Mario Vargas Llosa: Literatura, Art, and Goya's Ghost

UCLA Mester Title Mario Vargas Llosa: Literatura, Art, and Goya's Ghost Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6576607x Journal Mester, 29(1) Author Boland, Roy C. Publication Date 2000 DOI 10.5070/M3291014537 Copyright Information Copyright 2000 by the author(s). All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author(s) for any necessary permissions. Learn more at https://escholarship.org/terms Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Mester, Vol. xvz.v, (2000) Mario Vargas Llosa: Literatura, Art, and Goya's Ghost — The relatíonship between the \'erbal and the pictorial that is, between the written word and its \'isual representation, has exercised a particular fascination upon writers and ¿irtists throughout the ages. This nexus has operated both ways: artists have been fascinated by the in which writers manipúlate words, syntax and style to fashion manner new verbal realities (novéis, poems, plays), while writers for their part have succumbed to the allure of artists who utilise paint, ink, acid or crayons to créate new \'isual realities. Examples of this mutual attraction and occasional cross-fertilisation between artists and writers abound. Perhaps no aesthetic movement illustrates the symbiosis between literature and art more consistently and strikingly than fin ãc siède French svmboUsm through its premise that an idea could be expressed through form, the word orobjectrepresented beingnomore thím a sign to open up the pri\'ate world of the imagination. Thus, symbolist poets like Mallarmé, Verlaine and Rimbaud had their counterparts in painters like Redon, Moreau, Rops and Ensor a spiritucd bond between the verbal and the plástic arts that has inspired exhibitions in importantmuseums,galleries andlibraries in cities as far apart — as Melboume and Madrid.^ With respect to the Hispímic world, it is well-known that Sah ador Dalí and Federico García Lorca exercised considerable creative intluence upon each other, while Dali also produced a series of one hundred wood engravings illustrating Dante's The Divine Comedi/. The early novéis of the Spanish Nobel Prize winner for literature, Camilo José Cela, were influenced by the power and the passion of Picasso's Guemica (1937), whose tortured images of mayhem in tum echo the scenes of murder cind mutilation in La familia de Pascual Duarte. Another celebrated case is that of Gustaphe Doré (1833-83), a talented French iUustrator, and Miguel de Cervantes. Doré is remembered chiefly for his classic series of lithographs illustrating the dreams and follies of the Knight Errant of La Mancha. In the Hispanic world El ingeiíioso hidalgo Don Quixote de La Mancha has come out in more editions thcm any book other than the Bible, and no book of illustrations is more revered than El Quijote de Gustavo Doré. Aparticulañy interesting example is that of Littlc Birds, bv Anais Nin, a celebrated erotic writer of Spanish, Cuban French and Danish descent. Published posthumously in 1977, Little 93 — Mario Vargas Uosn: 94 Litcraturc, Art, and Goi/a's Ghost many of them between art and life to delve into the sexual desires and fantasies of men and women In a memorable short storv entitled The Maja, a painter and his wife can only find fulfilment bv phvsically re-enacting the intimacy and the passion encapsulated in Goya's La maja desnuda. One of the most recent illustraBirds consists of a pro\'ocative series of vdgnettes, utilising the paradoxical relationship tionsof the consciousinterplaysbetweenliteratureandartisprovided bv Arturo Pérez Reverte, who utilises Velázquez's grand historical canvas. La rendición de Breda, as the source and inspiration for a nov^el entitled El Sol de Breda. Even more so than Spanish counterparts, the their talented writers emanating from Latin America many hugely in the last forty years ha ve been prepared to employ litera ture as a source not only of pleasure and edification, but also of experimentation, sometimes playful, sometimes iconoclastic. Since the early 1960s Latin American writers, ranging from Jorge Luis Borges , Julio Cortázar and Jorge Amado to Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Manuel Puig and Luisa Valenzuela, have been aware of the ambigú ous status conferred upon them by their chosen vocation. Although they are creators of fiction a synonym for a lie, an untruth this privileged breed of men and women are also — — expected to play the role of oracles in their oracular function tums them pected to use the tools of their trade series of non-fictional topics, and art. Usually when home countries. Their into public intellectuals from —words— who to tell the truth are ex- about a and sex to culture stature of García Márquez or politics, religión writers of the Carlos Fuentes utter or pen words outside the field of fiction, they are taken seriously sufficiently so for a number of these writers to — have become revered or controversial figures in their homelands. More than one has had to go into exile, and some have even lost their lives for daring to speak the truth. Probably no Latin American writer has taken his role as public intellectual more seriously than Mario Vargas Llosa, who, from the time he began to write fiction -his first novel. La ciudad y ¡os perros, was published in 1963 has continued to write, speak, and indeed to act outside the field of litera ture. His ill-fated campaign for the presidency of Peru in 1990 has been well documented, and it is public knowledge that disenchantment with Fujimori, led the regime of his vanquisher, Alberto him to adopt Spanish nafionality in 1993. As a a citizen of both Spain and Peru, Vargas Llosa confinues to speak and write with persuasive eloquence about non-literary issues affecting both the countr}' of his birth and his country by adoption. For instance, in his — 95 Mester, Vol. xxix, (2000) fortnightly syndicated column. Piedra de toque, which appears Ln El País in Speiin and in Caretas in Peru, he regularly lambasts Fujimori for his and inquisitorial modus operandi. In Spain he has not been dictatorial slow to engage in public debate with other intellectuals over questions when he accused Spanish intellectuals of hypocrisy over NATO intervention in Kosovo.Not surprisingly, since Vargas Llosa has always remained steadfastly faithful to the Sartrean axiom that £in intellectual must remain comitted to his/her time and place in history, politics has been his of national or International importance, as preferred field outside literature. what may be termed It is certainly possible to extrapólate a "Vargas Llosan" politicai visión principal collections of articles and essays from Contra Viento y Marea his I, II, III and Desafíos a la libertad. On the other hand. Vargas Llosa has numerous other interests, as conñrmed by e\ en the most cursory reading of his hundreds of non-fictional publications: bullfighting, soccer, cinema, music, gastronomy, religión, anthropology, psychol- ogy, politiccü philosophy, erótica, travei and art. Indeed, there is probably no Uving Latin American writer who has written more about painters and painting than Vargas Llosa. His extensive bibUography includes an in-depth study of the Colombian super-realist Femando Botero, whose portrait of him filis the cover jacket of Making Waves a collection in English of fort\'six essays by Vargas Llosa (Fig.l). In other articles or essays he focuses on such diverse painters as Frieda Kahlo, Femando de Szyslo, George Grozsz and Monet. If he does identify with one painter more than with others, it is with Monet, the French impres, sionist whose intense struggle to capture the invisible layers of reality on canvas mirrors Vargas Llosa 's own endeavours to portray every possible facet of reíility on paper. However, Vargas Llosa does not only write art history and art criticism. He has written two novéis in which he consummates a Creative pactbetween literature and art, one in which the two worlds of painting and writing come together to constitute an altemative reality. In the first novel. Elogio de la madrastra, he interpolates six deliberately chosen paintings as illustrations for six of the novel's fourteen chapters. These paintings ^bv Jacob Jordaens, Francois Boucher, Titi£m, Francis Bacon, Femímdo de Szyszlo and Fra Angélico act as visual representations of the chapters in question, while the chapters in tum perform — — the function of ekphrasis, thereby acting out in words the erotic scenes represented in the paintings.' Most importan tly, the dust-jacket of this novel consists of a detall of Agnolo Bronzino's AUegorx/ of Love (Fig.l). This representation of Cupid and Venus acts as a premonition of the Mario Vargas 95 Llosa: Litcraiurc, Art, and Goya's Ghost amorous adventures in the novel involving the diabolical Cupid figure, Fonchito, and his stepmother, the goddess-like doña Lucrecia. As one reads the novel, it becomes increasingly apparent that there is an affectionate but provocative and challenging interplay between the ekphrastic text and the visual representations, as if each were trying to outdo the other in vividness and power. In a sequei entitled Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto utilises a more subtle ekphrastic technique. , Vargas Llosa No colourful, visual repre- sentations compete with the text. Instead, the reader finds ten small sketches of faces or figures in various poses, some of them sexually charged, at the end of each of the novel's nine chapters and epilogue. The sketches are in fact based on paintings or dra wings by Egon Schiele (1890-1918), aViennese expressionist whose scandalous life and art shocked hiscontemporaries.^ Rather than the sketches, whose function seems to be no more than that of pictorial footnotes, it is the ghostly figure of Egon Schiele that stakes a claim for supremacy in the novel. Schiele appears to be reincarna ted in the child protagonist, Fonchito, a Cupid with homs who tempts or beguiles other characters to act out scenes from Schiele's oeuvre, as occurs when he asks his stepmother to imítate the pose of Reclining According to the Nude eminent in Greni Stockings art critic, Robert (Fig.3). W. Gastón, Vargas Llosa's utilisation ofekphrasis toenrich his literary visión betokens a fine appreciation of the history of art."^ Yet, in all the thousands of pages that Vargas Llosa has devoted to every conceivable aspect of culture and civilisation, there is a Spanish painter of transcendental significance who hardly rates a mention in his writings Francisco Goya (1746-1828). However, Goya's absence from Vargas Llosa's creative and criticai work is quite deceptive, for Goya constitutes an — —a presence as powerful, suggestive ímd Many epithets have been appUed to Vargas Llosa —he has been com- invisible presence in his work perv^asive as the ghost of Egon Schiele in Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto. pared to Victor Hugo, Flaubert, Faulkner, Sartre and Tolstoy, and such terms as Freudian, Dantesque and OrweUian have been used to categorise his fiction. However, an analysis of his major novéis reveáis that there is probably no more fitting adjecti\' e to describe his literary visión than "Goyaesque"."' Very few writers are as conscious of their precursors fundamenwhathe calis a no\' elist's "demons^^ In this regard, a case may be made for Goya as one of his most influential and influences tal tenets as Vargas Llosa, to the extent that one of the of his novelistic theory is "cultural" One demons. of Goya's most famous and complex etchings is a capricho Mester, Vol. xv/.v, 97 {2000} 4). Etched in 1797, while sitting at his desk, the print portravs a man who has fallen asleep resting on the other. The man a paper under one hand and his head Gaspar also represent he could although could well be Goya himself, Spanish man of the quintessential the Melchor Jovellanos (1744-1811), against aU the life striving of his adult most Enlightenment, who spent ¿md modem claritv', science tolerance, reason, ideais of odds to bring the education to eighteenth century Bourbon Spain. Jovellanos succeeded in introducing important reforms under Charles III, but upon the death of this enligh tened monarch in 1788, Spain collapsed into an orgy of entitled El sueño de In rnzón produce monstruos (Fig. and intolerance. JoveUímos was so shocked by the rampant decadence in Spain that he wrote in his diaries scandal, corruption, persecution that his dreams had become "brief and turbulent", and that now "e\'en thestonesmakemecry."^^ What happens to civilisation when reason, intelligence and wisdom are put to sleep is the message depicted in the forces of Goya's etching. The viewer witnesses the reléase of darkness, readv to unleash their poison upon the world. The gargoyle of evil, the owls of ignorance, the lynx of persecution and the bats who suck out the goodness out of humanity now hover menacingly over the sleeping man, whose inteUect has been anaesthetised and his pen , stilled. Obviouslv Goya had obscurantist Spain at the end of the eighit does not require an undue exercise of the imagination to be able to apply this Goyaesque nightmare to other countries and to other times. Certainly any reader acquainted with teenth century in mind, but Vargas Llosa 's oeuvre wouldfindanuncannycorrespondencebetween the historical and intellectual resonances of El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, and the nightmarish moral and politicai visión in such novéis as Historia de May ta ¿md Lituma in the Andes. For instance, in the former. Peru is depicted as a nation where the lights of reason have gone out, monstrous injustice reigns and Armageddon beckons. Homicidal chaos rages throughout the land, which has become a theater of war between the superpowers and their sateUites, with whoring marines propping up a miHtary junta against an invading army of Cubans and Bolivians. As in Goya's etchings, Vargas Llosa uses surrealistic cartoon-like animal symbols to convey personal depravity and moral decav. The novel opens and closes with mountains of rubbish infested with tlies, cockroaches and vermin, and there are ritualistic scenes involving a lubricious tabby cat and the decapita tion of a duck. In short, Goya's macabre Spain at the end of the eighteenth century has been trar\smogrified into Vargas Llosa's apocalyptic Peru at the end of the 98 Mario Vargas Llosa: Litcraturc, Art, twentieth. Jovellanos's delirious last headless nation" —are as applicable produce monstruos words to the and Goya's Ghost — "a headless nation, a Spain of El sucfw de la razón as to the Peru of Historia de Mayta. As Spain plunged Lnto a maelstrom of bloodshed following the Napoleonic invasión of 1808, Goya's horrified response is contained in the series of etchings entitled Los desastres de la guerra. The ghouHsh images of camage in this series, almost unrelieved by any touches of humanity, descend to a level of irrational, indeed demoniacal, bestialFierro ity. Men and women behave abominably, as epitomised by monstruo, a loathsome, bloated creature engorging its victims (Fig.5). There are numerous other scenes of repugnant slaughter in Los desastres, as in Grande hazaña! Con nniertos! (Fig.6). This grotesque scene of castration, decapitation and dismemberment speaks for itself, as does depiction of mass garrotting. No se puede saber por qué Goya's two most notorious denunciations of Wcir, El dos de mayo de 1808 (Fig.8), and El tres de mayo de 1808 (Fig.9), are Ccinvasses whose epic grandeur serves to capture the paradox of war. The French soldiers, heirs of the French Revolution, have been sent to Spain supposedly to libérate the people from the chains of Bourbon tyranny, and yet here they are, annihilating them, even stooping so low as to use mercenaries, as if in this way they círn keep their own hands unstained by Spanish blood. Is it any wonder, in the light of these two paintings, that the Spanish people's reply to the French should have been "¡Que vivan las cadenas!"... In his paintings and etchings Goya conveys, with a mixture of a horrifying (Fig.7). horror, disgust and awe the demons that nourish war: ambition, vanity, fanaticism, barbarism and stupidity, mixed with doses of wild courage Vargas Llosa echoes Goya's visión of war by recountingoneof the most bizarreepisodesin Latin American history: a quasi-religious peasant rebellion in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century led by a lunatic holy man, Antonio "The Counsellor". This would-be messiah set up his own state within a state, the libertarían paradise of Canudos, the refuge of Brazil's downtrodden and outcasts, the prostitutes, bandits, beggars, orphans and cripples. If to these is added the teeming cast of officers, soldiers, politicians, priests, mystics, charlatans and crooks, it is then possible to draw a correspondence with the throng of characters popula ting Goya's etchings and paintings about war. Like Goya's harrowing iUustrations, Vargas Llosa 's novel throbs with grotesque scenes of wholesale carnage, but these are not inserted gratuitously. Rather, they are meant to expose a historical truth: that when one type of fanaticism (for example. and blind idealism. In La guerra del fin del mundo. (2000) 99 religious) is confronted bv another (politicai, ideological or military), it Mester, Vol. xv/.v. isinvariably thecommon people who suffer. Goya'scompositíonsare another time and the circumstances are quite different, but the that in the supposedly grand is certainly the same scheme of history, war is an infernal monster feeding on base motives set in — ultimate message on the flesh and blood of innocent victims. one transcendental image linking Goya and Vargas Llosa, however, it is that of Satum devouring his son, as portrayed in the shocking, phantasmagoric painting with this title (Fig.lO). The viewer cannot help but reel in shock before this image, which violates a fundamental taboo. As Vargas Llosa's readers know, the primai confrontation between father and son constitutes one of the basic and growing If there fat is themes of his novéis. From his verv first one, La ciudad y ¡os perros, to his one, La fiesta del chivo, what critics have called "the demon of the father" operates in Vargas Llosa's novéis at two leveis, the psychological and the politicai.'* For Goya's cannibalistic Satum one could read any one of the monstrous father figures in Vargas Llosa's novéis for la test — example, Richi's tyrannical father in La ciudad y los perros; the twisted and tortured Don Fermín in Conversación en La Catedral; or the despotic Don Ernesto in La tía y el escribidor who at one stage threatens to shoot his son like a dog and leave him to die in the street. In almost , all cases the filial figures in Vargas Llosa's novéis finish psychologi- not phvsically, like the bloody, mutilated corpse of Satum's son. Who could forget, for example, the crucified, emasculated, sodomised corpse of Palomino Molero with which the epomTnous novel by Vargas cally, if Llosa opens? In this psychological murder mystery, it is a demented Mindreau, who is responsible for this horrendous crime. Indeed, so powerful is the image of Satum devouring his son in Vargas Llosa's oeuvre, that the reader can only conclude that the Satum figure, Colonel Spanish painter functions as a creafive influence or "cultural demon" upon the Peruvian novelist. Another significímt correspondence between Vargas Llosa's novéis and Goya's art lies in their respective representationsof another heinous crime: cannibalism. Goya's two oils on canvas, Caníbales preparando a sus víctimas (Fig.ll), and Caníbales contemplando restos again reduce humanity to a state of unredeemed barbarism. Gova's naked, orgiastic savages have their counterparts in Lituma eji los Andes, Vargas Llosa's apocalyptic portrayal of contemporary Peru. In this novel the classical myth of Dionysius is transported humanos (Fig.l2), yet peaks of the Andes, where in the ñames of their ancient gods and demons a gang of crazed women sacrifice their male victims, cutting to the Mario Vargas 100 off, cooking and eating their Llosa: Litcratiirc, Art, testicles. and Goya's Ghost Although Goya depicts male cannibals and Vargas Llosa témale, their point seems to be the same: disbelief that in nineteenth century Spain and twentieth century Peru the valúes ofcivüization should have collapsed so totally and dramatically. Another etching from Los desastres de la guerra pointedly relevant Vargas Llosa is El buitre carnívoro (Fig.l3). What is particularly striking here is that el buitre (the vulture) is Vargas Llosa 's notorious svmbol for the novelist, who, more often than not, uses carrion that is, as fodder for fiction. It is for this reason, the dark side of humanity argües Vargas Llosa, that war, pestilence, corruption, tragedy, sexual depravit\' and personal anguish comprise the subject matter of great novelistic vul tures like Tolstoy, Faulkner, Victor Hugo, Joseph Conrad, and of course, Vargas Llosa himself. The sources of influence and inspiration in literature and art are usually mysterious, and more often than not impenetrable. Accordingly, it can be an exercise in idle fancy to — — or fatuousness by a critic to try to identify them. However, given the potent series of correspondences between the visual and verbal universes conjured by Goya and Vargas Llosa, the question may be legitimately asked: did Goya's image of the camivorous \'ulture inspire or influence Vargas Llosa 's symbol for the no\^elist? While their focus upon the scabrous and the grotesque establishes the most e\'ident connection in the chain binding Goya and Vargas Llosa, their respective representations of woman and the female body also link them. La maja desnuda (Fig.l4) and La maja vestida (Fig.15) are undoubtedlv Goya's most provocative female portraits. Mystery surrounds the Who was the identit\' of the maja ? Was maja and her relationship to the painter: she really the Ehjchess of Alba? Are the paintings reall v the immortalisation of their passionate love affair a fifty year oíd artist, and — ^he, she, a thirt}^ four ye¿ir oíd aristocrat? Just as autobiography, sex, eroticism and scandal are associated with Goya's majas, these are also the elements associated with Vargas Llosa's portrayal of Julia in La Tía Julia y el escribidor (1977). This novel scandalised Peru, with many readers disapproving of the way in which their most celebrated writer novel. Julia herself was Varguitas no utilised his first wife as moved to fodder for a comic publish an indignant riposte. Lo que dijo. Moreoxer, just as a perusal of Goya's paintings reveáis many suggestive representations of women — — and etching sitting, reclining or standing ^in various states of undress, a review^ of Vargas Llosa's novéis confirmsthathe,too, dresses and undresses his fíctional women 101 Mester, Vol. xxix, (2000) La Pies Dorados in La ciudad y los perros; Lalita and Queta in Conversación en La Catedral and la Brasileña in Pantaleón y las visitadoras, are only a few of the women who titillate or shock Vargas Llosa's readers. Indeed, the voluptuous doña Lucrecia seems to spend so much time covering or uncovering her nakedness in Elogio de la madrastra and Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto, that the reader is turned into a voyeur or PeepingTom. Representations of doña Lucrecia in this novel range from Jacob Jordaen's monumental bottom of the wife of the King of Lydia (Fig. 16), to Fra Angélico' s gentle Madonna (Fig.17). Doña Lucrecia hasalso inspired the use of alurid, garter-belted female torso by Andrzei Klimowski on the duskjacket of the paperback edition in English by Faber and Faber (Fig. 18). Ultimately, the correspondences between Goya as painter and Vargas Llosa with a knowing glee. in La casa verde; Hortensia ; own criticai responses to their respecfemale body. Depending upon the reader's as novelist extend to the reader' s tive representations of the personal sensibilities, Goya' s majas and Vargas Losa's images of doña may be situated within a spectrum ranging from sexist carica- Lucrecia tures to reverential icons. Previous literary criticism has drawn attention to some of the rich and varied influences that have shaped and informed Vargas Llosa's fiction: Sartre, Flaubert, Freud, Hugo, Faulkner, Joannot Martorell and view of the striking visual and verbal similarities between Goya and Vargas Llosa, there is little doubt that the former should be added to the list. Across the invisible boundaries of time and space that sepárate them, the painter from Aragón and the writer from Arequipa emerge as two of a kind. Tirant lo Blanc. In — Roy C. Boland La Trobe University 102 Mario Vargas Figure 1. Llosa: Literature, Art, Botero, Mario Vargas Llosa. and Goya's Ghost 103 Mester, Vol. xxix, (2000) Figure 2. Agnolo Bronzino, Allegory ofLove. Mario Vargas 104 Figure 3. Figure Egon 4. Llosa: Literature, Ari, Schiele, Reclining Goya, El sueño de la Nude in and Goya's Ghost Creen Stockings. razón produce monstruos. 105 Mester, Vol. xxix, (2000) .¿z/'¿emitir ://fír-/et>t''(./.e<A Figure Figure 6. 5. Goya, Fierro Monstruo. Goya, ¡Grande hazaña! ¡Con muertos! 106 Mario Vargas Llosa: Literature, Art, ^¿€i óe /m€<^ óaóei /lot Figur 7. Goya, Figure 8. and Goya's Ghost cae No se puede saber por qué. Goya, El dos de mayo. 107 Mester, Vol. xxix, (2000) Figure 9. Goya, El tres de mayo. Figure 10. Goya, Saturno devora a su hijo. Mario Vargas 108 Llosa: Literature, Art, and Goya's Ghost Figure 11. Goya, Caníbales preparando a sus víctimas. t t V V t y V 1 < », t. I s Figure 12. Caníbales contemplando restos humanos. 109 Mester, Vol. xxix, (2000) '¿^<^ éfâó'^ ecí^tnc'i^o'íeo^ Figure 13. Goya, El buitre carnívoro. lio Mario Vargas Llosa: Literature, Art, Figure 14. Goya, La maja desnuda. Figure 15. Goya, La maja vestida. and Goya's Ghost 111 Mester, Vol. xxix, (2000) r *~ ~-- «çcoonts ali my rmn. but rather thui An^'nit^ When l ord*r her to knccl and rrach roe. tbcv llfttlrr mr.) toudi hcT forehrof) to the carprt to kii» fluv rxaminr it« hi-r «t will. »o that it. thr pm-iout object l Attiiin^ mos! pnchantio^ volume. E»ch httnwphrr»- carnal parsdise; thc two of ihrtn. rpttintctt i^ > \>\ ., delicate cieft of nrorK impencptible dnwii that \»uishe» ili thr DCM. and fi»re*l of inloucalin»; whilrncít. black- ti]kin<H( that hrr thi^». mr ptit in crowns thr Hmi columni oí mind of an «har of that boi- baroii* rcli^iun of thr Babvlonjan» thal oiin ri- and %oU lo m> Itpv mv embrarr and vtarm on ctdd ni^ht». a mo6t mv hcad and foutilain of ptramirei ut thr hour nf «mnrou> •* pun|ied. h frrh firm tu im- inuch v«»t In comfortablc cuthton on whirh lo rml a Muil. l*mrtralin#t'her finl, and r*cn not ravv, pamful, rathrr. at i» brroir. in «cw of ihr rt:t«tiinfr thnt thojr expanses of pink flr«h "ffrr tu vinJr attatk ^ \Mial arr requirrd arr a «tubbom ing and When fmm 1 no onc. a> t«ld iiyiçti., v»nal gimrd and froin nniíi- thr »on of Datcviu». my a drrp- and trur of minr. it mmiMrr. prrfonncd b> fttaiii will which shrink p|i|ngin^. fK'rv%rnii^ rod. thal I m> m •iimptuous. hlH-tailed vcvsrl of our nuptial Í>rd of my wilh whith Mliooprd with laufUitrr ii tiir thr th. ri valorou» drrd» on thr banlrficld «r nf U mipartialiry But prt- wa» proudrr of rod wrth Luctim-im i*a* not: 1 ut I mrte oul ju*ti<e. . •', what hr look t» br n ««m more pndr in »uíh tnilv takr i-\ 112 Mario Vargas Llosa: Literature, Art, and Goya's Ghost InPraiseofthe Stepmother 'Eroticand very funny.' Observer Figure 18. A. Klimowski, In Praise ofthe Stepmother. 113 Mester, Val. xxix, (2000) NOTES \dsited the following I have recently and Mallarmé" (NGV, Melboume, November For example, ' "Visual Artists "Pintores dei alma. El simbolismo idealista de Francia " exhibitions: 1998); and (Mapire Vida, Madrid, January 2000). - For the polemic between Vargas Llosa and Manuel Vicent, see the on latter's article in El País An "^ provided by Robert W. Elogio de la See Robert ^ la 24-5-99. madrastra." On Egon Schiele'd life and art, see * Elogio de and the former's on 16-5-99, study of ekphrasis in Elogio de la madrastra is Gastón, "Pictorial Representation and Ekphrasis in enlightening W. Egon Schiclc : The Complete Works. Gastón, "Pictorial Representation and Ekphrasis. In madrastra." Vargas Llosa's fullest exposition of the role and function of the found in Garda Marquez: Historia de un deicidio, 85-213. For an explanation of the origins and signifícance of the "demons", see Efraín Kristal, " "demons" is Temp^tatio77 of the Word, 3-6. The basis of this article is a lecture entitled "Goyaesque Vision in Mario Vargas Llosa," delivered on October 18, 1998, at the National Galler\' of Victoria, Melboume, Australia, on the occasion of a Symposium to celébrate an " exhibitionofGoya'sprintsfromtheGallery'scoUection. I thank the organisers Symposium, particularly Dr. Frank Heckes, Irena Zdanowicz, Irene Ruffolo and Maria Zavala for their support and coUaboration in the prepara tion of the text and illustrations for this article. The book by Frank Heckes, Reasonand Folly. The Prints of Francisco Goya, contains an invaluable illustrated commenof the tary of Los Disparates, Caprichos and La Tauromaquia. For an account of Jovellanos's life and his relationship with Goya, see Carlos Fuentes, The Buried Mirror 215-31. " See Roy C. Boland, Mario Vargas Llosa. Oedipus and the Papa State 8* , , 12. 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