Book Review: Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants | Mathias Enard

It was some years ago that I found out about this book, thanks to a literature blog. I started reading it as soon as it was in my possession, but I left it aside just as quickly. Too complex, too strange, too poetic. That's what my teenage brain thought the first time I started reading this book.

Stupid brain. 

I was way too young when I came across this Michelangelo Buonarotti piece of biography, which takes a real fact as the starting point, and from there unravels what could have happened in a mysterious travel. It was the first time I got my hands on such a book, and I thought it would be boring. I wasn't educated enough by that time, I still have many things to learn, and therefore I found it exactly that: boring. 

Little I knew, just a year ago, that it would become one of my favorite books. Period. I decided to give it another go, and this time I just couldn't put it down. With 17 years, I had received classes on literature and I had learnt how to appreciate novels and books of any type in a more critic way than when I was a child. My taste was evolving and I was starting to get interested in Classics and more "serious" novels. I'm no Literature student, nor critic or expert, not per se (my degree has certainly nothing to do with literature, but that's something that should really change; that's a topic for another post, though), but I've been reading books since I acquired such a marvelous ability, and I haven't stopped since. I think this gives me at least a bit of knowledge and credit in this area. 

This story has stuck with me even thought it has less than 200 pages, but there's a jewel in each one. Every sentence is a treasure, I would say. 

It speaks about the travel Michelangelo did to Constantinople in answer to Sultan Beyazid's request in 1506. He leaves aside the construction of the tomb of Pope Julius II, known as "The Warrior Pope", because he's not paying Michelangelo for his work. He accepts the petition of building a bridge, the same petition his nemesis, DaVinci, couldn't accomplish. It is the perfect solution: defeating his worst enemy at the same time he says a big fuck you to Julius II. Trying to make this project into his life's masterpiece is just the icing on the cake. 

This book, even thought it's a piece of biography, even thought is a novel, is as beautiful as a book of poems. You can feel the dust of Constantinople in your clothes, you can feel the same rage that builds up in Michelangelo's chest when he gets frustrated with the progression of his work, you can feel all the love that is reflected in these pages, not just romantic love (which was something I didn't expect in this book, but didn't disappoint me because of its nature) but love for the act of creation. Michelangelo's an artist, an architect, a Renaissance man. He sees the world with different eyes and feels it with a brain that could explode with the beautifulness living inside it.  Behold not just Michelangelo's portrait, but Mesihi's too, one of the "most original among the early Ottoman poets". Certainly one of those characters you never want to let go. 

I read this book in a sitting. I couldn't get my eyes off it, and I turned pages back again and again to read every passage again and again. It was simply marvelous. It was art made into tiny black symbols on white paper, talking about art carved in stone and the man who made what was in his brain into such a thing. Enard has got my heart. 

I don't want to spoil much more, because this is one of those books that needs to be treasured. It has certainly wormed its way into my brain, and I still find myself with the urge of re-reading it once more every time my eyes land on its spine when I walk past my bookshelves... 

And maybe I always oblige my urges. 

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5 starts out of 5 

☆☆☆☆☆

And you? Have you read this book? 

Have you read something similar? What do you think?