På dette site bruger vi cookies til at levere vores ydelser, forbedre performance, til analyseformål, og (hvis brugeren ikke er logget ind) til reklamer. Ved at bruge LibraryThing anerkender du at have læst og forstået vores vilkår og betingelser inklusive vores politik for håndtering af brugeroplysninger. Din brug af dette site og dets ydelser er underlagt disse vilkår og betingelser.
"It is 1837. A young Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, is running through the long wet grass of an island at the end of the world to get help for her dying father, an Aboriginal chieftain. Twenty years later, on at island at the centre of the world, the most famous novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, realises he is about to abandon his wife, risk his name, and forever after be altered because of his inability any longer to control his intense wanting. Connecting the two events are the most celebrated explorer of the age, Sir John Franklin - then governor of Van Diemens Land - and his wife, Lady Jane, who adopt Mathinna, seen as one of the last of a dying race, as an experiment. Lady Jane believes the distance between savagery and civilisation is the learned capacity to control wanting. The experiment fails, the Franklins throw the child onto the streets and into a life of prostitution and alcoholism. A few years later Mathinna is found dead in a puddle. She is nineteen years old. By then Sir John too is dead, lost in the blue ice of the Arctic seeking the North West Passage. A decade later evidence emerges that in its final agony, Franklins expedition resorted to the level and practice of savages: cannibalism. Lady Jane enlists Dickens aid to put an end to such scandalous suggestions, and Dickens becomes ever more entranced in the story of men entombed in ice, recognising in its terrible image his own frozen inner life. He produces and stars in a play inspired by Franklins fate to give story to his central belief: that discipline and will can conquer desire. And yet the play will bring him to the point where he is finally no longer able to control his own wanting and the consequences it brings. Based on historic events, WANTING is a novel about art, love, and the way in which life is finally determined never by reason, but only ever by wanting"--Provided by publisher.… (mere)
Savn er godt nok svær at give et kort resumé af og i det hele taget en svær bog at skrive om, uden at komme til at røbe for meget, men man kan vel sige at der er to handlingsspor i bogen. Det australsk/tasmanske som drejer sig om de britiske kolonisters forsøg på at omskabe den oprindelige aboriginalbefolkning i sit eget billede på et 'højere' kulturelt stade - symboliseret ved guvernørparret John og Jane Franklins adoption ca. 1840 af den syvårige Mathinna, hvilket har konsekvenser for alle... Og så er der det engelske handlingsspor, centreret om forfatteren Charles Dickens, som ca.10 år senere midt i en solid midtvejskrise sættes til af Jane Franklin at imødegå påstande om, at John Franklin og hans besætning under en polarekspedition har forsøgt at overleve ved kannibalisme. Men det bogen egentlig handler om er lidenskab, savn, begær - og så som antydet civilisation samt kulturelle dogmer og fordomme. Hertil kommer der andre emner indover som pædagogik og ikke mindst ægteskabet som institution (og dets skuffelser). Det bliver næsten for meget. Bogen vil for meget, men klarer det egentlig meget godt alligevel, til trods for at det bliver meget ujævnt. Noget af det bedste er portrættet af Dickens og hans miserable ægteskab og hans genopdagelse af kærligheden - og noget der altså bliver for firkantet er historien om aboriginalpigen Mathinna i familien Franklin. http://bogbrokken.blogspot.com/2010/12/richard-flanagan-savn-2010.html( )
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen VidenRedigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
You see, reason, gentlemen, is a fine thing, that is unquestionable, but reason is only reason and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life. -- from Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
That which is wanting cannot be numbered. -- Ecclesiastes
Tilegnelse
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen VidenRedigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
For Kevin Perkins
Første ord
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen VidenRedigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
The war had ended as wars sometimes do, unexpectedly.
Citater
Sidste ord
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen VidenRedigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
With the stringybarked back of a hand, the sawyer wiped a dead and milky eye, then stroked the ox on the muzzle and asked it to help him carry the poor child home, her dirty feet jolting over the sled's back as the ox took up its burden, their light-coloured soles disappearing into the longest night.
"It is 1837. A young Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, is running through the long wet grass of an island at the end of the world to get help for her dying father, an Aboriginal chieftain. Twenty years later, on at island at the centre of the world, the most famous novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, realises he is about to abandon his wife, risk his name, and forever after be altered because of his inability any longer to control his intense wanting. Connecting the two events are the most celebrated explorer of the age, Sir John Franklin - then governor of Van Diemens Land - and his wife, Lady Jane, who adopt Mathinna, seen as one of the last of a dying race, as an experiment. Lady Jane believes the distance between savagery and civilisation is the learned capacity to control wanting. The experiment fails, the Franklins throw the child onto the streets and into a life of prostitution and alcoholism. A few years later Mathinna is found dead in a puddle. She is nineteen years old. By then Sir John too is dead, lost in the blue ice of the Arctic seeking the North West Passage. A decade later evidence emerges that in its final agony, Franklins expedition resorted to the level and practice of savages: cannibalism. Lady Jane enlists Dickens aid to put an end to such scandalous suggestions, and Dickens becomes ever more entranced in the story of men entombed in ice, recognising in its terrible image his own frozen inner life. He produces and stars in a play inspired by Franklins fate to give story to his central belief: that discipline and will can conquer desire. And yet the play will bring him to the point where he is finally no longer able to control his own wanting and the consequences it brings. Based on historic events, WANTING is a novel about art, love, and the way in which life is finally determined never by reason, but only ever by wanting"--Provided by publisher.
▾Biblioteksbeskrivelser af bogens indhold
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThingmedlemmers beskrivelse af bogens indhold
Og så er der det engelske handlingsspor, centreret om forfatteren Charles Dickens, som ca.10 år senere midt i en solid midtvejskrise sættes til af Jane Franklin at imødegå påstande om, at John Franklin og hans besætning under en polarekspedition har forsøgt at overleve ved kannibalisme.
Men det bogen egentlig handler om er lidenskab, savn, begær - og så som antydet civilisation samt kulturelle dogmer og fordomme. Hertil kommer der andre emner indover som pædagogik og ikke mindst ægteskabet som institution (og dets skuffelser).
Det bliver næsten for meget. Bogen vil for meget, men klarer det egentlig meget godt alligevel, til trods for at det bliver meget ujævnt. Noget af det bedste er portrættet af Dickens og hans miserable ægteskab og hans genopdagelse af kærligheden - og noget der altså bliver for firkantet er historien om aboriginalpigen Mathinna i familien Franklin.
http://bogbrokken.blogspot.com/2010/12/richard-flanagan-savn-2010.html ( )