Ghosts (Aira)

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Ghosts ( Spanish original title: Los fantasmas ) is a novel by the Argentine author César Aira . The original was published in 1990, the German translation by Klaus Laabs in 2010 by Ullstein .

content

The family of the Chilean caretaker Raúl Viñas would like to celebrate New Year's Eve in the six-storey shell of an apartment building in Buenos Aires . On the morning of that day, the future (Argentinian) residents first visit the construction site, are also presented individually, but no longer play a role in the further course of the action. The following describes how the extended Viñas family is preparing the New Year's Eve festival, which will take place on the top floor, “thirty meters above the street level” and will begin the evening after the relatives arrive. On December 31st it is summer in the southern hemisphere and the unbearable heat is mentioned several times.

The focus of the novel is little Patri (referred to as La Patri in the Spanish original ). Patri's father is not Raúl Viñas, but "the best man in the world", with whom Patri's mother Elisa Viñas had a brief relationship without revealing his identity to anyone.

During the entire course of the text, family members observe ghosts floating around the house , but this seems normal. Nobody cares about them. Over dinner, they tell each other some entertaining ghost anecdotes. Patri's contribution is the mention of an alleged tale by Oscar Wilde , in which a bored princess of ghosts lets herself be invited to a party and for this purpose “falls from the highest tower of the castle that same night to die and at the To be able to take part ”. This story is apparently a paraphrase of the Oscar Wilde tale “ The Infanta’s Birthday ”, in which, however, not a ghost, but a dwarf appears to amuse the princess.

With this story, Patri alludes to an invitation that was given to her by the ghosts buzzing around the house. The ghosts, which all seem to be male, invite Patri to their end-of-year celebration, the "Gran Reveillon [...], the great and festive midnight supper". However, there is one condition:

"You will of course have to be dead," said one of them. "(Originally:" Claro que tendrás que estar muerta, dijo uno de ellos. ")

In addition to the sexual sub-text, the constant and almost exclusively bizarre speeches about national stereotypes (“ the Argentines are”, “ the Chileans are” etc.) is merged with the ghost motif. This is how Elisa Vicuña says to her daughter Patri:

“Remember that there are always ghosts for us women. Subtract or add a Chilean from an Argentine, or vice versa. Do what you want from me. The result will always be the same: a ghost. "(In the original:" Piensa que para nosotras siempre hay fantasmas. Resta un chileno de un argentino, o vice-versa. O súmalos. Haz lo que quieras, de acuerdo. El resultado será el mismo: un fantasma. ")

style

Typical of Aira are the essayistic and stylistic deviations that its narrator takes. There is a multi-page, adventurous treatise on the relationship between different cultures and architecture. In addition, there are often bracketed comments by the narrator, which underline his carefree joviality:

"His uncle and another construction worker, an Argentinian named Aníbal Fuentes, but sometimes also called Aníbal Soto (sometimes like this, sometimes like that, actually strange), [...]" (in the original: "Su tío y otro albañil , un argentino llamado Aníbal Fuentes, o Aníbal Soto (se llamaba de las dos maneras, cosa rara), [...] ")

criticism

On September 15, 2010, Spiegel Online named “Ghosts” one of the “most important books of the week”.

The English translation by Chris Andrews, published by New Directions in 2009, was shortlisted for the 2010 Best Translated Book Award.

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Baron: The most important books of the week. In: Spiegel Online, September 15, 2010.