Place: Costa Rica

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Literary updates from The Philippines, Central America, and North Macedonia!

In this week of literary updates, our news range from recent award winners to support for incarcerated writers by PEN centres around the globe. Read further to catch up on the Guadalajara International Book fair, PEN Philippines’ statement on ‘The Day of the Imprisoned Writer,’ and a new contribution to Macedonian cultural studies!

Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines

On ‘The Day of the Imprisoned Writer,’ commemorated annually November 15, PEN Philippines joined PEN centres across the globe in issuing a statement calling for the release of Filipino poets Amanda Socorro Lacaba Echanis, Adora Faye de Vera, and Benito C. Quilloy, children’s book author Eduardo Sarmiento, and journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio—incarcerated writers who have been arrested on trumped-up charges and detained for years. “We continue to raise our voices to call for their release, and for the Philippine government to serve these detainees the justice that is due them under our system of laws—as is but right,” the statement declared. 

PEN centres globally have also demanded the release of Iryna Danylovych (Occupied Crimea), María Cristina Garrido Rodríguez (Cuba), Soulaimane Raissouni (Morocco), and Go Sherab Gyatso (Occupied Tibet). “PEN Philippines has been championing this cause for the past 65 years, and we continue to uphold that advocacy,” PEN Philippines furthers.

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Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest in literary news from Guatemala, Costa Rica, and the Vietnamese diaspora!

This week in world literature, we hear from our Editors-at-Large reporting on the latest in literary developments! In Guatemala, we’re covering the literary community’s response to threats to the electoral process, as well as the country’s most recent award-winning authors. From the Vietnamese diaspora, we take a dive into two authors’ recent publications. Read on to learn more!

Rubén López, Editor-at-Large, Reporting on Guatemala

On August 31, sixty-two Guatemalan writers, editors, and artists signed a statement calling for the resignation of María Consuelo Porras, Head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Ms. Porras, who was included in the Engels List of 2023 for obstructing investigations against corrupt political allies, has been the main actor in the attempt to sabotage the Guatemalan electoral process of this year. 

On June 25, the progressive presidential ticket composed of Bernardo Arévalo and Karin Herrera surprisingly made it to the second round of the election. This started a series of legalistic arbitrariness from Ms. Porras in an effort to prevent the duly elected candidates from taking office democratically on January 14. 

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Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest from Central America, Spain, and China!

This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us around the world for the latest of literary news! From a brilliant cast of Central American authors at Madrid’s upcoming literary festival, to an inside glimpse into Spain’s translation residencies, to a thought-provoking workshop at China’s aBC Art Book Fair, read on to learn more!

José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting for Central America

Central America’s brightest stars are about to come together yet again!

On September 18, the latest edition of the region’s most celebrated literary festival, Centro América Cuenta, will kick off in Madrid, Spain!

This time, Centro América Cuenta will gather regional talents such as Arnoldo Gálvez Suárez (Guatemala), Cindy Regidor (Nicaragua), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), Mónica Albizúrez (Guatemala), Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Guatemala), and Sergio Ramírez (Nicaragua), next to Latin American and Spanish writers such as Mónica Ojeda (Ecuador) and Patricio Pron (Argentina). One high point of the festival will occur on September 18, when former president of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solís, and former Guatemalan jurist living in exile, Thelma Aldana, will gather to discuss the current state of democracy in Central America.

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Resurrection: An Interview with David Cruz, 2021’s Winner of the Manuel Acuña Poetry Prize and Author of Lazarus

I like to think that all the ghosts from everything I’ve read since I was a kid have sat next to me whenever I sit down to write.

Silvia Plath once wrote, “I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—”

This is the opening line of Lady Lazarus, a poem originally included in Plath’s second book, Ariel, published in 1965. Plath, the Bible’s Saint Lazarus, Ovid, David Bowie, Wisława Szymborska, Federico García Lorca, and others sat next to Costa Rican poet David Cruz, or so he claims, as he was writing—and “rigorously editing”—his latest book of poems, Lazarus. This is David’s third book of poems and a follow-up to his 2017 She likes to cry while listening to The Beatles (Valparaíso Ediciones). Earlier this year, Lazarus won the Manuel Acuña Poetry Prize (PIMAPLE in Spanish); previous winners include Antonio Gamoneda, Juan Malibran, and Isabel Conejo.

Lazarus is a retelling of the myth of Saint Lazarus and Plath’s Lady Lazarus. It’s also, says David, “a game of dualities”: past and present, life and death; and an homage to “voices from the past.”

David Cruz is one of Central America’s most exciting poets working today. His poetry is a force of nature. Stunning, picturesque, exquisite. Devastating, earth-shattering, dense. Divine, esoteric, spiritual, mythological, and personal, too. In 2015, more than two hundred critics from universities such as Harvard, Oxford, Columbia, and Princeton chose forty Spanish-speaking poets, born between 1970 and 1985, who, they believed, were “the most relevant” at that moment. They called them El canon abierto—The open canon. The list includes authors such as Andrés Neuman, Urayoán Noel, Raquel Lanseros, and David Cruz. The few glimpses we’ve seen of Lazarus in Vislumbre and available here (PIMAPLE asked David not to share the book just yet) are a testament of such power and “relevance.”

Lazarus I

The mind is a multidimensional map.
Everything we see is but the tip of the iceberg.
I go to the basement of my head
and find many lives,
many memories that I have not lived.
Now I understand Vallejo
“I will die in Paris with the downpour,
on a day I already remember.”

David has published three books of poetry, and in 2011, he won the prestigious Luis Cardoza y Aragón Poetry Prize for his collection Trasatlántico. He’s currently completing a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.

José Garcia Escobar (JGE): The last book you put out before Lazarus was She likes to cry while listening to The Beatles in 2017—originally in Spanish, in 2013. What type of literary concerns (or, to put it differently, what “ideas to write about”) did you have then, and what happened to them?

David Cruz (DC): My last book was a personal interpretation of the social, cultural, and technological shifts we experienced between the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. My poetic self in that book gazed at a girl, and I gazed at the world through her. It’s a book nourished by many things such as music (The Beatles, naturally, is the book’s motif), daily news, artists’ ego, politics; I wanted to abridge many ideas under a clear and organic structure. And these are ideas that are still in my head, that remain, and they come to life every time someone reads the book.

TRACK 1

Music is a cavern of sounds
that resists oblivion.
Notes stretched out in bars.
Shallow vaults where the ships run aground.
Clouds in the depths of the universe
that at the point of impact with the rocks, plagiarize
their own interpretation.  READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

This week's latest news from Brazil, Hong Kong, and Central America!

This week, our writers bring you news of what’s happening around the world. In Brazil, a newly published collection draws together international voices discussing their experience during quarantine; in Hong Kong, tightened lockdown measures have meant book fairs and events moving online; and in Central America, the Autores en cuarentena event series is taking place online, whilst Carlos Wyld Espina’s essential political essay El Autócrata has been reissued. 

Daniel Persia, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Brazil

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has no doubt weighed heavily on writers, altering not only their physical workspaces and subject matter, but also their orientation to the art itself. In Brazil, the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) has invited 126 individuals and collectives to reflect on their experiences during quarantine, featuring multimedia work from writers, visual artists, and musicians, among others. Meanwhile, reflections have gone global with Para além da quarentena: reflexões sobre crise e pandemia, which showcases critical discussions from Brazil, Italy, France, Portugal, the United States, and Uruguay. The collection, released in June, is available in free pdf and e-book formats through mórula editorial.

Another new release, Pandemônio: nove narrativas entre São Paulo—Berlim [Pandemonium: Nine Narratives Bridging São Paulo—Berlin], takes a more in-depth look from two of the world’s major literary hubs: São Paulo and Berlin. Organized by Cristina Judar and Fred Di Giacomo, Pandemônio touches on the pandemic, the ongoing economic crisis, and the advance of authoritarianism, highlighting similarities and differences between São Paulo and Berlin. Featured authors include Aline Bei, Cristina Judar, Jorge Ialanji Filholini and Raimundo Neto (representing São Paulo) and Carola Saavedra, Fred Di Giacomo, Alexandre Ribeiro, Karin Hueck, and Carsten Regel (representing Berlin). Pandemônio illustrates the strength of collective testimony, highlighting how stories have the power to bridge experiences from distant corners of the globe. The book is available for free online at www.pandemonioantologia.com, and through Amazon. A full English translation will be released in August. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

The glorious fragrance of fresh literary works, hot off the presses from around the world.

It seems that national literatures around the world are shaping their next representatives as we receive further updates of new works by authors from around the globe. From publications by a Guatemalan indie press, to a remarkably young award honouree in Brazil, to a historic list of nominations for the most prestigious literary prizes in Japan, our editors are bringing you a glimpse of what is in yourand your bookshelf’sfuture. 

José García Escobar, Editor-at Large, reporting from Central America 

The biggest book fair in Central America, the Feria Internacional del Libro en Guatemala (FILGUA) is only a few weeks away. And like every year, on the days leading to FILGUA, the Guatemalan indie press Catafixia has been announcing its newest drafts. Mid-July, Catafixia will put out books by Manuel Orestes Nieto (Panama), Jacinta Escudos (El Salvador), and Gonçalo M. Tavares (Angola-Portugal). 

Additionally, this year’s FILGUA marks the tenth anniversary of Catafixia, which has helped launch the careers of poets like Vania Vargas and Julio Serrano Echeverría.

Last month, Costa Rican press los tres editores put out Trayéndolo todo de regreso a casa by Argentine author Patricio Pron, who won the Alfaguara Prize in 2019. los tres editores have previously published books by Luis Chavez, Mauro Libertella, and Valeria Luiselli. 

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

From the contemporary to the ancient, this week's roundup of literary news covers Argentina, Latin America, and Hong Kong.

This week, we’re taking a look at the precise and haunting work of a thrilling young Argentinian writer, celebrating and revelling in Latin American Indigenous literatures, and queuing up for a veritable mélange of literary and artistic events in the international hub of Hong Kong. It’s been a pretty good month.

Scott Weintraub, Editor-at-Large for Chile, reporting from Buenos Aires and Berlin:

On January 1, 2019, the New York Times reviewed Megan McDowell’s powerful translation of Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin’s book of short stories, Mouthful of Birds (originally titled Pájaros en la boca). In this review, the Times reveals what fans of contemporary Latin American fiction have known for years: that Schweblin’s haunting, claustrophobic writing is fascinating and addictive. Admittedly, Schweblin had previously received ample praise from critics in both the Spanish-speaking and Anglophone world. Among other accolades, we might consider: in 2010, the British magazine Granta named her a top young Spanish-language writer; Schweblin is a winner of the prestigious Juan Rulfo short story prize; she appeared on the Bogotá 39 list (2017), which lauded the top 39 Spanish-language authors under 40 years of age. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Bringing you the latest in world literature news.

Never is there a dull period in the world of literature in translation, which is why we make it our personal mission to bring you the most exciting news and developments. This week our Editors-at-Large from Mexico, Central America, and Spain, plus a guest contributor from Lithuania, are keeping their fingers on the pulse! 

Paul M. Worley and Kelsey Woodburn, Editors-at-Large, reporting from Mexico: 

On February 21, numerous events throughout Mexico took place in celebration of the International Day of Mother Languages. In San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, CELALI (the State Center for Indigenous Language and Art) held a poetry reading featuring Tseltal poet Antonio Guzmán Gómez, among others, and officially recognized Jacinto Arias, María Rosalía Jiménez Pérez, and Martín Gómez Rámirez for their work in developing and fortifying indigenous languages in the state.

Later in San Cristóbal, at the Museum of Popular Cultures, there was a poetry reading that brought together four of the Indigenous Mexican poetry’s most important voices: Mikeas Sánchez, Adriana López, Enriqueta Lúnez, and Juana Karen, representing Zoque, Tseltal, Tsotsil and Ch’ol languages, respectively. Sánchez, Lúnez, and Karen have all published in Pluralia Ediciones’s prestigious “Voces nuevas de raíz antigua” series.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Traveling the world, one book at a time!

Your weekly shot of global literary news is here! Today we travel to Austria, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Morocco to find out about the latest prizes, performances and literary festivals. 

Contributor Flora Brandl reporting from Austria: 

In the southern state of Styria, the oldest Austrian festival for contemporary art, Steirischer Herbst (Styrian Autumn), recently opened with a powerful speech by the Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas. Styrian-born, Haas is one of the most renowned figures of the international New Music scene and currently teaches at Columbia University.

In his opening speech, Haas reflected on the dynamics of the remnants of Nazism and the burgeoning avant-garde art scene in Styria. While Nazism was always at the forefront of fighting so-called “degenerate art”—“for they knew: art is dangerous for them”—it also provided fertile grounds for a creative form of resistance: “We [artists] were spurred by the pain and the rage and the grief,” Haas recounted. He ended with an invocation that the role of artists today is to “spread the virus of humanitarianism” in the wake of a worldwide rise of fundamentalism. A political speech with a very personal note, the entire speech can be read in the original German here.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest in literary news around the globe, all in one place.

If, like us, you can’t start the weekend without knowing what the literary world’s been up to this past week, we’ve got your back. We have dispatches from Central America, the United States and Indonesia with a real tasting board of talks, events and new publications. Wherever you’re based, we’re here to provide you with news that stays news. 

Editor-At-Large for Guatemala, José García, reports on events in Central America: 

Today Costa Rica’s book fair, the twentieth Feria del Libro 2017, kicked off in San José. During its nine days, CR’s fair will offer concerts, book readings, release events, and seminars. This year’s Feria will have the participation of writers like Juan Villoro (Mexico), Carlos Fonseca (Costa Rica), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner Rita Dove (United States), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), and Mayra Santos-Febres (Puerto Rico), among others.

Some of the books to be presented or discussed during the fair are Larisa Quesada’s En Piel de Cuervos, Alfonso Chase’s Piélagos, Carlos Francisco Monge’s Nada de todo aquello, Isidora Chacón’s Yo Bruja, and Luis ChávesVamos a tocar el agua. Also, the renown Costa Rican writer Carlos Fonseca, famous for his first novel Coronel Lágrimas that was translated into English by Megan McDowell and published by Restless Books, will talk about his sophomore book, Museo Animal on September 2.

In Guatemala, the indie press Magna Terra continued the promotion of many of its titles released during this year’s Guatemalan Book Fair. On August 17 they officially presented Pablo Sigüenza Ramírez’s Ana es la luna y otros cuentos cotidianos. Also, they continue to push Pedro Pablo Palma’s Habana Hilton, about the most personal side of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, during his time in Guatemala and his early years in Cuba.

Fellow Guatemalan indie press, Catafixia Editorial recently finished a local tour that included their participation in FILGUA, the international poetry festival of Quetzaltenango FIPQ, and a quick visit to Comalapa, for the presentation of Oyonïk, by the twenty-two-year-old poet, Julio Cúmez. Additionally, Catafixia is preparing for their participation in the IV Encuentro de Pensamiento y Creación Joven en las Américas in Habana Cuba next month. And recently they announced the inclusion of writer, poet, and guerrilla leader Mario Payeras to their already impressive roster; they have yet to share which of Mario’s books they will republish.

Finally, Guatemalan writer, Eduardo Halfon, has a new book coming out August 28 titled Duelo (Libros Asteroide).

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Join us for a spin across the literary world!

Another week full of exciting news! Paul and Kelsey bring us up to speed on what’s happening in Mexico and Guatemala. We also have José García providing us with all the updates about Central American literary festivals you could wish for. Finally, we are delighted to welcome aboard our new team-members, Valent and Norman, who share news from Indonesia. 

Paul Worley and Kelsey Woodbury, Editors-at-Large for Mexico, report:

In conjunction with partners such as the Forum of Indigenous Binational Organizations (FIOB) and the Indigenous Community Leadership (CIELO), the LA Public Library in California, US, recently announced that it will host the second annual Indigenous Literature Conference on July 29 and 30. As stated on Facebook, the conference’s “first day will be dedicated to the indigenous literature from (the Mexican state of) Oaxaca,” with “the second (being) broader in scope.” Among those slated to participate are the Oakland, California-based Zapotec writer and artist Lamberto Roque Hernández, Zapotec poet Natalia Toledo, and Me’phaa poet Hubert Matiuwaa, whose Xtámbaa was recently reviewed here in Asymptote.

On July 14 in Guatemala, K’iche’/Kaqchikel Maya poet Rosa Chávez announced the publication of a new poetry fanzine entitled AB YA YA LA. Limited to 40 in number, each copy is unique and contains different details.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Your weekly ride around the literary universe!

This week we will bring you up to speed on what’s happening in Central America, Morocco, and Spain. José brings us the latest news from the world of independent bookstores and publishing houses that are a treat for bibliophiles in Central America. Layla too has updates about exciting literary festivals and meets in Spain which bring book lovers together. Jessie shares some sad news from Morocco which however, on an optimistic note, reminds us of the universal reach of literature. 

José García, a cultural journalist from Guatemala, covers Central America for us this week:

On June 20 in San José, Costa Rica, Uruk Editores released Bernabé Berrocal’s second novel Archosaurio (Archosaur). Fellow Costa Rican writers like Aquileo J. Echeverría Prize winner Warren Ulloa and philologist Manuela Álvarez Escobar have called Archosaurio disturbing and captivating.

In late 2016 los tres editores publishing house announced its creation in Costa Rica. On June 21 they revealed their first title, Vamos a tocar el agua (Let’s Go Touch the Water) by Luis Chaves, a celebrated author of eleven books, whose work has been translated into German and is considered one of the leading figures of contemporary in Costa Rican poetry. los tres editores is yet to announced the publication date of Chaves’s book.

Additionally, the renowned Guatemalan writer Eduardo Halfon and Guggenheim fellow—whose work has been translated into several language including English, French, and Italian—on June 22  presented his novels Pan y Cerveza (Bread and Beer) and Saturno (Saturn). These novels were originally published by Alfaguara in 2003 as a single book titled Esto no es una pipa, Saturno (This is not a pipe, Saturno), and are now separate, as the author originally intended them to be. Pan y Cerveza and Saturno were published thanks to the work of Guatemalan bookstore SOPHOS and Spanish publishing house Jekyll & Jill. Eduardo has also a new book entitled Duelo (Duel) coming out later this year.

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Carlos Fonseca on Masks, Perspective, and History

An identity is nothing but a coherent life narrative weaving together separate fragments of lived experience.

Carlos Fonseca is the author of Colonel Lágrimas, first published in Spanish in 2015 by Anagrama (Barcelona) and coming out in English on 4 October from Restless Books. A British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge, Fonseca’s research interests lie in Latin American literature, philosophy, and art history, and the formal links between novels and politics, among many others. He was born in Costa Rica and grew up in Puerto Rico, but he considers himself Latin American.

Blog Editor Hanna Heiskanen interviewed Carlos over email about his debut novel, the people who inspired his characters, and his thoughts on identity and the evolving nature of memory. Read an excerpt of Colonel Lágrimas here.

Hanna Heiskanen (HH): Could you begin by describing your book to someone who doesn’t know anything about it?

Carlos Fonseca (CF): Imagine a book that works like a virtual map: you can zoom in or you can zoom out. If you zoom in, you will see the daily life of an eccentric old man who is constructing an encyclopedia of human knowledge. If you zoom out, you will see the political history of the twentieth century. Colonel Lágrimas tries to link these two narrative layers.

HH: This is your first novel—how did you get into writing fiction, and why did you want to tell this particular story?

CF: The novel sprang from two different events. The first is the moment in which a friend of mine tells me the life story of the eccentric mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, a brilliant thinker who ended up locked in his cabin in the French Pyrenees, imagining a universal theory of knowledge. The second was the moment I sat down and, influenced by the works of the American photorealist portrait painter Chuck Close, attempted to imagine what a close-up portrait of my character would “sound” like, what his voice would sound like. The moment I figured out which type of narrator I wanted, the novel’s structure became clear to me.

HH: History, its blurriness and dependence on perspective is one of the leading themes in your narrative. I understand your academic research also has to do with representations of history. How did your research seep into Colonel Lágrimas?

CF: I felt that the life of Alexander Grothendieck—upon which the character of the colonel is based—represented in some ways the history of the twentieth century: a century that began with an addiction to political action and ended up hooked on data. A century that moved from the battlefield to Wikipedia, so to speak. I wanted to explore, through the novel, this idea of contemporary history as a giant museum where the possibility of political action itself is at stake.

HH: You also write about how we can’t escape the inevitability of inheritance“walking on a tightrope” means you can only walk in one directionand whether it’s possible to change the narrative and thus the course of history.

CF: I think you are absolutely right: it is a novel about inheritance. A novel about what it means to inherit a history, a history both individual and communal. The protagonist, like Grothendieck, is the son of two left-wing anarchists and, as such, he must learn how to inherit this political tradition. In a way, I was interested in exploring the Colonel’s eccentric projects and actions as his way of appropriating the anarchist tradition from which he came. It is, indeed, a novel about the ways in which we narrate history and the consequences these narratives have upon us.

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Translation Tuesday: An excerpt from “Colonel Lágrimas” by Carlos Fonseca

The colonel inhabits his century with the anonymity of a fish in water.

Today we present an extract from Carlos Fonseca’s dazzling debut about the demented final project of a brilliant mathematician. Recalling the best of Bolaño, Borges, and Calvino, Colonel Lágrimas is an allegory of our hyperinformed age and of the clash between European and Latin American history.

The colonel aspires to have a thousand faces. The file endeavors to give him only one. Now that he’s sleeping we can remove the folder from the cabinet where it is stored, remove the blue band that protects the file, and thumb through it at our leisure, study the case history hidden behind this tired man’s dreams. On the first page in this heavy, grayish folder, we find the fundamentals of an identity: a name, date of birth, and place of origin. Strange inflexibility for a man who dedicated his life to being many, to seeking happiness through a schizophrenic multiplicity of personalities. The colonel inhabits his century with the anonymity of a fish in water. And, nonetheless, a name and a date bring continuity to the archive. Clearly, the sleeping man is only one. We are left with the magic of perspective, looking at him from a thousand different angles, drawing a kind of cubist portrait of this tired man. At times, asleep though he is, it would seem that the colonel is posing for us: he turns to one side, he turns to the other, he changes positions as often as he changes dreams. We tell ourselves that we must look at the file with the flexible gaze of one who catalogues dreams, we must analyze the colonel’s masks from the elusive position of happiness.

***

In the midst of war, the weight of his heritage upon him, the little colonel learned to play with his masks. We find in the file, in almost indecipherable handwriting, a note that establishes the precise moment of what would be one of the great realizations of his life: to don a mask was to refuse a destiny. Dated in 1943 and signed by a certain Jacques Truffaut, psychoanalyst at a Parisian orphanage, the note is summarized in the following lines: “The boy refuses to answer in his mother tongue. He rejects Russian with an alarming rage. He seems to want to annul his origins. On the other hand, he caresses Spanish with an angelic fluency.” Truffaut knows little of those rainy Chalco afternoons. For him, Mexico calls up ideas of erotic barbarism, of adventure and expeditions with no return, and so, in an attempt to feel at home, he chooses to write, on the line for birthplace, the French name, Mexique. But the little colonel doesn’t like homes: he prefers a theory he discovers in a French copy of National Geographic, in an article about the tribal use of masks in northeastern Africa. He prefers to think that civilization originated with the simulacrum, feigned identity, anonymity with a face, endless flux. He thumbs anxiously, happily, through the article that tells of a certain Johann Kaspar Lavater, father of physiognomy, who thought he had discovered the moral outlines of personalities in people’s faces. The colonel sketches precise and fantastic drawings in which different faces are juxtaposed with animal physiognomies: a man with a pointed snout compared to a long-nosed dog, a man with a small nose beside a buffalo. He laughs in the midst of war, and his laughter is the first of many masks. Years later, the colonel will find in his love of butterflies a kind of final mask, a homeopathic remedy for this, his solitude of grand, dramatic laughter.

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