That was why, in April 1844, she began her propaganda tour around the central and southern regions of France, which was to be just the beginning of a journey throughout other parts of the country and then through the whole of Europe. Weakened by illness and with a bullet lodged in her chest, she had to deal with innumerable obstacles on her journey, including the hostility of the authorities that searched her hotel room, confiscated her belongings and banned her meetings. She held out for a mere eight months, until her death in Bordeaux, on 14 November 1844. But in the course of her journey, she became ever more impressive and her actions became increasingly moving as she took her social message not just to the workers but also to the leading members of the establishment – bishops, businessmen, newspaper owners – convinced that her ideas for social justice would also win over the exploiters. Her tragic death, at forty-one years of age, brought to an end a richly varied life, admirable in its dedication – albeit marked by the nineteenth-century dream of utopia – which represents an important stage in the struggle for women’s rights and for a society free of all forms of discrimination, exploitation and injustice.
There is no better introduction to the life and work of this extraordinary woman than Flora Tristán. La Paria et son rêve, a very thorough edition of her correspondence edited by Stéphane Michaud, Professor of Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne, President of the Society of Romantic and Nineteenth-Century Studies and the author of a recent important book on Lou Andreas-Salomé, which combines erudition with a clear and elegant style. Professor Michaud is probably the leading expert on the life and work of Flora Tristán, having tracked it for many years with the obstinacy of a bloodhound and the tenderness of a lover. Her studies on Tristán and the symposia she has organised on her intellectual and political achievements have been decisive in rescuing Flora Tristán from the unjustified critical neglect she had suffered, despite isolated work like the admirable book Jules Puech wrote on her in 1925.
This new edition of her correspondence, expanded and enriched by notes and commentaries, contains new letters alongside the ones we already know, and also many letters from her correspondents, as well as mapping the social and political context of Flora’s life. The volume as a whole offers an excellent overview of her times: the hopes, polemics and personal disputes that were bound up in the first attempts in France to organise workers politically, the distance that often existed between reality and the ambitious messianic plans of the utopians, and the psychology of the main character herself, who is extremely frank in her letters and in the comments that she wrote in the margins of the correspondence that she received.
There are still major gaps in her biography, but these letters offer an absorbing portrait of her life following her return to France from Peru, especially the final two years. The letters are disarmingly fresh and sincere – luckily she did not write for posterity – revealing all her contradictions and weaknesses. She was a realist and a dreamer, generous and irascible, naïve and pugnacious, truculent and romantic, bold and never discouraged.
This book is the best homage that Flora Tristán could be offered in this the second centenary of her birth.
Marbella, July 2002
Also by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Cubs and Other Stories
The Time of the Hero
The Green House
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service
Conversation in the Cathedral
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
The War of the End of the World
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta
The Perpetual Orgy
Who Killed Palomino Molero?
The Storyteller
In Praise of the Stepmother
A Fish in the Water
Death in the Andes
Making Waves
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
The Feast of the Goat
Letters to a Young Novelist
The Language of Passion
The Way to Paradise
The Bad Girl
Copyright Acknowledgements
Literature
Semilla de los sueños. Seeds of Dreams, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1997
Una novela para el siglo XXI. A Twenty-First-Century Novel, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2004
El corazón de las tinieblas. The Heart of Darkness, from La verdad de las mentiras, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1990, 2002 (Abbreviated from now on to LVM)
La muerte en Venecia. Death in Venice, from LVM
La señora Dalloway. Mrs Dalloway, from LVM
Nadja (1928), from LVM
La condición humana. La Condition humaine, from LVM
Trópico de cancer. Tropic of Cancer, LVM
Siete cuentos góticos. Seven Gothic Tales, from LVM
El extranjero. L’Étranger, from LVM
El viejo y el mar. The Old Man and the Sea, from LVM
Lolita, from LVM
El tambor de hojalata. The Tin Drum, from LVM
Extract from La utopia arcáica. José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo on the Peruvian novelist, José María Arguedas. Edited essay on the novel Los ríos profundos (Deep Rivers), © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1996
Neruda cumple cien años. Neruda at a Hundred, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2004
Como perdí el miedo al avión. How I Lost My Fear of Flying, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1999
La literatura y la vida. Literature and Life, from LVM
Art
Una fábrica de sueños. A Dream Factory. On Museums, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1996
‘Grosz: A Sad and Ferocious Man’, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1992
Dos amigos. Two Friends, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001
Huellas de Gauguin. Traces of Gauguin, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2002
Los hombres-mujeres del Pacífico. The Men-Women of the Pacific, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2002
El pintor en el burdel. The Painter in the Brothel, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001
Cuando París era una fiesta. When Paris Was a Fiesta, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2002
Botero en los toros. Botero at the Bullfight, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1992
Culture and Politics
El nacionalismo y la utopía. Nationalism and Utopia, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1991
El hombre que sabía demasiado. The Man Who Knew Too Much. On Isaiah Berlin, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2000
El ladrón en la casa vacía. The Thief in the Empty House. On Revel, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1997
La cultura y el nuevo orden internacional. Culture and the New International Order, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1997
Las réplicas del 11 de setiembre. Responses to 9/11, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001
Novelista en New York. Novelist in New York, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001
Diario de Iraq. Iraq Diary (The eight original articles), © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2003
Historia de ratas. A Story about Rats, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001
El capitán en su laberinto. The Captain in His Labyrinth, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001
El caso Pinochet. The Pinochet Affair, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1999
Bostezos chilenos. Chilean Yawns, in El País, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2006
La odisea de Flora Tristán. The Odyssey of Flora Tristán © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2002
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2007 by Mario Vargas Llosa
Translation and selection copyright © John King
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2007 by Faber and Faber Ltd., Great Britain
Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010940200
ISBN: 978-1-4299-6747-1
www.fsgbooks.com
1 Efraín Kristal, Temptation of the Word
. The Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa, Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, 1998, pp. 185–86.
2 A Fish in the Water. A Memoir, Faber and Faber, London, 1994, p. 209.
3 La verdad de las mentiras, Alfaguara, Madrid, 2002, pp. 13–14.
4 ’Günter Grass en la picota’, El País, 27 August 2006.
5 La utopía arcaica: José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1996, p. 17.
6 The Temptation of the Impossible, Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 176–77.
7 ‘Karl Popper al día’, El País 27 April 1989 and 5 June 1989.
8 A Fish in the Water, p. 210.
9 ’King’s Cross’, El País, 24 July 2005.
10 Israel/Palestina: Paz o Guerra Santa, Aguilar, Madrid, 2006, pp. 107–108.
11 Ibid.
12 ’La segunda oportunidad’, El País, 18 June 2006.
13 Martín de Riquer, Para leer a Cervantes, Barcelona, 2003.
14 All quotations are taken from Miguel de Cervantes, The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de La Mancha, translated by John Rutherford, Penguin, London, 2000.
15 ’An Image of Africa’, Massachusetts Review, 18:4 (Winter 1977), pp. 782–94.
16 F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition, Stewart, New York, 1950, p. 179.
17 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1983, p. 112.
18 See Heart of Darkness, Icon Critical Guides, edited by Nicholas Tredell, Icon Books, Cambridge, 1998, p. 50.
19 Thomas Mann, Death in Venice together with Two Other Stories: Tristan, Tonio Kroger. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1955, p. 76.
20 Death in Venice, p. 71.
21 On surrealism and literature, see Jacqueline Chénieux-Gendron, Le Surréalisme et le roman (1922–1950), Paris, 1983.
22 André Breton, Nadja, Gallimard, Paris, 1963, p. 22.
23 Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales, Putnam, London, 1934, p. 202.
24 Ibid, p. 202.
25 This foreword to the American edition of The Outsider is reprinted as an afterword to the UK Penguin edition of the novel. See Albert Camus, The Outsider, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1983, pp. 118–19.
26 Hemingway en Cuba, prologue by Gabriel García Márquez, Editorial Letras Cubanas, Havana, 1984.
27 See Jeffrey Meyers (ed.), Hemingway: The Critical Heritage, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston, 1982.
28 Deep Rivers, University of Texas Press, Austria, p. 227.
29 Poem written by Grosz in 1918. See Uwe Schneede, Georg Grosz. The Artist in His Society, New York, 1985, p. 47.
30 M. Kay Flavell, George Grosz. A Biography, New Haven and London, p. 300.
31 Schneede, p. 31.
32 Marty Grosz, in George Grosz, Gli anni di Berlino, Mazzotta, Milan, 1985, p. 16.
33 Published in Das Kunstblatt, vol. 8, no. 2, Verlag Gustav Kiepenheur, Berlin, 1924.
34 Reproduced in Hans Hess, Georg Grosz, London and New Haven, 1985, p. 31.
35 Andrew De Shong, The Theatrical Designs of George Grosz, Michigan, 1982.
36 Flavell, p. 128.
37 As can be seen in his collection Mit Pinsel und Schere: 7 Materialisationen, Berlin, Malik, 1922.
38 Quoted by Uwe M. Schneede, George Grosz: His Life and Work, Universe Books, New York, 1979, p. 108.
39 The successful Berlin marchand and gallery owner.
40 Fernando Botero, La corrida, oleos, acuarelas, dibujos, exhibition catalogue, Hospital de los Venerables Sacerdotes, Seville, 1992, p. 19.
41 John Murray, London, 1991.
42 A Life: Isaiah Berlin, Chatto & Windus, London, 1998.
43 Ignatieff, p. 234.
44 Ignatieff, p. 125.
45 Ignatieff, p. 167.
46 Ignatieff, p. 233.
47 Ignatieff, p. 211.
48 Le Tour de France II, Maspero, Paris 1980, p. 192.
Mario Vargas Llosa, Touchstones: Essays in Literature, Art and Politics
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