'This flower allows the individual to confront and transform the pain and suffering. Pointing when the pain is very intense and is expressed in the form of anxiety, anguish or physical illness. This essence is not the function of an analgesic but pushes the individual consciousness to the outside, by concentrating on himself and isolation to a transpersonal awareness of the meaning and purpose of this painful experience. '
'LIA Love-lies-bleeding. We were in India once. Alex wanted to see the caves. [...] He told me the common name. Love-lies-bleeding. Thin red flowers. Thorny.
[...]
LIA is a name so beautiful. Cuts like a knife. '
(P.21-22)
Love-Lies-Bleeding is therefore a flower but also a short play written by Don DeLillo represented the United States in 2005, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.
It is the first play I read in full, so of course it's hard to be objective.
The plot is simple: the artist Alex Macklin, after the second stroke is forced to live as a vegetable, he turns around three key persons who will discuss the issue of euthanasia. Toinette, his third wife, son Sean and his first wife Leah, the last young wife of Alex.
In each of these characters are represented the most common feelings towards an issue difficult to tackle because it brings into question the life, and determine if that is right (for morality, ethics, consciousness) or not choose death for someone Another unable to clearly express an opinion.
Leah is not the usual woman who marries someone much older than her for money or power. Far from it. Lia is the devoted love, that particular sentiment that drives her husband to look after old and sick, unable even the smallest daily actions. It is a need to Leah, perhaps selfish, but very soft in many respects. At least uncommon. Leah refuses euthanasia, firmly. Do not agree to let him go, he can not. He still needs him. To remember the happy moments, gestures and shares. To get up every day and think that maybe.
'Toinette Foul die in peace.
LIA There is peace in death. Nothing. He is what he feels and what it is now. It is Alex Macklin. And you do not have any right to interfere. '(P.17)
Toinette another form of expressing love, in my opinion. Between her and Alex we were happy years, but also a definite break, characters and expectations that, at some point, have been divided, have chosen different paths. Toinette's why euthanasia is favorable. Because he knows, feels that the journey of her former husband, comrade and rival, is not to remain helpless in a wheelchair to a bed or whatever. Toinette believes without a doubt, that is due, recognized a different ending, faster and more dignified. At the same time scared, Toinette, to something that does not know, not what he knows about the 'how' and 'what'.
'Toinette We want to do one thing ... at least I know nothing ... I can not even talk about it. View trainers' (p.14)
Sean is a complex character that the reader (audience if the play was represented) effort to 'catalog' immediately. It is not the son of Toinette even if there is a special bond between their support and confidence. Did not know his father well, indeed, emerge from their obvious fractures and silences (Sean did not see anything, the body of the father sitting or lying).
'Sean was also able to assimilate some people consume and digest. As you well know. And those who could not consume the deserted street. We must always speak well of the dead. '(P.17)
Still supporting the theory of Toinette as to have procured the necessary to help his father in a quick but painless step, honest words. It is through Sean DeLillo gives voice to those feelings less 'noble' fatigue to the situation of a loved one who has no way out but still there, still alive but unable to do anything yet able to breathe. It is obvious that Sean discomfort to the condition for a prolonged death, however, a condition that leaves nothing to those who remain ill or even close to exhaustion, debases and 'steal' time.
'It could go on for another ten years. We will continue to love him less but because its survival there will be stifled. Not dead but is not even alive. Not yet and no more. E'a halfway '(p.26-27)
The dialogues may seem slow at times, inconclusive because DeLillo does not want to strike with effect phrases or absolute truths. There are no solutions or certainties in this comedy. As the power is not the dominant narrative. Are the reflections of the characters hidden between sentences, the only protagonists. They are, in my opinion, that the reader (audience) should get to listen. The dialogues, the ways and attitudes of the three characters are a way to get to the essence of the text. The intent is not to represent realistic scenes, engaging and impact. The intent is to let ideas.
Mind.
From this text discloses no new analysis or reference to euthanasia. E'già been told everything and the opposite of everything on the topic.
But DeLillo is trying to slim, but not acute invasive.
The same relationship between the characters, past and that Alex was the first stroke during the play emerges through memories, flashbacks sudden increasingly important. It is as if DeLillo is trying to bring the audience into the lives of people in small degrees. Only at the end you will have full awareness of feelings, past trends and challenges of four different lives and yet united.
It is undoubtedly one reading this, very different from the common narrative, requires an eye more, an approach also 'physical' in a sense. To imagine the scenes, 'see' the characters in motion, focus phrases and pauses. Yet I felt very 'inside' (although not, I repeat, other benchmarks on gender). If I could see it represented in a theater I'd been comfortable.
The only less positive point is related to the translation that I was not convinced. From reader.
Review and ISSUE BRIEF NOTES
DeLillo was born in New York on November 20, 1936 to Italian parents emigrated after World War I from a small town in the province of Campobasso, Montagano.
Born and raised in the Bronx, then largely inhabited by Italian Americans, attended Catholic schools up to university, this leaves an indelible mark in many of his writings and especially in Underword (1997).
After his studies he started working as an advertising and interested in art and music, particularly jazz and write. In 1971 he published his first novel Americana that will be translated into Italian until 2000. In 1972 he published End Zone, not yet translated into Italian, and the following year Great Jones Street (translated into Italian in 1997), which tells of a rock artist who retired to live in a barren environment.
In the late seventies on a long journey training in the Middle East and India, then moved to Greece where he lived for three years and writes his eighth novel, the names that will have a good success as a "psychological thriller".
Back then in the U.S. and here he wrote his first masterpiece, White Noise with which to win the National Book Award in 1985.
Since then he has produced other notable works that have crowned as one of the greatest American writers of this millennium: the central figure of the so-called postmodernism with Thomas Pynchon and Paul Auster, the first and oldest now considered a classic and one younger and eclectic.
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