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Ramón del Valle-Inclán

Tyrant Banderas (New York Review Books Classics) Paperback – August 14, 2012

by Ramon del Valle-Inclan (Author), Peter Bush (Translator), Alberto Manguel (Introduction)

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An NYRB Classics Original

The first great twentieth-century novel of dictatorship, and the avowed inspiration for García Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch and Roa Bastos’s I, the Supreme, Tyrant Banderas is a dark and dazzling portrayal of a mythical Latin American republic in the grip of a monster. Ramón del Valle-Inclán, one of the masters of Spanish modernism, combines the splintered points of view of a cubist painting with the campy excesses of 19th-century serial fiction to paint an astonishing picture of a ruthless tyrant facing armed revolt.

It is the Day of the Dead, and revolution has broken out, creating mayhem from Baby Roach’s Cathouse to the Harris Circus to the deep jungle of Tico Maipú. Tyrant Banderas steps forth, assuring all that he is in favor of freedom of assembly and democratic opposition. Meanwhile, his secret police lock up, torture, and execute students and Indian peasants in a sinister castle by the sea where even the sharks have tired of a diet of revolutionary flesh. Then the opposition strikes back. They besiege the dictator’s citadel, hoping to bring justice to a downtrodden, starving populace.

Peter Bush’s new translation of Valle-Inclán’s seminal novel, the first into English since 1929, reveals a writer whose tragic sense of humor is as memorably grotesque and disturbing as Goya’s in his The Disasters of War.

Print length

224 pages
Language

English
Publisher

NYRB Classics
Publication date

August 14, 2012
Dimensions

5.03 x 0.49 x 8.01 inches
ISBN-10

1590174984
ISBN-13

978-1590174982
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Valle-Inclán had the sensitivity to capture the essential quality of life in my unhappy, comic, and beautiful country, and his Tyrant Banderas remains one of the most moving books about Mexico.” —Diego Rivera

“An erotic, anarchic and Galician poet of the grotesque.”—Michael Billington, Guardian

“Because dictators have been a staple of Latin history, they’re a staple of the Latin novel. Spaniard Ramon del Valle-Inclán broke ground in 1926 with Tirano Banderas.”—The Miami Herald

“The radical innovation in the theater that came after World War I is known here mainly through the plays of Brecht. In Spain, the prophet of this new movement was Ramón del Valle-Inclán. . . Written in 1920, Divinas Palabras actually precedes Brecht’s agitprop dramas.” —The New York Times

“It is a dark, violent, gorey work whose unbridled lyricism cannot mask its many horrors. . . . Tirano Banderas, which Valle-Inclán wrote in his 20s, is Cubist in that its writing is highly fragmented, while its range of deep, intense colours is reminiscent of Goya. But its main characteristic is esperpento, a genre created by Ville-Inclán himself. Esperpento is a mixture of terror and comedy, in which a character from tragedy is reduced to the dimensions of a fairground huckster. Tirano Banderas is a farce written with a poisoned pen.” —Manchester Guardian Weekly

“Tirano Banderas was the first novel to describe a South American dictator. It was written before other authors, such as Asturias and Garcia Marquez. . . . All the horrible things describe in the novel are still a very real threat in present day Latin America.” —Lautaro Murua, Argentinian actor

About the Author

Ramón del Valle-Inclán (1866–1936) was born into an impoverished aristocratic family in a rural village in Galicia, Spain. Obedient to his father’s wishes, he studied law in Compostela, but
after his father’s death in 1889 he moved to Madrid to work as a journalist and critic. In 1892 Valle-Inclán traveled to Mexico, where he remained for more than a year. His first book of stories came out in Spain in 1895. A well-known figure in the cafés of Madrid, famous for his spindly frame, cutting wit, long hair, longer beard, black cape, and single arm (the other having been lost after a fight with a critic), Valle-Inclán was celebrated as the author of Sonatas: The Memoirs of the Marquis of Bradomín, which was published in 1904 and is considered the finest novel of Spanish modernismo, as well as for his extensive and important career in the theater, not only as a major twentieth-century playwright but also as a director and actor. He reported from the western front during World War I, and after the war he developed an unsettling new style that he dubbed esperpento—a Spanish word that means both a grotesque, frightening person and a piece of nonsense—and described as a search for “the comic side of the tragedy of life.” Partly inspired by his second visit to Mexico in 1920, when the country was in the throes of revolution, Tyrant Banderas is Valle-Inclán’s greatest novel and the essence of esperpento.

Peter Bush is an award-winning translator who lives in Barcelona. Among his recent translations are Juan Goytisolo’s Níjar Country and Teresa Solana’s A Shortcut to Paradise. He is currently translating Quim Monzó’s A Thousand Morons and Josep Pla’s The Gray Notebook (forthcoming from NYRB Classics).

Alberto Manguel is an Argentinian-born Canadian essayist and novelist. He has written twenty works of criticism, including The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (with Gianni Guadalupi), A History of Reading, and The Library at Night; edited more than twenty literary anthologies; and is the author of five novels, including News from a Foreign Country Came, which won the McKitterick Prize in 1992. An Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), he has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYRB Classics; Main edition (August 14, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1590174984
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590174982
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.03 x 0.49 x 8.01 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,160,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,716 in Classic American Literature
- #23,914 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #48,375 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Bruce Merrill

Disappointing rendering of an extremely important novel

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 20, 2014

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Tyrant Banderas (1926) is Valle-Inclan's best and most famous novel-- and especially significant as a precursor to subsequent Latin American "Mad Dictator" novels, of which Asturias' El Senor Presidente and Roa Bastos' I, the Supreme, are the best known. A Spaniard, Valle-Inclan visited Mexico twice, and so was familiar with the scenery and the intensity of "new Spain." He drew upon his own experience with Primo de Rivera, dictator of Spain, as well as the rule of Diaz in Mexico, and other Lat Am dictators, to come up with his depiction of the diabolical Banderas.

The novel is a classic instance of Valle-Inclan's use of "esperpento," exaggerated grotesque language which reinforces the exaggerated and grotesque nature of his subject matter. It is similar to the lively and imagistic style of Asturias-- but not so relevant to so-called "magic realism," which is more a matter of the sudden and temporary lurching from the realistic into the magical.

The book is composed on a strict numerological basis, with seven parts, each containing 3 books, except for the 4th middle part, which contains seven books. Hence book four in the fourth part is the precise center of the novel-- and concerns treachery visited upon the "Indians."

The novel covers a spread of individuals and groups: the tyrant and his lackeys, the revolutionaries, the Spanish colony, the diplomatic corps-- and in the background, churning away, we have the chaotic celebrations during the Day of the Dead. (Compare: Under the Volcano.) My favorite part of the novel is Valle-Inclan's intense descriptions of his disparate unfolding scenes. An especially acute example comes in part 6, book 3, when the Spanish minister is high on morphine and the surrounding scene becomes wobbly and impressionistic.

The 4 page introduction is brief and perfunctory, very disappointing given how much can be said about Valle-Inclan and his masterpiece. I can't compare the translation to the original, but it often seems awkward to me, especially the dialog. Perhaps this is the responsibility of Valle-Inclan? Or Peter Bush, the translator? More likely the latter. As a great fan of Gregory Rabassa's fluid translations, I wish he had tackled this one as well. Still, I'm very grateful that the excellent NYRB Classics have put out a much-needed new translation of this unusual and influential novel.

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matthew king

humdrum

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 22, 2012

Verified Purchase

I'm a huge fan of the NYRB series and Mexican literature and was excited to come across a new-to-me book in this sweet spot. And then more surprised by how dull it is. It could be the translation, but the prose is so flat as to leech the fun out of the satire. At some point NYRB has to run out of great, undiscovered books; there can only be so many, and this one is a sign that that time may be approaching.

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