Wretchedness by Andrzej Tichý

 


Literary critic James Wood writes: "Reality examined to the point of madness. What would this look like in contemporary writing? It might look like the fiction of László Krasznahorkai, the difficult, the peculiar, obsessive visionary Hungarian novelist."

After multiple readings of Wretchedness, I'd suggest it might also look like the fiction of the young Czech Polish author Andrzej Tichý.

The novel's opening scene sets the frame: It's late October down by the canal in the Swedish city of Malmö and the narrator, a gent in his late thirties who plays the cello, takes in the whitish-pink perfumed petals of the wax plants as he waits for two of his fellow classical musicians, a guitarist and a composer. He reflects on their morning practice session, a focused, fruitful run-through of music by the innovative 20th century composer Giacinto Scelsi. He tries to think of the name of the Italian philosopher who wrote an incisive essay on Scelsi when he's jolted out of his reverie by a thin young guy wearing a black hooded jacket asking if he can spare some change.

You would think a classical musician reflecting on philosophy and art, imbibing the fragrance and subtle beauty of flowers would come from a background where supportive parents provided a safe home and the resources necessary to foster a son's development as a budding cellist. However, this was decidedly not the case - our tale's narrator survived a life of squalor, of pain, a life lived in a slum filled with drugs, violence, fear, crime, surrounded by hatred based on nationality and race.

The book's chapters are, in effect, eight paragraphs consisting of mostly long, rambling Thomas Bernhard-esque sentences that seem to go on forever. However, there's good news: although some bits of drug and punk lingo might be unfamiliar, the language is clear; there's none of that Irvine Welsh mashing of words into heavy accents or regional dialects. Special call-out to Nichola Smalley's English translation from the original Swedish.

"I kick him in the calves a few times and press my forehead against the bridge of his nose, with small jolts, to push him away. A pulsating rhythm, a repeating pattern, a regular oscillation between stronger and weaker points in repeating cycles of various kinds. Bach's cello suites, where the fuck did you get that from you little cunt, get out of here, a sucker punch and a headbutt and there's no one else left in the room, and my tongue is still silent, unswollen, but now I know I'm Cody."

Re the above quote: note the use of the present tense (in-your-face nowness) as action seamlessly shifts between music and street violence, as if, for example, a reference to C in the world of Wretchedness can signify the key of C and/or the snorting of C.

A typical question I had to ask myself while reading: does this scene depict an urban brawl with avant-garde music playing in the background or are we among attendees at a concert of classical music where a cadenza prompts one of the musicians (narrator Cody?) to think back to an episode of Clockwork Orange ultra-violence?

Cody recollects growing up in a Sweden not usually visible or media-worthy for those outside the country, a Sweden not of affluent Swedes but of a mixing of races and ethnic groups in neighborhoods degraded as "human rubbish dumps," neighborhoods where young gangs roamed and inhabitants were pushed, shoved and reduced to struggle through hardscrabble alienation and pain. Andrzej Tichý social commentary, anyone?

"I figured out that they weren't Turks after all, they were like Christian Armenians, or Assyrians, or Syrians or something...but we didn't have any Iranians, you know, it was mostly Yugos, Chileans, Hungarians, Roma, Albanians and Poles, no Finns, or maybe a few, Arabs from different countries, Turks, Afghans, Somalis, a few Russians, a load of dropout Swedes, yeah, yeah."

Yet, there's music such as Scelsi's String Quartet No. 4 consisting of one ten-minute movement based formally on the golden section and symmetric principles throughout. Such contrast, such irony - Cody confronts the chaos of Malmö mauling while playing his cello in compositions expressing exquisite harmonies.

"The whole morning, while practicing a Scelsi piece - his Fourth String Quartet, to be precise - I kept glancing at the wax-plant flowers that had opened during the night. The white and pink blossoms hung in clusters and looked like tiny eyes watching over me."

Wretchedness, the novel's title, comes from a quote by Simone Weil that serves as the book's epigraph: "Contradiction alone is the proof that we are not everything. Contradiction is our wretchedness, and the sense of our wretchedness is the sense of reality. For we do not invent our wretchedness. it is true. That is why we have to value it. All the rest is imaginary."

And there's that twist at end, on the final page, prompting a reader to immediately return to the opening for a reread while asking the question: who, in fact, is narrating this tale?

Sound intriguing? I certainly hope so! I'll close by sharing what critic Jan-Olov Nyström has to say: "The darkness Tichý evokes has an epic, radiant energy. The frenzy of the narrator's flashbacks forces its way up through the narrative like volcanic continents, full of ruin, tragedy, wretchedness, and a rare, raging and destructive power. It is magnificent, across the board magnificent."


Czech Polish author Andrzej Tichý, born 1978