We have to strike straight inland - visionary Martín Fierro

The Gaucho Martín Fierro is a political book, a protest book.  The gaucho narrator is an oppressed minority; his unique way of life is threatened, or already destroyed; his contribution to the nation ignored. 

All of this may feel a little distant to the non-Argentinean reader.  It may well be opposed by a skeptical reader.  In the introduction to the 1974 translation, I am told that the gauchos had “performed a major role in the country’s independence from Spain” (good for them, vivan los gauchos!) and “had cleared the pampas of marauding Indian bands that plagued the pastoral development of the region” (good for - hang on there - vivan los indios!).

The outlaw gaucho Martín Fierro, at the end of his verse novel, flees across the desert to live with the Indians.  If his vision of a life of indolence (“you live lying belly-up \ watching the sun go round”) and happiness is a fantasy, he may be right that “We’ll find safety over there \ since we can’t have it here.”

Except that his decision is also an acceptance of death.  The canto begins with a section that is the closest thing this earthy poem has to a visionary interlude.  God gave beauty to flowers and birds, and strength to beasts and the wind, but he gave more valuable gifts to men – speech, intelligence, courage – balanced by the hardships from which Martín Fierro now longs to escape:

We have to strike straight inland
towards where the sun goes down –
one day we’ll get there, we’ll
find out where afterwards (2205-2209)

Martín Fierro takes a drink, smashes his guitar, steals some horses, and disappears across the frontier.   Who knows what happened to him, the narrator tells us, but everything you have heard is true, “EVILS THAT EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT \ BUT NO ONE TOLD BEFORE” (2315-2316, the last lines of the poem, capitalization supplied by the poet).

I have switched here to the plainer, more accurate 1967 translation by C. E. Ward, revised by Frank Carrino and Alberto Carlos.  The latter two also did the “cowboy” version.

The Gaucho Martín Fierro - classic 19th century knife fights

I need to slip across the border for a post or two, from Brazil to Argentina.  JenandthePen thought people should read some books from Argentina; I have made my opinions on that subject clear enough.

This time, rather than mess around with the howling lunatics and unassuming librarians of the 20th century, I went back to the root of Argentine literature, to The Gaucho Martín Fierro, the 1872 epic gaucho poem by José Hernández.

I will confess that I was expecting something – I don’t know – stiff, Longellowish.  Imitative Romantic twaddle.  What fun to discover that Martín Fierro is more of a Western. The English translators go so far as to turn it into a cousin of cowboy poetry.

When brandin’ time came
you got a warm feelin watchin’
all those gauchos ropin’
and throwin’ steers right and left.
ah, what times… there ain’t
ever been nothin’ to match it. (II.217-22)

The translators, I should say, are trying to match “substance and tone” and nothing else:

Cuando llegaban las yerras,
¡cosa que daba calor
tanto gaucho pialador
y tironiador sin yel!
¡Ah tiempos… pero si en él
Se ha visto tanto primor!

The poem is a lament for the lost life of the gaucho, destroyed by military conscription, war and settlement.  Martín Fierro narrates – actually sings – the poem to describe the loss of his home and family, his brutal treatment in the army, and his violent life as an outlaw.

When he rolled up his cuffs
I took off my spurs
since I suspected this guy
warn’t goin’ to be easy to handle.

There is nothin’ like danger
to sober up a drunk;
even your sight clears up,
no matter how much you’ve guzzled. (VII.1199-1206)

As any reader of Borges will guess, someone’s gonna get knifed.  I mean readers of Borges stories not about books, although the existence of Martín Fierro is a reminder that Borges’s stories about gauchos knifing each other are also about books.  Different books.  This book.

I have barely touched the Martín Fierro.  Maybe one more dusty, lonesome, bloody day.

SUNY Press published two editions of the poem.  The 1967 version has facing-page Spanish, extensive notes, and a longer sequel, The Return of Martín Fierro that I did not read.   The 1974 version, source of the English above, is smaller, lighter, and zippier.