Los hijos de los días

[Update: 31 December 2021. Reread, this time en español y a través del año completo, día a día. Esta vez lo encontré inconsistente, algunos ensayos sublimes, otros inpenetrables. Aún así, es una obra exquisita. Envía tu fuego hasta el final.]We are monsters, we humans, we're also sublime. I don't know how else to describe the feelings evoked here by Galeano nor how to recommend this book. You know those cutesy “On This Day” calendar sidebars, with fascinating facts about what white European males did on this long ago day? As it turns out, the past was also inhabited by women and darker-skinned people (of both sexes), and some of those shaped our world too. There are even some of those around today. Who knew?This is a book of vignettes. Short ones, one per calendar day, mostly short and sweet. Sweet indeed: Galeano's voice, how to describe it? Gentle, kind, deeply ironic but without bitterness. Strongly reminiscent of [a:Balys Sruoga 1162057 Balys Sruoga https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1329418774p2/1162057.jpg] in [b:Forest of the Gods 17372568 Forest of the Gods Balys Sruoga https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1382565904l/17372568.SY75.jpg 2663461]; reading these two so closely together feels eerily appropriate to today's world. “Those donations,” Galeano writes, referring to the pollutants tossed into a Mexican river by megacorporations. Writing of an 8-year-old boy who fell into the river: “He did not die by drowning. He died by poisoning.” “Donations” indeed: “gifts” would've come off cynical, and no descriptive word like toxin or poison would have a similar impact. “Donations” is striking because of its inoffensiveness. And he keeps it up, 365 days of perfectly crafted sentences with perfectly impacting words. He writes of monstrous acts and also honorable ones—they are so often intertwined. He points out hypocrisies, noble heroic acts, simple decent ones. I could not read this in one sitting. I constantly went on Wikipedia tangents—safaris—exploring, learning more about the undeservedly obscure characters he so briefly introduces. Or sometimes I just closed the book and pondered. Or went back and reread. I read the Kindle edition, because I have no way right now of getting the Spanish hardcopy... but I'm going to look for it, and maybe English too, and, like Linda, hope to leave copies by my bedside and the guest bedroom. To flip open at random, skim, and wonder.