"Warma Kuyay" and "The Pongo’s Dream"
These seemingly simple stories are in some ways, for me, more deeply expressive of the feeling states that companion particular cycles of individual and/or cultural/social experience. The other works we have read tend to approach or include a feeling dimension as part of elaborate and masterful intellectualizations; these stories are stark and dark forebodings of helplessness and hopelessness.
"Warma Kuyay" marvelously captures the volatile and conflicting feelings and thoughts of young Ernesto, a boy—probably an orphan—at the cusp of adulthood. Arguedas conveys this instability in subtle ways, such as the vast network of names and relations that are never quite explained, and mirror the experience of a child or young person who knows very precisely his or her relation to particulars (however fleeting), but not necessarily how those particulars relate to each other, or how they fit into a larger order.
Sadly, the Indian knows all too well that no matter how corrupt, cruel, or unfair the prevailing colonial system may be, it is beyond his ability even to attempt to rebel against that system. He can only retreat farther into the countryside. He understands the cruelty of men, his own included, that preys upon whatever is weaker. Ernesto does not comprehend the darkness of his heritage, or how simple it is to love an innocent animal, but not another person, who is naturally filled with conflict and fear, and will not carry the projection imposed.
In "The Pongo’s Dream" no justice is meted out or even imaginable in this life, on earth. Rather, after death, in heaven, a reciprocal cruelty is commanded and enacted for all time. This second tale describes a hopeless cycle of injustice and revenge that echoes Old Testament dynamics in the name of St. Francis. The intrinsic problem with this idea, its deep sadness, is that it allows only for a reversal of position, not a changed dynamic. Arguedas brilliantly describes the pongo’s dream not as volition, but as yet another act of subservience, this time to a wrathful St. Francis; the pongo submits to the heavenly command as to the landowner, locked forever in an embrace with his former tormentor. One can only imagine that he might have preferred to be released from that relation.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Pedro Paramo / Juan Rulfo
Notes on “Pedro Paramo”
On my first reading of “Pedro Paramo” my impression was of a marvelous and very dark enchantment; after my second reading, I was disappointed with the work as a whole (and I deeply regretted having that reaction); after a third reading I was left with both responses, each stronger. That said, my very strongest reaction to Rulfo’s work, however, was its difference from the other works we have read. Cautions are, of course, in order. This work was created after the Mexican Revolution; after the first World War; after the second World War and the dropping of atomic bombs.
All of the other works have a shape of completion or fulfillment as works that is different from “Pedro Paramo,” stylistically and essentially; each author may tell tales that are more or less cryptic and magical, but the voice from which they speak (if not necessarily what they mean to say) is essentially immediately comprehensible from a general Western European cultural perspective.
Certainly, Pedro and Susana could be seen as Titans involved in their titanic journey, regardless of the mere mortals or half-mortals who block their essential being, and the endless sufferings and movements of the living, dead, or not-dead is similar enough to stories of the Greek and Roman afterlife. Juan Preciado could be little more than a carpet-bagger after the US Civil War, looking for whatever he has not found elsewhere. His mother's claim that his father--Pedro Paramo-- would "want" to know him is not borne out by that parent's neglect. Nor can we even know that Pedro is his father.
However I may want to feel about it, I don’t believe in ghosts, or that I could run home and remind my—waiting—dead spouse to put in a good word when she gets to Heaven for Ines Villalponda. I do, however, believe in the fluidity of time and reason, that past and present constantly inform each other, and this belief is marvelously (and horribly) present throughout the book. In English there is, alas, only one term for the verb “to be;” in Spanish there are two: one for essential characteristics, and one for temporary states. Death, like Life, is considered a temporary condition; this seems simultaneously Christian, primordial, and similar to what some contemporary physicists and scientists hold to be possible, if not exactly true. “Pedro Paramo” is full of strange vitality and horrifying permanence, and, for me, its real and magnificent force is that it is entirely serious, earnest, and desperately human.
On my first reading of “Pedro Paramo” my impression was of a marvelous and very dark enchantment; after my second reading, I was disappointed with the work as a whole (and I deeply regretted having that reaction); after a third reading I was left with both responses, each stronger. That said, my very strongest reaction to Rulfo’s work, however, was its difference from the other works we have read. Cautions are, of course, in order. This work was created after the Mexican Revolution; after the first World War; after the second World War and the dropping of atomic bombs.
All of the other works have a shape of completion or fulfillment as works that is different from “Pedro Paramo,” stylistically and essentially; each author may tell tales that are more or less cryptic and magical, but the voice from which they speak (if not necessarily what they mean to say) is essentially immediately comprehensible from a general Western European cultural perspective.
Certainly, Pedro and Susana could be seen as Titans involved in their titanic journey, regardless of the mere mortals or half-mortals who block their essential being, and the endless sufferings and movements of the living, dead, or not-dead is similar enough to stories of the Greek and Roman afterlife. Juan Preciado could be little more than a carpet-bagger after the US Civil War, looking for whatever he has not found elsewhere. His mother's claim that his father--Pedro Paramo-- would "want" to know him is not borne out by that parent's neglect. Nor can we even know that Pedro is his father.
However I may want to feel about it, I don’t believe in ghosts, or that I could run home and remind my—waiting—dead spouse to put in a good word when she gets to Heaven for Ines Villalponda. I do, however, believe in the fluidity of time and reason, that past and present constantly inform each other, and this belief is marvelously (and horribly) present throughout the book. In English there is, alas, only one term for the verb “to be;” in Spanish there are two: one for essential characteristics, and one for temporary states. Death, like Life, is considered a temporary condition; this seems simultaneously Christian, primordial, and similar to what some contemporary physicists and scientists hold to be possible, if not exactly true. “Pedro Paramo” is full of strange vitality and horrifying permanence, and, for me, its real and magnificent force is that it is entirely serious, earnest, and desperately human.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
The Final Mist / Maria Luisa Bombal
For me, “The Final Mist” is a ravishing and frightening tale of warning. Through the voice of the nameless heroine, Bombal creates a powerful vision of a deeply feminine perspective caught in the conflict of body and soul, reality and illusion, and immobilized by both the fear of life and the fear of death. But her story is Everyone’s. The narrator is not a proto-feminist; she yearns not for freedom, self-expression, or self-knowledge, but, rather, to be dominated by a stereotype stranger in the usual way.
Her erotic reverie mirrors a traditional Christian religious yearning, a failed tale of redemption. Her fault—if it is that—is that she “weds” herself to an ordinary, conventional fantasy incapable of carrying anything extraordinary. More, she uses this fantasy to stand in the way of any other connection, until, too late, she must recognize the ordinariness of even that waste—of time and possibility. She is lazy, and can neither accept nor reject life, which never comes in the guise one expects. She is both victor and victim, shamed and envious of her sister-in-law who has done what the narrator could only dream, poorly.
It is not a surprise that the mist and death first appear after she declines to comfort her weeping husband on their wedding night. The peculiarity of her sudden marriage to her recently widowed cousin is not a sufficient excuse. She knows this herself: “I move away from him, trying to convince myself that the most discreet reaction is to pretend absolute ignorance of his pain. But inside, something tells me that my attitude is also the most convenient, the least involved. More than my husband’s sobbing, the idea of my own selfishness disturbs me.” But not sufficiently to act differently. Instead she goes to bed and falls asleep instantly. Then her dream commences.
At the end, her husband will reward her moment of truth and awareness in the same manner. The power of the story is not in revealing the narrator’s failing (in which she is unexceptional—not to be condemned), but in how common and easy failure is.
Her erotic reverie mirrors a traditional Christian religious yearning, a failed tale of redemption. Her fault—if it is that—is that she “weds” herself to an ordinary, conventional fantasy incapable of carrying anything extraordinary. More, she uses this fantasy to stand in the way of any other connection, until, too late, she must recognize the ordinariness of even that waste—of time and possibility. She is lazy, and can neither accept nor reject life, which never comes in the guise one expects. She is both victor and victim, shamed and envious of her sister-in-law who has done what the narrator could only dream, poorly.
It is not a surprise that the mist and death first appear after she declines to comfort her weeping husband on their wedding night. The peculiarity of her sudden marriage to her recently widowed cousin is not a sufficient excuse. She knows this herself: “I move away from him, trying to convince myself that the most discreet reaction is to pretend absolute ignorance of his pain. But inside, something tells me that my attitude is also the most convenient, the least involved. More than my husband’s sobbing, the idea of my own selfishness disturbs me.” But not sufficiently to act differently. Instead she goes to bed and falls asleep instantly. Then her dream commences.
At the end, her husband will reward her moment of truth and awareness in the same manner. The power of the story is not in revealing the narrator’s failing (in which she is unexceptional—not to be condemned), but in how common and easy failure is.
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