The war at the end of the world

The war at the end of the world ( Spanish La guerra del fin del mundo ) is a novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa from 1981. The author dedicated his work to the Brazilian publicist Euclides da Cunha . Vargas Llosa used his book "War in Sertão" ( Portuguese Os Sertões ) from 1902 on the War of Canudos as a template for the novel.

action

background

After the fall of Emperor Pedro II in 1889 and the establishment of the republic, reforms such as the separation of church and state , the introduction of civil marriage and the establishment of state cemeteries took place in Brazil . A census is carried out and the decimal system is introduced. Against these innovations, there are religious uprising movements like that of the so-called “adviser”.

At the end of the 19th century, the religious fanatic Antônio der Ratgeber roamed the Sertões as a Christian itinerant preacher and settled in Canudos in northeastern Brazil in 1893 . In an occupied fazenda , the saint and his jagunços (militias) resisted the young Brazilian republic, which he insulted as the servant of the Antichrist, until 1897 .

The messianic Sebastianites wait for an apparition in Belo Monte, as they renamed Canudos. King Dom Sebastião is said to rise from the bottom of the sea and fight alongside the righteous in Belo Monte. Mainly the poorest of the poor reach the fazenda from all directions. Whoever wants to be accepted into the community must first speak out against the republic and for the unity of church and state.

In vain is the government of the Republic of Brazil sending troop contingent upon troop contingent against the adviser. The prophet's supporters, who call themselves “Catholics” and their republican opponents “Protestants”, are only successfully driven from their base in Canudos on the fourth attempt.

Meanwhile, Epaminondas Gonçalvez, director of the newspaper Jornal de Notícias and a leader of the Progressive Republican Party in the region, is fighting the supporters of the monarchy from Bahia by all means. In order to discredit his conservative opponents in the regional parliament, he uses a Scottish revolutionary and phrenologist who has gone into hiding in Brazil under the false name Galileo Gall. Gonçalvez sends the Scotsman to Canudos with English rifles and has him murdered on the way. It is supposed to appear that the British crown is providing firearms to the Brazilian royalists. Gonçalvez wants to stir up nationalist anger against the English.

Novel plot

Vargas Llosa describes the advisor as a tall, thin figure with a burning look. The saint, as the counselor is sometimes called in the novel, wears a purple robe and sandals. The pilgrim prophet and his apostles Pajeú, Pedrão, João Abade alias João Satanás, the Beatinho and Maria Quadrado occupy the Fazenda of the Baron de Canabrava in the village of Canudos on the Vaza Barris river. Pedrão and the noseless Pajeú were bandits. 30-year-old João Satanás was an extremely brutal police killer. In front of the adviser, this mystic, even a previously independent businessman from Canudos becomes weak: Antônio Vilanova falls on his knees in front of the saint and is allowed to kiss his fingers. Antônio Beatinho, the son of a shoemaker, has been following the advisor closely since he was fourteen. Among other things, he organizes processions in Canudos. Except for the Beatinho, almost all of the Counselor's apostles were sinners. The priestess Maria Quadrado, for example, had previously suffocated her newborn as a young woman.

One of the converts from the counselor was the “negro” João Grande. As a slave, he had killed his mistress with hair-raising brutality and then continued to sin as a cangaceiro . In Canudos he rises to the head of the "Catholic Guards". This is the counselor's bodyguard.

As early as 1892, the republic had sent thirty Bahian police against the rebels because tax exemptions had been burned in Natuba. The police force in Masseté had been viciously beaten. Four policemen were killed. The pilgrims had died five times.

The advisor, a deeply religious, ascetic man, had met Maria Quadrado, then 20, in Monte Santo. The people had taken the prematurely aged young woman for a saint when she came from Bahia, dragging a heavy wooden cross. The guard dogs hadn't struck when she entered one of the yards. In front of her dwelling, a low grotto, the counselor had had endless spiritual conversations with Maria Quadrado, before she left with him, to the amazement of the inhabitants of Santo Monte, never to return.

The republic sends 80 Bahian police officers against the counselor and his disciples. The police officers are defeated in the same way as a company of infantry. Viana, the governor of Bahia, sends a punitive expedition under Major Febrônio de Brito. The major commands 543 uniformed men and wields machine guns and cannons into the field. The robber gangs under João Abade surprise and beat the uniformed men towards the end of 1896. On the one hand, the cangaceiros fight with unsurpassable human contempt. On the other hand, the surviving uniformed men are allowed to escape. Only those who have fallen are buried. A pastor is required for this. The clairvoyant Alexandrinha Corrêa is sent from Canudos to Cumbe. From there she fetches her former partner, Father Joaquim, whom she left behind with three children in the community. The parish priest of Cumbe is a sympathizer of the counselor.

Gonçalvez, who monarchists call a Jacobin, sends the Scots Gall to Queimadas to see Rufino, who is looking for a job. This local companion on the weapons transport to Canudos is cleverly chosen. Rufino and his wife Jurema used to be something like serfs of Baron de Canabrava and had worked on his Fazenda Calumbí. The baron, founder of the regional monarchist party, is the newspaper director's worst enemy. Murderer, sent by Gonçalvez to the house of the tracker, the Scot can put out of action. In the face of death, Gall forgets all noble resolutions and rapes Jurema. He had been sexually abstinent for ten years. The idealist had strictly focused all his powers day and night on the realization of anarchist goals. Fearing Rufino's revenge, Jurema now accompanies the red-haired Scotsman. Gall suspects that he will die at the hand of the tracker. Before doing this, he would like to follow his anarchist ideal. So he strives - blinded - towards Canudos. First of all, nobody can stop him on his way there; not even the mighty de Canabrava. The baron himself does not know why he is letting the anarchist go and also giving him a local expert on the dangerous journey. The Baron had a trump card against his opponent Gonçalvez in the form of the Scotsman. De Canabrava later explains the reason for his initially incomprehensible decision. The baron seeks a compromise with the Republicans. Rufino, who has taken the scent of the rival, of course doesn't understand his former master either.

In 1897 Brazil's 1200 strong Seventh Infantry Regiment under Antônio Moreira César, a small, almost rachitic but very agile colonel, advanced. This former supporter of the late President Peixoto wasted no bullet on civilians on his way into the Caatinga . What is meant are those renegades who, despite a written request, hand in neither weapons nor ammunition. The throats of those who betray the Republic are cut.

The newspaper man Gonçalvez generously allowed the nearsighted journalist to accompany the punitive expedition. Because of an epileptic seizure, the republican colonel has to interrupt the advance and rest in the Fazenda Calumbí - that is, in the property of a monarchist enemy. Baron de Canabrava is at home. The encounter between the two mortal enemies went smoothly. The Seventh Regiment marches on against the enemy in forced marches.

The Sebastianites want to make the supply of the soldiers more difficult. Pajeú marks the polite citizen. He visits the baron in Calumbí and after a short time burns down his fazenda. As a result, Baroness Estela, the baron's wife, goes mad. The aristocratic couple is forced to retreat to their Bahian city apartment via Queimadas.

When the colonel stands in front of Canudos, the faithful on the other side would like to send their adviser to a safe shelter. In vain, the prophet wants to go to the defenders in the trenches.

Meanwhile, Rufino, who is marching inexorably, can place the Scots at the side of Jurema and a dispersed circus dwarf shortly before Canudos. All that remains for the tracker is a knife. The duel ends in a draw. Both opponents tear themselves apart and die. Reluctantly, Jurema allows one of the soldiers to rape her because she wants to survive. The molester is brutally killed by Jagunços. Pajeú brings Jurema to Canudos with the dwarf.

When during an attack it looks as if the attack of the soldiers in the alleys of Canudos is stalling, the colonel wants to encourage the attackers, leaves the protective command post and falls immediately. The soldiers flee. The winners put Colonel Moreira César's head on a branch. The Sebastianites leave the corpses of their enemies to the vultures. They need a week to bury their own dead.

Five thousand men under General Artur Oscar encircle the rebels. Only seven trapped people manage to escape. One of them is the short-sighted journalist. This met the dwarf in Canudos. The wretch had led him to Jurema. Jurema gave the dwarf his first kiss in life. Pajeú had proposed marriage to Jurema. The woman had refused, but granted him a longing wish. Jurema had carried Pajeú's food into the trench. Father Joaquim had stayed with those trapped and reproached the short-sighted journalist who wanted to leave the cauldron. Although the visually impaired man came in Colonel César's entourage, he was given shelter, had been fed and was still alive.

The counselor had instructed the merchant Antônio Vilanova to leave Canudos with his family and the three strangers. Then the saint had blessed the temporal. In the face of death, the short-sighted journalist and Jurema had mated in their shabby quarters. The copulators had happily tolerated the dwarf's close proximity. Pajeú, meanwhile, had fallen outside fighting for Canudos. His body had been desecrated by the besiegers. The Beatinho had achieved that children, the elderly and pregnant women were allowed to surrender. The prisoners had been killed by the besiegers. Father Joaquim had been shot at the barricade.

De Canabrava leaves power to Gonçalvez. After all, the baron lost two fazendas in the course of the armed conflict and sorely missed the years of being together with his always loved, formerly intelligent wife. What has long been wanted is defied in such a mood of doom. Amazed, the baron raped her maid Sebastiana in the presence and with the tolerance of Baroness Estela .

Quotes

• "Politics is a trade for rags."
• "You can't wage two wars at once."

Testimonials

• "For me it's an adventure novel."
• "I ... began to accept the idea of ​​democracy," writes Vargas Llosa about the time he read Euclides da Cunha and wrote the novel on it.

Form and interpretation

The novel, divided into four books, appears confusing. A variety of characters, a pronounced abundance of material and a myriad of chronologically competing storylines impose this view. Scheerer also calls da Cunha's source a "heterogeneous" model. At second glance, based on just two protagonists, the common thread can be picked up. The two characters refer to the nameless myopic journalist and Jurema. Through these two, the reader who is looking for meaning arrives at further characters. The journalist was sent by Gonçalvez, stayed near Moreira César, experienced the fourth punitive expedition of the republicans to the Sebastianites in Canudas and went to Canabrava afterwards in Bahia. The short-sighted journalist also leads the way to significant formal elements. Vargas Llosa has smoothly broken up the constant flow of time in his thick work. For example, Moreira César's fatal wound during the third punitive expedition is presented from the point of view of both the attacker and the defender. Because it is the defender's turn much later to shoot Pajeús fatally at the colonel advancing on horseback, the reader first has to recognize the familiar event during the second lecture. Another striking treatment of chronology is inherent in the journalist's conversation with Canabrava. The journalist looks back and Vargas Llosa picks up the thread - goes in medias res; tells of the fourth punitive expedition. It appears that the short-sighted journalist is telling a story. Appearances are deceptive, because the narrative passage speaks of the short-sighted journalist, among other things.

Finally, from Jurema the path leads to her husband Rufino, his adversary Gall and the later flashed off lover Pajeú. Tension is maintained over the question: How will Jurema continue? The trio Jurema, short-sighted journalist and circus dwarf is also a source of poetic images. All three are cooped up in a warehouse of captured weapons, want to leave Canudos, but are prevented from returning to the outside world by the besiegers. Jurema sometimes pretends to be their children, both disturbed, frightened men.

Atrocities of war are announced in abundance in a memorable way. What is always shockingly repulsive in these war paintings is not for the faint-hearted reader. But sometimes a fable is even offered to accompany the cold horror, such as the story of Lieutenant Pires Ferreira, who took part in all four expeditions and was horribly mutilated in the last. However, the two intended passages are a hundred pages apart. This distance between related sections of text, which ultimately causes the above-mentioned attribute “confusing”, is common practice in the “war at the end of the world”. For example, the police officer Ensign Geraldo Macedo chases the bandit João Satanás at the beginning of the novel, disappears into oblivion and inquires, reappearing six hundred pages later as Colonel Geraldo Macedo, insistently how this João Satanás perished as the military chief of Canudos.

The narrator hands over the pen to the Scotsman Gall a few times - only briefly. This anarchist writer can be identified from the addresses given to fellow Europeans.

Occasionally the tense is changed.

reception

• According to Scheerer, the processing of a literary model - such as that of Euclides da Cunha by Vargas Llosa - is a very common procedure in analogous cases, for example in prominent French literary circles. Historical processes would be faithfully mapped chronologically. The narrators can be arranged hierarchically. On the lowest step is the dwarf from that lost traveling circus who told the audience about Princess Magelone . The lion of Natuba, a shaggy-haired boy who walks on all fours, follows. This writer is allowed to linger near the counselor because every word must be handed down to posterity. In his letters to European anarchists, the Scotsman Gall refers to Western, remote thinking. Without the short-sighted journalist, who is mostly at the focal points of the action, the novel might be a mere report. Vargas Llosa had his model Euclides da Cunha in mind with the helpless clerk without glasses. The journalist is standing on the top rung of the ladder just sketched out, because although he pats half-blind through the Caatinga, he can look behind the scenes. A physical or, in the case of the Scotsman, a psychological defect - a synonym for imperfection, but a necessity for all writing and storytelling - is obvious to each of the narrators mentioned.
• The counselor stands - distorted and exaggerated - for Christianity, which has brought suffering to Latin America . Vargas Llosa does not propose a political solution. He just put his finger on the wound. Not all figures are historically guaranteed. The Scot Gall and the tracker Rufino were invented. Da Cunha took part in the last of the four punitive expeditions as war correspondent . In his novel, Vargas Llosa went beyond da Cunha's report in the sense that a large space in the battle paintings was given to the other side - the counselor and his apostles. In addition, the novel naturally emphasizes the emotional.

literature

Used edition

• The war at the end of the world. Novel. Translated from the Spanish by Anneliese Botond. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1984. 741 pages (Licensor: Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981), 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

Remarks

1. ↑ Canudos lies in the midst of bare mountains and is named after the short pipes that the residents once smoked (edition used, p. 70 above).
2. ↑ The Scottish anarchist, who calls himself Galileo Gall, describes "Jagunço" as "insurgent" in his letters to friends (edition used, p. 67, 6th Zvu).
3. ↑ “Protestant” could perhaps have been used by the Sebastianites as a disparagement of the republicans, because they also call themselves Catholics (edition used, p. 591, 16th Zvu). In general, the impression arises that both parties do not give each other very appropriate names. For example, the Sebastianites repeatedly call the Republicans “ Freemasons ”, “wicked”, “heretics” or “dogs”.
4. ↑ Vargas Llosa writes “Salvador de Bahia de Todos os Santos (Bahia or Salvador for short)” (edition used, p. 44, 3rd Zvu).
5. ↑ Before 1974, Vargas Llosa stayed several times for longer periods in Paris.
6. ↑ The output used is not free from printing errors (see for example output used, p. 395, 11. Zvo).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Edition used, p. 16, 8. Zvo
2. ↑ port. Pajeú
3. ^ Johann the Abbot (Scheerer, p. 115, 7th issue); port. João Abade
4. ↑ eng. Vaza Barris
5. ↑ Port. Natuba
6. ↑ eng. Masseté
7. ↑ Port. Monte Santo
8. ^ Port. Luís Viana
9. ^ Port. Antônio Moreira César
10. ↑ eng. Arthur Oscar de Andrade Guimarães
11. ↑ Edition used, p. 248, 2nd Zvu
12. ↑ Edition used, p. 371, 11. Zvo
13. ↑ Vargas Llosa cited in Scheerer, p. 114, 7th Zvu
14. ↑ Vargas Llosa cited in Scheerer, p. 123, 16. Zvu
15. ↑ Scheerer, p. 114, 11. Zvo
16. ↑ Edition used, p. 550, 10. Zvo
17. ↑ Edition used, p. 550, 14th Zvu
18. ↑ Edition used, p. 486 below - p. 493
19. ↑ Edition used, p. 590, 15. Zvo - p. 593
20. ↑ see for example the edition used, p. 312, 6th Zvu
21. ↑ Scheerer, pp. 112-118
22. ↑ see also Lentzen, p. 105, 1. Zvu
23. ↑ Lentzen, p. 93, 4th Zvu
24. ↑ Lentzen, p. 95, 6. Zvo
25. ↑ Lentzen, p. 104, 14. Zvo
26. ↑ Lentzen, p. 110, 7. Zvo
27. ↑ Lentzen, p. 109, 7. Zvo
28. ↑ Lentzen, p. 110, 13. Zvu