The storyteller

The storyteller ( Spanish: El hablador ) is a novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa from 1987. Using the example of the nomadic Machiguenga in the Amazon region, it deals with the problem of the integration of indigenous peoples into westernized Peruvian society.

overview

Vargas Llosa's novel with autobiographical references is about the more than thirty years of occupation of the first-person narrator and fictional Peruvian author with the indigenous tribe of the Machiguengas living in the Amazon region and their mysterious storytellers. The narrator discussed this subject with his friend Saúl Zuratas in Lima while he was a student. Since then, the subject has not let go of him and he plans to write a story about it. In the following years he researched the mythology and history of this tribe through the study of anthropological reports and his own on-site interviews for a television report. But he did not begin to formulate his novel until 1985, after he was reminded of his college friend by an exhibition in Florence (chapters 1 and 8). In retrospect, he tells of this time since the 1950s (Kp. 2, 4, 6): of his research into the way of life and the mythology of the Indians , of his own encounters with them and of conversations with researchers who lived among them and more about they knew. The stages in the development of the novel described in the five chapters also show the increasing adaptation of indigenous groups to Peruvian society as well as the discussions about the integration problem: the improvement of living conditions, but also the loss of the old identity. During his research, the author tries again and again to find out what happened to his college friend Saúl, who once planned to live with the Machiguengas.

This storyline of the novel is interrupted by the lectures of a wandering Machiguenga storyteller (chapters 3, 5 and 7). He talks about the wandering life of the family associations, their struggles and their experiences with white traders, as well as the inclusion of their legends of gods and demons in their everyday lives in the context of animistic and magical ideas.

content

Framework story

In the first and eighth chapters the author reports on his study stay in Florence in the summer of 1985: In the Santa-Margherita-Passage he enters a tiny gallery with photos by the Italian Gabriele Malfatti from the Peruvian Amazon. The visitor recognizes in the pictures the area around Nueva Luz (Spanish: New Light) and Nuevo Mundo (Spanish: New World), which he had traveled a few years before. He is particularly drawn to one of the photos: Machiguenga men and women sit in a circle around a narrator. The author imagines that the storyteller is his friend in hiding, Saúl, who has joined the tribe, also because he probably wants to personally continue the Jewish history of exclusion and isolation. This construction enables the author to combine his studies of the Amazon Indians with his friend's conception of a life in and with nature, and he can now begin writing the novel, which is also about his difficulties, the spiritual world alien Understanding and depicting cultures. The narrator knows that since his visit six years ago the situation in the rainforest of South America has continued to deteriorate: deforestation, settlement, oil exploration, drug trafficking and terrorism, etc. will also have had an impact on the Machiguengas, and he wonders how long theirs Villages will be preserved and how the residents will react to the development: whether they continue to adapt to the conditions or whether they withdraw and resume the cycle of hiking.

Research by Saúl Zurata and the author on the Machiguengas

Kp. 2

Inspired by the exhibition in Florence, the author remembers the beginning of his acquaintance with Saúl Zuratas, who is nicknamed Mascarita (Spanish: Máscara mask) because of the mulberry- colored birthmark that covers the right half of the face. Saúl lives with his father, the grocer Don Salomón, in a run-down neighborhood in Lima . After the death of his Creole mother, an uneducated Goi from Talara , the Jew Don Salomón moved to the capital to enable his son to train as a lawyer. But Saúl neglected his law studies from 1953 to 1956, threw himself on ethnology with ardor and visits his mother's relatives, farmers in Quillabamba near Cusco , during the semester break . White people like Saúl call the local population Viracochas and accuse them of damaging the environment, for example fishing with dynamite. During his student years in Lima, Saúl made further trips to the upper reaches of the Urubamba and the Río Madre de Dios . It is from him that the author first learns of the myths of the Machiguengas: of Tasurinchi, the god of good, and Kientibakori, the god of evil, both of whom created life in the world with their bare breath: one man and everything useful to them, the other all evil. The two discuss the assessment of the simple, nature-dependent life of the Indians: while the author assesses the development opportunities through integration into Peruvian society as positive, Saúl sees the dangers, v. a. the loss of their identity, and would like to keep them in their isolation from contact with Western ways of life and religions. In 1956, Saúl obtained his bachelor's degree with a thesis on the Machiguenga tribe, but did not want to continue his field research because he viewed it as immoral violence against indigenous cultures, which increased its exploitation by the Viracochas as cheap labor. He compares this situation with colonialism . Saúl therefore refuses a scholarship arranged by his professor to study ethnology at the University of Bordeaux in France.

Kp. 4

Two years later, in 1958, the author travels to the Amazon jungle for the first time when, in Saúl's place, he accompanies Professor Matos Mar on an expedition of the Peruvian Institute of Linguistics to the banks of the Upper Marañón . Although the author cannot speak directly to Machiguengas, he does get to know the young linguist couple Schneil - graduates of the University of Oklahoma - who have won the trust of the Indians in the wilderness through careful procedures. In order to get in contact with them at all, Edwin Schneil approached a Machiguenga family naked with favors and was not turned away - like others before him. He neither took gringo-style photographs nor made sound recordings. But the Schneils are not just philanthropists and linguists. You are patiently pursuing a missionary purpose. You have the Bible with you and want to translate it into the language of the Machiguengas. The author learns a lot from them about the life and myths of the tribe. A special feature of their language is that they have no proper names . This explains why the storyteller in the novel addresses all men with "Tasurinchi". On the last evening of the expedition, the author had a conversation with the Schneils. They casually tell that the Machiguengas talked about a “storyteller” in a mysterious way. They can only guess at his role. The author is impressed by these wandering speakers, looks for more information in the researcher's documentation, and plans to write a novel about them.

On his expedition, the author does not come into contact with the small groups moving around, but only with the families who have settled in the villages. Western influences have already changed the lives of the tribes and there are often cruel confrontations. Because they are exploited by the patronos - they are whites and mestizos . Shortly before the expedition's visit, Jum, the Kazike of Urakusa and chief of the Aguaruna tribe of Viracochas, was tortured because he had recognized the value of money and wanted to set up his own trading cooperative to market their products. History repeats itself here: Machiguengas, a sought-after workforce, fell victim to manhunters as early as the rubber age .

After the author has returned from the expedition to Lima, he meets up with Saúl in a pub and talks to him about his experiences: The author assesses the evolution of the Indian ambivalent sees as before talking with Matos Mar, both capitalism as also communism with its different ideologies as potential destroyers of the Amazon cultures and gives the cooperatives visited on his journey a chance. On the other hand, the linguists in the Amazon are a major danger for Saúl, because they are far more powerful than missionaries, priests and nuns because they have money and a strong organization and want to make the Indians "good Westerners, good modern men, good capitalists". He believes that one should leave the indigenous tribes alone and respect their culture. After the interview, the author travels to Madrid and Paris to study, it will be her last, and who allegedly emigrated to Israel. Friend doesn't answer his letters.

The author researches the Machiguengas in the National Library and the Dominican monastery library in Madrid and finds articles on customs and language in the “Misiones Dominicanas” collection. In a report, Fray Vicente de Cenitagoya praised the “savages” as being honest and gentle. They are restless people with an unhealthy love of gossip and stories and “obsessed with the demon of movement”. Although missionaries had built a village for them with a school and provided them with food, one day the tribe suddenly disappeared. A conversation with the former missionary Fray Elicerio Maluenda is particularly informative for the author. This explains to him the idea of ​​the Indians of the universe. The cloud region "Menkoripatsa" and above "Inkite", the highest world, rise above the earth as the center. Below the earth are the realm of the dead, where the souls of the deceased reside, and the lowest region is the river with black water "Gamaironi", in which the devil "Kientibakori" lives.

Kp. 6

In 1981 the author developed the program “The Tower of Babel” for Peruvian television and traveled with his team through the country to report on interesting projects. He flies to the Machiguengas area with the Schneils for a program on the "Institute for Linguistics". More than 20 years have passed since the first encounter. The Schneils' children, who grew up bilingually with Machiguenga children, are now living as future scientists in the USA . The Indians are now settled in the villages of the mission stations on rivers and live mainly from agriculture. They are largely integrated into Peruvian society. The Bible has been translated into their language, the children go to school and the bilingual village chief can interpret for the visitors. While the author admires the Machiguengas admiration for the Schneils, he searches in frustration for reasons for his inability to write his planned novel. The drafts of his story about the Machiguenga storytellers always ended up in the trash, because he found no information about them in the more recent documentation. Nor can he learn anything about the storytellers from the Machiguengas. They show incomprehension or seem to evade the topic. And even Edwin Schneil is surprised and embarrassed when the author asks him about the narrator. Only after persistent follow-up did he tell of two events a few years ago in the jungle at which he happened to be present. One of the narrators was called albino or gringo because he differed from the other Machiguengas by a large mole on his face and carrot-red hair. The author therefore suspects that he is his friend in hiding, Saúl.

The Machiguenga storyteller

The Machiguenga storyteller speaks in three chapters inserted into the main plot. Edwin Schneil, the only eyewitness known to the Peruvian author of such long and tiring events, cannot give precise information about the content of the speeches. According to his impression, the “speaker” is neither a magician nor a healer nor a priest, but rather a postman, entertainer and at the same time the tribal memory of the widely dispersed members. So it plays a central role for the togetherness of the tribe, which despite the most adverse circumstances and the wild nature has survived the times thanks to its mobility. During a session, the storyteller addresses a plethora of topics, usually jumping from one experience to another in disorder. However, all traditions have in common the role of the Machiguengas, who have the task of maintaining the balance of the cosmos and preventing chaos by keeping the sun from falling through their wanderings and supporting the good spirits against the demons. That is why the novelist works his knowledge of mythology into the speeches and emulates the language of the indigenous narrator with long associative speech chains, so that the impression arises of “hearing” the stories from his mouth. But he makes the fictional character and the legendary of the representation through frequent restrictions of the indigenous narrator “so it seems”, “maybe. It may have been like that back then ”or“ at least that's what I experienced ”again and again. The legends are often presented in several versions by the shamans , which indicates a long chain of oral tradition.

Kp. 3

In the third chapter the narrator tells the audience the story of the creation of the Machiguengas: At the beginning, the people of the earth lived in paradisiacal conditions, the dead returned in a different form. But this life did not last and Tasurinchi - god or tribal leader - called his people to leave. Since then, they see themselves as the people who leave. Whenever they forget this appeal and the tribe interrupts nomadic life, demons nestle and cause disease. The narrator describes the difficult times in tribal history, e.g. B. the expulsion and persecution by the hostile Mashcos, who stole their wives, the exploitation by white fur hunters or rubber and wood collectors who used them as cheap day laborers. During this time of the “tree bleeding”, almost the entire cycle of nature got mixed up. A machiguenga occupied by a Kamagarini persuaded the tribe to see the moon Kashir and not the sun as the supreme authority and to hunt in the dark and build their huts. They became "men of darkness" who had to avoid daylight. Though satisfied, they had lost their wisdom and the balance of life. Their souls disappeared and devils invaded the empty shells and turned them into animals: one man's skin was covered with fish scales and he had to live in the pond, another one grew wings and he flew away, a third got a snout with tusks and became hunted like an animal by his sons. Eventually they repented of their betrayal of the sun and hiked and went back to work during the day.

In other passages of his speech, the traveling narrator tells of his visits to the families in the huts scattered and hidden in the jungle: at Tasurinchi at the bend of the river, at Tasurinchi in the forest on the Yavero river, then at Tasurinchi, the blind man lives on the Cashiriari River. He calls every man of the tribe and later himself "Tasurinchi", all of them are sons of the god of the same name, the creator of the world who tries to ward off the misdeeds of his adversary Kientibakori and his numerous demons. The narrator describes in detail the fate of the blind Tasurinchi's family as an example of the constant interlinking of death with life, whereby the real and magical levels are combined: After the youngest son died of a snakebite, Seripigari's parents asked her to lead into the world of the dead. At the “river of pure souls” they found their son and he promised them to return to earth one more time. During his visit he told them about his mystical journey into the "world of the sun". Two younger sisters of the blind Tasurinchi's wife also died, one killed in shame after she was captured and raped by the Punarunas, and the family hung her body on a tree to protect it from animal bites, and the other fell into one Gorge and was in a trance state before she died. After he has finished speaking, the blind Tasurinchi listens attentively to the narrator's stories, because they give him the feeling of a broad context between the events.

Kp. 5

Constantly on the move, Tasurinchi is threatened everywhere by the spirits of the evil Kientibakori. The storyteller knows many examples , some of them burlesque , including one of the evil spirits transforming into a wasp and stabbing the resting Tasurinchi in the penis. It swells and grows so much that the person who is stabbed has to wind it up and shoulder it. Forest birds mistake the penis for a tree trunk and find a place to sing on it. Then Tasurinchi buys a Yaminahua in exchange for food , which is rejected by the women of his tribe. But every pain is overcome patiently in the examples of the narrator by the Machiguengas according to the creation myth. Tasurinchi says: "Anger is a disturbance of the world." The narrator must not come to rest either. When Tasurinchi-Herbalist befriends him and wants to give him his daughter as a wife, she kills herself because she doesn't want to take the storyteller away from the tribe. Even after the torrential rain that washes the narrator into the river, the narrator survives by first clinging to an alligator, then to a heron, which lifts him up with him, and finally lands back on earth to continue his role play.

Other stories are explanatory narratives about earthly phenomena or celestial phenomena, e.g. B. Animals, stars, moon or comets: Pachakamue, the first narrator of the myth, has the power to unconsciously create things and animals from words. Speaking, he transforms people into all kinds of animal shapes and thus brings forth the fauna . However, this often upsets the balance. His sister Pareni, the first wife, and her husband Yagontoro therefore decide to kill him. Yagontoro cuts off his head and buries him to prevent him from speaking, but forgets to remove his tongue so that the head can continue to speak. Then Yagontoro is transformed into a carachupa (opossum), Pareni's second husband into a bee, Tzonkori, Pareni's third husband into a hummingbird and Pareni and her daughter into boulders. In another story, Kashiri, the moon, comes to earth as a young man, marries a Machiguenga woman and fathered a son, the sun, with her. But an Itoni (devil) disguised as a woman contaminates Kashiri's face with her feces and he returns tainted to Inkite (heaven). In another version, the Seripigari Tasurinchi combines the formation of the moon with the story of the fireflies who lost their wives as stars. Kashiri's constant lust for his wife disturbs the balance of the earth, and Tasurinchi weakens his shine and drives him back to Inkite. As a substitute he can take the firefly women with him as stars. A third story explains that Comet Kachiborérine is a transformed machiguenga. When his second wife sleeps with his son from his first marriage, he looks for a girl for him with the Chonchoites, but is caught and gutted by the cannibals. He can no longer feed himself without a stomach and intestines, so, possessed by a demon, puts a torch in his anus and turns into a comet in the sky.

Kp. 7

In this chapter the storyteller tells of further encounters with Tasurinchis: z. B. with the wise Seripigari Tasurinchi from the Kompiroshiato River, who knows everything about edible plants and animals that can be used as medicinal products and who has come to a relaxed attitude through this healthy diet. Perhaps in a life "before" he was the hunter Tasurinchi, who hunted the sacred deer, a transformed human being, and was himself transformed into a deer as a punishment. In another anecdote, the narrator learns from a Seripigari why the Machiguengas paint themselves with Orlean tincture: Inaenka, the handicapped ominous woman and the cause of diseases, killed the fisherman Tasurinchi and the Seripigari with hot water and ate them. . The orlean shrub Potsotiki explained to one of her sons that his mother wanted to destroy the Machiguenga tribe, through whose migration the balance between the sun and moon is maintained. This would lead to the crash of the sun and the chaos of the world. The son wanted to prevent this and, in order not to be recognized by Inaenka, allowed himself to be transformed into an Orlean child. Then he told his mother that he could show her the land of happiness. There her deformed feet would be healthy again and she would no longer have to limp. But he brought Inaenka to the monsters at the end of the world. To escape their revenge, his soul slipped into the shell of a Moritoni bird, which has been protected by the Machiguengas ever since.

In the second part of the chapter, the author assumes that the storyteller is his friend Saúl and works this into his presentation. Intoxicated, he lets the narrator experience an adaptation of Kafka's The Metamorphosis , Saúl's favorite story: Tasurinchi-Gregor transforms into a Machacuy cicada and this isolates him from his family. In a second allusion to Saúl, the narrator condemns the killing of deformed children that is common among the Machiguengas and, despite his disfigured face, refers to his own right to life. and shows the audience that one can live as a Tasurinchi even in imperfections. And once again he wants to make it clear to the audience that not everything that was born imperfectly has to be breathed in by Kientibakori, the evil one, and should therefore be killed: Through the story of his companion, the parrot “Mascarita”, which his mother bird is for wanted to chop up a deformed foot. Fourth, he tells of his own past life before going to the Machiguengas and Judeo-Christian mythology. In a language that the audience can understand, he speaks of the god Tasurinchi-Jehovah, the history of the Jewish people and Tasurinchi's son, the Seripigari ( Jesus of Nazareth ).

In the end, the storyteller decides to hike back into the wild with the Tasurinchi from the Timpinia River, who exchanged his surplus harvest for seeds and tools with the “White Fathers” and led a satisfied, sedentary life with his family. He interprets an earthquake as a warning and admonition to return to the nomadic life prescribed by the creator god Tasurinchi to maintain the natural balance.

Quotes

• Tasurinchi instructs the storyteller: "In order to understand, one must be able to listen."
• From the mouth of an indefatigable Machiguenga listener: "Thanks to your stories, it is as if what has happened will happen again many times."
• Even the lifeless according to the Western understanding can speak with the Machiguengas: "The circles of the water speak."
• The storyteller says of his self-discovery among the Machiguengas: "I returned here without leaving."

Form and interpretation

The author shares his difficulties in writing a novel on the subject of the Machiguenga storytellers. Thus a novel emerges within a novel. Not only in the first and last chapters, which frame the plot of the novel, but also during the events, the author occasionally refers to his memory work in Florence. His idea of ​​writing about his friend Saúl is a cursed temptation, which he has now given in.

The text can be a treasure trove for the reader who wishes to study the ethnic study of the Amazon, which was carried out by the Spanish in the eastern territory of Peru. For example, the missionary Father José Pío Aza, the first researcher of the Machiguenga language, is named. Or the reformer Dr. Luis Valcárcel ridiculed and called a novel on the subject: "La Vorágine". The three-time detailed explanation of the origin of this world, as the Machiguengas imagine - in the repetitions then visibly amalgamated with the Jewish and Christian faith - results in a confessional, ideological script rather than prose.

But what makes the book a novel? First and foremost, this is the extreme contrast between the sometimes factual and sober reporting, based on his writings, currently living far from home and the oral lecture of the storyteller reproduced in the three narrative chapters. The author may almost envy the storyteller, because he plays such a central role in the life of his tribe that the writer - although Vargas Llosa later even won the Nobel Prize for Literature - is not granted in his society. The investigation into the whereabouts of Saúl Zurata's friend creates tension. His disgusting birthmark and his Jewish origins may have contributed to his solidarity with the Machiguengas who have been pushed to the fringes of society, which also made him a “fringe existence” of Peruvian society. At the end of the book the author once again expresses his admiration for the profound transformation that his friend has undergone. However, the reader should keep in mind that despite all the verifiability of the facts and the autobiographical data in the book, these very contents have been expanded to include fictions - the author himself writes that he has to invent the current life of his friend, which he no longer knows. Incidentally, the author is never named by his name in the novel, and there is an authentic role model for the linguist couple Schneil, from whom he learns most of the information about the Machiguengas and the storytellers, but the name is slightly modified.

The reader gets to know an exotic view of the world and has to find his way into a strange vocabulary. Explanations are often given many pages later - for example, in the report by the Schneils about the Machiguengas, a lot is told that one could only suspect beforehand, for example that they have no proper names. The dedication to the “Machiguenga-Kenkitsatatsirira” at the beginning of the book also only finds an explanation here and only hinted at: A long sound with many “s” is mentioned, which can be translated as “storyteller”.

As the storyteller makes three big appearances, he becomes increasingly personal. Beginning with the excerpt from paradise and other myths as well as the reports on his visits, he weaves in more and more personal topics (see above, chapter 7).

The creation story of the Machiguengas is not presented in the biblical style. The reader has to excercise order himself from the hopeless disorder of the repeating lecture. With this the writer poses many a puzzle for the reader. A first clue could be in this respect: The moon lives under the Machiguenga; is married to one of her wives. He sleeps them persistently and successfully. She bears him the sun. Light illuminates the world. The fall of the central star in the evening could be one of the reasons for Tasurinchi's constant wandering. - After collecting his first impressions of the stories, the reader gets an overview of the cosmogony of the Machiguengas through a report by the author of his library studies.

The storyteller knows that his wealth of knowledge is imperfect. With caution and modesty, he almost always ends with the sentence: “At least that's what I learned.” Or he takes back countless assertions with a trailing “Maybe”, “So it seems” or similar expressions. For example, one hears about a child and his mother (a mythical figure on the side of evil): “One of his mothers must have been Inaenka. […] Are all devils limping? It seems so. Kientibakori too, they say. “Often phenomena such as happiness, guilt or malice and states of mind such as joy or anger are relativized in this way.

If Tasurinchi goes astray in the stories, it not only causes reactions from nature, but is also illustrated again and again with the dance of the devils in the forest: “Then he got angry. It was raining, there was lightning. Certainly all devils went out into the forest to dance. ”Or at his feast with forbidden meat:“ In the forest Kientibakori drank Masato and danced at the festival. His farts sounded like thunderbolts, and his burps like the roar of the jaguar. "

Sometimes the reader is delighted by the surprising imagery in the novel. For example: “The sky was a thicket of stars.” Or - the storyteller has drawn a thorn and wants to scare the pain with a roar.

reception

• In the multi-ethnic state of Peru, the Spanish-speaking native first-person narrator and thus the author himself - deals with an Indian language of this country that he does not speak at all; a project that would be doomed from the outset and that will fail. The first-person narrator finally despairs and celebrates “elegiac self-pity”. After all, the “truth researcher” Vargas Llosa has made an encouraging attempt to penetrate the foreign culture. The presented myth of a nomadic people - like that of the Machiguengas here - is an instrument of survival: the incessant wandering in search of game that can be hunted and arable land and avoiding enemies. The Tasurinchi of this people existed in many copies. Almost every machiguenga could be called tasurinchi. There is no fixed truth for this people. Rather, this only arises through the appearance of the storyteller. The photo of the storyteller and his audience, which was shown in Florence, also fits into the above-mentioned failure of the first-person narrator and his journalist colleagues in their attempt to penetrate the Indian culture. Although Edmund Schneil exercised restraint in communicating with the Machiguengas, that disavouring Malfatti photo was taken later.
• Lentzen points to a weakness of form in the novel. The tension built up in the first chapter fizzles out. In addition, it is difficult to extract the facts from fiction and the character who is being talked about cannot always be identified. The language of Vargas Llosa in the storyteller chapters three, five and seven is actually consistently mentioned by the critics with praise. The Troubadour as a model of his storyteller has fascinated Vargas Llosa.
• It would give the impression that the storyteller speaks the language of the Machiguenga. The author constructed this fictitious special language especially for his novel using Quechua and Peruvian Spanish and interwoven it with the chapters preceding the three storyteller chapters. According to the oral language model, the text is not arranged in terms of time or content. As a result, the novel makes a messy impression on first reading. A root for the difficulty of penetrating an oral language by the speaker of a written language - in this case: Vargas Llosa as the speaker of Spanish - is the too different thought structure inherent in the oral and literary types of language. Because Saúl enthusiastically wants to preserve the culture of the Machiguengas, he hides his storytelling profession from the strangers.
• The peculiarity described in the novel that the Machiguengas have no proper names is confirmed in ethnographic literature - for example with Allan W. Johnson, who refers to Wayne W. Snell, role model for the fictional character Edwin Schneil, and confirms it through his own experience. However, the fact that the uniform name Tasurinchi , the name of the creator of the Machiguengas, is used instead in the three narrative chapters of the novel is a peculiarity that the author put into the mouth of the storyteller. According to Sá, this underlines the creative role of the storyteller. Among the Machiguengas, the name Tasurinchi (the one who blows) is reserved for the Creator or demigods.
• Sá mentions further details that deviate from ethnographically established facts or from the cosmogony of the Machiguengas, although the novel, with its numerous references to specific sources and the many data from the life of Vargas Llosa, gives the impression that the information about the Machiguengas is authentic . For example, the moon plays a more important role with the Machiguengas than is expressed in the novel, where its spots - similar to Mascarita - would rather be on the sidelines. The role of women among the Machiguengas is by no means a subordinate one, as the representation in the novel suggests, in which only men are named Tasurinchi . There are no references to the role of the storyteller portrayed in the novel in texts about the Machiguengas or in their narratives - the only written source specifically named in the novel, the book by the researcher Paul Marcoy, is inexactly reproduced. The only other scientists who are named regarding the existence of the storytellers are the Schneils - it is significant that their names in the novel have been changed. Notwithstanding such remarks, Sá considers the book to be worth reading.
• The German-language edition of the novel was published in 2011 as the tenth book of the “ Eine Stadt. A book. “Both in Vienna and in Berlin, 100,000 copies each are given to readers free of charge. This book, published by echomedia buchverlag Wien, has the same page layout as the edition used and also contains the Nobel Prize speech by M. Vargas Llosa: “Praise to reading and fiction”.

literature

Used edition

• The storyteller. Novel. Translated from the Spanish by Elke Wehr. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990 (1st edition), without ISBN

Secondary literature

• Thomas M. Scheerer : Mario Vargas Llosa. Life and work. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-518-38289-6 .
• Norbert Lentzen: Literature and Society: Studies on the relationship between reality and fiction in the novels of Mario Vargas Llosas. Romanistischer Verlag, Bonn 1994 (Diss. RWTH Aachen 1994), ISBN 3-86143-053-3 .
• Markus Klaus Schäffauer: The paradox of the postmodern myth and the genus as a topographical problem in El hablador and Lituma en los Andes. in: Morales Saravia, José (ed.): The literary work of Mario Vargas Llosa. Vervuert, Frankfurt / M.2000, pp. 233-258.

Web links

• Susanne M. Cadera: Depicted orality in novels by Mario Vargas Llosa , Romance seminar at the University of Cologne , Geneva 2002, p. 145 ff. (Cologne Romance works, new series - issue 80)
• Andreas Hetzel: Voices of the Myth, Voices of the Unconnected: On the nomadic poetics of Mario Vargas Llosa in "The Storyteller" , in: Gerhard Gamm, Alfred Neumann, Eva Schürmann (eds.): Philosophy in the mirror of literature . Felix Meiner Verlag 2007, pp. 105–124 (magazine for aesthetics and general art history, special issue 9), ISBN 978-3-7873-1849-0
• Lúcia Sá: Rain Forest Literatures: Amazonian Texts And Latin American Culture . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2004, ISBN 0-8166-4325-3
• Action “One CITY. A BOOK. "(2011) (There is also an interview with Mario Vargas Llosa),
• Address by M. Vargas Llosa at the opening of the campaign ( part 1 , part 2 ).

Remarks

1. ↑ In view of the amalgamation of biographical data with invented parts of the novel, in the following this first-person narrator (Vargas Llosa's fictional self) is not referred to by the name of the writer, but rather according to his role in the novel as "the author" - in contrast to the first person Narrator of other chapters, the storyteller.
2. ↑ The view that the name "Tasurinchi" is used like a pronoun can be found in the English Wikipedia article on the novel, see " The Storyteller (novel) ".
3. ↑ According to Hetzel, the Machiguengas are “those who go” in their own language (Hetzel, p. 108, 7th Zvu). This term - "the people who go" - is used repeatedly in the novel. The anthropologist Johnson writes "Matsigenka" means "people" , thus translating the name with "people" or "the people"
4. ^ The Kafka admirer Saúl can recite " The Metamorphosis " by heart (edition used, p. 24, 13. Zvo). In identification with the main figure Gregor Samsa, after whom he also named his parrot (edition used p. 22, 16. Zvo), he is now called Tasurinchi-Gregor.
5. ↑ Everything is translated into the audience's imagination: the Jewish people hunting tapir and harvesting yucca, their god with the name Tasurinchi- Jehovah .
6. ↑ Not only the transformation of the student friend, but also the friend himself is an invention, see interview with the author in Vienna
7. ↑ 288 pages, print: May + Co., Darmstadt
8. ↑ ^{a b c} book preview (alternating pages are missing).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vargas Llosa as first-person narrator, Scheerer, p. 153, 18. Zvo
2. ↑ eng. Peruvian Amazonia
3. ↑ Markus Klaus Schäffauer: The paradox of the postmodern myth and the genus as a topographical problem in El hablador and Lituma en los Andes. in: Morales Saravia, José (ed.): The literary work of Mario Vargas Llosa. Vervuert Frankfurt / M .: 2000, pp. 233-258.
4. ↑ eng. Quillabamba
5. ↑ eng. Viracocha
6. ↑ Edition used, p. 31, 5. Zvo
7. ↑ Edition used, p. 96. 4. Zvu
8. ↑ eng. Eastern Cordillera in Peru . See also Manú National Park
9. ↑ Edition used, p. 21 below
10. ↑ Edition used, p. 100, 5. Zvo
11. ↑ see also Cadera, p. 183 middle
12. ↑ Vargas Llosa describes in the 6th part of his novel "The Dream of the Celts" (2010) in a similar way to Edwin Schneil in the 6th part of a "Seanchai" called traveling Irish storyteller
13. ^ Photo from Urakusa in Peru
14. ↑ Lentzen, p. 153, 1. Zvu
15. ↑ Cadera, p. 183 below
16. ↑ Edition used, p. 145, 16. Zvo
17. ↑ Edition used, p. 149, 18. Zvo
18. ↑ Edition used, p. 74, 2nd Zvu
19. ↑ Edition used, p. 155, 19. Zvo
20. ↑ Edition used, p. 248, 13. Zvo
21. ↑ compare Cadera, p. 160
22. ↑ see for example the edition used, p. 43, 20. Zvo, p. 95, 13. Zvu, p. 112, 11. Zvu
23. ^ Spanish Father José Pío Aza
24. ↑ Spanish Dr. Luis Valcárcel
25. ↑ eng. La Vorágine
26. ↑ see Scheerer, pp. 160–161
27. ↑ compare Scheerer, p. 160, 3rd Zvu
28. ↑ see Sá, pp. 271, 15. Zvu and Cadera, p. 154, footnote 16
29. ↑ Edition used, p. 109, 5. Zvo; Sá, p. 254, 3. Zvo
30. ↑ see also Scheerer, p. 48 ff: Order in Chaos - Aspects of Narrative Technique2
31. ↑ Edition used, p. 126, line 10 vo - 127, line 7 vo
32. ↑ see for example edition used, p. 133, 15. Zvu, p. 134, 13. Zvo, p. 136, 4. Zvu, p. 138, 16. Zvo
33. ↑ Edition used, p. 232, 8. Zvo and 14. Zvo
34. ↑ Edition used, p. 147, 15. Zvo
35. ↑ Edition used, p. 227, 7th Zvo, further examples p. 233, 1 Zvu, p. 147, 7th Zvo
36. ↑ Edition used, p. 202, 5th Zvu
37. ↑ Edition used, p. 267, 2nd Zvo
38. ↑ Scheerer, p. 153, 18. Zvo
39. ↑ Scheerer, p. 161, 17th Zvu
40. ↑ Scheerer, p. 162
41. ↑ Scheerer, pp. 159–162
42. ↑ Lentzen, pp. 152-164
43. ↑ Cadera, pp. 198-207
44. ↑ reported from 1958
45. ↑ The novel mentions Zvo Johnson Allan on p. 184, 14 .
46. ↑ see Sá, p. 271, 17th line vu
47. ↑ For more information, see the English article on personal names , first paragraph and sources cited there
48. ↑ see Sá, p. 265, 9th Zvu
49. ↑ Edition used, pp. 185, 13 Zvo, see also Paul Marcoy: Travels in South America .
50. ↑ see Sá, p. 271, middle
51. ↑ A CITY. A book. echo event ges.mbh, accessed on September 18, 2018.