To Those Gods Beyond

 

To Those Gods Beyond by Giorgio Manganelli
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have yet to read an Atlas Press title that hasn't surprised me and delighted me. Giorgio Manganelli's To Those Gods Beyond is no exception. Again, Atlas captures and presents the work of a heretofore-unknown-to-me master of literary expression with near perfection. I'll explain the "near" at the end. Even with that forthcoming caveat, this is an outstanding work that should be read more widely. I absolutely see why Italo Calvino praised Manganelli's work and why Atlas published this book. The first 50-ish pages alone are worth the price of entry. Far more, if you ask me. The book is divided into seven sections, which I've outlined below. Calvino remarked on the coherence of the work, which is seemingly all over the place. I agree, but I can't quite put my finger on exactly how it coheres. This bears more examination and thought.

Manganelli's essay "Literature as Deception" flatters the writer's vanity, crowning him buffoon, but in the sense of The Fool in the tarot. The foolishness is freedom and the buffoonery wisdom. The writer is, in essence, the trickster god of words and semantics. I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment. At least I flatter myself thusly. Call me a vain fool.

"A King" may be an existentialist shudder from the whispering of death or it may be a eulogy to solipsism itself. But why not both? In any case it is as bold and majestic as the title.

"Simulations" takes the narrator from kingship to poverty to being a renegade and, finally, to nothing but a "child's hallucination". Manganelli, like Beckett in his famous trilogy, breaks down the character to the point of less than nothing, a mere figment of imagination. The last paragraph is a masterful paradigm shift from the observer to the observed; an existentialist epiphany.

"A Few Hypotheses Concerning My Previous Reincarnations" is exactly what it purports to be, which is a baffling thing for any reader. Suffice it to say that the "S" word (-uicide) figures prominently in the narrative as the author tries to piece together his past life. It's a whimsical and tragic examination of identity and the twisted roads one can go down when reflecting on the self.

"Ignominy" sees the (yet another) dead protagonist slowly reason themself into the state defined by the title. The self-awareness of The Dead leads them to disappear in the ever-diminishing (or, rather, spreading thin to near-infinity) of the self. Ignoring, it seems, is both ubiquitous and inevitable for those without a body and, hence without a firm place in space and time. All dissolves into near-nothing.

In hindsight, it's plain to see that the title of the book: To Those Gods Beyond derives, in tone and principal, at least, from the story "An Impossible Love". Here, Hamlet (deceased) finds means to communicate with the Princess of The Princess of Cleve (also deceased) by means of a verbal catapult that launches missives across realities. But what is between and behind those realities? The answer is rather distressing.

The lengthy and exhaustive essay "Disquisition on the Difficulty of Communicating With the Dead" is precisely what the title promises. Where does one begin searching to find the dead, seeing that we have no way to measure those who have no body? Where are they hiding? And what language would we or should we use when communicating with them, once found? More importantly, do they even care? Or are they just stupid?

Now, on to my only complaint. I understand why Alastair Brotchie's afterword was, well, after the rest of the book. Here Brotchie tries to provide a framework for the volume as a whole, attributing all the references to death to an ongoing metaphor about writers and literary work. The evidence feels very thin, with Brotchie admitting as much, and I was absolutely unconvinced. Besides, the afterword saps the work of its mystery - the speculation, often with a darkly humorous twist, about what the state of the dead actually is. All I can say is that I'm glad it wasn't at the beginning, as the tenuous, yet overwrought analysis of Manganelli's work wouldn't have spoiled the joy of To Those Gods Beyond so much as polluted it utterly. I'd rather it just not have been a part of this volume.

So, excising the weak afterword, this is a strong collection of . . . well, it's not exactly easy to find an appropriate genre category for this work. It's its own thing. Unique. A bit of an enigma. And I love it for that.

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