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Books & Archaeology
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Orinoco: Account of the very long and adventurous conquest of the Orinoco, whose source remained hidden until the middle of the century preceding ours.
BOURDON Daniel.

Orinoco: Account of the very long and adventurous conquest of the Orinoco, whose source remained hidden until the middle of the century preceding ours.

Fata Morgana.
€23,00 €0,00
N° d'inventaire 26544
Format 14 x 22
Détails 136 p., illustrated, paperback.
Publication Paris, 2023
Etat Nine
ISBN 9782377921232
The reader sifts, compares, and verifies. It is impossible to trust the book he has in his hands, because it clearly does not say enough, and in fact refers to others that must be located, obtained, opened, and then understood. He finds one, which was in fact the source of the previous one. He reads it in a language that is not his own and that he does not master well—moreover, it is a seventeenth-century dialect using archaic terms and abstruse turns of phrase. But he must move forward, whatever the cost, regardless of the inconveniences, the discomfort, the dangers that lie dormant behind the dark green wall of the bank and that the sound of paddles in the water or the sound of pages being turned can awaken at any moment.
After reading works devoted to the exploration of the Orinoco, the ancestral river of South America, the author guides us to those who camped on its banks and made it a legend. Immersed in the writings of these poets, geographers, and anthropologists, he opens a path for us to lose ourselves in: biographies of adventurers and natives follow one another, overviews of maps and archives, zoological chronicles in hostile terrain, and more. Orinoco is neither a novel nor a travelogue. It deals less with the source of the river than with that of the books that have recounted the river—and made it an inexhaustible metaphor. Here, it is language that is questioned and literature that finds itself shaken in its pretensions.
The reader sifts, compares, and verifies. It is impossible to trust the book he has in his hands, because it clearly does not say enough, and in fact refers to others that must be located, obtained, opened, and then understood. He finds one, which was in fact the source of the previous one. He reads it in a language that is not his own and that he does not master well—moreover, it is a seventeenth-century dialect using archaic terms and abstruse turns of phrase. But he must move forward, whatever the cost, regardless of the inconveniences, the discomfort, the dangers that lie dormant behind the dark green wall of the bank and that the sound of paddles in the water or the sound of pages being turned can awaken at any moment.
After reading works devoted to the exploration of the Orinoco, the ancestral river of South America, the author guides us to those who camped on its banks and made it a legend. Immersed in the writings of these poets, geographers, and anthropologists, he opens a path for us to lose ourselves in: biographies of adventurers and natives follow one another, overviews of maps and archives, zoological chronicles in hostile terrain, and more. Orinoco is neither a novel nor a travelogue. It deals less with the source of the river than with that of the books that have recounted the river—and made it an inexhaustible metaphor. Here, it is language that is questioned and literature that finds itself shaken in its pretensions.