German Literature Month, the Argentinean Literature of Doom: Año 2, and the 2014 Caravana de recuerdos Ibero-American Readalong

With Novemberfest suddenly upon us, I'd like to put in a belated plug for the German Literature Month festivities being hosted by Caroline of Beauty Is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy of Lizzy's Literary Life.  Still not sure what I'm going to read for the event this time around, but I'm guessing that this is probably a good excuse to indulge in some more vitriol from our good friend Karl Kraus in between the more civilized Fausts and the Magic Mountains and the Julius Echter Hefe-Weissbiers and whatnot.

*

Speaking of civilization and barbarism, I'd rudely almost forgotten that the motorcade for the 2013 expedition to the lands of the Argentinean Literature of Doom was almost two months behind schedule.  What a boludo!  That said, the 2012 ALoD intro post should still explain the concept well enough for anybody with too much time on their hands.  But for you, the impatiently clock-watching and coffee-swilling bloghopping aesthete, here's an even shorter explanation: you either read and write about any piece of Argentinean literature in November or December and then tell me about it so I can include a link in a monthly wrap-up post or you challenge me to read and write about any piece of Argentinean literature with you at a mutually agreeable time in November or December and then we both blog about it and I include the links in a monthly wrap-up post.  Not sure what to read?  Of course, everybody who is somebody needs to read Roberto Arlt's mad, iconic doom bible Los siete locos [The Seven Madmen] at some point in their reading lives.  But here are some other worthwhile ideas from last year's intrepid ALoD participants:

Amateur Reader (Tom), Wuthering Expectations

If the reader is bored by these thoughts, I will tell him about some frightful crimes - some early Argentinean literary doom

How do you think it's going?  In Chile!  And on foot! - Sarmiento's anatomy of the gaucho

Miguel, St. Orberose

Borges on Kafka, Shakespeare, Joyce and the Expressionists

Richard, Caravana de recuerdos

Facundo.  Civilización y barbarie by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Siete noches by Jorge Luis Borges

Boquitas pintadas by Manuel Puig

Cómo me hice monja by César Aira

La Vida Nueva by César Aira

"El Fiord" by Osvaldo Lamborghini

Rise, in lieu of a field guide

This Craft of Verse by Jorge Luis Borges

"The Golden Hare" by Silvina Ocampo

Séamus, Vapour Trails

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

**

Too pressed for time to participate in the Argentinean Literature of Doom: Año 2 in November or December on such short notice?  No worries because the ALoD: A2 will unofficially morph into the 2014 Caravana de recuerdos Ibero-American Readalong in January (clarification: for our purposes, "Ibero-American" will be defined as having to do with all literature produced on the Iberian Peninsula--i.e. in addition to works written in the Romance languages, also including those composed in Arabic, Basque, Hebrew, and Latin--and all literature from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries in the Americas).  In other words, you have a full 14 months to read at least one measly Argentinean short story, poem, novel, or screed with me and only two months less than that to read something from one of the other countries' bodies of work.  So although what follows is a full year of structured group reads planned for 2014, I foolishly remain open to being challenged to read any other Ibero-American work of literature of your choice not penned by obvious losers.  More details on all this in a moment, but without further ado here are the titles I invite you to read along with me:



JANUARY-FEBRUARY

Roberto Bolaño's 2666 [2666]

Spain/Chile, 2004

FEBRUARY

Ibn Hazm de Córdoba's Tawq al-Hamamah [Spanish: El collar de la paloma; English: The Ring of the Dove]

Al-Andalus, c. 1022

MARCH

José Saramago's O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis [The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis]

Portugal, 1984
*
w/Richard of Shea's Zibaldone
& Rise of in lieu of a field guide

APRIL

The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance

Spain/New Spain, Middle Ages & Siglo de Oro

[translated by Edith Grossman in 2007]

MAY

Augusto Roa Bastos' Yo el Supremo [I, the Supreme]

Paraguay, 1974
*
w/Séamus of Vapour Trails

JUNE

Tirso de Molina's El burlador de Sevilla [The Trickster of Seville]

Spain, c. 1630

JULY

Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Tres tristes tigres [Three Trapped Tigers]

Cuba, 1967
*
w/Richard of Shea's Zibaldone
 



AUGUST

Jose Hernández's Martín Fierro [The Gaucho Martín Fierro]

Argentina, 1872 & 1879

SEPTEMBER

Macedonio Fernández's Museo de la novela de la Eterna [The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel)]

Argentina, 1967 [posthumous]

OCTOBER

Nicanor Parra's Poemas y antipoemas [Poems and Antipoems]

Chile, 1954

* 

w/Tom of Wuthering Expectations

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER

Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quijote de la Mancha [Don Quixote]

Spain, 1605 & 1615

*

w/Richard of Shea's Zibaldone

& Scott of seraillon

DECEMBER

Juan Rulfo's El Llano en llamas [The Plain in Flames and/or The Burning Plain and Other Stories]

Mexico, 1953

 

Although I respect you all too much to shill for these books too shrilly (i.e. it's getting late, and it's time to put this post to bed), I thought I'd say a couple of words about why I decided on these particular titles for the poorly-named Ibero-American Readalong.  The Bolaño, the Ibn Hazm, and the Cervantes are all favorites that I've been meaning to reread for a while.  I'd imagine that the Ibn-Hazm is the least well known of the three to most Caravana readers, so I'll just mention that it's a "treatise on love" originally written in Arabic poetry and prose that I really enjoyed the first time around.  Naturally, it's doing double duty here as a work from "medieval Spain" [sic] and as a representative of the various non-Spanish language literatures of the Iberian Peninsula.  The Saramago, Roa Bastos, Cabrera Infante, and Macedonio Fernández novels, on the other hand, are just works that I've long wanted to read--with the exception of The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, which is more of a recent obsession thanks to Miguel of St. Orberose's Saramago writing rampage a while back.  I'd initially thought about including Machado de Assis' 1891 Quincas Borba to add a Brazilian and a 19th century novel to the list, but in the end I couldn't resist the idea of substituting Borges acquaintance Macedonio Fernández's Museo de la novela de la Eterna instead because the idea of a "novel" full of some 50 prologues seemed too good a provocation to pass up on (of course, I realize that if my provocation is successful enough, I might end up reading Macedonio alone).  The poetry choices, all highly recommended by Tom of Wuthering Expectations by the way, are mostly dehumiliations years in the making.  The exception here is the Grossman anthology, much of which I believe I've read before, but that should make a nice intro to Siglo de Oro poetry newcomers and a nice refresher for me--especially since I usually dodge poetry on the blog. I also hope to add another short Sor Juana piece or two to the mix if things work out. Finally, El burlador de Sevilla (frequently attributed to Tirso de Molina) and Juan Rulfo's El Llano en llamas are here to represent Spain's Golden Age theater and the Latin American short story respectively.  Having read many if not most of the Rulfo stories before, I thought that the writer's lean, austere writing style might make a nice epilogue to the showy pyrotechnics of Don Quijote.  In any event, that was the plan.

Details

If you're interested in reading any of these with me, please note that I intend to post on most of them within the last three days of the month in question.  Barring the occasional procrastination,  I'll round up links at that time and include them on my review posts for discussion.  A few exceptions: 2666 will be split up into parts 1-3 in January (ending with "The Part about Fate") and parts 4-5 in February (beginning with "The Part about the Crimes").  Since I'll also be reading Ibn Hazm in February, I might post on one or the other work during the last week of the month rather than just the last three days.  By all means, post whenever you want to throughout the readalong, though.  Similarly, Don Quijote will be split up into Book I (the 1605 work) in November and Book II (the 1615 work) in December.  I'll likely post on Rulfo's stories after I finish the Cervantes, but do whatever works for you if you're joining for both.  If you're not interested in any of these titles but you're interested in challenging me to something not on the menu, just get in touch by e-mail or with a comment so we can work something out.  I would have loved to have included something by Onetti or Saer or a Catalan author, for example, but there just weren't enough months in the year.  Any takers?



El Fiord

"El Fiord"
by Osvaldo Lamborghini
Argentina, 1969

With the Argentinean Literature of Doom liturgical calendar year rapidly winding down to its increasingly alienating end, I thought I'd better stop putting off writing about Osvaldo Lamborghini--the unofficial dead calendar boy for the event and a "mysterious" figure who's at least somewhat famous in certain hobbyist circles for having made Roberto Bolaño deem his oeuvre "excruciating"--while I still have any readers left.  Of course, a post about Lamborghini's infamous 1969 short story "El Fiord" ["The Fiord"] just might take care of my "reader problem" for me for once and for all anyway.  You've been warned.  A mindbogglingly violent sado-masochistic allegory about the labor movement in Argentina in the late 1960s, "El Fiord" (sometimes referred to as a novel but here mercifully only about 15 pages in length) certainly lives up to its rep as an extremist's delight.  In point of fact, the work was supposedly considered so extreme in its time that its "distribution" was pretty much limited to behind the counter sales at a lone bookstore on the Avenida Corrientes in Buenos Aires and the sharing of mimeographed copies of the manuscript among Lamborghini's friends.  Since most of "El Fiord"'s more obscure political references are beyond me, how much of the piece's underground classic status is due to its stomach-turning qualities as opposed to its politics isn't quite clear to me.  However, César Aira, a longtime Lamborghini enthusiast who's been overseeing the posthumous publication of the writer's complete art terrorist works for the Editorial Sudamericana, has a perceptive comment about the specific avant-garde literary and political context of "El Fiord" in his compiler's note at the end of Lamborghini's Novelas y Cuentos I: "Si el comienzo de la literatura argentina fue El Matadero de Echeverría, el comienzo de su obra fue su propio 'Matadero'" ["If the beginning of Argentinean literature was Echeverria's 'El Matadero,' the beginning of Lamborghini's work was his own 'Matadero'"] (300).  A matadero, for those who don't know Spanish, is a slaughterhouse, and a slaughterhouse is exactly what "El Fiord" seems to want to replicate in terms of its vile assault on the senses.  To what end, I'm not sure.  However, to help explain the story's intrinsic gross-out wrongness, I should probably note that it begins with a character named Carla Greta Terón (supposedly a stand-in for former first lady Eva Perón) who is struggling to give birth to an "engendro remolón" ["stubborn monstrosity"] in a room full of hangers-on, onlookers, birds of prey, and cockroaches (9).  After an orgy of bloodshed (literally and figuratively) that gives new meaning to the measuring stick of "over the top," the piece ends at a political demonstration where flagpoles are planted into human bodies.  As you might suspect given "Evita"'s presence in the text, one of the other key characters is a man variously referred to as El Loco Rodríguez, "nuestro Patrón" ["our Master"] (11) and "nuestro abusivo Dueño y Señor" ["our abusive Lord and Savior"] (12-13): a malicious tip of the hat to President Juan Domingo Perón, who soon after he's introduced displays his abrasive love of country and lust for power by whipping Carla Greta Terón in the eyes as she tries to give birth and then sodomizing the narrator.  Later the "monstrosity" named Atilio Tancredo Vacán (possibly named in honor of labor leader Augusto Timoteo Vandor, a Perón opponent who was assassinated the same year "El Fiord" was published) is delivered among rivers of blood and shit and semen and vaginal fluids, and the rest of the story sees the characters subjected to beheadings, being burned alive, genital dismemberings (no pun intended), and the surrealistic like.  OK, I know, enough already, but Lamborghini is nothing if not consistent.  Sane readers may wonder at this point why anybody would want to read something like this or, even worse, why anybody would want to review something like this for an audience of practically zero. Good points! While I wouldn't presume to answer for you, I have to say that I personally was curious about the story's alleged artistry (Aira, I believe without joking, even refers to the "uniforme densidad poética del texto" ["uniform poetic density of the text"]) (301) and I wanted to see for myself why other admired writers like Fogwill speak so warmly about the assiduously repulsive Lamborghini.  Although I'm not really sure I found what I came for, I suppose I was impressed with the occasional striking image (the description of the nude Perón  gleaming with "un brillo de fraude y neón" or "a lustre of fraudulence and neon" caught my attention, for example [10]) and I did find what Bolaño found insofar as "El Fiord" seems like must reading for anybody who's serious about wanting to get his/her disgust on.  Plus I can now scratch another work off Ignacio Echevarría's list of the essential books in Spanish-language literature since the 1950s.  O happy day.

Source

"El Fiord," a real crowd-pleaser to be sure, appears on pages 7-25 of the César Aira-curated Lamborghini collection, Novelas y cuentos I.  Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2003.

La Vida Nueva

La Vida Nueva (Mansalva, 2007)
by César Aira
Argentina, 2007

I read this earlier in the year, enjoyed it a bunch, but then didn't write about it at the time for some reason that's now completely unfathomable to me.  I decided to reread it this week because--what's the technical term?--it's fucking funny, man.  A 77-page Slinky happily tumbling down the stairs of authorial time in a single uncoiled paragraph, La Vida Nueva [The New Life] is César Aira's warm, chatty, intermittently preposterous account of his friendship with his first publisher, Horacio Achával, and of the many, many, many delays that Aira's 1975 debut novel Moreira suffered at the hands of Lacanian proofreaders, high-speed book-delivery motorcyclists, and other pataphysical forces before finally seeing the light of day.  Without wanting to take anything away from Don César and his own impertinent storytelling personality, I have to say that one of the great joys of reading this book is that it made me think of what Dante's La Vita Nuova might have been like had it been written by the narrator of Bolaño's short story "The Insufferable Gaucho."  Wild!  In addition to providing a fun "autobiographical" goof, however, this novel should also be of interest to at least two Caravana readers on account of its entertaining look at the Argentinean writing life from both sides of the new author/small publisher divide from 1969 up till the present day.  How much of what the 2007 version of Aira says about his younger self is true rather than mere leg-pulling is rather difficult to ascertain, of course, but that shouldn't stop anybody from enjoying the local publishing industry color or laughing at the first-time novelist's alleged doubts about whether a print run of 1,000 copies was way too high of a number for his prospective audience given the well-known anecdote that Borges himself only sold 64 copies of his first book.  Achával, "un típico espécimen, quizás el más típico, del mundo de las editoriales de izquierda, con sus cuantiosas tiradas populares" ["a typical specimen, perhaps the most typical specimen, of the world of leftist publishing houses with their massive populist print runs"] naturally tells the young Aira that "no quería saber nada de esos derrotismos de élite" ["he didn't want to hear anything about that elitist defeatism"] (30) and for good reason; for, as he mentions with exquisite irony elsewhere, Aira's novel is "un arma de grueso calibre contra el cinismo rampante del postmodernismo" ["a high-caliber weapon against postmodernism's rampant cynicism"] (50) and, more to the point, "no había que subestimar al público, que siempre estaba a punto de cansarse de lo convencional y previsible y predigerido, del realismo chato y los sermones bienpensantes" ["there was no reason to underestimate the public, which was always on the verge of losing its patience with the conventional and the predictable and the predigested, of cheap realism and right-thinking sermons"] (12).

 

The cover of César Aira's Moreira as published by Achával Solo in 1975.  The blurb at the bottom reads: "Un día, de madrugada, por las lomas inmóviles del Pensamiento bajaba montado en potro amarillo un horrible gaucho" ["One day, early in the morning, mounted on a yellow colt, a horrible gaucho was descending through the motionless hillocks of the Mind"].



Cómo me hice monja

Cómo me hice monja (Debolsillo, 2006)
por César Aira
Argentina, 1993

"Cómo me hice monja es mi autobiografía, parcial porque trata sólo de un año de mi vida, entre los seis y los siete, empieza cuando pruebo un helado por primera vez, y termina cuando me asesina la viuda del heladero."

(César Aira, desde la contrasolapa de su "autobiografía")

 

Cómo me hice monja, si no literalmente una autobiografía, es, digamos, una especie de Künstlerroman disparatada en que "el niño César Aira" cuenta una historia en que su yo femenino (o sea la niña César Aira) afirma narrar "la historia de 'cómo me hice monja'" (11) con una circularidad muy admirable e inventiva.  En otras palabras, es un dedo en los ojos del lector incauto y/o taradito.  La historia, o mejor dicho, la falsedad empieza cuando la supuesta narradora relata, en un comienzo a caballo entre la comedia y el horror, su inolvidable introducción al mundo de helado de frutilla a la edad de seis años.  ¿El giro imprevisto?  "Yo había sido víctima de los temibles ciánidos alimenticios... la gran marea de intoxicaciones letales que aquel año barría la Argentina y países vecinos" (26).  Aunque la niña sobrevive al envenenamiento después de un rato en el hospital, resulta que sus arcadas y su delirio se contagian a lo que queda de sus memorias: de hecho, el novelista se aprovecha de la situación para decirnos no cómo la niña César Aira tomó los hábitos sino sí cómo el niño César Aira aprendió convertirse en escritor en edad temprana (según cabe presumir, el pibe Aira ya era l'enfant terrible de su escuela y un bromista de primera categoría incluso en aquel entonces).  Por supuesto, un torrente de mentiras más una historia de venganza siguen según las reglas del juego en esta serie de besos mandada en honor del oficio de escribir y de la figura del narrador de poca confianza.  Beso #1: "Tendría que haber sido un monstruo para mentir por gusto" (15).  Beso #2: "El mentiroso experimentado sabe que la clave del éxito está en fingir bien la ignorancia de ciertas cosas.  Por ejemplo de las consecuencias de lo que está diciendo" (61).  Beso #3: "Todo este relato que he emprendido se basa en mi memoria perfecta.  La memoria me ha permitido atesorar cada instante que pasó.  También los instantes eternos, los que no pasaron, que encierran en su cápsula de oro a los otros.  Y los que se repitieron, que por supuesto son los más" (63).  ¿La moraleja? Confusion Is Sex.

el niño/la niña Aira

Boquitas pintadas

Boquitas pintadas (Debolsillo, 2009)
por Manuel Puig
Argentina, 1969

"Todo lo que empieza como comedia acaba como tragedia".

(Roberto Bolaño, Los detectives salvajes)
 

Boquitas pintadas, la impresionante segunda novela de Manuel Puig, es una especie de homenaje y parodia de una telenovela cargada de muerte, una novela epistolar a la antigua, y un folletín que empieza como comedia y acaba como tragedia.  Según mi punto de vista más bien pesimista, es un valioso ejemplar de la llamada "literatura argentina de la pesada" de que habló Roberto Bolaño en Entre paréntesis.  Vamos a lo esencial.  Juan Carlos Etchepare, un mujeriego guapo sino tuberculoso, es el centro de atención dentro de la novela, dando besos y escupiendo sangre mientras que él corre tras las faldas en la Argentina de los 30 y de los 40.  No obstante, las noticias de su muerte a la edad de 29 años hacen estallar una reacción en cadena melodramática en cual sus ex amantes y sus íntimos amigos se convierten en las estrellas de sus propios hilos argumentales desdichados.  Historietas de amor.  Historietas de fracaso.  Historietas de amores fracasados.  Aunque la trayectoria emocional de la novela es más y más deprimente hasta el final, Puig proporciona un mecanismo de escape a los lectores con la vivacidad de su prosa.  Lo que sigue son tres ejemplos de la manera asombrosa de narrar de Puig en una novela que se destaca a causa de la riqueza de sus narradores y sus estilos narrativos.  En las páginas 116-119, hay una secuencia onírica que se relata a través de una lista de "Imágenes y palabras que pasaron por la mente de Juan Carlos mientras dormía".  En las páginas 130-131, un narrador sin nombre nos dice a) lo que hizo Nélida Enriqueta Fernández, la otrora novia de Juan Carlos, en el día 27 de enero de 1938, y b) comparte con nosotros las respuestas a las preguntas "¿Cuál era en ese momento su mayor deso?" y "¿Cuál era en ese momento su temor más grande?"; en las páginas 131-137, por medio de una repetición hábil que ocurre en varios momentos a lo largo de la novela, el narrador nos dice lo mismo acerca de Juan Carlos y cuatro otros personajes en los esbozos en miniatura sinópticos que siguen.  Por último, en las páginas 205-210, una mujer se confesa antes de un cura en una escena en cual lagunas dentro de frases y trucos de puntuación idiosincráticos llaman la atención al hecho de que sólo un lado del "diálogo" se escucha.  El punto de todo esto, en el evento que no esté claro todavía, es que Puig era un grosso en lo que refiere al estilo y a la estética.  Y además, pienso que Bolaño probablemente tomó prestado un par de peculiaridades estilísticas del tipo.



Heartbreak Tango (Dalkey Archive Press, 2010)

by Manuel Puig [translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine]

Argentina, 1969

 

"Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy."

(Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives)



Boquitas pintadas, the impressive second novel from Manuel Puig that's unfortunately only available in English under the cheesy moniker of Heartbreak Tango, is a sort of half-homage/half send-up of a death-laden soap opera, an old school epistolary novel, and a newspaper serial that begins as comedy and ends as tragedy.  From my rather pessimistic point of view, it's an all too worthy example of the so-called Argentinean literature of doom that Roberto Bolaño talks about in Between Parentheses.  Let's cut to the chase, though, shall we?  Juan Carlos Etchepare, a handsome womanizer suffering from an advanced stage of tuberculosis, is the nominal center of attention within the novel, exchanging kisses and coughing up blood while furiously chasing skirts in 1930s and 1940s Argentina.  However, the news of his death at the ripe old age of 29 sets off a melodramatic chain reaction of memories about the character in which his ex-lovers and other intimates become the stars of their own no less unhappy mini-dramas.  Love stories.  Stories about life's failures.  Stories about their failures in love.  Although the novel's emotional trajectory steadily gets more and more depressing until the very end, Puig manages to provide an escape valve of sorts for his readers via the sheer vitality of his prose.  Here are just three examples of how the guy racked up style points galore with me in a novel that offers up a kitchen sink's worth of narrators and narrative formats.  On pages 116-119,* there's a dream sequence conveyed through a list under the heading "Imágenes y palabras que pasaron por la mente de Juan Carlos mientras dormía" ["Images and Words That Passed through Juan Carlos' Mind While He Was Sleeping"].  On pages 130-131, an unnamed narrator tells us a) what Nélida Enriqueta Fernández, the one-time girlfriend of Juan Carlos, did on the day of January 27, 1938, and b) shares the answer to the questions "¿Cuál era en ese momento su mayor deseo?" ["What was her greatest wish at that moment in time?"] and "¿Cuál era en ese momento su temor más grande?" ["What was her greatest fear at that moment in time?"]; on pages 131-137, through a clever repetition pattern used at various points throughout the novel, the narrator tells us the same thing about Juan Carlos and four other characters in the ensuing synoptic vignettes.  Finally, on pages 205-210, a female character makes a confession to a priest in which lacunae within the sentences and idiosyncratic punctuation tricks I won't try to replicate here draw attention to the fact that only the woman's part in the "dialogue" is being transcribed.  The point, in case it's not yet clear, is that Puig was an arresting stylist with many tricks up his narrative sleeve.  What's more, I think that Bolaño probably picked up a couple of good tricks off the guy.

*All page references pertain to the Spanish language edition of the novel.



Manuel Puig (1932-1990)

The Argentinean Literature of Doom: October Link Action

Thanks to a spirited discussion of Sarmiento's often hyperbolic Facundo, there were more than twice as many ALoD posts in October as there were in September.  Of course, my stats monkey reminds me that there were only two such posts in September.  That being said, gracias to Tom and Rise for their reading/writing contributions this month.  Not yet sure what November will have in store on the Argentinean lit front here at Caravana, but given the "serious" nature of the other reading plans in place, don't be too surprised if J.R. Wilcock's The Wedding of Hitler and Marie Antoinette in Hell makes its long-awaited appearance at last.  That would slap a smile onto your Argentinophile book-blogging face now, wouldn't it?

Amateur Reader (Tom), Wuthering Expectations

If the reader is bored by these thoughts, I will tell him about some frightful crimes - some early Argentinean literary doom

How do you think it's going?  In Chile!  And on foot!  - Sarmiento's anatomy of the gaucho

 

Richard, Caravana de recuerdos

Facundo.  Civilización y barbarie by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Siete noches by Jorge Luis Borges

 

Rise, in lieu of a field guide

"The Golden Hare" by Silvina Ocampo



Siete noches

Siete noches (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007)
by Jorge Luis Borges
Argentina, 1980

Between June 1st and August 3rd of the Argentinean Literature of Doom year of 1977, the then 78-year old Jorge Luis Borges delivered a series of seven talks on "La Divina Comedia" ["The Divine Comedy"], "La pesadilla" ["Nightmares"], "Las mil y una noches" ["The Thousand and One Nights"], "El budismo" ["Buddhism"], "La poesía" ["Poetry"], "La cábala" ["The Kabbalah"], and "La ceguera" ["Blindness"] at the 1700-seat teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires' upscale Retiro district.  Although there were apparently more than a few dull moments on the noches dedicated to Buddhism and the Kabbalah, I won't gripe about that too much here since Borges was in undeniably fine form on all the non-opiate of the masses evenings in question.  His lecture on "Nightmares" is a good case in point and a good introduction to his presentation methodology in general.  After opening with a thought-provoking contrast between whether the waking memories of our dreams are, as Sir Thomas Browne believed, just a poor substitute for "la espléndida realidad" ["splendid reality"] or whether our dreams are instead, as Borges himself believed, like "una obra de ficción" ["a work of fiction"] that only improves with our retelling of it (36), the man of the hour mentions several examples of dreams in literature before turning to the etymology of the word "pesadilla" ["nightmare"] in various languages both ancient and modern.  A fascinating linguistic detour.  Confessing to his own recurring nightmares about labyrinths and mirrors (the former of which he partially attributes to the terrifying sight of a steel engraving of the labyrinth of Crete in a French book from his childhood), Borges then links the autobiographical with his interest in the treatment of nightmares in literature with the following arresting statement: "Llego a la conclusión, ignoro si es científico, de que los sueños son la actividad estética más antigua" ["I arrive at the conclusion, not knowing if it is scientific or not, that dreams are our most ancient aesthetic activity"] (47).  Throughout, Borges always seems to channel that extraordinary but very down to earth Comp Lit professor who clearly enjoys bonding with his students over the joys of text(s).  Thomas de Quincey, for example, is gently razzed for having "una admirable memoria inventiva" ["an admirable inventive memory"] in the talk about The Thousand and One Nights.  "Cada palabra es una obra poética" ["Each word is a poetic piece of work"] we are assured in the lecture on poetry (104).  No doom and maybe not the best Borges book for me to be writing about late at night considering I still have Ficciones to finish at some point but a satisfying souvenir all the same.

Borges at the Coliseo

Llegamos ahora a la palabra más sabia y ambigua, el nombre inglés de la pesadilla: the nightmare, que significa para nosotros "la yegua de la noche".  Shakespeare la entendió así.  Hay un verso suyo que dice I met the nightmare, "me encontré con la yegua de la noche".  Se ve que la concibe como una yegua.  Hay otro poema que ya dice deliberadamente the nightmare and her nine foals, "la pesadilla y sus nueve potrillos", donde la ve como una yegua tambien.
*
We now arrive at the most sensible and ambiguous word, the English name for la pesadilla: the nightmare, which means "the mare of the night" to us.  Shakespeare understood it in that way.  There is a verse of his which says, "I met the nightmare."  One sees that he conceives of it as a mare.  There is another poem which deliberately says "the nightmare and her nine foals," where he also sees it as a mare.
(Siete noches, 42)

Obviously anticipating the future release of the ALoD syllabus, Borges fan Rise of in lieu of a field guide reviewed the English translation of Seven Nights as part of his January 2010 Reading Diary.  A quick summary of César Aira's Ghosts, apparently submitted for extra credit, can be found at the same spot by clairvoyant and non-clairvoyant readers alike.


Facundo. Civilización y barbarie

Facundo.  Civilización y barbarie (Cátedra, 2005)
por Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
Argentina, 1845

En la primera de sus dos excelentes entradas sobre Facundo del lunes y del martes, Tom de Wuthering Expectations hizo ver que la obra de no ficción de Sarmiento acerca del choque de culturas entre la "civilization (Buenos Aires and a few outlying cities) and barbarism (the Pampas)" ["civilización (Buenos Aires y unas ciudades periféricas) y barbarie (las Pampas)"] en las guerras civiles de Argentina a mediados del siglo XIX es tan "imaginatively rich" ["imaginativamente rica"] que el libro parece haber anticipado ambas la novela del dictador de Latinoamérica y la futura no ficción latinoamericana del siglo XX como Los sertones de Euclides de Cunha.  Aunque el concepto de Tom en cuanto a lo que significa ser "imaginativamente rica" pueda ser distinto del mío, me gustaría adoptar esa idea como un punto de partida para subrayar varias cosas que me entusiasmaron en Facundo.  Primer de todo, para un fanático del lenguaje, es difícil negar el gran impacto del ritmo de la prosa declamatoria de Sarmiento: "¡Sombra terrible de Facundo", fulmina contra su adversario muerto en la introducción, "voy a evocarte, para que sacudiendo el ensangrentado polvo que cubre tus cenizas, te levantes a explicarnos la vida secreta y las convulsiones internas que desgarran las entrañas de un noble pueblo!  Tú posees el secreto: revélanoslo" (37-38).  Si quizá un poco pomposo, en torno al estilo esto no es sólo un recurso retórico: la biografía de Juan Facundo Quiroga (1788-1835), el símbolo del "gaucho malo" por excelencia, y las diatribas políticas en contra del tirano Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877), otro caudillo gaucho que --según el autor-- es culpable por arruinar al país, hierva de la cólera del exiliado Sarmiento frente a la memoria de los varios crímenes violentos de los hombres.  En medio de las letanías casi sin fin escritas sobre el mal, las cuales frecuentemente se leen como las más sencionales de las biografías imperiales romanas de Suetonio, Sarmiento de vez en cuando ofrece algunos momentos tranquilos como la aparencia de los rayos sobre la Pampa (una escena maravillosamente transformada por César Aira en su novela corta del año 2000 Un episodio en la vida del pintor viajero) o algunos ejemplos de análisis político como éste donde se describe Argentina como un país a caballo de un pasado iletrado (con raices en la cultura de los gauchos) y de un futuro civilizado políglota (anclado a una visión idealizada de la cultura europea): "En la República Argentina se ven a un tiempo dos civilizaciones distintas en un mismo suelo: una naciente, que sin conocimiento de lo que tiene sobre su cabeza, está remedando los esfuerzos ingenuos y populares de la edad media; otra que sin cuidarse de lo que tiene a sus pies, intenta realizar los últimos resultados de la civilización europea: el siglo XIX y el XII viven juntos; el uno dentro de las ciudades, el otro en las campañas" (91).  Si, como la mayoría de ustedes, no conozco la historia argentina del siglo XIX suficientemente bien para saber si o cuando Sarmiento esté exagerando las cosas para probar algo, no importa tanto dada su destreza "cuentística" como historiador.  De hecho, en un prólogo a una edición de Facundo imprimida en 1974 por la Librería "El Ateneo" Editorial en Buenos Aires, Jorge Luis Borges incluso afirmó que "el Facundo erigido por Sarmiento es el personaje más memorable de nuestras letras" (véase Borges, Prólogos con un prólogo de prólogos [Buenos Aires: Torres Agüero Editor, 1975], 138).  ¿Tenía razón el juicio de Borges?  Una anécdota desde el capítulo XII de Facundo, el último de cuatro capítulos en sucesión que se llaman "Guerra social", le permitirá que uno puede juzgarlo por si mismo (ojo: te evitaré los detalles subsiguientes en cuanto a los cadáveres y el cementerio).  Es el mes de noviembre del año 1831.  Facundo, el llamado "Tigre de los Llanos", ha justo obtuvo un triunfo en un Tucumán caracterizado como "el edén de América" (266); naturalmente, él está preparando a matar a todos los prisioneros enemigos como de siempre.  Sin embargo, "una diputación de niñas rebosando juventud, candor y beldad" se dirige hacia él; "vienen a implorar por la vida de los oficiales del ejército que van a ser fusilados".  Contra todas las expectativas, Sarmiento nos dice, "Facundo está vivamente interesado, y por entre la espesura de su barba negra alcanza a discernirse en las facciones la complacencia y el contento".  Las esperanzas de las niñas en cuanto al "piadoso fin que se han propuesto" parecen prometedoras cuando Facundo pasa una hora entera "interrogarlas una a una", preguntándolas de sus familias y otros detalles personales.  Pero "al fin", Sarmiento escribe, Facundo "les dice con la mayor bondad: ¿No oyen ustedes, esas descargas?  ¡Ya no hay tiempo!" (268-269)

Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (University of California Press, 2003)
by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento [translated from the Spanish by Kathleen Ross]
Argentina, 1845

In the first of his two excellent posts on Facundo from Monday and Tuesday, Tom of Wuthering Expectations made the point that Sarmiento's nonfiction classic about the clash of cultures between "civilization (Buenos Aires and a few outlying cities) and barbarism (the Pampas)" in Argentina's mid-19th century civil wars is so "imaginatively rich" that it seems to have anticipated both the Latin American dictator novel and early 20th century Latin American nonfiction like Euclides da Cunha's epic Rebellion in the Backlands.  Even though Tom's conception of what's "imaginatively rich" may well differ from my own, I'd like to borrow that idea as a starting point to jot down several of the things that made Facundo such a gripping read for me.  First of all, for a language freak, it's hard to deny the raw power of Sarmiento's declamatory cadences: "Terrible specter of Facundo," he thunders at his dead adversary in the introduction, "I will evoke you, so that you may rise, shaking off the bloody dust covering your ashes, and explain the hidden life and the inner convulsions that tear at the bowels of a noble people!  You possess the secret: reveal it to us!" (31).  While maybe over the top, this isn't just an over the top rhetorical device--Sarmiento's biography of Juan Facundo Quiroga (1788-1835), the symbol of "the bad gaucho" par excellence, and his political diatribes against the tyrant Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877), another gaucho strongman whom Sarmiento claims has brought the country to its knees, veritably seethe with the exiled Sarmiento's wrath at the pair's various violent crimes.  In between the seemingly unending litanies of evil, which often read like some of Suetonius' more lurid imperial Roman biographies transplanted to the Río de la Plata region a mere two millennia later, the pugilistic stylist and would-be political scientist Sarmiento occasionally slips in a quiet moment like an arresting nature scene about lightning storms on the Pampas (wonderfully transfigured by César Aira in his 2000 novella An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter) and many more or less thoughtful attempts at political analysis such as this one where he depicts Argentina as a country caught in between an unlettered past (rooted in South American gaucho culture) and a lettered, polyglot future (anchored to an idealized vision of European immigrant culture): "In the Argentine Republic we see at the same time two different societies on the same soil: one still nascent, which, with no knowledge of things over its head, repeats the naive, popular work of the Middle Ages; another which, with no regard for things beneath its feet, tries to attain the latest results of European civilization.  The nineteenth and the twelfth centuries live together: one inside the cities, the other in the country" (70).  If, like most of you, I'm not nearly familiar enough with 19th century Argentinean history to know when Sarmiento might be exaggerating about events to prove a point, that matters little from an entertainment standpoint given the immediacy of Sarmiento's "storytelling" abilities as an historian.  In fact, in a prologue to a 1974 edition of Facundo put out by the Librería "El Ateneo" Editorial in Buenos Aires, Jorge Luis Borges even went so far as to claim that "el Facundo erigido por Sarmiento es el personaje más memorable de nuestras letras" ["the Facundo erected by Sarmiento is the most memorable character in our literature"] (cf. Borges, Prólogos con un prólogo de prólogos [Buenos Aires: Torres Agüero Editor, 1975], 138).  Was Borges correct in his assessment?  A random anecdote from Chapter XII of Facundo, the last of four chapters in a row called "Society at War," might allow you to decide for yourself--although I'll spare you the coda about the executed soldiers' bodies being dragged off to the cemetery.  It's November of 1831.  Facundo, the so-called "Tiger of the Plains," has just won a resounding victory at the Edenic Tucumán and is preparing to kill off all the defeated enemy prisoners as usual.  However, "a delegation of young girls brimming with youth, innocence, and beauty" approach him and "come to plead for the lives of the army officers who were going to be shot."  Against all expectations, Sarmiento tells us, "Facundo was keenly interested, and from amid the thickness of his black beard, contentment and complacency could be discerned on his features."  The sobbing girls' hopes for mercy are raised as Facundo questions them one by one for a full hour, asking questions about their families and inquiring about other personal details in a friendly and respectful manner.  "At last," however, Sarmiento writes, "he said to them with the greatest affability: 'Do you hear those shots being fired?'  It was too late!" (180-181).



Sarmiento,1852

Es inaudito el cúmulo de atrocidades que se necesita amontonar unas sobre otras para pervertir a un pueblo, y nadie sabe los ardides, los estudios, las observaciones y la sagacidad que ha empleado don Juan Manuel Rosas para someter la ciudad a esa influencia mágica que trastorna en seis años la concienca de lo justo y de lo bueno, que quebranta al fin los corazones más esforzados y los doblega al yugo.  El terror de 1793 en Francia era un efecto, no un instrumento.  Robespierre no guillotinaba nobles y sacerdotes para crearse una reputación, ni elevarse él sobre los cadáveres que amontonaba.  Era un alma adusta y severa aquella que había creído que era preciso amputar a la Francia todos sus miembros aristocráticos, para cimentar la revolución.  "Nuestros nombres", decía Dantón, "bajarán a la posterioridad execrados, pero habremos salvado la República".  El terror entre nosotros es una invención gubernativa para ahogar toda conciencia, todo espíritu de ciudad, y forzar al fin a los hombres a reconocer como cabeza pensadora el pie que les oprime la garganta; es un despique que toma el hombre inepto armado del puñal para vengarse del desprecio que sabe que su nulidad inspira a un público que les es infinitamente superior.  Por eso hemos visto en nuestros días repetirse las extravagancias de Calígula, que se hacía adorar como dios, y asociaba al Imperio su caballo.  Calígula sabía que era él el último de los romanos a quienes tenía, no obstante, bajo su pie.  Facundo se daba aires de inspirado, de adivino, para suplir a su incapacidad natural de influir sobre los ánimos.  Rosas se hacía adorar en los templos y tirar su retrato por las calles en un carro a que iban uncidos generales y señoras, para crearse el prestigio que echaba menos.  Pero Facundo es cruel sólo cuando la sangre se le ha venido a la cabeza y a los ojos, y ve todo colorado.  Sus cálculos fríos se limitan a fusilar a un hombre, azotar a un ciudadano: Rosas no se enfurece nunca, calcula en la quietud y en el recogimiento de su gabinete, y desde allí salen las órdenes a sus sicarios.
(Facundo.  Civilización y barbarie, 261-262)
*
It is incredible how many atrocities must be piled up, one on top of the other, to pervert a people.  And no one knows the ruses, the studying, the observations, and the sagacity that Don Juan Manuel Rosas has used to subject the city to that magical influence, which in six years completely changed consciousness of what is just and right, which finally broke the hearts of the bravest and bowed them to the yoke.  The Terror in France in 1793 was not a means, but an effect.  Robespierre didn't guillotine nobles and priests to create a reputation for himself, or to elevate himself on top of the bodies he piled up.  He was an austere, severe soul who thought that all of France's aristocratic limbs had to be amputated in order to cement the revolution.  "Our names," said Danton, "will go down in posterity as execrable; but we will have saved the Republic."  Terror among us is an invention of government to choke all conscience, all spirit of the city, and finally to force men to recognize as a thinking brain the foot squeezing their throat.  It is the satisfaction taken by an inept man armed with a dagger to avenge the scorn he knows his nullity inspires in a public infinitely superior to him.  This is why we have seen repeated in our times the extravagances of Caligula, who had himself adored as God and made his horse an associate in the empire.  Caligula knew that he was the lowest of the Romans, whom he had, nevertheless, under his foot.  Facundo gave himself an air of inspiration, of clairvoyance, to supplant his natural incapacity to influence minds.  Rosas had himself worshipped in churches and his image pulled through the streets on a cart, to which generals and ladies were yoked, to create the prestige he lacked.  But Facundo was cruel only when the blood had risen to his head and his eyes, and all he saw was red.  His cold calculations were limited to shooting a man, to whipping a citizen.  Rosas never goes into a fury; he calculates in the quiet and seclusion of his study, and from there, the orders go out to his hired assassins.
(Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism, translated by Kathleen Ross, 176)

Leí Facundo con Tom como parte de un proyecto mío que se llama "The Argentinean Literature of Doom" ["La literatura argentina de la pesada"].  Los enlaces a los post de Tom se pueden encontrar abajo.//I read Facundo with Tom as part of my "Argentinean Literature of Doom" project.  Tom's posts are linked to below.

If the reader is bored by these thoughts, I will tell him about some frightful crimes - some early Argentinean literary doom

How do you think it's going?  In Chile!  And on foot! - Sarmiento's anatomy of the gaucho



The Argentinean Literature of Doom: September Link Action

Since Tom and I agreed to postpone our Facundo discussion from last week until this week and I've been sort of enjoying a working vacation from the blog in general of late, I'm afraid there's not too much Argentinean literature to report on here tonight.  Thankfully, two of my favorite Borges fans bailed me out with wonderful end of the month posts--gracias, Miguel and Rise!

On a related note, the Bioy Casares Borges diary pictured above, a 1,600 page library chunkster whose cover has been serving as an unofficial button for the Doom project, has been recalled from me again by a person or persons unknown.  Good thing I'm already several hundred pages behind on Galdós' Fortunata y Jacinta for Dwight's October readalong or there might be some Borges-inspired fisticuffs to relate to you all!

Miguel, St. Orberose

Borges on Kafka, Shakespeare, Joyce and the Expressionists

 

Rise, in lieu of a field guide

This Craft of Verse (Jorge Luis Borges)

The Argentinean Literature of Doom

This probably won't come as much of a surprise to those of you who are already aware of some of my many vices, but I, ahem, still seem to have a ton of unread books left over from the recent Spanish Lit Month excesses.  So, inspired by various interactive reading projects hosted by both Amateur Reader (Tom) of Wuthering Expectations and Nicole of bibliographing in the past couple of years (and in particular whipped up into a delayed reading frenzy by these two posts by Tom here and a year earlier here), I've decided to devote most of the rest of 2012 to the Argentinean Literature of Doom.  "What is the ALoD?" you ask.  Well, it's not a reading challenge--it's more, like Spanish Lit Month on a more expansive scale but only focused on a single country, a reading project/doomathon designed for me and possibly you to sample some great lit specimens from an often overlooked book culture in the company of a handful of virtual others.  I'm pretty sure that I'll at least in part be looking to test Roberto Bolaño's thesis, mentioned in one of Tom's posts above, that a prominent strain of post-Borges Argentinean literature has been infected by a particularly virulent doom virus.  You, on the other hand, may read whatever you like from the entire corpus of sickly or non-sickly Argentinean letters (as Wilhelm Doommeister, I'll also commit to rounding up the links of all participants' posts at least once a month and sharing them here for others to enjoy).  Having already said that the Argentinean Literature of Doom proyecto isn't a reading challenge, I should probably clarify that there is a reading challenge-like component available for anybody who'd like to take me up on it: using the world-famous "the only challenge that matters rules" popularized by the Wuthering Expectations braintrust, you can "challenge" me to read any work of Argentinean literature with you before the end of the year.  That is, we work out an agreeable schedule that works for both of us and then you and I post on the book, poem, or short story more or less around the same time.  Please note that for things I've already read, I reserve the right to just comment on your post rather than rereading a Rayuela-sized book in its entirety; also, I'm open to a challenge title from any author from a country adjacent to Argentina (Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Chile) as long as the novelist in question isn't named Isabel Allende or Paulo Coelho--I'd like to be geographically flexible, you understand, but this is the Literature of Doom and not the Literature of Middlebrow we're talking about after all.

The Argentinean Literature of Doom

runs September-December 2012.* Your attendance is requested but not required.



Reading Suggestions

Let's say you might want to participate in this project but you're not sure what to read for it.  No problem--no experience necessary.  However, here are a handful of ideas.  If you're of a 19th century bent, you could always read Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's 1845 Facundo [Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism] with Tom from Wuthering Expectations and me at some point during the second half of this month (it's the first Argentinean Literature of Doom "challenge" that's been agreed upon).  Sarmiento's work, written from exile in Chile during Argentina's mid-century civil wars, is a political biography as ethnography and history screed that has had a profound impact on many other Latin American thinkers since its publication.  Other major 19th century works: Esteban Echevarría's "El matadero" ["The Slaughterhouse," reviewed at Wuthering Expectations here], often considered to be one of Latin America's first short stories, and La cautiva [The Captive, possibly unavailable in translation], a long poem having to do with Argentina's Indian wars; Lucio V. Mansilla's 1870 nonfiction Una excursión a los indios ranqueles [A Visit to the Ranquel Indians]; and José Hernández's two-part gaucho epic poem, Martín Fierro, from 1872 and 1879 [described at Wuthering Expectations here and here].

Moving on to the 20th century, you have even more choices--so I'll try and limit myself just to the major names.  Leopoldo Lugones and Macedonio Fernández are said to be two of the bigger deals in pre-Borges 20th century Argentinean letters although Lugones seems to be in decline and Macedonio seems to be in the ascendant right now.  I've read little by either, but Scott from seraillon enjoyed Lugones' Strange Forces short story collection here and E.L. Fay of This Book and I Could Be Friends seemed to like Macedonio's posthumous provocation The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel) here.  Borges' lifelong friends Adolfo Bioy Casares and his wife Silvina Ocampo both have long bibliographies of "fantastic literature" you could choose from, as does crackpot acquaintance J.R. Wilcock although most of his work was written in Italian after he left Argentina for Italy. If, on the other hand, you want a near contemporary of Borges' who was "less literary" and a clear precursor of the Literature of Doom that Bolaño talks about, you could do a whole lot worse than Roberto Arlt and his 1926 El juguete rabioso [Mad Toy] and 1929 Los siete locos [The Seven Madmen].  The latter title, about a plan to foment violent revolution in the Americas through funding obtained from a proliferation of brothels, is visionary fucked-upedness at its best if I do say so myself.

Bypassing Ezequiel Martínez Estrada's essayistic 1933 Radiografía de la pampa [X-Ray of the Pampa] and Leopoldo Marechal's humorously post-Joycean 1948 Adán Buenosayres for the moment, let's jump ahead to the "modern era."  A relatively little known nugget for English readers but a standard in Argentina is Rodolfo Walsh's 1957 Operación Masacre, a pre-In Cold Blood work of "novelistic" investigative journalism.  Of the many Julio Cortázar works you could choose from, I'm most fond of the 1959 novella El perseguidor [The Pursuer, reviewed by Rise of in lieu of a field guide here] and of course the 1962 Boom classic Rayuela [Hopscotch].  Alejandra Pizarnik, who almost went down in history as the woman who lost the manuscript of Cortázar's Rayuela, was a poet whose signature work "La condesa sangriente" ["The Bloody Countess"] is almost surrealistically gory and lyrical. Ricardo Piglia and Juan José Saer, two novelists and critics whose writing and professorial careers stretched from the 1960s up to the 2000s, have both written multiple intellectual but hard-hitting novels that floored me--Piglia's 1980 Respiración artificial [Artificial Respiration] and Saer's 1985 Glosa [The Sixty-Five Years of Washington] probably being my favorite examples of each's work.  Fogwill and César Aira,  two fans of Argentinean Literature of Doom anti-hero Osvaldo Lamborghini (more on him before too long, not to worry), have contributed three of my all-time favorite Argentinean works to date: the 1979 short story "Muchacha punk" and 1983 novella Los pichiciegos [Malvinas Requiem] by Fogwill and the 1987 short story "Cecil Taylor" by Aira.  That's probably way more information than anybody cares for, so fans of either Manuel Puig or Tomás Eloy Martínez will have to pardon me for not saying anything about them here.

*Thanks to Stu, who has agreed to co-host Spanish Lit Month with me again but in a winter month next year, Spanish Lit Month will return in January 2013.  That kind of gives you savvy rule-breakers an extra month to participate in the Argentinean Literature of Doom should you choose to do so.*