“Gunter’s Winter,” the Paraguayan novel by Juan Manuel Marcos (1950), is, according to the translator or publisher, literary work The most important in Paraguay twenty years ago. It is not for us, who have not seen enough of Paraguayan literature, except to take it for granted. However, we did not fully understand how the translator or publisher continued to describe the owner of a work of fiction of such importance, as a thinker. We also do not understand how the work remains the most important, during the entire twenty years.
But what is certain is that the writer of the novel, who deserted dullness During the dictatorship period, he went to the United States to work as a professor at a university, and returned to it once the dictatorship was over. What is certain is that Juan Manuel Marcos has an importance in Paraguayan culture today.
The novelist in the winter of “Gunter” (published by “Dar Al-Farabi” translated by Tariq Abdel-Hamid) is not alone the present, but it is strong. The novel is full of characters. If we simplify further, we say that it is full of relationships. We move in it, among people who come from different classes, priests, soldiers, officers, ordinary people… and prostitutes.
Something suggests to us that we find Paraguay spread out before us. We find here characters of every kind, but there is something that suggests that behind them, behind each one of them, is something like a history, something like a model. This is how we still smell Paraguay, its historical and social structure, throughout the novel.
The writer moves from detailed narration to poetry without warning or introduction
We are like this in front of Paraguay, drawn and spoken. From this we can understand the place of the novel in Paraguayan literature. She, not directly or closely, paints Paraguay, but almost sings it. Paraguay is thus built and diagnosed from the relationships, voices, and movements of people, and these vary and multiply, or pass a glimpse into sketches and designs, and into long and short signs and narratives.
Thus, we can see from the reading that Juan Manuel Marcos is not alone in returning to Paraguay. His novel is also a return to it again. Thus, the novel, with its characters returning to the country, almost carries, from near or far, not only the story of the novelist, but also his longing for his country, his nostalgia, his recovery, and even enriches him with Paraguay.
This is what can be discerned from behind the speech, which does not risk romantic representation or emotional overflow, but rather works, through an almost singing realism and through rapid or broad portraits, to a vivid display of the Paraguayan place.
From here, Juan Manuel Marcos’s writing multiplies, but rather comes out of itself, and moves between literary and intellectual genres. The novel thus departs from the novel, as it contains other things within it. The thinker may be present here, the psychoanalyst may also be present, but what is there is, with a kind of intuitiveness, communication, emanation, natural and immediate presence, and what resembles improvisation. What appears thus to be a summary of speech and an end to it is poetry.
Juan Manuel Marcos in the novel moves, without warning or introduction, from detailed narration to poetry that does not ask permission before it responds. It comes on top of a previous text, as if it were a continuation of it, but it is only poetry. Poetry pretends to be a narrative, it speaks as a narrative, but it remains poetry, even pure poetry: “Leave me, the fibers of the naked boy’s body rage without restraint… Another explosion in the square of Alacidonia… The walls scream with a piercing whistle… Perhaps no one will look for hunting wings, nor for how Morning dew suddenly appearing, comets creeping in… It is the obstinate stupor of being young… This air is not yours and the world is nobody’s… Come on, put your signature and withdraw.” Poetry in the folds of the novel, poetry that comes from itself suddenly and uninvited.
Not pure poetry alone, but also poetic characters and poetic endings. Soledad is also a presence in the depth and strength of poetry. Her life and death are murdered, and her life, which fluctuates between dreaming and prostitution, is also a poem.
* My Lebanese poet