The secret notes of Don Rigoberto
The secret notes of Don Rigoberto ( Spanish Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto ) is a satirical-erotic novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa from 1997. The text is the continuation of the 1988 published little novel "In Praise of the Stepmother ".
content
If the pupil Alfonso had successfully divided his biological father Don Rigoberto and his second wife Doña Lucretia in "Praise of the Stepmother" with cunning and trickery, the boy in the present novel brings the couple, who are still in love, back together with the help of anonymous letters.
After Don Rigoberto had chased his beloved out of the house, things had moved quickly with his secret notes. These phantasies fixed in writing, pretending to be truths for the reader, revolve exclusively around the absent Doña as an object of pleasure. The reader has to doubt some “truths”. If, for example, Don Rigoberto makes his wife a famous academic - a law professor from Virginia - it can hardly be. But it remains a game that is worth reading, because the fact that Doña Lukrezia seduces a lawyer colleague may well be against it. But at the end of the novel, the reader is poured pure wine. He has been lied to for over 400 pages.
Don Rigoberto, a man with money from a good family, who considers himself neither a genius nor an artist, needs such lies to compensate for his tiring day-to-day work as a “bureaucrat”. Because that better reality, as this manager of the insurance company “ La Perricholi ” (the street singer) calls his hair-raising inventions, brings him pleasure and happy hours.
Immediately after their above-mentioned reconciliation, the parents fall from all clouds. Don Rigoberto, who often had to leave his son at home alone - for business reasons - wonders how Lucretia knows so many details about Egon Schiele ? The Austrian painter has been Alfonso's idol since he attended a painting academy in Lima , where the action took place. Lucretia has to confess to Don Rigoberto that little Alfonso has skipped the academy every now and then over the past six months and courted her in her new apartment. Lucretia asks Don Rigoberto to definitely send the boy to a school abroad - as far away as possible. Otherwise she would succumb to the advertisements of the beautiful boy again (see “Praise of the stepmother”). The boy had not slept with her again, but that he slept with her again was, in her opinion, only a matter of time. Don Rigoberto sees himself incapable. Giving the boy away - that is out of the question. The father thinks that the "happy family" must stay together. The head of the family knows exactly - his scheming, intelligent son has it all behind the ears. Alfonso wrote all 20 anonymous letters. Each of the two recipients of his ten letters were of the firm opinion that the distant spouse was the writer. Alfonso had imitated his father's writing and copied passages from his secret notes. Alfonso didn't have to pretend when he heard the stepmother's letters. Lucretia, anything but a lawyer professor from the USA, had not written a single letter to her husband to date.
Quote
- "Hurry makes us equal to the animal."
shape
The satirical novel consists of nine named chapters and an epilogue. A little farce by Vargas Llosa cannot be overlooked: the ridiculous enumeration of the greats of this world takes up a lot of space in the book - especially in Don Rigoberto's writings. In addition to Egon Schiele, the following are mentioned or, in more rare cases, discussed: Gustav Klimt , Arthur Roessler , Balthus , Midas Dekkers , Félix Vallotton , Pergolesi , Nostradamus , Brigitte Bardot , Garcilaso , van Gogh , Gustave Courbet , Goya , Felix Albrecht Harta , Anne Fausto -Sterling , John Money , Robert Redford , Wilhelm Reich , Mahler , Schönberg , Freud , Nero , Haydn , Shakespeare , Pérez Prado , Jorge Luis Borges , André Breton , Valéry , Nat King Cole , Frank Sinatra , Kiki de Montparnasse , Jonas Drentwett , Degas , Cyril Connolly, Francisco Pérez de Antón , St. Augustine , Cardinal Newman , Juan de la Cruz , Jean Guitton , Roger Vailland , Cardinal de Bernis , Giacomo Casanova , Marquis de Sade , Ayn Rand , Francis de Sales , Jonathan Swift , Havelock Ellis , Admiral Nelson , Pope Innocent XI. , Vallejo , Neruda , Seiji Osawa , Morarji Desai , Tarquinius Superbus , Johan Huizinga , Patricia Highsmith , Alfred Hitchcock , Botticelli , Emil Nolde , Tizian , Keats , Andy Warhol , Frida Kahlo , Mercedes Sosa , Oliver Stone , Assurbanipal , Nebuchadnezzar , Napoleon , Odysseus and Toulouse-Lautrec .
literature
Used edition
- The secret notes of Don Rigoberto. Novel. Translated from the Spanish by Elke Wehr. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1997 (st 3005, 1st edition 1999), ISBN 3-518-39505-X