Silence of the Body: Materials for the Study of Medicine - Hardcover
A fascinating scrapbook of observations the author has collected over the years on the subject of the body. He explores the meanderings of the history of medicine, & strikes with definitive aphorisms, cuts out images of distant & near civilizations, & glosses the squander & deceptions of physiology. An adventurous book that is both encyclopedic & personal. Open it to any page & you will find a sentence, a detail, a story that will make you reflect & fantasize.A compendium of aphoristic opinions erudite, outrageous, & cranky through which Ceronetti seeks to lift the veil from human things in a way that doctors of medicine never will.
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Language Notes:
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian
From Kirkus Reviews:
Original Language: Italian
Idiosyncratic musings by Italian poet, critic, and philosopher Ceronetti, originally published in 1979 and marking the first English translation of his work. Ceronetti, who describes himself as fascinated by medicine and obsessively worried over health, is ``appalled by the passiveness of our bodies...under the scourge of Medicine's will...and dismayed by Medicine's insatiable omnipotence.'' A student of classic and sacred writings, he has perused world literature, ancient to modern, for insights into the human body and human behavior. He shares those here, along with his own melancholy opinions, bizarre memories, sardonic observations, and nightmarish visions. This isn't a continuous text but, rather, a sort of scrapbook of thoughts, sometimes linked together, sometimes not. Occasionally, there are multipage essays, but many entries run only a pithy line or two. Ceronetti can be epigrammatic, cryptic, even poetic--as in his vignette about an aging twosome: ``They were a beautiful couple. Her wealth of varicose veins matched his complete lack of teeth.'' Or in this comment on medical research: ``Pharmaceutical products for dogs and cats should first be tested on men kept in special cages.'' Or: ``Since man is a cancer, his metastasis on other planets should no longer seem so improbable.'' Anglo-Saxon crudities abound, sounding a jarring note amid so many Latin phrases--but whether this reflects Ceronetti's language or that of his translator is unclear. What is clear is that the author has given a great deal of thought to what it means to be human--and that he wishes doctors would do the same. A literary oddity that's compelling yet repellent, amusing yet outrageous. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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- PublisherFarrar, Straus & Giroux
- Publication date1993
- ISBN 10 0788156543
- ISBN 13 9780788156540
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages234
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