Pedro Páramo

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Pedro Páramo is the only novel by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo . It was published in 1955 and has since been considered a groundbreaking work in Latin American literature, as it had a major influence on magical realism .

In 1958 the novel was translated into German by Mariana Frenk-Westheim . In 2008 a new translation by Dagmar Ploetz was published . It has been made into films several times, with the script for two films written by Gabriel García Márquez .

novel

The two-part storyline is relatively autobiographical. The author witnessed the death of his parents and other family members in childhood during the Mexican Revolution . These experiences can be found in "Pedro Páramo". According to Ursula Link-Heer, however, the novel can not only be read autobiographically, but in two different ways:

  1. the story of a son, Juan Preciado, in search of his father, Pedro Páramo;
  2. as the story of the father and that means as the story of the rise and fall of a “cacique” .

action

Juan receives the order from his dying mother, Dolores Preciado, to find the father and to claim his inheritance. So the son makes his way to Comala, the place of the action. But he finds the place described by his mother as blooming and the paternal hacienda Medialuna devastated and depopulated. His time in Comala was marked by numerous confusing elements and encounters. So he hears and sees people who are actually dead, and finally his journey also ends with death, but afterwards he talks “to the beggar Dorotea lying next to him in the grave about the alleged cause of his death and listens to the audible voices of other dead people " . He has become a ghost in the ghost town of Comala.

In the second part, Pedro Páramo's childhood is described and he himself is portrayed as a useless dreamer. After the murder of his father and the threat of expropriation, he marries the daughter of the main believer, Dolores Preciado, and subsequently develops into the ruthless and violent ruler of the land and people of Comala. During the civil war he came to terms with various groups that he used for his own benefit. When his childhood sweetheart, Susana, returns to his life mentally confused, he takes her in. However, Susana lives in her own world and in the memory of her first husband. For him it remains remote and inaccessible. On the day of their death, instead of mourning, the people of Comala celebrate a folk festival. Pedro Páramo silently swears to take revenge and puts his hands on his lap. From that day Comala begins to go under. Eventually he is murdered by a man who blames him for his wife's death. Pedro Páramo breaks up into stone spheres, whereby his name is to be taken literally: "(Pedro [piedra]: stone, rock; [páramo]: desolation, stone desert)" .

structure

The structure of the novel is like a mosaic. Non-chronological episodes from the lives of the two protagonists follow one another, seemingly at random, while some topics are reproduced in blocks. Mixing the two storylines creates a complex constellation. In addition, there are fragments of an impersonal narrator of mysterious origin and memories of other people, which are marked in italics. Link-Heer names a three-way perspective of paradise, inferno (hell) and purgatory (purgatory). Associations with the Odyssey are also awakened, but in the sense of a reversal: Juan Preciado as the failed son of the hero Telemachus.
In addition, there is the description of many inexplicable phenomena and elements that made the successful novel the model of the nueva novela . Even before Gabriel García Márquez ' Macondo in A Hundred Years of Solitude , Comala became a place of magical realism.

Most of the names that Rulfo gives his characters have a meaning, namely Dolores Pain , Preciado valuable , Pedro Stein , Páramo Öde and Abundio the lost .

Adaptations

The novel has been the subject of film adaptations several times:

  • Pedro Páramo (1967) (with John Gavin in the male lead)
  • Pedro Páramo (1978)
  • Pedro Páramo (1981)

Quotes related to the novel

literature

  • Juan Rulfo, Mariana Frenk: Pedro Paramo . Suhrkamp, ​​2003, 2nd edition, ISBN 3-518-45553-2

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Link-Heer, Ursula: ”Juan Rulfo:« Pedro Páramo »”; in Volker Roloff and Harald Wentzlaff-Eggebert (eds.): The Hispanoamerican novel: From the beginnings to Carpentier. Vol. 1, Darmstadt, Wiss. Buchgesellschaft 1992, pp. 266-278.
  2. ↑ Link-Heer, Ursula: ”Juan Rulfo:« Pedro Páramo »”
  3. ↑ Pedro Páramo (1967) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  4. ↑ Pedro Páramo (1978) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  5. ↑ Pedro Páramo (1981) in the Internet Movie Database (English)