If readers of literature in English know of Mexican writer Sergio Pitol, it is doubtless thanks to Deep Vellum Publishing and translator George Henson. In fact, the partnership between Deep Vellum and Henson constitutes exactly why small, independent publishers and translators are essential for providing us with authors whose works might otherwise go unnoticed in the United States. Moreover, partnerships like this one also give writers and their texts new life in different languages and cultural milieus. It’s common knowledge that only around 3% of the books published each year are books in English translation, and that number, despite superstars like Roberto Bolaño, Elena Ferrante, and Karl Ove Knausgård, has remained mostly stagnant. According to David Damrosch, the “worldliness” of literature depends upon its circulation beyond its language of origin, a theory to which I wholeheartedly subscribe. As Damrosch writes, “My claim is that world literature is not an infinite, ungraspable canon of works but rather a mode of circulation and of reading (emphasis mine), a mode that is applicable to individual works as to bodies of material, available for reading established classics and new discoveries alike” (5).
Translation, then, is indispensable for the circulation of literature beyond its linguistic and cultural borders. Translation opens worlds that might otherwise be cut off from the larger reading public, a public, at least in the United States, that hardly reads, to say nothing of works in translation. Henson’s translations of Pitol’s work have allowed that work to travel and escape the provincialism that plagues so many writers who go untranslated. This cosmopolitanism is also a major theme of Pitol’s latest novel to be translated into English.
Taming the Devine Heron is Henson’s sixth translation of books by Pitol. It’s also the second of his trilogy The Love Parade (See D. P. Snyder’s review “It’s All Relative: The Multifold Self in Sergio Pitol’s ‘The Love Parade‘ ). The novel is a major work exhibiting Pitol’s cosmopolitan sensibilities. It’s also a meta-narrative that highlights the self-reflection so evident throughout his oeuvre. Pitol’s literary works are grounded in a type of hybridity that combines fiction, memoir, travel narrative, and biography, to name a few genres. In fact, the entire novel could be read as an exercise in literary imagination, which knows no borders and whose boundary is exclusively contained by the human capacity to wonder.
The first chapter introduces us to a nameless narrator who is struggling to begin his latest book. The first line raises the curtain: “An aging writer is preparing to begin a new novel”. It’s the complexity of this statement, declarative, unambiguous, that also captures the imagination of the reader. One is reminded of Calvino’s first lines to his If on a winter’s night a traveler, a writer Pitol’s narrator mentions as an inspiration. The writer and the reader begin the journey together, but only after publication, like the introduction of a new child into the world.
Of course, what is also implied is the creative energies and frustrations of the act of writing, of creating new worlds. This point of departure also touches on the reading of the narrator, whose library includes Conrad, Mann, Bakhtin, Dante, and above all, Gogol. Like their readers, writers are also a combination of experiences, attitudes, and above all, the readings they have encountered. The first chapter sets off a whirlwind of wonder that is first opened by the discovery of new worlds that comes with reading: “Suddenly, something in the reading touched an unexpected place in his being and lit a fire” (18). The first chapter takes up only about ten pages, but those pages may be some of the most important in contemporary world literature. They constitute a critique of the act of reading and writing where the emphasis is placed on the encounter with reading as such.
The remainder of the novel tells the story of the travels and experiences of Dante C. de la Estrella. From scenes in Mexico to the European continent, and finally to the streets and dens of Istanbul, Estrella finds himself among a group of people who travel and discuss literature, revolution, politics, and all other matters that provide food for thought. At the center of this are Marietta Karapetiz, a Gertrude Stein-like character who is more complex than we first imagine, and her complicated friendship with Estrella.
I’m not sure it’s accurate to state that the inner narrative revolves around the developing relationship between Estrella and Karapetiz, for so much more is taking place. And yet, it is the dynamic between these two characters that keeps the reader focused, moored to a sense of narrative trajectory. When Estrella finally meets her in person, Karapetiz is described in an almost vulgar manner:
It’s difficult for me to describe my first impression. She almost frightened me. Her face was that of a toucan; but that image vanished instantly, because apart from the nose, she had none of the traits on might attribute to those cheerful tropical birds. She was instead like a giant crow with a prominent nose, yes, like a toucan, but at the same time she had the appearance of a massive safe. (80)
As the narrative continues to unfold, we discover that there is much more to Karapetiz and Estrella than meets the eye. Yet, a great deal is left unsaid, and this is part of Pitol’s magic as a writer. He leaves out just enough for the reader to take an active part in the narrative.
It is doubtless true that human beings are political animals, but more than that we are storytelling animals whose narratives give form to experiences, both real and imaginary. Pitol’s Taming of the Divine Heron can be read as a celebration of the human imagination as that human approaches the winter of life. Above all, Karapetiz is a storyteller and Estrella is a traveler. Together, they create the divine union between writing and traveling. And for us, the anonymous reader, the act of reading is a kind of traveling, unbounded by the physical text we hold in our hands.
The novel is charming, and the readers are charmed, bewitched, placed under the spell of a highly talented and imaginative writer and his translator. The relationship between writer and narrator here, and in Pitol’s other works, is no sleight of hand, no shell game; instead, it’s alchemy, rebellion, and ultimately life-affirming in the way that John Gardner argues in On Moral Fiction. Many have argued that literature’s great power is that it teaches us to be human. Perhaps more importantly, it also helps us to approach the divine, not necessarily in order to tame it, but to join its flame and become one, rising ever higher.
Pitol, Sergio. Taming the Divine Heron. Translated by G. B. Henson. Deep Vellum Publishing, 2023.
Andrew Martino is Dean of the Glenda Chatham & Robert G. Clarke Honors College at Salisbury University where he is also professor of English. He has published on Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, and Luigi Pirandello, among others.
Works Cited
Damrosch, David. What is World Literature. Princeton University Press, 2003.