Terra Nostra edition by Carlos Fuentes Margaret Sayers Peden Literature Fiction eBooks
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Terra Nostra is one of the great masterpieces of modern Latin American fiction. Concerned with nothing less than the history of Spain and of South America, with the Indian Gods and with Christianity, with the birth, the passion, and the death of civilizations, Fuentes's great novel is, indeed, that rare creation--the total work of art.
Magnificently translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, Terra Nostra is, as Milan Kundera says in his afterword, "the spreading out of the novel, the exploration of its possibilities, the voyage to the edge of what only a novelist can see and say."
Terra Nostra edition by Carlos Fuentes Margaret Sayers Peden Literature Fiction eBooks
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." says Stephen Daedalus in Joyce's Ulysses. This book - amongst many other things - is an exhaustive, exhausting exploration of that nightmare which is history, truly. Thus, it consists not of the linear history - and is certainly NOT a linear narration - of the history one learns in schools or history books. It is history as a hallucinogenic nightmare swirling around the figure of "El Senor" or "Don Felipe" and his necrophilic obsession with his manes (L.), or beatified ancestors. Some reviewers, noting the similarities, have gone so far as to identify him as Phillip II. This presumes far too much and, one might say, is contrary to the whole notion of the landscape presented here, where characters exchange identities and sexes, are reincarnated in different eras, in which literary characters are living beings, almost all of whom are given alternative histories, and characters and settings that are real or imagined or dreamed are all conflated into a baroque phantasmagoria. At one point in the book, Brother Julián wishes to tell a character called the chronicler the following:"Let others write the history of events that are apparent: the battles and the treaties, the hereditary conflicts, the amassing and dispersion of authority, the struggles among the estates, the territorial ambition that continues to link us to animality; you, the friend of fables, you must write the history of the passions, without which the history of money, labour, and power is incomprehensible."
This is at least part of what Fuentes tries to do in this unclassifiable work.
A great deal of the book is taken up by life-in-death, death-in life existential, theological questions of the most abstruse nature, which are intriguing and beguiling and, ultimately, unanswerable. Also, there is a great deal of sexual concourse described explicitly in all its various manifestations. Male and female genitalia, particularly the latter, are described in minute detail, often in bizarre circumstances evoking shock and, perhaps, if one dwells on them sufficiently, nausea. At times, this serves to highlight the Gnostic question of whether creation and matter are evil, or the question of overpopulation. But as often again it is simply there, as in a particularly harrowing nightmare.
I would be remiss not to mention the translator, Margaret Sayers Peden, who renders the archaic Spanish into delightfully archaic English and preserves as many Spanish words that have filtered into English as possible. In doing so, she preserves the baroque literary stylism of the Spanish original marvellously. I haven't read the Spanish original but, well, there's an entire chapter justifying the baroque in literature towards the end of the work, placed there, it seems to me, for rather obvious reasons.
In the end, this is a book from which I'm glad to have awakened. No doubt its claims to high literature are of merit and consideration. And it is indeed a very powerful, exceedingly erudite work. But if, as the ancient Greeks and others since have maintained, the primary aim of a work of art is to please - be it on the highest plain, or the most tragic, cathartic sense - then this work, as the NYT reviewer puts it, is a "magnificent failure." After over a week of living in the nightmarish, hallucinatory, hypnagogic world that is Fuentes' book, it is hard to shake the deep feeling it induces that, as one character puts it:
"Reality is a sick dream."
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Terra Nostra edition by Carlos Fuentes Margaret Sayers Peden Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
One of the great, most magical books ever written. Demands so much from the reader, but the rewards like few books can. Be aware that the Dalkey edition offered on as a hardback is in fact a paperback.
A+
I hesitated to say I love this book. Great writing and truly bizarre story. Not finished yet. Saw this on and was intrigued by the reviews, and once I started reading, could not put it down.
On a first read, a very great, vastly deep (as in "very deep is the well of the past," as Thomas Mann put it) and difficult work. A book to read at least twice.
this is a very difficult book to read. It is intense, seemingly unending sentences and a lot of repetition used to accent and intensify the narrative.
the book is epic in style and explicit in elaborate detail. for students of literature, for those looking for writing that is of another era, another level of excellence there is nothing to equal this magnificent endeavor. but a "good read " it is not. I have yet to find anyone who has actually finished the book without skipping parts. In fact, I have yet to encounter anyone who has read the book, cover to cover but maybe you will be the first.
This comment relates to the Folio trade paperback edition of the book that describes itself as an English and French edition. It is not; it is a French addition and is entirely in French. I suppose I don't know what an English and French edition of a Spanish language novel would be (I imagined that it was translated into English and had maybe there was some French in there or something, ugh), still I don't read French and can't read this. This confusion is certainly mine, but the product breakdown and the parenthetical beside the title are misleading they say the text is in English and French, and it is not in English.
Milan Kundera writes a very helpful End Note to the English translation of Fuentes' monumental meditation on history, historiography, Christianity, Kabbalism, and Spain and the Spanish Empire, in which he places Fuentes' compression of history alongside Thomas Mann's 'Doctor Faustus' to illustrate how historical figures - in the hands of gifted writers - can reappear as though reincarnated; and how this novellistic device serves to make those crucial links through time and space in order to shed light on the deepest impulses of our natures. "I thought of the art of the novel, which, alone of all the arts, is capable of becoming that privileged place where humanity's distant past can converse with its present. To arrange this rendezvous seemed to me one of the three or four great tasks, one of the three or four great possibilities available to the future of the novel."
It isn't possible to summarise this novel because it unwinds and unfolds unlike anything else I've come across. It takes as its starting point King Philip the Second of Spain's decision to build the new Imperial residence of El Escorial. The book is divided into three parts 'The Old World', 'The New World' and 'The Next World'. So many of the divere threads are woven together in 'The Next World' that it makes the traversing of the horrific, nightmarish 'The New World' worthwhile. The importance of the number three, in all its various manifestations, is crucial to both the appreciation of, and the structure of, the novel. Here's Ludovico trying to explain to Philip (Felipe) the necessity of accepting as his heirs the three twins whose various stories are woven into and out of the narrative of construction 'But now they are three. One brother will not kill his brother, because if one dies, the other two will not remember, or understand, or desire. Look, and understand, Felipe for the first time three brothers are establishing a history; three, the number that resolves oppositions, the fraternal cipher of encounter and the mixing of bloods, the dissolution of the sterile polarity of the number 2 understand, and make a place for them in your history.'
TERRA NOSTRA is immense. It's even over-bearing at times. But like Thomas Mann's 'Doctor Faustus', Musil's 'A Man Without Qualities' and Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time', this is a novel that more than rewards patience and care. If it is difficult, it is not because of its use of language (in the way, say, of Proust) but because it simply won't sit still in one historical place long enough to allow the reader the comfort of familiarity. But like most great writers, Fuentes teaches you how to read the book as you read it. I'm not sure that I agree that Fuentes' reach exceeded his grasp. I think this is a fully-realised masterpiece. It is beautiful, haunting and griping. Highly recommended.
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." says Stephen Daedalus in Joyce's Ulysses. This book - amongst many other things - is an exhaustive, exhausting exploration of that nightmare which is history, truly. Thus, it consists not of the linear history - and is certainly NOT a linear narration - of the history one learns in schools or history books. It is history as a hallucinogenic nightmare swirling around the figure of "El Senor" or "Don Felipe" and his necrophilic obsession with his manes (L.), or beatified ancestors. Some reviewers, noting the similarities, have gone so far as to identify him as Phillip II. This presumes far too much and, one might say, is contrary to the whole notion of the landscape presented here, where characters exchange identities and sexes, are reincarnated in different eras, in which literary characters are living beings, almost all of whom are given alternative histories, and characters and settings that are real or imagined or dreamed are all conflated into a baroque phantasmagoria. At one point in the book, Brother Julián wishes to tell a character called the chronicler the following
"Let others write the history of events that are apparent the battles and the treaties, the hereditary conflicts, the amassing and dispersion of authority, the struggles among the estates, the territorial ambition that continues to link us to animality; you, the friend of fables, you must write the history of the passions, without which the history of money, labour, and power is incomprehensible."
This is at least part of what Fuentes tries to do in this unclassifiable work.
A great deal of the book is taken up by life-in-death, death-in life existential, theological questions of the most abstruse nature, which are intriguing and beguiling and, ultimately, unanswerable. Also, there is a great deal of sexual concourse described explicitly in all its various manifestations. Male and female genitalia, particularly the latter, are described in minute detail, often in bizarre circumstances evoking shock and, perhaps, if one dwells on them sufficiently, nausea. At times, this serves to highlight the Gnostic question of whether creation and matter are evil, or the question of overpopulation. But as often again it is simply there, as in a particularly harrowing nightmare.
I would be remiss not to mention the translator, Margaret Sayers Peden, who renders the archaic Spanish into delightfully archaic English and preserves as many Spanish words that have filtered into English as possible. In doing so, she preserves the baroque literary stylism of the Spanish original marvellously. I haven't read the Spanish original but, well, there's an entire chapter justifying the baroque in literature towards the end of the work, placed there, it seems to me, for rather obvious reasons.
In the end, this is a book from which I'm glad to have awakened. No doubt its claims to high literature are of merit and consideration. And it is indeed a very powerful, exceedingly erudite work. But if, as the ancient Greeks and others since have maintained, the primary aim of a work of art is to please - be it on the highest plain, or the most tragic, cathartic sense - then this work, as the NYT reviewer puts it, is a "magnificent failure." After over a week of living in the nightmarish, hallucinatory, hypnagogic world that is Fuentes' book, it is hard to shake the deep feeling it induces that, as one character puts it
"Reality is a sick dream."
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