Chekhov's Mistress
Bolaño’s Caracas Speech at Triple Canopy
Roberto Bolaño gave his “Caracas Speech” in 1999 four years before he died in acceptance of the “highly prestigious Rómulo Gallegos prize for his novel The Savage Detectives.” Triple Canopy (as in Canopy Canopy Canopy) has the speech in their latest (2nd) issue. Here’s a choice bit:
“At this point in the speech, I get the feeling that don Rómulo Gallegos must be turning over in his grave. “But to whom have they given my prize?” he must be thinking. Forgive me, don Rómulo. It’s just that even doña Bárbara, with a b, sounds like Venezuela and Bogotá, and Bolivar, also, sounds like Venezuela and doña Bárbara. Bolivar and Bárbara, what a good couple they would have made, although don Rómulo’s other two great novels, Cantaclaro and Canaima, could perfectly well be Colombian novels, which leads me to thinking that maybe they are, and that beneath my dyslexia there might perhaps be a method, a bastard semiotic method or a graphological or metasyntactic or phonemic or simply poetic method, and that the truth of truths is that Caracas is the capital of Colombia, just like Bogotá is the capital of Venezuela, in the same way that Bolivar, who is Venezuelan, dies in Colombia, which is also Venezuela and Mexico and Chile.”
Read it at Triple Canopy.
comments
Priceless. It’s amazing how in just a few lines he gets directly at the heart of an issue that has certain international leaders up in arms. (I’m sure he knew exactly what he was saying.)
I’m going to have to find it in the original Spanish so that I can share it with family and friends. Too funny. (And Bolívar and Bárbara *would* have made a good couple!)
– amcorrea (06/05 at 09:58 AM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: June 04, 2008
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:1
- Links to this Post: Technorati
