The Pole

Written by J.M. Coetzee

Narrated by Colin Mace

An indelible tale of life, love, death, and Chopin—from the Novel Prize–winning author of Disgrace.

Renowned for his sparse yet powerful prose, J. M. Coetzee is unquestionably among the most influential—and provocative—authors of our time. With characteristic insight and a “brittle wit that forces our attention on the common terrors we don’t want to think about” (Ron Charles, Washington Post), Coetzee here challenges us to interrogate our preconceptions not only of love, but of truth itself.

Exacting yet unpredictable, pithy yet complex, Coetzee’s The Pole tells the story of Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a vigorous, extravagantly white-haired pianist and interpreter of Chopin who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, a stylish Spanish patron of the arts, after she helps organize his concert in Barcelona. Although Beatriz, a married woman, is initially unimpressed by Wittold and his “gleaming dentures,” she soon finds herself pursued and ineluctably swept into his world. As the journeyman performer sends her countless letters, extends invitations to travel, and even visits her husband’s summer home in Mallorca, their unlikely relationship blossoms, though only on Beatriz’s terms.

The power struggle between them intensifies, eventually escalating into a fullfledged battle of the sexes. But is it Beatriz who limits their passion by paralyzing her emotions? Or is it Wittold, the old man at his typewriter, trying to force intolife his dream of love? Reinventing the all-encompassing love of the poet Dante for his Beatrice, Coetzee exposes the fundamentally enigmatic nature of romance, showing how a chance meeting between strangers—even “a Pole, a man of seventy, a vigorous seventy,” and a stultified “banker’s wife who occupies her days in good works”—can suddenly change everything.

Reminiscent of James Joyce’s “The Dead” in its exploration of love and loss, The Pole, with lean prose and surprising feints, is a haunting work, evoking the “inexhaustible palette of sensations, from blind love to compassion” (Berna González Harbour, El País) typical of Coetzee’s finest novels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890590930

J.M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee nació en 1940 en Ciudad del Cabo, Sudáfrica. Allí se crió y más tarde cursó estudios universitarios para luego irse a la Universidad de Austin, Texas, y doctorarse en Literatura. En 1972 volvió a Sudáfrica, y desde entonces es profesor en la Universidad de Ciudad del Cabo, además de traductor, lingüista, crítico literario y, sin duda, uno de los escritores más importantes de Sudáfrica. Premio Nobel de Literatura en 2003, ha sido galardonado también, entre otros, con el prestigioso premio Booker, que ganó en dos ocasiones, por Vida y época de Michael K y Desgracia. Asimismo, fue distinguido en España con los premios Llibreter (2003) y Reino de Redonda (2001), creado por el escritor Javier Marías. Otros títulos en Literatura Random House son Infancia, Juventud, Elizabeth Costello, Hombre lento, Diario de un mal año, Escenas de una vida provinciana, En medio de ninguna parte y Siete cuentos morales. La muerte de Jesús es la tercera novela de la saga iniciada con La infancia de Jesús (2013), y Los días de Jesús en la escuela (2017), la continuación de aquella. También ha publicado varios libros de ensayo, entre los que se destacan Contra la censura, Costas extrañas y la correspondencia mantenida con Paul Auster, Aquí y ahora.

Reviews for The Pole

[jamey oneal · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ah.The Pole. Audiobook. I enjoyed the narrator very much. He embodied the Pole perfectly and did an amazing job on the icy, controlled Beatriz.
This is a romance for people who intellectualize romance. Sometimes that's considered a cold way of loving, but, among certain people, it's so compelling, deep, and warm, but covered by a sheet of ice. The Pole, an absolute mess who finds himself pursuing the stylish Beatriz, who sisn't even a fan of his artistry, is indeed a romantic, but so is Beatriz, and he can see it in her. Their devotion to each other in a doomed romance is actually touching, even if it lacks the usual trappings. The prose is spare and elegant. Never too much, yet not lacking.

This is not a novel for everyone. It;s sparseness and lonely feeling can read dry and distant as other have commented. If, however, you can find beauty is that. you will enjoy this lovely novel.

[Mariam Shah-Rais · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this well-written book, although I think it is better to read than listen to it. The short chapters and the announcement of the chapter numbers make it sound too mechanical. I also cringed at the narrator’s pronunciation of Haydn’ name. It is a simple story of love, expectation, vanity, loneliness, and hope for love when faced with mortality.

[Mary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Too dry, distant, removed….like so many men, erudite or not….so tiring.

[Mary Luttrell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very engaging and well written. Moving. I highly recommend it.

[Elizabeth Maness · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very short novel, or a very long short story? Moments of two lives that cross at a time when both souls needed nourishing, both feeding that which was lacking for them. A story of mature love, or was it an affair? Beautifully written, with sparse scenes that tell just what needs to be said.

[castlelass · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wittold is a seventy-something Polish pianist who plays a concert in Barcelona, and “falls in love” with his forty-nine-year-old hostess, Beatriz, who has dinner with him after the performance. He stays in contact, but she seems uninterested. She has an affair with him seemingly out of pity (or boredom or lack of excitement) in her life. I have enjoyed other works by this author, and the writing in this one is quite good, but there is no chemistry between these two, and how he supposedly “fell in love” in an evening did not seem realistic. Perhaps he was seeking a muse in his older years? Perhaps she was acting without thinking things through? I assume it is about one-sided “love,” (which I’m not sure can even be considered love), but I found it rather dull.

[vive_livre · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Everything I've ever read from Coetzee has been good. It's interesting to read a novel largely populated with old people. It's short, yet also somewhat unsatisfying in that most of the interesting things happen "off camera". Both characters are somewhat cold and unappealing nonetheless, it does have humor throughout.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As usual with Coetzee, a book that seems to have more to it than appears on the surface. Beatriz, a middle-aged bourgeois lady who’s active in cultural activities in Barcelona, is asked to entertain the distinguished Polish pianist Witold after a concert. Their encounter is mildly interesting for her, but seems to have been life-changing for the elderly musician. He pursues her, she has a brief fling with him against her better judgment (on Mallorca, as is traditional with Polish pianists), and then she forgets the whole thing until she hears of his death, many years later. When things start to get complicated again.

Naturally, as well as the obvious story about the asymmetry of love in the real world, and the lost-in-translation thing about people who communicate in different languages and different media, there is a Chopin story going on here, and lots of Dante allusions, not to mention Orpheus and Cupid-and-Psyche. And all kinds of other deep stuff. Presumably the reason Coetzee writes short books is that he expects you to read them at least three times before you can pin him down…

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Coetzee gives us a tango between Witold, an aging artist, and Beatriz, a middle-aged woman in a loveless marriage. Though the writing is spare, it carries a lot of weight. In this novel of ideas, Coetzee’s themes range broadly. They include love, commitment, family, art, literature, aging, loneliness, language, longing, delusion, sex, etc., etc. Most of these ideas Coetzee approaches obliquely, leaving much unsaid.

Beatriz presents as the consummate realist, while Witold is the ultimate romantic. While I found Beatriz to be credible, Witold seemed to be too fanciful to be believed. She responds positively to his attentions but finds them lacking in subtlety and never responds coquettishly. Witold, on the other hand, seems to have fallen head-over-heels for her following a dinner that they had with an elderly couple, no less. I found the life-altering nature of this brief encounter to be pretty far-fetched and it spoiled a lot of what followed for me.

[maryreinert · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Pole is a 75 year old Polish concert pianist who travels to Spain for a concert where he meets Beatrice, a much younger woman who acts as host. The story is told from the viewpoint of Beatrice in short snippets. After the concert and their dinner, Beatrice receives an email from the Pole (with an unpronounceable name) that he wants to meet her again and implies his deep love for her. The story spans a few years of emails and a weekend spent together where he does find their bed. The narrator Beatrice has been married for some time, is worldly with no illusions about love.

The Pole finally dies and leaves Beatrice some unpublished poetry written in Polish. Strange book, but one that I admit I kept at just to see the outcome. I think there is probably some deep message about love and who deserves love and who returns it.

[dwcofer_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a beautiful and emotional story of the love between Wittold, a 70 year old Polish pianist and Beatrice, a 50 year old woman he meets by chance. Wittold falls in love with Beatrice despite the fact that she lives in Barcelona and he in Poland. Unfortunately, Beatrice’s feelings for Wittold are not as strong Wittold’s feeling for her. This is a love story, and a story of unrequited love.

The do eventually meet up alone for a week, a week in which Wittold will never forget. Shortly before his death, he writes a series of poems reflecting his love and admiration for Beatrice, which he leaves to her after his death. The poems are written in Polish, which Beatrice has to have translated.

The book is very short, about 166 pages and each chapter is broken down into extremely short segments. The entire book can be read in a single sitting, if desired. But the story is one you may never forget for the remainder of your life. I will be reading more of Coetzee’s works.

[Pike Bishop · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Master Coetzee presents us with a story of "love among the ruins" between Witold, a seventy-year-old Polish pianist, and Beatriz, a nearly fifty-year-old married woman from Barcelona with two children. The affair oscillates between The Divine Comedy (Dante and Beatrice) and the music of Chopin, of which Witold is a renowned interpreter.

A low-key, measured love story, written with clean prose, and whose omniscient narrator has a delicate, almost feminine tone.

Certain passages of this short novel (no more than 100 pages) still carry the strength and sobriety of Coetzee's classic pieces (Disgrace, The Master of Petersburg, Age of Iron) that never veer off course, always provide tension, but never aim to take the reader to the brink of tears. This novel has much in common with Slow Man, as it is also a study of aging, and with Elizabeth Costello, from which Coetzee reflects on the hereafter, that is, the beyond.

The novella concludes with a posthumous translation into Spanish of some poems written by Witold in Polish and dedicated to Beatriz, along with letters that Beatriz writes to the deceased Witold that she may read in the afterlife.

If this novel is the testament of Master Coetzee (82 years old when he published it), it will be a significant closure to the narrative cycle of one of the greatest contemporary novelists in English.

I must point out that since the publication of The Childhood of Jesus (2013), Coetzee initially publishes in Spanish with the publishing house El hilo de Ariadna in Argentina, and after some time, the original edition in English is released in the market. Coetzee explained that he is against the English language being the "governing language" of the world, and this is his very personal and particular way of protesting. (Translated from Spanish)

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After the concert, Beatriz asked the Polish pianist why Chopin lives on. The Pole responds, because he tells us about ourselves, desires which are sometimes not clear to us, or for that which we cannot have. Beatriz doesn’t not understand. The Pole knows he hasn’t the English to make himself clear; listen to the music, he advices.

And at the end of the dinner, the hosts of the concert say good-bye to the pianist who thanks Beatriz for her profound questions. “I will not forget,” he tells her.

The lady forgets the pianist, returns to her life. She and her husband lead separate lives, in separate bedrooms; it is a good marriage based on respect and secrets. She didn’t like the Pole’s interpretation of Chopin, didn’t care for him, but did like how he took her seriously. No one takes her seriously.

Beatriz is shocked to hear from the Pole, who sends her CDs of his Chopin, then invites her to join him where he is teaching. Beatriz is perplexed. She does not trust him but they met again. He tells her that she is his Beatrice to his Dante, and he will love her all his life. She is confused, she is nothing like what he imagines, she feels nothing towards this man. He is over seventy, she is in her forties. She is content with her settled life. He offers his undying love. She does not know what she wants. Perhaps she pities him.

This is a strange love story, one-sided and hobbled by not having a common language, by his inability to convey passion to her cool solitude. After the Pole’s death, Beatriz still is not able to escape his devotion, their dialogue continues.

We understand Beatriz’s perspective, so that the Pole appears awkward and clumsy, the antithesis of a fervent lover. He cannot woe her with words, and even his poems to her are translated by a non-literary translator and lose their power. His Chopin interpretation had left her cold, for the music did not transport her, had no romanticism. He insists on his eternal love, which he can never fully express; even his aging body is against him.

A surprising, haunting, short novel.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

[maydacat_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This pianist from Poland, known as “The Pole,” says he is a man who plays the piano, disliking the term “pianist.” He goes to play a concert in Spain, where he meets a woman who is part of the group that brought him to Spain. She goes to the concert, and finds that she doesn’t like his interpretations of Chopin. Though more than two decades older than she, he is drawn to her, and she, though married, is struck by his attentions. She informs her husband of the attention the Pole is paying her, but she, of course, will reject him. And, of course, she doesn’t. And though the back cover of the book says “The Pole” evokes the inexhaustible palette of sensations, from blind love to compassion,” I found it devoid of any emotion. Though music and love are emotional concepts, and both are passionate in their expressions, and thus should have been great source material for a novel about music and love, this has to to be one of driest and most passionless novels I have encountered. And though the book cover praises the author and his writing, I find little to commend this story.