review: "I had a thousand lives, and took only one": A Breviary (Hardcover) Nooteboom's breviary "I had a thousand lives, and took only one" includes remarkable thoughts and poems in this very thoughtful Dutch writer.
The multi-page preface to the book has written Nooteboom's long-time friend Rudiger Safranski. He has also selected the texts. The preface ends with the remark:
"This selection Nooteboom presented as romantic, with and without irony, as a philosophical poet, as a politically alert witnesses, as a lover of places as a traveler and a writer who considers the relationship between the real and imaginary journeys, not just survive. In Nooteboom's footsteps is something you just in any case far. "
Cees Noteboom basic themes in his books and travelogues are experiencing the time of death and the process of writing as a way to design as it were a valid addition to the real world realities.
Before I was in his thoughts to images, portraits, characters, and in his question: "Why travel? "And other thoughts deepened at times, trails, historic moments, European, writing, reading, and loved ones have, I read his first flashes of inspiration.
to each quip, one could write a reflection paper, but that would lead us too far.
How much gratitude and positive experience with love is implied by the phrase "Those who have assumed the shape of a lover, eat and drink everything that plate of thistles, barrels full of vinegar"? How much introspection but also good-natured acceptance of the independent existence of ideas can the sentence "The memory is like a dog that lies down where he wants to know "?
shows with each flash of Nooteboom how deeply he reflects on questions of life and other things added.
Who is able to express in a concise set of everything for which not a few many pages need proves that he is not a self-representational talkers.
Nooteboom is wise in the course of his life has become. His wisdom is based on hard work on himself and on his brilliant observation. This is no doubt from reading the booklet significantly.
The Dutchman describes with great empathy Paintings, pictures and movies. I especially like his thoughts on a painting have been immortalized on the Prussian Queen Louise of Prussia. Nooteboom says at one point that I was very touched, "I do not know any woman who can look so. Very confusing. This view is extinct." Perhaps in the 20th Century, the former charm of women fell by the wayside because their dreams have changed, who knows ... Perhaps the age of innocence is over, who knows ....
The writer reflects on old photographs and is u. A. Ingmar Bergman's film "Wild Strawberries" apart, which I reviewed recently have. Nooteboom subtle reflections on the film have inspired me.
In his portraits and characters, I came across a mental miniature that I would not deprive my readers, because it certainly makes the book very curious: "What we do with the people we have met? If they are, we sometimes see in our dreams? faces, of which the name has worn it? have been preserved traces of them ?......... Where is all this? "
Such to answer questions is not easy. This requires that you put your own psyche with the deals.
Nootebooms Reisebetrachtungen haben mich beeindruckt, auch seine Erinnerungen an historische Augenblicke.
Wie schade, lieber Herr Nooteboom , dass Sie Weimar in so unangenehmer Erinnerung behalten haben. Reisen Sie abermals nach Thüringen. Sie werden überrascht sein über das Neuerwachen der alten Dichtermetropole.:-)
Ich kannte den Lyriker Nooteboom bislang noch nicht und sehe jetzt, was ich versäumt habe.
"Alles von dir werd ich vergessen, außer dich/....Durch dein Bildnis hindurch seh ich die flehende Sehnsucht,/ aus der wir vertrieben sind./....
Ein wunderbarer Poet und überaus nachdenklicher Schriftsteller.