A great fairy novel, the equally great Michael Ende, the author of "The Neverending Story", one of those novels where you wonder if the term "Fiction for Children" is indeed reductionist (and it certainly is).
Ende tackles one of the most difficult of philosophical arguments of all time: The time. But it does with the simplicity of a young girl and how the simplest things are the end, the deeper and more complicated things only reveal the confusion and contradictions of life rather than the complexity of the soul.
The implicit question that Ende shows through the characters of the story is "Why, in spite we run more and do everything to" save time ", doing more things in the shortest possible time and faster time, us, we have less and less? " .
And I'm sorry if it is little! A universal philosophical dilemma, which starts and ends in Seneca Nietzsche!
It 's the contradiction the modern, or, to quote Nietzsche, nihilism is generated by the triumph of technology on man and the divine.
A book that children should advise their parents always busy and out of breath.
And if the great, dear boys, were to answer that have little time to read, then you'll have to read ... the evening before going to bed, turning off their TV (the real, to quote Karl Popper, "thief of time" ! [ K. Popper, bad teacher television ])
Finally, I propose again the riddle in the book: In a house
there standard three brothers who
sometimes they are ugly and sometimes beautiful.
They are really different from each other.
But if you'll try to distinguish
alike will find them identical.
The first because there is coming.
The second is because there is no way out.
There is only the third, the youngest of three,
but there are others where the third is not.
And this country on which I spread my
exists only because the second
the first turns, dying. If you then look at the
want one of the other brothers will see.
Tell me, baby, the three are one?
or just two? - Or neither?
If their name you'll find three great kings
remembers.
They rule with a large kingdom
and they themselves are the great kingdom
and are equal in the great kingdom. "
will find the solution in the book!
From the back cover: "Among the ruins of an amphitheater on the edge of a big city, finds refuge a strange girl, who escaped from the orphanage does not even know their age. The people in the area, who watch intrigued, he says his name was Momo. Before long the little girl wins the trust and sympathy of all, anyone with a problem that goes from Momo gives advice and does not comment, only to listen with such intensity that the other person is alone the answer to his questions. One day the agents of a so-called Savings Time is also present in the microcosm consists of Momo and his friends. All falling into the trap of the "Grey Lady", and Momo is facing the situation alone ... "
reviewer of" The Index "(card Levi Montalcini, A., Index 1985, No. 1 ) "Living consumes time but retains the quality of life, save time off the life and destroys it over time. Ende tells the tale of the ancient conflict between life and death in a more subtle and modern: a Momo, the child can listen so much to hear and then hear the music, the silences and the adventures of the inner life, oppose Messrs Gray, foggy, cold and insinuating that can transform life into an empty and meaningless repetitive and the human heart in a sterile and noisy. Momo's fight against the Grey Lady comes to life with continuous inventions: the wandering vortex which creates the storms, the turtle Cassiopeia that predict the future, but only for the next half hour, the room clocks Maltro Hora, the keeper of time and place where the dream of spring and come the hour. The wealth of images compensates for the rare moments in which the conflict can not draw from the fairy size. "
M. Ende, Momo, 1984 Longanesi
