🦋 Narrative person
Rivera Letelier is an absolute wizard of narrative voice, of person -- I wrote before about the shifts from third to first-person singular in The Art of Resurrection; something even more complex and initially confusing is going on in Our Lady of the Dark Flowers. This is quite possibly the only novel I've ever read which is told in first-person plural omniscient present.* The novel opens
with the narrator telling a story, set in the present tense, about 56-year-old widower Olegario Santana and his two pet vultures** -- he "is feeding" them, they "are emitting their gutteral carrion cries"... And it is initially quite jarring when the narrator backs off and shifts to "we" -- I believe the first place this happens is at the end of the sixth paragraph, where Olegario is walking to the mines -- something does not seem quite right, suddenly he meets up with a group of men who come up to him and "we tell him" that perhaps he has not heard, but a general strike was declared last night. Is "we" the group of men? That's what it seems like at first; but as the novel progresses, "we" becomes more general, it is the workers of the pampa as a general class. The narrator is not a singular person or a distinct group of people -- the group of men would not have been able to narrate Olegario feeding his birds -- but is rather the voice of the pampino community. By doing this Rivera Letelier includes you the reader as a member of that community and makes it very easy, after a little hesitation, to get inside the book. Thinking of the story as a movie: when the narrator is telling about Olegario feeding his birds (and throughout the book in passages where he is speaking about "he" and "them"), he is describing the action onscreen as you watch the movie -- the present tense makes this work -- but when he shifts to "we", you realize you are part of what you're watching onscreen.
 *I can't think of another one. Can you? I can't imagine this has never been done before; still it is quite distinctive.
**Well I'm pretty sure they're vultures anyway -- they are called jotes, which I think serves as a generic way of referring to birds, not buitres -- but they are described as carrion birds with pink heads, so vultures. Possibly jot is a Chilean term for vulture. Vulture does seem like an unlikely bird to have as a pet; but I am leaving that to the side for now, suspending disbelief. ...And, confirmation! Googling around for jotes in the Atacama brings me to a page from the Museo Virtual de la Región Atacama, with pictures of a vulture, "Jote de Cabeza Colorada (Catarthes Aura)". Wiktionary lists jote as a Chilean term for turkey vulture.
posted morning of Friday, December 31st, 2010
➳ More posts about Our Lady of the Dark Flowers
➳ More posts about Hernán Rivera Letelier
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about The Art of Resurrection
Wikipædia sends me to look at Gorky's 26 Men and a Girl which looks very interesting indeed but is set in the narrative past, and Faulkner's A Rose for Emily which ditto.
posted afternoon of December 31st, 2010 by Jeremy
A sample of the transition to 'we' that I'm talking about here, that takes me a little by surprise as I'm reading: at the beginning of Chapter 9, Elevando sus volantines a orillas del mar, Idilio Montaño y Liria MarÃa, seguidos al talón por Juan de Dios, pasan una de las tardes más felices de sus vidas. A lo largo de la playa hay desparramado un gran número de huelguistas
pampinos; hombres, mujeres y niños de distintas oficinas y cantones que, con expresión extasiada, recorrÃamos la orilla del mar como si de verdad estuviéramos paseando a la orilla de otro mundo.
Up until the recorrÃamos -- switching to imperfect past tense and first-person-plural voice -- I think of this as a story being told me. I do a double-take when I get to that verb and realize I am one of the characters in the story.
posted evening of January second, 2011 by Jeremy
BTW, the most common definition of jote in chilean spanish is a drink of coke and wine, and the later should not be of the cheaper ones.
But yeah, they are buitres too!
posted evening of January 5th, 2011 by Jorge López
Ah, I see that drink listed as Kalimotxo (and many alternate names according to what country you're in) at Wikipædia -- wonder what it tastes like, it's hard for me to imagine pouring coke into good red wine...
posted morning of January 6th, 2011 by Jeremy
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