Matilde Asensi

Matilde Asensi at the Madrid Book Fair C.E.2008

Matilde Asensi (C.E.1962 — living), Spanish writer.

Incipit of some works:

Iacobus:

At this point it is inexplicable how I, Galcerán de Born, who have recently ceased to be a knight of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, second son of the noble lord of Taradell, former crusader in the Holy Land and vassal of our lord James II of Aragon, can still believe in the existence of an occult and ineluctable destiny among the apparently accidental cases of life.

The Lost Origin:'

The problem I sensed just that afternoon, as I lingered motionless in the dust, shadows, and smells of an old enclosed building, was that being metropolitan, progressive, skeptical, and technologically advanced at the beginning of the 21st century made it impossible for me to consider anything that remained outside the realm of the five senses. At that time, life for a hacker like me was just a complex system of algorithms written in a programming language on which there were no manuals. In other words, I was one of those for whom living meant learning how to manage their software every day without having had the opportunity to take courses or the time for exercises or tests. Life was what it was, and a very short one at that; Mine was to keep myself permanently occupied, without thinking about anything that had nothing to do with what I was doing from moment to moment, especially if, as then, I was committing a crime punishable by law.

The Last Cato:

Beautiful things, works of art, sacred objects, suffer like all of us from the unstoppable passage of time. From the precise moment in which their human author, conscious or not of his own harmony with the infinite, gives the final touch and delivers them to the world, a life begins for them which, with the passing of the centuries, will lead them to old age and even death. Nevertheless, this very time that consumes and destroys us gives them a new kind of beauty, which man's old age cannot dream of attaining. For nothing in the world would I want to see the Colosseum rebuilt, with all the walls and bleachers in perfect condition, or a Parthenon painted in bright colors, or a Victory of Samothrace with the head.

The Conspiracy of Cortes:

I had heard some people say that love is joy, enthusiasm, cheerfulness, but that evening, sitting on the beach, I wished I had those crooks in front of me so that they could experience with the edge of my sword the joy, the enthusiasm and the cheerfulness of lovesickness. It was worse than a disease, I told myself in anguish, worse than an infected sore. It was like drinking poison, swallowing needles. And it's all because of that scoundrel with hair bigger than the sun! I calmed down and remained motionless, but I wanted to glance at Alonso, who was sleeping soundly by the campfire, along with Rodrigo, Tumonka, and the other Indians.

Mainland:

Martín, my younger brother, died fighting valiantly against the English pirates, who, after having shot our galley with cannon fire for the better part of the night, at dawn threw the boarding bunches and approached us on their starboard side to steal from us all the merchandise which our vessel was carrying from the markets of Seville to the colonies of the Mainland. in the New World. My poor brother was only fourteen years old, but he used the sword better than many of the king's hidalgos and soldiers, for our lord father, one of the most esteemed sword-makers in Toledo, had been his master, and had taught him the art properly. By misfortune, with the same eyes that are seeing these letters as I write them, I saw how that accursed Englishman dealt him a fatal blow on his head, with an iron club, which blew his brains out.

All Under the Sky:

One noon, after the interminable succession of nausea and various illnesses which had tormented me during the voyage on board the André Lebon, a surprising calm had taken possession of the ship, forcing me to make an unpleasant effort to open my eyes a little, as if in this way I had been able to discover why the postal service, for the first time in six weeks, He had stopped banging against the waves. Six weeks! Forty infamous days during which I remembered having gone on deck only once or twice, and even for those few outings it had taken a lot of courage. I hadn't seen Port Said, Djibouti or Singapore. And I hadn't even been able to look out of the portholes in my cabin as we crossed the Suez Canal or docked in Ceylon and Hong Kong. Nausea and depression had kept me lying on the cot in my second-class cabin since the day of our departure from Marseilles, that is, since the morning of Sunday, July 22, and not even the ginger infusions and laudanum inhalations, which numb me, had been able to relieve the nausea.

Bibliography:

• Matilde Asensi, Iacobus, translation by Andrea Carlo Cappi, RCS, C.E.2005. ISBN 8845412784
• Matilde Asensi, The Lost Origin, translation by Margherita D'Amico, Sonzogno, C.E.2006. ISBN 8845413357
• Matilde Asensi, The Last Cato, translation by Andrea Carlo Cappi, Sonzogno, C.E.2005. pp. 479 ISBN 8845412148
• Matilde Asensi, La congiura di Cortes, translation by Margherita D'Amico, Rizzoli, Milan, C.E.2012. ISBN 9788817061940
• Matilde Asensi, Terra Ferma, translation by Margherita D'Amico, Rizzoli, C.E.2008. ISBN 9788817023269
• Matilde Asensi, Everything under the sky, translation by Margherita D'Amico, Sonzogno, C.E.2007. ISBN 9788845414145