Novel
Miltín 1934
Not translated into English
Juan Emar · 1935
Synopsis
A first-person narrator, who closely resembles the author, relates his thoughts, his days, his dreams and his inventions. The book opens with the inventory of the clothes of a certain Martín Quilpué, an announced character who never takes shape; there follow a night outing, a legend in which Pedro de Valdivia confronts in 1541 a trimotor aircraft and tanks, fantastic beasts with giant fuchsias, a journey into space to speak to God, attacks on critics and a long dialogue with the painter Rubén de Loa, according to Niall Binns and The Modern Novel.
Context
Published in Santiago by Zig-Zag in 1935, along with two other novels of the same year illustrated by Gabriela Emar, the book went almost unnoticed. Niall Binns attributes this silence to the narrator's attacks on Alone and Raúl Silva Castro, and to a publication that coincided with the end of the avant-gardes; Eduardo Barrios nevertheless praised in it a “dream technique”. Memoria Chilena notes in it a fragmentary and allegorical structure, close to cubism, futurism and Huidobro's creationism, and a taste for black humour, the occult and the unconscious.
Who it is for
A short novel without a plot, digressive and funny, which asks the reader to accept the game; no French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Ignored on its release, it is ranked by Memoria Chilena among the three novels of 1935 that defied realism.
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The pages consulted to check this page.