In the midst of reading The King's Gold, Arturo Pérez-Reverte's fourth volume in his swashbuckling series "The Adventures of Captain Alatriste," I came across one of those brilliant, long, elegant, artfully constructed sentences that takes up almost the entire paragraph. I've read it over several times and just can't get over how gorgeous it is. My editors would kill me if I attempted so ambitious a sentence -- mostly because I am completely comma dysfunctional, though I try very hard. The novel, set in 1626 Cadiz, Spain opens to the return of soldiers who have fought and survived the bloody seige of Breda, in Holland. It is a bustling port scene, with disembarked soldiers doing what they love best when finding themselves home and alive:
"When we said our goodbyes, Curro Garrote was already back on dry land, crouched beside a gaming table that guaranteed more tricks and surprises than spring itself, and playing cards as if his life depended on it, his doublet open and his one good hand resting, just in case, on the pommel of his dagger, while his other hand traveled back and forth between his mug of wine and his cards, which came and went accompanied by curses, oaths, and blasphemies, as he saw half the contents of his purse disappearing into someone else's."
There is so much happening here, and like the eye of a camera in an opening scene, it visually moves the reader from moment to moment in such a smooth, unbreakable line, so that we see both the details and the entire scene all together.;
And again, this time in The Pirates of the Levant, the latest novel of Captain Alatriste, Pérez-Reverte's narrator Iñigo Balboa provides an observation on the harsh life aboard a galley sailing to battle that mid-way draws the reader in with the switch in viewpoint -- from the "sailors" to "you" so that the reader must share personally in the discomfort.
"Years before, he had found it difficult to adjust to the harsh galley life: the lack of space and privacy, the worm-and-mouse-eaten, hard-as-iron ship's biscuits, the muddy brackish water, the cries of the sailors and the smell of the galley men, the itch and discomfort of clothes washed in salt water, the restles sleep on a hard board with a shield as pillow, your body always exposed to the sun, the heat, the rain, and the damp, cold nights at sea, which could leave you either with congestion or deafness."
Pérez-Reverte also marries such remarkable descriptive and gritty sentences with small inserts of poetry -- written by some of the most famous poets of the age, viseral commentators on the excesses of their age, especially the seemingly never-ending wars. At the end of this detailed descriptive passage on military galleys, we are to be reminded by the 17th century poet Francisco de Quevedo of those who have it worst on the ships, the galley slaves who live chained to their oars.
"I'm a scholar in a sardine school,
And good for nothing but to row;
From prison I did graduate,
That university most low."
And here is a short clip from the film on Youtube with some subtitles -- a meeting of the poet and swordsman in a tavern.
*Kudos should also got to Margret Jull Costa, the translator, who has enabled us to smoothly read such densely-packed sentences.