Transcript Bruce Chatwin Utz - Camera Crew Miami

Bruce Chatwin
Utz
Title: Utz
Author: Bruce Chatwin
Format: Hardcover
Language: Czech
Pages: 84
Publisher: , 0
ISBN: 8090182909
Format: PDF / Kindle / ePub
Size: 8.7 MB
Download: allowed
Description
Novela, jejíž d?j je zasazen do ?ech, p?edevším do Prahy, lí?í osudy vášnivého sb?ratele
porcelánu a operních div a na jeho p?íkladu mapuje duchovní a politické d?jiny zem?. D?j
osciluje mezi tém?? sou?asností, p?esn?ji ?e?eno dobou t?sn? p?ed sov?tskou okupací a
následujícími normaliza?ními léty, na stran? jedné, a exkursy do zna?n? vzdálené minulosti,
p?edevším rudolfínské, na stran? druhé.
Insightful reviews
Nell Grey: Bruce Chatwin considered Utz to be a work of fiction, but it's written in such a way
that it feels true. The narrator's voice is identical to that of the author's in In Patagonia, a journal
of his travels (although one with more than a hint of the surreal and bizarre), and stylistically Utz
follows a similar structure.
The story centres around the character of Kasper Utz and his amazing and valuable collection
of Meissen porcelain, both trapped in Czechoslovakia during the turbulent and dangerous years
of the Cold War. In order to be able to escape from time to time, Utz signs away his precious
and passionately-loved collection to the State, on the condition that he's allowed to keep it until
his death. Although he could defect during these episodes of time away, the collection has to
remain in the country and it always draws him back.
I enjoyed the journalistic feel of the first two-thirds of the book, which adds to the strange feeling
of uncertainty about Utz's existence: historic details and information about porcelain, the
figurines, the atmosphere of the different locations, the political climate - even alchemy puts in
an appearance.
I won't spoil the end, which is brilliant in its own special and original way, and not really like a
novel at all, although it answered the question about reality posed at the beginning. I loved it.
Piperitapitta: La collezione proibita.
Strano romanzo questo Utz, breve quanto intenso, multiforme e cangiante.
Non avevo mai letto niente di Chatwin, ma per sentito dire o per articoli letti qua e là mi
immaginavo viaggi avventurosi in terre lontane oltreoceano.
Mi sono ritrovata invece a Praga, «la più misteriosa tra le città europee», a viaggiare nella mente
indecifrabile di Utz, un ricco collezionista di porcellane settecentesche della casa Meissen di
Dresda; di origine tedesca, ebreo per parte di madre, Utz è un personaggio indecifrabile, ora
ironico e sprezzante, ora romantico e nostalgico, barone per caso, ma che vive senza agi né
sfarzo, unicamente del suo amore per la bellezza e per la perfezione dei suoi pezzi da
collezione dal valore inestimabile.
Chatwin, rievoca qui un fatto realmente accadutogli verso la fine degli anni Sessanta, quando
già direttore della prestigiosa casa d'aste Sotheby's si recò nella Cecoslovachia pre-invasione
sovietica per incontrare il famoso collezionista Rudolf Just e scoprire i segreti della sua
collezione.
In un lungo ricordo, l'io narrante del romanzo, lo stesso Chatwin appunto, cerca di scoprire che
fine abbia fatto la preziosa collezione dopo la morte di Utz: quella stessa collezione che
l'eccentrico protagonista aveva difeso con grande forza e determinazione, dal nazismo e dalla
guerra prima e dal comunismo e dal marxismo poi, che sembra ora essersi volatilizzata o
addirittura, nonostante le fitte maglie della burocrazia comunista, andata distrutta.
Quella di Utz e delle sue statuine sembra essere una danza senza tempo, ballata sulle note di
una nostalgia impalpabile, una danza delle ore scandita con lentezza dalla dedizione assoluta
di Utz e dalla sua incapacità di subirne un distacco: la stessa che la fedele cameriera Martha
riserverà al suo padrone sino alla fine dei suoi giorni.
Alla fine, nonostante avranno attraversato i secoli e i confini degli imperi della Sassonia e degli
Asburgo, nonostante avranno attraversato le frontiere del Reich e quelle della Cortina di ferro,
nonostante tutto, sulle statuine Messen della collezione Utz, non si sarà mai posato nemmeno
un granello di polvere.
Perché come Utz sosteneva, un oggetto chiuso nella teca di un museo deve patire l'innaturale
esistenza di un animale in uno zoo. In ogni museo l'oggetto muore - di soffocamento e degli
sguardi del pubblico -, mentre il possesso privato conferisce al proprietario il bisogno di toccare.
Come un bimbo allunga la mano per toccare ciò di cui pronuncia il nome, così il collezionista
appassionato restituisce all'oggetto, gli occhi in armonia con la mano, il tocco vivificante del suo
artefice. Il nemico del collezionista è il conservatore del museo. In teoria, i musei dovrebbero
essere saccheggiati ogni cinquant'anni e le loro collezioni dovrebbero tornare in circolazione...
Peccato che Chatwin non abbia mai saputo del ritorno "in circolazione" della collezione Meissen
di Just, il tesoro che sembrava svanito nel nulla...
http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/20...
Un'ultima annotazione va alla scrittura colta e raffinata di Chatwin: amo i libri che fanno
conoscere nuovi mondi e insegnare nuove cose; amo ancor di più i libri che sanno stimolare il
lettore ad affrontare nuove letture: La montagna incantata di Thomas Mann, La signora col
cagnolino di Cechov, e ancora Zweig, Schnitzler, e per finire L'immoralista di André Gide: la mia
piccola collezione dopo la lettura di questo romanzo.
"E io capii, mentre Utz faceva ruotare la statuetta alla luce della candela, che lo avevo giudicato
male; che anche lui stava danzando; che per lui il vero mondo era il mondo di quelle figurine, e
che, paragonate a loro, la Gestapo, la polizia segreta e furfanti vari non erano che creature di
latta. Gli eventi di questo fosco secolo - i bombardamenti, i Blitzkrieg, i colpi di stato, le purghe erano, per quel che lo riguardava, altrettanti «rumori di fondo»".
Angela: Utz is the story of Utz, a collector of fine porcelains. I have to admit the story was
bizarre and somewhat hard to understand. The basic premise is before the war, Utz was a
baron with a large estate. As a young child living with his grandmother, he took a fondness to
porcelain figurines, using his money to purchase pieces. As he got older, he refined his tastes to
learn between those pieces which were great and those which were fakes or sub-par.
With the onset of World War II, he packaged up his porcelains and fled the country with them to
live in Czechoslovakia. Once established there in a small apartment, he unpacked his treasures
and put them on display.
I honestly don't know what I got out of this read. At some point you realize that you're a certain
length through the book and may as well continue to the end. It was a small book, so I didn't feel
like I was spending too much time reading through it. This is one that I probably wouldn't
recommend to my friends - it just wasn't all that entertaining or interesting.
David: A fictional historical past of a guy dedicated to his figurines. And a secret as to what
occurred to these collectible figurines after he dies. We get a bit glimpse of what Prague used to
be like through the chilly War. Lyrical and luminescent, it left me a section cold.
matt: approximately 3/4 of ways in and i am discovering it so easy to read. it really is sneakily
subversive, witty, stylish in a quiet means and very will get its hooks into you. Absorbing, a little
bit absurd, legitimately humorous and slyly knowing. It was once pressed on me via a drunken
pal who insisted that I cost it out. It was once additionally one of the 5,000 books namedropped
by means of Hitchens (in a private essay, though, and that i imagine he most likely knew the
writer well) so that is constantly a plus. up to now at the very least it is the type of e-book that
feels longer than its genuine web page or plot length, yet now not in a lugubrious, dragging form
of way. i am savoring it and am attempting to end it with an appropriate mindset- hushed,
receptive and open. Like...I do not know...a collector of old porcelain may be. (Sorry when you
already comprehend what i am speaking about, I needed to do it)In an attempt to truly clarify
what I suggest approximately how nice this publication is, here is a few tremendous costs and
scene-setting: the tale opens with the titular character's funeral: "The bearers- staff of a rubber
manufacturing unit who labored night-shift and doubled for the undertaker by means of day- had
shouldered the coffin and have been advancing up the most aisle: to tune that reminded Orlik of
the tramp of infantrymen on parade. midway to the altar the procession met the cleansing
woman, who, with soap, water and a scrubbing-brush, was once scrubbing on the blazon of the
Rozemberk family, inlaid into the ground in many-coloured marbles. The top bearer requested
the woman, so much politely, to permit the coffin to pass. She scowled and went on scrubbing.
The bearers had no substitute yet to take a left flip among pews, a correct take place the facet
aisle, and one other correct to cross the pulpit. Eventually, they arrived ahead of the altar the
place a youngish priest, his surplice stained with sacramental wine, was once anxiously biting
his fingernails. They set down the coffin with a convey of reverence. Then, attracted through the
scent of sizzling bread from a bakery alongside the street, they strolled off to get breakfast
leaving Orlik and the trustworthy Marta because the in basic terms mourners. The priest
mumbled the carrier on the velocity of a patter quantity and, from time to time, lifted his eyes in
the direction of a fresco of the Heavenly Heights. After commending the lifeless man's soul,
they'd to attend at the least ten mins prior to the bearers condescended to return, at 8.26." So
the nondescript, enigmatic mister Utz is a somewhat-obsessed collector of vintage porcelain,
that's to assert he suffers from Porzellankrankheit, and is a type of a Bartleby the Scrivener in
Communist Prague, and we and the narrator stopover at him and study a piece approximately
his whys and wherefores (such as they are, and they're indeed, as we slowly realize and are
available to understand, even though Utz continues to be primarily ungraspable throughout)
together with his residing situation: "The room, to my surprise, used to be adorned within the
'modern style': virtually without furnishings except a daybed, a glass-topped desk and a couple
of Barcelona chairs upholstered in darkish eco-friendly leather. Utz had 'rescued' those in
Moravia, from a home equipped via Mies van der Rohe. It was once a slender room, made
narrower through the double financial institution of plate-glass shelves, them all filled with
porcelain, that reached from ground to ceiling. The shleves have been sponsored with mirror, so
you had the semblance of getting into an enfilade of glittering chambers, a 'dream palace'
expanded to infinity, by which human kinds flitted like insubstantial shadows. The carpet used to
be grey. You needed to watch your doorstep for worry of tripping over one of many white
porcelain sculptures- a pelican, a turkey-cock, a bear, a lynx and a rhino- modelled both via
Kaendler or Eberlein for the japanese Palace in Dresden. All 5 have been scarred with fissures
because of faults within the firing... Utz had selected each one merchandise to mirror the moods
and elements of the 'Porcelain Century': the wit, the charm, the gallantry, the affection of the
exotic, the heartlessness and light-hearted gaiety- sooner than they have been swept away
through revolution and the tramp of armies." after which you get this: "No. He used to be now
not a spy. As he defined to me during our afternoon stroll, Czechoslovakia was once a delightful
position to live, supplying one had the potential for leaving. even as he admitted, with a selfdeprecating smile, that his critical case of Porzellankheit avoided him from leaving for good. the
gathering held him prisoner. 'And, of course, it has ruined my life!' Ah, sure, and our obsessions
do start to wall us in a bit bit, indeed, but...as we learn the porcelain starts to tackle a distinct
meaning: "'Are you attempting to inform me that Shadrach, Meshach and Abendigo have been
cermaic figures?" 'They can have been,' he answered. 'They definitely survived the fire.' 'I see,' I
said. 'So you do imagine the porcelains are alive?' 'I do and that i do not,' he sniggered.
'Porcelains die within the fireplace ,and then they arrive alive again. The kiln, you want to
understand, is Hell. The temperature for firing porcelain is 1,450 levels centigrade.' 'Yes,' I said.
Utz's flights of fancy made me suppose rather dizzy. He asserting that the earliest ecu
porcelain- Bottiger's purple ware and white ware- corresponded to the crimson and white
tinctures of the alchemists. To a superstitious outdated roue like Augustus, the manufacture of
porcelain was once an method of the Philosopher's Stone. If this have been so: if, to the
eighteenth-century imagination, porcelain was once not only one other exotic, yet a paranormal
and talismanic substance- the substance of longevity, of potency, of invulnerability- then it was
once more straightforward to appreciate why the King could stuff a palace with 40 thousand
pieces. Or protect the 'arcanum' like a mystery weapon. Or change the 600 giants. Porcelain,
Utz, concluded, was once the antidote to decay. the appearance was, of course, shattered by
means of Frederick the good who easily loaded the contents of the Meissen manufacturing
facility onto ox-carts and despatched it, as booty, to Berlin. 'But Frederik,' Utz fluttered his
eyelids, '...and with all that musical talent!...was particularly an absolute philistine!' Going a bit
extra here, declaring the separately discovered Grecian Urns of Utz's massive, world-spanning
collection: "I have stated that Utz's face used to be 'waxy in texture', yet now within the
candlelight its texture appeared like melted wax. I checked out the ageless complexion of the
Dresden ladies. Things, I reflected, are harder than people. issues are the changeless reflect
during which we watch ourselves disintegrate. not anything is extra age-ing than a suite of
works of art. One via one, he lifted the characters of the Commedia from the shelves, and
positioned them within the pool of sunshine the place they looked as if it would skate over the
glass of the table, pioting on their bases of gilded foam, as though they'd ceaselessly pass on
laughing, whirling, improvising. Scaramouche may strum on his guitar. Brighella might unlock
people's purses. The Captain could swagger childishly like several military officers. The health
practitioner might kill his sufferer in an effort to rid him of his disease. The coils of spaghetti will
be forever poised above Pulchinella's nostrils. Pantaloon might gloat over his money-bags. The
Innamorata, like any transvestites everywhere, will be mobbed on his strategy to the theatre.
Columbine will be perpetually in love with Harlequin- 'absolutely mad to belief him'. And
Harlequin ...The Harlequin...the arch-improviser, the zany, trickster, grasp of the volteface...would perpetually strut in his variegated plumage, grin via his orange mask, tiptoe into
bedrooms, promote nappies for the kids of the Grand Eunuch, dance within the enamel of
catastrophe...Mr Chameleon himself! And as I recalled, as Utz pivoted the determine within the
candlelight, that I had misjudged him; that he, too, used to be dancing; that, for him, this
international of little figures was once the true world. And that, in comparison to them, the
Gestapo, the key Police and different hooligans have been creatures of tinsel. And the
occasions of this sombre century- the bombardments, blitzkriegs, putsches, purges- were, as far
as he was once concernedm such a lot of 'noises off'. 'And now,' he said, 'we shall go. we will
opt for a walk.'" If hope, in case you are analyzing this, you may have an concept of what a
superbly wry, subtle, realizing and lovely publication this is, and that i truly wish you learn it. Do
it for the creditors (I mean, come on, in case you are in this site, you possibly healthy the bill),
do it for the porcelain, do it for Utz!
Kevin Argus: Bruce Chatwin is considered one of my favorite authors. He educates richly
relating to each one book's context as he writes. This booklet supplied perception into how
people search to manage their world, (and for men) prompted by means of a terror of death. His
major personality collects porcelain gadgets (a very prosperous man), and whilst the Soviets
took control, he remained the custodian of his now Soviet owned collection. It seems that his
intent for accumulating porcelain figurines, used to be that they retained their beauty, by no
means aging, and consequently have been ageless. However, in the direction of the top he
destroys his Portcelain assortment and turns into passionately concerned along with his plainlooking, middle-aged condo servant, whom he had formerly by no means seen with desire.
Finally, he recognises that age isn't the enemy of ardour and that zeal experienced, superseeds
ardour preserved through porcelain objects. one in every of my favorite books - i have learn this
many times.
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