Felisberto, el "naïf"

"Felisberto, el 'naïf'"
by Juan Carlos Onetti
Spain, 1975

Onetti's book talk--I hesitate to call it criticism--almost always strikes me as hurried but loaded with insight with the caveat that "loaded with insight" sometimes means accompanied by the perfect anecdote.  Here's a good example of one such piece I've been wanting to share for a while. "Felisberto Hernández fue uno de los más importantes escritores de su país" ["Felisberto Hernández was one of the most important writers in his country"], he begins.  "Muy poco conocido en España --según estoy comprobando--.  Esto no debe preocupar, cuanto la ignorancia de su obra es también comprobable en el Uruguay" ["Hardly known in Spain--as I'm finding out.  This needn't concern us insofar as the ignorance of his work is also ascertainable in Uruguay"].  After this set-up, Onetti suggests that "factores políticos" ["political factors"] might have had something to do with his fellow Uruguayan's lack of celebrity because "Felisberto --siempre se le llamó así-- era conservador, hombre de extrema derecha" ["Felisberto--as he was always called--was a conservative, a man of the far right"] taken to arguing out loud about politics in gatherings during World War II and its aftermath. Although Onetti is quick to make clear that it's Felisberto the writer rather than "Felisberto político" ["political Felisberto"] who interests us here, he adds that an anecdote or two which will help us to understand Felisberto better or to reassess him are on the other hand fair game.  Unsurprisingly, this is where things start to get good.  Onetti reveals that he first met Felisberto early on at a time when his countryman was so lacking in confidence about the "pequeños libros" ["little books"] that he'd published that he told Onetti he couldn't even think up new themes to pursue.  "En aquellos tiempos" ["In those days"], Onetti explains, "Felisberto se ganaba la vida golpeando pianos en ciudades o pueblos del interior de la república, acompañando a un recitador de poemas.  Es fácil imaginar sus públicos" ["Felisberto earned a living thumping pianos in the cities and small towns of Uruguay's interior, accompanying a reciter of poems.  It's easy to imagine their audiences"].  Given the musical subject matter of so much of Felisberto's output, Onetti then makes the rather startling claim that he suggested that Felisberto's piano tours through Uruguay's backwaters might make a good source of material, something which the piano man thanked him for but seemed undecided about, as if he weren't sure that Onetti wasn't putting him on or blowing him off.  Fast forwarding a bit, Onetti then recalls his first encounter with Felisberto the writer when, due to a friendship with one of the author's family members, he was able to get his hands on one of Felisberto's hard to find earliest books, 1931's La envenenada: "Digo libro generosamente: había sido impreso en alguno de los agujeros donde Felisberto pulsaba pianos que ya venían desafinados desde su origen.  El papel era el que se usa para la venta de fideos; la impresión, tipográfica, estaba lista para ganar cualquier curso de fe de erratas; el cosido había sido hecho con recortes de alambrado.  Pero el libro, apenas un cuento, me deslumbró" ["I say book generously: it had been printed in one of the holes where Felisberto played pianos that were permanently out of tune.  The paper was the kind that was used to sell pasta in; the printing was fit to win a typo contest; the binding had been stitched with pieces of wire.  But the book, barely a short story, amazed me"].  Why?  "Porque el autor no se parecía a nadie que yo conociera... Y era díficil --e inútil-- encontrar allí lo que llamamos literatura, estilo o técnica" ["Because the author didn't seem like anyone else I knew... And it was difficult--and useless--to find what we'd call literature, style or technique there"].  In much of what follows, Onetti traces his subject's later trajectory in pursuit of the idea that "Felisberto, sabiéndolo o no, perseguía el malentendido llamado fama" ["Felisberto, knowingly or not, was pursuing the misunderstanding called fame"].  Contrasting the quality of 1942's Por los tiempos de Clemente Calling [Around the Time of Clemente Calling] with 1960's La casa inundada [The Flooded House], Onetti casts the latter as a stylistically inferior example of the author's deliberate attempt to "conservar la pureza, la sinceridad de sus primeros libros" ["preserve the purity, the sincerity of his first books"] given the so-called "naïfismo" ["naiveté-ism"] for which he'd become known among a small but vocal circle of friends and admirers.  Onetti ends his appreciation with an unhurried and unexpectedy corrosive critical double whammy first saying that his personal admiration for Felisberto's work on balance still remains strong "pese a los avatares mencionados" ["in spite of the ups and downs mentioned"] and then attributing a couple of mischievous references to Felisberto's late life morbid obesity and string of broken marriages as a "homenaje al malhumor de Sainte-Beuve, que estropeaba cada lunes el apetito de los Goncourt y sostenía que era imposible hacer buena crítica sin conocer la vida íntima de cada víctima" ["homage to the ill humor of Sainte-Beuve, who ruined the Goncourt brothers' appetites each Monday and maintained that it was impossible to give a good review without knowing the private life of each victim"].  Ouch!

Felisberto Hernández (1902-1964, top) & Juan Carlos Onetti (1909-1994, here pictured in Madrid in 1975 in a photo by Dolly Onetti, bottom)

*

"Felisberto, el 'naïf'" can be found on pp. 532-535 of Onetti's Obras Completas III.  Cuentos, artículos y miscelánea (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2009).

El balcón

"El balcón"
by Felisberto Hernández
Uruguay, 1945

Impromptu Felisberto Hernández Week continues with two stories--or rather a short story and an anecdote.  Do I know how to work a crowd or what?  In "El balcón" ["The Balcony," readily available to non-Spanish speaking hipsters in the anthology Piano Stories], the usual Felisberto-style narrator--an unnamed piano player on tour in the provinces--gets into the usual Felisberto-style scrape--he charms a lonely, bad poetry-reciting shut-in who then has to choose between the piano player and her beloved balcony, with whom she seems to share an, ahem, unnaturally close relationship--with the usual improbably entertaining results.  How do you say "WTF" in Spanish, you ask?  Good question.  However, for our purposes, the more salient question is this: how could Felisberto have ever managed to pull off such a preposterous premise?  Three possible answers: Moxie.  A fine sense of humor.  More moxie.  I mean, it certainly doesn't hurt that Felisberto's unusual way of regarding inanimate objects as if they were endowed with life ("Contra la pared que recibía menos luz había recostado un pequeño piano abierto, su gran sonrisa amarillenta parecía ingenua" ["Backed against the darkest wall of the room was a small open piano.  Its big yellowish smile looked innocent"]) (97 in Spanish, 56 in Luis Harss' English translation) seems so natural, seems so right in context.  Still, how can I logically explain the childish delight of a story whose emotional payoff transports me back to the days when I was a seven- or an eight-year old kid happily placing coins into an organ-grinder's monkey's tiny, greedy, and last but not least nattily-attired hands?  It's almost illogical, I tell you!  On the anecdotal front, Norah Giraldi de Dei Cas, whose slender 1975 critical biography of the author (Felisberto Hernández: del creador al hombre) promises to help me extend Impromptu Felisberto Hernández Week indefinitely should I only choose to, shares an interesting tidbit about Felisberto's autobiographical novella Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling [Around the Time of Clemente Colling in its English incarnation].  At the beginning of this work, the narrator--another piano player but this time an undisguised version of Felisberto himself--makes reference to a house in his childhood neighborhood in which a madman lived.  The madman, while a minor character in the grand scheme of things, is a memorable one: he'd go down into a well to read when he didn't want to be disturbed, he lived in a room that had a "window" painted on to the wall of the house instead of having a regular glass window, etc.  As Giraldi de Dei Cas explains it, this character was based on a real person from Felisberto's childhood whose sisters (also mentioned in the novella) had dug him a well so that he could study in peace when he was in a better place in terms of his mental illness.  Not sure whether the painted-on window was a factual or an artistic touch, but it tickles me to learn that some elements of Felisberto's real life were just as fantastic or at least out of the ordinary as the ones that figure prominently in his stories.

Sources

"El balcón," often anthologized in both Spanish and English, appears on pp. 95-110 of FH's Las Hortensias y otros relatos (Buenos Aires: El cuenco de plata, 2009).  "The Balcony," as translated by Luis Harss, appears on pp. 53-68 of FH's Piano Stories (New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1993).  The Norah Giraldi de Dei Cas anecdote comes from p. 33 of her study, Felisberto Hernández: del creador al hombre (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1975).

Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling

Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling (Eterna Cadencia Editora, 2009)
por Felisberto Hernández
Uruguay, 1942

Poco a poco (o mejor dicho, novela corta tras novela corta), estoy enamorándome de la obra genial e idiosyncrásica de Felisberto Hernández.  A diferencia de la divertidamente demente Las Hortensias de 1949, la más temprana Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling es una íntima obra autobiográfica que es lijeramente proustiana y matizada de nostalgia por la Montevideo de la infancia del escritor.  En aquél entonces (o sea de los años 1915-1925), el narrador, como el Felisberto de carne y hueso, estudiaba piano y armonía con un tal Clemente Colling, un maestro de piano francés que era ciego y tuerto además de ser, al parecer, todo un personaje: un hombre de "grandes virtudes y poca higiene" como se dice en algún momento (81).  En todo caso, la memoria de Colling en su turno provoca la reaparición de otros recuerdos vinculados a  la niñez del narrador, recuerdos que, algunos cargados de tristeza, "empiezan a bajar lentamente, de las telas que han hecho en los rincones predilectos de la infancia" (25).  ¿Ligeramente proustiana?  Sí, pero en vez de un parlanchín llamado Marcel hablando de la aristocracia parisiense, se trata de un parlanchín llamado Felisberto hablando de la gente que pertenece a su barrio montevideano humilde.  Aquí hay de todo para todos.  Hay una serie de anécdotas, narradas con evidente ternura y gracia, sobre los vecinos y los familiares.  Por ejemplo: la de las tres "longevas" que tenían un loro disecado, muy querido en su vida, en su casa, "a quien ellas hablaban como si estuviera vivo.  La que cocinaba imitaba su voz, como lo haría un ventrílocuo y contestaba por él" (33).  O: la de la tía Petrona, una persona generosa sino burlona con "cierto matiz brutal", que "tomaba con dos dedos un sapo y lo levantaba hasta mostrar la barriga blanca.  Yo tenía miedo porque ella misma me había dicho que soltaban un fuerte chorro de orín, que daba en los ojos y que dejaba ciego" (38).  O: la de la niña vidente que, al visitar al Instituto de Ciegos "y que viendo a las niñas ciegas", decidió que "ella también quería ser ciega" y se echó jabón en los ojos a las risas de los demás (51).  Hay lindas descripciones "auténticas" de la época: "El lazarillo esperaba con tanta inmovilidad como el perro de los discos Víctor que escuchaba la voz del amo" (88-89).  Hay otras descripciones inesperadamente desconcertantes:  "Mirando al escenario, sentí de pronto aquel silencio como si fuera el de un velorio.  El gran piano era todo blanco.  Los pianos negros nunca me sugirieron nada fúnebre; pero aquel piano blanco tenía algo de velorio infantil" (45).  Por supuesto, hay muchas reflexiones sobre la vida artística y algunas sobre cómo narrar el pasado también.  En cuanto a Colling, un tipo raro que no se bañaba con frecuencia, dormía con los zapatos puestos, y tenía que mudarse de conventillo a conventillo cada cuando a causa de su penuria extrema, me gustó cómo el retrato de él que emergió de las sombras era tan cariñosamente esbozado e incluso fidedigno a la vez: como si, en las palabras del narrador cuando menciona una anécdota del ciego, era escrito "de manera que tenía posibilidades de ser cierta" (73).

Fuente

Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling, una novela corta publicada en Uruguay en 1942, aparece en los Cuentos reunidos de Felisberto Hernández con prólogo de Elvio E. Gandolfo (Buenos Aires: Eterna Cadencia Editora, 2009, 17-93).

Las Hortensias

Las Hortensias (El cuenco de plata, 2009)
by Felisberto Hernández
Uruguay, 1949

Man, I sure wish all my César Aira-loving friends could/would read this unpredictable, insanely entertaining and way over the top pre-Aira example of "delirious realism" from the Uruguayan master blaster Felisberto Hernández (above, 1902-1964).  Pure genius!  You see, the novella Las Hortensias, available in English as The Daisy Dolls, finds the Río de la Plata cult icon Felisberto walking the glistening knife edge between downright hilarious and outright creepy throughout his nearly 60-page account of eccentric married man Horacio's infatuation with his impressive collection of just slightly larger than life-sized dolls.  While Horacio's longsuffering wife María Hortensia is enough of a good sport at the outset to prepare various "surprises" for her husband involving the dolls, helps her man stage his after dinner exhibitions of the dolls in various poses behind glass display cases (the guests try and guess what the "adventure" is about before reading the description of the scene that's been prepared by Horacio and his helpers), and even encourages Horacio to kiss a new doll that's a lookalike of her for laughs ("Él sentía por Hortensia la antipatía que podía provocar un sucedáneo.  La piel era de cabritilla...él se disponía a hacerlo pensando que iba a sentir gusto a cuero o que iba a besar un zapato" ["He felt the aversion toward Hortensia that only a substitute for the real thing could provoke.  Her skin was made of kidskin...he prepared to do it thinking that he was going to experience the taste of leather or that he was going to kiss a shoe"]) (27, ellipses added), things begin to take a turn for the worse after Horacio increasingly takes more interest in the new "Hortensia" than the suddenly somewhat boring María Hortensia.  The latter eventually becomes extremely jealous of Hortensia and Horacio's other manufactured playmates, and the non-human Hortensia is stabbed to death so to speak not once but twice.  While all this would probably just make for a strange or a disturbing tale in less talented hands, Felisberto--a silent movie pianist and an itinerant concert musician by trade--is nothing if not a consummate showman and a sort of bohemian bon vivant as a writer.  His humor, for example, comes served in frisky, friskier, and friskiest highball glasses as in the scenes where 1) Horacio asks the dollmaker Facundo to modify Hortensia so as to make her more lifelike in regard to her "calor humano" ["human warmth"]: "Además me gustaría que ella no fuera tan dura, que al tomarla se tuviera una sensacíon más agradable..." ["Also, I'd like it if she weren't so stiff, so that it'd be more pleasant when taking her into my arms"] (31); 2) Horacio, separated from María but believing that she'll return, decides to take advantage of her temporary absence upon discovering a new doll--"una rubia divina" ["a divine blonde"]--at Facundo's: "Horacio pensó, en el primer instante, ponerle un apartamento; pero ahora se le ocurría otra cosa; la traería a su casa y la pondría en la vitrina de las que esperaban colocación.  Después que todos se acostaran el la llevaría al dormitorio; y antes que se levantaran la colocaría de nuevo en la vitrina.  Por otra parte él esperaba que María no volvería a su casa en altas horas de la noche" ["Horacio thought, at first, about setting her up in an apartment, but now another idea occurred to him.  He would bring her to his house and put her in the display case of the dolls that were awaiting a permanent location.  Then, after everybody went to bed, he'd bring her up to his bedroom and put her back again before everybody woke up.  Besides, he was hoping that María wouldn't return home at such a late hour in the night"](49-50); and 3) when María finally decides to divorce Horacio after reading this newspaper article about the sudden popularity of Facundo's Hortensia dolls (59):

 "En el último piso de la tienda La Primavera, se hará una gran exposición y se dice que algunas de las muñecas que vestirán los últimos modelos serán Hortensias.  Esta noticia coincide con el ingreso de Facundo, el fabricante de las famosas muñecas, a la firma comercial de dicha tienda.  Vemos alarmados cómo esta nueva falsificación del pecado original  --de la que ya hemos hablado en otras ediciones-- se abre paso en nuestro mundo.  He aquí uno de los volantes de propaganda, sorprendidos en uno de nuestros principales clubes: ¿Es usted feo?  No se preocupe.  ¿Es usted tímido?  No se preocupe.  En una Hortensia tendrá usted un amor silencioso, sin riñas, sin presupuestos agobiantes, sin comadronas".

["There will be a grand exposition on the top floor of the La Primavera store, and it is said that some of the dolls that will be sporting the latest styles will be Hortensias.  This news coincides with the admission of Facundo, the manufacturer of the famous dolls, into the said store's commercial concern.  We are alarmed to see how this new falsification of the original sin--which we already have spoken about in other editions--is making new inroads into our world.  I have here one of the advertising flyers, discovered by chance in one of our major clubs: Are you ugly?  Don't worry.  Are you shy?  Don't worry.  With a Hortensia, you will enjoy a silent love without quarrels, without worrisome expenses, without midwives."]

For brevity's sake, I'll have to pass over the gag about the shy man who purchases what's practically the sister-in-law doll of Horacio's new favorite and the bit about the Hortensia love nest that Horacio eventually sets up elsewhere.  Beyond the salacious humor, though, there's a lively unpredictability to the writing in Las Hortensias that's just totally engaging.  Seemingly fantastic scenes where Horacio kisses the dolls and the dolls seem to move in response, for example, are counterbalanced by others where the dolls seem to sit in silent judgement of him.  "Después empezó a encontrar, en las caras de las muñecas, expresiones parecidas a las de sus empleadas: algunas le inspiraban la misma desconfianza; y otras, la seguridad de que estaban contra él; había una, de nariz respingada, que parecía decir: 'Y a mí qué me importa'" ["He later began to find expressions in the faces of the dolls similar to those of his female employees: some inspired the same sense of mistrust and others the certainty that they were against him.  There was one, with her snooty nose, who seemed to be saying: 'And what do I care about that?'"] (29).  Philosophical thoughts about whether spirits can descend into the bodies of dolls just as ghosts can haunt houses occupy Horacio here and there, but too much drinking, his phobias about mirrors and evil omens, and the possible onset of madness ground the character's concerns regarding inanimate objects in ways that rationalists won't object to.  On the storytelling level, there's the presence of anecdotes like this--"La gente de los alrededores había hecho una leyenda en la cual acusaban al matrimonio de haber dejado morir a una hermana de María para quedarse con su dinero; entonces habían decidido expiar su falta haciendo vivir con ellos a una muñeca que, siendo igual a la difunta, les recordara a cada instante el delito" ["The people in the neighborhood had fabricated a legend in which they accused the couple of having let a sister of María's die so they could keep her money.  Then, the couple had decided to expiate their guilt by letting a doll live with them who looked exactly like the dead woman, so that they would be reminded of their crime at all times"] (30)--and descriptions like this--"Pero en la noche, después de cenar, fue al salón y le pareció que el piano era un gran ataúd y que el silencio velaba a una música que había muerto hacía poco tiempo" ["But in the evening, after having dinner, he went to the salon and it seemed like the piano was a giant coffin and that the silence kept vigil over a piece of music that had died not too long ago" (55).  To end on a less depressing note, I should probably mention that the great irony of all this is that Las Hortensias was supposedly written for and dedicated to the second of Felisberto's eight wives as a wedding gift.  She, apparently unbeknownst to him, was reportedly a KGB spy, and yet there's an otherwise insignificant scene in the story in which Horacio asks his Russian servant what he thinks of his latest doll: "Muy hermosa, señor.  Se parece mucho a una espía que conocí en la guerra" ["Very beautiful, sir.  She looks quite a bit like a spy I met in the war"] (57).

Illustration from the first standalone edition of Las Hortensias:

"A María Luisa" ["To María Luisa"], it says in type, "en el día que dejó de ser mi novia: 14-11-49 Felisberto" ["on the day that she stopped being my girlfriend: 14-11-49 Felisberto"], it concludes by hand.

Source

This novella, the formal kickoff to my 2014 short story of the week project in which I intend to alternate short stories and novellas of my own choosing with the suggestions that various readers left me on this post here last year, can be found on pages 17-74 of Felisberto Hernández's Las Hortensias y otros relatos (Buenos Aires: El cuenco de plata, 2009).  The English version of The Daisy Dolls, translated from the Spanish by Luis Harss (whom some of you might remember from this post on João Guimarães Rosa), is available in the Felisberto anthology Piano Stories, which was just reissued by New Directions last week if I'm not mistaken.  Edit: Rise of the great in lieu of a field guide just reminded me that he actually wrote about Harss' translation of The Daisy Dolls in a post on the Masterworks of Latin American Short Fiction: Eight Novellas anthology (Harper Collins, 1996) almost two years ago.  Click on the link for a particularly juicy post from Rise and a mouthwatering discussion of what other titles people think deserve to be added to the list.

For more on Felisberto's second wife in Spanish, see Alicia Dujovne Ortiz's "Felisberto Hernández y la espía soviética" linked at Los Grandes de la Literatura Rioplatense blog here.