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arirang's review
4.0
I came to this book as several respected bloggers (including one of the judges) highlighted it as the most glaring omission from the Best Translated Book Award 2014, where it didn't even make the long-list. Having read it, I share their surprise - it's certainly deserves a place as one of the top translated books published last year.
When Tigers Are At Home is centered around the figure of Athanasius Kircher, a real-life 17th century scholar.
One part set in the (near) present say tells the story of Eleazard von Wogau, a French foreign correspond, but also Kircher expert, living in a relatively isolated part of Brazil and of various people connected with him.
Von Wogau has been tasked with editing a recently discovered manuscript, containing a previously unpublished biography of Kircher written by a contemporary who was Kircher's assistant.
When Tigers are at Home also contains, in interspersed chapters, the complete text of this (fictional) biography.
The real-life Athanasius Kircher was a fascinating figure, the last of the great polymaths, and as Von Wogau explains:
"He wrote about absolutely everything, claiming each time and on each subject to have the total sum of knowledge. That was fairly standard at the time, but what fascinates me about him - and I'm talking about a man who was a contemporary of people like Leibniz, Galileo,Huygens and was much more famous than them - is that he was entirely wrong about everything."
Most famously Kircher claimed to have deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics - claiming them not to be a language of letters but rather ideograms, arcane symbols for detailed theological concepts. It took the discovery of the Rosetta stone over one hundred years later for his assertions to be proved wrong.
As he first tackles Kircher's biography, von Wogau is very hard on him e.g. calling him "a common manipulator. He tampers with facts until they make sense. His clear conscience is no excuse. The propagation of the faith, propaganda, distortion of history etc - the sequence is only too well known. The certainty of being in the right is always a sign of a secret vocation for fascism".
However, as he reads through his life story, as told by a contemporary and loyal admirer, and also discusses Kircher with his friends, von Wogau comes to revise his views, as he comes to appreciate the aesthetics of Kircher's works, his thirst for knowledge, his successes and the foundation that even his major errors provided for future scientists. Also his irrational streak was not unusual at the time and among his illustrious predecessors - Newton spent much time and money on alchemy, Kepler on the "music" of the spheres - and was only swept
by the rational revolution of Descartes, a contemporary of Kircher.
The title of the book comes from a quote from Goethe's Elected Affinities, which, translated, reads as "No one can walk beneath palm trees with impunity, and ideas are sure to change in a land where elephants and tigers are at home".
The quote is relevant to von Wogau, uprooted from his native France, and now living in exotic Brazil, and perhaps justifies what to me was the least convincing part of the novel, the wider story in which von Wogau, and particularly his wife, get caught up. This rather lurid tale of Pentagon agents, corrupt politicians, native rites, drugs and environmental destruction is a little morally simplistic and I felt the book would have been better had the present-say parts focused only on von Wogau and his thoughts on Kircher.
This also means that the book is over 700 pages long, but it is remarkably readable, aided by the old chestnut of ending each chapter, particularly the biography, on a "cliff-hanger", as far as such can exist in an essentially philosophical book.
Huge credit to the translator Mike Mitchell for such a massive effort.
Overall almost 5 stars but not quite - but even so what were the BTBA judges thinking?
When Tigers Are At Home is centered around the figure of Athanasius Kircher, a real-life 17th century scholar.
One part set in the (near) present say tells the story of Eleazard von Wogau, a French foreign correspond, but also Kircher expert, living in a relatively isolated part of Brazil and of various people connected with him.
Von Wogau has been tasked with editing a recently discovered manuscript, containing a previously unpublished biography of Kircher written by a contemporary who was Kircher's assistant.
When Tigers are at Home also contains, in interspersed chapters, the complete text of this (fictional) biography.
The real-life Athanasius Kircher was a fascinating figure, the last of the great polymaths, and as Von Wogau explains:
"He wrote about absolutely everything, claiming each time and on each subject to have the total sum of knowledge. That was fairly standard at the time, but what fascinates me about him - and I'm talking about a man who was a contemporary of people like Leibniz, Galileo,Huygens and was much more famous than them - is that he was entirely wrong about everything."
Most famously Kircher claimed to have deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics - claiming them not to be a language of letters but rather ideograms, arcane symbols for detailed theological concepts. It took the discovery of the Rosetta stone over one hundred years later for his assertions to be proved wrong.
As he first tackles Kircher's biography, von Wogau is very hard on him e.g. calling him "a common manipulator. He tampers with facts until they make sense. His clear conscience is no excuse. The propagation of the faith, propaganda, distortion of history etc - the sequence is only too well known. The certainty of being in the right is always a sign of a secret vocation for fascism".
However, as he reads through his life story, as told by a contemporary and loyal admirer, and also discusses Kircher with his friends, von Wogau comes to revise his views, as he comes to appreciate the aesthetics of Kircher's works, his thirst for knowledge, his successes and the foundation that even his major errors provided for future scientists. Also his irrational streak was not unusual at the time and among his illustrious predecessors - Newton spent much time and money on alchemy, Kepler on the "music" of the spheres - and was only swept
by the rational revolution of Descartes, a contemporary of Kircher.
The title of the book comes from a quote from Goethe's Elected Affinities, which, translated, reads as "No one can walk beneath palm trees with impunity, and ideas are sure to change in a land where elephants and tigers are at home".
The quote is relevant to von Wogau, uprooted from his native France, and now living in exotic Brazil, and perhaps justifies what to me was the least convincing part of the novel, the wider story in which von Wogau, and particularly his wife, get caught up. This rather lurid tale of Pentagon agents, corrupt politicians, native rites, drugs and environmental destruction is a little morally simplistic and I felt the book would have been better had the present-say parts focused only on von Wogau and his thoughts on Kircher.
This also means that the book is over 700 pages long, but it is remarkably readable, aided by the old chestnut of ending each chapter, particularly the biography, on a "cliff-hanger", as far as such can exist in an essentially philosophical book.
Huge credit to the translator Mike Mitchell for such a massive effort.
Overall almost 5 stars but not quite - but even so what were the BTBA judges thinking?
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