By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño

SPOILERS

Summary:

Set in Chile during the 60s and 70s, the novel is narrated by Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix, or Father Urrutia.
The story begins with Sebastián attending a dinner at a prominent literary critic's, named Farewell, house, joined by Neruda and a youger Nerudian. Dinners such as these with similar guests follow, and Sebastián immerses himself in Chile's literary and art world.
Sebastián publishes book reviews, and finds himself in moral conflict with himself and characters around him for the content he writes.
Sebastián is befriended by an writer, Earnst Jünger, and the two of them have wide ranging conversations and visit a depressed and anorexic Guatemalan painter (one of my favorite characters).
Later, Sebastián is sent to Europe by s couple strange businessmen to assist with the implementation of falconry to protect Catholic monuments, and later to teach Marxism to a select group of students.
Throughout each task life brings him to, Sebastián dives in over and over to literature, politics, art, himself, and philosophical questions about life itself. His own successes and failures are brought into question, and above all there is a dialogue between him and his younger self, whom he refers to as "the wizened youth." The wizened youth and him share topics of guilt, betrayl, and resentment.
The end of the book sees Sebastián question wheather there is a difference between him and the wizened youth at all.

Noteable quotes:

The red text were the notes I had written on the page, transcribed under the quote they were in reference to.

"I am dying now, but I still have many things to say" (pg. 1).
"So, propped up on one elbow, I will lift my noble, trembling head, and rummage through my memories to turn up the deeds that shall vindicate me and belie the slanderous rumors the wizened youth spread in a single storm-lit night to sully my name" (pg. 1).
"and imagined that estate where the critic's path was indeed strewn with roses, where knowing how to read was valued, and where taste was more important than practical necessities and obligations," (pg. 5).
"that blessed equilibrium granted to me minutes before by the contemplation of nature" (pg. 19).
"As time goes by, as time goes by, the whip-crack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavor except the struggle to survive" (pg. 23).
"And little by little the reputation of H. Ibache outstripped that of Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix, to my surprise, and to my satisfaction, since Urrutia Lacroix was preparing a body of poetic work for posterity, an oeuvre of canonical ambition, which would take shape gradually as the years went by, in a metre that nobody was using in Chile any more, what am I saying, a metre that nobody had ever used in Chile, while Ibacache read other people's books and explained them to the public, just as Farewell had done before him, endeavoring to elucidate our literature, a reasonable endeavor, a civilized endeavor, an endeavor pursued in a measured conciliatory tone, like a humble lighthouse on the fatal shore. And Ibache's purity - clothed as it was in the simple garments of critical prose, yet none the less admirable, since it was perfectly clear, whether reading between the lines or viewing the full sweep of the enterprise, that Ibacache was engaged in an ongoing exercise in dispassionate analysis and rationality, that is to say in civic virtue - Ibacache's purity would be able to illuminate far more powerfully than any other strategy the body of work taking shape verse by verse in the diamond-pure mind of his double: Urrutia Lacroix" (pg. 25).

I think book reviewing is a truly good pursuit, only able to be done by the truly good. I think it is easy to tell who does and doesn't understand certain literature. Snd this is an immense skill required to review truly complex pieces of literature. I think what he means here by "pure" is not in any way corrupted by his own intellectual beliefs, that he reads not to review and intellectualize, but to really lean into the story and the beauty of the writing.

"a fear of hearing what cannot be heard, the essential words to which we are deaf and which in all probability cannot be pronounced" (pg. 31).
"heroes setting out for immortality armed only with their writings" (pg. 39)

Writiers (heroes) set out to be immortalized, but not the muses. The muses have no ambition to be remembered, and that purity, in a sense, makes them all the more powerful. Muses, often related to ideas of beauty and femininity, are looked down upon by modern critics as of little significance compared to the artist immortalizing the two of them - but isn't she much more important in her grace than we think? If she'd had any ambition then she would never be a muse. And maybe that's tragus, Beautiful, though, either way.

All of pages 58-60, including:

"poems whose deep meaning, or at least the meaning I thought I glimpsed in their depths, left me in a state of perplexity and anguish that lasted all day long" (pg. 58).

I love this snippet right here, especially now as I'm writing all these essays and seeing so much meaning and worthiness in each word because no one else will be able to see the same horrible meaning in this writing. My essays and his poems will still be asked to be read by never understood. I can see the meaning but it really is more of a glimpse. I am carving away through my words trying to expose the meaning for everyone else but then again I can't. Because it would no longer then be an anguish to read just as it was to write and that's not fair. It would no longer be esoteric and invaluable. Because my meaning, my pain, is nothing if it's just set out bare for all to see. It's only meaningful if it takes digging to find. That's how you know it's real.

"My boredom had taken on a fierce intensity. And my exhaustion had grown in proportion" (pg. 59).
"But all that flitting around was to no avail. The boredom did not abate, indeed sometimes in the middle of the day it became unbearable and filled my head with ludicrous ideas. Sometimes, trembling with cold, I would go to a soda fountain and order a Bilz. I would sit on a bar stool and gaze all misty-eyed at the droplets running down the surface of the bottle, while someplace inside me, a bitter voice was preparing me for the unlikely spectacle of a droplet climbing up the glass, against the laws of nature, all the way up to the mouth of the bottle. Then I shut my eyes and prayed or tried to pray while my body was seized with shuddering" (pg. 60).

"In some of those countenances I felt I could read signs of an immense pain. Pigs suffer too, I said to myself. And immediately I regretted that thought. Pigs suffer, it is true, and their pain purifies and ennobles them. A lantern came alight inside my head or perhaps inside my piety: pigs too are a hymn to the glory of the Lord, of if not a hymn, for that is perhaps an exaggeration, a carol, a ballad, a round in celebration of all living things...the infinite vulgarity and hopelessness of my compatriots" (pg. 63)

I wonder then, if understanding the pigs to be noble with their suffering, that he sympathizes with them. Feel any sort of reverence? Or is he as he remains, the opposition to the pigs? Pig hater.

Plunged in darkness, guided by memory. Not feeling the cold that cuts to the bone up there near the Arctic circle, feeling nothing, just alive and moving. Not even feeling alive: just moving, inured to the routine of crossing the Baltic in one direction or the other" (pg. 65).
"appeared again like a lightning bolt, or the abstract idea of a lightning bolt" (pg. 72).
"And then I went to Paris, where I spent about a month writing poetry, frequenting museums and libraries, visiting churches whose beauty brought tears to my eyes" (pg. 78).
"It was as if until then we had all been dreaming and had suddenly woken to real life, although occasionally it seemed to be the other way round, as if we had all been plunged into a dream. And we went on living day by day in accordance with the abnormal conventions of the dream-world: anything can happen and whatever happens the dreamer accepts it. Movement works differently. We move like gazelles or the way gazelles move in a tiger's dream. We move like a painting by Vassarely. We move as if we had no shadows and were unperturbed by that appalling fact. We speak. We eat. But underneath we are trying not to realize that we are speakin and eating" (pg. 83).
"Was it all right? Did they learn anything? Did I teach them anything? Did I do what I had to do? Did I do what I ought to have done? Is Marxism a kind of humanism? Or a diabolical theory? If I told my literary friends what I had done, would they approve? Would some condemn my actions out of hand? Would some understand and forgive me? Is it always possible for a man to know what is good and what is bad?" (pg. 95)

I want to be friends with hum so bad. It is my dream to find someone who behaves and asks questions like this. A dream.

"I could no longer bear the weight, or to be perhaps more precise, the alternatively pendular and circular oscillations of my conscience, and the phosphorescent mist, glowing dimly like a marsh at the vesperal hour, through which my lucidity had to make its way, dragging the rest of me along" (pg. 96).
"as people do in novels, but never in real life" (pg. 97).
"ladies with illustrious names and one foot in the grave" (pg. 101).

I really can't say what prompted this particular comment, but: I like how gossiping is seen as a womanly and therefore trivial activity, as if men aren't the ones sitting around in pubs, parlors, and offices, gossiping all day long about people, art, politics, philosophy, and so on. I very much believe in the nobility of gossiping, especially as a "womanly" activity. Without gossiping we'd all be holed up silently in church all day, never moving forward, never feeling shame, always being ashamed of our innate humanity.

"But only I know the story, the real story. And it is simple and cruel and true and it should make us laugh, it should make us die laughing. But we only know how to cry, the only thing we do wholeheartedly is cry" (pg. 106).
"How trivial, how grammatically awkward, how plain stupid. We all have weaknesses, I said. How dreadful. Only world of genius will prove to be unblemished. How ghastly" (pg. 114).

The whole of the wizened youth, the younger self, looking at the older self, criticizing him is quite backward I realize. Usually, it is the older self showing up in the younger self's life to criticize, warn, and so on. It's why the mere mentions of the wizened youth is so unnerving.

"I'm lost, I cried out. I'm dead" (pg. 118).

I'm lost. I know exactly where I am. My anguish makes me authentic. My pain is so real I have to be human. It's so real it has to be otherwordly. God has to be in the sky. If He is on Earth then my pain would be unbearable. I must keep God as far away from me as possible. I can't touch Him. He must only exist in the periphery of the universe. He would overpower me. I'd ruin him.

"I said that life was much more important than literature, and she looked me in the eyes with that bovine fave of hers and said she knew, said she had always known that. My authority collapsed like a house of cards, while hers, or rather her supremacy, towered irresistibly" (pg. 119).
"Am I that wizened youth? Is that the true, the supreme terror, to discover that I am the wizened youth whose cries no one can hear? And that poor wizened youth is me?" (pg. 129).

Review and notes:

5 stars - If it weren't obvious by the absolutely inexcusable amount of quotes I included in this review, this book is dazzling. 2666 will most certainly kill me.

"a certain composure" by Creative Commons

Roberto Bolaño on Neruda, Kafka, and the abyss, The Book Haven

First things first, Bolaño writes the longest sentences I have ever laid my eyes upon, so long you will find yourself desperately searching for the next period, or even semi-colan, and failing miserably. That being said, the lines written will have your eyes scurrying, running, stumbling, gracefully strolling, and still, dancing across them. How I have convocated with the literary world, arrogantly thinking I knew what lyrical writing was, without having read Bolaño, is bewildering. This book is 130 pages long, and I am not exaggerating when I say I probably spent nearly 10 hours in front of this book. If not reading, then writing furiously in the margin, highlighting like never before, and simply staring at the words, reading and rereading until the English language seemed like a joke. A joke I hopelessly would never understand. I never cease to be amazed by the capabilities of translators, and I with every word I read, I couldn't stop thinking: if the book is this good in its second language, how jaw-dropping would it be in Spanish? It's with novels like this and Tender is the Flesh that I chide myself for taking French instead of Spanish. So, a round of applause for Chris Andrews.

Second thing second, the envy that I, and anyone like myself, felt and will feel reading this book is excruciating. There are many a passage detailing afternoons, evenings, and entire days of sitting down with writers, poets, artists, and lovers of all things that humanity creates. I've long come to peace with the fact that I will always love what humanity creates over humanity itself, and it is the chance to find like-minded people, even better, the very people who create the art that keeps me alive, that is perfectly illustrated in this novel. The life Sebastián leads, a life filled with these people, their lives, their art, their offerings, and their problems. I want it so much. I am so very envious. I want so much to live my life alongside artists, those who can take humanity and create, in every sense of the word. So, if any reader has the same ambition, prepare for a read filled with awful jealousy.

At first, Bolano's admittance that he dislikes, or at least never did like, Neruda is surprising, considering the monumental impact Neruda had on Chilean, and Latin American literature in general. But a careful look at Neruda's character in By Night in Chile shows a more stressing presence than awe-inspiring. Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet I've had the misfortune of not reading (I have a strange standard for myself where I don't let myself read translated poetry for fear I would devalue the work by forcing it into English, a silly and insular belief, I know) apparently adored Stalin. I suggest this short interview for more insight into Bolaño as a reader.

It is hard to discern any kind of character development, I'd argue this novel is more of a character and setting exploration rather than a series of events and growth. It is true there is some sort of plot, but every plot development ultimately serves to extract more lore from the world Sebastián, and Bolaño, inhabits. The book is written without paragraphs or line breaks, and the dialogue is without quotations, and combined with the often mile-long sentences, makes for what is essentially a monologue-like story. It is obvious from the first page that Sebastián is unlike other priests, think of Fleabag's Hot Priest, not in their sexual and romantic proclivities, but in their insistence on having a personality outside of what God demands of them. Sebastián's consistent back and forth with his former self, the wizened youth, is a tool by which Bolaño insists on Sebastián's maturity, his growth beyond his ignorant childhood. The growth that, presumably, meant finding the priesthood, is expressed in this relationship: the disagreements they have, the anger and grief between the two. It is with the final quote I highlighted, a quote that comes at the very end of the book too, conveniently, that such illusions are not only questioned but utterly obliterated. Not to say the debates between the two, Sebastián and the wizened youth, were useless, quite the contrary. Sebastián lives his life inside his head as much as he does with the world around him, and whatever living he does is correct and just. I identified extremely with Sebastián.

It is an act of rebellion in itself, to write a narrative from the point of view of a priest. Not to mention he is flawed and at times Godless, considering the purity with which Christianity looks at agents of the Lord. I did not expect the religious aspects of Sebastián's narrative to have such an effect on me, as I practice reform Judaism, but simple mentions of Jesus Christ, ones I didn't include in the above quotations (though why not, I've already put the whole book), as I thought they may be too personal, prompted certain contemplations I never thought I'd allow myself. I won't say I'm the most secure in my faith, I've had my own insecurities, but I would guess this book could take the most religiously confident person and cause at least some kind of doubt. I understand the causing of religious doubt to be a frowned upon quality in literature and art in general, but I see more goodness in such causes. After all, Descartes didn't doubt for nothing.

I'd like to finish with a final thanks to Bolaño for his introducing me to many new writers and artists, not just of Chile, but across Europe and Latin America: Neruda, Archimboldo, Baudelaire, Breton, Redon and Moreau, Dürer, Maecenas, Vassarely, de Rokha, and d'Halmar.

Affiliates:

I own a copy of Bolaño's last novel, 2666, an 898 page monster. Once the review for that beast is finished I will link it here. Wish me luck.

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