Seda

Alessandro Baricco introduced the Italian edition of Silk, which was an extraordinary success in his country, with these words: This is not a novel. It's not even a short story. This is a story. It begins with a man traveling the world and ends with a lake that remains motionless on a windy day. The man's name is Hervé Joncour. The lake's name is unknown. You could say it's a love story. But if it were only that, it wouldn't have been worth telling. Desires and sorrows are intertwined within it, desires whose nature is well known, but which lack a precise name. And, in any case, that name isn't love. (This is something very old. When you don't have a name for things, you use stories. That's how it works. It has for centuries.) All stories have their own music. This one has a white music. It's important to say this because white music is strange music, sometimes disconcerting: it's played softly and danced slowly. When they perform it well, it's like hearing silence, and those who dance it superbly seem motionless. White music is incredibly difficult. There's not much more to add. Perhaps the best thing is to clarify that it's a 19th-century story: just enough so that no one expects airplanes, washing machines, or psychoanalysts. There aren't any. Maybe another time.