Name: Once in Europa
ISBN: 9781408859100

John Berger

A collection of interwoven stories, this is a portrait of two worlds - a small Alpine village bound to the earth and by tradition, and the restless, future-driven culture that will invade it - at their moment of collision. The instrument of entrapment is love. Lives are lost and hearts broken.

Once in Europa

loisesya

‘Perhaps they are right, those who pretend there are harps in heaven. Maybe flutes and violins too. But I'm sure there are no accordions, just as I'm sure there's no green cowshit that smells of wild garlic. The accordion was made for life on this earth, the left hand marking the bass and the heartbeats, the arms and shoulders labouring to make breath, and the right hand fingering for hopes!’

‘The dream became vaguer and vaguer as, awake, he saw something else. He saw Death approaching the farm. Or, rather, he saw Death's lamp, bobbing up and down, as Death strode leisurely past the edge of the forest where the beech trees in October were the colour of flames, down the slope of the big pasture which drained badly at the bottom, under the linden tree full of wasps in August, over the ruts of the old road to St. Denis, between the cherry trees against which, every July, she asked him to lean the long ladder, past the water trough where the source never froze, beside the dungheap where he threw the afterbirths, through the stable into the kitchen. When Death entered the Middle Room—where the smoked sausages were hanging from the ceiling above the bed—he saw that what he had taken to be a lamp was in fact a white feather of hoarfrost. The feather floated down onto the bed. Abruptly Albertine sat up and said: Fetch me my dress, it is time to go!

‘It was then that he heard his mother's voice calling him by name. The sound the bees were making gave birth to her voice, and at the same time mufied it. The voice went on repeating his name as if the solitude of his days were now in the name itself.’

Years later, people asked: how was it possible that Boris, who never gave anything away in his life, Boris, who would cheat his own grandmother, Boris, who never kept his word, how was it that he gave the house to the blond? And the answer, which was an admission of the mystery, was always the same: a passion is a passion. Women did not ask the same question. It was obvious to them that, given the right moment and circumstances, any man can be led. There was no mystery. And perhaps it was for this reason that the women felt a little more pity than the men for Boris. As for Boris, he never asked himself: Why did I give her the house? He never regretted this decision, although—and here all the commentators are right—it was unlike any other he had ever taken. He regretted nothing. Regrets force one to relive the past, and, until the end, he was waiting.’

Once in Europa was first published by John Berger in 1987. Bloomsbury's reissue of this moving love story has been given a new and poignant twist with the addition of award-winning photographer Patricia Macdonald's remarkable colour images, which punctuate Berger's lyrical tale of stoical romance in the midst of agrarian collapse and the depredations of heavy industry in Central Europe in the 1950s.

Berger's modern classic updated with glorious photos. John Berger has spent a lifetime experimenting with new ways of storytelling, often using both words and images as in books such as "Another Way of Telling "and "A Fortunate Man," where he worked with photographer Jean Mohr, and in his world-renowned Ways of Seeing. Now, together with artist-photographer Patricia MacDonald, the beautiful love story found in his earlier collection, "Once in Europa," is retold, in an emotionally and visually stunning combination. Macdonald's powerful images, made from the air and close to the ground, and containing many layers of meaning, create a landscape and a weather for this contemporary classic.

Once in Europa

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