L`Entreprise des Indes

L'Entreprise des Indes
by Erik Orsenna
The younger brother of Christopher Columbus speaks,...he says about the Hispañola Island (*): he himself and
brother didn't discover paradise, Bible's,...but got close to it.
(One of the three maplets, or map sketches, attributed to Bartholomew Columbus showing the new discoveries
“attached to Asia”, also shown is western Africa)
(A re-drawing of all three map sketches illustrating Columbus’ view of the world)
Bartolomeo recounts the inflamed church sermons of Frei [Friar] Antonio Montesinos: in defense of the native
Indians,victims of exploitation. And there's this man who travelled with Colombo in his second voyage (1493) to
the New World: Bartolomeo de las Casas. Both Bartolomeos talk about the Discoveries and the cruelty it brought
to the Island.
It's 1511,Christmas time. The Bartolomeos try to find the answer to the problem in the Bible.Columbus and his
brother used to read a chapter of the Book every Sunday, back in Lisbon.
Oh Lisbon! once, so great you were...!
Oh Lisbon! once, so great you were...!
It seems all started in Lisbon,Bartolomeo recalls. He had spent childhood in Genova,Italy,with his brother. Mother
Susana had arranged them to attend the worst school in the place- a school where Bartolomeo was educated in
the "Holy Ignorance" spirit- the religious one...the one that made Bartolomeo think for some time that the Earth
was flat.
(The “Columbus map” which perhaps was drawn by Christopher Columbus and his brother Bartolomeo in Lisbon
around 1490 before the discovery of the New World, showing the known world in their time)
And then 1469: he arrives to Lisbon, and with some difficulty and luck gets a job in the office of the great
Cartographer Andrea. This one will open his eyes in what concerns geography knowledge.Andrea teaches
Bartolomeo: Erastotenes, Hiparco of Niceia and the Jew Abraham Cresques (author of the Catalan Atlas).
Bartolomeu goes through rebellion feelings towards his previous education. He still remembers with some
jealousy back in Genova: "Christopher's only interest was his Enterprise [of the Indies] and everybody cared only
about Christopher".
In Lisbon, it´s a new vision of the world,timid Bartolomeo develops: Earth as a sphere.
(The "Colombus map" was drawn circa 1490 in the workshop of Bartolomeo and Christopher Columbus in Lisbon)
In the city there's so much agitation and people rush constantly to see the ships arriving- like that one that
brought a rhinoceros- what a creature from another world! A mix of animal and rock...a beast not created by
God,says a priest in his church: an entity issued from a "hole in time"- let's burn it!! And then the crowd wants
more: a fight! the rhinoceros versus an elephant in a public plaza- it seems the rhino charged...the elephant got
away,...and later, with rhino tusks, a business thrived for a short while: the magic virility tusks...powder.
I won't resist quoting Erik Orsenna vision of the Portuguese:"Inhabitants of a lovely country,and so
tempered,sometimes too quiet, the Portuguese could not avoid falling in love with the wild life". Correct.
After the rhinos came the turtles and the leprosy remedies- and there's this feverish endeavor to name (in
Portuguese!no savage syllables allowed!) all the wild species imported- so, "mogno" for a tree, and "lamantin" for
a kind of seal, and so on.
The King expressly instituted an Academy of Translation. Yes,Italian/Genovese Bartolomeo was witnessing these
manoeuvres in Portuguese land.Bartolomeu learned that the Lie is daughter of the Truth...and at the
Cartographer's he understands why two kinds of maps are being made: the true ones for the King and the false
ones to fool the enemies.
In 1473 he receives one visitor: red-hair brother Christopher,so busy, it's been years, voyaging through the Atlantic
Ocean. Bartolomeu now is no more a child- Christopher mocks about the maps of Andrea and is obsessed with
the "Journey Around"...-and reveals a true faith in the stars,the sea currents and the winds- it's a brief encounter.
Bartolomeu felt the older brother,the wizard of his childhood, wanted to hire him.
(*) A major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and
Haiti.|Dizem que Cristóvão Colombo inspirou tantos livros como a II Guerra Mundial. A ser verdade, é obra!
"Empresa das Índias" (2010) é um saboroso livro escrito com um grande sentido de humor ( pelo menos até meio
"Empresa das Índias" (2010) é um saboroso livro escrito com um grande sentido de humor ( pelo menos até meio
da narrativa) por Erik Orsenna, vencedor do Prémio Goncourt em 1988 com o romance "A Exposição Colonial".
Através dos olhos do irmão Bartolomeu, cartógrafo em Lisboa, conta-se a história da vivência e aprendizagem
portuguesa do outro Colombo, o ruivo de "cabelo da cor do sol poente" que tinha o sonho de chegar à Índia por
Oeste.
Uma grande variedade de personagens onde até existe um fabricante de viúvas – afinal, as portuguesas da época
dos Descobrimentos não tinham tanta vocação para Penélopes como eu pensava!
Numa entrevista ao Diário de Notícias, Orsenna explica, porém, que Lisboa é a verdadeira personagem principal
do seu romance e descreve a cidade portuguesa como sendo na época "a capital da curiosidade".
As páginas dedicadas ( e são muitas) a essa Lisboa, capital do “glorioso país da mentira”, vibrante e cosmopolita
da época, onde coabitavam conhecimento, verdades e mentiras ao serviço do secretismo que caracterizou a saga
dos Descobrimentos, são as mais interessantes do livro.
Gostei de ler, ou não fosse eu uma apaixonada pelos séculos XV e XVI espanhol e português.
|Loved this book. I picked it up from a "leave a book, take a book" shelf at a conference center in Singapore (the
book I left was IN COLD BLOOD by Capote). Orsenna pulls off a tough challenge with this volume: the "less
successful younger brother" shtick. But he nails it. The book isn't about exploration, maps, or history. It's about an
idea - the idea of this "enterprise of the Indies," Christopher Columbus's dream of sailing west to find the Indies.
Narrating to a Dominican friar, Bartolomeo Columbus recounts his childhood in Genoa with his older brother, the
brother's long years away at sea in the 1470s and '80s, and his obsessive - almost desperate - efforts to assess the
size of the Asian continent as it extends eastward, away from Europe. The farther Asia reaches, the smaller the
expanse of ocean that Columbus will have to cross to land there from the East.
There is a focus, of course, on Bartolomeo's many years as a mapmaker, and those interested in cartography (or
the idea of it, even) will find the first half of the book very engaging, just on that basis.
The language is tinged with enough detail to evoke the 15th century European setting, but the narrative moves
quickly enough between the worldly and the personal to keep the story interesting. Orsenna avoids the mistake
(of which AS Byatt and Charles Frazier are among the worst offenders) of giving too much period detail in an
attempt to legitimize the setting. Not needed: the ideas carry the work forward, not the recipes or the style of hat.
I knew nothing about Orsenna before reading this, but will seek out more of his works, based on L'ENTREPRISE.
(Note: This book is in French.)|Il est toujours intéressant et agréable de découvrir une histoire que l'on connaît à
travers un autre point de vu mais on ne s'attache pas vraiment à un des personnages et les anecdotes historiques
qui pourraient compenser cette distance ne sont pas au rendez-vous. Un peu déçu par le tout.|Eu, que costumo
gostar de tudo o que esteja relacionado com a história, não gostei muito deste livro.
O autor relata os preparativos da viagem de Cristóvão Colombo mas, na minha opinião, não consegue prender o
leitor.