I do not cry

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I'm not crying ( Spanish: Cuando quiero llorar no lloro ) is a novel by the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva , which was published in 1970 by Tiempo Nuevo (Neue Zeit) in Caracas .

overview

On Sunday, November 8, 1948, the midwife Señora Consuelo in Caracas helped three mothers with the birth of their boys. When asked for the desired name of the newborn, one of the three mothers replies: "Victorino, today it's Saint Victorinus ...". The midwife also gave the other two boys the name Victorino. Besides their first names, the three of them have one thing in common - they die a violent death in 1966.

In Venezuela, the protagonists began to democratize in the last years of their lives - to be precise, after 1958, i.e. after the overthrow of dictator Jiménez , with Presidents Betancourt (from 1959) and Leoni (from 1964) .

content

Caracas in the 1960s.

Victorino Perez

Facundo Gutiérrez, the boy's father, a drunkard, occasionally finds work as a truck driver. Whenever he comes home, he slaps his mother, takes away the money she has earned and sleeps the woman. He usually whips his son with his leather belt. The boy began his “career” as a criminal as a motorcyclist who tore the bags from pedestrians. Later one was killed in a supermarket robbery. He has now fled La Planta prison and has been limping after jumping off a roof ever since. He had ambushed and shot the Italian Pietro Lo Monaco, a tailor, because he refused to obey the gangster's orders. The police arrived three days after the crime.

Gang member Victorino Pérez is shot dead by police during the attack on a jeweler. After the robbery was successful, the gang's driver lost his nerve during the escape and caused the police to pursue it. Victorino Pérez had empty the machine gun before his death.

Victorino Peralta

The boy had begged for a Maserati for a good year. Now, on his 18th birthday, his father, engineer Argimiro Peralta Heredia, fulfills his wish. The mother, who encouraged the father to give the birthday present, shares her dream with the boy: Victorino Peralta dies in a car accident. That's why. The boy goes on a trip to the mountains. The Berlin Philharmonic under Karajan Berlioz plays on the car radio . With 160 things, the car starts sliding on a wet curve. Victorino Peralta evades a bus full of children. The Maserati crashes into the abyss.

Victorino Perdomo

The unteachable revolutionary Juan Ramiro Perdomo, the boy's father, is in prison in Ciudad Bolivar on the Orinoco . Meanwhile, the mother keeps the family afloat with an extremely modest primary school teacher salary. The son, a student, has no common denominator with his father, this “communistiosaur”. While the father wants to fight imperialism as a congressman , the son - favoring "revolutionary violence" - has joined the guerrilla fighting force FALN and is killed in an attack on the branch of the Dutch bank in Caracas.

epilogue

The three mothers of the dead in mourning clothes meet after the funeral of their sons on the narrow cemetery avenue and "look at each other blankly ...". The title of the epilogue "I don't cry" - at the same time the title of the novel - is taken from a poem by Rubén Daríos : "Cuando quiero llorar no lloro" - I want to cry, but I don't cry.

Film adaptations

In spanish language:

  • 1973 Venezuela: Cuando quiero llorar no lloro - feature film by Mauricio Walerstein with Orlando Urdaneta as Victorino Perdomo, Pedro Laya as Victorino Pérez and Valentin Trujillo as Victorino Peralta.
  • 1991 (remakes 2009 and 2011), USA , Colombia : Victorinos - TV series by Ramiro Meneses.

reception

  • April 1975, Alfred Antkowiak turns the focus of his reflections on the last of the three stories. The illustrated failed struggle of the Venezuelan communists against the upper middle class ruling there at the time is the Venezuelan variant of the Colombian Violencia .

Text output

Used edition
  • I do not cry. Novel. Translated from the Spanish by Roland Erb . With an afterword by Alfred Antkowiak. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1975 (1st edition), 240 pages, without ISBN

Remarks

  1. ↑ Because Otero Silva brings up the persecution of Christians under Diocletian in the prologue of his novel in connection with a certain Victorinus, Saint Victorinus von Pettau could be meant.
  2. ↑ The FALN (Spanish Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional , Armed Forces of National Liberation) was a fighting force of the Partido Comunista de Venezuela against the democratically elected governments Betancourt and Leoni in the 1960s .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 46, 16. Zvo
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 230, 4th Zvu
  3. ^ Spanish Mauricio Walerstein
  4. ↑ Spanish Orlando Urdaneta
  5. ↑ eng. Valentin Trujillo
  6. ^ Film 1973 in the IMDb
  7. ↑ eng. Victorinos
  8. ↑ Spanish Ramiro Meneses
  9. ^ Films from 1991 in the IMDb
  10. ↑ Antkowiak in the edition used, pp. 227–239