‘First there was the sea’, by Tomás González: we are particles with impossible projects

A review places a book in the cultural field and also in the market. Beyond utopias of independence of the former from the latter, the cultural field and the market often merge into an indistinguishable magma. First there was the seawhose first edition dates back to 1983, does not deserve to reappear in this very opportune reunion with the public by appealing to the argument that makes a novel saleable: very hopeful visions of life that help us to be better people; a joy that is born from humor and lightness; the discovery of light in our smallest things. No. This book is terrible and wonderful. It does not need to put itself in a pink soap bubble to present itself to society.

J. and Elena leave Medellín, its nocturnal life and its comfortable bohemian lifestyle. He perhaps does so in search of being more coherent with his anarchy; her reasons are linked to the fantasy of social improvement. We know that nothing will turn out well. So this book speaks of how life cannot be changed: there are such necrotic inequalities in social schemes that resentment blackens the hearts of the pariahs of the earth, and a self-destructive naivety marks the falsely egalitarian attitude of the young gentlemen of good will. The milkmaid’s tale takes on a savage dimension. Interracial conversation does not work either: the not very cultured ladies, who become the ladies of the house, order a wire fence to be put up so that the bare feet of a black woman do not cross their property. For their part, the butlers’ wives are pusillanimous, dirty, and let their children defecate in the hallways. Leaving the city and its servitudes, nesting next to the ceibas and the sea, does not free us from anything; nature imposes itself and first there was the sea, the cruelty of the rains, the emaciated and tick-ridden cattle, the snake bites. Our size is tiny compared to a nature to which, however, we deal mortal blows. There is something vain and suicidal in our relationship with the environment, and this violent link is recreated in three dazzling passages: the living shines in the cemetery; a majestic tree is cut down and with it a multitude of animals and plants die; J.’s body returns to the earth.

We know from the beginning that J. has died, but González does not work with the playful virtuosity of Chronicle of a death foretold. He works with inexorability. Good intentions, readings —Dostoevsky, Neruda—, anarchism or renunciation snob good taste will be of little use to a character who asks for his packages to be carried, but does not want to be rich. Nor is he a pauper: he is someone who can get into debt and, in his ridiculousness and in the anonymity to which the initial of his name reduces him, he is very similar to any of us. J. and the radical ineffectiveness of good intentions. First there was the sea We hear the murmur of Kafka and Camus, decanted by the best Colombian narrative. We listen to Onetti. We enjoy an exuberant text in the tact with which each word is chosen and we enter into an increasingly dense, alcoholic, hallucinatory, pestiferous atmosphere… Love does not save. The future and memory rest in the sea. Rest and waves. Point of confluence between the living and the dead. We only have to assume this fusion of matter in matter. We are particles with impossible projects. The book has deserved praise from such optimistic writers as Elfriede Jelinek. It is, simply, a beauty.

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