Why This World by Benjamin Moser

Author:Benjamin Moser
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141976006
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

From wordlessly being—“But there was not a single synonym for a man seated with a bird in his hand”13—Martin must exit the irrational divine and become a full human, and to be human is to have a language.

The first words come, a cliché: “ ‘Like jewels, he thought, since he had always had a general tendency to compare things to jewels.” Inspired, he launches into a long soliloquy. At its climax, his hand involuntarily contorts and crushes the little bird. It is a second crime. “He was impressed with himself. He had become a dangerous man.”14

It is a painterly scene, forty pages of stillness, like a landscape of Magritte’s or De Chirico’s: the solitary man, the burning sun, the shimmering rocks, the dead bird, in the immense desert. The only action takes place inside Martin, who at its conclusion starts to walk away from the desert, arriving at length at a “poor and pretentious” farmhouse. He introduces himself as an engineer, which “lightly scandalizes” the plantation’s boss, a tough woman named Victoria, who looks at him as if he were an animal, “as if she were professionally examining a horse.”

“Where are you from?”

“Rio.”

“With that accent?”

He didn’t reply. With their eyes both agreed that it was a lie.15

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