[QKG]⋙ Libro Gratis An Imaginary Life David Malouf 9780099273844 Books

An Imaginary Life David Malouf 9780099273844 Books

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An Imaginary Life David Malouf 9780099273844 Books

"Waking in the dark, to hear the soft crying, I have thought it was the Child himself, and finding him crouched over the basket in the dark, answering the animal's cries with little high whinings of his own, have had the greatest difficulty drawing him back to his pallet. And all the time I was aware of the old woman, sitting bolt upright in her corner, watching, and have imagined her invisible smiles. " (p. 126)

The 126 pages of this imagined life are luminous with this evocative writing and with ambiguities. Malouf imagines the life of Ovid, exiled from Rome for inciting Augustus's daughter, Julia. Her behavior was so far beyond her father's tolerance that she herself was exiled to a miserable island where she died. Was the incitement from Ovid's "The Art of Love?" Something more outrageous? Was her exile Augustus's idea? His wicked wife's Livia's conniving?

Ovid's story is a Matruska doll of questions within questions within questions. Fittingly, Malouf refers not only to his image of the Poet's life at the edges of the Roman empire in Tomis, but more centrally, a life he imagines Ovid may have imagined: a wild Child, like the wolf-raised children. These appear benignly in Kipling as Mowgli ,sadly in the research on the Wild Boy of Aveyron, and much earlier, in wolf-mothered Romulus and Remus.

There are few characters in this look: Ovid (the narrator), the headman of Tomis where he is sent to live, his mother, the widow of his son, and her child. The Child whose story becomes the focus of Ovid;s existence is found in a forest. He may or may not exist, he may or may not be the same Ovid remembers encountering as a three-year old in Sulmo...

The arc of the story thus bends to the Child's discovery by Ovid, their perilous existence in Tomis, and their flight to the great wilderness.. The arc equally is Ovid's thoughts on identities, transformations, origins with echoes of his great work on the origin of the gods, of human life, and of our own metamorphoses,

I found the writing almost sculpturally crafted, the imagined lives compelling, and the book wholly worth reading.

Any reader alerts? I couldn't get "An Imagined Life" out of my mind. It can have that kind of power.


Tags : An Imaginary Life [David Malouf] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Roman poet Ovid, exiled to a remote village on the edge of the Black Sea, tells the story of his meeting with a feral boy,David Malouf,An Imaginary Life,Vintage Uk,0099273845,General & Literary Fiction,Fiction

An Imaginary Life David Malouf 9780099273844 Books Reviews

This poetic short novel is extremely moving for Malouf uses the language of perception, sensation and intuition to great effect. This novel is based on the exile of the great Roman poet and writer, Ovid, exiled to the northern boundaries of the Roman Empire by the Emperor Nero. In a distant, barren, primitive tribal village he resides with a family. Yet, in beautiful paradox, it is the years he spends in exile that begin to shape Ovid's spirit and reconcile him to a return to nature at his death. It is a novel about the separation of mankind from nature. This separation of man from nature because of our cognitive abilities is considered to be tragic by such great writers as Melville. Malouf, to his great credit, understands that the return to nature is to dissolve the ego into ephemeral sensation experiences. This may sound too philosophical but Malouf pulls it off with a short book full of vivid descriptions and tensions. Several of these passages warrant comment. Ovid has never reconciled that his devoted and honored older brother died at age 18 leaving Ovid, the dreamer, as the heir. Such a burden to know that you are not the favored son and now you must replace the favored son and also to be burdened with guilt that any thoughts of the future beyond his brother's death would hasten that death.

The passages of nature descriptions and dreams are very beautiful and I realize deserve a slow second reading. One dream stands out where Ovid is a rain puddle, moved by the passing sky and clouds and sun as the human soul is moved by emotions and pain. That as dark clouds reflect upon his surface, the puddle cools, as the life energy of man cools and flairs with life events and time.

Ovid is enchanted by a wild child of 8 who lives with the deer in the forest and after 3 years of gradual contact he is captured and brought into the superstitious village. The villagers are correct to view him with suspicion for he surely was protected by the gods and spirits of the wild to survive 11 years naked in the cold harsh wild world.

The passages where the Child becomes ill and the perceptions of this illness by the family where Ovid lives and the other villagers is fascinating. For what is contagion in the primitive mind exception possession of evil spirits moving from one body to the next.

I was reminded of the poetry of Yeats and Ted Hughes and the novels of Coetzee (Waiting for the Barbarians) and the short story by James Joyce (The Dead) as I read Malouf, yet he is not derivative but deals with themes that Joyce, Coetzee, Hughes, and Yeats also explore.

What do you want to understand before you die? What do you wish to experience before you die? What is the unreconciled part of you that should be made whole before your last breath? Malouf is brave enough to engage in a short novel that addresses these issues with dream, vision, and the power of sensation. An excellent book which I highly recommend.
"Waking in the dark, to hear the soft crying, I have thought it was the Child himself, and finding him crouched over the basket in the dark, answering the animal's cries with little high whinings of his own, have had the greatest difficulty drawing him back to his pallet. And all the time I was aware of the old woman, sitting bolt upright in her corner, watching, and have imagined her invisible smiles. " (p. 126)

The 126 pages of this imagined life are luminous with this evocative writing and with ambiguities. Malouf imagines the life of Ovid, exiled from Rome for inciting Augustus's daughter, Julia. Her behavior was so far beyond her father's tolerance that she herself was exiled to a miserable island where she died. Was the incitement from Ovid's "The Art of Love?" Something more outrageous? Was her exile Augustus's idea? His wicked wife's Livia's conniving?

Ovid's story is a Matruska doll of questions within questions within questions. Fittingly, Malouf refers not only to his image of the Poet's life at the edges of the Roman empire in Tomis, but more centrally, a life he imagines Ovid may have imagined a wild Child, like the wolf-raised children. These appear benignly in Kipling as Mowgli ,sadly in the research on the Wild Boy of Aveyron, and much earlier, in wolf-mothered Romulus and Remus.

There are few characters in this look Ovid (the narrator), the headman of Tomis where he is sent to live, his mother, the widow of his son, and her child. The Child whose story becomes the focus of Ovid;s existence is found in a forest. He may or may not exist, he may or may not be the same Ovid remembers encountering as a three-year old in Sulmo...

The arc of the story thus bends to the Child's discovery by Ovid, their perilous existence in Tomis, and their flight to the great wilderness.. The arc equally is Ovid's thoughts on identities, transformations, origins with echoes of his great work on the origin of the gods, of human life, and of our own metamorphoses,

I found the writing almost sculpturally crafted, the imagined lives compelling, and the book wholly worth reading.

Any reader alerts? I couldn't get "An Imagined Life" out of my mind. It can have that kind of power.