Beatriz Fernandes's Reviews > A Cidade e as Serras

This is a beautifully written book, like many others from Eça de Queiroz. It's amazing how he can combine nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs that would not be used together, allowing them to get new meanings and enriching the writing. Instead of using a straighforward critic using, for example, the irony, he works the portuguese language not only using many vocabulary, but also with a lot of figures of speech and symbols.
That being said, this book focuses on the opposition between the city (Civilization) and the saws (Nature). Half of it is a detailed description of the boredom of the city: always the same people, with the same ideas; the opression of a full schedule, with nothing really interesting or new; the servility to the social standarts. Jacinto was a preacher of the city. To him, Man could only be happy if he lived to the maximum of his habilities: stimulating his intelectual capacity, reading everything he could get, sciences, poetry, history, philosophy, etc, and maintaining his physical health, his strength. However, with the passage of the years, this goal started to be to opressive, to dull...too many. His constant yawns were the supreme expression of his discontentment, despite his loyalty, now weakened, to his beliefs.
Then, he decides to visit one of his many properties in Portugal (by the way the city was Paris, but obviously represented all of the citys), in the saws of the river Douro. There he finds peace rejuvenation, he rediscovers the wonderment of life, falls in love with every tree, stream, flower, hill...and also a woman. The simplicity of the village offers him the plenitude of life. Without all of his machines, telephones, phonographones, and other phones, elevators, brushes, perfumes, without his 30 000 books, his able to enjoy completly the act of lilving. It is the field of tranquility and serenity, were you can give enough attention to any object and detail.
Basically I told you the whole story. I think that this book is close to my perspective of life: with should in between; not too much rain, nor too much sun, because both are necessary and good, both give us trouble and contempment. The quietness of nature, with it's many faces and the turmoil of the city, with so many faces that you can't see them all. The balance between Me and You, inside and outside, doing nothing and everything. Perfection within Imperfection.