and Denver are happy to take her in. Sethe, Denver, Paul D and every other character in the novel live simultaneously in their present and in their history - the chapters of the novel alternate between the two stories: that of the growing contest between Sethe and Beloved; and that of Sethe's life on the plantation, her escape, and the traumatic events that followed her crossing of the Ohio River and her appearance at the home of her mother-in law, Baby Suggs. A crucial, revealing and in some ways impossible to assimilate event takes place about halfway through the novel - Sethe's former owner shows up with some officers to recapture the escapees, and Sethe attempts to kill her children. The two boys and the newborn survive, but she succeeds in slitting the throat of the two-year-old.
Everyone is astonished and appalled by this turn of events (which Morrison discovered in an old newspaper account of the period). Baby Suggs is never the same again; Sethe is shunned by her fellow citizens; Denver grows up isolated and suspicious. Morrison is careful, though, to indicate that while this is a pivotal event in the lives of everyone, it is not the climax, or the worst thing to have happened to Sethe and her loved ones. The climax of the historical narrative is, in fact, the night of the escape, when several of the escapees were hanged and mutilated, while the present-time narrative builds to Denver's decision to separate herself from what is apparently a life-and-death struggle between Sethe and Beloved, and to go out and find work and friends that will help her save herself.
One of the reasons Beloved is a great novel is that it is equally full of sensations and of meaning. Morrison knows exactly what she wants to do and how to do it, and she exploits every aspect of her subject. The characters are complex. Both stories are dramatic but in contrasting ways, and the past and the present constantly modify each other. Neither half of the novel suffers by contrast to the other. Especially worth noting is Morrison's style, which is graphic, evocative and "unwhite" without veering toward dialect. Wonderful reading that I strongly recommend.

TRADUZIONE

Beloved non è facile da leggere come, ad esempio, Il buio oltre la siepe, ma ci si abitua facilmente, e una volta che il lettore inizia a distinguere tra tra I vari elementi, questi cadono al loro posto in modo abbastanza chiaro. All'apertura, Sethe, al termine dei suoi trent'anni, vive con la figlia diciottenne, Denver, in una casa che i vicini evitano perché infestata da un fantasma. Sono i primi anni settanta del XIX secolo, subito dopo le prime strazianti dislocazioni della guerra civile e le sue conseguenze. Sethe e Denver vivono in un'inquietante tregua con il fantasma fino all'arrivo di Paul D, uno dei compagni schiavi di Sethe dell’ ex piantagione in Kentucky. Paolo esorcizza il fantasma, ma poi arriva una misteriosa sconosciuta. Ha vent'anni e stranamente non ha segni particolari - non ha linee nei palmi delle mani, per esempio, e i suoi piedi e i suoi vestiti non mostrano segni di viaggio. Si fa chiamare “Beloved”, e Sethe e Denver sono felici di accoglierla.
Sethe, Denver, Paul D e ogni altro personaggio del romanzo vivono contemporaneamente nel loro presente e nella loro storia passata- i capitoli del romanzo si alternano tra le due storie: quella della crescente competizione tra Sethe e Beloved e quella della vita di Sethe nella piantagione, della sua fuga, e degli eventi traumatici che seguirono il suo attraversamento del fiume Ohio e la sua apparizione a casa della suocera, Baby Suggs. Un evento cruciale, rivelatore e per certi versi impossibile da assimilare si svolge circa a metà del romanzo - l'ex proprietario di Sethe si presenta con alcuni agenti per catturare i fuggitivi e Sethe tenta di uccidere i suoi figli. I due ragazzi e la neonata sopravvivono, ma lei riesce a tagliare la gola alla bimba di due anni.
Tutti sono stupiti e spaventati da questa svolta (che Morrison ha scoperto in un vecchio racconto di un giornale dell'epoca). Baby Suggs non è più la stessa, Sethe viene evitata dai suoi concittadini, Denver cresce isolata e sospettosa. Morrison è attenta, però, a indicare che, pur essendo un evento cruciale nella vita di tutti, non è il momento culminante, né la cosa peggiore che sia capitata a Sethe e ai suoi cari. Il culmine della narrazione storica è, infatti, la notte della fuga, quando molti dei fuggitivi sono stati impiccati e mutilati, mentre la narrazione del presente si basa sulla decisione di Denver di separarsi da quella che apparentemente è una lotta di vita e di morte tra Sethe e Beloved, e di uscire a cercare lavoro e amici che l'aiutino a salvarsi.
Uno dei motivi per cui Beloved è un grande romanzo è che è ugualmente pieno di sensazioni e di significato. Morrison sa esattamente cosa vuole fare e come farlo, e sfrutta ogni aspetto del suo soggetto. I personaggi sono complessi. Entrambe le storie sono drammatiche ma in modo contrastante, e il passato e il presente si modificano continuamente l'un l'altro. Nessuna delle due metà del romanzo soffre in contrasto con l'altra. Degno di nota è soprattutto lo stile di Morrison, che è grafico, evocativo e “non bianco” senza virare verso il dialetto. Una lettura meravigliosa che consiglio vivamente.

寵兒，書評說堪稱是童妮·摩里森最難懂的小說，說得完全正確，這本書卡關了好久，大概從夏天一路讓我啃到了冬天。
不過，打從小說的一開始，就感受到了語句的詩意美感，好像不是在讀小說，而是在讀一首很長、很悲傷的詩，有些片段，我只能猜測，或自己想像，是不是作者的本意就難以確定了，這也正是本書難讀之處，因為抽象的地方很多，故事情節又很跳躍且支離破碎，從字、詞間花心思去感受故事角色所經歷過的苦、痛，有時被其中的殘暴所震懾，每讀幾頁就必須停下來喘息平復，這故事所濃縮的悲傷就是這麼的沉重，這正是另一個難讀之處。
這部小說主要在描寫，或說控訴十九世紀美國白人恐怖的奴隸制度，所帶給黑人種族的巨大傷痛。一個母親，在一念之間決定親手結束親生骨肉的生命，只因為她深信，若孩子落入白人蓄奴者手中，將會被更殘忍的方式虐待、羞辱而死。這是怎樣一個無情又殘暴的年代？許多難以想像的暴行被作者雲淡風輕的不經意帶出，差點都沒嚇死：沒頭沒脚的吊死屍、燒脆了的狂笑著的逃犯、被抹滿奶油棄置奶油桶的丈夫、被鞭笞而血肉模糊的背上的樹、被形容成動物以公母描述的黑人嬰孩、當作種馬配種的強迫性交(女黑奴的價碼因此較高，可以生更多奴隸)、被各種鈍器毆打所留下的疤(不打人的奴隸主被當作天使，可以重覆說上好幾遍：至少沒人把我打倒在地)、被偷走的奶水、被成群銬起關押在土壕中的逃犯、生下來的孩子沒必要細看因為馬上就會被賣掉而永不再見的母親、隨意取名字掛在奴隸上的售價牌、販賣勞力租售自己只為贖回母親的兒子、一再逃亡又被抓到的浪漢……。經歷過這一切，你又怎麼嚴譴這個弒子的母親呢，基本上，她的全部自我已經被摧殘得支離破碎了，剩下的只有野性的本能、以及深陷過去回憶的癡狂靈魂而已。
童妮運用魔幻虛實的手法，將這位母親的悲慘故事寫成一首長詩，並紀念整個黑奴世代犧牲離散的孤魂。幸好，故事結局是好的、有希望的、充滿愛的。靈魂得到了平靜，變成簷上的風。傷口癒合後所留下的疤，得以繼續承載往後人生的炎涼。

Beloved, was Sethe's daughter. She was hers and she had to teach her what a mother should do.
Beloved came back to her mother of her own free will and she didn't have to explain a thing. She didn't have time to explain before because it had to be done quick. Quick. She had to be safe and she put her where she would be. But her love was tough and she was back now.
She wanted her children to be free from the cruelty of slavery; so she killed Beloved, because, at that time, it was the best thing to do.
She found the house at 124 of Bluestone Road where Beloved whispered to her and there she was, smiling at last.
She couldn't lose her again and now they couldn't hurt them no more.
Sethe was Beloved and she was hers; her face was her own and she wanted to be there in the place where her face was and to be looking at it too.
She saw her smiling face and the face Sethe lost was her own face.
She always said to herself to not love her daughter too much, but she loved her too much.
Anything she wanted she got, and when Sethe ran out of things to give her, Beloved invented desire.
She wanted Sethe's company, she imitated Sethe, talked the way she did, laughed her laugh and used her body the same way down to the walk, the way Sethe moved her hands, sighed through her nose, held her head.
She took the best of everything.
Beloved accused her of leaving her behind. Of not being nice to her, not smiling at her. She said they were the same, had the same face, how could she have left her?
And Sethe cried, saying she never did, or meant to – -that she had to get her children out, away.