Mimoso

"Mimoso"
by Silvina Ocampo
Argentina, 1959

Alfajores Havanna or Cachafaz?*  Whatever, it's now time for the dessert & coffee portion of Spanish and Portuguese Lit Months 2018 at long last!  "Mimoso" ["Affectionate"], a four page-long morsel from "Silvina is a Borges" Ocampo's 1959 La furia which brings unwanted attention to that previously innocent term "animal lover," is the giddily effed-up taste treat in question--a morally dubious tale about a woman who so loves her dog Mimoso that she decides to embalm him after his passing only to eventually arouse the suspicions of her neighbors.  Ocampo's peculiar sense of humor is clearly the dulce de leche filling of our alfajor argentino with the cookie-like descriptions of 1) the pet owner Mercedes--"Con su tejido en la mano esperaba como Penélope, tejiendo, la llegada del perro embalsado" ["With her fabric in hand, she awaited the arrival of the embalmed dog like Penelope, weaving away"]; 2) the now glass-eyed Mimoso himself--"Nunca había parecido de mejor salud...lo único que le faltaba era hablar" ["He had never seemed in better health...the only thing that was lacking was that he couldn't talk"]; 3) and in particular Mercedes' reaction to the new and improved, "bien peinado y lustroso" ["well-groomed and shiny"] post-embalming Mimoso--"Ese perro muerto la acompañaría como la había acompañado el mismo perro vivo, la defendería de los ladrones y de la soledad.  Le acarició la cabeza con la punta de los dedos y cuando creyó que el marido no la miraba, le dio un beso furtivo" ["That dead dog would accompany her just as the same dog had done in life, he'd defend her from thieves and loneliness.  She stroked his head with the tips of her fingers, and when she thought her husband wasn't looking, she gave Mimoso a furtive kiss"]--all leading to uncomfortable laughter.  To help wash this all down, I will avoid all mention of the gross-out ending and will instead propose a lágrima** for all #Spanishandportugueselitmonths readers who are so inclined in honor of one Jorge Luis Borges' almost tearful response to this story: "Borges lo odiaba" ["Borges hated it"], Mariana Enriquez writes in her recent must read Ocampo bio, "siempre le pedía a Silvina que no lo incluyera en sus recopilaciones" ["he would always ask Silvina to leave it out of her anthologies"].  Mmm, alfajores.

*The correct answer, of course, is "both!"
**If curious, please see "A Buenos Aires Coffee Guide (with pictures)" for a handy primer.  Nature of primer: thirst-inducing.

Source

"Mimoso" appears on pages 197-200 of Silvina Ocampo's

Cuentos completos I (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1999).  Author photo: Sara Facio.

La hermana menor. Un retrato de Silvina Ocampo

La hermana menor.  Un retrato de Silvina Ocampo (Anagrama ebook, 2018)
by Mariana Enriquez
Argentina, 2014

An absolutely stupendous profile of Silvina Ocampo--during her lifetime (1903-1993), a critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful cipher famous for being the little sister of Victoria Ocampo, the wife of Adolfo Bioy Casares, the close friend of Jorge Luis Borges, and a person whom Mariana Enriquez refers to as  "una de las mujeres más ricas y extravagantes de la Argentina" ["one of the richest and most eccentric women in Argentina"] and "una de las escritoras más talentosas y extrañas de la literatura en español" ["one of the strangest and most talented writers in Spanish-language literature"].  Enriquez, who in an interview just out a few days ago admits that she's more an admirer of Ocampo's than a true fan ["es una escritora a la que admiraba más que ser fan"], still went out and did the fan-like dirty work of interviewing a number of Ocampo's surviving acquaintances--many of whom have since passed away.  She then paired those first-person testimonies with archival selections from the voluminous diaries, memoirs and other biographical material having to do with Ocampo and Bioy Casares that are already out there, resulting in a splendid read.  You want mostly good-natured literary gossip?  Multiple people attest to how the loud joking and outbursts of laughter from Bioy and his pal Borges audible from the next room would prompt Ocampo to ask dinner guests at her Buenos Aires home: "¿De qué se reirán esos dos idiotas?" ["What are those two idiots laughing about?"].  Prefer scandal?  Ocampo's rumored lesbianism or bisexuality and in particular the alleged love affairs between her and Alejandra Pizarnik and even her and Bioy Casares' mother receive some serious attention.  Some well-placed literary criticism more your cup of tea?  Enriquez, discussing the impact of the spoken word on many of the tales from 1959's La furia, notes the artistic advance in which "Silvina Ocampo, a diferencia de Borges y Bioy, y cerca de Cortázar y Manuel Puig, incorporaba a sus cuentos el habla coloquial rioplatense" ["Silvina Ocampo, unlike Borges and Bioy and more like Cortázar and Manuel Puig, incorporated colloquial Río de la Plata speech patterns into her short stories"].  On that note, I'll close by mentioning that La hermana menor also asks whether Ocampo, now a canonical writer, was undeservedly overshadowed by her two more famous male peers in her lifetime.  Her writer friend J.R. Wilcock, a fan of both Ocampo's and a really rabid fan of Borges', gave this answer at one point in time: "Silvina es un Borges, piensa y escribe como un hombre, es uno de los mejores escritores de la Argentina" ["Silvina is a Borges, she thinks and writes like a man, she's one of the best writers in Argentina"].  And Ernesto Schoo, a novelist and newspaper critic acquaintance of Ocampo's and one of the many people interviewed by Enriquez for this work, more politically correctly adds this: "Era un ser rarísimo y con una literatura que no se parece a nadie.  Muchos dicen: 'Es Borges con falda.'  Para mí es más interesante que Borges porque tiene pasión, tiene amor.  Borges es muy cerebral" ["She was a super odd person with a literature that didn't resemble anyone else's.  Many people say 'it’s Borges in a skirt.'  For me, it’s more interesting than Borges because it has passion, it has love.  Borges is very cerebral"].  In that recent interview, Enriquez says that she’d love to do a similar piece on Nick Cave someday.  I’d gladly read that book too.

Mariana Enriquez

Autobiografía de Irene

Autobiografía de Irene (Emecé Editores, 1999)
por Silvina Ocampo
Argentina, 1948

Autobiografía de Irene es el segundo de cuatro volúmenes de cuentos reunidos en la colección Cuentos completos I, de Silvina Ocampo, publicada por Emecé Editores en 1999.  Tengo muchas ganas de seguir el sendero Ocampo antes del fin del año con La furia, de 1959, y Las invitadas, de 1961, lo que no me dejaría mucho tiempo por la obra temprana Viaje olvidado, de 1937.  ¿Alguién sabe si valga la pena de intentarla?  En todo caso, Autobiografía de Irene me gustó mucho aunque tres de sus cinco cuentos no me impresionaran tanto.  Había leido el famosísimo cuento que da título a la colección hace años, por supuesto, pero me encantó más que nunca durante esta relectura.  Como un Ireneo Funes al revés saltando desde las páginas del cuento de Borges, Irene Andrade, la narradora de 25 años que es ya abatida por la vida, está afligida con una condición rara en que ella puede prever el futuro pero no puede acordarse del pasado (Irene/Ireno, ¿entendés?).  A sabiendas de que sus recuerdos solo van a regresar a ella cuando la hora anticipada de su muerte la acerque, Irene aprovecha del día decisivo para meditar sobre cómo pronosticó (y estaba en luto por) la muerte de su padre con tres meses de anticipo, cómo presenció una pelea de cuchillos que ella supo que iba a acabar con una herida fatal, cómo miró los niños que pasaban bajo su balcón con las caras que les pertenecerían como adultos, e incluso cómo trató de evitar de enamorarse porque anticipó como la vida de su pretendiente futuro acabaría violentemente.  ¿Los poderes de la claravidencia no tendrían sus recompensas?  No, no es así en el mundo de Irene donde, una rosa de papel en la mano, perfumada con la tristeza, ella dice que era feliz antes de la muerte de su padre  --"si es que existe la felicidad" (157).  A sentirse culpable por o haber provocado o, al menos, no haber hecho lo suficiente para evitar la muerte de sus amados, Irene confesa conmovedoramente cómo en vano anhelaba "la muerte, única depositaria de mis recuerdos" (160).  Una estructura narrativa circular (el cuento empieza con y acaba con las mismísimas palabras) y la llegada de una mujer desconocida (¿la doppelganger de la protagonista?) se complican las cosas: ¿ha muerto Irene al final o está la pobrecita encerrada en una especie de circuito cerrado metafísico sin fin con o sin su doble?  Magistral.  Si Autobiografía de Irene es claramente un cuento superior, ¿cómo debo evaluar el relato largo El impostor?  ¿Hay una nota de supermagistral?  Quizás el mejor (o al menos lo más jugoso) cuento que leí en 2013, El impostor tiene que ver con la visita de un tal Luis Maidana a la estancia Los Cisnes, ambiente gótico (en el mejor sentido) y lúgubre donde se encuentra con otro chico más o menos de la misma edad que se llama Armando Heredia, de quién se dice que es un mozo "medio loco" (98).  Heredia y su visitante se hacen amigos, pero según el diario del narrador Maidana la amistad de los muchachos está acompañada por tal medida de sospecha y de malentendidos que al final el lector se preguntará quién es el loco de verdad.  No quiero decir mucho más acerca del argumento por miedo de arruinar la historia para los demás, pero la relación entre los protagonistas es tan bien trazada en El impostor que lo leí dos veces en seguida para saborearlo de nuevo.  Es un éxito de estilo y de adrenalina y de violencia anticipada, puntuado por declaraciones extrañamente llamativas como "no soñar es como estar muerto" (106), "los animales son los sueños de la naturaleza" (113), y "vagué por la estancia, con la sensación de ser un fantasma que vive entre fantasmas" (119).  Muchachos, lo entiendo.  Cuentazo.

Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993)

Fuente

Autobiografía de Irene aparece en las páginas 81-165 de los

Cuentos completos I de Silvina Ocampo (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1999).

Silvina Ocampo x 3

"Autobiografía de Irene," "La furia" & "Las invitadas" (Emecé Editores, 2009)
by Silvina Ocampo
Argentina, 1948, 1959 & 1961

En la puerta de un almacén tuve que presenciar la pelea de dos hombres.  No quise ver el cuchillo secreto, no quise ver la sangre.  La lucha parecía un abrazo desesperado.  Se me antojó que la agonía de uno de ellos y el terror anhelante del otro eran la final reconcilación.  Sin poder borrar un instante la imagen atroz, tuve que presenciar la nítida muerte, la sangre que a los pocos días se mezcló con la tierra de la calle.

[In the doorway of a store, I had to witness a fight between two men.  I didn't want to see the hidden knife, I didn't want to see the blood.  The struggle resembled a desperate embrace.  I fancied that the agony of one of them and the longed for terror of the other was the final reconciliation.  Without being able to erase that dreadful image for one instant, I had to witness the spotless death, the blood which in a few days would be mixed with the street's earth.]

(Autobiografía de Irene, 158, w/my translation)

Given Silvina Ocampo's impeccable Buenos Aires cultural pedigree--she was, after all, the wife of Adolfo Bioy Casares, the close friend of Borges and J.R. Wilcock, and the youngest sister of Sur founder Victoria Ocampo--should she really be considered as an Argentinean Literature of Doomster alongside all those full-on freaks like Osvaldo Lamborghini and Néstor Perlongher?  That is, does she have the requisite street cred?  Judging by the three title tales from her 1948, 1959 and 1961 short story collections, I'd say that the answers are probably, a resounding yes, and maybe, just maybe respectively.  You, of course, are free to decide for yourself, hipster. "Autobiografía de Irene" ["Autobiography of Irene"] is prob. the most conventional of the three stories under consideration here, but it's really only conventional from a literature of the fantastic point of view: like a reverse Ireneo Funes from Borges' "Funes el memorioso," its weary 25-year old narrator Irene Andrade is afflicted with a strange condition in which she can see the future but can't remember the past (Irene/Ireneo, get it?).  Knowing that her memories will only return as the anticipated hour of her death approaches, Irene takes advantage of the fateful day to reflect on how she predicted and mourned her father's death a full three months in advance, witnessed a knife fight that she knew would end fatally, watched kids pass by her balcony on the way to school bearing the faces of the adults they would eventually become, and even avoided trying to meet her future boyfriend because she foresaw how his life would end as a result of a date with destiny with an oncoming train.  Wouldn't having clairvoyant powers have its compensations, though?  Not in Irene's world where, paper rose in hand, redolent of loss, she says that she was happy before her father's death--"si es que existe la felicidad" ["if, that is, happiness exists"] (157).  Feeling guilty for having caused or at least not having been able to do anything to prevent the death of her loved ones, she later adds how she fervently wished for "la muerte, única depositaria de mis recuerdos" ["death, sole repository of my memories"] (160).  A circular narrative structure (the story ends with the same words with which it begins) and the arrival of an unknown woman (Irene's doppelganger?) may lead the reader to question whether the narrator has finally died or is just stuck in a metaphysical endless loop with or without a double in tow.  Ocampo's gruesome but vividly written "La furia" (translatable as either "The Fury" or just "Fury" as the story plays off both the mythological and the non-mythological significance of the word in its tale of a young child's murder), on the other hand, is surely an undeniable Doom urtext in the sense that it's almost as disturbing as, say, Marcel Schwob's "Blanche la sanglante" ["Bloody Blanche"] or Alejandra Pizarnik's "La condesa sangriente" ["The Bloody Countess"] from a thematic point of view. Even if the confession of a madman style resolution of the story is less structurally inventive than the one provided by the earlier "Autobiografía de Irene," its wild writing and lurid, nightmarish imagery help make up for that deficiency.  Winifred, the supposed love interest of the unnamed narrator, is introduced to us as the Filipina nanny of a young Buenos Aires child: "La conocí en Palermo.  Sus ojos brillaban, ahora me doy cuenta, como los de las hienas.  Me recordaba a una de las Furias" ["I met her in Palermo.  Her eyes were shining, I now realize, like those of a hyena's.  She reminded me of one of the Furies"] (230).  During her Saturday afternoon trysts with the narrator, Winifred cops to how she accidentally killed her best friend Lavinia as a child in the Phillipines by setting her angel wings on fire when they were both dressed up for a feast day of the Virgin Mary celebration.  Shades of the Lavinia from The Aeneid, "ripe for marriage," whose hair catches on fire during a sacrifice at the altar?  Perhaps.  But suffice it to say that the little angelic friend met her end "carbonizada" ["carbonized"] (232), a revelation that eventually leads our schoolboy narrator to suspect that Winifred only "quería redimirse para Lavinia, cometiendo mayores crueldades con las demás personas.  Redimirse a través de la maldad" ["wanted to redeem herself for Lavinia, committing greater cruelties against other people.  Redeeming herself through evil" (234).  Sounds heavy and yet, how I do explain the humor of the scene where Winifred wants to etch the narrator's name and hers boyfriend/girlfriend style on the most pornographic graffiti-ridden surface in a public park?  Or the surrealistic strangeness of the scenes involving little plates of milk left outside Winifred's home to ward off vipers or her accounts of the dead rats and live spiders placed in loved ones' beds by the presumably kinder, gentler childhood Fury?  Since "Autobiografía de Irene" and "La furia" both touch on the notion of childhood trauma in their own dramatically different ways--the earlier story with its pensive and world-weary tone and its suggestion that there's nothing that can be done to thwart fate, the latter with its figurative aesthetic representation of a cracked fairy tale-like kingdom where a minotaur stalks the perfectly manicured and otherwise opulent prose grounds--I suppose it's only fitting that "Las invitadas" ["The Guests"] offers yet another approach to the same general topic (Ocampo is both imaginative and obsessive, you see).  However, this particular offering showcases a much more humorous side of the writer via a story in which young female personifications of the seven deadly sins mysteriously show up at a young boy's birthday party to initiate him into the world of adulthood.  While the laughs here are largely situational--as in the case of the batty old maid who, left alone to take care of the boy while his parents are on vacation in Brazil, wants to serve the young boy his birthday cake for breakfast because "por la tarde la torta cae pesada el estómago, como la naranja que por la mañana es de oro, por la tarde de plata y por la noche mata" ["just like oranges are gold in the mornings, silver in the afternoon, and kill you at night, cake is too heavy on the stomach in the afternoon"] (473)--the larger, lost in translation irony is that nobody but the birthday boy Lucio is expecting any guests because he's home sick with the measles.  That is, all the invitados (male and female guests) have said they would stay away from the party for fear of contagion; only Lucio foresees the arrival of las invitadas (female-only guests) when they knock on the door and he smoothes down his hair in the mirror in preparation.  "Ningún varón entre todos estos invitados" ["No male among all these guests"] exclaims the maid.  "¡Qué extraño!" ["How strange!"].  The upshot of all this?  According to the maid, Lucio ends up developing a crush on the scheming girl who "supo conquistarlo sin ser bonita.  Las mujeres son peores que los varones" ["knew how to conquer him without being good-looking.  Women are worse than men"] (476).  And the punchline that immediately follows?

Cuando volvieron de su viaje los padres de Lucio, no supieron quiénes fueron las niñas que lo habían visitado para el día de su cumpleaños y pensaron que su hijo tenía relaciones clandestinas, lo que era, y probablemente seguiría siendo, cierto.

Pero Lucio ya era un hombrecito.

[When Lucio's parents returned from their trip, they didn't learn who the girls were who had visited him on his birthday and they thought that their son had clandestine relationships, which was, and probably continues being, true.

But Lucio was already a little man, un hombrecito.]

Note: according to the number of candles on his birthday cake, a six year old hombrecito at that!

Source

These three stories appear in Silvina Ocampo's Cuentos completos I (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1999) on pp. 153-165 ("Autobiografía de Irene"), 230-236 ("La furia") and 473-476 ("Las invitadas").  On a related note, Rise of in lieu of a field guide reviewed Ocampo's "The Golden Hare" ["La liebre dorada"], one of the few stories from La furia to be translated into English to date, as part of last year's ALoD.  Check out his post here.