The reasons why it is worth living
Already in a previous novel, Provincial Elegy, in which it was the death of Doria Manfredi, alleged mistress of the unforgettable Maestro Puccini, made of very sensational news in the age and in the environment where it occurred, appropriate to appear almost like a pre-gossip litteram, Micheli focused instead to evoke the agricultural landscape that was gradually becoming industrial, customs, the many vices and the few virtues of a nation that was preparing hecatomb of the first World war. If it can be considered easy to formulate predictions retrospective based on historical events congealed, as the author was then, he with the end of the world confirms, now, a prophetic vein.
Wanting to establish a parallel with a renowned intellectual whom Umberto Eco, where these exercised virtuosic ability, having well studied Thomas Aquinas, to build the types of events that make sense in relation to this, Micheli unfolds in prose a critical acumen sometimes visionary, that could be considered neo-Marxian. If the psychoanalyst reads a sign to give it a sense, similar Micheli takes the reader along beautiful natural descriptions, love, ecological, related to contexts of the various social and geographical situations, as in this novel where it ranges from China to Niger valley and down to the Old and New continent, until, in the mist of a complex style and while we investigate the fundamental issues of life - what is love, what money, what joy or sorrow -, It is watermarked with the danger of the end of the world, just the same way as a monstrous telltale sign of self-destructive impulses buried in the collective unconscious of the species. In an era of superficial writing, sometimes maybe even brilliant, the author of West Indies and Grace enough he performs, in explicit contrast, one that is all-density stratified polysemous plans that always stimulate the interpretative acumen of the reader. In a passage of one of the early chapters, which I think explanatory best to explain what the characteristic expressive tools of narrative language of Micheli, has come across as a typical Joycean epiphany, in which the story illuminates sense: "The current dragged logs tree, ornaments and vehicles with equally equanimity inertia. On the roof of a car a Catholic priest, his cassock to such a soaked water from piegargli knees under its own weight, however, resisted in an upright posture and drew to ossecrazioni sky that he must have taken from the Book of Daniel, or by ' Revelation of John. " We find here, as well as an irony that often recurs elsewhere, and each time carefully dosed, the overwhelming power of nature, which prostrates the unfortunate priest in the same act that he has learned to perform as a sign of praise and supplication before all ' object of their faith. Not so the force of destiny, always marked by dramatic exuberance, but that of nature, who likes to hide in the big to the small, the upper limit of energy in tiny atomic orbitals. Therein lies also the strength of the writing of Micheli, since it does not express the content but instead only makes it accessible to the lighting of the reader. The end of the world is, therefore, a work entirely inscribed in the present time, so as to leave a glimpse, intimately concrete appearance of subjective experiences, the terrible threat looming apocalyptic on the planet, the threat that the same style evokes, through the metaphor congruent the flood: dilated sentences with impetuosity, which offer an indirect representation of the scourges certificates in multiple traditions. Next to this - which he implied a reading of the text in terms, as mentioned, neo-Marxist - appear in dialectical antithesis, the reasons why it is worth living.
Tomaso Kemeny