[{"id":46697,"date":"2026-09-16T20:47:33","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T02:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/?p=46697"},"modified":"2026-09-21T14:48:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T20:48:50","slug":"time-is-an-individual-experience-a-conversation-with-juan-gomez-barcena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/09\/time-is-an-individual-experience-a-conversation-with-juan-gomez-barcena\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTime is an individual experience\u201d: A Conversation with Juan G\u00f3mez B\u00e1rcena"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juan G\u00f3mez B\u00e1rcena (Santander, 1984), once a student of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, is a writer who \u201coffers fresh and unexpected perspectives on contemporary literature.\u201d He was awarded the Premio Tormenta al Mejor Autor Revelaci\u00f3n for his first book of short stories, <\/span><\/i>Los que duermen <\/span>(Salto de P\u00e1gina, 2012). He is the author of the novels <\/span><\/i>El cielo de Lima <\/span>(Salto de P\u00e1gina, 2014; Seix Barral, 2023), <\/span><\/i>Kanada <\/span>(Sexto Piso, 2017), and <\/span><\/i>Mapa de soledades <\/span>(Seix Barral, 2024<\/span><\/i>). <\/span>We spoke with the Cantabrian author about his work and approach to understanding literature following the publication of his latest novel, <\/span><\/i>Abril o nunca <\/span>(Seix Barral, 2026).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eduardo Su\u00e1rez Fern\u00e1ndez-Miranda: <\/b>In 2023, Seix Barral published <\/span>El cielo de Lima<\/span><\/i>, which was originally released by Salto de P\u00e1gina in 2014. Did you revise the text at all, or was it taken to the printer exactly as it was ten years ago?<\/span><\/p>\n

Juan G\u00f3mez B\u00e1rcena: <\/b>Besides a few minor corrections that readers wouldn\u2019t notice, the text is the same as it was when it was first published ten years ago. At first, I considered the possibility of including some improvements or even rewriting passages that no longer reflect the concerns that interest me today. Fortunately, I quickly understood that interfering with the text would be running the risk of erasing the whole book and rewriting it from scratch\u2014an act that would prove impossible, because I couldn\u2019t write a novel like <\/span>El cielo de Lima <\/span><\/i>today. That doesn\u2019t mean that I regret having ever published it. But I think books are fixed pictures that represent the different stages of the journey that brings us to being the type of writer we are today: in my opinion, going back would be unnatural, and maybe even parodic, like those pictures that circulate on social media of families that recreate their childhood photos decades later.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>El cielo de Lima <\/span><\/i>tells the story of a real literary hoax. In an attempt to secure the books of their idol, Juan Ram\u00f3n Jim\u00e9nez, Jos\u00e9 G\u00e1lvez Barrenechea and Carlos Rodr\u00edguez H\u00fcbner decide to write to him in the guise of a young woman named Georgina H\u00fcbner. How did you come to know this story? What led you to write a novel based on these events?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>The first time I heard about Georgina H\u00fcbner was in secondary school, when I wrote a paper about Juan Ram\u00f3n Jim\u00e9nez for a language arts class. I am positive that the story left a deep mark on me, because I never forgot it. Years later, I decided to write a short account of the story, which, much to my dismay, grew into a three-hundred-page novel. What fascinated me about the story was how it showed that a work of fiction, when it manages to trick the right people, can come to cause undoubtably real consequences. Juan Ram\u00f3n Jim\u00e9nez fell in love with a myth named Georgina H\u00fcbner, whom he never met, to the point that one could say she became more real to him than many of the flesh-and-blood women he knew during that same period.<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>In the novel, you include the poem \u201cCarta a Georgina H\u00fcbner en el cielo de Lima\u201d (\u201cElegy for Georgina H\u00fcbner\u201d)<\/span>. <\/span><\/i>In its final lines, J.R.J. laments: \u201cAnd if there is nowhere where our arms might meet \/ what stupid child, son of hate and pain, \/ created the world, playing with soap bubbles?\u201d These verses seem prophetic. Do you think Moguer\u2019s famous poet was aware of the trick?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>It seems that, sure enough, Juan Ram\u00f3n came to know the truth. He said as much with a few words that I find truly beautiful, which largely tie into the idea that the boundaries between reality and illusion are blurrier than they seem: \u201cWhatever the case, I have loved Georgina H\u00fcbner. She filled an empty period of my life and existed for me as if she had always actually existed. So, thank you to whomever may have invented her.\u201d But what is most interesting is that he didn\u2019t know the truth until long after he had published the poem. That is, his mention of a stupid child playing with soap bubbles came many years prior to the discovery that a stupid child\u2014two, in fact\u2014had been pulling his leg. I like to think that, through his poetic self, which is far more perceptive than his biographical self, he was in some way aware that something didn\u2019t sit right with the character of Georgina H\u00fcbner\u2014that perhaps she was too perfectly constructed to be real.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>Lo dem\u00e1s es aire<\/span><\/i> (Seix Barral, 2022) is a sort of time machine. It is set in a small Cantabrian village, To\u00f1anes, whose inhabitants pass through the centuries. What was your intention in writing this novel? Is it trying to pay tribute to the region?<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>My intention wasn\u2019t so much to honor a specific region as it was to make the reader aware of the overwhelming weight of history. To this end, I decided to focus on a very specific point in space, the smallest possible, and to propose a reading that isn\u2019t chronological, but rather a simultaneous reading of all its layers of time. For this specific point in space to be the small village of To\u00f1anes is important to me, not necessarily to the readers. I didn\u2019t intend to honor Cantabria, nor much less praise life in the region\u2019s villages, which, depending on the case, can be as negative as it is positive. The idea was for readers, after seeing my love for and interest in To\u00f1anes, to establish their own connections with spaces that are as important to them as To\u00f1anes is to me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M: <\/b>I imagine writing this book required some historical research beforehand. What kinds of sources did you draw on?<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>The documentation process stretched intermittently over more than twenty years, becoming a sort of pastime or sudoku that I would fill in during my free time. It took a long time for me to realize that all this material would someday turn into the foundations of a novel. I handled a massive number of written sources: wills, lawsuits, maps, land surveys, old account books, newspapers on microfilm. However, the most useful information came from parish records, which can be considered the only truly democratic documents from our past. Because under the Ancien R\u00e9gime only those who had something to leave to their descendants made wills, and only those with something to gain or lose went to court\u2014almost always men of a certain social rank\u2014but everyone, rich and poor, men and women, the elderly and children, were born and died at some point, and the parish priests strived to bear witness to all their lives equally.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But I did not just consult written sources: my interviews with neighbors in To\u00f1anes were also decisive in learning about our collective memory, and, about how myths, while often less precise than written documents, reveal a kind of truth that written records can never quite capture.<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>In the novel, we find ourselves simultaneously in different years and different centuries. You seem to use cinematic techniques to achieve this effect. Why did you choose this structure for <\/span>Lo dem\u00e1s es aire<\/span><\/i>?<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>We tend to explain the history of a place or a person linearly or chronologically, but this is just one of the many ways that we can organize time. Sometimes we can understand history better when we play with its chronology, connecting episodes that are far apart chronologically but can be interpreted together. This is what I proposed with <\/span>Lo dem\u00e1s es aire<\/span><\/i>: that this chronological disorder is far from arbitrary; it could trace a larger argument that allows us to understand the past in alternate ways. To achieve this, I turned to film montage techniques, which helped me string together very different periods and contexts in a fluid and dynamic way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>Los que duermen <\/span><\/i>(Salto de P\u00e1gina, 2012; Sexto Piso, 2019) was your first book of short stories. Do you think it is still more difficult to publish a collection of short stories than a novel?<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.:<\/b> I do, or at least that has been my experience with several publishers: short story collections are still harder to sell and especially harder to sell abroad. When I started to publish over a decade ago, I often heard that the short story would end up gaining more traction in the market\u2014its short length and fragmentary character seemed like the perfect genre to accompany us in our ever more fast-paced and frenetic lives. I still sometimes hear similar comments. However, I am inclined to believe the exact opposite: that in a time when we have increasingly less time to read and smaller attention spans, the public demands novels that create a lasting narrative world that we can return to every time we sit down to read.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, this doesn\u2019t mean there aren\u2019t notable exceptions. A good example comes from my own home: my partner, Marta Jim\u00e9nez Serrano. Last year, she published a short story collection\u2014<\/span>No todo el mundo<\/span><\/i>\u2014which has achieved a truly extraordinary number of readers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>The English translation of <\/span>Ni siquiera los muertos \/ Not Even the Dead<\/span><\/i> (Sexto Piso, 2020; Open Letter, 2023) was included on the <\/span>New York Times Book Review<\/span><\/i>\u2019s list of one hundred best books published in the United States. What does this mention on the list mean to you?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>To start, it was a huge surprise. When <\/span>Ni siquiera los muertos<\/span><\/i> was published in Spain, it was a very unfortunate release date\u2014it arrived in bookstores in March 2020, just when the pandemic lockdown began. There were few media outlets that chose it as one of the year\u2019s best. The last thing I expected was for a market like the American one\u2014which is far larger and, in general, not very open to literature in translation\u2014to be the one to do it. Also, the joy has been double, as the novel is partially set in the United States. I am happy that some critics and readers found that the book had something interesting to say about their country.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>In your novel <\/span>Kanada<\/span><\/i> (Sexto Piso, 2017), you address World War II from the perspective of those who returned from the conflict: the survivors. What can you tell us about this book?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.:<\/b> In 2010, I received a grant to work at the Spanish Embassy in Budapest. There, I moved into an apartment in the Jewish ghetto, where you could still see bullet marks in the walls. I asked myself, to no avail, which Jewish family had lived in that house: whether its inhabitants had survived the Holocaust, and if so, what kind of life they had when they came home. Out of these questions came <\/span>Kanada<\/span><\/i>. The novel recounts the experience of an Auschwitz survivor suffering from a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder, who, upon returning to the city, decides to never leave his house\u2014symbolically recreating the confinement he suffered in the concentration camp.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>Mapa de soledades <\/span><\/i>(Seix Barral, 2024) is a kind of essay in which you reflect on the experience of loneliness. It is a sort of guide in which several characters appear whose loneliness seems like an inherent part of their lives. How did this book come about?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>Writing <\/span>Lo dem\u00e1s es aire<\/span><\/i> was very demanding due to the wide historical scope of its plot and the number of topics I felt compelled to put into play. One could say that <\/span>Mapa de soledades <\/span><\/i>was the product of that exhaustion. I felt that if I were to throw myself into writing another novel, I would rely on similar narrative techniques, and something that defines me is a constant search for new techniques. So writing an essay was my way of distancing myself from familiar territory and forcing myself to explore new narrative paths without the risk of repeating myself or being redundant.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>Abril o nunca <\/span><\/i>(Seix Barral, 2026) is a novel in which the protagonist desperately wants to return to an important moment in their life through a \u201ctrip through time.\u201d Was it difficult to create a story with an element of the fantastic without abandoning a strong component of plausibility? Are parenthood and family relationships fundamental themes in the novel?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>I think you have touched on the trickiest aspect of the novel, just as I had conceived it: how to make it so that a novel moves within the confines of realism, even flirting with social realism, while venturing into the murky territory of the fantastic. The most complicated part was making it believable for the reader that a completely normal person ends up\u2014thanks to some Internet searches and a traumatic loss\u2014convinced that time travel is possible. As for parent-child relationships, there have in fact been plenty of readers and critics who have called out their prominence in the novel, but I must confess that I never conceived of it as a book about family or parenthood. That choice was driven by another goal: to show how we inhabit not just one time, but many times\u2014that is, that time, beyond its physical magnitude, is an individual experience\u2014and how grief can drive us to feel that our faith in linear time is unraveling.<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>John1419 is a netizen who follows Daniel in his attempt to \u201creturn\u201d to the past. I\u2019m reminded of John Titor\u2014another netizen who travels through time\u2014from <\/span>Steins;Gate. <\/span><\/i>I\u2019m not sure if you are familiar with this manga or anime, or if it influenced you at all when creating this character.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>I must confess that I\u2019m unfamiliar with the reference, but you have piqued my interest: I need to read it! But it doesn\u2019t surprise me that there are certain connections between the two characters: in science fiction, we often see the role of the initiatory guide, a sort of Virgil or Morpheus from <\/span>The Matrix<\/span><\/i>, who outlines the rules of the fantastic world we are about to step into.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>Bajo treinta <\/span><\/i>(Salto de P\u00e1gina, 2013) is an anthology of short stories in which you present the work of fourteen writers under the age of thirty. What criteria did you follow to make this selection? What use may a book like this and <\/span>Bogot\u00e139 <\/span><\/i>have for readers and publishing houses?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>My criteria were strictly based on quality, which of course does not suggest that I as an anthologist lack certain biases or blind spots. Over the years, I think the selection has shown more than a few successful predictions. I am happy to have identified authors who have continued writing high-quality, and highly recognized, works, like Cristina Morales, V\u00edctor Balcells, Aixa de la Cruz, and Guillermo Aguirre, to name a few. Of course, the book also lacks some key figures: in my defense, I must say that a few members of this generation who emerged as brilliant writers in the following years hadn\u2019t yet published their first books when the anthology was released.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These lists are useful in that they establish a conversation about today\u2019s literature, all while providing us with a quick way to explore new narrative proposals. For me as a reader, the 2010 Granta anthology was crucial\u2014it was through this book that I was first exposed to some extraordinary writers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>You received a grant from the Fundaci\u00f3n Antonio Gala para J\u00f3venes Creadore<\/span>s. <\/span><\/i>Can you tell us a bit about that experience?<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>It was a very important experience in my writing career because I received it at a pivotal time. I had just finished my degree and my parents, understandably, were worried about my job stability, encouraging me to study something else. But I sensed that if I were to set aside my dream of publishing a book for too long, I would never be able to become a professional writer. When I received the grant from the Fundaci\u00f3n Antonio Gala, I breathed a sigh of relief, because it gave me the perfect cover: the opportunity to continue writing without guilt, now with the backing of a prestigious institution. I later received several other grants and residencies, but none came at such an opportune moment as that one. Also, at the Fundaci\u00f3n Antonio Gala, I met several colleagues and friends who exposed me to other artistic disciplines. It is only thanks to their friendship and influence that I have been able to become the kind of writer and person I am today.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>You teach creative writing, an activity to which many writers devote themselves. Could you tell us a little about your workshops?<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>My workshops have a maximum of thirteen students, almost always from very diverse backgrounds and interests. They all have only one thing in common: they are committed to writing a long-term project, be it a novel, a book of short stories, or a work of nonfiction. The students are generally of very different ages and levels, and that\u2019s a good thing: the students who are more experienced in writing become a sort of role model for the less experienced ones, while these students provide their counterparts with an extremely valuable reference\u2014an example of how their texts may be interpreted by the average reader. My role is to act as a tutor who guides each student as they plan and develop their projects, and I also teach some theoretical concepts when necessary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E.S.F-M.: <\/b>To conclude, we would like to know if you are working on any new literary projects.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.G.B.: <\/b>I am working on something a lot more modest than a project. It\u2019s barely more than a glimmer, a happy idea\u2014at least that\u2019s what I hope\u2014that has spent many years running through my head: the dream of writing an encyclopedic novel that gathers the history of value and how it has transformed\u2014communal property, bartering, money, cryptocurrency\u2014over the course of human history.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Iyan Smith Williams<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo: Spanish writer Juan G\u00f3mez B\u00e1rcena.<\/span><\/h6>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juan G\u00f3mez B\u00e1rcena (Santander, 1984), once a student of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, is a writer who \u201coffers fresh and unexpected perspectives on contemporary literature.\u201d He was awarded the Premio Tormenta al Mejor Autor Revelaci\u00f3n for his first book of short stories, Los que duermen (Salto de P\u00e1gina, 2012). He is the author of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":46760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2878],"tags":[5739],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[5590],"lal_author":[5123],"class_list":["post-46697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-issue-39","translator-iyan-smith-williams","lal_author-eduardo-suarez-fernandez-miranda"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46697"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47142,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46697\/revisions\/47142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46697"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=46697"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=46697"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=46697"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=46697"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=46697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":46689,"date":"2026-09-16T20:46:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T02:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/?p=46689"},"modified":"2026-09-21T14:48:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T20:48:36","slug":"a-community-to-survive-catastrophe-a-conversation-with-andrea-chapela-about-todos-los-fines-del-mundo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/09\/a-community-to-survive-catastrophe-a-conversation-with-andrea-chapela-about-todos-los-fines-del-mundo\/","title":{"rendered":"A Community to Survive Catastrophe: A Conversation with Andrea Chapela about Todos los fines del mundo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mexican author Andrea Chapela has received awards that confirm her status as one of Latin America\u2019s most interesting contemporary writers. A recipient of the Premio Nacional de Ensayo Joven Jos\u00e9 Luis Mart\u00ednez (2019) and the Premio Nacional de Literatura Juan Jos\u00e9 Arreola (2020), and included in Granta\u2019s prestigious list of the best young Spanish-language novelists in 2021<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Chapela now gives us <\/span><\/i>Todos los fines del mundo <\/span>(Penguin Random House<\/span><\/i>)<\/span>, a hybrid novel that mixes eras, spaces,<\/span><\/i> ambiguous and complicated loves, natural disasters, and futures that promise little.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s protagonist, Angelica, writes to share her story and talk about the past. Writing becomes an act of faith, a way of holding on to Manu and Susana, with whom she has built a relationship full of ambiguities, where love and friendship mix, and questions are raised rather than answered with certainty. In the novel, the three spend their days together in Madrid (a city located in one of the \u201cPa\u00edses del Bienestar\u201d), thrust into the unknown when a climate crisis brings days that reach up to 55\u00b0 C. They survive and build their own small community, so as not to die of sadness, among rechargeable batteries and portable speakers, reading, talking, and dancing, despite the hostile world outside, although they know that any vision of the future is a mere pantomime.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

On a day like any other, Angelica asks herself whom she would spend the inevitable end of the world with, now that environmental collapse is imminent. She has been forced to return to her native Mexico to seek refuge in a remote town with a new community and a present where Manu and Susana are only a memory. She survives with others and wants to believe, together with them, that there is a tomorrow, while at the same time she feels that, when talking about the past, it\u2019s a fiction that she has invented. At the end, she tells us: \u201cYou should never trust the narrator.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Natalia Consuegra: <\/b>Your novel raises many questions about intimate relationships, love, and friendship: \u201cWhat do we mean when we say, \u2018It was nothing\u2019? Do you think you would fall in love all over again with the people you loved before? How much of desire comes from within, and how much is learned? Can you truly love without thinking about the body?\u201d Do you also ask yourself these questions? Have you been able to answer them?<\/span><\/p>\n

Andrea Chapela: <\/b>Yes, I ask myself those questions. In fact, even though the book isn\u2019t autofiction, the book\u2019s central questions are my own, and I think that writing it brought me to an answer that feels sufficient for the stage of life I\u2019m in now: what relationships mean to me, which relationships make me happy, and what role desire and the body play in them. But above all, I think I came to the conclusion that personal relationships are exactly that: deeply personal. That our feelings also depend on where we are in our lives. That we need to let ourselves grow and change our minds, that things that happen to us now will probably be different in a few years, that we will probably fall in love with people we had never expected; and I like the idea of keeping this possibility open. When I started writing this book, I thought the way I felt and moved through the world, especially when it came to these themes, was wrong because I didn’t fit the mold. Now I realize that, instead, I need to open up my worldview so what I am feeling can truly come in, and I realize there is nothing inherently wrong with what I feel. In this sense, writing, publishing, and talking about this book has given me a lot of peace.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>How do you think people will experience cataclysms, climate collapses, and environmental disasters in light of their relationships, and vice versa?<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.: <\/b>Intuitively, when I began writing this book, I thought there was some connection between the idea of the end of the world and relationships. At first, it was just intuition, a sense that the end of the world maximized a feeling of nostalgia, but this changed during the pandemic. For example, the issue of a lack of hugs, the distance between people, finding yourself after a cataclysm with a group of people who help you survive\u2014but these aren\u2019t the most important people in your life, the people who truly understand you and to whom you feel closest. For me, this is also a topic that emerged from the pandemic. In my view, catastrophes remind us how essential it is to have a community close by and how, much more than things or material goods, it is people who save your life. In this sense, I believe affective relationships are pivotal; they help us to endure catastrophes, to understand them. We have already settled in hostile environments, and I feel that the answer to trying to live in one is for people to stay close and care for one another. <\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>Let\u2019s focus on those two \u201cforms\u201d of community in the future: the smaller one (Manu, Susana, and Angelica before the collapse) and the one after, those one hundred seventeen people living in the town. How do you imagine those communities beyond the novel?<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.: <\/b>I wanted to explore, on the one hand, these kinds of communities where people are deliberately chosen and how they work. Often, the answer is that these kinds of things function primarily in isolation, where there isn\u2019t an external danger. That small community functions, in part, due to the magic of science fiction: they have everything they need, but at the same time, are very isolated and this allows them to not be too worried about the outside world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>Something similar happens with Manu, Susana, and Angelica, who also take on another sort of isolation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.:<\/b> Yes, and as someone who lives in Mexico City, I think sometimes our communities and surroundings are so vast that it seems impossible to embrace it all and everything that comes with it. Perhaps I\u2019m beginning to think from the small scale outward. I think the novel doesn\u2019t spend enough time on this idea of future communities, but I wanted to explore two things: first, how the way in which we love one another on a microscale is replicated at the macroscale; I believe without a doubt that this is true. What\u2019s true is that we have continued reproducing the model of a nuclear family as many small nuclear families living together amongst one another, and there need to be other forms of community. Here we break from that idea of the nuclear family with Manu, Susana, and Angelica, and we also break from the notion of the separated family, as you have a community in which everyone depends on one another. The second thing is to acknowledge that what one person does affects everybody, that the resources we have are all that we have. For me, this can be easily scaled up to what might be the importance of these communities in the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>How do you interpret the relationship between climate change and migration policies today?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.: <\/b>We are already starting to see what has come to be known as \u201cclimate migration\u201d<\/span> or \u201cclimate-driven immigration,\u201d and I think this is a big issue. The novel touches on it in passing because it is focused on other things; it touches more on the idea that, when faced with a more hostile world, which, in many ways, is the product of climate change, there is much more insecurity and much less certainty in predicting the future. I think it has always been normal for countries to close themselves off when faced with these kinds of things and to try and maintain the status quo<\/span> as much as possible. So restrictive immigration policies don\u2019t surprise me, but of course, I am thinking about this after Trump\u2019s intervention in Venezuela and at a political moment very different from when I was writing the novel, where climate change is also going to be a war for resources, which will bring with it human displacement, among other things. I think migratory policies will become even harsher with this type of migration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>In your narrative work, you always raise a question about time\u2014here, you raise it through theater, through love, and through the climate disaster. How do those two central moments of the novel shape different perspectives on time?<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.: <\/b>The concept of time fascinates me, and it\u2019s true that the novel addresses a question about it, about how we experience it and about how emotions alter it, and also about how the world itself changes it. The first section is governed by memory, and it plays a lot with the come-and-go of \u201cI\u2019m recounting this year, but I move back and forth through it, weaving the strands together,\u201d trying to preserve the way memory experiences time. It is very different from the way we think of time in the present; when we remember, we compress time; things aren\u2019t necessarily in chronological order, and there are other organizing principles shaping the narrative.<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>The second part views time very differently.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.: <\/b>\u2026because it\u2019s as though time itself were frozen, along with the fact that a new sense of time takes hold. I was very interested in the idea that there is a clear concept of time\u2014day and night\u2014but then there is a concept of time that we\u2019ve agreed upon and invented\u2014clocks and calendars\u2014and we could create another one that looks at time in a different way. That also fascinates me. Somehow, in this second part, that invented time no longer exists; it\u2019s a more frozen time, not by love or by memory, but by the very same passage of time, which is moving slower. I also think it is a world where, because everything is more disconnected and there is no internet, and thus, no modes of communication, they would return to a more primordial, slower kind of time, a different one. I am very interested in how we experience and remember time. I think the novel tries to capture that experience. In fact, I was often worried that the second part was too slow, and I often wrestled with how to make it work despite that slowness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>Tell us a bit about the idea of our need to tell stories, to keep records, to document everything that happens to us, to capture it within a story\u2014like what Angelica does with her diary, for example.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.: <\/b>In the novel, there are three major narrative layers: the story of her year in Madrid, the diary that she keeps during the second part, and then the surprise that everything, in fact, is a novel. For me, everything comes from thinking about how the act of writing helps us think about and organize reality; it forces us to put things in chronological order, to tell one thing before another. It is one of the clearest ways we have of communicating with the future and learning about the past. For me, this book, as much as it focuses on collapse and important life relationships, is also about the need to capture things in narrative, to tell and share them, and how this act of sharing something also helps create those relationships.<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.:<\/b> It\u2019s one way of dealing with what has happened to us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.: <\/b>The fact is that sometimes remembering isn\u2019t enough. Until we do something with what we remember, it doesn\u2019t become completely real. Angelica often doubts her own version of events; she always says that perhaps she is not presenting them as they were, and for me, it\u2019s important to leave those uncertainties visible in this kind of writing: the possibility that there are other versions I don\u2019t know, that events may have unfolded differently, and the uncertainty that arises when we\u2019re trapped within our own perspective. Sometimes it is difficult to step outside of our own point of view even when we are trying to be faithful to what has happened.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>In this sense, do you agree with Manu that words aren\u2019t enough and that the few we have end up pigeonholing our perspectives?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.: <\/b>This is a question that I probably first discovered and have been asking myself since my essay <\/span>Grados de miop\u00eda, <\/span><\/i>where I first confronted the idea that language is less reliable and more malleable than I had once thought. The same thing happens in my book of short stories <\/span>Ansibles, perfiladores y otras m\u00e1quinas de ingenio, <\/span><\/i>a book about trying to communicate and the ways in which this can prove problematic, especially when technology is part of the equation. In a way, in <\/span>Todos los fines del mundo<\/span><\/i>, I return to this idea from another place: the issue that language is all we have for expressing ourselves, and in that sense it\u2019s marvelous, but at the same time never enough. I think it is in that tension\u2014between language being all we have and yet not being enough\u2014that poetry, literature, and the need for more words to express what happens inside us emerge. I don\u2019t know if I feel pigeonholed by language; I think choosing literature as a profession has led me to think\u2014perhaps mistakenly\u2014that I have greater control over language than most people. What I am certain of is that I am fascinated by those moments where language reaches its limits.<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>What was the most complicated part of the exercise of autobiographical writing?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.:<\/b> There were many complicated parts. This novel made me feel insecure, not because of the narrated events, nor the possible interpretation of closeness between Angelica and me, but because it presents a version of my ideas and questions about the world. It scared me a bit, made me feel embarrassed and a little ashamed, so this made the exercise more difficult. I wrote this novel over five years and Angelica\u2019s voice became easier to find and to connect with over time, but it was hard to find all of the different ways to express that voice, to make her reflect on the things I wanted to reflect on. Above all, there was the worry about what others may think about me, not Angelica, when they read it. That was always there and was hard; there was a lot of noise around me and expectations I had for myself as I wrote. That was one of the biggest challenges.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

N.C.: <\/b>What questions about writing did working on <\/span>Todos los fines del mundo<\/span><\/i> allow you to explore?<\/span><\/p>\n

A.C.: <\/b>I thought a lot about the novel as a form; about different ways they are made, like more fragmented novels, and how each part can be a new formal experiment. I thought a lot about how to create different voices. For me, there was also the somewhat architectural exercise of making a structure work, of those twists, the gamble of this kind of narrative structure where each part recontextualizes the one before it, reshaping the rules of the game. I wanted to know if I could still write another novel. This book made me fall back in love with the novel itself and its endless possibilities; it also made me ask a lot of questions about fiction, climate change, and climate fiction. While many of them remain unanswered, I feel that those questions are guiding where I\u2019m headed now. While with this novel I started to explore the possibilities of how to write about climate change, about the future, and about these collapses, I realized when I finished it that there was a thread I hadn\u2019t followed all the way through and needed to keep pulling. This book also committed me to a particular kind of fiction\u2014one I want to continue pursuing in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Iyan Smith Williams<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo: Mexican writer Andrea Chapela by Alv\u00e1n Prado.<\/span><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mexican author Andrea Chapela has received awards that confirm her status as one of Latin America\u2019s most interesting contemporary writers. A recipient of the Premio Nacional de Ensayo Joven Jos\u00e9 Luis Mart\u00ednez (2019) and the Premio Nacional de Literatura Juan Jos\u00e9 Arreola (2020), and included in Granta\u2019s prestigious list of the best young Spanish-language novelists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":46761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2878],"tags":[5739],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[5590],"lal_author":[4939],"class_list":["post-46689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-issue-39","translator-iyan-smith-williams","lal_author-natalia-consuegra-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46689"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47136,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46689\/revisions\/47136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46689"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=46689"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=46689"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=46689"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=46689"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=46689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":47078,"date":"2026-09-16T20:44:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T02:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/?p=47078"},"modified":"2026-09-21T13:43:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T19:43:13","slug":"__trashed-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/09\/__trashed-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Cinco poemas biling\u00fces de Robert Southwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Circumsision<\/b><\/p>\n

The head is launc\u2019t to worke the bodies cure
\n<\/span>With angring salve it smartes to heale our wounde
\n<\/span>To faltlesse sonne from all offences pure
\n<\/span>The falty vassalls scourges do redounde
\nThe judge is cast the guilty to acquite
\nThe sonne defac\u2019d to lend the starre his light
\n<\/span>The veyne of life distilleth droppes of grace
\n<\/span>Our rock gives yssue to an heavenly springe
\n<\/span>Teares from his eyes blood runes from wounded place
\n<\/span>Which showers to heaven of joy a harvest bringe
\n<\/span>This sacred deaw lett Angells gather upp
\n<\/span>Such daynty droppes best fitt their nectared cupp.
\n<\/span>With weeping eyes his mother reu\u2019d his smart
\n<\/span>If bloode from him, teares rann from her as fast
\n<\/span>The knife that cutt his fleshe did perce her hart
\n<\/span>The payne that Jesus felt did Marye tast
\n<\/span>His life and hers hunge by one fatall twiste
\n<\/span>Noe blowe that hitt the sonne the mother miste.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

La circuncisi\u00f3n<\/b><\/p>\n

La cabeza fue sajada para lograr la cura del cuerpo;
\n<\/span>Con irritante b\u00e1lsamo, arde para sanar nuestra herida.
\n<\/span>Al Hijo inocente, puro de toda mancha,
\n<\/span>Los malvados vasallos le pagan con latigazos.
\n<\/span>El Juez es condenado para absolver al culpable;
\n<\/span>El Hijo desfigurado, para otorgarle a la estrella su luz.
\n<\/span>La vena de la vida destila gotas de gracia;
\n<\/span>Nuestra roca genera una fuente celestial.
\n<\/span>L\u00e1grimas fluyen de sus ojos, sangre desde el lugar herido;
\n<\/span>Estas lluvias llevan una cosecha de alegr\u00eda al cielo.
\n<\/span>Que los \u00e1ngeles recojan este sagrado roc\u00edo;
\n<\/span>Unas gotas tan delicadas se ajustan \u00f3ptimamente a su copa de n\u00e9ctar.
\n<\/span>Con ojos llorosos su madre lament\u00f3 su escozor;
\n<\/span>Si a \u00c9l le corr\u00eda la sangre, las l\u00e1grimas a ella igual de r\u00e1pido.
\n<\/span>El cuchillo que cort\u00f3 su carne atraves\u00f3 el coraz\u00f3n de ella;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The burning Babe<\/b><\/p>\n

As I in hoary Winters night stoode shyveringe in the snowe
\n<\/span>Surpris\u2019d I was with sodayne heat, which made my hart to glowe
\n<\/span>And lifting upp a fearefull eye to vewe what fire was nere
\n<\/span>A pretty babe all burninge bright did in the ayre appeare
\n<\/span>Who scorched with excessive heate such floodes of teares did shedd
\n<\/span>As though his floodes should quench his flames, which with his teares were fedd
\n<\/span>Alas quoth he but newly borne in fiery heates I frye
\n<\/span>Yet none approach to warme their hartes or feele my fire but I
\n<\/span>My faultles brest the furnace is the fuell woundinge thornes
\n<\/span>Love is the fire and sighs the smoke the ashes shame and scornes
\n<\/span>The fewell Justice layeth on and Mercy blowes the coales
\n<\/span>The metall in this furnace wrought are mens defiled soules
\n<\/span>For which as nowe on fire I am to worke them to their good
\n<\/span>So will I melt into a bath to washe them in my bloode.
\n<\/span>With this he vanisht out of sight and swiftly shronke awaye
\n<\/span>And straight I called unto mynde, that it was Christmas daye.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o ardiente<\/b><\/p>\n

Cuando estaba tiritando, de pie en la nieve en una blanca noche de invierno,
\n<\/span>Me sorprendi\u00f3 un repentino calor que hizo que mi coraz\u00f3n se iluminara
\n<\/span>Y elevando una temerosa mirada para ver qu\u00e9 fuego habr\u00eda cerca,
\n<\/span>Apareci\u00f3 en el aire, brillando con todo su ardor, un bello Ni\u00f1o,
\n<\/span>Que abrasado con excesivo calor derram\u00f3 tales diluvios de l\u00e1grimas,
\n<\/span>Como si sus diluvios debieran extinguir sus llamas, que de sus l\u00e1grimas se alimentaban.
\n<\/span>\u201c\u00a1Ay!\u201d, dijo, \u201creci\u00e9n nacido en fieros calores me abraso,
\n<\/span>Pero nadie se acerca a entibiar su coraz\u00f3n o sentir su fuego, sino yo.
\n<\/span>Mi inocente pecho es la fragua; el combustible, las hirientes espinas;
\n<\/span>El amor es el fuego y el humo son los suspiros; las cenizas, la verg\u00fcenza y el desd\u00e9n.
\n<\/span>La justicia pone el combustible y la misericordia aviva las brasas.
\n<\/span>El metal forjado en esta fragua son las almas corrompidas de los hombres,
\n<\/span>Por quienes como ahora estoy ardiendo para trabajarlos por su bien,
\n<\/span>As\u00ed me fundir\u00e9 en un ba\u00f1o para lavarlos en mi sangre\u201d.
\n<\/span>Con esto mengu\u00f3 a ojos vistas y r\u00e1pidamente se consumi\u00f3
\n<\/span>Y en seguida record\u00e9 que era el d\u00eda de Navidad.
\n<\/span>El dolor que Jes\u00fas sinti\u00f3, Mar\u00eda lo sufri\u00f3.
\n<\/span>Su vida y la de ella pend\u00edan de una fatal rama;
\n<\/span>Ning\u00fan golpe dado al Hijo dej\u00f3 de alcanzar a la madre.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

New Prince, new pompe<\/b><\/p>\n

Behold a sely tender babe
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In freesing Winter nighte
\n<\/span>In homely manger trembling lyes
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Alas a pitteous sighte
\n<\/span>The Inns are full no man will yeld
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 This little Pilgrime Bedd
\n<\/span>But forc\u2019d he is with sely beasts
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In Crib to shroude his headd.
\n<\/span>Despise not him for lyinge there
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 First what he is enquire
\n<\/span>An orient pearle is often founde
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In depth of dirty mire
\n<\/span>Waye not his Crib, his wooden dishe
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nor beasts that by him feede
\n<\/span>Way not his mothers poore attire
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nor Josephs simple weede
\n<\/span>This stable is a Princes Courte
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The Cribb his chaire of state
\n<\/span>The beastes are parcell of his pompe
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The wooden dishe his plate
\n<\/span>The persons in that poore attire
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 His royall livories weare
\n<\/span>The prince himselfe is come from heaven
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 This pompe is prized there
\n<\/span>With joy approach O Christian wighte
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Do homage to thy Kinge
\n<\/span>And highly prise this humble pompe
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Which he from heaven doth bringe<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nuevo pr\u00edncipe, nueva pompa<\/b><\/p>\n

Mira, un indefenso y tierno Beb\u00e9
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 En una g\u00e9lida noche de invierno.
\n<\/span>Yace tiritando en un vulgar pesebre.
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a1Ay!, qu\u00e9 lastimoso espect\u00e1culo.
\n<\/span>Las posadas est\u00e1n llenas, nadie quiere cederle
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Una cama a este peque\u00f1o Peregrino,
\n<\/span>Sino que entre nimios animales est\u00e1 obligado
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 A cubrirse la cabeza en el pesebre.
\n<\/span>No lo menosprecies por yacer ah\u00ed.
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Primero pregunta qui\u00e9n es.
\n<\/span>Una perla de oriente a menudo se encuentra
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 En lo profundo de un sucio lodazal.
\n<\/span>No eval\u00faes su pesebre, su cuenco de madera,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Ni los animales que comen junto a \u00c9l.
\n<\/span>No eval\u00faes el pobre vestido de su madre,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Ni la humilde ropa de Jos\u00e9.
\n<\/span>Este establo es la corte de un rey;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 El pesebre es su trono real.
\n<\/span>Los animales son parte de su pompa;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 El cuenco de madera es su vajilla de plata.
\n<\/span>Las personas con esa pobre vestimenta
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Lucen sus libreas reales.
\n<\/span>El Monarca mismo ha venido del cielo.
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 All\u00ed se aprecia esta pompa.
\n<\/span>Ac\u00e9rcate exultante, oh, criatura cristiana.
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Rinde homenaje a tu Rey
\n<\/span>Y valora en mucho esta humilde pompa
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Que \u00c9l trae del cielo.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Saint Peters Complaynt (Selection)<\/b><\/p>\n

Deare eie that daynest to let fall a looke,
\n<\/span>On these sad memories of Peters plaintes:
\n<\/span>Muse not to see some mud in cleerest brooke,
\n<\/span>They once were brittle mould, that now are Saintes.
\n<\/span>Their weakenesse is no warrant to offend:
\n<\/span>Learne by their faultes, what in thine owne to mend.<\/p>\n

(\u201cThe Author to the Reader,\u201d vv. 1-6)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

I stayed, yet did my staying farthest part:
\n<\/span>I liv\u2019d; but so, that saving life, I lost it:
\n<\/span>Daunger I shund, but to my sorer smart:
\n<\/span>I gayned nought, but deeper domage crost it.
\n<\/span>What daunger, distance, death is worse then this:
\n<\/span>That runnes from God, and spoyles his soule of blisse?<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv. 223-228)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

You flames devine that sparkle out your heats,
\n<\/span>And kindle pleasing fires in mortall hearts:
\nYou nectared Aumbryes of soule feeding meats,
\n<\/span>You graceful quivers of loves dearest darts:
\n<\/span>You did vouchsafe to warme, to wound, to feast:
\n<\/span>My cold, my stony, my now famishde breast.<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv. 349-354)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

My eye, reades mournefull lessons to my hart,
\n<\/span>My hart, doth to my thought the griefes expound,
\n<\/span>My thought, the same doth to my tongue impart,
\n<\/span>My tounge, the message in the eares doth sound.
\n<\/span>My eares, backe to my hart their sorrowes send:
\n<\/span>Thus circkling griefes runne round without an end.<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv. 673-678)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sleepe, deathes allye: oblivion of teares:
\n<\/span>Silence of passions: balme of angry sore:
\n<\/span>Suspence of loves: securitie of feares:
\n<\/span>Wrathes lenitive: hartes ease: storme calmest shore:
\n<\/span>Senses and soules reprivall from all cumbers:
\n<\/span>Benumming sence of ill, with quiet slumbers.<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv. 721-726)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

With mildenesse, <\/span>Jesu<\/span><\/i>, measure my offence:
\n<\/span>Let true remorse thy due revenge abate:
\n<\/span>Let teares appease when trespasse doth incense:
\n<\/span>Let pittie temper thy deserved hate.
\n<\/span>Let grace forgive, let love forget my fall:
\n<\/span>With feare I crave, with hope I humbly call.<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv.781-786)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Saint Peters Complaynt (Selecci\u00f3n)<\/b><\/p>\n

Amado ojo que te dignas posar una mirada,
\n<\/span>Sobre estos tristes recuerdos de los lamentos de Pedro,
\n<\/span>No te asombres al ver algo de barro en el arroyo m\u00e1s cristalino;
\n<\/span>Fueron moho quebradizo los que ahora son Santos.
\n<\/span>Su debilidad no es excusa para ofender;
\n<\/span>Aprende de sus faltas lo que en las tuyas debes enmendar.<\/span><\/p>\n

(\u201cDel autor al lector\u201d, vv. 1-6)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Me qued\u00e9, pero al quedarme, m\u00e1s lejos part\u00ed;
\n<\/span>Viv\u00ed, pero de tal modo que, al salvar la vida, la perd\u00ed.
\n<\/span>Evad\u00ed el peligro, pero para mayor desgracia.
\n<\/span>Nada gan\u00e9, salvo el da\u00f1o m\u00e1s profundo que me alcanz\u00f3.
\n<\/span>\u00bfQu\u00e9 peligro, distancia o muerte es peor que esto:
\n<\/span>Huir de Dios y privar mi alma de su dicha?<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv. 223-228)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ustedes, llamas divinas que destellan sus calores,
\n<\/span>Y encienden fuegos placenteros en corazones mortales;
\n<\/span>Ustedes, alacenas de n\u00e9ctar de alimentos del alma,
\n<\/span>Ustedes, gr\u00e1ciles aljabas de los m\u00e1s queridos dardos del amor:
\n<\/span>Se dignaron calentar, herir y deleitar
\n<\/span>Mi fr\u00edo, mi p\u00e9treo, mi ahora fam\u00e9lico pecho.<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv. 349-354)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mi ojo lee lecciones de duelo para mi coraz\u00f3n,
\n<\/span>Mi coraz\u00f3n expone las penas a mi pensamiento,
\n<\/span>Mi pensamiento lo mismo transmite a mi lengua,
\n<\/span>Mi lengua lleva el mensaje a los o\u00eddos,
\n<\/span>Mis o\u00eddos devuelven las penas a mi coraz\u00f3n;
\n<\/span>As\u00ed, las penas circulares giran sin fin.<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv. 673-678)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sue\u00f1o, aliado de la muerte, olvido de las l\u00e1grimas,
\n<\/span>Silencio de pasiones, b\u00e1lsamo de la herida iracunda,
\n<\/span>Incertidumbre de amores, seguridad de temores.
\n<\/span>Calmante de la ira, alivio del coraz\u00f3n, la orilla m\u00e1s quieta de la tormenta,
\n<\/span>Respiro de los sentidos y del alma de todos los problemas,
\n<\/span>Que adormece el sentido del mal con apacibles sue\u00f1os.<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv. 721-726)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Con benevolencia, <\/span>Jes\u00fas,<\/span><\/i> mide mi ofensa;
\n<\/span>Deja que el verdadero arrepentimiento mitigue tu justa venganza;
\n<\/span>Deja que las l\u00e1grimas apacig\u00fcen cuando la transgresi\u00f3n provoque;
\n<\/span>Deja que la piedad temple tu merecido odio.
\n<\/span>Deja que la gracia perdone, que el amor olvide mi ca\u00edda;
\n<\/span>Con temor imploro, con esperanza humildemente clamo.<\/span><\/p>\n

(vv.781-786)<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Filii Prodigi porcos pascentis ad Patrem Epistola<\/b><\/p>\n

Si tam longinquis rogites quis scripsit ab oris
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Vel ferat unde rudes sordida charta notas
\n<\/span>Inspice suffusis quamvis maculosa lituris:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Littera scriptoris nomen et omen habet.
\n<\/span>Continet illa meos plenos formidine casus,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Illa dabit nati facta scelesta tui,
\n<\/span>Et licet ingrato sordent elementa colore
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sunt tamen haec domino candidiora suo.
\n<\/span>Quippe, quod emerui, lutosis versor in antris
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nilque nisi obscenum lumina nostra vident.
\n<\/span>Non mihi divitiae non fulvi copia nummi
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Praestitit ut quondam, nunc quoque praestat opem.
\n<\/span>Haud inopem fallax comitatur vulgus ut olim
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nec qualis fuerat jam famulatus adest.
\n<\/span>Ornatae desunt radianti murice vestes
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nec phaleris tecti subjiciuntur equi.
\n<\/span>Omnia nimboso fluxere simillima vento,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nec facies rebus quae fuit ante manet.
\n<\/span>Hei volvit fortuna rotam ventisque solutis
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Disrupit nostram perniciosa ratem.
\n<\/span>Aurea deperiit, nunc ferrea prodiit aetas
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sunt laeta in tristes tempora versa dies.
\n<\/span>Quaeque prius ventis pergebant vela secundis
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Et pontum ut faciles edomuere lacus
\n<\/span>Acta ruunt inter Scyllas interque Charybdes
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Et fracta adversis dilacerantur aquis.
\n<\/span>Heu parva infandum liquerunt gaudia luctum
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Heu ruptum liquit vipera parta latus
\n<\/span>Jam placidae periere dies tristesque secutae
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Ultima laetitiae prima doloris erat.
\n<\/span>Sors ea dura quidem sed nostris debita factis
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Immo est errato lenior ira meo.
\n<\/span>Cum miser ignotas veni peregrinus in oras
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Pronus in interitum pro dolor ipse meum,
\n<\/span>Totus in insanos effudi tempora luxus,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Tempora vulneribus iam redimenda meis.
\n<\/span>Seque mihi juveni juvenes iunxere sodales
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Et ruitura simul plurima turba fuit.
\n<\/span>Raptus in exitium, sociis agitantibus ivi
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Aut comes aut princeps ad scelus omne fui.
\n<\/span>Utque pudor faciem, pietas sic pectora liquit.
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Calluit a multis mens hebetata malis.
\n<\/span>Nec mihi cura Dei propriae nec cura salutis:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sola videbatur caeca libido salus.
\n<\/span>Sic ego tartareis merces certissima monstris
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Tartareos retuli jam nova dira canes
\n<\/span>Non furiis actus furiosa videbar Erinis
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nec mihi sub stygiis par fuit ullus aquis.
\n<\/span>Haec mea vita fuit, si possit vita vocari
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Quae tulit ad mortis perniciosa fores.
\n<\/span>Hoc mea lustravit nimium vaga carbasus aequor
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Alta quoad plenam sustulit unda ratem,
\n<\/span>Sed modo saxosi portus anfractibus haerens
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Corruit ablatis naufraga puppis aquis.
\n<\/span>Jamque luo poenas, turpis fero praemia vitae:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Obruor innumeris exul egensque malis.
\n<\/span>Ah! Lacer ex humeris algenti pendet amictus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Cetera marmoreo frigore membra rigent
\n<\/span>Et male contecti malefiunt imbribus artus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Quin lacerant nudam verbera saepe cutim.
\n<\/span>Continuis lassae callent grunnitibus aures
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Laeta est in tales musica versa sonos
\n<\/span>Sunt etenim porci mensae lectique sodales
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Unus eis cibus est unus et ille mihi.
\n<\/span>Horridus inculto pendet de fronte capillus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nec caput a ventis quod tueatur adest.
\n<\/span>Dum facies liquida pallens respondet ab unda
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Quae quondam a speculo reddita saepe fuit,
\n<\/span>Dissimiles surgunt antiqua ab imagine vultus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nec species eadem, quae fuit ante, manet.
\n<\/span>Quippe novas macies induxit in ora figuras:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Vix cutis, exesis carnibus, ossa tegit
\n<\/span>Squalida languentes febris depascitur artus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Imaque pervasit tabidus ossa dolor,
\n<\/span>Nec mihi curandis dantur medicamina morbis.
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Tu nisi succurras, non feret alter opem.
\n<\/span>Hei tua sum genitor tua sum licet impia proles
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Ni mala quae fuerit desinat esse tua.
\n<\/span>genitore fui proles, non impia proles
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Impia me misero me genitore fui.
\n<\/span>Aspice tu prolem: proles dedit impia poenas
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Atque tulit meritis praemia digna suis,
\n<\/span>Inque dies funesta magis tormenta supersunt
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Et mala praeteritis deteriora malis,
\n<\/span>Mille animum curae corpus mala mille fatigant
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Intus nulla datur nee foris ulla quies.
\n<\/span>O quam difficiles portendunt omnia casus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Tu nisi mature tristia fata leves.
\n<\/span>Hei citus affer opem dextramque extende cadenti
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Quae data vita mihi morsque negata foret.
\n<\/span>O pater, o nati spes summa et sola salutis,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sis pater et nati sit tibi cura tui.
\n<\/span>En, scelus agnoscit, lacrimis commissa fatetur:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Parcere peccanti munus amoris erit.
\n<\/span>Peccavi, fateor; sceleris mens conscia luget
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Erroresque luunt singula membra suos.
\n<\/span>Scilicet et veniam sceleris mens conscia poscit,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nec nisi peccanti parcere posset amor.
\n<\/span>Parcat amor vincat pietas iraeque facessant:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Plus tua te virtus, quam mea facta regant.
\n<\/span>Nec quia me cernis factum de prole rebellem
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Tu fieri judex ex genitore velis.
\n<\/span>Quamvis si fieres nunquam te judice tantis
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Esset credo equidem subdita vita malis.
\n<\/span>Cur tua deserui redamati limina tecti?
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Cur mea subtraxi lumina maesta tuis
\n<\/span>Sic visum est superis; haec me fortuna manebat;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Haec mihi dura licet poena ferenda fuit.
\n<\/span>Ah, Deus, ecce tuli saevos iam comprime fluctus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Et petat optatos lassa carina sinus.
\n<\/span>Per mare per scopulos per mille agitata Charibdes
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Mitius ah tandem te duce pergat iter.
\n<\/span>O mihi si patrias liceat revidere penates,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 O mihi si felix luceat ille dies,
\n<\/span>Ante ruet coelum tendetque ad sidera tellus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Et mare siccatis fluctibus ignis erit
\nQuam quaeram ignotas iterum novus advena terras
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Quamvis quaerenti regia sceptra dares.
\nPatria dulce solum quod si mihi visere detur
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nec me divelli mortuus inde sinam.
\n<\/span>Condicio melior patriis in sedibus Iri est
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Quam Croesi magnas exulis inter opes.
\n<\/span>Ergo cara tui pateant mihi limina tecti
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Et videam notos post fera fata lares.
\n<\/span>Sin minus externis moriar peregrinus in oris
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Nee tumuli ritum qui mihi praestet erit
\n<\/span>Sed sine funeribus nullo curante relinquar
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Et miseranda feris praeda cadaver erit.
\n<\/span>O si forte brevi tales tibi littera casus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Adferat et nati talia fata tui,
\n<\/span>Quae sibi mens quis sensus erit cum te orta parente
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Audieris rabidas membra vorasse feras?
\n<\/span>Tunc fortasse gemens sobolis vel busta requires
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Quam poteras vivam nunc habuisse domi.
\n<\/span>Tunc si me renuas memorans renuisse dolebis
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Atque tuo duplex imber ab ore fluet.
\n<\/span>Obvia saepe animo defuncti occurret imago
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Junctaque cum lacrimis plurima verba dabis.
\n<\/span>Ast aderit nullus nisi tristes fletibus umbrae
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Et rapiet gemitus ventus et aura tuos.
\n<\/span>Tunc dolor invadet quem non invaserat olim
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Quique sepultus erat vulnere surget amor.
\n<\/span>Ille quidem surget sed nostros serus in usus
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Cum nulla optatae spes opis esse potest.
\n<\/span>Nunc, igitur, o nunc dum spes manet ulla salutis
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Succurre et tantis obvius ito malis.
\n<\/span>Quodque mihi o genitor solus concedere posses
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Accipe supremum prolis ab ore vale.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Carta del hijo pr\u00f3digo a su padre, mientras apacienta a los cerdos<\/b><\/p>\n

Si te preguntas qui\u00e9n te escribi\u00f3 desde regiones tan remotas
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 O desde d\u00f3nde este sucio papel lleva tan toscas l\u00edneas,
\n<\/span>F\u00edjate que, aunque manchada y emborronada,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 La carta indica el nombre y el destino de su escritor.
\n<\/span>Ella contiene mis desventuras, llenas de temores;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Ella relatar\u00e1 los cr\u00edmenes cometidos por tu hijo,
\n<\/span>Que, aunque con manchas repugnantes
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Son incluso m\u00e1s puros que su autor.
\n<\/span>Pues me hallo en los fangosos antros que merec\u00ed,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y mis ojos ya nada ven que no sea impuro.
\n<\/span>No me quedan riquezas ni abundancia de doradas monedas,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Como antes; ahora estoy necesitado de ayuda.
\n<\/span>En mi necesidad ya no me acompa\u00f1a, como antiguamente, el falaz vulgo,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Ni est\u00e1 conmigo la servidumbre que antes ten\u00eda.
\n<\/span>Se perdieron ya los vestidos de radiante p\u00farpura,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y ya no conduzco ornamentados caballos.
\n<\/span>Todo se disemin\u00f3 semejante al borrascoso viento,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y ya no quedan rastros del cariz que ten\u00edan las cosas.
\n<\/span>Ay, la fortuna hace girar su rueda y con sus vientos desatados
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Destruye perniciosa nuestra nave.
\n<\/span>Acab\u00f3 la edad dorada, y ahora, que empez\u00f3 la f\u00e9rrea,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Los tiempos alegres se han vuelto tristes.
\n<\/span>La nave que antes avanzaba con favorables vientos
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y que someti\u00f3 al mar como si fuera un pl\u00e1cido lago,
\n<\/span>Sucumbe arrastrada entre Escilas y Caribdis
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y es destrozada por enemigas aguas.
\n<\/span>Ay, peque\u00f1os gozos no dejaron m\u00e1s que una aflicci\u00f3n inefable;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Ay, naci\u00f3 una v\u00edbora que me dej\u00f3 el costado herido;
\n<\/span>Ya terminaron los d\u00edas placenteros, seguidos de los tristes;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 El \u00faltimo d\u00eda de alegr\u00eda era el primero del dolor.
\n<\/span>Esta es una suerte dura, pero merecida por mis actos;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 La ira es, por cierto, menor que mi culpa.
\n<\/span>Cuando llegu\u00e9, miserable peregrino, a estas desconocidas regiones
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Dirigi\u00e9ndome yo mismo, \u00a1ay!, a mi perdici\u00f3n,
\n<\/span>Malgast\u00e9 el tiempo en insanos placeres;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Tiempo que ahora debo redimir con mis padecimientos.
\n<\/span>Siendo joven, se me allegaron j\u00f3venes compa\u00f1eros;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Compa\u00f1\u00eda encaminada conmigo a la ruina.
\n<\/span>Me dirig\u00ed a mi perdici\u00f3n arrastrado por mis socios,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y particip\u00e9 en todo crimen, o como c\u00f3mplice o como jefe.
\n<\/span>Como el pudor mi rostro, la piedad me abandon\u00f3 el pecho.
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Se me encalleci\u00f3 de tantos males el alma.
\n<\/span>No me preocupaba ni de Dios ni de mi propia salvaci\u00f3n;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 La \u00fanica salvaci\u00f3n me parec\u00eda ser la ciega lujuria.
\n<\/span>As\u00ed, como prenda para los monstruos del T\u00e1rtaro,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Entregu\u00e9 perros tart\u00e1reos como cert\u00edsimos nuevos terrores.
\n<\/span>Me parec\u00eda a una furiosa Erinia sin que me llevaran las furias,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y nadie hab\u00eda bajo las aguas estigias semejante a m\u00ed.
\n<\/span>Esta era mi vida, si vida puede llamarse
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 La que conduce, perniciosa, a las puertas de la muerte.
\n<\/span>Este oc\u00e9ano inagotable surcaba mi vago velamen,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Hasta que una alta ola levant\u00f3 completo el nav\u00edo;
\n<\/span>Pero ahora la n\u00e1ufraga nave perece encallada
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Por el rebalaje de las aguas de un rocoso puerto.
\n<\/span>Y ahora purgo estas penas, y sufro el pago de mi vergonzosa vida:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Me deshago en inn\u00fameros males, exiliado e indigente.
\n<\/span>\u00a1Ah! Mi capa destrozada cuelga maltrecha de mis hombros,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Los dem\u00e1s miembros est\u00e1n r\u00edgidos con marm\u00f3rea frigidez
\n<\/span>Y mis articulaciones, mal abrigadas, padecen por las lluvias,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Que suelen lacerar, como azotes, mi piel desnuda.
\n<\/span>Mis o\u00eddos se han endurecido de tanto aguantar gru\u00f1idos:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 En ello se convirti\u00f3 la alegre m\u00fasica,
\n<\/span>Pues los cerdos son mis compa\u00f1eros de mesa y de lecho,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y lo mismo que comen ellos lo como yo.
\n<\/span>Sucios cabellos cuelgan de mi desarreglada cabeza,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y nada tengo con qu\u00e9 cubrirla del viento.
\n<\/span>Mientras responde a la l\u00edquida onda el p\u00e1lido rostro
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Que en otros tiempos sol\u00eda devolverme el espejo,
\n<\/span>Surgen caras distintas a la antigua imagen,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y ya no quedan rastros del aspecto que antes ten\u00eda,
\n<\/span>Pues la delgadez trajo a mi rostro nuevas figuras:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Consumidas las carnes, la piel apenas cubre los huesos;
\n<\/span>La dura fiebre devor\u00f3 mis l\u00e1nguidas articulaciones
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y el corrosivo dolor invadi\u00f3 lo hondo de mis huesos.
\n<\/span>\u00a1Y no se me dan medicamentos para curar mis males!
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Si t\u00fa no me socorres, no me llegar\u00e1 m\u00e1s auxilio.
\n<\/span>Oh, padre, tuyo soy; soy, aunque imp\u00edo, tu prole,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Que por mala que haya sido, no deja de ser tuya.
\n<\/span>Siendo t\u00fa el padre, no fui de ti prole imp\u00eda;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 S\u00ed lo fui siendo yo, en mi miseria, mi propio padre.
\n<\/span>Mira a tu prole: la prole imp\u00eda pag\u00f3 sus penas,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y recibi\u00f3 los premios proporcionados a sus m\u00e9ritos.
\n<\/span>Cada d\u00eda abundan m\u00e1s los funestos tormentos,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y cada mal va siendo peor que los anteriores.
\n<\/span>Mil preocupaciones fatigan mi alma y mil males mi cuerpo,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Sin encontrar alivio ni dentro ni fuera.
\n<\/span>Oh, qu\u00e9 duras ca\u00eddas me vaticina todo
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Si t\u00fa no cambias, presto, mi triste hado.
\n<\/span>Oh, trae pronto el auxilio y extiende al que cae tu diestra,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Que si es dada ser\u00e1 vida, y muerte si es negada.
\n<\/span>Oh padre, oh suma esperanza y \u00fanica salvaci\u00f3n de tu hijo;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 S\u00e9 padre, y que sea tuya la aflicci\u00f3n de tu hijo.
\n<\/span>Mira, \u00e9l reconoce su crimen, confiesa con l\u00e1grimas sus delitos:
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Perdonar al pecador ser\u00e1 tarea del amor.
\n<\/span>Pequ\u00e9, lo confieso; mi alma se lamenta consciente de su crimen
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y cada miembro purga sus errores.
\n<\/span>Ciertamente el alma, consciente de su crimen, pide venia,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y el amor no puede sino perdonar al pecador.
\n<\/span>Que perdone el amor, venza la piedad, se vayan las iras;
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Que te rija tu virtud m\u00e1s que mis actos.
\n<\/span>No quieras, porque me ves transformado de hijo en rebelde,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Transformarte t\u00fa de padre en juez;
\n<\/span>Aunque si lo haces, creo que contigo como juez
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Mi vida no estar\u00eda sometida a tan grandes males.
\n<\/span>\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 dej\u00e9 los umbrales de tu amada casa?
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 apart\u00e9 mis tristes ojos de los tuyos?
\n<\/span>As\u00ed le pareci\u00f3 al cielo; esta fortuna me esperaba.
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Esta pena, aunque dura, la tuve que soportar.
\n<\/span>Ah, Dios, mira que la soport\u00e9; ahora reprime las terribles olas,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y que la fatigada barca se dirija a los anhelados puertos.
\n<\/span>Por el mar, por roquer\u00edos, por mil agitadas Caribdis
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Se vuelva al fin m\u00e1s suave mi camino, siendo t\u00fa mi gu\u00eda.
\n<\/span>\u00a1Oh, si tan solo pudiera volver a ver los penates de mi patria!
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a1Oh, si brillara ante m\u00ed aquel d\u00eda feliz!
\n<\/span>\u00a1Colapsar\u00eda el cielo y subir\u00eda hacia los astros la tierra
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y el mar, sec\u00e1ndose sus olas, se tornar\u00eda fuego
\n<\/span>Antes de que yo vuelva a buscar tierras extranjeras, como nuevo viajero,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Incluso si me dieras por eso cetros reales!
\n<\/span>Patria, mi \u00fanico deleite, si se me permitiera visitarte,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 No dejar\u00eda que ni muerto me apartaran de ti.
\n<\/span>La situaci\u00f3n de Iro en casa de su padre es mejor
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Que la de Creso en medio de riquezas extra\u00f1as.
\n<\/span>Que se me abran, pues, los queridos umbrales de tu casa,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y que vea los conocidos lares despu\u00e9s de tan terribles azares.
\n<\/span>Pero si muero peregrino en costas extra\u00f1as
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 No habr\u00e1 quien me celebre los ritos funerarios,
\n<\/span>Sino que ser\u00e9 abandonado sin nadie que se ocupe de mis exequias
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y mi cad\u00e1ver ser\u00e1 miserable presa para las fieras.
\n<\/span>Oh, si por fortuna llegaran a ti, en esta breve carta,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Las desventuras y azares de tu hijo,
\n<\/span>\u00bfQu\u00e9 pensar\u00e1s, qu\u00e9 sentir\u00e1s, al o\u00edr que los miembros engendrados por ti
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Han sido devorados por r\u00e1bidas fieras?
\n<\/span>Entonces, quiz\u00e1s, buscar\u00e1s gimiendo la sepultura de tu hijo,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 A quien habr\u00edas podido tener ahora vivo en tu casa.
\n<\/span>Si me rechazas, te doler\u00e1s al recordar que lo hiciste,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y una doble lluvia caer\u00e1 de tu rostro.
\n<\/span>A menudo se te presentar\u00e1 en el alma la imagen del difunto,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y le dir\u00e1s numerosas palabras mezcladas con l\u00e1grimas.
\n<\/span>A nadie encontrar\u00e1s en tu llanto, sino a tristes sombras,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y los vientos se llevar\u00e1n tus gemidos.
\n<\/span>Entonces el dolor invadir\u00e1 a quien antes no hab\u00eda invadido,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Y el amor que se hab\u00eda sepultado surgir\u00e1 de la herida;
\n<\/span>Surgir\u00e1, ciertamente, pero demasiado tarde ya para mis necesidades,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Cuando ya no puede alcanzarse la ansiada esperanza de auxilio.
\n<\/span>Ahora, pues, ahora, mientras a\u00fan queda alguna esperanza de salvaci\u00f3n,
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Soc\u00f3rreme y ven al encuentro de tan grandes males,
\n<\/span>Lo que solo t\u00fa, oh padre, puedes concederme.
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Recibe el supremo adi\u00f3s de boca de tu hijo.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Traducciones de Paula Baldwin Lind, Neil Davidson, Sergio Gonz\u00e1lez Arrieta, Vicente Silva Beyer y Jos\u00e9 Manuel Tagle
\n<\/span>Poemas del libro <\/span>Robert Southwell. Jesuita, poeta y m\u00e1rtir<\/span><\/i> de Braulio Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs (Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica, 2026)<\/span><\/a><\/h5>\n

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\u00a1Compra libros de los autores y traductores incluidos en este n\u00famero en nuestra p\u00e1gina de Bookshop!<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n

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Foto: Catedral de Coventry, Inglaterra, por Stuart Frisby, Unsplash.<\/span><\/h6>\n

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PAULA BALDWIN LIND. Doctora en Shakespeare Studies por el Shakespeare Institute, Universidad de Birmingham, Inglaterra. Profesora Titular y directora del Mag\u00edster y Doctorado en Literatura de la Universidad de los Andes, Chile. Investiga la obra de Shakespeare, los espacios femeninos y de representaci\u00f3n en el teatro isabelino.\u00a0 Es traductora de Shakespeare y de autores ingleses como Charlotte Smith y Robert Southwell.\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n
NEIL DAVIDSON. Ha sido columnista estable de los diarios <\/span>El Metropolitano<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>El Mercurio<\/span><\/i> y <\/span>Las \u00daltimas Noticias<\/span><\/i>, adem\u00e1s de colaborar en revistas. Sus libros publicados incluyen dos recopilaciones de columnas y <\/span>El ce\u00f1o radiante<\/span><\/i>, estudio biogr\u00e1fico del poeta Gerard Manley Hopkins con traducciones de los poemas, que fue finalista del Premio Municipal de Literatura de Santiago, Chile. Tambi\u00e9n ha publicado traducciones al ingl\u00e9s de novelas, ensayos y poes\u00eda latinoamericanos.<\/span><\/h5>\n
SERGIO GONZ\u00c1LEZ ARRIETA. Licenciado en Letras, con menci\u00f3n en Ling\u00fc\u00edstica y Literatura Inglesa, Pontificia Universidad Cat\u00f3lica de Chile.\u00a0Mag\u00edster en Lenguas Cl\u00e1sicas, con menci\u00f3n en Lengua Latina y Griega, Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educaci\u00f3n, Chile. Se desempe\u00f1a como profesor de Lat\u00edn y Ling\u00fc\u00edstica hist\u00f3rica.<\/span><\/h5>\n
VICENTE SILVA BEYER. Licenciado en Literatura y en Filosof\u00eda. Actualmente es candidato a Doctor en Filosof\u00eda en la Universidad de los Andes, Chile, donde se desempe\u00f1a tambi\u00e9n como profesor de Lat\u00edn y de Literatura Antigua.<\/span><\/h5>\n
JOS\u00c9 MANUEL TAGLE. Licenciado en Literatura por la Universidad de los Andes, Chile, y profesor de Castellano. Ha complementado su formaci\u00f3n con estudios de lat\u00edn y mantiene un especial inter\u00e9s por la literatura cl\u00e1sica y la tradici\u00f3n grecolatina. Actualmente se desempe\u00f1a como profesor de Lengua y Literatura.<\/span><\/h5>\n
Editor:
\n<\/b>Braulio Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs <\/b>earned his doctorate in Literature at the Pontificia Universidad Cat\u00f3lica de Chile. He is a writer, a professor at the Instituto de Literatura of the Universidad de los Andes, Chile, and a member of the Academia Chilena de la Lengua. Among other works and peer-reviewed articles, he has published fifteen academic books, including translations of William Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis.<\/span><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Circumsision The head is launc\u2019t to worke the bodies cure With angring salve it smartes to heale our wounde To faltlesse sonne from all offences pure The falty vassalls scourges do redounde The judge is cast the guilty to acquite The sonne defac\u2019d to lend the starre his light The veyne of life distilleth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":47082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742],"tags":[5739],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[],"lal_author":[5844],"class_list":["post-47078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dossier-robert-southwell-in-latin-america","tag-issue-39","lal_author-robert-southwell"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47078"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47588,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47078\/revisions\/47588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47078"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=47078"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=47078"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=47078"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=47078"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=47078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":46637,"date":"2026-09-16T20:14:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T02:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/?p=46637"},"modified":"2026-09-16T20:20:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T02:20:59","slug":"an-exemplary-life-from-braulio-fernandez-biggs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/09\/an-exemplary-life-from-braulio-fernandez-biggs\/","title":{"rendered":"An Exemplary Life from Braulio Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hard happ where halves must disagree
\n<\/span><\/i>Or truce of halves the whole betraye
\n<\/span><\/i>
\nSouthwell, Mans Civill Warre<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If the depth of a biography is measured by how it faces its main character\u2019s complexity, then Braulio Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s <\/span>Robert Southwell: Jesuita, poeta y m\u00e1rtir <\/span><\/i>(Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica, 2026) succeeds remarkably in combining the varied facets of its biographee into a portrait\u2014betraying neither the whole nor its parts, in a style both clever and current\u2014of a sixteenth-century English poet whose life and work are here addressed for the first time in Spanish.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a start, we come to understand the character as a Catholic priest persecuted and condemned for high treason in Elizabethan England, hence the historical and biographical framework in which he is contexualized, \u201cHispanizing\u201d the matter in no small measure. There is an indisputable bigger picture at play: schismatic secession, national fracture, and fratricidal conflicts without quarter, marked by the figures of Mary and Elizabeth\u2014which of the two was more bloody, more persecutory?\u2014both daughters of the same father, and what a father: a \u201cdefender of the faith.\u201d As we delve into this story, its conclusion is not yet defined. It involves great powers, a Counter-Reformation, and squads of Ignatian footsoldiers trained in Rome, as well as underground networks that reach the upper echelons of English society, through which Southwell moves as if right at home. Obviously, politics is inescapable. And the book does not take sides; rather, it seeks to familiarize its Spanish-speaking readership with this world, for which its non-English and non-Protestant reference points come in useful.<\/span><\/p>\n

The book\u2019s biographical focus also allows for narrative effects. \u201cFather Robert,\u201d as he is called from time to time, is followed, accompanied, and imagined, creating empathy in the reader. This strategy lends greater power to what comes after, once the protagonist and his environment are thoroughly depicted: nothing less than the translation into Spanish of his entire collected poetic oeuvre, including prose poems and other texts (but not his correspondence, which promises to form the basis of a future volume). This is a prodigious contribution, which analyzes the texts one by one\u2014from an academic angle, with all the corresponding scholarly rigor and technical precision\u2014but that, by granting the newly described character words, allows him to speak and recite for himself. All the while, like a persistent subliminal image, he appears to us, wandering the streets of London, and he hides, offers spiritual relief, preaches, and prays alongside others. Oftentimes we come across a poem as awe-inspiring as his most famous \u201cThe Burning Babe\u201d and do not know what we have found. \u201cA truly beautiful poem,\u201d though simple and plain, about a child in flames who appears one winter\u2019s night, or an enlightenment, a vision, an anticipation or \u201cprolepsis\u201d of the passion of Christ on theological grounds? This study is an extraordinary guide to how and on which different levels literary texts can be appreciated. It teaches us to read and interpret said texts.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the book is far from dull in its specific literary endeavor; it is, on the contrary, provocative. It aspires to recover Southwell\u2019s legacy and correct what it considers his marginalization from the English literary canon. In the first decade of the seventeenth century, he became the most published author in England after Shakespeare, which gives rise to two additional chapters. One examines his connection to the so-called \u201cmetaphysical poets\u201d\u2014Donne, Milton, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan, and Marvell\u2014whose subjects, tastes, and confluences with Baroque conceptism, wit, and paradox allow us, following Fern\u00e1ndez, to classify Southwell as their predecessor, if not as \u201cthe first metaphysical poet.\u201d Another chapter examines his possible connection to Shakespeare, with clear awareness that this angle is more speculative, though no less grounded in the author\u2019s impressive handling of the relevant analytical literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

It goes without saying that Fern\u00e1ndez decidated three years of his life to this book\u2014written after the death of his dauther, Sara\u2014which holds great personal meaning for him, and there is no need to list his various talents and skills: he is a specialist in English literature, a professor, a poet, and a translator, and in this study and colossal translation, he also plays the role of translation team leader and, broadly speaking, of interpreter: he translates just as he writes history and tells a story. It is plain to see that Fern\u00e1ndez cannot help but carry out his undertakings in a multifocal manner.<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, it is through martyrdom that the book produces an even greater effect: it brings Southwell back, present and alive\u2014a paradox, like his death, which, despite being violent, seemed to be anticipated as the decisive prefiguration of a spiritual wish. \u201cBy force I live, in will I wish to dye\u2026\/ Life is but losse where death is deemed gaine,\u2026\/ Come Cruell death, why lingrest thow so longe?\u201d he wrote in prison.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this day and age, we do not tend to speak this way, much less to speak of martyrdom in such terms. Martyrdom has been desacralized or lost its currency; it is considered anacrhonistic or reserved for \u201ccauses\u201d linked to social justice or associated with collective entities categorized as victims (\u201ca martyred people,\u201d \u201ca sacrificial community,\u201d \u201ca geography of pain\u201d), but is rarely used for individuals. The same goes for depictions of the killings of martyrs in Renaissance paintings. Curiously, none of these paintings is necessarily moving. Nor is the \u201cvertigo of lists\u201d described by Umberto Eco: the hoped-for effect is more saturated than strengthened. It gives the sensation of quantifiable \u201cnews,\u201d not of a testimony of faith, nor, let\u2019s say, of a martyred individual who accepts his martyrdom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor was this martyrdom easy to recognize. The Catholic Church took 384 years to beatify Southwell and another forty-one to canonize him. Even before having to be proven according to canon law, his martyrdom faced accusations that denied his sacrifice. Martyrs tended to be classified as mere enemy or criminal casualties (rebels, conspirators, traitors). And while it is understandable that, in the 1911 edition of the <\/span>Encyclopedia Britannica<\/span><\/i>, he is not considered a saint, it is shocking that he is not deemed a martyr. Martyrdoms traditionally presuppose an undeniable \u201ctestimony\u201d and, therefore, why shouldn\u2019t they be able to speak for themselves, whether the faith in question is shared or not? Should they require certification? And should their manifestations of conviction, integrity, moral fiber, and character be considered vestiges of other ages that have nothing to tell us today?<\/span><\/p>\n

Southwell is too powerful an individual to be silenced. What he has to tell us is still eloquent today. This book proves it. It shows us that his martyrdom is still a relevant denunciation, as well as a pressing, individual, and subjective explanatory challenge. This biography, if somewhat pious for those who wish to read it in this key\u2014I say so as a non-Christian myself\u2014is not hagiographic. It is another offshoot of a long tradition of \u201cexemplary lives\u201d that serve as models to follow. Leon Edel and Henry James keep watch. They have demonstrated that it is possible to capture an essence or a soul, that the death of the biographee sets and seals. It is a matter of overall symmetry, sensitivity, and intuition, this act of unraveling the \u201cfigure\u201d from the tapestry\u2019s design in the midst of so many circumstantial absurdities, including death.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Arthur Malcolm Dixon<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hard happ where halves must disagree Or truce of halves the whole betraye Southwell, Mans Civill Warre   If the depth of a biography is measured by how it faces its main character\u2019s complexity, then Braulio Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s Robert Southwell: Jesuita, poeta y m\u00e1rtir (Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica, 2026) succeeds remarkably in combining the varied facets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":47075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742],"tags":[5739],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[1067],"lal_author":[5751],"class_list":["post-46637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dossier-robert-southwell-in-latin-america","tag-issue-39","translator-arthur-malcolm-dixon","lal_author-alfredo-jocelyn-holt"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47074,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46637\/revisions\/47074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46637"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=46637"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=46637"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=46637"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=46637"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=46637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":46629,"date":"2026-09-16T20:06:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T02:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/?p=46629"},"modified":"2026-09-16T20:59:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T02:59:26","slug":"defeating-silence-the-recovery-of-robert-southwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/09\/defeating-silence-the-recovery-of-robert-southwell\/","title":{"rendered":"Defeating Silence: The Recovery of Robert Southwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do we ever think about the fate of books? Only every once in a while when we come up against those works whose mere existence seems to defy all logic. Books that make us wonder not only what they say, but also why they were written, what obsession made them possible, and what need\u2014whether intellectual or spiritual\u2014justified the years of work that went into them.<\/span><\/p>\n

We rarely find the answer on the first reading. Every essential book seems to lead to more questions than answers. Maybe this is because books tell us not only about their authors, but also about the age that produced them and the age that receives them. Today, these questions take on special resonance. We live at a time when literature seems obligated to constantly justify its own existence. We see frequent diagnoses on the paucity of reading, the predominance of the image, and the replacement of the book as our privileged means of understanding the world. Every so often, someone announces that a tradition many centuries old has come to an end.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just a few weeks ago, Hungarian novelist L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai stated in an interview with a Spanish outlet: \u201cThe whole world of literature is lost, it will disappear; at this time, I have no hope that it will survive as we know it. This is a farewell: goodbye, it was a wonderful story that lasted thousands of years, but now, goodbye. Many believe literature will survive heroically. They do not realize that, before writing, humanity already existed.\u201d It is striking when, in the midst of these declarations of extinction, books appear whose existence seems to respond precisely to the opposite impulse: to save that which time has allowed to fall into oblivion. Such is the case of <\/span>Robert Southwell: Jesuita, poeta y m\u00e1rtir<\/span><\/i> by Braulio Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs, the first study written entirely in Spanish on English poet Robert Southwell (1561-1596).<\/span><\/p>\n

This publication also marks a publishing milestone: for the first time, all of Southwell\u2019s extant poetry\u2014almost seventy compositions\u2014appears here in bilingual format with translations for readers of Spanish. This endeavor is surprising not only for its scale\u2014nearly seven hundred pages, including the study itself, critical apparatus, and translations\u2014but also due to the author at hand. Southwell was a Jesuit priest, poet, and martyr, a contemporary of Shakespeare, and a decisive figure in the development of English metaphysical poetry. Nonetheless, outside of academic circles, his name barely survives, having been eclipsed by later writers like John Donne and George Herbert, despite his profound influence on the English poetry of the late sixteenth century.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs seems to be aware of this paradox. In the book\u2019s prologue, he states that one of its purposes is to \u201cremedy this\u2026 forgetting?\u201d His hesitation is meaningful. He is not speaking simply of an unknown author, but rather of one whose disappearance from the canon raises a larger question: how can a body of work that was widely read and admired in its time\u2014and that even influenced some of England\u2019s best known writers\u2014be lost?<\/span><\/p>\n

To answer this question, we must return to the context in which Southwell wrote. Born in 1561 into a Catholic family in the county of Norfolk, just as Anglicanism was growing entrenched under Elizabeth I, he was educated by the Jesuits in Europe, ordained as a priest in Rome, and secretly sent back to England in 1586 to attend to its persecuted Catholics. For seven years, he dedicated himself to intense pastoral and literary work. Arrested in 1592, he was tortured, lived as a prisoner for almost three years in the Tower of London, and was executed in 1595. Paradoxically, his death cemented his prestige: his writings circulated broadly for decades after and helped to mold a poetic sensibility whose importance would only start to be fully recognized much later.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his <\/span>Parallel Lives<\/span><\/i>, Plutarch notes that it is impossible for a biography to encompass an entire life. This is what Boswell attempts in his <\/span>Life of Samuel Johnson<\/span><\/i>: to meet the challenge of containing a life within a book through letters, conversations, and anecdotes, implicitly accepting that every biography is, in fact, a selection. Virginia Woolf, for her part, observes that every biography fluctuates between the documented facts and a personality that, inevitably, escapes us. But in this case, Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs comes painstakingly close to achieving this goal. He succeeds in making sense, interpreting, and setting down on paper Southwell\u2019s brief life\u2014just thirty-three years\u2014depicting it in the book\u2019s very architecture, in the sum of its parts, where we bear witness to his thoughts, his silences, and his unrealized possibilities. Is this an academic volume, a biography, a work of religion, reference, or study? It is a little of them all, and it clearly shows the author\u2019s personal stamp.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs\u2019 book does not limit itself to compiling, quoting, and reconstructing a life. It examines the political and religious context of Elizabethan England, studies Southwell\u2019s poetry as well as his prose, analyzes his place within the metaphysical tradition, and dedicates a chapter specifically to his possible influence on Shakespeare. The result is much more than an intellectual biography: it comes together as the recovery of a writer whose absence leads us to inquire into the mechanisms of the literary canon and the ways in which a tradition decides, over time, who remains and who disappears. But there is also another dimension to this book: the construction of a writer\u2019s life is, in this case, the construction of a saint\u2019s life, and thus, inevitably, an approach to spiritual and religious life as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the first chapter, \u201cThese New Made Treasons,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs delves thoroughly\u2014as he does throughout the book\u2014into the historical period at hand: from the formation of the Society of Jesus, Mary Tudor, and the Counter-Reformation to the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. These matters are essential if we are to understand not only Southwell\u2019s life but also the nature of his writing. Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs observes: \u201cIt is important to pause and consider that Catholicism and its practices turned, at a specific historical moment, into a matter of high treason that thus merited death. England had \u2018always\u2019 been Catholic and had \u2018always\u2019 been a monarchy. How is it, then, that all of a sudden, Catholics were traitors? We are talking about religious beliefs that, while they may presuppose political positions, are much more than that. It is no surprise that Elizabeth hesitated at first: this was her people, her very own people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In this chapter and the next, which tells the story of Southwell\u2019s life, it is revealed to us that this journey\u2014this expedition into the energy of a different time\u2014is not an entirely solitary journey for the writer: he engages in conversation with a multitude of voices. Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs employs a bibliography and citations that, while not overwhelming, make up a vast ensemble: T.S. Eliot, Saint Augustine, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Samuel Johnson, John Milton, Peter Ackroyd, Sir Thomas Malory, the work of Eamon Duffy (very closely), and Virgil, to name just a few of those who share space with letters, court rulings, and documents from the era. But, unlike in certain other studies, where citations tend to interrupt the main storyline, here they are interspersed fluently, producing an accumulation of perspectives, echoes, and reconances that creates a vivid image of events that took place more than four hundred years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

This text has a remarkable ability to shift and change before our very eyes. Sometimes we find ourselves in the midst of a historical work, and at other times, when we delve into Father Robert\u2019s biography, we find episodes worthy of a novel in which the tension grows as the authorities close in around his clandestine activities. The author puts the pieces together such that the mechanism draws us in, making us part of the persecution and the Catholic cause the Jesuits defended on the island. \u201cIt comes as no surprise that, along with their vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, they should also vow to teach catechism. They were prepared to go anywhere in the world where there were souls to save.\u201d The overall panorama is far from simple; the tension goes beyond personal experience. It permeates the continent in a clash of powers and suspicions, between loyalties and betrayals\u2014to Rome and the Pope, to queen and country\u2014with Spain as a looming menace and politics hovering above the whole scene. And in the middle of it all, amid Southwell\u2019s evangelizing endeavor, his poetry began to emerge. After spending years on the continent, Father Robert began to recover his fluency in his mother tongue, in English. \u201cAnd of all the weapons he learned to wield\u2014and did in fact wield\u2014his poetry is the best remembered.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We can appreciate this confluence between the literary and spiritual dimensions of his work in the following excerpt from one of his most famous poems. It is crafted with deceptive simplicity, its religious imagery becoming almost material:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Burning Babe
\n<\/b>(excerpt)<\/b><\/p>\n

Alas quoth he but newly borne in fiery heates I frye
\n<\/span>Yet none approach to warme their hartes or feele my fire but I
\n<\/span>My faultles brest the furnace is the fuell wounding thornes
\n<\/span>Love is the fire and sighs the smoke the ashes shame and scornes
\n<\/span>The fewell Justice layeth on and Mercy blowes the coales
\n<\/span>The metall in this furnace wrought are mens defiled soules
\n<\/span>For which as nowe on fire I am to worke them to their good
\n<\/span>So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my bloode<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The texts he wrote as part of his mission\u2014religious books of consolation, a meditative devotional text, a brief polemic treatise, and books of spiritual poetry\u2014would circulate and become known as manuscripts, in print, and by word of mouth. These same texts are revisited in Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs\u2019 books, where they can be found compiled a few pages on, annotated and explained by the author. Here we discover that Southwell\u2019s work corresponded wholly to his task as a priest: it remains within the context of his evangelizing mission. \u201cSouthwell\u2019s poetry points to reconciliation and communion, but also, thusly, to a return to devotion, liturgy, and culture.\u201d Remorse and the possibility of redemption, in his dramatic monologue of Peter\u2014a traitorous Peter\u2014also serve as an example of confession. His syntax reproduces the circular movement of pain through the senses and through thought, a physical mechanism we can see in action:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Saint Peters Complaynte
\n<\/b>(excerpt)<\/b><\/p>\n

My eye, reades mournefull lessons to my hart,
\n<\/span>My hart, doth to my thought the griefes expound,
\n<\/span>My thought, the same doth to my tongue impart,
\n<\/span>My tounge, the message in the eares doth sound.
\n<\/span>My eares, backe to my hart their sorrowes send:
\n<\/span>Thus circkling griefes runne round without an end.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The nature of Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs\u2019 book, as I said, is ever-changing. It creates the sensation of pausing to observe the same phenomenon from different angles, and each of them amplifies the result: the conception of Southwell\u2019s work, its circulation and reading, its place in the canon among the metaphysical poets, the historical moment and contemporary details; the streets of London, the theatre, the prisons of Southwark, the fairs. And, of course, speculation on Southwell\u2019s possibile relationship with Shakespeare, in the most curious of all the book\u2019s sections, where the author, without slackening his characteristic academic rigor, takes the liberty of theorizing on a possible (or, perhaps, very probable) influence and a meeting and a friendship, as longed-for as they are difficult to prove: \u201cWilliam Shakespeare would have shed tears on seeing his friend Robert Southwell in \u2018love\u2019s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity\u2019… And fallen silent, like all others, since no one shouted \u2018traitor!\u2019 as was customary.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs dares to lay bare all these possibilities, looking for clues in Sonnet 73: \u201cIn me thou see’st the glowing of such fire \/ That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, \/ As the death-bed whereon it must expire, \/ Consum\u2019d with that which it was nourish\u2019d by.\u201d This effort leads us to wonder about the motives of the author, the compiler, the scholar who is behind this book, for this is where he sees fit to confess a personal interest in the matter: \u201cI have dedicated the better part of my academic life to the study of the Elizabethan period, and especially to the conditions of enactment in London\u2019s public theatres and Shakespeare\u2019s dramatic and poetic work itself (including translations of his works); and because Southwell\u2019s life and work have left a very deep mark on me in recent years; this book, indeed, is clear proof of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And this book\u2019s clear proof does not encompass a life; rather, it propels said life toward our own times. It is not the reflection of a selection, but rather the configuration of a profound recovery that defeats silence and sheds light on the possibilities that emerge from the symbiosis between poetry and life. And the fate we sense in both\u2014by means of spiritual reflection, the use of religious paradox, and the surprising, original images we find in Southwell\u2019s work\u2014is a path between reason and emotion, an intellectual exploration of the experience of faith, an attempt to understand suffering and prepare for death. To feel the fire. The presence of death in life, the possibility of justifying both through martyrdom:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I Dye Alive
\n<\/b>(excerpt)<\/b><\/p>\n

I live but such a life as ever dyes
\n<\/span>I dye but such a death, as never endes
\n<\/span>My death to end my dying life denyes
\n<\/span>And life my living death no witte amendes<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Arthur Malcolm Dixon<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo: Chilean writer and professor Braulio Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs.<\/span><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do we ever think about the fate of books? Only every once in a while when we come up against those works whose mere existence seems to defy all logic. Books that make us wonder not only what they say, but also why they were written, what obsession made them possible, and what need\u2014whether intellectual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":46763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742],"tags":[5739],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[1067],"lal_author":[5269],"class_list":["post-46629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dossier-robert-southwell-in-latin-america","tag-issue-39","translator-arthur-malcolm-dixon","lal_author-nicolas-bernales-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46629"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47072,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46629\/revisions\/47072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46629"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=46629"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=46629"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=46629"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=46629"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=46629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":46626,"date":"2026-09-15T20:57:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/?p=46626"},"modified":"2026-09-21T13:34:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T19:34:40","slug":"pink-slime-translated-by-heather-cleary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/09\/pink-slime-translated-by-heather-cleary\/","title":{"rendered":"Pink Slime, translated by Heather Cleary"},"content":{"rendered":"

A hair-raising, poetic work of literary horror and climate fiction about a woman and the people who depend on her as the world around them edges toward apocalypse.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to understand why her world is falling apart. An algae bloom has poisoned the previously pristine air that blows in from the sea. Inland, a secretive corporation churns out the only food anyone can afford\u2014a revolting pink paste, made of an unknown substance. In the short, desperate breaks between deadly windstorms, our narrator stubbornly tends to her few remaining relationships: with her difficult but vulnerable mother; with the ex-husband for whom she still harbors feelings; with the boy she nannies, whose parents sent him away even as terrible threats loomed. Yet as conditions outside deteriorate further, her commitment to remaining in place only grows\u2014even if staying means being left behind.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

An evocative elegy for a safe, clean world, <\/span><\/i>Pink Slime<\/span> is buoyed by humor and its narrator\u2019s resiliency. This vivid and unforgettable translated novel explores the place where love, responsibility, and self-preservation converge.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

When the fog rolled in, the port turned into a swamp. Shadows fell across the plaza, filtering between the trees and leaving the long marks of their fingers on all they touched. Under each unbroken surface, mold cleaved silent through wood, rust bored into metal. Everything was rotting. We were, too. If I didn\u2019t have Mauro, I\u2019d spend all day wandering around, guided through the fog by the neon sign flickering in the distance: PAL CE HOTE . The missing letters hadn\u2019t changed, though it wasn\u2019t a hotel anymore; like so many other buildings in the city, it had been taken over by squatters. What day was that? Sometimes I can still hear the neon, its electric hum and the crackle of another letter on the verge of shorting out. The squatters kept the sign lit, but not out of laziness or nostalgia. They did it to remind themselves they were alive. That they could still do something arbitrary, something purely aesthetic. That they could still transform the landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n

If I\u2019m going to tell this story I should choose a starting point, begin somewhere. But where? I was never any good with beginnings. The day I saw the fish? Certain details leave their mark on time and render a moment unforgettable. It was cold, and the fog condensed into droplets on the overflowing dumpsters. I don\u2019t know where all that garbage came from. It seemed to consume and excrete itself. And how do you know <\/span>we\u2019re<\/span><\/i> not the waste? Max might have said something like that. I remember turning at the old corner store, with its windows boarded over, and how the greenish-red light of the hotel sign washed over me as I stepped onto the rambla.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mauro would be back the next day, bringing with him another month of confinement and work. Cooking, cleaning, monitoring his every movement. Each time they came to collect him I spent a whole day catching up on the sleep he threatened or interrupted. This endless vigil was the reason Mauro\u2019s parents paid me the exorbitant salary they knew would never compensate me. Breathing in the stale air of the port, prowling the streets, visiting my mother or Max\u2014these were the luxuries I afforded myself on the days my time didn\u2019t carry a price. If I was lucky, that is, and there was no wind.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only people on the rambla were fishermen with the collars of their jackets pulled up around their ears, their hands red and cracked. The water stretched wide in all directions, an estuary where the river became a shoreless sea. The fog blurred the horizon. It was ten o\u2019clock or eleven or three under that flat, milky light. The algae floated nearby like bloodshot phlegm, but the fishermen seemed not to care. They rested their buckets next to their beach chairs, baited their hooks, and gathered the strength of their brittle arms to cast their lines as far as they could. I liked the sound of the reels spooling out: it reminded me of summers spent riding my bicycle in San Felipe, no brakes, knees angled high to avoid the pedals. That bicycle contained my whole childhood, just like those beaches that would later be cordoned off with yellow tape the wind would periodically destroy and a few policemen in face masks would rehang. KEEP OUT, it said. Why? You\u2019d have to be crazy to want to go like that: infected, exposed to a nameless disease that didn\u2019t even promise a speedy death.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once, long before I married Max, I saw fog as dense as it was that day. It was in San Felipe, just before dawn, sometime in early December. I remember because the beach town was still empty, except for the few of us who had been summering there all our lives. Max and I walked slowly along the road, not looking at the black sand of the beach, accustomed to the rhythm of the breaking waves. That sound was like a watch to us, a certainty of all the summers to come. Unlike the tourists, we didn\u2019t go to San Felipe to get away from it all. We went there to affirm the continuity of something. It was pitch-dark except for Max\u2019s flashlight, but we knew the way. We stopped near the lookout, where lovers often hid, and leaned over the white wooden banisters. Max pointed his flashlight at the beach and through the fog we saw a swarming mass of crabs. The sand seemed to breathe, to swell like a sleeping beast. The crabs gleamed in their halo of light, they gushed from cracks in the boardwalk. Hundreds of them, tiny. What did Max say? I don\u2019t remember. I think we were both shaken, as if we had just been alerted to the existence of something incomprehensible, something bigger than ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

In winter along the rambla, though, there was no sign of so much as a mullet. The fishermen\u2019s buckets were empty, their bait waiting useless in plastic bags. I sat down near a man wearing a Russian-style hat with earflaps. My hands trembled from the cold, but I didn\u2019t do anything to still them. Unlike Max, I didn\u2019t view a person\u2019s will as independent from their body. This belief had led him to dedicate the last few years to extravagant experiments: purges, privations, weights hooked through his skin. The ecstasy of pain. The fasting organism is a single vast membrane, he would say, a thirsty plant left too long in the dark. Maybe. But Max was after something else: to separate himself from his body, that indomitable desire-generating machine, which knew neither conscience nor limits\u2014repugnant but also innocent, pure.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fisherman sensed I was looking at him. With my feet dangling over the water, my maskless face, and my backpack, which seemed to be loaded with stones, he must have thought I was another lost soul ready to jump into the river. Maybe my whole family was dead, admitted one by one to the critical care wing at Clinics, never to emerge. The water barely made a sound as it lapped against the seawall and the air was completely still. How long could this calm last? Every war had its ceasefires, even this one we fought unarmed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The line suddenly tensed, and I watched the fisherman cinch and reel in until a small fish popped into the air. It arched weakly, but the glint off its silvery scales brought a smile to the man\u2019s face. He grabbed it with his gloveless hand and removed the hook. No one could know what death and what miracle that animal held within it, and the two of us admired it accordingly. I expected the man to drop it into his bucket, even if just for a little while, but he threw it back immediately. It was so slight that it made no noise as it broke the surface. The last fish. One minute later and it would be far away, immune to the dense seaweed, to the death trap of algae and waste. The man turned to look at me, gesturing with his hand. This is the starting point I choose for my story, its false beginning. I could easily make an omen of it, justify it as a sign of things to come, but I won\u2019t. That\u2019s all: an hour like any other on a day like any other, except for the fish that soared through the air and fell back into the water.<\/span><\/p>\n

Translated by Heather Cleary<\/span><\/h5>\n
From <\/span>Pink Slime <\/span><\/i>by <\/span>Fernanda Tr\u00edas<\/span><\/a>. Copyright \u00a9 2025 by <\/span>Fernanda Tr\u00edas<\/span><\/a>. English language translation <\/span>\u00a9<\/span><\/i> 2025
\nby Heather Cleary. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pink Slime <\/i><\/b>is available now from Scribner.<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n
Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A hair-raising, poetic work of literary horror and climate fiction about a woman and the people who depend on her as the world around them edges toward apocalypse. In a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to understand why her world is falling apart. An algae bloom has poisoned the previously pristine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":46774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5740],"tags":[5739],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[1165],"lal_author":[2899],"class_list":["post-46626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-author-fernanda-trias","tag-issue-39","translator-heather-cleary","lal_author-fernanda-trias"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46626"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47585,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46626\/revisions\/47585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46626"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=46626"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=46626"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=46626"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=46626"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=46626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":46620,"date":"2026-09-15T20:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/?p=46620"},"modified":"2026-09-19T17:05:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T23:05:02","slug":"of-wounds-and-absences-fernanda-triass-miembro-fantasma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/09\/of-wounds-and-absences-fernanda-triass-miembro-fantasma\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Wounds and Absences: Fernanda Tr\u00edas\u2019s Miembro fantasma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miembro fantasma <\/span><\/i>(2026) is the latest book from Fernanda Tr\u00edas, a Uruguayan writer based in Colombia and two-time winner of the Sor Juana In\u00e9s de la Cruz Prize for her novels <\/span>Mugre rosa<\/span><\/i> (translated by Heather Cleary as <\/span>Pink Slime<\/span><\/i>) and <\/span>El monte de las furias<\/span><\/i> (forthcoming in English translation as <\/span>The Mountain Woman<\/span><\/i>, also by Heather Cleary). The many awards she has earned for her work as a novelist, as well as the fact that her books have been translated, situates her in a place of prominence and worldwide resonance alongside a select group of other Latin American women writers, such as Mariana Enriquez, M\u00f3nica Ojeda, Liliana Colanzi, Agustina Bazterrica, Samanta Schweblin, and Dolores Reyes, among others. In the twenty-first century thus far, these writers have stood out for the power of their stories and for their ability to build their own styles, resisting all classification. They have made an impact through the variety of their literary endeavors, which Argentine critic Florencia Garramu\u00f1o synthesizes into the verbs \u201cdecenter,\u201d \u201crupture,\u201d and \u201cexcavate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What is a phantom limb, as the title of Tr\u00edas\u2019s new book might be rendered in English? It is the \u201cpresence\u201d of the absence of an amputated body part. Those who have lost an arm or a foot say they can still feel physical sensations from the absent limb: pain, numbness, tingling. The image of the phantom limb is present in the story that gives this book of stories its name. Yes, there is a physical amputated foot belonging to the narrator\u2019s mother, but the idea of the phantom takes shape as an allegory for memory, trauma, and a deep wound. The story presents a monodialogue at a bar, in the freezing cold setting of a country in the far north. We only hear one side of this conversation, from an interlocutor who tells of his childhood experiences in the time of state terrorism carried out by Uruguay\u2019s dictatorship in the seventies. The story gradually reveals what it was like to be a child and grow up in a neighborhood where he, his parents, their neighbors, and a girl with a black doll suffered absences, exiles, disappearances, home invasions, and more. For a long time, his mother refused to speak of this past. The narrator says of his father, \u201cHe believed in truth. I just believed in revenge.\u201d That which can no longer be seen remains. The wound lives on within these characters like a phantom limb. The narrator searches for a culprit, investigates, and digs through archives. Here, the verbs \u201crupture\u201d and \u201cexcavate\u201d fit in sync. Revenge will become possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Feminist writer Rebecca Solnit wrote an interesting book called <\/span>Men Explain Things to Me<\/span><\/i>, in which she tells how, at a social gathering, a man asked her what she did for work and she answered that she had just published a book on the photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The man interrupted her, and boastfully, with an air of superiority, told her about an important book that was recently published about the same figure. Without letting her speak, he summarized and explained the book, which he only knew through a review he had read, as if he were a major expert on the subject. At first, she wondered if she had failed to cite some important source. But, in the end, another woman clarified to the man in question that the book he was talking about was precisely the one that Solnit had just published. The man reacted with confusion and shame. This led Solnit to explore this social pattern that leads many men to doubt what women know, to ignore what they say, to not listen, and to take on patronizing or condescending attitudes. Solnit says: \u201cThe presumption [\u2026] trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men\u2019s unsupported confidence.\u201d This can have the effect of silencing women, and this silence comes to the fore in the story \u201cIntimidad irremplazable.\u201d A woman is cornered in her own house: \u201cShe went up to the writing desk in her room. This was her workplace. Her husband had a study, though he never used it and the room just gathered dust. So why didn\u2019t he give it over to her? [\u2026] But then again, what was she doing that was important enough to merit a study?\u201d This story\u2019s solitude and alcohol, its immersive silencing, its domestic routine, a project preparing electric bicycles for the city abandoned due to an argument with her husband, and the thought that \u201cit wouldn\u2019t have worked anyway, it was crazy to think she could have pulled off something like that on her own\u201d all remind us of Solnit\u2019s essay. That being said, the story takes a special turn when the protagonist forms an unusual relationship with a little hatchling sparrow, abandoned by its mother in a nest on her windowsill. Her secret bond with this fragile creature moves something within her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Illness, old age, and closeness to death are explored in the stories \u201cCicl\u00f3n\u201d and \u201cUna mujer de su \u00e9poca.\u201d The former delves into the blocked-out memories of childhood and the denial both of a forbidden first love and of sexual awakening; the latter outlines the memory of a whole life\u2019s worth of failed romantic relationships, with both men and women, in contrast to the indifferent present embodied in a stray dog seen through a hospital window. The animal is here and now; memory is a string of frustrations. The return to the present, alongside a hospital roommate, suggests one way of letting it all go.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPersonaje en construcci\u00f3n,\u201d \u201cGrupo de foco,\u201d and \u201c\u00daltima carta a Claudia\u201d are playful metafictional experiments put together in surprising ways. The mise-en-scene of writers whose lives intertwine through the act of telling stories or through what seems to be a writing workshop gives rise to innovative structures. By turning the writer into a fictional character, Tr\u00edas explores different facets of literary creativity. Humor and pain come together in these stories, and we even catch a wink to another woman writer with whom the author is close.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cEl orador\u201d and \u201cSi el mundo parara de hacer lo que hace,\u201d addictions become ways to escape from absences and wounds. These stories explore different forms of dementia and wounds from the past. Clinics house pitiful, hopeless characters, like those of \u201cEl orador\u201d: \u201cThey shuffled away, dragging their feet; they really seemed very mistreated by life. Their pants sagged, their hair was white and invariably long, with a halo of pink, shiny skin at the back of the head, that part they would never see in the mirror, and their hands were rigid as birds\u2019 beaks.\u201d The orator in the former story and the boss in the latter are disturbing parodies of the powerful. In these stories, the world is not a safe place either inside or outside the clinic. For the narrator and main character of\u00a0 \u201cSi el mundo parara de hacer lo que hace,\u201d the memory of the attack on the Twin Towers is linked to memories of abuse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This unsafe world appears in other forms in \u201cDe frontera solo aire,\u201d which shows us various different ways in which death is trivialized. The story takes place during the pandemic. It opens with a murder to which passers-by are indifferent\u2014one woman jumps over the dead body\u2014but that becomes an object of obsession for the narrator, who cannot get the image out of her mind. The only ones obsessed with the image of the dead body are herself and the dog she gets in order to get out of the house during lockdown. Her partner and a friend remain uninterested. Shootings are part of their life. The narrator remembers various stories of the ashes of the dead in strange situations, with a tinge of dark humor. Urban violence becomes part of the everyday landscape and the story ends with yet another murder.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Miembro fantasma<\/span><\/i> is inhabited by characters immersed in solitude and affected by past traumas; they are the residents of an uncertain world. Its biting humor, inner exploration, and unexpected endings keep the reader on tenterhooks. In these stories, the traumatic past becomes the phantom limb of the present.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Arthur Malcolm Dixon<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miembro fantasma (2026) is the latest book from Fernanda Tr\u00edas, a Uruguayan writer based in Colombia and two-time winner of the Sor Juana In\u00e9s de la Cruz Prize for her novels Mugre rosa (translated by Heather Cleary as Pink Slime) and El monte de las furias (forthcoming in English translation as The Mountain Woman, also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":46772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5740],"tags":[5739],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[1067],"lal_author":[5748],"class_list":["post-46620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-author-fernanda-trias","tag-issue-39","translator-arthur-malcolm-dixon","lal_author-luz-marina-rivas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46620"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47064,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46620\/revisions\/47064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46620"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=46620"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=46620"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=46620"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=46620"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=46620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":46611,"date":"2026-09-15T20:09:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/?p=46611"},"modified":"2026-09-21T13:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T19:33:08","slug":"working-with-the-hidden-story-and-weaving-together-all-that-remains-unseen-a-conversation-with-fernanda-trias-on-miembro-fantasma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/09\/working-with-the-hidden-story-and-weaving-together-all-that-remains-unseen-a-conversation-with-fernanda-trias-on-miembro-fantasma\/","title":{"rendered":"Working with the Hidden Story: A Conversation with Fernanda Tr\u00edas on Miembro fantasma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exploring beneath the surface, venturing beyond what we can see, grasping at what escapes us\u2014we attempt all of these, almost unavoidably, with each short story in <\/span><\/i>Miembro fantasma (<\/span>P\u00e1ginas de Espuma, 2026<\/span><\/i>), <\/span>the most recent book by Uruguayan novelist, short story writer, and translator Fernanda Tr\u00edas.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

A writer whose greatest worry is creating a work of literary value; a mother who forgets her own needs to ensure the best for her children; alcohol as the best psychologist; mountains that want to become clouds; memory as a skittish animal. With all these scenarios, the two-time winner of the Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara\u2019s Premio Sor Juana In\u00e9s de la Cruz, among other prizes, invites us to peek into these everyday realities through a lens of estrangement\u2014one with which we recognize \u201cthe mystery of the other, which is always changing.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Juan Camilo Rinc\u00f3n: <\/b>How did you go about building the book\u2019s architecture? What was it like to return to short stories after <\/span>El monte de las furias <\/span><\/i>(forthcoming next year in Heather Cleary\u2019s English translation as <\/span>The Mountain Woman<\/span><\/i> from Scribner)?<\/span><\/p>\n

Fernanda Tr\u00edas: <\/b>I don\u2019t necessarily feel like I have returned to short stories, in the sense that I was still writing them while working on my novels <\/span>Mugre rosa<\/span><\/i> (translated as <\/span>Pink Slime<\/span><\/i> by Heather Cleary) and <\/span>El monte de las furias<\/span><\/i>. I wrote both one after another, almost without stopping, though there was a brief break in between them when I was firming up the stories I had started to outline while working on <\/span>Mugre rosa<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t really sat down to tackle them just yet, but I had outlined them, taken notes, written down ideas as they came to me, and kept them in a folder. During that middle period between novels, I was so tired that I couldn\u2019t find the energy to step right into building another novel. So, I decided that as a way to rest, I would take all those stories that had stayed as drafts and go one by one, systematically reworking and editing them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It felt like a break not because they are easier to write, but because they took me out of the mindset of writing a novel and brought me to another genre\u2014to another way of thinking\u2014to look for other things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.C.R.:<\/b> On precisely that point: the collection includes a particularly intense look at the writing profession\u2014the demands authors place on themselves to accommodate market demands, machismo<\/span> in the literary field, the aspiration to become a writer. How has your own reflection on the craft of writing provided material for these stories?<\/span><\/p>\n

F.T.:<\/b> I think it has to do with the fact that I am currently in a phase where I am reflecting on these things. I have reflected on this for years, and I think that time, experience, and the ability to say: \u201cIt\u2019s been almost twenty-five years since my first book, <\/span>La azotea <\/span><\/i>(translated as <\/span>The Rooftop<\/span><\/i> by Annie McDermott), was published for the first time in 2001,\u201d have helped me look back and think about many things.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some have been positive, like how the world has changed and how my books and the books of my fellow women writers are received. But there are also some things that stay the same: prejudices that continue, inherited ideas that remain deeply embedded.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I reflected on all of this, I felt that the short story would be a good place to bring out everything I had not been able to develop very thoroughly in my novels that could find its place in the short story, in a different way.<\/span><\/p>\n

This book was, for me, a laboratory to explore forms and themes, and one of the things I wanted to experiment with the most was irony: talking about all these thorny issues, but with a certain humor, while at the same time not taking away from their severity.<\/span><\/p>\n

J.C.R.:<\/b> Tell us about the hidden as a driving force for these stories\u2014how the story suggests but doesn\u2019t reveal everything, always bringing the reader to questions rather than answers or a sense of certainty.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

F.T.: <\/b>I thoroughly enjoy reading those great masters of the short story that cleverly work with that hidden story, or as Piglia would put it, Story Two.<\/span> Or Hemingway and his iceberg theory: everything that lies below the surface, that line that separates the visible and the invisible. Story One<\/span> is the story itself, but I have always been far more interested in what lies beneath, which is what really gives the story its weight and lets you reread without growing tired of it\u2014what lets you reread a story and enjoy it all over again, as there is always something that ultimately escapes you. There is a bit of a very interesting technical challenge in stringing together this Story Two<\/span> in the in-betweens, the silences, in everything that Story One<\/span> does not say, and in how everything comes together in the end. When you reach the end, something clicks, bringing Story One<\/span> and Story Two together to the surface.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.C.R.:<\/b> Another common thread of these stories is a feeling of strangeness or estrangement towards oneself and others. I get the sense that you redirect the reader\u2019s gaze elsewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

F.T.:<\/b> I think that has a lot to do with that way of looking. I have spent a lot of time on this path trying to refine it. That is my life\u2019s work: fine-tuning that way of looking by working on the precision of my words, my phrases. The question is: how do I see reality? I see it almost certainly through a strange lens, because I see the oddity in everything. I can see the strangeness in being oneself and not somebody else, for example, and how that somebody else is an unsolvable mystery. I would even go so far as to tell you that the strangest thing to me is how even the closest \u201cother\u201d in our lives is an unsolvable mystery. For this reason, in my opinion, human relationships as a literary theme can never be overdone. They will never grow old because there is something about them that is almost impossible for us to grasp\u2014something having to do with the fact that the mystery of the other, the mystery of personality, is always changing. In this way it is an inexhaustible theme because, even when you think you understand it, it changes. It\u2019s not that you don\u2019t know it; it\u2019s that it changes into something else. And that is not to mention all the many other things I find stranger each day, like how the world works, what lies beyond, everything we don\u2019t know: all of those mysteries that range from insects to the universe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.C.R.: <\/b>Speaking of insects, you made me think about the presence of animals in many of these stories\u2014a sparrow, dogs, cats\u2014and in one of them, you even ask: \u201cWhat is more human than a pet?\u201d What about animals allows you to address questions about what it means to be human?<\/span><\/p>\n

F.T.: <\/b>It\u2019s precisely what you were just saying: because they allow us to ask questions about humanity, but also because they are part of an otherness that fascinates and intrigues me. I would do anything to one day understand the languages of dogs, cats, and birds; to understand what they might be saying. On the other hand, I would say that it now seems impossible for me to write without taking into account those other living things, these more-than-human beings. I think it is essential to include them in our world. In the story about the pigeon, for example, it became, for the protagonist, a being loaded with mystery, which she gradually sees with a certain promise, as something overflowing with symbols. I also thought about this: how there is so much to learn from these more-than-human beings, like how they manage solitude, how they occupy public spaces, and how they interact with other species. These ideas fascinate me more and more each day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.C.R.:<\/b> Something I thought was particularly lovely about this book, and I feel like this is very characteristic of your work, is the changes in forms of language. For example, popular slang versus literary language, or localized dialects versus neutral language.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

F.T.: <\/b>I have been reflecting for a long time on how to integrate these two forms of Spanish into my work, both of which I consider my own. I think I am the product of that hybridity; I would even say that I have even more combinations of Spanish in my life because I have lived in many different places, and there are words from each that I have never left behind. I have been living in Colombia for over eleven years, so it is the closest thing I have to a second homeland. But, for example, in <\/span>No so\u00f1ar\u00e1s flores,<\/span><\/i> there are stories that take place in Buenos Aires, so its dialect was more involved, including specific porte\u00f1o<\/span> slang, but over time I began to lose those expressions. I have started to experiment with how I can put this mixture within me to work in a way that still feels like my own.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.C.R.: <\/b>That experimentation is quite evident in <\/span>El monte de las furias.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

F.T.: <\/b>And in some of the stories from <\/span>Miembro fantasma, <\/span><\/i>you can see the parallels; there you can notice that they were written around the same time because there are connections\u2014points of contact. In any case, I am always trying to make sure that any intrusions of Colombian language in my Rioplatense dialect\u2014and, more specifically, my Uruguayan one\u2014make sense; that they emerge organically through characters who, like me, are shaped by the experience of foreignness. One of the stories deals with how one immigrant suffers a specific type of violence she had never experienced up until that moment. It is a deeper reflection that goes beyond language, while also residing within it and the idea that there exist certain words that feel more adequate to name certain realities, because they are words from those places. \u201c\u00daltima carta a Claudia\u201d also follows an immigrant, whom we assume to be Uruguayan, who writes the story\u2014a woman from Montevideo who travels to Lima but lives in Bogot\u00e1. This part isn\u2019t addressed in the story but, again, she is a woman who has been in these different places. That is something I have always felt: as a writer, what I write exists between these places, and this in-betweenness proves valuable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.C.R.:<\/b> This talk of places has made me think about, for example, the rehabilitation center or the basement that houses a sort of self-help cult, each space not too close to our general daily experience. How do you work with those kinds of spaces in your narrative?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

F.T.: <\/b>There is always a tension between inside and outside, something that has recurred in my books, though unconsciously; I have just noticed it recently. There are those spaces and places that are like rooms, but there is always an inside that looks outward, or an outside where, in some way, you feel you can\u2019t quite reach the inside, like those feet you see passing by the window, for example. There are often windows, and this is something others have helped me see\u2014I hadn\u2019t noticed before. People ask me: \u201cWhy are there so many windows in your stories and so many people looking through windows?\u201d In \u201cUna mujer de su \u00e9poca,\u201d there is the woman who watches a stray dog through her window; the woman who watches the pigeon through her window; the woman in \u201c\u00daltima carta a Claudia\u201d who sees the mountains of Bogot\u00e1 through her window; the children at the rehabilitation center who sneak out through the window to break into a house; etc. That question has helped me realize the importance of the window as a border between outside and inside\u2014a penetrable one that allows this exchange, be it glances through a glass pane or a hole you can pass through. I find the concept of the window as a limit between places very interesting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J.C.R.: <\/b>These stories also feature some historical events: the dictatorship in Uruguay, the 1982 World Cup, the attack on the Twin Towers\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

F.T.: <\/b>I believe all these historical events have left a mark on us\u2014or at least on my generation. There is the dictatorship in Uruguay, which needs little more explanation; the fall of the Twin Towers, which transformed the entire world; COVID, which also transformed the world. There are certain moments that give you that sense that there was a \u201cbefore\u201d and now there is an \u201cafter.\u201d The issue of COVID, for example, allowed me to think about several things that have to do with unresolved grief\u2014those pains that remain unchecked. The dictatorship in Uruguay is one of these pending issues: think of all of those who disappeared and how, to this day, we still don\u2019t know where they are, we are still searching for them. All of these issues are pending; they have not been resolved. On the other hand, there is the fall of the Twin Towers, an event which, beyond having transformed the world, marked, according to some, the true beginning of the twenty-first century: September 11, 2001, not January 1, 2000. I became interested in the horribly brutal trauma that came with the attack: it was destruction that happened inside the heart of an empire, and at the same time, there is a boy who struggles with his own fall, while obsessed with the image of collapse on loop on the TV\u2014those images that remained so fixed in our collective unconscious, just like the Twin Towers. In my stories, there are many characters that come to grips with falls. Those are also threads of meaning that I go weaving between one story and another to give them the cohesion and semantic density that I wanted to give the book as a whole.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Translated by Iyan Smith Williams<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo: Uruguayan writer Fernanda Tr\u00edas, by Carlos Escobar.<\/span><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exploring beneath the surface, venturing beyond what we can see, grasping at what escapes us\u2014we attempt all of these, almost unavoidably, with each short story in Miembro fantasma (P\u00e1ginas de Espuma, 2026), the most recent book by Uruguayan novelist, short story writer, and translator Fernanda Tr\u00edas.\u00a0 A writer whose greatest worry is creating a work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":46785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5740],"tags":[5739],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[5590],"lal_author":[4720],"class_list":["post-46611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-author-fernanda-trias","tag-issue-39","translator-iyan-smith-williams","lal_author-juan-camilo-rincon"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46611"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47584,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46611\/revisions\/47584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46611"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=46611"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=46611"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=46611"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=46611"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=46611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":47266,"date":"2026-09-01T11:17:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T17:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/?p=47266"},"modified":"2026-09-21T09:09:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T15:09:03","slug":"the-universe-is-our-birthright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/09\/the-universe-is-our-birthright\/","title":{"rendered":"The Universe Is Our Birthright"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few literary traditions are as disproportionately rich as Uruguay\u2019s, taking into account the country\u2019s size. In the early twentieth century, Rod\u00f3 published his <\/span>Ariel<\/span><\/i>, which would fuel conversations for decades; Horacio Quiroga laid the foundations of the modern Latin American short story and, not long later, Onetti would forge the path toward a radically modern novel, perhaps before its time. Poets like Delmira Agustini, Juana de Ibarbourou, Idea Vilari\u00f1o, and Ida Vitale left unmistakable marks on Latin American poetry. This tradition of cosmopolitan openness also gave us critics like Rodr\u00edguez Monegal and \u00c1ngel Rama. I\u2019ll stop myself there, as the list could go on and on.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the twenty-first century, Uruguayan literature has been no less impressive. Many uniquely powerful writers have emerged. One of them is Fernanda Tr\u00edas, whom we feature on the cover of the thirty-ninth issue of our magazine. This choice is not gratuitous. Her widely acclaimed literary career has earned her major prizes, both in Uruguay and internationally, and her books are sold and read in her own country and abroad. An heir to the R\u00edo de la Plata narrative tradition, Tr\u00edas develops her personal conception of the short story in this issue\u2019s interview with Juan Camilo Rinc\u00f3n. As she explains, her work involves \u201cstringing together this Story Two in the in-betweens, the silences, in everything that Story One does not say.\u201d The strange also comes into play as perhaps the aspect that most clearly links her work to a certain Uruguayan tradition: I would dare to call it a distinctive hallmark of her literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides being a reader of the great masters of the short story, Tr\u00edas is also a novelist. This interview is centered on her most recent book, <\/span>Miembro fantasma<\/span><\/i> (P\u00e1ginas de Espuma, 2026), whose title embodies a concern that permeates its pages: that which is no longer there\u2014a person, a place, a relationship, a past\u2014continues producing effects, like an invisible presence that refuses to disappear. Something similar happens when we read her stories: we keep thinking about them after the fact, as if some part of them had never left us. Impossible to label and with a personal poetics you can spot from a mile away, Tr\u00edas is an essential voice in the Latin American literature of recent years.<\/span><\/p>\n

This issue\u2019s second dossier is dedicated to a single book: Chilean writer and researcher Braulio Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs\u2019 monumental study of English Jesuit poet Robert Southwell (c. 1561\u20131595), titled <\/span>Robert Southwell: Jesuita, poeta y m\u00e1rtir<\/span><\/i> (Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica, 2026). This more than 800-page volume is the first book ever written in Spanish to be dedicated entirely to Southwell, and it comes complete with all of his poetry in bilingual edition, translated to Spanish for the first time in its entirety. Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs\u2019 book stands as a critical contribution to our knowledge of Robert Southwell in the Spanish language, and it is sure to hold the interest of lovers of English literature for a long time to come.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here, two Chilean authors reflect on the book: writer Nicol\u00e1s Bernales and historian Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt. The former sees Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs\u2019 endeavor as \u201cthe recovery of a writer\u201d whose absence forces us to inquire into \u201cthe mechanisms of the literary canon\u201d and the reasons why a given tradition decides who stays and who disappears. Bernales also highlights the volume\u2019s multifaceted nature\u2014it is \u201can academic volume, a biography, a work of religion, reference, or study\u201d\u2014and its success in reconstructing, all at once, Southwell\u2019s life, his historical and religious context, his poetry, and his place in the English literary tradition. For his part, Jocelyn-Holt celebrates Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs\u2019 skill at \u201ccombining the varied facets of his biographee […] betraying neither the whole nor its parts.\u201d Life and work come together into a whole in which poetry, faith, underground action, and martyrdom all shed light on one another. The result, as the historian tells us, \u201cbrings Southwell back, present and alive,\u201d proving that, more than four centuries after his death, \u201cwhat he has to tell us is still eloquent today.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This work by Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs upholds once again the maxim that Borges defended so vehemently in his famous essay \u201cThe Argentine Writer and Tradition\u201d: Latin American writers and intellectuals are free to make the Western tradition their own. It is curious that an author from a Western country should find it necessary to publicly reclaim his right to this tradition. But reclaim it Borges did, and he went even further when he asserted, at the end of this brief essay, that \u201cwe must believe that the universe is our birthright\u201d (tr. Esther Allen). The book by Fern\u00e1ndez Biggs\u2019 that we present in this issue of LALT seems to confirm, many decades later, that this claim from Borges is still valid, and is indeed one of the traits that, to my mind, characterizes a great deal of South American literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also in this issue, Joaqu\u00edn Castillo writes for LALT about <\/span>El ej\u00e9rcito ciego<\/span><\/i>, the novel with which Mexican writer David Toscana earned the 2026 Alfaguara Prize, becoming the fifth writer from his country to receive this award. The Alfaguara Prize needed a novel like Toscana\u2019s\u2014one less anchored in realism and more open to the fable, myth, and imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here we also reproduce the prologue by Carlos Gran\u00e9s to the new edition of one of the most controversial Latin American essays of its time: <\/span>Del buen salvaje al buen revolucionario<\/span><\/i> by Venezuelan writer and journalist Carlos Rangel, published by the Fundaci\u00f3n para el Progreso in Santiago de Chile in 2023. Gran\u00e9s hits us where it hurts: he maintains that Latin America must abandon the explanation of its history based on victimhood and examine its own responsibilities, from caudillismo, nationalism, and populism to authoritarianism, institutional weakness, and its fascination with utopian politics. As we all know, Latin America is not unlike that student whose bad grades never seem to convince him that he\u2019s going to fail. That is, until he fails.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this issue, we also share a fragment from \u201cEl af\u00e1n europeizante\u201d by Pedro Henr\u00edquez Ure\u00f1a. We don\u2019t want to forget the past, much less one of its most significant literary critics. This text was originally published in <\/span>Seis ensayos en busca de nuestra expresi\u00f3n<\/span><\/i> (1928), and we include it here in LALT as a sort of <\/span>aide-m\u00e9moire<\/span><\/i>, to ask ourselves once again what it means to be American. The spirit of our literature is deeply defined by its hybrid condition, its ability to appropriate diverse traditions and put them in dialogue with an experience all its own, and a cosmopolitanism that few other literary traditions have handled so naturally. Borges, who was a close friend of Henr\u00edquez Ure\u00f1a\u2019s, remembered him with words that speak for themselves: \u201cPedro felt American and even cosmopolitan\u2026\u201d Such an adverb is not for just anyone. You have to earn it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We round out this issue with a series of interviews with Andrea Chapela, Nona Fern\u00e1ndez, and Juan G\u00f3mez B\u00e1rcena; from the pages of <\/span>World Literature Today<\/span><\/i>, Haleh Liza Gafori brings us closer to the poetry of Rumi; and our section dedicated to translation brings together an essay by Miaad Banki and an interview with Spanish translator Jordi Fibla. In our poetry section, we feature Juan Carlos Galeano, Rosabetty Mu\u00f1oz, Evodio Escalante, Alejandro Sebastiani Verlezza, and Jeannette Miller, while our indigenous literature section includes texts by Kalu Tatyisavi, Gloria C\u00e1ceres Vargas, Baruc Mart\u00ednez D\u00edaz, and Nadia L\u00f3pez Garc\u00eda. We highlight Brazilian literature with poems by Salgado Maranh\u00e3o and Bruna Mitrano. In our previews section, we present texts by Horacio Quiroga, Miriam Reyes, and Xitlalitl Rodr\u00edguez Mendoza. The issue concludes with fiction by three essential voices of contemporary Latin American literature: Ariana Harwicz, Rafael Gumucio, and Mar\u00eda Teresa Andruetto.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll end this note with a reflection. We have often felt fascinated by other literary traditions. Those of Europe have been especially magnetic to us, and the literature of the United States has been no less significant. We have eagerly read French, German, Italian, and Russian writers, and many writers of the English language have left a deep imprint on Latin American literature. But this love has seldom been requited. The case of the United States is especially revealing: it is estimated that just around three percent of the books published here are translations, and if we look specifically at fiction and poetry, the most commonly cited estimate places the number at less than one percent. The English-speaking world, to an overwhelming degree, reads books originally written in English. The province is so vast that it sometimes resembles a metropolitan center. But this matters not. Perhaps this indifference has contributed, paradoxically, to our efforts to build ever bigger windows through which to look at what\u2019s happening outside of our own countries and our own language. And this has also made us different: sometimes excessively (or even unjustifiably), we have been cosmopolitan. We are, in the end, the children of Dar\u00edo and of <\/span>modernismo<\/span><\/i>. We look at what we have and think it\u2019s not enough, so we look elsewhere. But the telescope can\u2019t help you see what\u2019s in your own backyard. This is our paradox. And this search brings with it a passion for an ancestry that is ours as well. Perhaps it is not the West we\u2019re looking for, but rather, as Borges said, the universe itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Arthur Malcolm Dixon<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!<\/b><\/a><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo: LALT editor-in-chief Marcelo Rioseco, by Carolina Rueda.<\/span><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
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