کجا می توان تو را که گل سرخ در دست داری یافت؟
زمان در زندگی تو چگونه می گذرد؟
در دنیای تو اینک چه ساعتی است؟

They walk under its shadow. And it feels forever. They breathe their warm heart out under its all-pervasive blanket for so many countless instants (sometimes their entire lives) that the line drawing its glistening touch and blistering wrath becomes blurred.

Ask the earth that curled under its downpour, seek the fauna that lies huddled in apprehensive terror, summon the pebbles that were no match to its stony shower, shuffle the air that still carries its haughty scent in its chest, question the sun that drowned beneath its sultry curtain, sample the flowers that hold its diaphanous kiss on their bodies and they all would speak through their dilated eyes and smothered hearts of the vindication the n  Cloudn scored on each of them, emphatically and routinely.

The n  Cloudn roared. And so did the n  Generaln whose seemingly perennial autumn spelt more decay than the word itself can ever hold in all its ramification. He thundered; hovering over people’s life like an alien whirlpool, sucking them dry of their joy and pride, lashing them with his barbaric rain of punishment and defecation, turning them blood red with his incessant shower of rancid pride, contaminating the chastity of innocent buds, stoning down the walls of wise ears with his indisputable authority and wiping clear the lifelines of cursed countrymen and political heads. He overgrew his dictatorship by his own ambitious standards and there lay a horizon where no light could be seen except for the floating candle, bewitching from the high, frosted glass-pane of his palace.

Then, he fell silent. Much like how when the pulse of the mighty black, gigantic, ravenous, whimsical n  Cloudn is held in the excruciating shadows of solitude, it throws no beat. Because it is empty.

The n  Generaln succumbed, at last, to the emptiness of his façade and rancour of his actions. After wandering in condemned streets, indulging in make-shift adultery schools and battling the crossed murderous dominions, his identity got gradually locked in those nebulous shackles which seemed romantic to a passer-by but were nothing more than a hot-melting liquid of loneliness and grief that seeped in his body slowly, displacing his cells of arrogance and power with acute precision. His family including his mother, his wife and a child, also got dissolved in the tornado of reckless complacence and the n  Cloudn of his Being shrunk to its embryonic form, albeit with sprigs of death this time. And the vast sky of life finally sucked this n  Cloudn into its throes, dismissing it into the nothingness of death.

Garcia Marquez’s prose needs a special mention here since this journey of the n  Generaln read like an eternal prose; the rhythm overpowered me frequently with its mellifluous body and throbbing heart. Describing the restless sojourns that the n  Generaln undertakes to meet his secret beloved, he writes:

n  ”… he went in civilian clothes, without an escort, in the taxi which slipped away back-firing the smell of rancid gasoline through a city prostrate in the lethargy of siesta time, he avoided the Asiatic din of commercial district alleys, he saw the great feminine sea of Manuela Sanchez of my perdition with a solitary pelican on the horizon, he saw the decrepit streetcars with frosted glass windows with a velvet throne for Manuela Sanchez…... God damn it, which house do you live in this clamor of peeling pumpkin yellow walls with the purple trim of a bishop’s stole and green parrot windows with fairy blue partitions and columns pink like the rose in your hand…”n

The never-ending thread of honeyed words hit the heart soft, and sticky too. The juxtaposing emotions of characters was a beautiful case of panoramic writing, where too many striking elements made their presence felt with élan. Don’t be deluged under the avalanche of sematic wordsplay though. The sentences are long and breathless but you won’t miss a single stone lying beneath the velvety brook of prose if you set your sincere gaze upon it.

And Garcia Marquez and the n  Generaln, both would not mind waiting for you to come under their n  Cloudn; nothing more satisfying to them than getting you hypnotized with their rainbow spell!

خیلی تلاش کردم پایداری کنم تا ته کتاب، اما نشد. باهاش ارتباط برقرار نکردم. دوباره بهم ثابت شد با وجود شیفتگی م نسبت به ادبیات آمریکای جنوبی، مارکز نویسنده من نیست.

با قلم و سبک مارکز نتونستم ارتباط خوبی برقرار کنم. اوایل کتاب که به سختی صفحات رو پشت سر گذاشتم، پاراگرافهایی بس طولانی که به نظر پایانی نداشتند، گردش و تغییر دائمی دریچه نگاه و راوی، زبان وهم آلود داستان به خصوص زمانیکه حوادث در ذهن ژنرال می‌گذشت و ... . هرچند از میانه کتاب به بعد کمی بر میزان کشش داستان افزوده شد و شاید من با سبک مارکز خوی بیشتری گرفته بودم، با این وجود برای من سخت بود خواندن چنین اثری. مشکلی دیگری که با این اثر داشتم این بود که هرگز نتونستم در ذهنم جنبه و بعد واقعی به حوادث و اتفاقات کتاب بدم شاید به این دلیل از شرح سبعیت این ژنرال و جنایت‌هایی که بر مردمانش وارد آورده بود آنچنان رنجیده و متاثر نشدم. در پایان میتونم بگم وقتی که این اثر مارکز رو با سوربز یوسا که آن هم توصیفگر یک حکومت خودکامه و دیکتاتوری به تمام معناست مقایسه میکنم و میزان تاثیرگذاری اون اثر رو با پاییز پدرسالار می‌سنجم بیشتر به این نتیجه متمایل میشم که آقای مارکز شما خیلی دورید از آن اثر کم بدیلی یوسا خلق کرده. نمره من کتاب بیش از 2.5 نمیتونه باشه.

The autumn of an elderly Caribbean dictator’s discontent is set forth brilliantly and unforgettably in this 1975 novel by a Nobel Prize-winning author. Over the course of The Autumn of the Patriarch (El otoño del patriarca), Gabriel García Márquez takes us inside the thought processes of an old man whose capacity for hideous cruelty is equaled only by the banality of many of his recollections.

Much critical ink has been spilled trying to ascertain just which Caribbean dictator might have provided the inspiration for the unnamed tyrant who serves as main character of this story. Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, Gómez in Venezuela – sadly, history provides plenty of candidates. To my mind, it seems likely that García Márquez may be combining characteristics of many different tyrants, in order to create a colorful, larger-than-life character that will fit well within the sort of magical-realist landscape that he is famed for creating.

I wish that I knew Spanish well enough to read García Márquez in the original; I have heard so much about how the great Colombian novelist is a stylistic master. Not being able to read Spanish that well, I must settle for the way in which Gregory Rabassa’s translation seems, to my mind, to capture well the lilting flow of a great prose stylist’s work.

The opening sentence of The Autumn of the Patriarch will provide a suitable example: “Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur” (p. 7). He sets the scene, grabs the reader’s attention, and introduces what will be major themes of the novel, all within 58 words.

That sentence is actually a relatively short one for El otoño del patriarca. The novel’s sentences go on for pages at a time, swirling and twirling like Caribbean trade winds, capturing in a stream-of-consciousness manner the recollections of a larger-than-life tyrant who is described by the novel’s unnamed, first-person-plural narrator as having died “at an indefinite age somewhere between 107 and 232 years” (p. 82). The narrator seems to be capturing the perspective of the tyrant’s subjects who have been so long observing the vicissitudes of his reign.

In accordance with the magical-realist traditions within which García Márquez writes, characteristics of the general, such as a herniated testicle, take on a larger-than-life quality. The events of the novel are not “realistic,” and are not meant to be.

The tyrant’s recollections are alternately pathetic – he loves to recall sexual liaisons with the women kept as concubines in the stables of the presidential palace – and horrifying: he is perfectly capable of having a political opponent skinned alive and then thrown out onto the cobblestones to writhe in agony.

Supporting characters in The Autumn of the Patriarch are drawn with comparable vividness: the dictator’s mother Bendición Alvarado, whose death prompts the general to demand that the papal nuncio nominate her for sainthood; his mistress-turned-wife Leticia Nazareno, a former nun whom the general regularly refers to as “Leticia Nazareno of my misfortune”; General Rodrigo de Aguilar, the country’s defense minister, who for a time shows a remarkable ability to survive the frequent purges and upheavals of the general’s reign.

Some of my favorite moments in the novel are the humorous ones, like the general’s recollection of how his mother responded when she saw him in full dress uniform on the occasion of his formally taking power: “[S]he could not repress her impulse of maternal pride and exclaimed aloud in front of the whole diplomatic corps that if I’d known my son was going to be president of the republic I’d have sent him to school, yes sir” (p. 49).

But there are more serious moments as well – moments that dramatize the general’s sense of realpolitik – as when the general recalls what he once said to a foreigner who wanted support for anti-conservative revolutions in other countries of the region:

[H]e felt so moved by his vehemence that he had asked him why are you mixed up in this mess, God damn it, why do you want to die, and the foreigner had answered him without a trace of modesty that there was no higher glory than dying for one’s country, excellency, and he replied smiling with pity don’t be a horse’s ass, boy, fatherland means staying alive, that’s what it is, he told him, and he opened the fist that he had resting on the desk and in the palm of his hand showed him this little glass ball which is something a person has or doesn’t have, but only the one who has it has it, boy, this is the nation, he said, while he sent him away with pats on the back and not giving him anything, not even the consolation of a promise, and he ordered the aide who closed the door that they were not to bother that man who has just left any more, don’t even waste your time keeping him under surveillance, he said, he’s just got a fever in his quills, he’s no good for anything. (pp. 100-01).

So absolute is the general’s need to control all aspects of life in his republic that even the plot of a radio soap opera may be subject to presidentially mandated change:

[H]e would listen to it in the hammock with his pitcher of fruit juice untouched in his hand…his eyes moist with tears over the anxiety to know whether that girl who was so young was going to die or not and Saenz de la Barra would ascertain yes, general, the girl is going to die, then she’s not to die, God damn it, he ordered, she’s going to keep on living to the end and get married and have children and get old like everybody else, and Saenz de la Barra had the script changed to please him…so no one died again by his orders, engaged couples who didn’t love each other got married, people buried in previous episodes were resuscitated and villains were sacrificed ahead of time to please him general sir, everybody was to be happy by his orders... (p. 200).

What is being emphasized in scenes like this one, I think, is the manner in which real-life dictators like the fictional general of García Márquez’s novel have held, and still hold, absolute power over the lives of their people. Indeed, there are plenty of real-life tyrants today, all over the world, who give nonsensical orders that are immediately and dutifully carried out.

To try to sum up plot action in a novel as complex as El otoño del patriarca is, to my mind, unavailing. The book is impressionistic in quality, conveying impressions both of the general’s power – life-and-death control over his people – and of its limitations, as underscored every time an American Ambassador visits with "offers" from the colossus to the north that are at least as much demands as offers. The Autumn of the Patriarch is a multi-layered and challenging novel that demands and rewards repeat readings. I have read it twice now – once for a Latin American history course at William & Mary, and then again more recently – and I look forward to reading it again, in hopes that I will more fully understand it someday.

من خیلی خواب می‌بینم. خیلی زیاد. خواب‌های عجیب و غریبی که هیچ ارتباطی با واقعیت ندارن. از بارش بز کوهی گرفته تا جنگ و قتل و غارت. اما همه‌ی خواب‌هام یه منطق روایی سفت و محکم دارن و قابل باورن.
کتاب خزان خودکامه تنها موجودیه که باهاش مواجه شدم و از خواب‌هایی که می‌بینم جنون‌آمیزتره. تجربه‌ی خوندنش مثل یک خواب آشفته‌ست. شخصیت‌ها عوض می‌شن. وسط یه جمله راوی عوض میشه. متن قطع نمیشه، در حدی که فکر می‌کنم در طول کتاب تعداد نقطه‌هایی که مارکز به کار برده کمتر از ۲۰تا باشه.
توی این کتاب مارکز یک دیکتاتور رو ترسیم می‌کنه و مسخره‌ش می‌کنه. و انقدر هنرمندانه این کار رو انجام میده که ما می‌تونیم برای این دیکتاتور وحشتناک که باعث به دنیا اومدن بیش از ۵۰۰۰ بچه‌ی حرامزاده شده دل بسوزونیم.
یکی از بدقلق‌ترین کتاب‌هایی بود که خوندم. طوری نیست که بشه توی هر شرایطی خوندش. نیاز به تمرکز داشت که راوی و زمان و مکان رو وسط این دیوانه‌خانه‌ی کلمات گم نکنی.
مارکز باز هم بهم یادآوری کرد چرا عاشق خوندن رمان هستم.

If ever a book a stumped my rhythm, this one takes the prize. It is written as one fluid thought, one ranting narrative, sans paragraphs, with sentences that rival even St. Paul's run-ons.

It's racy, delusional, oh so very violent (in language, sex, war, illness, execution, thought, etc.), and even comical at times. Each time I laugh, I feel a tinge of guilt - like the uncontrollable snicker at a disabled person tripping over their untied shoelaces into a puddle of water.

I've decided that it's better to treat this book like a well in the desert, to be dipped into when necessary, but not to gorge oneself on for fear of being baked in the sun or having your stomach explode, whichever occurs first.

Markes je moj gimnazijski sweetheart, po dva osnova: za širu javnost, to je prvi veliki pisac koga sam otkrila sama sa za to pripadajućim ponosom, dok se u stvarnosti radilo o slučajnosti koja je uredila da se zateknem u biblioteci baš kad izvesni wannabe Džim Morison iz četvrte godine na koga sam se ložila prvačkim krišom vraća (ili uzima) Oharasku. Ljubav sa potonjim se nikad nije desila, a možda ne bi ni sa prvim da je narečeni naslov bio manje misteriozan – da sam znala za tu reč, ne bih se napela da ga zapamtim (a naravno da bi bilo potpuno providno, te apsolutno nedopustivo da odmah uzmem to isto!). U svakom slučaju, hvala mu što sam Markesa čitala sa puno ljubavi (ubrzo samo prema Markesu), zgrožena nad onom trulom Dragojevićevom forom i uz manje ili više no uglavnom oduševljena koje je trajalo sve do Sto godina samoće – ta mi je i kasnije bila jednako bezveze – a onda potpuno prestala, bez obzira što i dalje mislim da je Pukovniku nema ko da piše jedna od najboljih knjiga koje sam pročitala. Kako mi je promakla Jesen patrijarha (jer sam u to vreme ovaj roman mogla da čitam samo pod tim naslovom) ne znam, ali je dobro što je ispalo tako.

Ovo je ma-es-tra-lan prevod! I ovde se moja pogana jezičina mora zauzdati, jer će pred ovolikim spiskom izvesno baldisati (od boga, zakona, države, ljudi... sve redom treba i mnogo) uz samo jednu napomenu: čitajte ovaj roman pod imenom Patrijarhova jesen u prevodu Nadežde Popović, i nikako drugačije. Zbog kosmičke pravde, ne samo za potpuni doživljaj! Svima ostalima i svemu ostalom je mesto u... (pa zauzdala sam se, jbg sad) brzom zaboravu.

Ovo je, ako mene pitate, magijski realizam optimalnih proporcija, da triput po strani zinete, a dvaput vam se zanebesa, ali nijednom ne padnete u nesvest, jer je u pitanju u kap tačno doziranje (maaalkice štucne pred kraj, al’ malo malkice, mini zagrc), pa nema ni sutrašnjeg mamurluka. Zla mašina jezika i stila, buldožer barona Harkonena* što spreda mlavi, a straga dronjke i froncle namata u bale šećerne vune.
Da li je Antuneš (počupavši karanfile) baš nju izgrebenao u Priručnik za inkvizitore za veličanstveni omaž Markesu mi je teže pitanje od onog hoće li na raju doveka padati (Bolanjova) kiša govana. Hoće.

Mnogo ti, Momčilo, hvala za ovo!

*Skarsgard, naravno

n  n


في العادة أخصص الجزء الأخير من المراجعة للحديث عن جودة الترجمة لكن هذه المرة قررت البدء بها.
كل كلمة في هذه الرواية تشي بالجهد المبذول من المبدع والمميز دائماً مارك جمال (طبعة دار التنوير) لنقل هذه التحفة الأدبية بشكل يليق بها وبالقارئ العربي. لا يسعني سوى القول بأن الترجمة والهوامش جاءت وافية وساعدتني بشكل كبير على استساغة التعبيرات الغريبة التي استعملها ماركيز في الرواية والتي جعلت المترجمين يجن جنونهم على حد قوله...


بعد سقوط بيريس خيمنيس (1958) بيومين أو ثلاثة يوم اجتماع مجلس الحكومة في قصر ميرافلوريس أثناء انتظار الصحافيين والمصورين _ ومنهم غابرييل غارثيا ماركيز نفسه_ أدرك الأخير يومها ما السلطة وما لغز السلطة. يعتبر هذا اليوم هو يوم ميلاد البطريرك في عقل غابرييل
استوحى الكاتب شخصية البطريرك من ديكتاتوريات أمريكا اللاتينيه التي تتكرر بشكل سيزيفي. يموت الديكتاتور ليأتي الأسوأ منه.

مستعينا بشذرات من حياة الطغاة رسم ماركيز ديكتاتورا يمثلهم جميعاً مع لمسة ساخرة من طباعهم وتسلطهم

في البطريرك تجد "ماركوس بيريس خيمنيس" و "خوان بيسينتي غوميس" و "فرانسوا دوفالييه" و "خوسيه جاسبار رودريجيس دي فرانسيا" و"ماكسميليانو هرنانديس مارتينيس" و "فولخينسيو باتيستا" و "انستاسيو سوموسا غارسيا" و "رافايل ليونيداس تروخِيُّو" جميعهم في شخص واحد.

ديكتاتور طاعن في السن لدرجة لا تصدق يعيش معزولا في قصر مليء بالبُرُص والمفلوجين والأبقار وزوجات غير شرعيات ومحظيات ومومسات يغلق غرفته على نفسه كل ليلة بالمزاليج الثلاثة والمغاليق الثلاثة والأقفال الثلاثة لا يثق بأحد غير أمه بيندسيون ألبارادو _ياروحي أنا_ وبعدها ليتسيا ناسارينو التي استحوذت على شيخوخته وجعلت نفسها الزوجة الشرعية الوحيدة وهنا تظهر هيمنة صورة الأم على الديك��اتور الذي نشأ يتيم الأب أو غير معروفه.


جنرال يرى نفسه كلّي القدرة وذو بصيرة تصل إلى حد العرافة ويصل به الأمر إلى مقارنة نفسه بالمسيح في عدة مواضع فيقول " إني أنا هو".


رغم طغيان البطريرك ودمويته الشديدة يجعلك ماركيز تشفق على هذا العجوز الوحيد الذي يتحول إلى مجرد ظل في خريفه بعد أن استمر في الحكم ما يربو على المائة عام

يموت الجنرال بملابس الشحاذين متوسداً ذراعه اليمنى كعادته بعد أن فاجأه الموت في غرفته المعزولة وليس في مكتبه _مخالفاً بذلك نبوءة العرّافة_ في الوقت الذي بدأ يدرك فيه أن المرء لا يعيش وإنما ينجو بحياته فقط!

The Caribbean Bates Motel

Perhaps one of the longest sustained rants in literary history. Certainly an anti-dictatorial polemic which spares the reader nothing of the disadvantages of uncontrolled power - torture, arbitrary execution, sadism, and a general lack of good taste. Even if the dictator in question does love his mother.

The United States of course is the catalytic force for the dictatorial regime and its flaws. Well sort of, since one could hardly insist that previous governments were better in any discernible sense. Marquez implies that there is an underlying problem of unwillingness to be governed which would have led to the same state regardless of foreign meddling. The country resembles the Roman Empire in its declining years - the buck stops with local war lords who keep most of it and distribute the rest as loose change.

Perhaps the real culprit is mother. She was a peasant after all, with all the banal proclivities of the peasantry, “lamenting to anyone who wanted to listen to her that it was no good being the president's mama.” She encouraged the dictator to believe in “the miracle of having conceived him without recourse to any male and of having received in a dream the hermetical keys to his messianic destiny,” Of course she chooses not to acknowledge his grotesque sexual appetites when she sees him “wallowing in the fen of prosperity.” Poor boy never had any real discipline.

The problem presented by Marquez to the reader is that without extensive knowledge of Colombian (and more general Latin America) history, Autumn of the Patriarch reads, like an old Norse saga, as a endless series of awful lives, more awful assassinations and massacres, and dissipating palace intrigues. Perhaps that is how he perceives Colombian history in a nutshell: a repetitive cycle of corrupt generals who maintain a permanent state of incipient war and pervasive squalor. Not something for the tourist brochures then.

92nd book 2021.

Not the masterpiece I was expecting. Considered by many as his magnum opus, this wasn't even close to One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is still one of the greatest novels I've ever read. I prefer experimental fiction to anything else but the 20/30/40 page long sentences in this were simply distracting/frustrating and, at least for me, didn't particularly add anything to the narrative. Most moments of stellar prose were dampened by the annoyance at the sentences. I'm a fan of beautiful sentences and the sentences in this book, with only commas driving them, did not hit it off with me. Maybe I need to read it again one day. I'll write a full review at some point.

مكنتش عايز اقرأ خريف البطريرك بصراحة، مكنتش عايز اقطع علاقتي بماركيز، لأنها آخر رواية اعرفها له لسا مقرتهاش، فكنت عايز اسيبها للآخر، ويبدو أن الآخر جه، يمكن اللي شجعني اقرأها الترجمة الجديدة من الاسبانية لمارك جمال، وثقتي الكبيرة في مجهوده، ويمكن استهلال الرواية بحوار ماركيز المقرب لقلبي اللي هو رائحة الجوافة، ويمكن لأني خايف اموت قبل ما اقرأها، لكن الأكيد اني بحب ماركيز حب مهول، من أضلاع ثالوثي الأدبي المقدس اللي انا مدين لحبهم بالكتير.

ولما خلصتها، كنت في حالة ذهول منها، ومحتاجة وقت علشان اعرف اكتب عنها حاجة، وفهمت ليه هي رواية مهمة، وليه ماركيز اعتبرها أهم كتاباته، وبردو فهمت ليه يوسا اعتبرها أسوأ ما كتب ماركيز، وليه هي رواية مش (شعبية).

رواية صعبة، غريبة، درس سردي وروائي رفيع الطراز.