Further, in order to retain as much original flavour as possible, I have, with two exceptions, not translated the characters’ names. The first is the most vexatious; the eponymous “Adán Buenosayres” — in Spanish a euphonious six-syllable verse of poetry — has been rendered as “Adam Buenosayres.” Unfortunately, the substitution disrupts the rhythm of the name/title, and the music of this lovely verso llano suffers. However, the name Adán is not readily recognizable to most anglophones, and would not therefore convey all the biblical and symbolic freight we hear in “Adam.” Poetry has thus had to take second place to meaning. The other exception is the name of the astrologer Schultz, changed from Marechal’s “Schultze,” the latter being a far less common form of the German surname. But the real-life model for the astrologer is the self-named Xul Solar, a monniker that condenses his birth name “Oscar Agustín Alejandro Schulz Solari.” It seems likely that Marechal preferred “Schultze” because the German “Schulz,” lacking the final voiced “e”, is virtually unpronounceable within the phonological system of Spanish. In English, by contrast, it is more natural to say Schultz and to spell it with a “t” (as Marechal has done).
Much lyric material is quoted in the novel, including verses from tangos, folk songs, children’s poetry, doggerel, and Marechal’s own poetry. So as not to disrupt the flow, I have placed my translations of this material in the main text and the original versions in the endnotes. Readers of Ulysses will notice that I use the same protocols for dialogue as Joyce does; that is, a dash to mark the point where a given character’s speech begins. This partially replicates the Spanish punctuation observed in Marechal’s text (in Spanish, a second dash normally marks the point where the speech act ends). In fact, as Lafforgue notes, Marechal in his manuscript notebooks often neglected to add the closing dash (“Estudio filológico preliminar” xxiii — xxiv), perhaps unconsciously under the influence of his reading of Ulysses. On the other hand, as Barcia observes (103), Marechal never used the Joycean stream-of-consciousness technique. Indeed, he seems to hesitate when punctuating complex narratorial layering; in Book Two, chapter 1, for example, he vacillates between the dash and quotation marks when handling Adam’s interior monologues, sometimes presenting them as soliloquies (see Lafforgue and Colla’s critical edition). Nevertheless, once in print, the punctuation remains quite stable in all succeeding editions. In this translation, with the exception noted above, I reproduce Marechal’s punctuation of dialogue and interior monologue.
Marechal often cites classical phrases in Latin. Unless the phrase is very short and its meaning obvious, I usually provide translations in the notes. When we read, for example, that Adam says something to himself ad intra, it is obvious that he is speaking inwardly. Adam’s penchant for using Latin phrases, an anti-modernist gesture, is as odd in Spanish as it is in English. The narrator uses phrases from both classical and medieval Church Latin, often with cheeky jocularity.
The annotation, intended for both scholars and non-specialist anglophone readers, owes much to Pedro Luis Barcia’s 1994 edition, as well as to the recent critical edition of Javier de Navascués, who was kind enough to exchange manuscript notes with me. References to Barcia’s notes are indicated by page number (e.g., Barcia 100n); likewise to Navascués’s critical edition (e.g., Navascués, AB 227n). Textual material quoted in the notes, if the original is in Spanish prose, is rendered in my English translation, unless otherwise indicated. All errors and omissions, of course, are entirely my responsibility.
~ ~ ~
Leopoldo Marechal in 1929. (Courtesy of María de los Ángeles Marechal)
Sketch of Marechal from mid- to late 1920s. (Artist unknown, often attributed mistakenly to Xul Solar)
Sketch of Marechal by Aquiles Badi (Paris, 1930). (Courtesy of María de los Ángeles Marechal)
Argentine artists of the “Grupo de París” around Aristide Maillol’s Monument à Cézanne in the Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, 1930. Standing, left to right: Juan del Prete, Alberto Morera, Horacio Butler, Raquel Forner, Leopoldo Marechal. Sitting, left to right: Maurice Mazo, Alfredo Bigatti, Athanase Apartis. (Courtesy of the Fundación Forner-Bigatti)
Artists of the “Grupo de París” in Sanary-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, 1930. Left to right: Alberto Morera, Alfredo Bigatti, Aquiles Badi, Leopoldo Marechal, Raquel Forner, Horacio Butler. (Courtesy of the Fundación Forner-Bigatti through the Centro Virtual de Arte Argentino)
Marechal’s working sketch of Schultz’s “Neocriollo,” the astrologer’s visionary model of Argentina’s future inhabitants. (Courtesy of María de los Ángeles Marechal)
Sketch by Marechal for the magazine Valoraciones (August 1926). His poem “Jazz Band” appeared in Martín Fierro 27–28 (10 May 1926). (Courtesy of María de los Ángeles Marechal)
Leopoldo Marechal, Susana Rinaldi (tango singer and actress), and composer Astor Piazzolla. Photo first published in the magazine Extra in 1968. (Courtesy of photographer Gianni Mestichelli)
The original cover of Adán Buenosayres, published by Sudamericana in 1948.
ADAM BUENOSAYRES
To my comrades of Martín Fierro,1 alive and dead, each of whom could well have been a hero in this fair and enthusiastic story.
Indispensable Prologue
On a certain October morning in 192—, at not quite noon, six of us entered the Western Cemetery,2 bearing a coffin of modest design (four fragile little planks), so light that it seemed to carry within not the spent flesh of a dead man but rather the subtle stuff of a concluded poem.3 The astrologer Schultz and I held the two handles at the coffin’s head, Franky Amundsen and Del Solar had taken those at the foot. Luis Pereda went ahead, stocky and unsteady as a blind boar. Bringing up the rear came Samuel Tesler, pawing with ostentatious devotion a great rosary of black beads. Springtime laughed above the tombstones, sang in the throats of birds, waxed ardent in the sprouting vegetation, proclaimed amid crosses and epitaphs its jubilant incredulity toward death. And there were no tears in our eyes, nor sorrow in our hearts, for in that simple coffin (four fragile little planks) we seemed to bear not the heavy flesh of a dead man but the light material of a poem concluded. We arrived at the newly dug grave; the coffin was lowered to the bottom. From the hands of friends, the first lumps of earth drummed upon the bier, then the gravediggers’ brutal shovels took over. Samuel Tesler, proud and impudent, knelt down on the abundant earth to pray a moment, while at the head of the grave the men proceeded to erect a metal cross bearing, on its black tinplate heart, the inscription:
ADAM BUENOSAYRES