{"id":202430,"date":"2022-01-03T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=202430"},"modified":"2022-01-01T09:51:45","modified_gmt":"2022-01-01T09:51:45","slug":"musings-on-olympia-by-emanuel-garcia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/01\/musings-on-olympia-by-emanuel-garcia\/","title":{"rendered":"Musings on Olympia by Emanuel Garcia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>31 Dec 2021 – <\/em>If you are a lucky reader, you chance upon a book that makes your hair stand on end in wonder and sends a shiver down your spine.\u00a0 This book<\/a> does that, for it is deft, digressive, and capricious in ways that leave you wondering what whim set the author\u2019s mind so ablaze to dare to set this story to paper.<\/p>\n

Was it a flight from reality or to reality?\u00a0 But what is reality?<\/p>\n

There is no cage within which you can categorize this writing: no fable, mystery, novella, myth, etc. \u2013 they all fail to grasp its essence.\u00a0 Like a song or a wild bird, it flies free from all attempts to pin it down.\u00a0 Emanuel Garcia writes luminescent words that vibrate in the reader\u2019s heart and soul, and set the mind on fire contemplating the strangeness of existence.\u00a0 It leads one to ask oneself: What do you desire?\u00a0 What is desire?\u00a0 Where does it lead us?<\/p>\n

I had to read the book very slowly, a few pages at a time, and often before sleep and dreams.\u00a0 My passage from reading to sleeping felt like walking across a bridge in the twilight, crossing a river or a canal, and when dawn arrived, to cross back.\u00a0 I would often then reread those pages in the morning before proceeding to the next bridge that night.\u00a0 Sometimes I would get lost, but that lostness drew me into a waking dream state that the writing had conjured.\u00a0 It was eerie, but in the alluring way one hears a gypsy violinist\u2019s haunting tune drifting from a twisting alley.\u00a0 A siren call.<\/p>\n

On its face, this brief jewel \u2013 125 pages \u2013 is about Donato and Olympia and their enigmatic love affair in and about the environs of Venice, Italy, the city of masks, secrets, and labyrinthine ways.\u00a0 The city called La Serenissima, The Most Serene Woman, whose nickname belies the tempestuous Olympia and the wildly sexed Donato, whose love and desire for women and what they represent snakes through the book.\u00a0 Only a eunuch would fail to understand Donato, who has written this book as a gift for Olympia, who, in her own way, makes Donato the writer seem pedestrian by comparison.\u00a0 But her passions are slightly different; she is a deeply wounded wild mystical woman, entrancingly beautiful and prone to drift out of this world for periods of time.\u00a0 Her gypsy mother died when she was six-years-old and, although her life-long grieving father doted on her, she found solace in visitations from the angels Michael and Gabriel and Jesus\u2019s mother Mary and Mary Magdalene. She would visit churches for the peace it brought her to sing with her beautiful bell-like soprano.\u00a0 A serene tigress is she, prone to despair and faith, strange sexual activities devoid of emotion, and intense love and insight.<\/p>\n

Being a writer and not being sure why he writes or to what end, Donato takes twenty years to spin out this story for Olympia.\u00a0 It is what he calls a \u201ccaprice,\u201d sudden motive-less writing done on a whim that he considers \u201cthe absolute jewel of literature.\u201d\u00a0 In it, the mundane and imaginative mix, as do dreams and waking life.\u00a0 Perhaps living is whimsical and condenses the years when one steps out of the cage and just writes when possessed by language.\u00a0 For Donato discovers, of course, that in writing about Olympia, he is writing about himself, and in writing about another couple, Emilia and Marcello, and all their mutual interactions, both sexual and artistic, he is holding up a mirror to the multifaceted and complicated nature of everyone.<\/p>\n

What are we doing with our lives and why?\u00a0 What does it mean to be yourself?\u00a0 What do we want?\u00a0 What is the nature of wanting?\u00a0 And prayer?\u00a0 Why write anything at all \u2013 my musings on this enchanting book or the book itself?\u00a0 Who is it all for?\u00a0 Does Emanuel\/Donato\/ me or you need an audience for our deepest caprices, our secrets, our deepest wishes?\u00a0 What\u2019s it all about, Alfie?<\/p>\n

If you wish to be transported out of this sorry world for a while to a place where you can wonder, read Olympia<\/a>; it is a marvelous book.\u00a0 It will take you in circles, like the closed circle of infinity represented by a ring.<\/p>\n

Such an exploration brought me back to where I started, and it felt as though I knew the place for the first time, this life where the seen, unseen, and the unforeseen meld into a work of art that we call literature, and life.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Edward Curtin is a widely published author and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. His new book is <\/em>Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies<\/a> \u2013 His website: Behind the Curtain<\/a> – email: edcurtinjr@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Dr. Emanuel E. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born writer, theatrical director, physician (retired psychiatrist), and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. He has resided in New Zealand since 2006 and his political essays and poetry have appeared widely on various websites and publications including<\/a><\/em> TMS<\/a>. <\/em>His most recent novel, published in 2021, is the story of an Italian wayfarer entitled\u00a0<\/em>Olympia. <\/em>Website: www.emanuelegarcia.com<\/a>. Email: <\/em>emanuelegarcia@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

31 Dec 2021 – If you are a lucky reader, you chance upon a book that makes your hair stand on end in wonder and sends a shiver down your spine.\u00a0 This book does that, for it is deft, digressive, and capricious in ways that leave you wondering what whim set the author\u2019s mind so ablaze to dare to set this story to paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":202431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[642,870],"class_list":["post-202430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-literature","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}