What do you think?
Rate this book
ʱԳٲDzí #1
Singing from the Well
This first novel in Arenas's "secret history of Cuba"-- a quintet he called the Pentagonia--is a powerful story of growing up in a world where nightmare has become reality, and fantasy provides the only escape.
"One of the most beautiful novels ever written about childhood, adolescence, and life in Cuba." --Carlos Fuentes
"One of the most beautiful novels ever written about childhood, adolescence, and life in Cuba." --Carlos Fuentes
Reinaldo Arenas was born in Cuba in 1943. In 1980, he was one of 120,000 Cubans who arrived in the U.S. on the Mariel boatlift. Arenas settled in New York where he lived until his death, from AIDS, ten years later.
195 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
69 people are currently reading
1225 people want to read
About the author
Reinaldo Arenas
55books343followersArenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). His Hallucinations was awarded "first Honorable Mention" in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year.
His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of 'ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent.
He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. He came on the boat San Lazaro captained by Cuban immigrant Roberto Aguero.
In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS; he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas died of an intentional overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York City. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: "Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression that causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life... I want to encourage the Cuban people abroad as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom... Cuba will be free. I already am."
In 2012 Arenas was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people
His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of 'ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent.
He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. He came on the boat San Lazaro captained by Cuban immigrant Roberto Aguero.
In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS; he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas died of an intentional overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York City. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: "Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression that causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life... I want to encourage the Cuban people abroad as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom... Cuba will be free. I already am."
In 2012 Arenas was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
December 14, 2018
Surreal and brutal, this is like "Guernica" by Picasso, which can be found in Madrid's Prado Museum. The point of view of the young Arenas (who gives us but a glimpse of this Magical Realist work in his fantastic 'Antes que anochezca') is vivid, alive, & at one point he stops and asks his audience: Are you listening to me? Do you know me? The questions are set off like some prayer, a song from a lonesome, often-times violent and horrific place, a "well." A man with a hatchet, witches, elves, talking animals, morphing humans, literal metaphors... they all congregate in this awesome flight of fancy. This is a writer at his freest.
May 26, 2012
The 5 stars I've given this book are in recognition of its genius that overides my intense dislike.
RA has certainly done a brilliant job in reconstructing the timeless and imaginative world of a child growing up in chaotic poverty. The reader is forced to decide on the reality of this world as presented. Is Celestino an unfortunate cousin,an imaginary companion/alter ego or the narrator stripped of his many disguises? What actually is the narrators name?
In fact, Celestino was the name umder which the book was first published, before it became the first volume in his 5 volume secret history of Cuba. That he managed to complte this cycle is a testament to his tenacity and devotion to his craft in the face of world disdain.
But SftW is a harsh book and difficult to read. Even when we begin to relax and appreciate the mastery of the writing (it's all just childish fantasy and there are some lovely lyrical bits) there is the pervasive uneasy feeling that the seeds from which the fantasies flow are even more horrific than the incessant casual violence portrayed.Emotionally its devasting.
RA himself lived a tragic story that began with his early literary triumphs in Cuba,and ended abrubtly in exile, where he died triply outcast,in New York in 1990 at the age of 47.
The introduction to SftW by Thomas Colchie provides an indispensable overview.
RA has certainly done a brilliant job in reconstructing the timeless and imaginative world of a child growing up in chaotic poverty. The reader is forced to decide on the reality of this world as presented. Is Celestino an unfortunate cousin,an imaginary companion/alter ego or the narrator stripped of his many disguises? What actually is the narrators name?
In fact, Celestino was the name umder which the book was first published, before it became the first volume in his 5 volume secret history of Cuba. That he managed to complte this cycle is a testament to his tenacity and devotion to his craft in the face of world disdain.
But SftW is a harsh book and difficult to read. Even when we begin to relax and appreciate the mastery of the writing (it's all just childish fantasy and there are some lovely lyrical bits) there is the pervasive uneasy feeling that the seeds from which the fantasies flow are even more horrific than the incessant casual violence portrayed.Emotionally its devasting.
RA himself lived a tragic story that began with his early literary triumphs in Cuba,and ended abrubtly in exile, where he died triply outcast,in New York in 1990 at the age of 47.
The introduction to SftW by Thomas Colchie provides an indispensable overview.
October 23, 2020
لكل شيء طاقة و طاقتي مع الرواية وصلت لصفحة 80 و بعدها انتهت
لم استطع اكمال الكتاب ، ليست من نوعية الكتب التي اتقبلها كما يقولوا بالانجليزيه
It's not my cup of tea
لم استطع اكمال الكتاب ، ليست من نوعية الكتب التي اتقبلها كما يقولوا بالانجليزيه
It's not my cup of tea
January 26, 2018
Maravillosa narración de la mente un tanto perturbada de un niño, temiéndole más a los vivos que a los muertos, viviendo en un mundo de violencia, creo que es un poco complejo de comprender la prosa del autor ya que el ritmo que lleva es disparatado y surrealista, le doy tres estrellas porque no alcancé a entender todo el contenido metafórico de la obra.
August 15, 2023
El mejor libro que he leído este año. Merece una reseña? Sí. Quizás cuando lo relea y lo entienda la haga, porque hay mucho que procesar, este libro me dejó muy perdido ,😂 una genialidad
September 2, 2023
Una locura que necesitaré reposar.
June 30, 2017
I read the description and it sounds so magical and fascinating... I read the book and I felt like it was one massive hallucination caused by severe physical abuse. I dislike the term "I didn't 'get' it" but in this case that couldn't be more accurate.
September 12, 2016
No es mi taza de té, pero no por ello deja de ser bueno
November 22, 2024
Extraño y excelente. Un estilo súper confuso y enmarañado que a veces causa estrago pero que de pronto funciona tan pero tan bien para contar algo tan profundo y crudo. Es un libro fuerte, cruel, de maldad tras maldad, con Celestino como luz única. Hay mucho que sacar de este libro, mucho que preguntarse.
July 13, 2020
Celestino Before the Dawn, revised in exile by gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, reprinted as Singing from the Well and presented as the introductory volume of a series of five experimental novels ("the Pentagonia") that create a "secret history of Cuba." Since, Celestino Before the Dawn was published in Cuba and enjoyed moderate international success before Arenas' subsequent novels were banned and the author was imprisoned for his homosexuality, its politics are not explicit. An imaginative child growing up in rural poverty escapes physical and emotional abuse through a series of nightmares and fantasies. The reliability of the narrator is, of course, dubious and the magical realist elements typically associated with Latin American novelists are presented as violent and hallucinatory: the ghosts of all the narrator's dead cousins sit on the roof of the palm thatch house plotting the death of their murderous grandfather, while the orphaned and probably imaginary playmate cousin Celestino carves poetry into the trunk of every tree surrounding the house eliciting familial shame and inspiring their grandfather to eliminate the "filth" by cutting down these trees with a hatchet, gnomes, witches, giant spiders with the crying head of a human woman, reflections and doppelgangers of his mother also populate the non-linear narrative. If you want a plot, or perhaps assumed that the Pentagonia was accessible and autobiographical, Singing From the Well will disappoint with its surrealism and chimerical nature, the narrative is disjointed and interrupted by handwritten quotations that seem disconnected (perhaps they are fragments of the poetry that Celestino is carving into the trees?), eventually it breaks from paragraph formatting and becomes scripted dialogue with stage directions. If you always wanted the childhood bedwetting portion of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or the Benjy chapter of The Sound and the Fury to be sustained for a two hundred page novel Singing From the Well is that stream of consciousness with zero chronology and distinction between reality and dream narrative that verges on accessibility and comprehension slightly more than those esteemed canonical authors. But, if you are seeking realism or history you will not find it in the bottom of this well.
August 24, 2009
Up until well over half way reading this book I was bitching and complaining, reading offending parts of the book to my wife. I felt like an adult following a child around as he played his own very private game. SftW was all fantastical, nothing grounded the story, there wasn't a plot, I didn't know what the hell was going on, characters were constantly dying and then coming back in the next paragraph, everyone seemed insane, is Celistino even real?
But..... right after or on page 130 (of 206) something clicked for me. Maybe I just released my realist fiction expectations. It's a novel from a young child's perspective, there is little or no setting, and for the life of me I'm not even totally clear what the point of the damn book is! (Though it is interesting that the novel was originally titled Celestino antes del alba and how the book ends. And that the name derives from "of the sky, heavenly", sort of an angel.) Maybe it is just the particular brutality of this childhood, there is a reason why everyone is dying all the time. I still think the trope of Celestino writing on all the trees and the grandfather cutting them down was just that, a writers trope -- too transparently 'meaningful' to have any power for me. But the cumulative effect of the barrage of a child's fantastical imagining finally did have its effect on me. By the end I was touched -- so the book worked for me. For anyone looking for a education about Cuba, look elsewhere, but if you want up close, very upclose, childhood hell (A Season in Hell) this is your book.
But..... right after or on page 130 (of 206) something clicked for me. Maybe I just released my realist fiction expectations. It's a novel from a young child's perspective, there is little or no setting, and for the life of me I'm not even totally clear what the point of the damn book is! (Though it is interesting that the novel was originally titled Celestino antes del alba and how the book ends. And that the name derives from "of the sky, heavenly", sort of an angel.) Maybe it is just the particular brutality of this childhood, there is a reason why everyone is dying all the time. I still think the trope of Celestino writing on all the trees and the grandfather cutting them down was just that, a writers trope -- too transparently 'meaningful' to have any power for me. But the cumulative effect of the barrage of a child's fantastical imagining finally did have its effect on me. By the end I was touched -- so the book worked for me. For anyone looking for a education about Cuba, look elsewhere, but if you want up close, very upclose, childhood hell (A Season in Hell) this is your book.
October 22, 2019
¿De qué trata? ¿Qué es? ¿Surrealismo? ¿El mundo de los sueños? ¿Delirios de un pobre infante campesino? ¿El relato de un loco o de un bobo? ¿Costumbrismo barroco salpimentado de realismo mágico y humor? ¿Alucinaciones por tanta hambre que ha pasado el personaje? ¿Narraciones del absurdo? ¿La imaginación desbordada de un niño? ¿Un texto poético sobre zombis? ¡Qué sé yo! Pero es hermoso y no pude parar de leer.
October 6, 2008
This book rocks balls. If I ever write a novel, then I want to write one like this.
February 13, 2020
Que nos muriéramos los dos y la poesía siguiera sin terminar.
October 18, 2022
Reinaldo Arenas' Singing from the Well is a unique dose of magical realism set in rural pre-Revolution Cuba.
Told from the perspective of a young Arenas, the narrator is a young boy who lives in a violent home with grandmother and grandfather with violent tendencies and a mother who is herself emotionally unstable. When his aunt dies and leaves his cousin, Celestino, with his hodge-podge family, the two boys become the target of the adults' ire. Celestino cannot help but carve poems into trees, an activity that embarrasses the family and drives the adults wild. But the two boys manage to build an imaginary world - that is itself violent - in order to protect themselves from the violence in their real world.
Singing from the Well is a beautiful book and Arenas' masterful use of magical realism makes this book imaginative and striking. But the magical realism can get out of hand at times, and I am not sure of its full purpose. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading the other books in this series.
Told from the perspective of a young Arenas, the narrator is a young boy who lives in a violent home with grandmother and grandfather with violent tendencies and a mother who is herself emotionally unstable. When his aunt dies and leaves his cousin, Celestino, with his hodge-podge family, the two boys become the target of the adults' ire. Celestino cannot help but carve poems into trees, an activity that embarrasses the family and drives the adults wild. But the two boys manage to build an imaginary world - that is itself violent - in order to protect themselves from the violence in their real world.
Singing from the Well is a beautiful book and Arenas' masterful use of magical realism makes this book imaginative and striking. But the magical realism can get out of hand at times, and I am not sure of its full purpose. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading the other books in this series.
April 4, 2012
Incoherent and dreamlike, but (mostly) all the better for it. It's gonna be hard not to think of this in comparison to 'before night falls' by the same author (maybe the greatest and most impactfull books i've read in years) but i'll try not to do that since they are so different. I had such high expectations for this story of arenas' childhood after reading his more formal autobiography but let me reiterate this is so different it almost seems like it could come from the pen of a different author.
Anyways, this is the story of an enchanted countryside that can also be very nightmarish. People are always dying or at least getting severely beat with switch's and other worse but seemingly pretend predicaments and forms of violence. So that leads to what might be the real psychological crux of this novel: in what ways do the aforementioned fantastical elements of the novel cover up for real traumas of the author or else also the residues of his gifted childhood imagination? It's hard to tell indeed and I'm not gonna try for an in-depth analysis here, but that was definitely one of the strongest running currents/questions for me during this book. But then (!) other times i laid off the psychoanalysis and just enjoyed the imagery and the abrupt and varied change of pace tone and magical happenings and it was great (!).
So basically, 'singing from the well' can be confusing if you let it or else a dark romp into an enticing though at the same time pretty negative paradoxical fairyland or else also something that possibly requires some heavy psychological evaluation and decoding for a serious reading. It was a bit of all that for me and a pretty entertaining, disturbing and wild ride all and all.
Anyways, this is the story of an enchanted countryside that can also be very nightmarish. People are always dying or at least getting severely beat with switch's and other worse but seemingly pretend predicaments and forms of violence. So that leads to what might be the real psychological crux of this novel: in what ways do the aforementioned fantastical elements of the novel cover up for real traumas of the author or else also the residues of his gifted childhood imagination? It's hard to tell indeed and I'm not gonna try for an in-depth analysis here, but that was definitely one of the strongest running currents/questions for me during this book. But then (!) other times i laid off the psychoanalysis and just enjoyed the imagery and the abrupt and varied change of pace tone and magical happenings and it was great (!).
So basically, 'singing from the well' can be confusing if you let it or else a dark romp into an enticing though at the same time pretty negative paradoxical fairyland or else also something that possibly requires some heavy psychological evaluation and decoding for a serious reading. It was a bit of all that for me and a pretty entertaining, disturbing and wild ride all and all.
December 10, 2012
"There went my mother, she just went running out the door. She was screaming like a crazy woman that she was going to jump down the well. I see my mother at the bottom of the well. I see her floating in the greenish water choked with leaves. So I run for the yard, out to where the well is, that's fenced around with a wellhead of naked-boy saplings so rickety it's almost falling in."
So begins Singing from the Well. In some respects, this book reminds me of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. In Singing from the Well, we read the tale of a young boy in the poverty of pre-revolutionary Cuba, a tale in which the characters are not only the boy's family, but who are allegories for Cuba. The narrative jumps about and is mixed with both what the boy sees as real and what he fantasizes about. Reality for the boy holds violence, both at the hands of his peers and his family. So he takes solace in another reality that includes his dead cousin Celestino, who carves beautiful poetry into the trunks of trees.
This is the first book in a series by Arenas that follows this boy's life during the period just before the revolution. It is a tremendously moving book, but cannot be considered uplifting. The reader who takes the challenge to read this will be rewarded.
So begins Singing from the Well. In some respects, this book reminds me of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. In Singing from the Well, we read the tale of a young boy in the poverty of pre-revolutionary Cuba, a tale in which the characters are not only the boy's family, but who are allegories for Cuba. The narrative jumps about and is mixed with both what the boy sees as real and what he fantasizes about. Reality for the boy holds violence, both at the hands of his peers and his family. So he takes solace in another reality that includes his dead cousin Celestino, who carves beautiful poetry into the trunks of trees.
This is the first book in a series by Arenas that follows this boy's life during the period just before the revolution. It is a tremendously moving book, but cannot be considered uplifting. The reader who takes the challenge to read this will be rewarded.
December 28, 2018
Conozco a Reinaldo Arenas por ciertas referencias, por la película Antes de que Anochezca y ahora por Celestino Antes del Alba, su primer libro. Me pareció un sinfín de situaciones y eventos extravagantes, mágicos, muy propias de la literatura latinoamericana. Hay fragmentos del libro que tienen un gran contenido poético, otros pueden ser muy conmovedores y partes del libro empiezan con epígrafes de Rimbaud o Borges. No sé si sea un libro que le pueda gustar a todas personas considerando lo "caótico" de su estructura e imagino que debajo de muchas oraciones, párrafos, capítulos enteros, hay un simbolismo paralelo a la vida del propio Arenas. Claro, obviando el hecho de que Celestino es un niño que escribe poesía en los troncos de los árboles. Estoy interesado en leer más del autor.
August 1, 2014
Leí antes de Celestino antes del alba, El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas; es complicada la narrativa de Reinaldo Arenas, Celestino antes del alba parece un antecedente del palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas, hasta parecen ser los mismos personajes (el abuelo, la abuela, las tías y los chicos). Si me resultó agotador El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas, Celestino antes del alba es asolador. Es lo que hace la literatura, nos mueve emociones.
August 16, 2010
Fantastically surreal this book jumps from factual descriptions to complete fantasy from one word to the next and paints an amazing picture of a child's difficult upbringing in Cuba, where the only release is to escape from reality.
January 25, 2016
Alucinada, onírica e imposible novela (¿novela?), una explosión de creatividad y libertad artística que va más allá de una historia que no cuenta para centrarse en el simbolismo de la represión de los instintos y de la vena poética en una sociedad marcada por la inmediatez y la brutalidad.
June 9, 2015
Highly recommended.
December 31, 2015
no me gustó este libro y una muy buena amiga dice que es increíble. no sé.
September 11, 2016
Alucinante.
November 19, 2022
Una scrittura "onirica" la definirei, che come un sogno ti invade, riempe, e confonde. E si confondono realtà e fantasia, si scambiano di posto, e non c'è tregua per Celestino, per suo cugino e per ogni membro di questa famiglia disgraziata che lotta per il cibo, per la propria casa, per una carezza o un sorriso e per il proprio concetto di onore. E se la realtà è dura, spietata, anche le fantasie sanno marcire e risultare sgradevoli e dolorose... E i personaggi, come in un caleidoscopio, mutano e trapassano dalla tenerezza alla spietatezza, dalla vita alla morte. Una storia di violenza, di repressioni e di rinunce soffocate nei sogni, affidata a una scrittura lussureggiante, plastica.
Ho trovato interessante il secondo finale con la sua struttura da tragedia greca, coro compreso, ma poco chiaro nel vertiginoso susseguirsi di personaggi vivi, ma forse morti... 🤔
P.s. Letto in italiano, ovviamente, nella bellissima edizione di Mar dei Sargassi edizioni
P.p.s. Non riesco a non pensare alla pittura di Frida Kahlo, al suo dolore affidato a pennellate di colori forti...
Ho trovato interessante il secondo finale con la sua struttura da tragedia greca, coro compreso, ma poco chiaro nel vertiginoso susseguirsi di personaggi vivi, ma forse morti... 🤔
P.s. Letto in italiano, ovviamente, nella bellissima edizione di Mar dei Sargassi edizioni
P.p.s. Non riesco a non pensare alla pittura di Frida Kahlo, al suo dolore affidato a pennellate di colori forti...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 2, 2019
I guess its kind of like what growing up is like
March 8, 2025
Reinaldo Arenas escribió todo lo que me hubiera gustado escribir.
May 12, 2024
I’m used to thinking of Arenas as a political novelist, whose Kafkaesque and surreal works were a thorn in Castro’s side and exposed the punishing, authoritarian nature of the government. In the introduction to "Singing from the Well," Thomas Colchie details a two part history for Arenas: first, the sad history of artistic persecution and jailing Arenas suffered at the hands of the Cuban government as it shut down artistic freedom and persecuted homosexuals; second, the neglect Arenas suffered after he emigrated to the United States, contracted AIDS, and committed suicide. The story seems similar to another Cuban writer, Guillermo Rosales and his novel, "The Halfway House." This is Arenas� first novel, and was very much celebrated before Arenas attracted Castro’s ire and mistreatment.
I read this novel twice, first on a eight hour train trip and second on my return home. It is a surreal novel with a fragmented narrative, and the distractions of travel made maintaining the concentration I needed to make sense of the book difficult.This is also a rural novel. The setting is not specified, but I assume it’s Cuba, although the lack of specificity lends it a sense of universality. The narrator is an unnamed young boy, living with his mother, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, and cousin, Celestino; he may be a much older character by the end of the novel. His narrative can be very fragmented, made up of very short observations and reactions to what is happening around him; this style befits a young narrator, who has a short attention span and is easily attracted and distracted by various stimuli (family, animals, nature, ghosts). At other points in the novel, he tells longer, more coherent stories, using longer paragraphs. Later, he writes as a playwright, using character dialogue and italicized stage directions. The narrative becomes less personal and more distanced and authorial, which perhaps indicates that he is older(?).
The novel splits into three parts–First Ending, Second Ending, Final Ending–which are more recursive rather marking distinct story lines or themes. I’m unsure how the three parts are meant to organize the overall narrative. Besides the larger three part division, there are also occasional hand-written (cursive) pages, whose typeface is much larger than that in the rest of the book; the writing on these pages consists of short phrases from that narrator’s family or short quotations from a famous author, like Rimbaud, or work, like MacBeth. These pages do not function as chapter breaks, creating distinct narrative chunks, because more often than not the narrative bridges the handwritten pages. Instead, they seems to function as occasional interrupters, or as a chorus offering commentary and pulling me out of the narrative for a moment to shape my reading of it.
Once I understood how the narrative was structured, I could better understand what Arenas was doing with it. This is a rural novel–realistic–but it is also surreal and fantastic. Dreams and the supernatural are as much a part of the novel as the hard scrabble realities of living an impoverished rural life where too often one cannot find enough to eat. Throughout, the narrator does not distinguish between the real, surreal, and supernatural, and through his eyes the three realms intermingle. Initially I tried to keep them separate as distinct narrative lines, distinct kinds of perception, but I couldn’t and stopped. There really was little use in asking What is real? What is a dream? and What is fantastic?, because they were all a fluid part of the narrator’s perceptions and understanding.
The narrator tells the story of his family. The story begins with his mother running out of the house ready to throw herself into the well; the narrator runs after her to prevent her suicide, but she is not there. The tension and conflict of the household and the threat of suicide remain constant motifs throughout the book. The mother was abandoned by her husband, the narrator’s father, who returned her to her parents, maligning her before disappearing. This is a family that is deeply unhappy and dysfunctional. The grandparents are violent and abusive. The grandfather has a hatchet with which he threatens everyone, and he is always willing to act violently, like forcing his wife’s hands into a pot of boiling water, to insure his dominance. He is the patriarch, and everyone hates him for it. Even though it puts the family at risk for starvation, the grandmother destroys a planting of corn to spite him. The narrator wants to kill his grandfather, and he conspires with the ghosts of his dead cousins on the roof of the house. There are also dead aunts, witches, and elves that populate the house and the surrounding land. The spirit world is as present as the real, and they are linked by the violence that is at the core of this family’s life, a violence born of the grandfather’s need to dominate. The cousin, Celestino, is taken in, because his mother, one of the narrator’s aunts, dies.
Celestino is a poet. He is obsessed with writing poetry, and once he covers all the available paper in the house with poems he begins to carve poetry into the trunks of trees, which becomes a massive project to write a massive poem. The family is ashamed of Celestino’s literacy and his literary talent, because it is not an appropriate male behavior, like dominating others and dominating the land. The grandfather is so angry that he chops down all the trees on which Celestino has written, but Celestino is so driven by his poetry that he continues to carve verses into trees, which then his grandfather chops down until there are almost no trees left. The family’s violent dysfunction impacts the land which sustains them, making survival difficult at best. Amidst all this violence, the narrator and Celestino develop a close and loving bond. It is the only close and loving bond in the book, and it provides them a shield of mutual self-protection against all the hatred and violence directed at them. Their relationship, that between the storyteller and the poet, is the only uplifting relationship in the book. Besides the bond of language, the boys escape to the woods and river to enjoy nature and experience freedom, outside the degrading reality of the family and farm. But the domineering grandfather and the rest of the living dysfunctional family cannot let the boys inhabit such a liberated, peaceful space, and so harry them. Arenas offers little sense in the novel that there is a world outside the house, the farm, the village, and surrounding nature. It’s a closed system that traps everything and everyone: living beings, ghosts of the dead, supernatural beings (witches, elves). Even in the narrator’s dreams, when he dreams that his mother is a frog or fish for example, he cannot escape the violence or dysfunction. The only compensation is story and poetry, and they are always under threat.
And then there is death, for everyone–almost everyone?--dies in this book, and then magically comes back to life, only to die again, including the grandfather. Early on, Celestino escapes to the woods and returns with an awl sticking out of his chest, a sure sign that he is going to die, but he doesn’t. Later, the grandfather kills him with the hatchet; he dies but is mysteriously resurrected. This happens with the grandmother, mother, and narrator, too. Near the end, though, the narrator begins to transition to becoming part of the crew of dead cousins, but the dead are as stuck here as the living. Reminds me of Juan Rulfo’s "Pedro Páramo," where the dead cannot migrate beyond the graveyard because the town cacique, the eponymous Pedro Páramo, has corrupted the local priest who can no longer administer last rights.
The stories are recursive, theme and variation, escape and return, to try again and again. At the end, the narrator sleepwalks to the well, teetering on the edge, waiting for his mother to save him, but they–the witches? the elves? the dead cousins?--tell him that she didn’t get there in time, although he thinks that she got there too soon, and jumped into the well before him(?). So the narrator has entered the realm of the dead, yet if he did commit suicide, like his mother, there is still no escape from this hermetic world.
This may be a creative rendition of Pre-Castro rural Cuba, a place that was an inexorable trap for its inhabitants, ruled by men who have nothing but violence to share. At this point, though, I can’t help but see it as a precursor to the entrapment Arenas felt under Castro and later in the US.
I read this novel twice, first on a eight hour train trip and second on my return home. It is a surreal novel with a fragmented narrative, and the distractions of travel made maintaining the concentration I needed to make sense of the book difficult.This is also a rural novel. The setting is not specified, but I assume it’s Cuba, although the lack of specificity lends it a sense of universality. The narrator is an unnamed young boy, living with his mother, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, and cousin, Celestino; he may be a much older character by the end of the novel. His narrative can be very fragmented, made up of very short observations and reactions to what is happening around him; this style befits a young narrator, who has a short attention span and is easily attracted and distracted by various stimuli (family, animals, nature, ghosts). At other points in the novel, he tells longer, more coherent stories, using longer paragraphs. Later, he writes as a playwright, using character dialogue and italicized stage directions. The narrative becomes less personal and more distanced and authorial, which perhaps indicates that he is older(?).
The novel splits into three parts–First Ending, Second Ending, Final Ending–which are more recursive rather marking distinct story lines or themes. I’m unsure how the three parts are meant to organize the overall narrative. Besides the larger three part division, there are also occasional hand-written (cursive) pages, whose typeface is much larger than that in the rest of the book; the writing on these pages consists of short phrases from that narrator’s family or short quotations from a famous author, like Rimbaud, or work, like MacBeth. These pages do not function as chapter breaks, creating distinct narrative chunks, because more often than not the narrative bridges the handwritten pages. Instead, they seems to function as occasional interrupters, or as a chorus offering commentary and pulling me out of the narrative for a moment to shape my reading of it.
Once I understood how the narrative was structured, I could better understand what Arenas was doing with it. This is a rural novel–realistic–but it is also surreal and fantastic. Dreams and the supernatural are as much a part of the novel as the hard scrabble realities of living an impoverished rural life where too often one cannot find enough to eat. Throughout, the narrator does not distinguish between the real, surreal, and supernatural, and through his eyes the three realms intermingle. Initially I tried to keep them separate as distinct narrative lines, distinct kinds of perception, but I couldn’t and stopped. There really was little use in asking What is real? What is a dream? and What is fantastic?, because they were all a fluid part of the narrator’s perceptions and understanding.
The narrator tells the story of his family. The story begins with his mother running out of the house ready to throw herself into the well; the narrator runs after her to prevent her suicide, but she is not there. The tension and conflict of the household and the threat of suicide remain constant motifs throughout the book. The mother was abandoned by her husband, the narrator’s father, who returned her to her parents, maligning her before disappearing. This is a family that is deeply unhappy and dysfunctional. The grandparents are violent and abusive. The grandfather has a hatchet with which he threatens everyone, and he is always willing to act violently, like forcing his wife’s hands into a pot of boiling water, to insure his dominance. He is the patriarch, and everyone hates him for it. Even though it puts the family at risk for starvation, the grandmother destroys a planting of corn to spite him. The narrator wants to kill his grandfather, and he conspires with the ghosts of his dead cousins on the roof of the house. There are also dead aunts, witches, and elves that populate the house and the surrounding land. The spirit world is as present as the real, and they are linked by the violence that is at the core of this family’s life, a violence born of the grandfather’s need to dominate. The cousin, Celestino, is taken in, because his mother, one of the narrator’s aunts, dies.
Celestino is a poet. He is obsessed with writing poetry, and once he covers all the available paper in the house with poems he begins to carve poetry into the trunks of trees, which becomes a massive project to write a massive poem. The family is ashamed of Celestino’s literacy and his literary talent, because it is not an appropriate male behavior, like dominating others and dominating the land. The grandfather is so angry that he chops down all the trees on which Celestino has written, but Celestino is so driven by his poetry that he continues to carve verses into trees, which then his grandfather chops down until there are almost no trees left. The family’s violent dysfunction impacts the land which sustains them, making survival difficult at best. Amidst all this violence, the narrator and Celestino develop a close and loving bond. It is the only close and loving bond in the book, and it provides them a shield of mutual self-protection against all the hatred and violence directed at them. Their relationship, that between the storyteller and the poet, is the only uplifting relationship in the book. Besides the bond of language, the boys escape to the woods and river to enjoy nature and experience freedom, outside the degrading reality of the family and farm. But the domineering grandfather and the rest of the living dysfunctional family cannot let the boys inhabit such a liberated, peaceful space, and so harry them. Arenas offers little sense in the novel that there is a world outside the house, the farm, the village, and surrounding nature. It’s a closed system that traps everything and everyone: living beings, ghosts of the dead, supernatural beings (witches, elves). Even in the narrator’s dreams, when he dreams that his mother is a frog or fish for example, he cannot escape the violence or dysfunction. The only compensation is story and poetry, and they are always under threat.
And then there is death, for everyone–almost everyone?--dies in this book, and then magically comes back to life, only to die again, including the grandfather. Early on, Celestino escapes to the woods and returns with an awl sticking out of his chest, a sure sign that he is going to die, but he doesn’t. Later, the grandfather kills him with the hatchet; he dies but is mysteriously resurrected. This happens with the grandmother, mother, and narrator, too. Near the end, though, the narrator begins to transition to becoming part of the crew of dead cousins, but the dead are as stuck here as the living. Reminds me of Juan Rulfo’s "Pedro Páramo," where the dead cannot migrate beyond the graveyard because the town cacique, the eponymous Pedro Páramo, has corrupted the local priest who can no longer administer last rights.
The stories are recursive, theme and variation, escape and return, to try again and again. At the end, the narrator sleepwalks to the well, teetering on the edge, waiting for his mother to save him, but they–the witches? the elves? the dead cousins?--tell him that she didn’t get there in time, although he thinks that she got there too soon, and jumped into the well before him(?). So the narrator has entered the realm of the dead, yet if he did commit suicide, like his mother, there is still no escape from this hermetic world.
This may be a creative rendition of Pre-Castro rural Cuba, a place that was an inexorable trap for its inhabitants, ruled by men who have nothing but violence to share. At this point, though, I can’t help but see it as a precursor to the entrapment Arenas felt under Castro and later in the US.
June 28, 2015
De Reinaldo Arenas, “Celestino antes del alba�.
Un relato construido por varios relatos. Un realismo mágico de vivencias, de sueños de vigilia y de sueños al dormir, de familiares agresivos y de familiares agredidos, de muertos, de vivos y de sobrevivientes, de costumbres, de pobreza y sobre todo de miedo, miedo latente que termina por eclosionar en una violencia constante. Todos estos relatos, narrados sin distinción de principio ni de fin, se encadenan uno al otro, pero no se sabe en que momento. Se ignora que personaje piensa o siente, antes de conocer la circunstancia en que sufre, porque de sufrimientos se trata. A veces el texto es un diálogo, a veces un monólogo interior, otras un pensamiento fugaz. Una historia de muchos hechos dolorosos y de pocos, muy pocos, hechos felices. Esta amalgama enmarañada trata de abrirse paso en la escritura de un personaje que todo lo escribe, hasta los árboles, su único refugio.
Celestino es un pequeño, un joven que cuenta caóticamente su vida, su penosa vida que es, por cierto, un caos. Sólo la naturaleza le da cobijo y descanso, tal vez un poco de esperanza. “Y volví a la tierra� suele decir y continúa mirando el firmamento. Cuando la magia o lo sobrenatural lo envuelven, Celestino parece manejarse bien con ellos, quizás sean parte de su destino sin destino. Por todo esto, no es un texto sencillo de leer, requiere de solícita atención y de varias búsquedas de sentido literal o metafórico de palabras de uso corriente en el lenguaje del autor, pero que no lo son para los que leen y no las conocen. Celestino sufre y construye un relato de tristeza y fantasía.
Un relato construido por varios relatos. Un realismo mágico de vivencias, de sueños de vigilia y de sueños al dormir, de familiares agresivos y de familiares agredidos, de muertos, de vivos y de sobrevivientes, de costumbres, de pobreza y sobre todo de miedo, miedo latente que termina por eclosionar en una violencia constante. Todos estos relatos, narrados sin distinción de principio ni de fin, se encadenan uno al otro, pero no se sabe en que momento. Se ignora que personaje piensa o siente, antes de conocer la circunstancia en que sufre, porque de sufrimientos se trata. A veces el texto es un diálogo, a veces un monólogo interior, otras un pensamiento fugaz. Una historia de muchos hechos dolorosos y de pocos, muy pocos, hechos felices. Esta amalgama enmarañada trata de abrirse paso en la escritura de un personaje que todo lo escribe, hasta los árboles, su único refugio.
Celestino es un pequeño, un joven que cuenta caóticamente su vida, su penosa vida que es, por cierto, un caos. Sólo la naturaleza le da cobijo y descanso, tal vez un poco de esperanza. “Y volví a la tierra� suele decir y continúa mirando el firmamento. Cuando la magia o lo sobrenatural lo envuelven, Celestino parece manejarse bien con ellos, quizás sean parte de su destino sin destino. Por todo esto, no es un texto sencillo de leer, requiere de solícita atención y de varias búsquedas de sentido literal o metafórico de palabras de uso corriente en el lenguaje del autor, pero que no lo son para los que leen y no las conocen. Celestino sufre y construye un relato de tristeza y fantasía.
February 13, 2019
5 estrellas por el desafío, el rico vocabulario, el humor, las referencias y la explosión imaginativa de personajes y situaciones.
Es un libro difícil que requiere volver una y otra vez, si uno intenta mantener un hilo de lo relatado.
Es un pastiche de escenas que se repiten y referencias literarias.
Me encantan esas escenas en que lo metafórico se vuelve real o que el personaje ingresa en un mundo en apariencia ajeno.
Hay brujas, duendes, primos muertos, madres que vuelan.
Hay una mezcla rica en lo creativo a causa de la pobreza, la naturaleza y la falta de comida y sueño.
La novela es violenta, pero todo eso está solapado por la mirada fantasiosa del narrador.
Creo que el título en inglés revela demasiado y condiciona la lectura del texto.
Las lecturas políticas relacionadas con Cuba no salen directamente de este texto. Creo que acá no hay nade de eso. Obviamente que el autor conecta todo, pero aún así... lo que si hay es una escena con unos muchachos bañándose en el río, hay una muy linda de construcción de un castillo.
Después se me hizo difícil recordar momentos puntuales, porque muchos se repiten: el abuelo hachando árboles, mamá en el pozo, la abuela siendo una mierda, el abuelo pegándole a uno, el narrador planeando la muerte del abuelo, los primos muertos.
Se puede pensar que el narrador ya está muerto, y en realidad toda la novela es un espiral de las mismas situaciones reescritas, metaforizadas, etc? Por qué la gente recibe heridas mortales y no muere? Es que están todos muertos ya?
La novela empieza y termina desde el pozo, y él dice que está solo abajo. Bue, no se. Habrá que leerla de nuevo.
Alguien que lo haya leído y piense otra cosa?
Es un libro difícil que requiere volver una y otra vez, si uno intenta mantener un hilo de lo relatado.
Es un pastiche de escenas que se repiten y referencias literarias.
Me encantan esas escenas en que lo metafórico se vuelve real o que el personaje ingresa en un mundo en apariencia ajeno.
Hay brujas, duendes, primos muertos, madres que vuelan.
Hay una mezcla rica en lo creativo a causa de la pobreza, la naturaleza y la falta de comida y sueño.
La novela es violenta, pero todo eso está solapado por la mirada fantasiosa del narrador.
Creo que el título en inglés revela demasiado y condiciona la lectura del texto.
Las lecturas políticas relacionadas con Cuba no salen directamente de este texto. Creo que acá no hay nade de eso. Obviamente que el autor conecta todo, pero aún así... lo que si hay es una escena con unos muchachos bañándose en el río, hay una muy linda de construcción de un castillo.
Después se me hizo difícil recordar momentos puntuales, porque muchos se repiten: el abuelo hachando árboles, mamá en el pozo, la abuela siendo una mierda, el abuelo pegándole a uno, el narrador planeando la muerte del abuelo, los primos muertos.
Se puede pensar que el narrador ya está muerto, y en realidad toda la novela es un espiral de las mismas situaciones reescritas, metaforizadas, etc? Por qué la gente recibe heridas mortales y no muere? Es que están todos muertos ya?
La novela empieza y termina desde el pozo, y él dice que está solo abajo. Bue, no se. Habrá que leerla de nuevo.
Alguien que lo haya leído y piense otra cosa?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.