great admirer of James and Conrad, D'Arzo knows that the key moments are the ones where "nothing happens there." But nothing herein creates a taut prose and punctuated each word seems ripped from the most secret reluctance. The painful question that the old house the other woman, after many twists and slips, the priest raises a village lost in the Emilian Apennines can not get an answer. In a world mineral and sorry that the return haunting rhythm of the seasons and gestures, hardly troubled by the unspeakable tragedy that makes the book, she returns every player in the depths of himself.
A small mountain village where nothing happens, where life goes every day ... that is the scenery of this little story. A priest is alive with its inhabitants, bells, dogs barking in the night, the village children, the dead must be buried.
"At that moment they heard out there, the sound of cowbells bronze a rustle like alfalfa and water that invaded the entire street and an infinite number of light trampling and bleating. "
life could go if there was not this sudden question from an old priest in the village ... ... ... question he will not answer ....... cowardice, honesty?
The loneliness of the man of the church in general is set to light here. As ordinary people, facing the great questions he is facing himself, without reply, delivered to his own conscience, his own doubts.
A short story to read, reread, because it delivers certainly not all his wealth at first.
of Arzo, Silvio Verdier-86 pages (available in paperback Shores)
Silvioof Arzo (Enzio compare) was born in Reggio Emilia in 1920. He died in 1952 without ever being really gone. It esert of the army in 1943 because he did not like fascism. And it was a great admirer of Henry James, Conrad and Stevenson.
