Réquiem (Portuguese Edition)

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How it is done, made to look easy, comfortable. Further on I came upon a row on either side of large rusted black metal barrels. Peering down into one I moved on to the next and then the next. Each was filled three quarters of the way to the top with quotation marks. Each door opened onto a room. Steadfast and plainly set. Shrugging it off I went to leave the first room I entered. The door was locked, the phantasm quietly setting into place. Looking around everything appeared similar. A feeling the wall began its crumble and dream sifted in.

A door painted the same white as the splitting walls opened and a man appeared with two drinks. When finished he directed me to another door. There stood…yes, may father as a young man filled with questions to grill me.

When finished he directed me to another where I found my old friend who had died. Tabucchi himself, his narrator, or was it me. Confused I no longer recognized the difference. A life was being walked through. Retaken in its ending. Room after room handed off through the past. Some rooms occupied by those of my present situation which quickly worsened as the corridor split off again. What kind of theme park was this? What was Tabucchi thinking, doing?

There were no signs lit. Choosing either direction might well spin my disorientation into mayhem in this maze. It seemed too far to turn back. Knocking on doors there was no answer. On impulse I chose the path on the left. I could turn around and retrace my steps then take the turn to the right. But if I just listened a faint sound simmered through the dark.

Barely heard but gradually louder as I stepped on. Then shards of light, widening. To an opening, the din reshuffled into voices of tears, sobs, mutterings convoluted. Holding my breath and stepping to the flutter of my heart I snaked out into the light. All eyes turned toward me. I had returned to the entrance where my journey began.

I followed the path, patrons on both sides of me, the bitter-sweet smiles, handkerchiefs dabbing at moist eyes, pats on the back encouraging me on. The exit gate opened for me.

Requiem (Marcos Portugal)

The Poet with legs crossed a hand held briefly up hesitated then waved. I felt my own eyes grow moist and waved back. Passing through the exit gate I heard it click shut behind me. View all 7 comments. If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review. The Emptiness of Literature: But there is something else that needs explaining. Strictly speaking, a Requiem should be written in Latin, at least that's what tradition prescribes. Unfortuna If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be up to it in Latin.

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It's a very subjective thing, but when you read something that impresses you as language, regardless of its meaning, that seems to be so perfectly expressed that no one could have written it better, that makes you want to telephone a friend at 4AM and read it aloud, then you're probably reading a great prose stylist.

I also pay attention to a writer's ability to create interesting, appropriate and original metaphors, similes, etc. If you're into European Literature, read on. View all 6 comments. Is Karen in that picture, or is it a hallucination? View all 9 comments. August 14, Review of Requiem: A Hallucination - take 2. Imagine yourself sitting with your favourite eccentric friend. The two of you are sitting in a comfortable, partially darkened room sipping at glasses of a particularly good port.

Silence has reigned for several minutes as you have let the port tell its story. Now your friend breaks in with the story that he has come to tell.

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He speaks of a meeting which he arrived at twelve hours too early. He August 14, Review of Requiem: You sit back with your port, prepared to be enlightened and entertained. Antonio Tabucchi leads us through one of those extremely hot and uncomfortable days in Lisbon and around its environs, one of those days where you cling to every scrap of shade that you see, asking yourself how the local people survive. In the course of the day, we travel with our unnamed narrator as he encounters: Because of the heat, he asks the taxi driver to stop so that he can buy a new, dry, shirt as he is soaked in sweat.

She then reads his palm and gives him what will be the theme for his day. Our narrator now takes us through the rest of his day as he encounters: He also meets the ghost of his father as a young man. Let the narrator do that. I shall skip to the end of the story, to the meeting with the person the narrator was supposed to meet at Of course, if you are a big fan of Portuguese literature, you may have guessed who it was. Of course, the ghost of Fernando Pessoa. If you have the patience to read it, you should ask me for my story of my encounters with the ghost of Pessoa back then.

Now, to be honest, Pessoa is never named, but who else would Tabucchi, a Lusophile, like myself go to all of this trouble for on such an unbearable hot day in July in Lisbon. I know, he said, with me it always finishes that way, but don't you think that's precisely what literature should do, be disquieting I mean personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences.

Neither do I, I agreed, but you see, I'm already full of disquiet, your disquiet just adds to mine and becomes anxiety. I prefer anxiety to utter peace, he said, given the choice. And what do they discuss? Especially food from the Alentejo region of Portugal. I can speak highly of the food from the region because I have enjoyed it myself. And if you get the book, you will have the ability to learn about that food because there are recipes, of sorts, in an appendix to the book.

What more could you ask? What is the book about? Read the book, with a fine port, of course. If you read the book, you will read about the Lame Lottery-Ticket Seller. Our narrator recognizes him from somewhere. Do you know where? August 10, When will I ever learn? I lost another one. I will rewrite this in a few days when I have regained my equilibrium. View all 11 comments. Jun 18, Ben Winch rated it it was amazing Shelves: An un-self important masterpiece, deeply affecting and yet sheer pleasure to read.

A celebration of Portugal and Fernando Pessoa by an Italian who chose to write this most perfect of all his books in Portuguese. What is it about Pessoa that so excites the imagination? So far I'm not a big fan of Jose Saramago, but his The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis concerning one of Pessoa's key pseudonymic alter-egos is also brilliant, and for many of the same reasons as this is - fu This is priceless! So far I'm not a big fan of Jose Saramago, but his The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis concerning one of Pessoa's key pseudonymic alter-egos is also brilliant, and for many of the same reasons as this is - funny, sad, playful, otherworldly, with a vivid sense of Lisbon as a setting.

Also the painting of Pessoa that graces the cover of Penguin's Selected Poems - have you ever seen a better portrait of a writer? For whatever reason, Pessoa clearly fascinates Tabucchi, and it will help your understanding of Requiem if he fascinates you too. When I first read this novella roughly 15 years ago I knew nothing of Pessoa, and though the atmosphere stayed with me I found it too cryptic.

But by now, the fourth or fifth reading, I enjoy every word of it, and find it anything but cryptic.

Every chapter contains a revelation, some so powerful I am left repeatedly in tears. The description of the death of the narrator's father, for example, is heart-rending, and yet still conveyed with the playful tone that appears so easy yet is so rare. In a short preface to the piece Tabucchi explains: Should anyone remark that this Requiem was not performed with due solemnity, I cannot but agree.

Requiem: A Hallucination

But the fact is that I chose to play my music not on an organ, which is an instrument proper to cathedrals, but on a mouth-organ that you can carry about in your pocket, or on a barrel-organ that you can wheel through the streets. This love of the 'music of the streets' also comes through strongly here. It's hardly credible that this works, but it does.

Taken together, the whole jangling, apparently discordant jumble actually brings forth notes of utter purity. It's real and it's heartfelt, and this reader at least wonders how anyone could ever have the time or energy to write such a thing, despite or because of its scarce pages.

Rarely is literature this inspiring. Jan 31, M. After completing this quick read I was reminded of my very first sighting of the Chrysler Building in New York City just after coming out of the hole in exiting the subway. I immediately remarked to my companion that day that this building is the one that should really be the Empire State Building. My guide that day long ago got quite a kick out of my country bumpkin statement. But it was true at that time. The magnificence of first lighting eyes on this w http: The magnificence of first lighting eyes on this wildly extravagant building gave me pause to wonder what other structure in this humongous city could possibly be any more remarkable than this one I was faced with?

And was not the Empire State Building the one attraction all the tourists flock to? I have since given up that feeling for the Chrysler Building and have grown rather fond of regularly seeing the Empire State Building breaking into view while heading uptown on Broadway. A Hallucination had the same affect on me as that first morning did in New York.

Suffice to say that this book is exactly what I have been looking for between the covers of the two Italo Calvino books I have thus far engaged in. And as dead as Calvino's writing is to me the opposite is true of Antonio Tabucchi. Now, smarter people than I could most likely explain why this is true. But I, for the life of me, cannot begin to try, other than to say I have felt my way through every page of this small gem of a book and nary felt a thing while reading Calvino.

So perhaps this a quasi review of both short books, this Requiem: A Hallucination and Calvino's Mr. But how is it that one respected writer can make a reader feel something and another does not, when both use language in which to proceed from? Of course, in a way this is not fair, as Calvino is writing in Italian and Tabucchi in Portuguese, and both works have been translated into English by completely different translators.

But even if a foul has been made how is it that the words of one may ring so hollow and the other come to break so deeply in my soul?

I am wont to always return to my theory of a writer's personality or translator's having been present in the work and that personality being of a person I am attracted to or find extremely interesting. Antonio Tabucchi is one very cool dude. I love the way his mind works, and the people he visits with, whether true or made-up characters in a fictional world made so very real to me. And if this world is not at all of material substance it matters little to me as the dream is one I am attracted to anyway. This was a short and lovely piece that I wish had not ended so soon for me.

But as other readers and admirers of this little book have said, it is one that must be revisited and enjoyed again. In addition I also learned some interesting recipes and was also introduced to the writer Fernando Pessoa, and for that I am grateful again. View all 12 comments.

La luna prende il posto del sole. A chi, o a che cosa stavo dicendo addio? Non lo sapevo bene [ Reclinai il capo all'indietro e mi misi a guardare la luna". Oct 07, Marc rated it liked it Shelves: What a curious, yet charming book! To begin with, the Italian Tabucchi wrote this in Portuguese. The explanation is simple: The book is set in Lisbon on a very hot day, or actually perhaps more in a kind of no man's land, or better a Wonderland.

For the protaganist, clearly the writer himself, makes a surreal journey through various more or less imaginary places. It is not for nothing that Tabucchi ha What a curious, yet charming book! It is not for nothing that Tabucchi has given this booklet the subtitle of 'hallucination'. Soon he also gives away a reading key, when the storyteller says: What follows is a curious journey through various places including a burial chamber and especially a succession of endless, sometimes absurd conversations, mostly about food, but in the background there is clearly also a personal tragedy, an abortion followed by a suicide is mentioned.

In the end, after the encounter with a figure that in everything reminds of the inevitable Pessoa, a feeling of sadness remains, or, to stay in a Portuguese context, of saudade. May 30, Jonathan rated it it was amazing Shelves: Simply beautiful, sad and perfectly poised.

Makes me want to re-read Pessoa and re-visit Lisbon Jul 24, Nate D rated it liked it Shelves: Another of Tabucchi's metaphysical travelogues, this one an ode to city of Lisbon, the delights of regional Portugese cuisine, and, yes, a requiem for a certain Portugese poet. The journey is also haunted by other losses, gracefully held to the ellipses between chapters, a requiem for memory and personal past and all that cannot be undone. Against the scars of what is gone, however, Tabucchi's narrative, with its dramatis personae of symbolic figures and mildly unearthly meeting places, gently a Another of Tabucchi's metaphysical travelogues, this one an ode to city of Lisbon, the delights of regional Portugese cuisine, and, yes, a requiem for a certain Portugese poet.

Against the scars of what is gone, however, Tabucchi's narrative, with its dramatis personae of symbolic figures and mildly unearthly meeting places, gently allows for reconciliation. Aug 17, James rated it it was amazing Shelves: A ridiculously charming novella that is is difficult to describe in a way that gives it justice. The story follows one day or perhaps one dream of an Italian walking around Lisbon interacting with both figures from his past and people he meets.

It works at many levels: Feb 27, Stephen Durrant rated it liked it. Writers who choose to write novels or poetry in languages other than their native one intrigue me. Antonio Tabucchi, the well-known Italian novelist, writes this novel in Portuguese and claim Writers who choose to write novels or poetry in languages other than their native one intrigue me. Antonio Tabucchi, the well-known Italian novelist, writes this novel in Portuguese and claims, moreover, that "a story like this could only be written in Portuguese.

The narrator has a series of encounters with the dead, all in preparation for a midnight meeting with the late Fernando Pessoa, Portugal's greatest poet. His search seems to be for reconciliation, a sort of failed conquest of remorse: This is a very short novel, well worth the hour or so it takes to read. The English of Margaret Costa's translation is clear and smooth. But how this small text reads in Tabucchi's Portuguese is something this reader will presumably never know. Per lo stesso motivo mi ritrovo a dover privare il libro di una valutazione migliore: Le atmosfere evocative tanto care a Tabucchi sono cadenzate dalle inquietanti presenze di diversi personaggi che si alternano senza sosta, intervallando i 4 grandi fantasmi della vita del protagonista: Tadeus - Il padre - Isabel Tabucchi era dannatamente sincero e in Requiem ci regala uno scorcio intimo della sua vita senza fronzoli e vergogne.

Tabucchi mi prende per la gola, parla di Lisboa di arroz de Tamboril. L'ho trovato leggero e irresistibile, anche se l'ultimo capitolo ha rovinato un po' la lettura unico motivo per cui manca la quinta stella , non l'ho trovato incisivo come gli altri. Vorrei averlo letto in portoghese.. Jun 29, Michael Flick rated it really liked it. The narrator, the author, has fallen asleep under a large mulberry tree in the garden of a friend and dreams. But he cannot agree with that, he chooses to play his music not on an organ, which is an instrument proper to cathedrals, but on a mouth-organ that you carry around in your pocket--street music.

Really impossible to summarize or adequately categorize this book. This book is a lot like herpes, which is like remorse: E poi ho aperto Requiem. Li este livro pela primeira vez em e apaixonei-me pela escrita de Antonio Tabucchi. Like the better-known Spanish Requiem masses, Portuguese settings are characterized by an intimate relation to chant and its performing practices.

These practices often determine for each move- ment which segments are to be set polyphonically, which are to be varied in texture, and which are to be performed monophonically. I am grateful to Owen Rees for his insightful comments on an early draft of this text and to my wife, Isabel, for her support. The former avoid using variable texts, making the polyphonic settings suitable for almost any particular liturgical use and occasion, while the latter often include texts traceable to specific diocesan liturgies.

Differences in formularies and the spread of the Roman use in Portugal partly account for the more standardized Portuguese Requiem masses see Table 1 in the Appendix. Moreover, and although it is difficult to ascertain when most of the surviving polyphonic masses for the dead were probably composed especially because of the relatively late date of their sources, early Spanish settings seem definitely older than the Portuguese settings.

Also, Spanish settings, either complete or fragmentary, survive in Portuguese sources see Table 2 in the Appendix. Table 3 in the Appendix presents the extant polyphonic settings of the Requiem mass from sixteenth- to mid-seventeenth-century Por- tugal in approximate chronological order. The earliest setting—datable to between around and the s and preserved anonymously in a manuscript from the Augustinian Monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra P-Cug MM 6, dated to c. Patterns for Sixteenth- to Early-Seventeenth-Century Portuguese Polyphonic Settings 55 This style was by the time well established and widespread in Portugal particularly for setting items from the Proper of the mass.

A Homage to Bruno Turner, Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, , pp. He was a singer and chaplain to the Bishop of Coimbra in and was still active in P-Cug MM 34, fols. Identifying the composers will help in dating the mass settings. Patterns for Sixteenth- to Early-Seventeenth-Century Portuguese Polyphonic Settings 57 composer active in Seville around , or Afonso Perea Bernal, a Spa- niard possibly also from Seville who was appointed professor of music at Coimbra University on May 29, and who died in Evidence suggests that polyphonic settings of the Requiem mass did travel far beyond the context of the specific liturgical use or local tradition for which they were composed.

At least some settings were widely disseminated and surely performed many times, even regularly, not only in the place or general area of their origin but in different, distant places as well. P-Pm MM 40, fols. Evidence also suggests that musical texts in late peripheral sources should eventually be appraised as testimonies close to the original work, insofar as their processes of transmission can be ascertained. It is clear that transplanted texts, whatever their nature, are better and long -er preserved in peripheral traditions than within the core tradition from where they were brought.

The latter manuscript lacks the Altus and Bassus parts in the Introit; the former manuscript has the original reading at that point visible under erasure. Officium, missa et motecta defunctorum, Barcelona: On E-V Ms 21 olim Ms s. On E-Vp Ms s. This has to be taken into account in assessing the whole work and its extant sources.

It was composed possibly in Tarazona between and and was then brought to Coimbra probably through Ciudad Rodrigo not later than the s. Differences between the Tarazona and Coimbra sources—besides text and trivial differences in notation, there are four variants of rhythm and one of pitch, this latter removing the octave leap from the final cadence— however suggest, not a direct transmission, but a more complex dissemination of the piece. Early Portuguese settings share certain stylistic and structural traits which are supposedly characteristic of northern Spanish Requiem mass -es: Longer intonations in the Introit and Gradual, an appa- rently Andalusian feature following Pedro de Escobar, appear first in the mass by Bernal Table 3, no.

Treatment of the chant melody is also quite distinctive. The settings of the Introit, typically the most hieratic movement in polyphonic 26 Or in the Palencia-Valladolid region after c. Basurto was chapel master at Tarazona Cathedral in , stayed in Saragossa and Palencia in , and was probably a singer in the chapel of Empress Isabella of Portugal in the s.

Bernal presents it unchanged in mostly equal and relatively long values, as in early and mid-century Andalusian settings, of which the overall style is followed by latter Spanish, and Portuguese, composers see Example 1 ; Francisco Mouro breaks it in short phrases with alternating paraphrase and textual repetition, giving it more rhythmic definition especially in the approach to cadences, not unlike Basurto and the composer of the anonymous Saragossa Requiem mass Table 2, no. Patterns for Sixteenth- to Early-Seventeenth-Century Portuguese Polyphonic Settings 65 Structuring of the Gradual is a possible clue of the models for Portuguese settings of the Requiem mass, their hypothetical depen- dence on Spanish settings, and the latter regional early characteristics.

As shown on Table 6 in the Appendix, three types of structure for the Gradual Requiem aeternam coexist in late-sixteenth- and early-seven- teenth-century Iberian settings: The latter is not used in any Portuguese setting of the Requiem mass. Both Basurto and the composer of the anonymous Coimbra mass set the respond and verse in two separate polyphonic sections. Two- and three-section struc- ture of the Gradual with one polyphonic section seems thus a likely characteristic of Sevillian, or Andalusian, early settings; two-section structure with two polyphonic sections can be possibly related to northern and central Spanish early settings.

Three-section structure of the Gradual with three polyphonic sections preceded by an intonation was introduced by Morales in his five-voice Requiem mass, possibly following Roman trends,30 though most Italian sixteenth-century poly- phonic Requiem masses omit the Gradual altogether. Studien zum Leben und Schaffen des portugiesischen Komponisten, Regensburg: Regarding struc- ture, post-Tridentine Portuguese composers clearly followed a path different from the Spanish, continuing on a tradition with roots in pre- Tridentine Iberian settings of the Requiem mass.

As seen, in addition to differences in the choice of both text and chant melody the latter being a significant issue which I did not touched upon , early settings of the Requiem mass from northern and central Spain, on the one hand, and Andalusia, on the other, do have some distinctive structural and stylistic features, even if other pro- minent trends are similar in settings from both regions. Portuguese early settings of the Requiem mass depended on Spanish models, partly because of the spread of Spanish settings and also because at least some of these Portuguese early settings were indeed composed by Spa- niards working in Portugal.

In the latter half of the sixteenth century, Spanish and Portuguese composers evolved into what we might term a common Iberian style, combining strict processes of chant treatment and presentation, which entailed a rather conservative approach to texture especially noted in settings of the Introit and items from the Ordinary , chant paraphrase allowing for a more interactive contra- puntal display, and standardized patterns for the texts set, based on the Roman formularies for the mass for the dead.

This was the legacy not only of Morales—what we commonly assume in the light of the wide dissemination particularly of his five-voice Requiem mass—but cer- tainly also of other composers of lesser prominence from both sides of the border, nowadays unnoticed. In memoria aeterna T Absolve, Domine V.

Et gratia tua V.

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