Meng Xiayun read "The Dream of the Exile" | a short narrative of life

The Dream of the Exile: A Collection of Short Stories by Mambo Giardineri, by Mambo Giardineri[ Argentina, translated by Fan Tongxin, published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House in December 2021, 180 pages, 45.00 yuan

The Argentine writer Mempo Giardinelli is a kind and kind grandfather, with a cartoon-like face that reveals his childlike, gentle and cute side, but the crane-haired childlike appearance hides a rational, deep, sharp and taste-heavy inner world. Born in 1947 in Recistense, the capital of the Argentine province of Chaco, Mambo lived in Buenos Aires from 1969 to 1976, exiled to Mexico from 1976 to 1984, and returned to Argentina in exile in the 1990s.

My association with Mambo dates back eleven years, when I was a graduate student in Latin American literature and happened to read Mambo's Spanish novel Luna caliente (1983) and was fascinated by its gripping plot conflicts, fiery erotic catharsis, and the criminal elements of black humor, so I began to search for other works by this writer. At that time, there was no translation of his work in China, not even an introduction to the "Thermidorian" that had already been put on the movie screen, and when I looked it up on the Internet, I found that his other novel with a very different style suited my reading interests, "Imposible Equilibrio" (1995), which involved the theme of nature and ecological protection, which belonged to my academic research, so I borrowed most of his works through my American classmates. It took me half a year to read the books I borrowed and copied, including the novels La revolución en bicicleta (1980), Qué solos se quedan los muertos (1985), Santo Oficio de la memoria (1991), and El décimo (The Tenth Hell). infierno, 1997); the short story collection Vidas ejemplares (1982), El castigo de Dios (1993); the essay collection El Género Negro (1984), The Story Is So Written (1992), The Land of Wonderland: The Argentinians of the Millennium (El país de las maravillas: Los argentinos en el fin del milenio, 1998) et al. My refreshing, sweet and savoury style of work has made Mambo the target of my master's thesis. In the year of studying in Spain, I read more of his works, and found that his popularity in Europe was also quite high, his works were translated into more than twenty languages published in Europe and Latin American countries, won the "Romulo Gallegos Literary Award" in Latin America, the "National Novel Award" in Mexico, the "Planetary Literature Award" in Spain and other awards, and was often invited to many universities in Europe and the United States to give speeches, lectures, seminars, he not only served as a judge of literary awards, but also attended international book fairs as a special guest.

Mambo's works are rich in content and unique in art form, loved by readers in Spain and the Americas, and occupy a pivotal position in Argentine literature. If in the Argentine literary world, there are philosophical literary masters such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Ricardo Piglia, interdisciplinary multi-talented writers such as Manuel Puig, Ernesto Sabato, and outstanding suspense detective novelists such as Guillermo Martinez, Pablo de Santis, Claudia Pinheiro, etc., then Mambo is both between and away from them, he uses truth and fiction, metafiction, film montage, all-dimensional narrative, Artistic techniques such as black humor subvert the narrative discourse of argentine literary tradition and show a unique creative style. His works have attracted the attention of many researchers and literary critics, and I have collected many reviews of his works in Spain, and researchers pay special attention to the themes of exile, pornography, violence, and death in his works, and combine these themes with the historical and political environment in which the characters in the novel are located for in-depth analysis and research. Some people interpret his works as "new historical novels", "black novels", and "new police novels", and I read a variety of complex thematic expressions in his works, and I feel more and more that he is a good writer worth digging into, and this feeling has gradually deepened with my reading and research and acquaintance with him.

I'm ashamed to say that during the first few years of my study of Mambo, I didn't have any connection with the writer himself until 2016, when Mambo first came to China. At that time, I had just graduated from my ph.D. and entered the work, and I happened to see the news from the circle of friends that he had come to China to participate in the International Literary Forum, and I got Mambo's contact information, although I missed the opportunity to meet with him in Beijing, but we have since established a long-term communication between emails. Mambo is a little different from what I read in my work, he is warm, friendly, approachable, and every email affectionately calls me Xia Yun, telling me about the various anecdotes and mental processes behind his creation. I passed on to him the comments I had published about his work, and he was so excited that he printed it out for a group photo like a child, and said that he would translate his work into Chinese. It was also at that time that Mambo decided to give Fan Tongxin the copyright negotiation of his work Chinese translation, and it happened that Tong Xin and I also met in 2017. Since then, Tong Xin has begun to translate the hand-drawn fairy tales written by Mambo to children, and for the first time, I have also felt the incomparably innocent and whimsical childlike fun hidden in the heart of the heavy-tasted writer in my cognition.

The official meeting with Mambo was in 2018, when he invited me to Argentina for the Resistensia International Book Festival, and I arrived as promised. There, I felt the charm of his hometown of Resistensia, where many of his novels and stories, such as The Tenth Hell, take place. Later, he showed me a copy of the film based on it, which was his second film adaptation after his famous work "Thermidorian". I published a critical article in Film magazine about this violent aesthetic Argentine road movie, and mambo's crime, erotic, and violent elements are once again vividly displayed in a black humor, and the crazy and eerie atmosphere is extremely ironic. It was also at that meeting that I received a number of new works from Mambo, including the short story collection "Forever Chaco", which was translated by The Child's Heart, which is based on part of the story of "The Exile's Dream", named after his father's famous football club in Resistensia, which is a book commemorating his hometown. He especially reminded me through this book to feel the passion, madness, beauty, ugliness, blandness and loneliness brought by his hometown of Chaco. After reading it, I immediately published a short book review in Guangming Daily, "Why Life Is Full of Sorrow and Joy", through the title of the article, I may be able to feel Mambo's depiction, exploration and metaphor of hometown and universal human emotions. The human feelings involved in the story are complex and fickle, and always show the humble and paranoid side of human nature in the small emotional waves. Mambo also portrays the rapidly changing and elusive good and evil of human nature with irony and ridicule, which makes people feel helpless and helpless.

Most of Mambo's early award-winning works deal with military dictatorship, exile, and immigration, which are inextricably linked to his own experiences of immigration and exile. Two masterpieces of this genre, Thermido and The Inquisition in Memory, won mexico's National Prize for Fiction and the Romulo Gallegos Prize for Fiction, respectively, and were both named on the list of the 100 Best Novels in Spanish since 1982 by Colombian magazine Semana. Carlos Fuentes has praised the "humanization" of his work's immigrant themes, saying that in that "era of anger, discrimination and xenophobia", people especially needed "such words". Juan Rulfo commented that he was "well versed in the way of dissolving bitterness, perhaps in exile in a foreign country", saying that he had created "profound words" and a spirit of "transforming pain into optimism and open-mindedness". Coincidentally, these thematic expressions and creative qualities of his are also appropriately presented in the "Dream of the Exile" translated by Tong Xin.

The twenty-five stories in this book span about half a century, and the content of the book is extensive, involving many themes such as police and bandit solving, foreign relatives searching, writer's manuscripts, tragic love, friendship agreements, sales and transactions, war pains, political dictatorship, and family ugliness, revealing the accumulated resentment, nightmare shadows, anger and embarrassment, and selfish greed hidden by complex human nature, as well as repression, betrayal, jealousy, revenge, grief, bitterness and other emotions and unbelievable actions that are forced by life in different forms. Mambo uses plain and soothing language to tell a story full of death, violence, bloodshed, shame, mystery and loneliness, seemingly depicting the simple life and daily trivia of ordinary people, but layer by layer to create bizarre scenes, set suspense, create doubts, arouse readers' reading interest and speculation, inadvertently stop writing intriguing, unexpected and abrupt endings make people sigh.

"Death" is the theme covered most in this anthology of stories, but each story presents a different way, essence, and meaning of death.

"The Other Side Dances, Here Weeps" creates an atmosphere of carnival at the other end and sadness here. On the eve of the night in San Juan, Juana digs the pit where her heart-piercing lover Rosallo has promised to light the festival bonfire together, and in the lively music at the other end, she looks back at the past years when she and Rosalo are full of love, where the mournful and miserable courtyard, the lonely and tear-dry atrium push her into the abyss of hopelessness, and the death is nothing more than a little patience in the flames of the campfire, and the companion is buried in the fire.

"Jenny Miller" has a slightly Mambo autobiographical narration, from the perspective of "I", a bystander, denouncing the tragic ending of the death of Jenny, a black girl under racial discrimination. The people of Resistensia, who claimed to be free of racial discrimination, superficially sought after beautiful and seductive black girls, and the white rich man and her hot love showed off everywhere, but when she was pregnant with his child and wanted to get married, she was given the shameful notoriety of "not knowing who is the father of the black-skinned wild species". Great personality humiliation and self-esteem trampling lead to Jenny's eventual suicide, Resistencia becomes ugly, gray and dirty in "I" heart, and also makes "I" love and hate for my hometown, and death is the fuse that triggers the climax of "I" hate.

"Juan and the Sun" closely links the fate of the character Juan with the rise and fall of the sun, and the two friends accompany the dying Juan in the rainy weather, as if only when the rain stops the sun, Juan can be reborn. However, everything is lifeless, and his friend chooses to paint him on the roof with his own hands to symbolize the life of the sun, and death also quietly comes in the "brilliant sunshine" created by this close friend. The day after his death, the sun broke through the clouds and appeared, which may have been the dawn brought by Juan, who arrived in heaven, to accompany his best friend on his deathbed.

"The Guy" tells the story of a newspaper reporter who offends the powerful by writing "anachronistic" reports and is hunted down and killed. "That guy" carries out the ultimate reflection on his career and fate before being murdered in a slightly ridiculous tone, and jokingly explains and summarizes the beginning and end of the matter and the end of his life. Knowing that the report is dangerous and will pay the price of life, he still insists on the "suicide" act of hitting the stone with a pebble. This is the self-deprecating spirit of death, and the best way to face an unjust society and the world.

In "Harvest Season", the poor foreigner can't find a job, spends half his savings to get a drink, but is beaten by the xenophobic Chaco locals, who want to make a living in the best harvest season in Chaco province, but die for no reason under their fists. "Harvest" is an ironic ridicule of a cold and cruel heart, a lament for the loss of life, and another emotional catharsis of Mambo's love and hate for his hometown.

"God's Punishment" restores the "dirty wars" of the dark ages in Argentine history. The inhumane general, for his son, who is on the line of life, has to find a life-saving doctor among the "mutineers" he suppresses, and the unsolvable dilemma also makes people reflect on the reasons and meanings behind the war. The general's son was killed on the operating table that night, and more "prisoners" were secretly executed that night, is this revenge catharsis, or is it an acceleration of punishment? And people prefer to believe that the death of the general's son is the fairest and most punishing punishment that God has ever inflicted on this "dirty war"...

In addition to the obviously focused thematic performance, another outstanding feature of this story anthology is the setting of open-ended or unexpected endings, so that the reader can read it without end.

The unknowable ending of "Eat Him" makes people continue to speculate about the fate of the protagonist Locke. Locke faints from the punches and kicks of the mentally ill and the haunting cries of "Eat him", and the reader seems to have no idea of Locke's life and death at the end, but the abrupt closing creates a helpless mood of fear of elusive mental illness and a desolate atmosphere of powerlessness to do anything about it.

"Coghlan Station" also presents an ending that does not end. Whether the protagonist "I" eventually helped his sick best friend Louis to end his life as he wished, but no matter how he chose, the reader experienced the torment of the protagonist's heart, the death of the perfect friend was to help him, but to himself and others caused harm, people often fell into a contradictory dilemma, not choosing may become the best choice. Mambo's open-ended ending may be the best answer to Louis's fate, and it also leaves the reader with room for imagination, allowing people to perceive human emotions while thinking about the way out of human spiritual anxiety.

"Uncle Bob" is also a mambo autobiographical story, he and new York acquaintance of the same surname "Uncle Bob" is a year-old friend, promised to help uncle but travel to Patagonia wish, but has never been realized. It wasn't until his uncle's death that he knew why he wanted to go there: the German soldier killed by his uncle in World War I confessed on his deathbed that it was his wish to live in Patagonia in South America. The unexpected ending of his uncle's death without fulfilling his wish is slightly regrettable, but this regret is not his uncle's intention, the pain brought to him by the war killing is hidden behind the luxurious life, he wants to go and is afraid to go to Patagonia, because he feels guilty about the German soldiers, wants to help him but wishes but it is difficult to face the crimes he committed, and the slightly unexpected and regrettable ending has become the best choice.

In "Borges's Lost Manuscript", Mambo imitates Borges's narrative technique of combining fiction and reality, telling a story in the form of a story set story in which "I" met and talked with Borges's plane, was authorized by the master to read his manuscript, and "I" returned it only to find that the manuscript was stolen by strangers. However, this ending in "I"'s perception is not the truth of the story, "I" think that the lost manuscript is Borges's original handwriting, worried that his old man mistakenly regarded "me" as a thief, until many years later "I" learned in a speech of his that the manuscript was just to cover the eyes and ears, blowing up the "truth" of the fake manuscript of the attempted thief. And "I" is just a pawn in the master's virtual reality "dream" and "story", and "I" am played by the manuscript and airplane story shaped by the master. The reader who reads Mambo's story is also playfully designed by him to be in the self-experience fabricated by the first perspective of "I", and is played by his story inside and outside the story. Mambo pays tribute to Borges for his literary play, perhaps the best tribute to the master himself.

"The Journey of Sorrow" also ended with unexpected regret. The reader, who thought something was going to happen between the male and female protagonists who were full of passionate hormones, followed their steps closer, observed, and lustful, about to believe that the moment when the two were going to reach the point of water and milk, but were awakened and amused by the end of the journey, where they ran their own things without opening their mouths to say a word. In addition to the witty irony, they can only miss the "beautiful" fate for their silence and lack of courage, no wonder it is called a "sad journey", no matter how heavenly marriage, there is no choice but to miss each other.

The vanished editor Piluz in "Commander Garcia" subverted everyone's cognition and believed in the "fallacy" of the old man Garcia Martian invasion of the earth, when everyone was puzzled by this, the strange voice and announcement of colleague Ivankovich also made the end of the story come to a big reversal, maybe the Martians really began to invade the earth...

Whether it's heavy themes of death, violence and war, or open-ended, unexpected endings, Mambo's approach to themes and artistic approach is just right. The sorrow, joy, contradiction, regret, regret and anger of the human heart are vividly displayed in the plain telling and unexpected ending of several stories, and those seemingly simple fragments of life contain the peaks and valleys of human emotions, revealing the complexity and diversity of human nature, the complexity of human hearts, and the cruelty and sadness of human nature. Each individual, family, collective, each has its own misfortunes and blessings, beauty and sorrow, whether the story is good, life is good, the choice of when to end, what kind of ending is not willful, all kinds of characters, times, events, backgrounds, all kinds of emotions, thinking, psychology, spirit, all kinds of internal and external factors superimposed into a story or a short narrative of life, the dream is the same. The story telling of "The Dream of the Exile" does not have a deliberate choreography and contrived drama, nor does it have a thrilling beginning and a stunning ending, but reflects the truth of life and the essence of the human heart in a slow and natural and step-by-step way, and silently brings shock and enlightenment to the reader's heart.