At the beginning of The Golem and the Jinni a new window opened in front of me and beyond that I enjoyed a fantastic sight: two merged worlds, one against the other in the modern age, but strongly related each other.
Reading the book I encountered thrice that interlacement, and for sure it was not accidental: first, the authoress life, since Helene Wecker is jewish and she married an arabic american; second, in the fantastic adventures of the two protagonists, supernatural creatures, one jewish and the other arabic; third, after investigating the origin of the two cultures interlacement, starting with Abraham and his two sons: Ishmael, son of the slave Hagar, and Isaac, son of Sarah his wife, the one considered the father of the arabic religion, the other of the jewish one.
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| Il genio e il golem, di Helene Wecker |
I think the authoress did not want to set them against, but I felt exactly the opposite. By a compelling narrative, 592 pages that you will not stop to read, two worlds, apparently conflicting, attract each other, as the two opposite poles of a magnet.
The Golem is control and will, strength and exertion; the Jinni is unruliness and talent, the readiness of the tightrope walker who never loses his balance, even though he risks in each instant the fall but he smiles, without fear, winking to the public.
But both are looking for the same thing.
I think it is wrong to call it the american dream, either because it is a too modern idea, or perhaps because in my opinion the search for freedom is no more something american, since a while. I rather believe that the freedom that our heroes are looking for is to be free to be what they are, the one with the bravado typical of awareness, the other with the timid prudence of those who still failed to know herself.
The Golem is a just born creature, so she must work to know herself and the world around her, facing big difficulties, but that search is an hard work also for a millenary creature, the Jinni, when the environment changes so much that disorients even the most experienced acrobats.
At the end this is the challenge that each of us must face every day: while the world quickly evolves, more than we are aware, we need to preserve the equilibrium, measure the strengths with timid prudence and smiling overcome our weaknesses...
Punto
Ps: thanks to Punto that described her feelings about the Golem and the Jinni and then gave to this blog, enriching it, a point of of view different from mine.
Italian version