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"O my America, my new-found-land!" Mateo Renaldo Colombo (or Columbus, to give him his English name) might have written in his De re anatomica." It is no accident that Federico Andahazi draws a parallel between his Renaissance hero, the anatomist Mateo Colombo, and the explorer Christopher Columbus. It is the conceit of his first novel, The Anatomist (beautifully translated from the Spanish by Alberto Manguel), that both Colombos made "equally momentous and disturbing" discoveries. Every schoolchild can tell you what Columbus's was; less well known, perhaps, is that of his countryman and fellow "explorer." "Mateo's America is less distant and infinitely smaller than Christopher's; in fact, it's not much larger than the head of a nail." In short, Mateo Renaldo Colombo discovered the Amor Veneris, the clitoris.
Andahazi makes much of this discovery, not to mention its discoverer: "The discovery of Mateo Colombo's America was, all things considered, an epic counterpointed by an elegy. Mateo Colombo was as fierce and heartless as Christopher. Like Christopher (to use an appropriate metaphor) he was a brutal colonizer who claimed for himself all rights to the discovered land, the female body." Certainly women readers will view this description with at least as much irony as Native Americans regard that other Columbus's "discovery" of a land they had known about all along.
The Anatomist is based on a historical figure and historical fact; what Andahazi provides is his title character's heart and soul. The fictional Colombo is driven by desire for the high-priced courtesan Mona Sofia. Though Mateo adores her, the heartless Sofia regards him as nothing more than a paying customer. After breaking both his heart and his bank account over her, Colombo returns to his native Padua whence he is eventually called to Florence to treat a saintly young widow, Inés de Torremolinos. Inés is "infinitely beautiful," and her illness is "far from common." While examining her, he discovers "between his patient's legs a perfectly formed, erect and diminutive penis." Land ho.
Though Colombo's "discovery," first in Inés and then in other women, offers plenty of opportunity for eroticism, the most compelling aspect of The Anatomist lies in the Church's reaction to De re anatomica, the book Colombo writes detailing his find. The Renaissance may well have signaled the birth of new art, science, and philosophy, but it was also the age of Inquisition--and Colombo's unfolding of "the key to the heart of all women ... the anatomical cause of love" soon lands him in prison on charges of heresy and Satanism. The trial, Mateo's defense, and the surprising aftermath make for provocative reading and raise The Anatomist above the level of the merely erotic to a more intriguing philosophical plane, one that is sure to prompt a lively discussion or two. --Alix Wilber
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From Publishers Weekly
In a first novel that aroused long-buried passions in his native Argentina, Andahazi takes readers back to the Renaissance in a fact-based satire about a scientist groping his way toward enlightenment. The relationships between religion and science, love and sex, and men and women are some of the themes that Andahazi addresses in his provocative story, which reigned at the top of the Argentinian bestseller list when the book became a literary scandal. During the age of discovery, renowned physician Mateo Colombo takes on an exploration nearly as perilous as the quest of his famous namesake, Christopher Columbus: he discovers the clitoris and scandalizes the religious and temporal powers of 16th-century Italy. Indeed, Colombo's motivations are not purely unselfish: he dreams of winning the love of one Mona Sofia, the most expensive prostitute in Venice. But after publishing his work he finds himself imprisoned and at the mercy of the vacillating political whims of the Vatican. Andahazi writes with wit and economy in prose that alternates between the lyrical and the mock-scholarly (both rendered seamlessly in Manguel's translation). He cleverly lures the reader into a sense of condescension toward Colombo only to underscore, ultimately, how little progress has been made in solving the problems that vexed him, despite several centuries of research, scientific and otherwise. (Sept.) FYI: The Anatomist won Argentina's prestigious Fortabat Prize for a first novel, but the prize was revoked by Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, the heiress who endows the award, on the grounds that the book's subject and style are obscene. Anchor is publishing a simultaneous paperback Spanish edition, El Anatomista.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
