Literature is a form of human expression wherein human beings have devised various forms which have evolved over the years to produce literary works which might bring it closer to real life, in a way that it mirrors our life. We have seen that the literature has evolved over the years from outside to inside, which means that we have turned inwards towards our existential angst and quest, and in the process we have witnessed the blossoming of modernism and other art and philosophical movements of 20th century; the postmodernism rises in response to it underlining the relativism, skepticism, absurdity, randomity and non-sense of life in association with post-structuralism, and some experts say that beyond post-modernism we have progressed towards meta-modernism. The various styles of literary fiction took birth in the advent of exploration and depiction of human condition- such as metafiction, surrealism, and magic realism which portrays realistic view of world by infusing magical elements to it. De exemplu, în „Instrucțiuni privind urcatul pe scară” conștiința este plasată în afara corpului cu care se joacă apoi ca și cu o păpușă.

Animals around the world are headed to bed in this beautifully illustrated book, which adds an odd twist of quirkiness to make it an intriguing read…. The animals are depicted in a wonderful artistic manner, which adds a dash of sophistication. In other words, these are simply well done and beautiful in their style and flair.” Najpre nešto što treba naglasiti: prevod je odličan, što je utoliko veći plus kad se ima u vidu da su prevodi sa slovenskih jezika na engleski obično... ne baš sjajni. Ovde tekst niti štuca, niti je nezgrapan, niti deluje kao da je uprošćavan za ljubav strane publike. Scriitorul are o aplecare particulară către animale – urși (mai ales!), cămile, cazuari, lei, condori, broaște țestoase … - despre care fabulează, adică scrie niște fabule! Urșii nu sînt suport de alegorii, sînt pur și simplu adulați („Poveste cu un urs moale”, unde soarele este ca un „gong de miere”, „Discursul ursului”, după care am plîns…) himself as an expatriate from Latin America (Argentina)? the metamorphosis of a writer? or something else?Gloriile și cronopii sînt tipuri de caractere; cronopii – răzvrătiți, contestatari, imaginativi, glorii – conformiști, convenționali, cruzi. Speranțele sînt normalitatea, dezirabilul. Dintre povestirile cu aceștia „Dificultăți în serviciile publice” prilejuiește o întîlnire șoc cu Bucureștiul văzut ca oraș de filateliști și de atentate (!). At the same time the book is presented with colored photographs for its illustrative purposes although I find that a lot of these look to be captive animals instead of actual wild axolotls. At the same time each picture used has a caption that although it stands apart from the actual writing is either repetitive or just ends up getting in the way for readers thus it would have been better use to have left the captions out altogether. El libro nos cuenta que un hombre va a visitar al Jardín Des Plantes ubicado en Paris en donde se encuentra con un animal llamado muy peculiar llamado Axolote. Tanto fue su encanto por estas peculiares criaturas que se termina convenciendo en que es uno de ellos. Era tanta su curiosidad por estos animalitos que comenzó a visitarlos hasta tres veces al día, se fijaba en su contextura con mucho detalle, le llamaba mucho la atención sus cuerpos translúcidos y lechosos, sus espectaculares colas de lagarto, sus rostros en forma de triangulo, planas y de color rosa, sus manos con dedos muy similares a los de un humano, los ramilletes que salen desde sus branquias, el gran brillo que proyectan sus ojos, su forma de desplazarse por los acuarios en forma muy lenta que hace pensar que no se mueven y el movimiento de sus branquias y cuando nadan lo hacen solo con un movimiento ondulatorio de sus cuerpos. Esto los hace fascinantes para él, creyendo tener una relación muy cercana con ellos, de alguna manera siente que estos les piden ayuda con sus grandes ojos, un día estaba observándolos en el acuario hasta que llegó a un punto en el que se sintió que estaba dentro del acuario siendo un miembro más de ellos. El cuento finaliza en que estás criaturas tienen la idea que el hombre entendió lo que ellos le querían comunicar y este se encuentra haciendo una redacción respecto a ellos motivó por el cual no volvió más a visitarlos. Overall plot idea is VERY interesting, but there are some inconsistencies / oversimplifications that could have been avoided or walked around (I think) Honestly, I'm not sure what Cortazar is trying to say with this story. Is he talking about the Aztecs?

A kötet szokatlan szerkesztésmódjával nem egészen vagyok kibékülve. Eleinte nagyon tetszett a fura kéthasábos megoldás, később már erőltetettnek éreztem, ráadásul egy ilyen formabontásnak mindig nagy az ára is: fókuszvesztést, töredezett olvasási élményt okoz. Nem biztos, hogy megérte. Inkább érzem úgy utólag, hogy valamiféle naplózási fájlokat olvastam, mintsem hogy egy regényt. Persze lehet, hogy pont ez volt a cél. There are numerous references in the story to Aztecs and various phases of the Argentine history, the intentional usage of foreign words by the author perhaps underlines the invasion by foreigners who silence the local voices. The golden eyes of axolotls, their peculiar heads allude to the history of the country of the author. The author portrays the secluded, shifting and puzzling behavior of the axolotl to underline humanity’s loneliness and solitude of existence as we often struggle to fit into the world we live in, feeling as if we are trapped here and condemned to live. The quiet nature of axolotl may also be interpreted as humanity being an unintentional accomplice to the unfair things in life by mutely spectating them. The author ends the story the way he starts it by subverting the narrative through the infusion of metafictional element to its epilogue for giving a final but decisive twist to the story so as to create an art which might voice to those trapped in the hell of nothingness; but even then, as expected from Cortazar, the end of the story is left to multiple interpretations- the possible realities which may lie in a possibility. Si bien el cuento relata la fascinante vida de los Axolotl, su particular manera de vivir y que una persona llegara a entenderlos de tal manera que se sintiera como uno de ellos, a través del relato del libro se puede llegar a conocer a este extraño animal no se salva de tener sus partes inconclusas llegando a dejar una sensación de vacío en el lector al saber que el cuento tiene final abierto.Julio Cortazar created a whole new world altogether wherein the ordinality was plunged to the great depth of nothingness to subvert the realism with surreal and fantastical elements, and what rises up from the annihilation of mundanity is an enigmatic and eerie reality of humanity which forces us to look upon ourselves from a whole new perspective. The author completely eschews the mundane rules of literature so as to write in a non-linear fashion and shifting perspectives which dance across various characters as human consciousness keeps on jumping from one to another, as if to emulate it. The fiction of Cortazar infuses fantastic and bizarre elements to our everyday reality to transform it to a haunting depiction of humanity so as to force us to see our own absurdity which is perhaps more close to the reality as we perceive. Over the years, we have seen that the prose has been progressively seen from the underlying meanings which one might explore by opening up its layers, Cortazar’s world gives us access to such a reality wherein we may have to actively participate to understand or rather assume the various possible realities which may lie in a possibility. In this review I put aside all the hype around the book in Poland, additional media content (3D printing, PI videos, etc.). These are additional elements I find supplementary at most. * Dukaj nije previše zainteresovan za uobičajen zaplet, za likove se ne bi trebalo odviše vezivati (iako sve vreme pratimo Barteka, odnosno Bartekov konstrukt posle apokalipse) niti očekivati neke velike avanture, svaki put kad naivni čitalac pomisli "Aha! evo sad ćemo se ovim problemom baviti!" autor to razreši uz akademsku hladnokrvnost i idemo dalje. Njega zanimaju... pa... mogući pravci razvoja čovečanstva pod takvim okolnostima. Nije nimalo slučajno što je moto preuzet baš od Stejpldona. I treba reći da Dukaj na vrlo malo prostora (ovo moje izdanje ima nekih 140 strana sa ilustracijama) uspeva da nabaca neverovatan broj intrigantnih koncepata, svaki malo osvetli i gura dalje. Recimo, neki od gikova uspeli su da aplouduju i svoju decu, tako da po opustelom svetu u raznoraznim robotskim telima, od dizalica do seks-botova, tetura i nekoliko desetina večite virtuelne dece od dve-tri godine... i jedan ker. Frakcije se formiraju prema ideološkim i verskim ubeđenjima koja su u početku prepoznatljiva (jao, on je od onih linuksovskih fundamentalista) ali ubrzo evoluiraju, baš kao i sami post-ljudski likovi. Ponovno stvaranje organskog života i kloniranje ljudskih bića rešeno je ubrzo i sasvim uzgred - i tu Dukaj samo odškrine vrata prema bezbrojnim implikacijama koju nosi takvo stvaranje čoveka 2.0 i nastavlja da se bavi svojim ni-ljudima-ni-robotima koji nikako da se odluče šta su i da li uopšte žele da to budu. Jedan fenomenalno apsurdan momenat jeste formiranje novog horoskopa u zavisnosti od toga čime se neko aploudovao - tako npr. svi koji su koristili Xbox imaju suicidalne sklonosti, korisnici uralske piratske verzije s vremenom padaju u depresiju (usporavaju im se procesori, koje god da koriste) i tako dalje. Drugi takav momenat jeste potraga za programom koji bi mogao da zameni spavanje i sanjanje i koji, posredno, vodi do naslovnog motiva aksolotla.

It's not an easy read. I can be confusing as the main character is a program never really in 'one' body, which is why the story often jumps (think of Ancillary Justice). It can be even more confusing once the main character obtains a dream module, after that the novel is constantly hallucinating. There's no real motivation or character development or even anything close to a 'character' here, but that is part of the message:Evolving - as the story (& time) is progressing, everything changes: way of thinking, systems of values, priorities, language itself. It may sound ridiculous, but this can be as engaging as the good plot itself :) Before I begin: I'm not a fan of Dukaj's newspeak - I find it hard and exhausting to follow. 1/3rd of this edition consist of footnotes explaining the wording used throughout the book. On positive side at least I'm understanding what I'm reading (which I couldn't say about "Król Bólu" - another book of this author). On negative one, it's a very lazy way of introducing a reader to a presented universe at best. This was a book about the axolotl salamander that can be found down in Mexican canals although they are definitely rare now. As such I was actually amazed to see the amount of information included while at the same time noticing that the book was directed for a very much younger audience than I would think would be ready for this type of read. I have yet to read this text, but from what I have heard, it is very good, if dated (I am unsure if the 1994 edition brings the species and the rest of the text up to date). It does cover the Axolotl though. It is written for the more scientifically minded.

I think that at the beginning I was capable of returning to him in a certain way—ah, only in a certain way—and of keeping awake his desire to know us better. I am an axolotl for good now, and if I think like a man it's only because every axolotl thinks like a man inside his rosy stone semblance. A profound question often probes our consciousness to instigate our inquisitiveness that why do we read, and before that why do we even write? Books, what are they for? Why do we read them or write them? For Goerge Orwell it might be the inner demons which forced him to write, to keep himself away from insanity; for Kafka, books were “the axe for the frozen sea within us”; for Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska, books stood as our ultimate frontier of freedom; but the question still stands greatly holding its ground. Perhaps we need to understand it from the perspective of our innate need to express ourselves, which makes us human. At times another question rises up from ignorance of humanity that why do we need to read and create fiction in the first place; though fiction per se may be about the things which may not exist in real world but it is very much about the truth of humanity, the truth to understand what we are and how do behave.

Books

With a big heart, she paints a world that has changed forever, but which still has hope for a brighter future.” Drowning in nostalgia for the lost world, the survivors create civilization after civilization, life after life, humanity after humanity. They form alliances and fight wars. They develop their own politics, ideologies and crazy hardware religions. And they face dilemmas no one has ever confronted before. Axolotl es un cuento escrito por Julio Cortázar, publicado junto a otros cuentos, en 1956. Algunas de las temáticas que aborda esta historia son: la obsesión del narrador hacia estos anfibios, la empatía, la relación de una persona con una especie marina y los privilegios de los seres humanos. This book is, without a doubt, situated in a well-established and extremely vibrant current of works like Peter Watt's "Blindsight", Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean Le Flambeur series, and I highly recommend it to anyone who might be interested in humanism, trans-humanism, a critical view of humanity, that can make you laugh, and stutter, and be silent in contemplation.