Resumo de "the Little Apocalipse"

"The Little Apocalipse" is a moving title; forcing a reflection, however bereft of moralization and school-like simplifications. Its protagonist and at the same time narrator of the short story is a man lost in the reality of a totalitarian regime. A creator who, with a sensibilty of the world around typical for an artist, is subjected to the ubiquitous marasm and wickedness of his country. He is a man confrotned every day with a sense of lack of purpose and lack of fulfillment; he dreams of changing the grotesque reality around him but at the same time is consciuos of his own disability. He knows he has neither accomplished or changed anything in his life. However the most weighing down consciousness is that he probably never will. When one sulky autumn day he wakes up again with the sense of absolute pointlessness of his own life, he comes to a conviction that this is the end of his private world. He knows his time is up, he is attacked from every direction by bitter realisations about what he has not accomplished and never will. And it that day that his long unseen friends choose to visit him and make him a grotesque and on the face of it impossible to accept offer: they present him with the possibility of doing a pathetic deed - making a sacrifice himself. Burning himself up in the name of a protest.. This is how unravels the plot of the short story about dreams, ideals, the bitter confrontation with the prosaic and helpless reality and that, which will never come back... The story of the one breakthrough day is written in an original and baffling way. This book lacks naivete and tenderness; all lofty reflections are contained in the sharp, sweet'n'sour and sparkling inner monologue of the narrator. Together with him we stalk the streets of a dying capitol, observe the ubiquitous and striking, similar to that of Kafka, grotesqueness of the world. We wonder and deride at the same time. We observe the omnipresent moral and ideological banktrupcy. We see the agony of hope everywhere around. At the same time we spot the simple, average people, not involved in politics; sometimes they are ridiculous figures, sometimes they evoke disgust. Tragicomically we walk the streets of the coty together with the protagonist, holding in our hands a canister of gasoline and matches. Together with him we battle our thoughts and confront our memories. The relity presented by Konwicki is fasinating, funny and astonishing at the same time. We penetrate it with increasing disbelief and curiosity... The author skilfully avoids pathos when asking even the most relevant and fundamental questions. He forces us to think and ask but does not moralize us. He enables us to stand together with the main character in the middle of a giant square and, confronting us with a panopticon of questions, reflections and memories, to make the final decision...Until the very end we feel the omnipresent smell of gasoline, however the final is as striking as the whole book...

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