a terra como deus

Não está muito longe das tradições mais antigas, nem dos povos anteriores ao cristianismo, os povos do livro. Recuperada e reciclada a imagem da terra divina em To a God Unknow, um cristo de sacrifício pela sobrevivência da fertilidade. De certo modo recuperada a imagem que agora se revê pelos olhos estatísticos de quem alterou o curso das estações. Os não-católicos mais afastados da mãe-terra, os católicos semi-pagãos com as suas cerimónias e representações e finalmente o homem natural, nesta procissão de valores. Um cortejo de símbolos e mitos, gostei das personagens tipificadas e maiores do que elas próprias de To a God Unknown, mais ainda das árvores, do musgo e dos riachos e, finalmente, das mulheres, ligação de sempre do homem-ideia ao que lhe resta de bicho.

As mulheres e a violência particular do seu mundo em dois momentos, o parto e a morte.

Rama was washing out the baby's toothless mouth with warm water while Alice set the safety pins in the strip of muslin that would bind Elizabeth's hips after the placenta came. «Only a little while yet,» Rama said. «It will be over in an hour.»
Joseph sat heavily in a chair and watched the women, and he watched the dull, pained eyes of Elizabeth, filled with suffering. The baby lay in its basket-crib, dressed in a gown twice as long as itself.
When the birth was all over, Joseph lifted Elizabeth and held her in his lap while the women took up the fould birth pad and made the bed again. Alice took out all the rags and burned them in the kitchen stove, and Rama pinned bandage around Elizabeth's hips as tightly as she could pull it.
. . .

A furtive step sounded on the porch. He heard the front door open quietly. A rustling sound came from the sitting-room. Joseph lay still and listened, and wondered idly who was there, but he did not call. And then the bedroom door opened, and he turned his head to look. Rama stood naked in the doorway, and the lamplight fell upon her. Joseph saw the full breasts, ending in dark hard nipples, and the broad round belly and the powerful legs, and the triangle of crisp black hair. Rama's breath came panting, as though she had been running.
«This is a need,» she whispered hoarsely.
In Joseph's throat and chest a grinding started, like hot gravel, and it moved downward.
Rama blew out the light and flung herself into the bed. Their bodies met furiously, thighs pounding and beating, her thewed legs clenched over him. Their breath sobbed in their throats. Joseph could feel the hard nipples against his breast; then Rama groaned harshly, and her broad hips drummed against him, and her body quivered until the pressure of her straining arms crushed the breath from his chest, and her hungry limbs drew irresistibly the agonizing seed of his body.
She relaxed, breathing heavily. The strong muscles grew soft; they lay together in exhaustion.
«It was a need to you,» she whispered. «It was a hunger in me, but a need to you.»

in To a God Unknow
John Steinbeck

open to interpretation

"Sometimes in these nights in bed she told him of the things she knew, how the Persians invaded Greece and were beaten, and how Orestes came to the tripod for protection, and the Furies sat waiting for him to get hungry and let go his hold. She told them laughingly, all her little bits of knowledge that were designed to make her superior. All of her knowledge seemed very silly to her now." in To a God Unknown
Sensation against theory, the American way echoing Leaves of Grass. Classic literature against the New World, action for fiction and how Steinbeck helped lay the foundations of the American character. Greek mythology updated in a new mythical land. Not sure how feminist concepts would read Elizabeth, the uptight teacher reshaped by the wild. I am very curious to see her transformation and how she will stand the test of the upcoming tragedy. (In a more personal note; knowledge is never silly but it comes second)

McGreggor

Chapter 7 of To a God Unknown is a revealling one. Being short, it introduces Elizabeth, the main character's wife-to-be. Joseph, the thirty-five year old land-obsessed, procreation-"engineer", meets Elizabeth, the obstinate daughter of an opinionated man, a seventeen year old teacher who has read the classics and will elevate the social status of any man. A desirable, pretty knick-knack.

Like so many women characters, Elizabeth isn't very interesting. She is the ultimate young school teacher, full of manners and ideals, a little stubborn but naíve and inexperienced, a willful girl who nevertheless (and to my surprise) would easily cave in to the song of a cheaper Rett Butler. If her thoughts after Joseph's impulsive proposal are of calculation and fear, Joseph beastly reaction uncovers a less than promissing future for this couple on the make.

Away from Steinbeck's mythic characters, emerges McGreggor, the photographic image of a man you can almost hear. A few lines is what takes for Steinbeck to bring this pseudo-marxist, unsettled man to life.

"In Monterey there lived and worked a harness-maker and saddler named McGreggor, a furious philosopher, a Marxian for the sake of argument. Age had not softned his ferocious opinions, and he had left the gentle Utopia of Marx far behind. McGreggor had long deep wrinkles on his cheeks from constantly setting his jaw and pinching his mouth against the world. His eyes drooped with sullenness. He sued his neighbors for an infringement of his rights, and he was constantly discovering how inadequate was the law's cognizance of his rights. He tried to browbeat his daughter Elizabeth and failed as miserably as he had with her mother, for Elizabeth set her mouth and held her opinions out of reach of his arguments by never stating them. It infuriated the old man to think that he could not blast her prejudices with his own because he did not know what they are.

Elizabeth was a pretty girl, and very determined. Her hair was fluffy, her nose small and her chin firm from setting it against her father. It was in her eyes that the beauty lay, grey eyes set extremely far apart, and lashed so thickly that they seemed to guard remote and preternatural knowledge. She was a tall girl; not thin, but lean with strenght and taut with quick and nervous energy. Her father pointed out her flaws, or rather faults he thought she had."

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The trouble with "To a God Unknown" by John Steinbeck by the Paperback Writer
To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck by the Fifty Books Project 2008

femaleness

"He was half-drugged and overwhelmed by the forest of Our Lady. There was a curious femaleness about the interlacing boughs and twiggs, about the long green cavern cut by the river through the trees and the brilliant underbrush. The endless green halls and aisles and alcoves seemed to have meanings as obscure and promising as the symbols of an ancient religion. Joseph shivered and closed his eyes."
J. Steinbeck, To a God Unknown

Is it me or is this utterly arousing?

Reading Steinbeck after meandering through diverse ways of writing, different time and space backgrounds, is an interesting experience. How well can writers master the skill today and what do they chose to do with their ability? I enjoy digital literature for its scattering feeling and for its sort of schizophrenia. But I haven't read any "of these "digital authors" that controls writing, much less content. Then there are skillful authors, best-sellers, who write emptied thousands of pages that mean nothing, the perverse consequence of market and marketeers on writing. Other very few writers do write but in "everything has been said already" times, cynicism taints their work, a sort of "I'm embarrassed of being honest". The excess of images has gotten to literature as well, life has been averaged by means of clichés. It's the big hypocrisy, hollow words.

"The western range was still edged with the silver of the afterglow, but the valley of Our Lady was filled to the mountain-rims with darkness. The cast stars in the steelgrey fabric of the sky seemed to struggle and wink against the night. The four men sat about the coals of the fire, their faces strong with shadows. Joseph caressed his beard and his eyes were brooding and remote. Romas clasped his knees with both his arms. His cigarette gleamed red and then disappeared behind its ash."

Fílmico. O segundo livro de Steinbeck depois de um primeiro de pouco sucesso, "To a God Unknown" levou cinco anos a ser escrito, mais do que qualquer outro de Steinbeck. Uma espécie de nascimento a ferros do escritor.