The Physics of Sorrow raises the topics we discussed with my Polish lecturer D.F. on Monday.
– the sadness/sorrow that a certain state of things (better satus quo) will never return and is forever gone;
– thus, the in-overlive-ability of this sadness;
– the nature of nostalgy and saudade (Kundera, fados, Stasiuk);
– the total lost of the communist times and experiencing/expressing this lost by the people who have lived if not their whole lives, at least those important periods like childhood and adolescence (the matrices for the rest of the life. methinks).
In addition to this, the autobiographical moments in the novel raise my own notices for the times of the 80-s and 70-s, probably concluded/ excerpted from the pictures I’ve seen, the stories I’ve head from my parents, the whole spirit of the era I have felt. My own experiences in the post-communist “transitional period” (“Преходът”, lasting already for more than 20 years).
– nothing-happening-ness;
– the end of the 60-70s revolutions and their echoes in one communist country;
– “the afternoon of the century” as Gospodinov says [my father mostly relates to his childhood with scenes of calm afternoons, alone in the apartment, listening to the radio and laying with his stuff in his “secret” drawers under the sofa in the tiny kitchen; I have inherited this view, it seems];