Gilbert Keith Chesterton
L'Uomo Che Fu Giovedì

LA RECENSIONE

Many geniuses have come and will come in telling spectacular, unforgettable, and immortal stories—heartbreaking or terrifying, exciting or introspective—placing them in imaginative, inspired, gripping science fiction settings.

Chesterton places his "Man Who Was Thursday" in a real setting, brazenly everyday, and this is what makes it a novel so (at least in my view) enthralling. The agile maneuvering between the inscrutable figure of Sunday ("Δεινòς" as the ancient Greeks would call it, and it’s the only adjective truly fitting for the situation, those who know the language will understand) and the pathetically ordinary "Saffron Park", between the terrible (truly terrible) anarchist council and the banal quarrel between anarchist poet Lucian Gregory's beliefs and the poet-inspector Gabriel Syme, the true alter ego of the author.

The enigmatic plot full of twists, with some parts of the ending rather predictable to be honest, is more of an intriguing assembly of ideas, reflections that may or may not be shared (as in my case), but certainly courageous and innovative. Rowing against much of the art world of his time, of past and future times, Chesterton warns us to prefer reason to illusion, as it is more solid and rooted ("the journey to the unknown requires strong and experienced sailors, not dreamers or utopians: illusion can allow us to imagine the end of the journey, but rarely to actually reach it. Similarly, only a well-rational mind can endure the sight of the irrational to the end, meaning where the irrational is no longer so" is roughly the message provided by Chesterton and reported in a very similar form on the back of the book, at least on the reprint I own, of course.) Indeed, it will be the constant need for knowledge and discovery that will guide Syme to the allegorical conclusion.

Very important is the confrontation of what should have been six superior minds that reveal themselves to be increasingly fragile and in need of each other's help, often a true counterweight that restores a proper emotional and rational balance. I had thought of providing examples but it would spoil too much.

There are many references to Christianity and Buddhism, despite him being an Atheist at the time, along with numerous allusions to poetry, from an anarchist and rational point of view (the debate on the essence of poetry is fascinating: for anarchist Gregory, poetry is an attack because the explosion "leaves its mark" more than the pathetic human lives forced to be sacrificed, whereas for Syme nothing is more poetic than a train schedule, as it bears witness to the organization and progress of civilization), on nature, power, the god-money, and popular beliefs. 

Not to ignore the great narrative skill of the author, who, as mentioned before, navigates well between moments of absolute and high philosophy, reflection, great tension, daring adventure, crossword puzzle game, thriller, almost spy story elements, English humor, and above all mystery, which accompanies us even past the end of the novel, where not everything seems fully clarified.

In conclusion, a novel I consider a masterpiece because it can concentrate, in a reading that is ultimately not heavy and quite flowing, in a setting known to all, at times amusing and very pathetic (again, take the Greek connotation of the term) significant elements of reflection and questioning the great qualities and extraordinary weaknesses of the human creature.