Amado has found a fun dough to mix in his expert hands with this novel, He exploits parallel universes and controversial subjects with witty, funny writing,
He tackles these subjects with mastery, playing with the history, the customs of an era, and society's beliefs in complete political and cultural effervescence,
Tolerance as an art of living, good humor as a solution to daily worries, and disregard as an escape from more serious problems are the portrait of a people and a philosophy of life unique in the world!
Furiously burlesque and comical! This is Middlemarch, written in modern times, that happens to be gloriously in Brazil and in some ways is even better.
Add to that his censorship issues and exile, and its a compelling work of art, To contrast this with Middlemarch, I got more out of this because the social conventions and issues are not as dated, the conclusions are still scandalous and it feels like this could still happen now, while Middlemarch is stuck in its age.
One of my new, top favorites, It's the same level of quality asYears, but a great deal more accessible, It's got a great deal of repetition, it seems, but really it's about subtle changes over time, So it seems to be the same, nearly is the same, but by the end of the book a lot has changed, Awesome, not too high flying, the characters are believable and you begin to really feel affection for them, People have their vices but are presented as threedimensional, In other words, they dont just have vices, Highly recommended, long but written with a speedy, fluid style that takes you throughpages in very little time, Questo libro é arrivato sul mio scaffale in una maniera insolita: illegittimamente preso in prestito o forse dovrei dire rubato alla mia stronza padrona di casa di Bruxelles, un'edizione Garzanti abbastanza bruttina e vecchiotta.
Inconsapevolmente ho cominciato a leggerlo proprio perché speravo che non parlasse di una vedova che si sarebbe risposata, Ops, é andata proprio così!
Jorge Amado mi ha dato quello che mi aspettavo nel modo in cui non mi aspettavo: tra piatti brasiliani, olio di dende, serenate, programmi radiofonici e drammi interiori.
Ogni emozione o sensazione, ogni stato d'animo é accompagnato da un piatto, Non é quello che ci succede tutti i giorni Il cibo é vita, il cibo é la nostra quotidianità, e Jorge celebra ogni piccolezza che di solito viene trascurata,
"Dona Flor e i suoi due mariti" parla di amore e passione in un modo incredibilmente reale: l'amore non è solo romantico, l'amore é anche nelle viscere, nel corpo.
L'amore é sentimento, ma allo stesso tempo bisogno di sicurezza, rassicurazione, certezze, Proprio questo rappresentano i due mariti di Dona Flor, divisa e combattuta, prima di capire che non potrebbe mai essere ciò che vuole se rinunciasse a uno dei due.
Flor é un personaggio stupendo perché ci rispecchia tutti: chi non è stato diviso tra due emozioni opposte, provandole allo stesso tempo, due amori, decisioni ecc, Chi non vorrebbe risolvere i propri problemi sperando nell'occulto, nella magia, nella spiritualità, in una terza via, nell'irreale
Tutto questo è accompagnato dalla cultura bahiana, fatta di persone che spettegolano, giudicano, dal bigottismo della religione, l'osservanza dei riti candomblé, le spiagge brasiliane, il rumore delle onde, i quartieri del vizio, del gioco e delle prostitute, ma soprattutto la varietà, la differenza e la pazzia di quello che Bahia rappresenta.
Si percepisce l'amore che lo scrittore ha per questa terra,
Inoltre, la scrittura é adorabile: popolare, schietta, a volte anche volgare! Senza pretese, dritta al cuore,
Non posso non concludere con due frasi che trovo amaramente stupende:
"Tu non sai che oscuro pozzo sia il cuore della gente"
"La felicità non ha storia, con una vita felice non si può scrivere un romanzo".
Doña Flor es una mujer diez, Trabajadora, simpática y de buena planta, El problema Vadinho, su marido, es un caradura y un cantamañamas de muchísimo cuidado, Es muy jijí jajá pero su descontrol y desfachatez sacan de quicio a cualquiera, Pero ella, enamoradita perdida, aguanta carros y carretas hasta que Vadinho muere durante el Carnaval, A partir de ahí empezará un proceso de transformación en Flor, O no.
Ésta es una lectura de lo más veraniega y sabrosona en todos los sentidos posibles, Una telenovela en toda regla pero de gran calidad literaria, conste en acta,
Una novela llena de momentos y diálogos chistosísimos, con una gran riqueza de lenguaje qué gran trabajo de las traductoras que lo han sabido plasmar tan bien en nuestro idioma y de elementos de cultura, religión y folclore brasileños totalmente desconocidos para mí.
Un disfrute.
Algún pero Sí, lo hay, Para mi gusto le sobran páginas aquí y ahí, Tiene fragmentos un tanto repetitivos y, aunque paradoxalmente no se me ha hecho larga, creo que la novela habría funcionado un pelín mejor de haber sido más concisa.
Pero, oye, una muy buena lectura que me deja con ganas de más Jorge Amado, The truth about human nature and human happiness is the message of this story, The middleclass inhabitants of a small neighborhood of Salvador, Bahia, have their traditional ideas about everyday life, behavior distinct from the practices of disreputable, immoral lowlifes, artists, and streetcorner musicians elsewhere in the town.
Their insularity is occasionally challenged by more progressive types among themselves, namely Dona Flor or Dona Norma, Do the deities influence them as well, . . does anyone influence these pagan gods through proper rituals, . . how is good and bad luck explained The distinction between the upright and seedy parts of town gets broken down, However skeptical about the explanations offered by those mercenary mediums who are keen to supernatural presences, the reader sees that some voodoo rituals/human petitions to gods as well as someone like deeply feeling Dona Flor find a pathways between everyday and eternal realms.
When Dona Flor considers that "honor" and reputation require her to forsake immodest Vadinho, will she eventually be sorry Does she have time to change her mind The dichotomy of either/or choices, it turns out, is false to choose between marriage or career, spirit or manner, life or death, struggle or placidity as in gambling is backward and not conducive to wellbeing.
Having a foot in both realms, Vadinho is both spirit and matter, though the successful petition to the gods by the AfricanBrazilian religious cult prefer the dead man settled forever where he belongs.
The fantastical, melodramatic, and entertaining ending depicts the great argument within the pantheon, which plays out as meteorological and political events, spectacular and extraordinary by comparison even to the sublimity and sordidness of the everyday.
Overall, DONA FLOR is good from beginning to end but is amazing in the last fifth, I must admit that this is great literature, and would deservestars, Butit just wasnt my cup of tea, Too slow, too much detail, too much rambling,
The strange and moving account of the experiences of Dona Flor,
professor emeritus of the culinary art, and her two husbands,
the first known as Vadinho
the second, Dr.
Teodoro Madureira by name, pharmacist by profession
or
The Fearsome Battle between Spirit and Matter
Narrated by Jorge Amado,
public scrivener located in the Rio Vermelho quarter
of the city of Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos,
in the neighborhood of Largo de Sant' Ana,
where Yemanja, Our Lady of the Waters, dwells.
This will probably be my favorite read of the year, an irreverent, bawdy, tumultous celebration of life and love under the tropical sun of Bahia, written with tender irony and wicked wit by Jorge Amado, to the accompaniament of guitars, violins, bassoons, cellos and the thundering
batucadas of a full fledged Carnival.
Was is not by loving that I learned to love Was it not by living that I learned to live asks Dona Flor in the introduction to the story, while sharing with the author one of her favorite Bahian spicy recipes.
Some of the lessons are extremelly painful, and the amorous tale of Dona Flor begins with the death of her first husband, Vadinho, in the morning of the last day of the Carnival.
He dies the same way he lived his life : drinking and singing and making lewd gestures at passing women, accompanied by his gang of gamblers and lechers, buried in debt and missed only by his creditors and by his long suffering wife of seven years, Floripedes Paiva Madureira Dona Flor de Guimaraes, owner of the Cooking School of Savor and Art.
A murmur of the professionally devout, of old church mice, of spiteful enemies of fun and laughter, arose with the incense in a sour sussuration:
"He wasn't worth a ha'penny's prayer, the renegade.
"
The wicked, forked tongues of the neighbouring busybodies wag with glee at the death of the devilish Vadinho, but Dona Flor is devastated, Why would she mourn a cheating husband who spent his nights gambling and whoring, stole the money she made from cooking lessons, flirted with her pretty students and, gasp!, even beat her up once when he was down on his luck She is better off without him, sings the chorus of her friends, led by her shrill and envious mother, Dona Rozilda.
In a long and rambling flashback, we follow Dona Flor down memory lane, reminiscing over her seven years of secret happiness in the arms of Vadinho, who might have been everything the gossipy tongues wagged about, and even worse on occasion, but who nevertheless loved his young wife with all his wild heart and his admirable bedroom skills.
Jorge Amado makes me think of the Canterbury Tales, transplanted to a tropical land and scripted by a feverish Federico Fellini, populating the lower middle class neighborhood of Bahia with a colourful, wacky cast of characters, both imaginary and historical, and telling hundreds the juicy, scandalous, spicy anecdotes about all and sundry.
It's a rambling, leisurely, subversive narrative style that might not appeal to readers who prefer clear plot and fast action, but the city of Bahia comes alive in all its splendour under the pen of Amado, full of laughter and tears, music and scented breezes, good food and wild parties, gambling and illicit love affairs.
Vadinho is revealed as the king of the revelries, Even the parish friar, Dom Clemente Nigra, is forced to admire his atitude:
Vadinho was so gay, he loved to laugh, Whenever I saw him, I realized that the greatest sin is sadness, the only one that is an offense to life,
Dona Flor is still too young though to live only for tears and memories of Vadinho, Her one year of mourning weighs heavily on her shoulders, and the iron bed where she once knew extasy under the caresses of her husband soon becomes an instrument of torture.
She needs a man in her life, and all her friends conspire to find the right one for her, After a couple of hilarious missteps, the choice falls on Dr, Teodoro, the local pharmacist. He is everything Vadinho wasn't : serious, careful with money, reliable and, most importantly, really enamoured of the plump and hot blooded Dona Flor, His conventional and slighlty staid courting produces the desired results and Dona Flor will soon put the iron bed to more pleasant use, Sundays and Wednesdays, like clockwork.
Enveloped by the transparency of the air that morning, so beautiful in its light and so made to the measure of man that it was a privilege to live it, Dona Flor, raising her eyes from the ground, looked about to take in the sight of the street and the color of the day.
Unfortunately, Dr Teodoro in his careful and respectful kisses doesn't hold a candle to the despicable Vadinho, so well versed in all the pages of the Kama Sutra.
All the elevated social position and the respect of the neighborhood, the musical soirees in the best mansions of Bahia and the financial stability get boring after awhile.
Dr Teodoro is the perfect husband, but what woman really wants perfection when she can have danger and adventure
Why, Dona Flor would not take it amiss if something were to happen, something unforessen to break the monotony of those days all equally happy and all equally placid.
"It is positively a sin, sister, to talk like this when I am blessed with this life I lead, after having eaten such bitter bread but the same thing every day gets cloying, even when it is of the finest.
Just between us, my dear, there are times when this blissful life, which everyone envies me, causes me such torment, absolutely idiotic, which I can't even explain,
For all the comedy and the laughter and the music, Jorge Amado doesn't forget that he started his career as a leftist writer deeply engaged in social issues, and makes Dona Flor more that a pretty ornament to her husband or an object of lewd dreams.
She strikes a hard blow for all women forced to live in a male dominated society, raising an early voice for emancipation in this's fairytale of Bahia:
"And why don't I have the right to contribute to buying us a house Or don't you consider me your helpmate in everything Am I only good to clean up, look after your clothes, cook your meals, and go to bed with you" Dona Flor was in a temper.
"Just a servant and a strumpet, "
Her newly reawaken restlessness is heard by the hidden deities of Bahia, the African Pantheon brought across the Atlantic ocean by the former slaves, and the patron of Vadinho intervenes to give Dona Flor the peace of mind she craves
The last part of the novel is like the annual Carnival in Brasil: raucous, loud, bawdy, irrepressible.
Magic is in the air, everything is possible, love rules over the world, and Dona Flor has no choice but to succumb again to the charm of Vadinho, the consummate seducer.
Can she be both the faithful wife of the serious doctor and the secret mistress of a ghost Only in Bahia something like this is possible:
All this took place let him who will believe.
It took place in Bahia, where these and other acts of magic occur without startling anybody, If anyone has his doubts, let his ask Cardoso e Sa, and he will tell him whether or not it is the truth, He can be found on the planet Mars or on any poor corner of the city,
gtgtltltgtgtltltgtgtltlt
I read last year a novella by Amado that uses a similar style, full of humour, music and human kindness "The Discovery of America by the Turks".
With "Dona Flor" he exceeded my expectations and wrote a magical novel to rival the Latin American stories written by Marques and de Bernieres, I feel now like one of the hundreds of small characters in the book that made Bahia such a vivid and memorable city to visit:
When he arrived from Munich, this Finerkaes was fairly restrained in his judgements.
But the tropics conquered him completely: he lost his moderation and never regained his winter cool,
I have no moderation left in me and I gladly give all the in my pocket to this story,
gtgtltltgtgtltltgtgtltltgtgtltlt
tentative soundtrack listing :
anything by Dorival Caymmi , a personal friend of the author and one of characters in the novel that sings a serenade with Vadinho under the balcony of Dona Flor
Beth Carvalho "Hora de Chorar"
Caetano Veloso "Cavaleiro"
Cartola "A Mesma Historia"
Elis Regina "Dois Pra La, Dois Pra Ca"
Joao Gilberto "Bim Bom"
Gilberto Gil "Chiclete com Banana"
Maria Creuza "Onde Anda Voce"
Maria Creuza "Otra Vez Bahia"
Martinho da Villa "Pelo Telefone"
Nara Leao "A Banda"
Rolando Boldrin "Vaca Estrella E Boi Fuba"
Tom Jobim "Insensatez"
Baden Powell "Consolacao"
Marisa Montes "Danca da Solidao"
.
Gain Access Dona Flor E I Suoi Due Mariti Written And Illustrated By Jorge Amado In Digital Copy
Jorge Amado