Novel
Égloga trágica
Not translated into English
Gonzalo Zaldumbide · 1956
Synopsis
Segismundo, a young landowner of the sierra, returns from Europe to his family's hacienda, which his uncle Juan José has run since the death of his parents and his sister. Overwhelmed by these bereavements and believing himself incapable of love, he nevertheless becomes attached to Marta, a girl whom the household looks after, while his uncle loves her in secret. Around them, the Indians of the estate work and obey, and the hero, shaped by Europe, watches them from a distance, in long monologues on the land and on his times.
Context
Begun around 1910 and published in fragments in reviews, the text was set aside during its author's diplomatic career; he took it up again on his retirement, after asking Gabriela Mistral for advice, and only completed it in 1954. The academician José Miguel Leoro urged him on by publicly announcing a secret novel, and the book appeared in full in 1956, in four acts. Aurelio Espinosa Pólit devoted a study to it, but Marxist criticism, from Agustín Cueva to Abdón Ubidia, reproached it for its conservatism and an aesthetic already old-fashioned.
Who it is for
In Spanish, not translated. The sentence is long and laden with images, closer to the prose poem than to the narrative: it is better read slowly.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's major work; Hernán Rodríguez Castelo saw in it the finest prose written in Ecuador in the twentieth century.
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