| Title | : | Men of Maize: The Modernist Epic of the Guatemalan Indians (Pittsburgh Editions of Latin American Literature) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0822955148 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780822955146 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 466 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1949 |
Men of Maize: The Modernist Epic of the Guatemalan Indians (Pittsburgh Editions of Latin American Literature) Reviews
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Civilization exploits nature and destroys it. Nature and civilization are in perpetual opposition to each other…
The sun let down its hair. The summer was received in the domain of the chieftain of Ilóm with comb honey rubbed on the branches of the fruit trees, so the fruit would be sweet; with headdresses of immortelles on the heads of the women, so the women would be fertile; and with dead raccoons hanging from the doors of the ranchos, so the men would be potent.
The firefly wizards, descendants of the great clashers of flint stones, sowed sparkling lights in the black air of the night to be sure there would be guiding stars in the winter. The firefly wizards with their obsidian sparks. The firefly wizards, who dwelt in tents of virgin doeskin.
These are the ways of nature… And the ways of civilization are guns and machines, intrigues and perfidy.The gods have disappeared, but the legends remain and they, like the gods before them, demand sacrifices. Gone too are the obsidian knives which tore out the hearts of sacrificial victims, but the knives of absence which wound and madden, remain.
As a revenge for the treachery and massacre, with the magic more ancient than the Christian religion, the dire curse was worked… And Men of Maize is a cruel and marvelous story recounting how this curse is being fulfilled.“…Life ain't no iguana's tail where you chop off one piece and another comes out to face the danger anew. You lose it and it stays lost. Don't sprout again. Ain't on permanent lease.”
Whatever we wish and however we plan, life intertwines and interlocks the past and the present, truth and fiction, our desires and our achievements in the most unpredictable and whimsical ways. -
I have written to the publisher about doing a second print run, or somehow getting this back in print, as: (1) I really want to read it, but cant afford the second hand copies floating around; (2) it is in the UNESCO Catalogue of Representative Works, its author won the Nobel Prize, and it is widely considered a hugely important work of Latin American fiction.
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Oameni de porumb sau, mai pentru noi, oameni de mămăligă, fără os, slabi, alimentați de speranțe himerice - iată un diagnostic realist, un certificat de sclav, emis de unul din granzii literaturii latino-americane. E atât de tristă soarta oamenilor de porumb încât nu-ți mai este milă de ei, fiindcă mila este ultimul țesut viu pe care-și clădesc destinul.
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A powerful book and I have no words to describe it. it is that sort of book, which makes you feel a bit smarter after you read it.
There is magical stuff, or better said legends, there is reality and social issues, there is love and betrayel, there is war, there are great usages of the "word". who would have thought, that words can be so flexible. The multitude of quotes I wrote here speaks for this.
Respect for the translator, it wasnot an easy translation, for sure. This is that sort of book you need to read in your mother tongue. -
This is one of the best books that i've read in, say, the last year. Scratch that, the last ten years. The poetic descriptions and the fancy of the articulations make love to the page. I only have to offer a quote: "In the beards of the cobs, in the dusty axils of the mauve leaves and stalks as they matured, in the thirst of the earth-covered roots, amog flowers like doomed flags crawling with insects, the fire sprung from those sparks, went about, releasing flames. The night woke up fighting to trap, in its web pearled with water, the flies of light falling from the spark maker. It awoke with all its articulations asleep in corners of darkness and cast its web of weepy silver turpentine over the sparks, which were already small conflagrations making contact with new centers of violent combustion, beyond all strategy, in the most skillful of skirmishing tactics. Drops of nocturnal water could be heard with a resonant rain patter from the withered leaves, blood red in the glow of the flames, clinging with mist, hot with smoky down to the very marrow of dead stalks swathed in porous tissue which thundered like dry powder. One enormous firefly, the size of the plains and the mountains, the size of everything that was painted with sun-roasted maize, ready for threshing." The rhythm in this book is resonant, it is impossible to ignore because it carries the entire novel on this roaming sound. i found it similar to the wind in the book
Chocolat, the same sense of a magically real mind of a natural element forming the story around its not-so-defined consciousness. It is an umbrella of consciousness that warps itself into certain arenas, not necessarily taking to any character's specific story, but gliding in between stories and dialogue, descriptions and poetry. It reminded me of
Dos Passos, but told in a more reserved, illustrative way--not afraid to expound on the magnificence of the setting and surroundings, creating a theater of creatures and austere beings and beasts, rather than merely transgress the mundane in a brightened sense of clarity as
Dos Passos did within New York. In
Asturias' Guatemala, he encapsulates the culture within the veneer of a waking revolution of invention, amidst the death of culture.
the book concentrates on the doom of a failing farm community, sweltered because of the earth's inability to grow maize in the largescale because of the maize's unencumbered greed in soaking up all the nutrients. Now, this detriment does not effect a singly-served family, but when technology comes to town a whole world of crazy breeches in on these farmers and the mystical magical animation is born into their lives. The obliterated landscape is likened to a fiery horseman who resembles the sheen of the maize crop, but becomes corrupted with greed by its viability, for the usual criminal cup o' tea--money and power. Diabolical effects take place; a mastery of the deity which presides over these people takes form through anger and finds resolution in mischief and destruction.
this tale is magical, there are features of this concept of the naugal, or a person's protective animal, and the transformation of these people into their naugal when they are forced by life crisis into a change which supercedes their emotional or physical limits. For instance, a postman whose wife falls off the face of the earth changes into his spirit animal: a coyote; and a healer turns into a mystical creature called The Deer of the Seventh Fire who wreaks havoc on a crop and sets the fields ablaze.
The book circulates around a few certain themes. The most obvious being the traditional weight of farming versus the massive wholesale type that is bred by technology and innovation. The book is told in a retrospective fashion, giving dominance to a dying culture whose faith in the magic of reality tries in vein to stop a monster with no spiritual element other than the insane coldness of the machine. This concept is further explored with another theme about the inability to cope with lost love, the transformation of a soul into an eternal wanderer, a ghost in the purgatory beset amongst phantom clouds within this world is a microcosmic display of the discordance of an entirely changing culture, wrought with the problems of a dying tradition and faith in simplicity. The book has a tremendous weight, as three quarters of it are devoted to the story of a man whose wife leaves him and he can not figure out why. He spends his entire life searching for her, and because the job is not done he eventually transforms into his spirit animal forever on the quest for security in the knowledge he can not die without:
"And how can you tell compadre, that i was in love?"
"The way you stop and listen to every woman's voice. Even if she's nothing to do with you, you stop and listen."
There is a great sense of sadness weighing the intent of this book, saying that no matter the resolution--this culture has been lost to the test of time and is no more sound than a ghost's echo in a wall. And yet, it is told with a great pride, a stunning amount of opulence and impressionability that emits an epic purpose surrounding the need to collect these stories and this information into a majestic, seminal story. There is a sense of power in the way this inevitable tragedy is displayed, in that as an image of the past, as a presentation of a forgotten culture with a fanstastic understanding of supernatural events, there is a mist of dreams somewhere that explains the entire hallucination, composes a story within the mundane expectations of a life so ordinary to lead slip-handedly those too dumb to handle a world beyond our own through the prosaic climax of our stupid plot structure: birth, age, then death. There is something more fantastic within this world, and it is victim to the same coffins that lie the forgotten communities which housed the presences of gods and fairies and mountains of creation waiting ot be explored again. This book flirts with the idea, playing with a hatch not afraid to be opened; and it is constructed with the vitality of a nymph, the eloquence of a solid dancer: "subterranean structures begin speaking without lips, a direct rigid voice propelling the song of the firefly wizards from the human throat into the booming cavity of those diamond-throated grottoes. The voice explodes, it is a petard opening out within the secret ears of the rocks, but the echo picks it up and molds it anew like clay, sculpting its modulations, until it is changed into a tinkling glass from which those who were not defeated at the bottom of the earth drink the potable flight of birds, lest they be defeated in the sky." -
Amo este libro. Amo su complejidad, la historia, los giros, la escritura... Es uno de mis favoritos, sin duda.
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Overblown, melodramatic, frequently incomprehensible. Magical realism at its most annoying.
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Me gustó mucho. En su tema y su trato de lo mítico, me recordó mucho a Cien años de soledad, aunque Márquez es más accesible que Asturias. Al principio pensé que era una especie de libro de cuentos, pero la forma en la que todas las historias se entrelazan después es sorprendente y magistral, con muchísima naturalidad. Muy recomendado, aunque se necesita tenerle bastante paciencia.
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This book is crazy. A lot of the time it's kind of like reading Guatemalan mythology in poetry form mixed in with a drug-induced dream. There's an entire page about glowworm sex. The crazy makes the book kind of hard to follow for long sections at a time. But when it gets back to coherence the story is pretty great. It continually surprised me how much a story written in Guatemala in 1945 seems so similar to American life now. After digging through the crazy is a great, comedic story about love.
I picked this up to help "prepare" for a trip to Guatemala in a month. I had read that this was a pride of the country having been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I have no idea if this book is anything like what I will experience when actually visiting Guatemala, but I'm hoping it was a good introduction to the culture and vocabularies (albeit translated vocabularies) that I will experience when actually there. -
I feel like i have being under the drugs when i read this books..to tight interconnection with Guatemalan mythology. Wish i have ever been in this country to understand if it is so real as described in book.
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Me sigo maravillando de la destreza narrativa de Asturias y las incontables historias que habitaron su mente...
Otro mas super recomendado, y al igual que los anteriores, especialmente recomendado para los Guatemaltecos. -
No será de las más conocidas novelas hispanoamericanas, pero es muy buena.
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πρόκειται για ένα αριστούργημα, μαγεύτηκα δίχως επιστροφή
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Lacerato dalla dura realtà della deforestazione e dello sfruttamento commerciale, il mondo guatemalteco di Asturias lotta per affermare il possesso della propria terra e sopravvive grazie alla più arcaica cultura maya, fatta di leggende, tradizioni e profezie sciamaniche.
I chicchi gialli sono l'oro del Guatemala.
Da un lato i coltivatori di mais, avidi commercianti che, bruciando la foresta, disboscano per ampliare i terreni delle colture, perché il mais è Profitto. Dall'altro gli Uomini di mais, indios nativi, che di quel mais si nutrono perché è Vita. Uomini impastati di magia e realtà, una dualità intrinseca che vivono senza alcuno stupore, e tra i quali ci si imbatte in un guaritore che è anche un cervo, in un corriere che è anche coyote, in un cieco che riacquista la vista, in un eroe avvelenato che guarisce bevendo l'acqua del fiume. Uomini alla ricerca della propria donna fuggita, che forse altro non è che la propria terra.
La lettura in principio è faticosa, per lo stile di Asturias, definito spesso baroccheggiante. Ed in effetti è una scrittura che richiama molti elementi tipici degli scrittori latinoamericani: spesso onirica, surreale, sconclusionata, la definirei quasi folle! Poi la narrazione si fa più lineare e, pur senza rinunciare all'elemento magico, tutti i personaggi trovano posto come tasselli di un puzzle, e accanto all'arte affabulatoria si fa strada la voce di denuncia che ci conduce nel cuore di un centro America ferito.
"Tutta la mia opera si sviluppa fra queste due realtà: una sociale, politica, popolare, con personaggi che parlano come parla il popolo guatemalteco; l'altra immaginativa, che li racchiude in una sorta di atmosfera e di paesaggio di sogno." -
I recently re-read this after a ten-ish year hiatus. I was completely blown away by it the first time, but I also barely comprehended it that first reading. The second time was much different. I actually made sense of the story this last time, and not only did I enjoy the novel more, I gleaned much more from it. It is very difficult to explain the story and its many digressions, suffice it to say that everything ties together eventually.Not necessarily neatly, but the purpose of the novel is to take the reader on a journey into the worlds of native South Americans and the contrasts to the European influence imposed upon them. Asturias never fully explained what he intended with Men of Maize, and while it is assuredly political in many ways, it is a beautiful, lush, engrossing work. The colors, sounds, tactile sensations, and mixing of the mundane with magical set in a mysterious natural environment makes this a transcendent novel. I would compare it to Marquez' The Autumn of the Patriarch but such a comparison does injustice to Men of Maize.
Read it and enjoy. Leave it. Then read it again later and enjoy it even more. -
Oameni de porumb este rodul fericit, de maturitate, pe care ni l-a dăruit, acum trei decenii, un mare scriitor al lumii şi un nedezminţit prieten al oamenilor: Miguel Ángel Asturias, laureat al premiului Nobel pentru literatură în 1967. Astăzi, cartea se vădeşte a fi centrul de gravitate al unei opere şi al unui univers epic care au dat şi vor da tot mai puternic impresia profundă şi măreaţă a mării „mereu, mereu reîncepute”. A unei mări răscolitor umane, căci vocea lui Asturias şi scrierile în care ea s-a
încorporat ne fac să simţim, cu o intensitate aproape fizică, tălăzuirea vastă şi. neobosită a mulţimilor din America sa latină şi din lumea întreagă, frămîntarea neîncetată a tuturor oamenilor care se avîntă, visează, izbîndesc sau pier în lupta – cea mai nobilă şi hotărîtoare – de a
spori umanitatea din om. Asturias refuza să conceapă şi să reprezinte artistic această umanitate fără întîlnirea dintre două facultăţi (şi puteri) fundamentale ale sufletului omenesc: simţul dreptăţii şi simţul frumosului. -
Los libros de Miguel Angel Asturias no son nada faciles, ni son para cualquier lector. Yo misma en su momento deje tirado "El sennor presidente" como 2 veces porque no lograba conectar. Pero una vez que se lograr, se encuentran obras llenas de consciencia social, de una narrativa tan barroca como poetica a la vez y un crisol maravilloso con referencias a la cultura maya ancestral. "Hombres de maiz" es una mezcla de todo esto que les digo, y aunque a ratos su historia se diluye entre mucha prosa adornada, la historia de fondo es tan vigente como triste. Recomendado para los amantes de la cultura e historia de America Latina, mas especialmente, Guatemala.
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Tierra desnuda, tierra despierta, tierra maicera con sueño, el Gaspar que caía de donde cae la tierra, tierra maicera bañada por ríos de agua hedionda de tanto estar despierta, de agua verde de desvelo de las selvas sacrificadas por el maíz hecho hombre sembrador de maíz.
¡Qué libro tan maravilloso! Me ha encantado, me parece una obra de arte.
¡Qué bonito suenan las palabras, tejidas con primoroso mimo!
Os animo a todos a que disfrutéis de su lectura, no os decepcionará. -
რთულად წასაკითხი წიგნია იმიტომ, რომ ჭირს გზის გაკვლევა რეალობასა და მითს შორის. ასე სამყაროთა ზღვარზე ცხოვრობენ სამხრეთ ამერიკის ინდიელები, "სიმინდის ადამიანები". ცხოვრობენ და კვდებიან ბრძოლაში ბუნების, ტრადიციების დასაცავად მაშინ, როდესაც მათი მიწა კოლონიად ქცეულა.
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y es buscando el sueño que se da uno cuenta que nada duerme, que la noche es un gran velorio de estrellas sonando en los oídos de los seres, grandes y pequeños, de las cosas que se ven como tumbas de la actividad del día: las mesas, los armarios, las cómodas, las sillas, no parecen muebles de gente viva durante la noche, sino piezas de un amueblado que se colocó a un muerto en su tumba para que siguiera viendo sin ser él, sin ser otro, porque eso es lo grave, los muertos no son ellos ni son otros, no se puede explicar lo que son. (p.229)
Más un 3,5 tirando a 4. Admito que me gustó más "El señor presidente", pero también admito que esta es una gran obra por dos cosas: el lenguaje y el contenido. Para hacer una novela con el habla popular, tan rica en oralidad, se requiere de mucho ingenio y del conocimiento de la lengua. A su vez, esta lengua le da riqueza a los personajes: pueblerinos, campesinos, con carácter pero perdidos en lo que es el mundo, el tiempo y los sueños. El autor usa el lenguaje como la vía para llevarnos al presente, al pasado, a la vida de todos los personajes.
En cuanto al contenido, el libro se divide en capítulos que llevan por nombre el de algún personaje de la novela: Goyo Yic, Gaspar Ilóm, María Tecún, etc. Todas las historias parecen inconexas, pero hay una trama muy fuerte en cada capítulo, se van atando cabos (no es una novela policial) y entiendes todo el misticismo de las acciones y las escenas. Cada personaje tiene su historia bien desarrollada y dan entre sorpresa y compasión. Esta gente, estos hombres, son hombres de maíz porque trabajan la tierra, pero no para dar sustento a su familia -aunque quisieran- sino para hacer más ricos a los ricos.
Otra cosa importante aparte del lenguaje y el contenido: el realismo mágico. Es una historia sobre los campos y guerras de Guatemala, casi los orígenes, en donde la realidad de esa vida se mezcla con elementos mágicos, tales como los nahual, las transformaciones, las visiones, los embrujos o hechicerías, etc. Todo el misticismo de estas tierras latinoamericanas.
Por último, releyendo "Sabor y saber de la lengua" de la profesora Palacios, me topé con una frase que me recuerda mucho a Asturias: "Entonces, cuando un escritor se preocupa por la lengua quiere decir que en él lo que trabaja es la lengua; ella lo mueve, lo seduce; ella es la que fabula abriéndole paso al sentido, a todo lo que rebasa la significación". -
Un viaje completamente inesperado y sorprendente, cuando empecé esta novela tenía una percepción del libro que al final no resulto en absoluto de esa forma. Decir que me agarró en curva es poco, me tomaba receso entre cada parte; no porque el libro sea malo, sino porque es un libro de realismo mágico puro y duro lleno de metáforas y simbolismos que te hace sentir, pensar, analizar de una manera que hace mucho yo no lo hacía, porque definitivamente no es un libro de una sentada y sí te gusta este tipo de libro lo vas a querer leer nuevamente de una manera mas pausada.
Lo primero que me descoloco fue la forma que está escrito el libro, inicia como prosa lírica; que no esperaba, conforme avanza la historia va dejando este tipo de ritmo hasta llegar a la prosa estándar manteniendo su carácter fantástico entre sus páginas, lo miro como una forma de simbolizar como dejamos nuestras tradiciones hasta la actualidad donde nos hemos modernizados gracias al influjo de la colonización y " la civilización".
Otro punto que hace mucho énfasis el autor es sobre la capitalización y sus efectos en el medio ambiente y la cultura, donde la lucha se da entre el pueblo de Iliom contra los terratenientes/ejercito, donde el karma persigue a los transgresores del cacique Gaspar Iliom, y nos hace una critica acertada sobre el capitalismo y como afecta nuestro modo de vida, pero al final ¿quién es peor, las etnias que no quieren avanzar y quedarse estancadas o la "civilización" que nos vienen arrebatar nuestras tierras y costumbres? ¿Para qué? ¿Qué se logra? Nada es gratis, siempre hay un precio que pagar y tarde o temprano se paga... -
Met 'De doem van de maïs' lijkt de Guatemalteekse schrijver Asturias een portret te hebben willen schetsen van zijn land, en dan met name van het bergland, waar het woud en de indianen moeten wijken voor maïsvelden en waar de werkelijkheid naadloos overloopt in een magische wereld.
Het boek is niet zozeer een roman, alswel een verzameling aan elkaar gelieerde verhalen, die telkens samenkomen. Maar bovenal heerst er een magische sfeer.
Een rode draad lijkt de verdwijning van mensen te zijn, een gegeven dat doorleeft in verhalen en telkens opnieuw uitgroeit tot een mythe. Dit proces van overlevering legt Asturias perfect bloot, en zo komt een verhaal een paar keer terug: eerst als gebeurtenis en dan als verhaal, dat steeds meer afwijkt van het origineel.
Asturias' taal draagt bij aan het magische karakter van het boek: hij schrijft in dichte, bloemrijke zinnen vol beeldende vergelijkingen, die soms totaal onzinnig zijn. Er zijn aardig wat vrij overbodige dialogen en het losse karakter van de roman haalt soms de vaart eruit. Het resultaat is een fascinerend boek dat evenwel niet gemakkelijk leest. -
Cuatro historias aparentemente desconectadas. Un eje temático y lingüístico. Asturias aborda el lenguaje poético de manera excepcional. Hay un antecedente: en el estilo de narrar desde lo poético: Las lanzas coloradas, Conrado Nalé Roxlo.
Fuera de eso, la novela tiene una clara referencia al libro sagrado de los mayas, Popol Vuh, en el cual Asturias trabajó en su traducción. Las raíces de Latinoamérica, el saque de los europeos, el colonialismo, la tradición latinoamericana y el humor son algunos de los complementos de la narrativa.
Libro imperdible. -
Un libro único dónde hay una mezcla de dos mundos y así dos realidades. Tenemos al mundo convencional pero también al mundo del mito maya que se entrelazan. Así para leer este libro es importante dejarte llevar por la historia.
Un año más tarde vuelvo a leerlo y lo que me llama la atención es como no hay un protagonista en si. La novela está dirigido por fuerzas y elementos naturales, lo cual resulta en una experiencia de lectura diferente y a veces también frustrante. Sin embargo, este libro vuelve a agarrarme y llevarme a un mundo mítico que contiene una visión holística de la vida. -
Exceptional dream-like novel that tells a story across generations in Guatemala. Each chapter documents one character in the linked story, from stories of the Spanish colonial power to the natives. The actions and consequences of history are charted from one character to another; stories from one generation become legends or myths in the next, and the belief systems are intertwined with a history that is brilliantly told. Asturias weaves mythology into fiction to create a story that resonates today with environmental issues, despite being written in the 1940s. Brilliantly paced.
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Esta es una obra descomunal. Fue escrita por el premio nobel guatemalteco Miguel Angel Asturias. Es la semilla del realismo mágico, nos ilustra con una narrativa incansable como surge un mito, que le da forma a una leyenda. Es en verdad sorprendente e inagotable; No es una lectura fácil, no sigue una línea de tiempo lineal, es un despliegue de circunstancias que en su ruta de zig zag va rasgando la realidad para transformarla.
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I have the book and I am trying to read it, but it is old spanish. It is a challenge, but the few pages that I have read have been fantastical. I am into Magical Realism and what cannot be explain with some pseudo science answer. I am waiting a paper bag because I have hard covers book!
This books is a difficult reading. I have given up on it becuase of its spanish! -
Author Miguel Angel Asturias does for South American literature what William Faulkner did for North America. Asturias creates a colorful Picasso world, rich with the symbolism of a culture long persecuted and forgotten by Western society. After reading this novel I understand why Asturias won the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize for Literature.
