2024-04-23 05:00:25
The writer has always had some difficulty with Latin American literature, apart from a few authors, such as Bolaño or Saer. However, it is undeniable that the narrative of that extraordinary continent has bewitched generations of readers, ever since the boom that writers like Marquez or, as in this case, Isabel Allende had.
Today I recommend a collection of Allende’s short stories, “Eva Luna narrates”, originally released in 1987 (in Italy in 1989) and then reprinted several times by Feltrinelli (with translation by Gianni Guadalupi).
Eva Luna is a character that Allende’s readers already knew when this collection came out, having been the protagonist of the novel of the same name published two years earlier. These stories of love, violence, travel, destiny, always seem pervaded by a vague “fantastic” aroma, even when they are completely realistic; it is, needless to say, the famous Latin American magical realism, but here very attenuated, so much so that for Allende there was often talk of “new realism”. Their origin is a narrative pretext: there are two lovers enveloped in the dim light of a room, on an unmade bed, he asks her, a new Sherazade, “tell me a story, a story that you have never told anyone”.
Eva Luna has 23 in store. That of Belisa Crepuscolario, for example, a seller of words in town squares, who ends up writing the speeches of the Colonel, the most feared of guerrillas, but tired of being feared and eager to be acclaimed. by the people as a politician.
Or Elena Mejìas, the “perverse” little girl destined to torment the thoughts of her mother’s lover for her entire life, but without her knowledge, and for an episode that she soon forgot.
And so on, and so on, as in a modern version of “The Arabian Nights”, where deep passions are intertwined with fatal actions, composing an almost mythopoetic tapestry. We are obviously talking about “popular” myths, of characters taken directly from everyday existence, from the cities, the streets, the countryside and the markets that make up the great mosaic of South America, but illuminated by events that are exceptional in their own way, each with a peculiar meaning.
Eva Luna’s stories remain in your head for a long time, even once the pages of the book are closed. Which is certainly one of the characteristics of this writer and journalist, granddaughter of Salvador Allende, born in Lima, Peru, but raised with her mother in Chile. She left the country in 1973, at the time of the coup by General Augusto Pinochet (in which President Allende, as is known, met his death), he wrote his most famous work in exile, “The House of the Spirits” which also became a film in 1993. Today he lives in California, and continues to write, including literature for childhood. In May 2007 Allende was awarded an honorary degree in modern Euro-American languages and literatures in Trento.
2024-04-23 05:00:25