This is the final video in unit 3 of the course, The New Historical Novel in Latin America. And rather than putting together a lecture on this topic myself, I decided to bring in one of my colleagues here at the University of Virginia, We happen to have a renowned expert on the modern and contemporary model in Latin America, who's also a translator of some prominence of this genre. So I'm very happy to introduce, my colleague Gustavo Pellon of the department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, and Gustavo thank you so much for joining us. >> My pleasure Very happy. >> So, so we're here to talk about, historical fiction in general, in the Latin American tradition. And, you've written quite a lot about this. And so I wonder if you could talk broadly about the 20th century tradition of historical fiction in Latin America. >> Yes, well it's, it's very interesting. one of the first areas that one would have to point out is the, the novel of the Mexican revolution. Which is a kind of trailblazer in the field. And the first of those is Mariano Azuela's Los de abajo, translated, ever since then in all the translations including mine as The Underdogs. >> And so you've translated this novel, [CROSSTALK] >> I translated, Los de abajo, and eh, It appeared in an edition with historical notes, and other, other packs to go with it, including an excerpt from a very interesting non fiction work, by John Reed, the famous American journalist, which is called In Search of Mexico. And I was able to find chapters that, cover the same ground as the novel. And that's all published in the same volume. But Azuela's novel is, is fascinating. Because Azuela was, was narrating the events that he, himself, took part in. Azuela was a medical officer with Pancho Villa's troops. And eventually, when the revolution spun out of control and became a civil war, he left, and he went for El Paso, and in El Paso, where he had no livelihood, he began to write a novel, and he serialized it. It was published in installments in a newspaper called El Paso, A Spanish language newspaper in el Paso, and it was serialized in 1915. And then in 1916 the same newspaper published a paperback version of it, in, I said in 1916, and because it was published in El Paso, it was largely forgotten for many years. But then in 1924 there was a heated debate in Mexico about our fiction is in the doldrums; how there's no blood in it, there's no life in it. And there was one noted critic in Mexico City who said, there is Azuela's novel. There is a macho novel. There is a novel, he meant macho in a, in a good sense, those were the sexist values of the day. And, and people began to read it, Azuela's novel, and it's never been out of print in 1916. >> Wow. It's become one of the bestsellers and mine I think is the fourth or the fifth translation. So it's a work that is of, of great interest in comparative literature courses, Latin American literature courses done in translation but very much American studies courses and history courses. >> Okay, so what did you find were the big challenges of translating this novel? And, and what is it about it that, that made you, despite the fact that there were already several translations, that made you feel like, what we need, we need to do this again, and >> The. it's really interesting because, I had always taught this novel in Spanish. >> Mm-hm. >> and I, I wasn't aware of the translations that were around. But when the publishing company got in touch with me. Hackett got in touch with me. They said, would you be interested? I, I said of course I'd be interested. I love this novel. It's a masterpiece. And then they, they said to me, okay, great. now justify the need for a new translation. >> Okay. >> And so I had to look at the translations that existed, and I began to understand why they were dissatisfied. Largely the translation that was being used a lot was the first one which was published around 1930, and it was done by a Mexican diplomat. But he felt, my, my impression is that he felt uneasy with the bluntness of Azuela's prose. >> Mm-hm. >> in 1916 Mexico, Azuela's novel was a kick in the gut. It was it was based on notes that he took in the battlefield. The dialogue, you were asking me about the challenges in translating it. Well, it's mostly a novel that's driven by the dialogue, and the dialogue is the way that the, the peasant guerrillas speak. And they have different levels of education, and there are regional differences. >> So in translating, you had to, to sort through that, and think about. >> I had to find some way to convey the richness of the language and the cultural baggage that all this carries. Now, I'll give you an example. When Lukia, the first translator publishes his translation of Los de abajo, when he comes to what they're eating, they're eating tortillas, right? And he has to say corn cakes. >> Hm. >> Because in 1930s United States. >> Nobody would know what that was. >> Only the people in Southwest or California would've had an idea what a tortilla was. So, when I did it, I rethought it and said, you know, many people in the United States who know no Spanish, know a lot of Spanish. >> Mm-hm. >> Vamos muchachos is not a phrase that needs to be translated. >> Okay. >> Tortillas [FOREIGN] and I took inspiration from Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy. I looked at what he did with Spanish and although I was not as daring as he was, because I was doing a translation, I don't have whole dialogues in Spanish the way Cormac McCarthy does, I allowed much more Spanish that I was pretty sure that the readers would know. Plus, I had a glossary of specific, terms that we use. >> That you use. >> But if you begin to look at it, there are any number of words that are in Webster's. And if it's in Webster's, it's fair game. >> And, so where does the historical novel tradition then go after this? And elsewhere >> Yeah. >> In the 20th century. Well it's very interesting because Azuela, as I mentioned and, other writers such as, the writer of The Eagle and the Serpent, and Martin Luis Guzman, whose novel, the The Shadow of the Strongman, I am translating now, Blaze a trail, and they're very similar. They're based on their own experiences of the Mexican revolution, and then in both cases, they fictionalize it. Although some real life characters, as happens in the traditional European historical novel, pop in. You'll see Napoleon in the background in some novels, or Or something like that. Or they'll say, oh, he was in the army of Pancho Villa. But Pancho Villa, for example, never shows up, you know? In, in The Underdogs. However, there, there is a transition after the novel effect of Mexican Revolution. The next big phase comes with the Cuban writer, Alejo Carpentier begins to write a different kind of novel. It is it is not based on battleground experience or personal experience with being in the general staff of one of the generals, or anything like that. But for example, he writes in 1962, Explosion in a Cathedral is the way that the novel was translated into English, is called El Siglo de las Luces in Spanish, which would technically be the enlightenment, but the title, Explosion in a Cathedral, is the title of a very important painting, >> Okay. >> which symbolized the Enlightenment. So the translators did a, you know, were very imaginative in using that. And Carpentier, is trying to use the historical events of the French Revolution And how the French Revolution came to the French Caribbean. In order to talk about Caribbeaness. >> Okay. >> In order to talk also about Cuban history, and the interrelatedness of the history of the islands. So then we begin to have an agenda, a historical agenda, an idealogical agenda. And Carpentier is a huge influence on the writers of the boom. Garcia Marquez also mentioned him as an influence, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, all of them. And of course he kept, he was older than they were but he kept writing at the same time. And then, we actually come to a very interesting moment in the Latin, in the history of the Latin American novel, which is what we actually call the new historical novel in Latin America. Now, what is it that makes it new, because it is different from Azuela and is different from Carpentier? And what makes it different is that the, the authors have absorbed post-modernism. Um-hm. >> The authors have absorbed a critical view of reality and a critical view of history. There's a kind, there's a skepticism of, of history and the idea that the historical, historical discourse is multiple. That there are many voices. So we begin to have. These are people who have read Bakhtin. >> And are they, are they, would you use the phrase that, that Linda Hutchin uses, historiographic metafiction, is that part of this? >> Yes. Yes. Very much so. Very much so, and one thing, when I was working on this in the 90s, what I was really struck by was that, in many cases, I'm pretty sure that they didn't read Hutchin. And, they didn't, they weren't aware of new historicism, as a theoretical, you know, field. But they were doing the same things. But it's not too mysterious because Latin American writers have always been very Francophile, and so they were very aware of everything that was going on in structuralism and post-structuralism in France. So we can assume a familiarity with Barthes, with Derrida with Lacan >> So when, so when, one of our students, say, is reading one of these, more complex novels from, from the, the 80s or 90s. >> Yes. >> Historical novel, and, and they get that sense of self-consciousness about history about the historical materials, a kind of critical distance a little bit on, on written history. Is that kind of part of the trend that they're seeing? >> Very, very much so, and, what, in addition, they, it's, it's very, very interesting, because what they do is they do give you an exciting historical novel to read in which the plot does matter, and in which the characters do matter, but, along the way there are in different, and there are different techniques that are used. There are ways to make you reflect on the historical record, and on the reporting of the historical record. Now you will see variations of course, in the use of the historical novel, and I could give you a few major examples. With a variety of countries, since we've talked about Mexico, I'll continue with Mexico. There is a very very well respected, and well known Mexican writer by the name of Fernando del Paso had written many novels that have been acclaimed by critics. When he wrote in 1987; he wrote a novel about the French invasion of Mexico. During our civil war, Mexico, Napoleon III took advantage of the fact that Lincoln couldn't do anything about the Monroe Doctrine and invaded Mexico. And he set up Maximilian from Habsburg, as the emperor of Mexico, the brother of the emperor of Austria and his, Belgian wife, Carlotta. And Fernando del Paso goes back to that historical moment. Benito Juarez is fleeing from the French troops. Porfidio Diaz is a young general at this time fighting to to defend the Mexican Republic against the French invaders. And from this period, just so that, you know, people can have an idea. We always talk about Cinco de Mayo, in the US. And everybody goes off and has a Corona or whatever. Well Cinco de Mayo is, to commemorate Porfirio Diaz's defeat of Napoleon III's troops in Puebla, in the city of Puebla. So, in Fernando del Paso's novel, Fernando del Paso, as many Latin American authors, is an avid reader of Joyce and an admirer of Faulkner. Latin American authors are voracious readers of the modernist writers. >Garcia Marquez is always talking about the influence of Virginia Woolf's works on, on his own narrative vision. And this is the case in Fernando del Paso and with A Vengeance. The book is, is, is a kind of patchwork quilt of different discourses. Sometimes there will be a, a very traditional, almost 19th century, historical novel description of a, of a party >> Mm-hm >> in Paris, with Napoleon III. And that will end, and then all of the sudden you will have a segment that is, that appears periodically during the novel, which is the monologue of Carlotta. >> Hm. >> Think Molly Bloom monologue >> Okay, yeah. >> at the end of James Joyce. Carlotta went mad when her husband Maximilian was shot in 1867. And Carlotta then went back home to Belgium where she was kept in a, basically a prisoner, in a castle right, the Chateau de Bouchout. And she was there until she died, I believe, in 1920. And Fernando del Paso focuses on the character of Carlotta, and writes these streams of consciousness, which are very, very Joycian, and these are some of the segments that help pull together what otherwise would just be a text that would just go in every direction. >> Right, right. >> So it's all punctuated. And in the last segment of the monologue of Carlotta, she talks about James Joyce's monologue of Molly Bloom. So then we have a, a. >> Is that. Oh, so the self consciousness is that, not just about historical sources, but about literary sources... >> It's amazing. >> But about literary sources as well. >> Amazing. And to give you an idea. Not, not to be exhaustive here, but another one of the sections is epistolary, the letters from two French brothers. One is a socialist in Paris, and the other one is one of the soldiers with Napoleon III's troops. >> So it be, so, the, the idea of of using letters in a novel that, that also goes all the way back to the 18th century with, with the epistolary. Early historical fiction. So there's a great richness of narrative history.
