The deep rivers

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The deep rivers ( Spanish Los ríos profundos ) is a novel by José María Arguedas , which was published in 1958 by Losada Publishing in Buenos Aires . The work has autobiographical traits. The author attended a colegio as a boarding school student in Abancay , the location of the action, from 1924 to 1925 .

content

The old

The father of the 14-year-old narrator Ernesto rides from customer to customer through Peru as a lawyer . Actually, the beloved father's ride is an escape from his enemies. On the way to Abancay, father and son visit the wealthy relative Don Manuel Jesús in his residence in Cuzco . Ernesto's uncle Manuel owns four haciendas - among others in Huayhuay, Parhuasi and Sijllabamba. Hundreds of colonos toil there. The stingy uncle punishes the two relatives with contempt by assigning them a shabby room to spend the night in his house. The two disappointed travelers soon take the route across the Pampas of Anta, reach the Cordillera and look down into the Apurímac Valley. In the Indian language Quechua , Apurímac means "the God who speaks".

The travels

The way to Abancay leads through remote villages. One of them is the "most humble provincial capital" Huancapi. Nobody from the upper class - whether priests, judges, teachers or other officials - is an Indian there.

The good bye

When Ernesto is registered by his father in the Colegio in Abancay and has to spend the night there in the boarding school of this Catholic boys' school, he realizes that his father will move on. The father wants to ride to Chalhuanca. Ernesto is soon alone "in a world full of monsters ... full of great rivers that sing with a wonderful voice when they hit the stones and islands."

The hacienda

Ernesto cannot keep the subject matter. He carries on with thoughts of escape. During the night he wants to cross the Pachachaca and go to Chalhuanca. The rector, Father Linares, is doing his best with Ernesto and the rest of the internal staff. The pious man, says Ernesto, knows what he wants. He praises the large landowners as the "foundation of the fatherland" and exhorts the Indians on the haciendas to endure the compulsion to humble work.

Bridge over the world

The crowd of students is recruited from a wide variety of walks of life. While the cunning Añuco is the illegitimate son of a landowner, the modest little Palacios comes from an Indian Andean village. The origin of Lleras - that is the great, strong protector Añucos - is uncertain. Both friends brag that they hiked "up to the first snowfields of the Ampay" on Sundays. Wanderlust is contagious. Ernesto wants to get rid of the compulsory boarding school with hours of marching to the banks of the Pachachaca. The river water "is like liquid, blue steel, smiling, ... solemn and deep ... unstoppable and eternal."

Zumbayllu

A friendship is emerging. Antero Samanez gives Ernesto a self-made top. Antero, the son of a landowner from the Apurímac Valley, is two school grades ahead of Ernesto. Because of its red hair, Antero is also called Candela - fire - and because of its moles Markask'a - the marked one. Early in the morning, before the bell rings to get up, when Ernesto lets his top dance in the schoolyard, the boy feels as if the hum of the insects from the blossoming trees can be heard from his four large eyes.

The riot

Led by Doña Felipa, the maize beer sellers from Abancay forcibly enter the city's salt administration, steal sacks of salt and give salt to the colonos of Patibamba. Ernesto joins the rebellious mestizo women - mostly waitresses and landladies. The first-person narrator won't let Antero drag him out of the crowd. The friend marches along without fear and without fear. Other schoolmates pinch. Gendarmes - the guards of the salt administration - shoot in the air. The angry women seize the guns. In vain does the Father Rector confront the indignant salt thieves. Women fight against an injustice. The salt is fed to the cows in the haciendas. Mounted bailiffs from the hacienda penetrate the huts of the Indians and take away the salt from the recipients.

The deep gorge

When Ernesto returned to the Colegio, he was beaten with a small braided whip by the Father Rector. That is the principal's sacred duty. Ernesto confesses. For this he receives a Latin prayer, a tolerable slap in the face and a ban on going out every Sunday.

Antero instructs Ernesto about the magical properties of the top. A dialogue with the toy is possible via the spinning eye. Once the top has grasped it, it carries the owner's message elsewhere, for example to Ernesto's father.

During a ball game on the grounds of the Colegios, the brother Miguel, an Afro-Peruvian, as the acting referee had proven the student Lleras to have committed a foul. Lleras did not want to accept the humiliation and called the referee a "dirty negro". Brother Miguel had punished the insult with a bloody punch in the face. The impartial Father Rector mediates. Both opponents must withdraw to their accommodation. The Rector's subsequent request to ask his brother's forgiveness, Lleras does not comply, but fled the Colegio, never to be seen again. Añuco apologizes for the friend. Brother Miguel forgives. Ernest gives Añuco the magic top.

The stone bridge

Troops are advancing from outside. The encouraged gendarmes get their rifles back. Only Doña Felipa, armed with two rifles, is on the run. The maize beer sellers in Abancay have to lift their skirts and are flogged by the military. The delinquents do not wear underpants. The husbands of the mestizo women have to watch, are imprisoned for a few days and have to take part in the cleaning of the city after their release. The story of the fleeting Doña Felipa is never told to the end. The gunman is being followed by a Guardia Civil patrol . A soldier suspects the rebel will be shot.

After an argument between Ernesto and Antero about the punishment of the indigenous serfs on the white haciendas, the friendship between the two boys breaks up. The future large landowner Antero thinks that the colonos should be flogged every now and then. Antero makes friends with young Gerardo - the son of the commander of the troops that have moved into Abancay.

Yawar mayu

With Jesús Warank'a Gabriel and the master Oblitas, Ernesto meets two free Indians in Abancay who are not tied to a hacienda. The boy is talking to the traveling musicians about his hometown Chaupi near Huayrala. After performing a daring song publicly, Master Oblitas is imprisoned. Ernest asks about the master in prison. The boy achieved nothing with the policeman on duty.

The colonos

Antero puts Gerardo in the picture via Ernesto. The little one is a mad stranger.

A feverish, deadly epidemic - Ernesto suspects the plague or typhoid - is rampant in Abancay. After the feeble-minded Marcelina, a kitchen maid in the Colegio, succumbed to the disease, Ernesto folds his hands on the dead man's chest. The Father Rector then isolates the boy and locks him in the vacated cell of brother Miguel. After the incident with Lleras, some relatives of the students had enforced that the Afro-Peruvian had to leave the Colegio and the city. The Indian Palacios is picked up by his father in view of the epidemic. Before the classmate leaves, he says goodbye to Ernesto and pushes him two coins through the gap under the cell door. The gold pieces are intended as an aid to Ernesto's funeral. The prisoner has no fever at all. Ernesto wants to go to his father. The Father Rector telegraphs and receives the answer that Ernesto should get through to his uncle Manuel. It turns out that Ernesto is the last student in the Colegio. Marcelina has long been buried. Ernesto will most likely not be able to find her grave among the numerous dead from the epidemic. As a farewell, the boy hangs a bouquet of flowers on the door of Marcelina's room in which he died and sets off.

Colonos crowd into town from the surrounding haciendas.

Form and interpretation

Several poetic text passages make you sit up and take notice. There is the story of the magical top and the recurring hymn of praise for the deep rivers, whose deadly force can only escape the experienced swimmer with a little luck and skill. When Ernesto is taken from Antero to Condebamba, the larks are singing on the mulberry trees. The first-person narrator admits: "... her singing was what I was made of ..." In general, there is music and singing - also present in the back of the text through the harpist Meister Oblitas from a village in Curahuasi and the singer Jesús Warank ' a Gabriel - two constituents of the novel.

The text is cleverly constructed. For example, at the beginning Ernesto talks about the visit to his stingy uncle in Cuzco, and at the end of the novel, Father Rector sends the boy to that uncle again. The reader expects to meet again, but the novel breaks off first. Readers' expectations are also disappointed in many other ways. Ernesto's friendship with Antero falls apart.

Arguedas is not naked in terms of narrative. When the persecution of the fugitive Doña Felipa is mentioned, the reader thinks that the young first-person narrator is suddenly omniscient. Nothing - a few pages down, Ernesto portrays the allegations as people's gossip.

With all the refinement mentioned above, the first-person narrator appears as a naive child. For example, Ernesto does not really know how to interpret a process on the riverbank in which two young girls from Abancay were "dishonored" by two officers. And when the troops leave, the narrator does not understand why pretty young girls cry for officers. Almost throughout the entire novel, pubescent, mostly older classmates rape the feeble kitchen maid Marcelina near the latrines inside the Colegio. Ernesto describes the nocturnal events as disgusting orgies of violence, but the reader has to figure it out for himself.

Argueda's novel also conveys aspects of the Andean Quechua tradition. The legend of the legend of the Condenado - in the German translation Damned -, the damned soul of a person who has committed a terrible crime, a mortal sin , is taken up several times . The Catholic priest condemns the rebellious chicheras (maize beer sellers ) who stole sacks of salt and distributed them to the peons of Patibamba: “Theft brings a curse on the soul; Whoever steals or receives stolen goods is guilty, he is a damned one who finds no rest, who carries chains with him, who falls down from the snowy peaks into the abyss, who climbs like a cursed donkey from the ravines to the mountains ". Elsewhere, the Palacito from the heights of the Andes tells of the Condenados : “The damned find no rest. [...] They don't even find someone to burn them. [...] The damned burn like pigs, they roar, they shout for help, trembling and trembling. [...] But how many damned must suffer their punishment forever! "

reception

  • Rincón cannot agree with the term “Indian development novel” of some of his fellow critics, but favors the collective hero people as the protagonist.
  • Gerhards thinks that Arguedas drew a positive caricature of the Indian - if only because the first-person narrator is a figure on the edge of the Indian world. The text draws its depth from Ernesto's “presumptuous and remembering brooding”.

literature

Used edition

  • The deep rivers. Novel. Translated from the Spanish by Susanne Heintz. With an afterword by Carlos Rincón. Explanations of words at the end of the volume. Volk und Welt publishing house, Berlin 1972 (Licensor: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1972). 375 pages, linen, without ISBN

Secondary literature

  • Ernst Gerhards: The image of the Indian in Peruvian literature. Myth and mystification of the Indian world with José María Arguedas. Diss. FU Berlin (FB Newer Foreign Language Philologies) on February 2, 1972, Universitätsdruckerei FU Berlin, Berlin, Kelchstrasse 41, 272 pages, paperback, without ISBN

Remarks

  1. ↑ Comuneros are free Indians who own land and live in villages. Colonos are practically serf Indians who live on a hacienda. (Edition used, p. 374, 9th and 10th entry)
  2. ↑ Zumbayllu: Roundabout. (Edition used, p. 376, 1st entry vu)
  3. ↑ Yawar mayu: Bloody River. (Edition used, p. 376, 2nd entry vu)
  4. ↑ On the presumed location of Ernesto's home village Chaupi: In the Bolivian border area a mountain Chaupi Orco of the 6000 category rises .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhards, p. 249, 2nd entry
  2. ↑ Gerhards, p. 162, 10th Zvu
  3. ^ Spanish Colegio
  4. ↑ Gerhards, p. 104, 19. Zvo
  5. ↑ Spanish San Cristóbal (campamento minero)
  6. ↑ eng. Anta Province
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 33
  8. ↑ Spanish Huancapi
  9. ↑ eng. Chalhuanca
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 57, 4th Zvu
  11. ↑ eng. Pachachaca River
  12. ↑ eng. Ampay
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 94, 14th Zvu and p. 96, 3rd Zvu
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 230, 1. Zvo
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 227, 14th Zvu
  16. ^ Spanish Distrito de Curahuasi
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 216, 2nd Zvu
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 290, 11. Zvu and p. 294, 12. Zvo
  19. ↑ Edition used, p. 292, 11. Zvu
  20. ↑ José María Arguedas: The deep rivers (novel). Translation into German by Susanne Heintz. Suhrkamp, ​​1980. p. 133. In the original: El robo es la maldición del alma; el que roba o recibe lo robado en condenado se convierte; en condenado que no encuentra reposo, que arrastra cadenas, cayendo de las cumbres nevadas a los abismos, subiendo como asno maldito de los barrancos a las cordilleras . José María Arguedas: Los ríos profundos . Linkgua digital, 2013. p. 122.
  21. ↑ José María Arguedas: The deep rivers (novel). Translation into German by Susanne Heintz. Suhrkamp, ​​1980. p. 184. In the original: Los condenados no tienen sosiego —nos decía Palacitos en el corredor—. No puedenhabenrar siquiera quien los queme. Porque si alguien, con maña, los acorrala en una tienda o en una cancha de paredes altas, pueden quemarlos, rodeándolos, con fuego de chamizo o con kerosene. Pero hay que ser un santo para acorralar a un condenado. Arden como cerdos, gritando, pidiendo auxilio, tiritando; hasta las piedras, dice, se rajan cuando les atraviesa el gruñido de los condenados que arden. Y si oyen tocar quena en ese instante, así, llameando, bailan triste. Pero al consumirse ya, de sus cenizas una paloma se levanta. ¡Cuántos condenados sufrirán para siempre su castigo! En cuatro patas galopan en las cordilleras, pasan los nevados, entran a las lagunas; bajan también a los valles, pero poco. El Lleras ya estará sintiendo que su piel endurece, que le aumenta la grasa bajo el cuero . José María Arguedas: Los ríos profundos . Linkgua digital, 2013. p. 167.
  22. ↑ Rincón in the afterword of the edition used, p. 370, 14th Zvu
  23. ↑ Gerhards, pp. 161-165