Title: Microcosms - Claudio Magris - book
Summary :
This time, Claudio Magris takes us from the Café San Marco to the Church of the Sacred Heart in Trieste, passing through a few borderlands, marginal places, secrets of a Europe with a vivid memory and a burning past. The witnesses of time are those forgotten by History, whose poor, contradictory and fascinating lives make and judge History. Nine place names constitute the titles of the chapters of this book, which is neither a travel journal, nor a fragment of autobiography, nor a historical essay, nor a roman à clef, but perhaps the story of an initiatory journey, shrouded in the presence of a vanished Beloved, through places, cultures, and myths dear to the author and rich in humanity. Microcosms eludes all classification: erudition presents itself as description, analysis sometimes assumes the role of narrative, real characters acquire the epic stature of heroes, and myths map out the uncertainties of reality. Magris, a man of the confines, here erases the boundaries of genres, languages, and time, in this quest for self that is every journey, a "lost guerrilla war against oblivion."
