Breviario mediterraneo - Predrag Matvejevic'

Predrag Matvejevic' born in 1932 in Mostar from a Russian father and a Croatian mother. Now teaches at the New Sorbonne of Paris and the Sapienza in Rome. 

In his work he has always confronted himself with the open concept of ethnical-cultural identity, most of all by investigating the relationship and the history of the peoples of the Mediterranean and among them.




Among his works: 
"Breviario Mediterraneo" (1987),
 "Pour une poétique de l'événement" (1979),
 "Epistolario dell'altra Europa" (1992).

 Our Daily Bread (Kruh naš), Zagreb: Ambrozija, 2009 -next entry
    (Acantilado-Quaderns Crema -2013)

The central questions asked by Matvejević’s book Mediterranean Breviary – Could we conceive of a viable intramediterranean culture beyond stereotypes? Is the Mediterranean doomed to become “an ex-world”? – are understandably intimate for Matvejević himself, given that he has been living in first person the status of “ex.” 
The writer Predrag Matvejević shows how Mediterranean identity cannot be understood as an all-encompassing unity, but as a satura, a discrete ensemble made up of differences and conflicts. By constructing a metonymical network of landscapes, things and crafts, and relying on the philological excavation of everyday words, his Mediterranean Breviary succeeds in asserting a humble communal identity against the clamor of wars and the retracing of borders.
Breviario mediterráneo de Predrag Matvejevic:

Excerpt:

A KEY CHARACTER… Waves play an important role in the dramaturgy of the sea, its scenes and peripeteias. They have many names, varying not only from one gulf to the next but also according to whether we view them from ship or shore and what we expect of them. They combine with adjectives (or, less commonly, other nouns), which are for the most part descriptive: regular or irregular, longitudinal or transversal; they are connected with high tide or low tide, with the surface or the depths; they are solitary, frequent, fortuitous, rolling, choppy, cyclical (experts claim that the cycles of some waves can be measured in terms of geologic periods). What matters most from the deck is their size; their strength; whether they hit flank, bow, or stern; and whether masting, sails, and, especially, sailors can handle them. The distinctions that interest us here are of a different sort: how they break on the shore, how long they last after they have broken in the eyes of their beholders, whether they are the same when they return, how the sound they make differs when they hit sand and when they hit rock, how they sleep when they are tired and barely perceptible. All that remains of the huge waves tapering and dying on the shore is a gurgle or a lap, a splash on the pier or the hull of the boat, buoy, or reef, though this sound can last a long time and is most likely to be audible at night. Even though everyone recognizes it—this gurgle or lap or whatever one calls it—there is disagreement over whether it is a noise or a voice...

English chapter
In recent years, the declining importance of the nation-state and an increase in globalization have encouraged scholars to move towards the borderless world of seas and oceans, giving special attention to their diasporic movements of people and goods. Lately, this “new thalassology” has witnessed an outburst of Mediterranean studies. Yet the resurgence of the Mediterranean in the postmodern, anti-nationalistic arena must be critically assessed. The risk in such studies is a reinforcing of old stereotypes, what the anthropologist Michael Herzfeld calls “Mediterraneism.” The present article highlights the work of two scholars and one writer who alert us to the manifold dangers of Mediterraneism and who offer standpoints for launching a serious interrogation of Mediterraneism. Roberto Dainotto points to the asymmetries couched in the alluring metaphors of liquidity and flows. Iain Chambers views the Mediterranean as a space of solid borders that entail the production and consumption of the immigrant as outcast. The writer Predrag Matvejević shows how Mediterranean identity cannot be understood as an all-encompassing unity, but as a satura, a discrete ensemble made up of differences and conflicts. By constructing a metonymical network of landscapes, things and crafts, and relying on the philological excavation of everyday words, his Mediterranean Breviary succeeds in asserting a humble communal identity against the clamor of wars and the retracing of borders.

Ressenya1-

REseña2
Una profunda y poética «filología del mar»: historia de una cultura, nuestra cultura mediterránea, de un extremo a otro del tiempo y del espacio. «En Alejandría conocí a un catalán, relojero de profesión, que intentaba rehacer el catálogo de la biblioteca devastada, la mayor de la Edad Antigua, pese a los escasos datos disponibles. Se lamentaba porque su lengua materna se estaba perdiendo y quería compensarlo de algún modo. Los excéntricos del sur se distinguen de los excéntricos del norte. La causa no es sólo el clima diferente. En el Mediterráneo, los prodigios también son diferentes.» En una narrativa apasionante y sugerente, pletórica de hallazgos y encuentros, Predrag Matvejevic´ reconstruye la historia de una palabra –Mediterráneo– y ahonda en sus múltiples significados. Este breviario, un clásico de las letras europeas contemporáneas, evoca centenares de los rasgos que configuran un espacio histórico y cultural, y una forma de vivirlo: el estilo de los puertos y las aduanas, la suavidad de la arquitectura en el perfil de la costa, los saberes de la cultura del olivo, la difusión de una religión, las huellas permanentes de las civilizaciones árabe y hebrea, las lenguas y los dialectos que cambian con el tiempo, las historias ocultas y los destinos particulares. Guiados por una prosa excepcional y una sabiduría que no parece de este tiempo, los lectores descubrirán el mundo al que pertenecen y las ricas señas de identidad que lo vertebran. Una obra maestra que ahora se ofrece reescrita y ampliada por el autor.