The deep sense of things and time in Faulkner

The poet Maurizio Cucchi reviews two masterpieces of the great American writer: the wonderful Absalome, Absalome! and The Sound and the Fury

by Maurizio Cucchi

Great Faulkner. Yet, nobody read him anymore, people say. Yet, his books are reprinted in important series. Perhaps the contemporary taste prefers the ease, fast-consuming things, or novels where one can easily identify himself. So, reading a so complex author is tiring. However, I read him, again.

I did it with Absalome, Absalome! and The Sound and the Fury, and the reward was wonderful. Sometimes, I admit, Faulkner is almost unreadable for the efforts he forces us to. But also when you can not understand, you perceive that there is something important, there.

It is so dense, so thick, that you can not pass through it. Absalome, Absalome!, for example, is great for many things. Especially for the sense of the time that it contains, for how things engrave in time and how they reemerge from it for people that stubbornly look for them.

The Sound and the Fury has so many unforgettable things, too. Scenes saw through the idiot eye. Sometimes they make us closer to the possible true sense of things, the relation with the external of the animal. Such as when Benji holds the slipper in his hand and says that, in that way, he could see, together with the mirror and the flame reflected in the mirror, the slipper. An incredible simplicity, a minimal and sordid ground with no shade of minimalism.