|
|
|
Excerpt
Everything tells
me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making
mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me?
Does it want me to take to take no risks, to go back where I
came from because I didn’t have the courage to say ‘yes’
to life?
I made my first
mistake when I was 11 years old, when that boy asked me if I
could lend him a pencil; since then, I’ve realised that
sometimes you get no second chance and that it’s best to
accept the gifts the world offers you. Of course, it’s
risky, but is the risk any greater than the chance of the bus
that took forty-eight hours to bring me here having an
accident? If I must be faithful to someone or something, then
I have, first of all to be faithful to myself. If I’m
looking for true love, I first have to get the mediocre loves
out of my system. The little experience that I have had has
taught me that no one owns anything, that everything is an
illusion... and that applies to material as well as spiritual
things. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs
forever (as has happened often enough to me already) finally
comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.
And if nothing
belongs to me, then there’s no point wasting my time looking
after things that aren’t mine; it’s best to live as if
today were the first (or last) day of my life.
|
Nevertheless, at no point is the author moralistic or judgmental
in any way. This is what Coelho said in an interview: "I’ve
tried to avoid any kind of moralizing tone and in any way
judging the main character for the choice she makes. What really
interests me is how people relate to each other sexually. My
intention, as always, is to be straightforward without being
superficial." This is not to mean that sensual pleasure is
the sole concern of the novel, instead it is crucial to the
understanding of the myths that have been constructed about love
and sex. Coelho tries to look beyond the conventions that people
use to play safe, not realising that they are jeopardising their
chances of experiencing tranquility and fulfillment by doing so.
Partners are more often than not caught up in false pretensions
and fail to discover and explore one another. Making love should
not be merely an obligatory act but an endeavour to seek that
blissful love which involves not only the body but also the
soul. But most people do not do so. As Maria writes in her
diary: "Although my aim is to understand love, and although
I suffer to think of the people to whom I gave my heart, I see
that those who touched my heart failed to arouse my body, and
that those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart".
But Maria does
meet her soul mate, Ralf Hart, in a cafe that stands across the
signboard that reads ‘Road to Santiago’. This becomes a
metaphor for the fusion of body and soul and from then on the
flames of real love once again begin to smolder within Maria’s
heart.
In Eleven
Minutes, Coelho presents sexual experience as a route to
self-discovery. He emphasises the sacredness of the act which is
often referred to as something that happens in the heat of the
moment. Through Maria’s story the author attempts to
facilitate an understanding of the importance of sexual love in
human life. Maria’s dilemmas are resolved with
intelligence and sensitivity.
It has been the
character of Coelho’s writings to celebrate the ordinariness
of things that are routine yet very significant and beautiful. Eleven
Minutes is yet another attempt to celebrate a physical act
that would last merely 11 minutes. However, if there existed
that utopian harmony, it would last for an eternity and
something that was considered to be profane could be discovered
to be beautiful. Coelho’s proclamation in his Dedication
seems, indeed, to be his very signature: "Some books make
us dream, others bring us face to face with reality, but what
matters most to the author is the honesty with which a book is
written". And Eleven Minutes is definitely a
truthful, frank and provocative piece of writing that is not
culture or territory specific but talks of a universal
experience.
|
"ONCE
upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria" begins
Paulo Coelho, and one would, undoubtedly, find it tremendously
difficult to put away his new novel before having read the final
sentence. Even before the narrative gets into motion, Coelho makes
it a point to justify the use of fairytale terminology in a story
that does not belong to that genre. The story is about the bitter
reality of the materialistic world of human beings.
