A very accurate definition to describe our deepest truth. The exposed nature would be something like turning our skin to expose the internal forum of each one with the motivations and beliefs that forge the crucible of the will. An intention that, however, conforms to one of the greatest mysteries: what we really are.
The will of the protagonist of this novel is to save lives that cross borders, like lyrical metaphors of so many hopeful transits in the uncertain future.
In its small existence, further reduced by the rugged landscape in which it is located the author, our protagonist occupies the free time offered by this particular Sherpa activity towards liberation, in sculpture.
His last commission is the restoration of a Christ. While he occupies his hands in the review of that representation between the human and the divine (a metaphor of metaphors of the man about to approach his last most transcendental path), the novel deepens with a lyricism that flies over the prose and that reaches that internal forum where instincts and faith coexist; where the need to stay alive is compensated by trusting that later there will be more life, of another type, associated with the soul that is supposed to correspond to us as heirs of the Christian sacrifice.
Our exposed nature is that contradiction, it is that secret that can never be revealed. Sex as the highest and in turn the most repudiated. If a Christ must show his sex can be a dilemma for the artist influenced by morality ...
The walkers keep arriving, oblivious to the fundamental dedication of their savior, hopeful in new worlds beyond the borders, like new Christs given to providence.
Faith and the worldly. Life in a world limited by itself and enclosed in borders for more inri (pun intended). Instinctive survival and historical hope in the transcendental. Religion as a pedestal to bring out the best in ourselves while whipping our consciences. The pagan as what we essentially were.
Novel made poetry and philosophy at the same time. A literary style that at times between the dense and the light resembles Javier Carrasco in his outdoor novel.
You can now buy the novel The exposed nature, the new book by Erri De Luca, here: