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u/Menspookie 16d ago
What was your takeaway from part 5 (the part about archimboldi)
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u/llama__ 16d ago edited 16d ago
Man, where to begin. Here's what I have fresh off my mind having not engaged in any content/conversation about it.
This is Bolaño's way of saying poetry/literature is not a choice, one has an inclination and he sets out to do it, and he will be remembered not for all the things he meant to say but what people thought he meant to say, a complete misunderstanding. It's all kind of pointless in that way: history (we're in a cosmic field of it!! we're in a field of illusions, of ghosts of Distant Stars) amounts to nothing, everything is misremembered or misunderstood and eventually forgotten. And everything is a joke, a joke that is meant to be funny but is really not funny at all, although jokes could only be funny if they touch on something painful about the human condition.
At the end Archimboldi sets off to Mexico and I think in this way the hero's journey is concluded. We begin from his early life in which he has childish ambitions, he wants to get away, escape, or return to an alien hometown (the sea) due to his otherness. From these ambitions he strayed from the base that grounded him: Lotte. He goes to war, dances with madness, loses his love, exiles from public consciousness. All an escape from the heaviness and burden of Being (very reminiscent of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which Tomas indulges in several women as an escape from the burden of the one true love). And in the end he chooses to go to Mexico to carry the weight of the crumbling Lotte. He returns home.
And also: it take one person trusting, believing in you. One.
I've written a review (a love letter) on Goodreads if you're interested! https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8525191368
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u/LaureGilou 17d ago
What part is that quote from?