From how I was captivated by an usher
(Felisberto skill)
Fernando Sorrentino
M any people have written valuable pages on Felisberto Hernández subtle. From many different aspects of his work have addressed, among others, Italo Calvino, Juan Carlos Onetti, Julio Cortázar, Juan José Saer, Ricardo Rey Bedford, Ricardo A. Latcham and Edelweiss Serra, and have done so with authority, insight, with dissimilar viewpoints healthy.
I just want to tell a modest experience, not a sharp critic, but hedonic reader.
I can determine with certainty the date on which I learned of the existence of a man named Felisberto Hernández. In those years I bought the book "affordable price" of such a Universal Basic Library in Buenos Aires, published each week the Center for Latin American Editor. The volume 130 is entitled The crocodile, and other stories , and was published in April 1971.
As at that time I was a sort of reading machine, must have taken the time to read the unknown author. The second story of the anthology begins:
had hardly left the teens I went to live in a big city. Its center-where all world moved between houses in a hurry too high, was near a river.
Apparently, the tone is somewhat childish, with a reminiscence of school writing. However, I am in possession of a few very detailed:
the narrator is a young person;
lives in a big city but was born elsewhere (smaller)
in the center of the city is tall buildings;
shownpeople hurried, which tells me that is there business;
the river has to be the de la Plata and Uruguay as the author is, I can infer that the "big city" is Montevideo.
These thirty-some words from the opening paragraph are not disturbed by any pernicious abstraction, and only two austere and dull adjectives: big and hurry.
The overall effect is immediately spark my interest, my desire to move forward.
What engages the narrator?
I was a theater usher, but the same thing out there running from side to side, like a mouse under old furniture. Going to my favorite places like stepping into holes and find unexpected connections coming. Also, I was pleased to imagine everything that he knew of that city.
Al level usher office was opposed some curious circumstances, even outside of work, keep running from one place to another, compared to a mouse enters bifurcated holes, in turn, in other passages, he takes pleasure in imagining what not know the city.
Caramba! This has been unknown Felisberto have to pay much attention. What will happen now ...?
My turn on stage was the last of the afternoon. I ran to my dressing room, polished brass buttons I wore my coat and green on gray vest and pants, then put me in the left aisle of the auditorium and reached the gentlemen taking their number; but they were the first ladies that followed my steps when I put out the red carpet. As I stopped and had reached out a greeting in passing minuet. Always expect a tip amazing, and I knew the head tilted with respect and contempt.
Perhaps I only found the excellent description, visible action verbs, concrete nouns, no idle adjective, adverb-minimum nuances of his daily task of accommodating. But the final sentence ends with two antagonistic terms ( respect and contempt ) that cause me concern: if the usher has contempt for the audience, then the respect they show is fake. So I must ask: why despises who give tips ...?
And then I read:
not matter that they did not suspect anything more than I was.
At this point in my foray reader who enjoys the adventures and riddles, how to stop reading, how to not wanting to find out what lay the great superiority of the unnamed narrator?
Needless to say that I no longer stood for a moment and, indeed, read on to learn the mysteries that the narrator intended but hidden: the greed of the reader is the result of the effectiveness of narrator.
course, as in act of reading I made no conscious analysis of the text, it can happen one of two things:
a) trip and I get bored and annoyed me when the author is clumsy;
b) I am driven by the pleasure of reading precisely because of the ability of the narrator.
Since we are lucky if b) , only later occurred to me to try to establish why Felisberto not let me-leave-captivated reading "The usher." 1
Those who have read the story know what possessed the usher unusual gift, who have not read it have to do it, because I will not reveal. 2
Notes:
1. "The usher" was first published in The Annals of Buenos Aires (I, 6 June 1946), a fact of relevance, if we consider that the director and factotum of the magazine was none other than George Luis Borges. The following year was collected in the volume Nobody lit lamps (Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1947).
2. Will use the lower body shy of the footnote page to expose a personal confession.
In 1982 the Editorial de Belgrano, Buenos Aires, my book of short stories published In self-defense. One of his stories is not titled "The usher," but is titled "The filing cabinet." It starts like this:
At one time, I was a thin person and very short stature. This was due to working in a large company file. The attendance of dust, old papers and darkness I had instilled an air of vermin poaching, an inhabitant of the corners.
I thought the light was hurting me, and to avoid it, I used to get to my file before dawn, when the building was only men who did the cleaning of offices, and never left until after dark.
certainly read more than once "The usher." But I swear I wrote these paragraphs without having under the sight Felisberto text (in a time when, because of moving house and other disorders, or even have managed to find my books) and after several years of those readings. I guess the happy memories will guide my hand, this principle and the story of an absurd fate "was a winding way unconscious? to pay tribute to a beloved writer.
[This article was first published in the supplement to "The Word", the newspaper La Opinión (Rafaela, Santa Fe, Argentina), January 11, 2003.]
Fernando Sorrentino © 2003
speculum. literary studies journal. Universidad Complutense de Madrid
The URL of this document is http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero23/felisber.html
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