JUAN RULFO PEDRO PÁRAMO JUAN CARLOS HERKEN ENGLISH

JUAN RULFO PEDRO PÁRAMO THE MEXICAN LABYRINTH Juan Carlos Herken Krauer, ©2021, ©2023 2 JUAN RULFO: PEDRO PÁRAMO, THE MEXICAN LABYRINTH. https://litteraemundijcherken.blogspot.com/2021/04/juan-rulfo-pedro-paramo-mexican.html? m=1 Málaga Airport, Spain, mid-2003. I had the pleasure of going to welcome a person who was arriving from Paris in the Andalusian city. Aware that there might be a delay, I decided to take with me a small print with short-stories by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo (*1917, †1986, full name "Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno"), to ease the wait. The booklet in turn had a somewhat romantic resonance, as it was purchased at the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris, France, back in 1996. The current location on Rue de la Bûcherie, 5th arrondissement, is the second version. The first one founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, on Rue de Odéon, 6th arrondissement, was closed during the military occupation of Paris, and never reopened. 3 The bookstore with a view of the Notre-Dame Cathedral became a "refuge" often frequented by the author of these lines, especially between 1991-1998. Even afterwards. Climbing the narrow stairs and gazing at the walls crammed with books, new and used, mostly in English, but also in other languages, was tantamount to a calendar change, a detachment from chronological time and concerns in that other land, “out there”. It was during a visit, accompanied by a beautiful and brilliant young woman, an American art historian, who years later would hold the chair at one of the most renowned universities in that country, that I found the mini-editions of Alianza Editorial de Madrid, and bought the volume of stories by Juan Rulfo1. And another by Jorge Luis Borges (* 1899- † 1986), Artificios. 1 Rulfo, Juan. Relatos, Alianza Editorial, 1994. 4 While waiting at the “Arrivals” hall in Málaga I began reading “They have given us the land”, and a few minutes later I felt the itch of “goose bumps” that began to inundate me, without haste, without opposition. “One has sometimes believed, in the middle of this road without shores, that there would be nothing later; that nothing could be found on the other side, at the end of this fissured plain of cracks and dry streams. "2 I was no longer there, and it was hard for me to understand why I had been there. (First page of the "Seminar on the short-story of three Hispanic-American authors", typed by the author of these lines ", 1970-71. © 2021) 2 Rulfo, Juan. Relatos, Alianza Editorial, 1994, Nos han dado la tierra, p. 5. 5 I was back in South America, between 1970-71, when I began to read the “great Mexican”, Juan Rulfo, with whom I have the honor of sharing the saint. At the premises of an entity to be summarized as I.L.A.R.I., located on Calle Eligio Ayala in the city of Asunción, Paraguay, a “Seminar on the short-story of three Spanish-American authors, Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges” was organized, coordinated by the great Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos (*1917†2005), Cervantes Prize (1990), who lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but occasionally visited Paraguay, “when political circumstances allowed it. ... ”. I have memories of intense sessions, very much rich and stimulating, which were written down in detail by the person who subscribes these lines. Roa Bastos demonstrated not only a first-rate intellectual authority, but also great generosity, and a mixture of curiosity-respect for the youngers. One of the works that I presented was "The treatment of time in the work of Juan Rulfo", whose draft is still there, several decades later, hoping that this author may dare to resurrect it. I insisted on underlying the concept of "metaphysical time", to which Roa Bastos, smiling, said "... rather, psychological time”. We took up the subject again on a visit to Toulouse, France, in 1988. Roa Bastos told me of his amazement at the ability of some students at the French university in that city, to discover new facets in Rulfo's narratives, such as the one who, in a doctoral thesis, showed that "... in this part you can hear the noise made by the dead": "What would they discover next?", he said, astonished and happy. 6 (First page of the presentation of the “first group” on Rulfo's work, written and typed by the author of these lines, 1970-71. © 2021) In the novel Pedro Páramo (1955) by Juan Rulfo one of the secrets of "being accepted by the text" lies precisely in listening to the noise made by the living and the dead, when they walk freely through the town, Comala. Even as that noise does not sound, but it can be felt: 7 “I heard the sound of words from time to time, and I could tell the difference. Because the words that I had heard until then, until I knew about it, they did not have any sound, they did not sound. They could be felt, but without sound, like those you hear in your dreams. "3 The novel came into light after the set of stories published as El Llano en Llamas (1953), which take place against the background of rural life in Mexico during the "Mexican Revolution" and the "War of the Cristeros" (1926-28). This succession of social convulsions was to affect Rulfo's family to the utmost. After the murder of his father in 1923, and the death of his mother in 1927, Rulfo was educated by his grandmother in Guadalajara, Jalisco. It is the same matrix that would provide the substrate for The Power and the Glory of Graham Greene. https://litteraemundijcherken.blogdpot.com/2020/11/graham-greene-power-and-glorymexican.html?m=1 Pedro Páramo was described by Jorge Luis Borges as "one of the best novels of the literature of Hispanic languages, and even of all literature."4 It was only a few weeks ago that I became aware of the meeting between the two writers, in 1976, when Borges was visiting Mexico. Both were to die in the same year, 1986. Jorge Luis Borges, left, and Juan Rulfo, right, 1976) 3 4 Translation from the Spanish original. Pg. 41. Borges, Jorge Luis. Pedro Páramo, 1985, Hyspamérica, Buenos Aires, 1985. 8 The novel begins with the first-person narration of Juan Preciado, who promises his dying mother that he will go to Comala, to look for his father, Pedro Páramo. The name already offers clues to capture the novel's underlying landscape: Pedro, "Petrus", (stone, stones ...), "the wasteland where there are only stones", and one could even replace "stones" by "bones”. Thus begins the journey of Juan Preciado, who before arriving in Comala meets another man, a "muleteer", who tells him that he, too, is the son of Pedro Páramo. Juan Rulfo, accompanied, on his way to Comala. Johann Sanssouci, © 2022. A woman, a friend of his mother, will welcome him to the abandoned village, where only shadows, ghosts circulate, crossed by empty carts, and a horse without a rider that keeps going round and round, “aware that his employer had committed a crime". “It’s only the horse that runs back and forth. They were inseparable. It runs all over the place still looking for him, especially at this hour. Perhaps the poor thing is plagued by remorse. Because even animals realize when a wrong has been done, isn’t that so?”5 5 Our translation of the Spanish original. Pg. 18. 9 There is no need for us to give more details of the plot(s) in the novel, if plots in the traditional sense were to be found. To be noted, yes, the Leitmotiven that underpin the structure of the narrative: Adventures and misadventures of Pedro Páramo, his wives, his children, legitimate and illegitimate. Dreams and anguish of women, at a time when aggressions arrived more frequently than rain, the bid for money and land, the waves of the "revolution." And a Catholic priest, Father Renterías, confronting one of the typical crossroads of the epoch, granting indulgence to someone who, among other things, murdered his brother and raped his niece. “A handful of gold coins” leaves the petitioner, hoping that in that way his deceased son would obtain God's forgiveness. The narrative about the characters offers us a range of tools to capture the substratum of the work: How can the reader enter that world, deceivingly "fictitious", and rub shoulders with men and women who seem to be swimming in the clouds. Above all: Listen to the echoes. "Yes," Damiana Cisneros said again. This town is full of echoes. I'm not scared anymore. I hear the howling of the dogs and let them howl. And on airy days you can see the wind dragging tree leaves, although here, as you can see, there are no trees. There were trees at some time, because if not, where would those leaves come from? "6 What are those leaves dancing thanks to the wind across the town? They are the souls of the dead, whose original depository, their bodies, are no longer there (the trees). 6 Our translation of the Spanish original. Pg. 36. 10 We do not even know if the entire narrative is nothing more than a dreamlike construction of the first-person narrator, right at the onset of the narrative. Commenting on the desire expressed by his mother that he ought to make the trip, he says: “But I had no intention to keep my promise, until I began to fill myself with dreams, to give flight to illusions. "7 It should be emphasized that Pedro Páramo is written in “Mexican-Spanish”, with singular expressions and sentence constructions, and that it can only be apprehended within that linguistic background, which is, per se, a “Mexican view of the world”. The novel breathes the vapors exhaled by a society constantly shaken by revolutions and persecutions, a Catholic Church in turn harassed by many, and venerated by many others, which the persecution seems to make stronger. The geography of Pedro Páramo is, as his name indicates, arid, dry land, few trees, and above all little water. By bringing together these two writers who, each in their own way, transgressed the norms of traditional narrative, we would dare to express, repeating what we had already suggested at the beginning of the 1970s, that while Rulfo “universalizes” the “Mexican experience”, Borges “recreates” the Universal with Argentine spectacles. Comala is the town that Rulfo uses as his own Mexican "Tower of Babel", his "labyrinth" on the plateau, in which, without a doubt, Ariadne’s thread is not available. At least visibly. It is the place where the living do not know whether they are still alive, and the dead do not know whether they are still dead. 7 Our translation of the Spanish original. Pg. 2. 11 Juan Rulfo, accompanied, on his way to Comala, B, Johann Sanssouci, © 2022. Let us rewrite it: "Dead" and "living" keep recalling the events, in turn changing their existential position, passing from existence on earth (Das Dasein) to existence beyond the "wall of time" (Das-jenseits-der-Zeitmauer-Sein). Summa summarum: The only thing that "exists" is memories. And not only in Comala. Perhaps Roa Bastos was right in criticizing my persistence with the concept of "metaphysical time", and insisting on that of "psychological time", even more so, today, as we remember the Greek origin of the word "psyche", that is, "soul". Here follows what appears to be the last message from Juan Preciado, but it is not. The reunion with his mother will arrive: “I escaped to the street looking for some air; but the heat that chased me did not relinquish. And there was no air; only the night slowed and still, heated by the August heatwave. There was no air. I had to suck in the very air that came out of my mouth, stopping it with my hands before it disappeared. I felt it coming and going, less and less; until it got so thin that it slipped through my fingers, forever. I say forever. I have memory of seeing something like foamy clouds swirling over 12 my head and then washing myself off with that foam and getting lost in its cloudiness. That was the last thing I saw."8 The question we asked ourselves, weeks ago, when we began to re-read the novel Pedro Páramo: How would we react, half-a-century later? After fifty years, the wonder is still there, coming out of a novel with a simple and concise language, which promises little, but offers much. And we happen to believe that, fifty years from now on, the wonder will not have ceased. New revision, 12.2023. 8 Our translation of the Spanish original. Pg. 50.