Everyman

I am not surprised by my silent passage through April but by my relative eloquence in March. I watch the few bloggers I really follow going through parallel ways, using different techniques: some retreat to self-referential speech ("why I love myself"), some play the drama of departure (Nikos Dimou is an almost global master in that- opening, closing, restructuring his blog, substituting it with other web pages, referring to numerous e-mails he gets and point at the direction of a glorious come-back to his posts). Anyway, for me, I just prefer reading or reviewing these days. Which text would I consider telling for the sense of these days? I look at the small pile of books next to my bed, waiting for a summary, or some last note (before the first-reading will be considered accomplished). I pick Philip Roth's Everyman, in its nice translation in Greek by Achilleas Kyriakides. Based on the title of an English allegoric drama (late 15th cent.) Everyman or The Summoning of Everyman, in which the main figure is asked by Death to present his deeds and acts on this futile world. Roth's Everyman, present his long encounter with the sense of mortality. The successive events that take place in his life (marriages, alienated children, perishing friends and relatives) and gradually are encoded with rising frequency in the operations he is obliged to go through in full or partial anaesthesia. Everyman is so damn close to death, Everyman is so damn eager to forget it every time, Everyman's life seems tidy and well arranged, rectangular, geometrical; in reality there is a Chaos realm, under the precise map. The scene with the geometry of the grave digger is a very telling one. A good book really.