Sleep in the sun

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Cover of an edition of Dormir al sol

Sleep in the sun (original title: Dormir al sol ) is a novel by the Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares . The original edition was published in Spanish in 1973, the German translation was published in 1976. The novel combines the realistic portrayal of petty-bourgeois life in a neighborhood of Buenos Aires with a plot that turns into the fantastic and deals with the question of human identity. At the center of his present-day story is a loving husband's attempt to understand his wife's increasingly unsettling change in personality. Critics have understood the book on the one hand as a socially critical, also politically interpretable parable, but on the other hand also described it as a purely literary creation without a special message. An Argentinian film was released in 2010.

action

The novel is mostly told as a letter from the protagonist Lucio Bordenave to his friend Felix Ramos, and to a small extent as a report from Ramos. Buenos Aires is recognizable as the location of the action through the different names of locations ( Saavedra Park , Plaza Irlanda etc.). The time frame is not set exactly, but most of the action takes place in the last weeks of the year, at Christmas and New Year. Everyday objects and occupations (e.g. television) indicate the present at the time the novel was published (1973).

First part

Lucio "Lucho" Bordenave, a former bank clerk and now an independent watchmaker, loves his wife Diana very much. She is, however, a bit mentally unstable and as a girl was housed in a sanatorium for some time . Her nervousness and “tendency towards general dissatisfaction” do not change anything in Bordenave's devotion, although he sometimes asks himself what he really loves about Diana - whether it is just her particularly beautiful appearance. The couple is childless. When they get to know a professor Standle, the German operator of a dog school, he trustingly urges Bordenave to have his wife, who is “very ill”, be admitted to a clinic for inpatient treatment. He deduces this, among other things, from Diana's indecision, who could not decide on any of the puppies from his dog school - this does not indicate "a person who is in their right mind". Bordenave lets himself be persuaded and Standle announces that he will pick up his wife the next morning and take him to Dr. Wanting to bring Reger Samaniego. After that Bordenave, who has actually only undertaken to "extradite my wife so as not to cut a bad figure in the conversation with the professor", is worried and even forges plans to flee with Diana that same night, which he does not, however does the deed.

When Standle picks up Diana, she willingly goes with them - Bordenave has the impression that Standle had already discussed everything with her. Nevertheless, Bordenave blames himself. He later bought a shepherd dog from Standle, which he would like to give Diana as a present when she returns. This also has the name Diana and immediately charms him. While Bordenave is still contemplating using a lawyer to demand the release of his wife, Dr. Samaniego ordered to the clinic by phone. To his surprise, the latter informed him that she could actually be released as cured. Samaniego asks Bordenave not to miss “habits and idiosyncrasies” that his wife may have lost. She had changed to her advantage and Bordenave now had to suppress his tendency to make her sick again, or to “infect” her again with the disease, which she had partly transmitted to him. Samaniego even suggests that Bordenave could be treated as an inpatient himself.

The Plaza Irlanda

In fact, Bordenave finds his wife very different - gentle and loving, very different from before the treatment. She is also happy about the bitch and gets on well with her. And yet Bordenave begins to miss the former nature of his wife. In addition, there are strange moments in which Diana seems to have forgotten simple facts - she wants to bring a defective watch to the watchmaker, although Bordenave does this job herself, confuses her nephew with a strange boy and seems to no longer master her recipes. She wants to visit Plaza Irlanda repeatedly with Bordenave ; he complies with this request, albeit with a strange feeling, since he cannot understand why Diana has recently become so interested in this place. Ceferina, the Bordenaves' housekeeper, is very suspicious of Diana's change of character and one day searches her belongings in Diana's absence. Bordenave protests against it, but accepts it. Ceferina finds the photograph of a girl around twenty years old, which is inscribed with “Memory of Plaza Irlanda”. Since Bordenave had slept badly, Diana brings him a sleeping pill on her return home. She seems very keen for him to take it. Bordenave only pretends to do so and during the night he watches Diana rummage through his drawers until she has found what she was looking for: the family tree of her family, which she seems to be looking at with great interest.

Nervous and worried, Bordenave looks for Dr. Samaniego to tell him that he "can't find his wife anymore". She has become a different one. Both get excited. When Bordenave announces that, in view of Samaniego's unwillingness to respond to his worries, he wants to speak to his wife himself in order to "tear the truth away" from her, Samaniego anesthetizes him with a syringe and Bordenave wakes up in a room at the hospital. There he is now apparently also to undergo a cure against his will. He begins to write down his story and has it brought to his friend Felix Ramos by a nurse named Paula, whom he likes. With Paula's help, he finally managed to escape from the institution. Dr. Samaniego visits Bordenave at home and asserts that he was not locked up at all; after all, he had not expressed the desire to leave. He was subjected to a "rest and strengthening cure" in the clinic. Diana is now back in the clinic, where he can see her. The pacified Bordenave actually follows Samaniego back to the clinic.

In Samaniego's office, this Bordenave now clarifies the reason for Diana's changed nature. He, Samaniego, developed a rest cure to which he was inspired by his method of promoting sleep. He imagines himself to be a dog "sleeping in the sun, on a raft that drifts slowly along a wide, calm stream". Then he falls asleep. He had therefore come to the conclusion that "there is no better rest cure for humans than immersion in the animal world". It was possible to isolate the human soul and to transplant it into another body. The rest cure for Diana should now consist in planting her soul in a hunting dog for a certain time. When this escaped, Samaniego was at first at a loss, but then found a terminally ill young woman who lived in Plaza Irlanda and was happy to have her soul transplanted into Diana's body in order to survive. So Diana returned to Bordenave from Plaza Irlanda with the soul of the woman. All she knew about him and her family was what Samaniego and his people could figure out and teach her.

Bordenave reacts indignantly to these statements and asks Samaniego to give him back his wife. In fact, according to Samaniego, the bitch has since been found. However, Samaniego only makes one offer to Bordenave, which he does not want to accept: he cannot or does not want to take the soul of the woman in Diana's body from it. However, he could use Diana's soul for another, younger, but terminally mentally ill woman. Bordenave has to choose. The latter does not want to know anything about it and snaps at the doctor: “You are the patient! You are the sick man! ”Again Samaniego immobilizes him with a syringe. Bordenave wakes up again in a room in the sanatorium. The nurse Paula replied evasively when asked whether she would help him with a new attempt to escape. He should hurry up with his report, as she will be moved to another floor tomorrow. Bordenave's thought that it might not be too late to convince Samaniego to put the soul of the girl from Plaza Irlanda "into the body of the others and my wife into the one that belonged to her", ends his report.

Second part

The second part, "by Felix Ramos", only has a few pages. Ramos tells how a dog, after having previously received a "confused, monstrous letter" from Bordenave, brought him further papers signed by Bordenave. This dog, which tried to push down the handle on Ramos' door with its front paws, showed an intelligence that was extraordinary for an animal. Shortly afterwards, the dog was taken away by an employee of the dog school - it had run away. Ramos calls the psychiatric clinic and speaks to the nurse Paula, who asks him if he has received the papers. When he confirms that a dog has brought her, she shouts “Poor puppy! My dear dog! ”. Twenty days later, Bordenave's old housekeeper, Ceferina, appears at Ramos'. She screams excitedly: “The one who came back is not Lucho! The one who came back is not Lucho! ”And collapses dead.

Ramos takes advantage of the wake at Ceferina to see Bordenave. He is so indifferent to him that Ramos seeks "refuge" with a group of friends nearby. The novel ends with Ramos' observation of a young girl with short hair who yells at Diana to leave her house, where she has no business. Bordenave and Standle put the girl on the street. Ramos notices a scar on both the girl's neck and Bordenaves. He decides to "forget for a while" the matter that appears to him confused and threatening.

Biographical background and work context

A short autobiography by Bioy Casares, published in 1976 in the collection of materials on Latin American literature, reveals the author's lifelong relationship to dogs. He gives notes about his dogs as important as, for example, his reading. For 1971 he notes: “Reading: Stories by Paulhan, Voltaire, Le siècle Louis XIV , Le siècle Louis XV , Charles XII de Suède . The bitch Diana comes into the house. ”In 1918 (that is, at the age of about four) he won a“ dog named Gabriel ”in a raffle. “The next day he is no longer in the house. They tell me I have dreamed ”. He mentions another dog, Ayax, who came into the house in 1931 and died in 1942.

In Sleep in the Sun, Bioy Casares refers to his earlier novel The Heroes' Dream . The reference is made by Lucio Bordenave reading a newspaper report that takes up the plot of The Heroes' Dream , but at the same time seems to turn into its opposite. While in The Dream of Heroes the disguised (future) wife of the protagonist saves him from murder during a masked ball, she is now referred to as the protagonist's murderer. According to Matthias Hausmann in a contribution to a collection of essays, a later novel "presents a possible different interpretation of a previous one".

reception

In a review in 1976, when the German translation was published, Peter Jokostra wrote in the Swiss newspaper Die Tat : “Without Kafka's knowledge , the eerie scene would be asleep in the sun , the clinic of Doctor Samaniego, in which the souls of mentally ill people are transplanted into dogs , unthinkable ". Bordenave, who accuses himself in the novel of not loving Diana enough and properly, is "guilty because he has forgotten her soul". That is the real theme of Bioy Casares, "which runs through all of his books with a leitmotif and gives them their depth, their uncanny bottomlessness". Although the novel is fantastic, it achieves its effect with realistic methods. Quoting Bordenave's exclamation “You are the sick person!”, Jokostra comes to the conclusion that the reader should recognize that a society is sick “that allows such practices that make them possible in the first place, and thus destroys the soul of man, life, as it is given to him, not respected ”.

For John C. Murchison of the University of British Columbia , however, there is "no special message"; the enjoyment stems from Bioy's ability to create an oppressive atmosphere while always speaking from the perspective of Bordenave, who is thoroughly decent and hopelessly kind-hearted. Bioy is a "writer's writer" (a writer valued by writers) and the book is the brilliantly executed tour-de-force of an author.

TJ Lewis describes the book as one of the best and most popular novels by Bioy Casares in Argentina and praises the English translation by Suzanne Jill Levine, who you can hardly tell that it is a translation.

Michael Rössner writes in Latin American literary history that the novel, like Diario de la guerra del cerdo ( Diario of the Pig War ) from 1969 and El sueño de los héroes ( The Heroes' Dream ) from 1954, can be interpreted politically. Rössner compares the novel's “soul transplantation” with “methods of brainwashing”. The fantastic plot has a special effect “through its connection with a petty-bourgeois world that is lovingly detailed and realistic, almost costumbristically depicted”, in which the characters move. Matthias Hausmann, who deals with Sleep in the Sun in a collection of articles on the grotesque in Spanish-language literature, also sees an interpretability "as a general parable of political conditions". The grotesque elements of the novel unfold, according to Hausmann, “critical potential” and in this context it could be asked “whether fantastic literature cannot be more than evasion literature, as is still often claimed, namely also committed literature with political objectives”.

In the Latin American lexicon of authors , sleep in the sun is referred to as a “fantastic theses novel”. He proves that "human identity is not based on the ephemeral exterior, but on the soul".

filming

A film adaptation by the Argentine director Alejandro Chomski was released in 2010. The film Dormir al sol or Asleep in the Sun (international English title) has been shown at various film festivals, including the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival . He has been nominated for several awards. The main actors are Luis Machín (Lucio Bordenave), Esther Goris (Diana) and Carlos Belloso (Dr. Samaniego).

expenditure

First edition:

German editions:

  • Sleep in the sun. Translated by Joachim A. Frank. Suhrkamp , Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-518-02535-X .
  • Paperback edition: Sleep in the Sun (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch . Vol. 691). Translated by Joachim A. Frank. Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 .

The German paperback edition was reissued in 2001. The novel has been translated into several other languages. The French translation Dormir au soleil was published by Gallimard as early as 1974 and the English edition Asleep in the sun by Persea Books in 1978 . Translations into Portuguese ( Dormir ao sol , 1980), Romanian ( Dormind la soare , 1984) and Slovakian ( Spánok na slnku , 1986) followed.

literature

  • Matthias Hausmann: Grotesque media amalgamations in Adolfo Bioy Casares' Dormir al sol . In: Jürg Türschmann, Matthias Hausmann (Hrsg.): The grotesque in the literature of Spain and Latin America . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8471-0231-1 , p. 255-280 .
  • Marina Gálvez Acero: La felicidad de “dormir al sol” . In: Anales de literatura hispano-americana . tape 26 , 1997, pp. 447-459 .
  • Julien Roger: Le pouvoir de l'écriture dans “Dormir al sol” d'Adolfo Bioy Casares . In: Les Langues Néo-Latines . No. 348 , 2009, pp. 21-32 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 16 .
  2. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 34 .
  3. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 38 .
  4. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 117 .
  5. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 152-153 .
  6. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 161 .
  7. ↑ a b Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 205 .
  8. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 215 .
  9. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 216 .
  10. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 222 .
  11. ^ Mechtild Strausfeld (ed.): Materials on Latin American literature . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-518-06841-5 , pp. 344 .
  12. ^ Mechtild Strausfeld (ed.): Materials on Latin American literature . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-518-06841-5 , pp. 338 .
  13. ^ Mechtild Strausfeld (ed.): Materials on Latin American literature . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-518-06841-5 , pp. 340-342 .
  14. ↑ Adolfo Bioy Casares: Sleep in the Sun (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . No. 691 ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37191-6 , pp. 13 .
  15. ^ A b c Matthias Hausmann: Grotesque media entanglements in Adolfo Bioy Casares' Dormir al sol . In: Jürg Türschmann, Matthias Hausmann (Hrsg.): The grotesque in the literature of Spain and Latin America . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8471-0231-1 , p. 255–280 , here p. 272 .
  16. ↑ a b c d Peter Jokostra: dreams and nightmares . In: The deed . No. 297 , December 17, 1976, p. 26 ( online ).
  17. ^ John C. Murchison: [Untitled Review] . In: Books Abroad . tape 48 , no. 4 , 1974, p. 744 , doi : 10.2307 / 40128217 (English): “There is no special message in all of this (…)”
  18. ^ John C. Murchison: [Untitled Review] . In: Books Abroad . tape 48 , no. 4 , 1974, p. 744 , doi : 10.2307 / 40128217 (English).
  19. ^ TJ Lewis: [untitled review] . In: World Literature Today . tape 54 , no. 1 , 1980, p. 83 , doi : 10.2307 / 40134531 (English).
  20. ↑ a b Michael Rössner (Ed.): Latin American Literary History . Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1995, ISBN 3-476-01202-6 , p. 364 (the author of the corresponding section is Rössner according to the author's identification in the imprint).
  21. ^ Matthias Hausmann: Grotesque media entanglements in Adolfo Bioy Casares' Dormir al sol . In: Jürg Türschmann, Matthias Hausmann (Hrsg.): The grotesque in the literature of Spain and Latin America . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8471-0231-1 , p. 255–280 , here p. 276 .
  22. ^ Matthias Hausmann: Grotesque media entanglements in Adolfo Bioy Casares' Dormir al sol . In: Jürg Türschmann, Matthias Hausmann (Hrsg.): The grotesque in the literature of Spain and Latin America . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8471-0231-1 , p. 255–280 , here p. 277 .
  23. ↑ a b Dieter Reichardt (Ed.): Authors Lexicon Latin America . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-518-40485-7 , pp. 18 .
  24. ^ Asleep in the Sun / Dormir al sol ( English ) Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. 2011. Accessed January 12, 2020.
  25. ^ Dormir al sol (2010): Release info ( English ) In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved January 12, 2020.
  26. ^ Dormir al sol (2010): Awards ( English ) In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved January 12, 2020.
  27. ↑ a b Not consulted for this article.
This article was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 8, 2020 in this version .