Carlos Droguett

Carlos Droguett (born October 15, 1912 in Santiago de Chile , † July 30, 1996 in Bern ) was one of the most important Chilean writers of the second half of the 20th century. He studied English there and later also studied law.

He reached the peak of his literary career in 1970 when he was awarded the National Prize for Literature. Three years later, however, this fame became life-threatening for Droguett: The well-known Pinochet military coup overthrew the government of Salvador Allende and a regime in which Droguett suffered from persecution was established.

In 1975 he went into exile in Switzerland, where he lived for 21 years. He died in Bern in 1996.

The books

Of the books by Carlos Droguett, the German-speaking public only knows Eloy (German by Helmut Frielinghaus), originally published in 1959. It was his first successful novel, which made him known beyond the national borders and which was translated into several languages. Droguett takes up the case of a mass murderer who caused a stir in Chile in 1941. Not the sensational the author, but the inner workings, the motives of the criminal. So the book is a single monologue by this Eloy , who, hounded by the police, recapitulates his life and crimes in the face of death.

Droguett deals with a similar topic in his 1971 novel Todas esas muertes (All these deaths), where he used the facts to process the career of the French murderer Emilio Dubois in Chile at the turn of the century.

Like Eloy , the novel El Compadre (The Kumpan), published in 1967, is designed as an internal monologue. The miserable life of the construction worker Ramón Neira reflects the social and political misery that, according to Droguett, prevailed in Chile before and after the Popular Front government from 1938 to 1941. The individual chapters are introduced by quotations from the Gospels. The suffering of this worker is deliberately set in parallel with the Passion of Christ, but ends in a tone of total despair and hopelessness.

Droguett's books are permeated with an undogmatic Christianity, a view of man and the world in which suffering, mercy and salvation are central concepts. " I'm a Christian anarchist, " said Droguett. His repeated preoccupation with marginalized existences and outcasts can be better understood from this actually early Christian attitude. His law degree also instilled in him a lifelong distrust of the state and jurisprudence and showed him that the good and the law are not identical, and can even be contrary.

After years of work, Droguett has also finished an extensive saga called Matar a los viejos (Kill the Ancients). “ I started this novel in Chile; the manuscript went into exile before me - in a diplomatic suitcase, ”said Droguett. This book is a large-scale fresco of the social situation in Chile and combines history and utopia, as it extends from the 19th century into the future, that is, to the time after Pinochet. Droguett shrinks the years of dictatorship into a prologue - a literary expression of hope in the face of apparent hopelessness.

Works

• Los asesinados del Seguro Obrero (1938)
• 60 muertos en la escalera (1953)
• Eloy (1959, rev. 1982)
• 100 gotas de sangre y 200 de sudor (1961)
• Patas de perro (1965)
• Los mejores cuentos (1967)
• Supay, el cristiano (1968)
• El compadre (1967)
• El hombre que había olvidado (1968)
• Todas esas muertes (1971)
• El cementerio de los elefantes (1971)
• Después del diluvio (1971)
• Escrito en el aire (1972)
• El hombre que trasladaba las ciudades (1973)
• Sobre la ausencia (1976)
• Matar a los viejos (1976)
• La señorita Lara (1979)
• Materiales de construction (1980)
• El enano Cocorí (1986)

Edits

The composer Francisco C. Goldschmidt (1981) has transformed Carlos Droguett's novel Eloy into a musical theater:

ELOY - Music with Images of Isolation (2013–2017) / music theater for reinforced ensemble, voice and video / 90 min. (World premiere in Cologne, 2017).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Pessimism is optimism in the long term (1982) / Tages-Anzeiger. Text: Georg Sütterlin

Web links

• Entry at the Chilean National Library