Roberto Arlt

Remo Erdosain's Buenos Aires is a dim, seething, paranoid hive of hustlers and whores, scoundrels and madmen, and Erdosain feels his soul is as polluted as anything in this dingy city. Possessed by the directionlessness of the society around him, trapped between spiritual anguish and madness, he clings to anything that can give his life meaning: small-time defrauding of his employers, hatred of his wife's cousin Gregorio Barsut, a part in the Astrologer's plans for a new world order... but is that enough? Or is the only appropriate response to reality - insanity? Written in 1929, The Seven Madmen depicts an Argentina on the edge of the precipice. This teeming world of dreamers, revolutionaries and scheming generals was Arlt's uncanny prophesy of the cycle of conflict which would scar his country's passage through the twentieth century, and even today it retains its power as one of the great apocalyptic works of modern literature.

No s lo este ensayo se convierte en imprescindible por ser el primer texto largo y enjundioso que publicara Roberto Arlt, sino porque su tem tica y las cuestiones, cuando no, pulsiones an micas, que desvela y denuncia el gran novelista bonaerense siguen, a pesar de los noventa a os transcurridos desde su publicaci n, en el tapete de nuestro d a a d a. M s a n cuando esta edici n, profusamente notada, permite, frente a todas las anteriores, una mejor comprensi n de la inmensa enga ifa y confusi n que late bajo eso que se entiende como esoterismo y espiritualidad, y que un joven Arlt, con una perspicacia fuera de lo com n, capt de un golpe en estas breves, cuanto agudas, p ginas. Por todo ello, Las ciencias ocultas en la ciudad de Buenos Aires es un manifiesto de una actualidad indudable para cualquier buen lector en lengua espa ola.

Hemos elegido El jorobadito y Las fieras para el tomo dedicado a Roberto Arlt en nuestra serie Dos relatos. En ella hemos venido publicando libros breves compuestos siempre de dos narraciones.En El jorobadito (1933), su primer libro de cuentos, Roberto Arlt trata temas oscuros. Aqu se habla del crimen, la traici n, la hipocres a y la cr tica a la moral burguesa.El narrador est encerrado en un calabozo por haber estrangulado a Rigoletto, el jorobadito que da t tulo al texto. La sociedad ve su crimen como la consecuencia de su locura y lo encierra en la c rcel.La confesi n sobre el estrangulamiento, escrita en la c rcel, intenta justificar el asesinato como una especie de higiene social. La maldad del jorobado y la perversas relaciones familiares del asesino, son las razones que utiliza el narrador-asesino para justificar su bajeza moral.Los diversos y exagerados rumores desparramados con motivo de la conducta que observ en compa a de Rigoletto, el jorobadito, en la casa de la se ora X, apartaron en su tiempo a mucha gente de mi lado.Sin embargo, mis singularidades no me acarrearon mayores desventuras, de no perfeccionarlas estrangulando a Rigoletto.Retorcerle el pescuezo al jorobadito ha sido de mi parte un acto m s ruinoso e imprudente para mis intereses, que atentar contra la existencia de un benefactor de la humanidad.Se ha echado sobre m la polic a, los jueces y los peri dicos. Y sta es la hora en que a n me pregunto (considerando los rigores de la justicia) si Rigoletto no estaba llamado a ser un capit n de hombres, un genio, o un fil ntropo. De otra forma no se explican las crueldades de la ley para vengar los fueros de un insigne piojoso, al cual, para pagarle de su insolencia, resultaran insuficientes todos los puntapi s que pudieran suministrarle en el trasero, una brigada de personas bien nacidas.En Las fieras, Robert Arlt explora otro territorio. Se acerca con m s intensidad al g nero negro. A trav s de un largo mon logo ante el fantasma de su mujer ya fallecida. A quien explicar el proceso de envilecimiento y degeneraci n en que ha ido cayendo.El jorobadito y Las fieras tienen un elemento en com n. Son contados por un mismo criminal idealizado, que se responsabiliza siempre de todos sus propios actos mal volos. As estas narraciones son confesiones ntimas que intentan quiz redimir al criminal, a trav s de la higiene social o la memoria de un amor perdido.

Roberto Arlt, celebrated in Argentina for his tragicomic, punch-in-the-jaw writing during the 1920s and 1930s, was a forerunner of Latin American “boom” and “postboom” novelists such as Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende. Mad Toy, acclaimed by many as Arlt’s best novel, is set against the chaotic background of Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century. Set in the badlands of adolescence, where acts of theft and betrayal become metaphors for creativity, Mad Toy is equal parts pulp fiction, realism, detective story, expressionist drama, and creative memoir. An immigrant son of a German father and an Italian mother, Arlt as a youth was a school dropout, poor and often hungry. In Mad Toy, he incorporates his personal experience into the lives of his characters. Published in 1926 as El juguete rabioso, the novel follows the adventures of Silvio Astier, a poverty-stricken and frustrated youth who is drawn to gangs and a life of petty crime. As Silvio struggles to bridge the gap between exuberant imagination and the sordid reality around him, he becomes fascinated with weapons, explosives, vandalism, and thievery, despite a desperate desire to rise above his origins. Flavored with a dash of romance, a hint of allegory, and a healthy dose of irony, the novel’s language varies from the cultured idiom of the narrator to the dialects and street slang of the novel’s many colorful characters. Mad Toy has appeared in numerous Spanish editions and has been adapted for the stage and for film. It is the second of Arlt’s novels to be translated into English.

Roberto Arlt, celebrated in Argentina for his tragicomic, punch-in-the-jaw writing during the 1920s and 1930s, was a forerunner of Latin American “boom” and “postboom” novelists such as Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende. Mad Toy, acclaimed by many as Arlt’s best novel, is set against the chaotic background of Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century. Set in the badlands of adolescence, where acts of theft and betrayal become metaphors for creativity, Mad Toy is equal parts pulp fiction, realism, detective story, expressionist drama, and creative memoir. An immigrant son of a German father and an Italian mother, Arlt as a youth was a school dropout, poor and often hungry. In Mad Toy, he incorporates his personal experience into the lives of his characters. Published in 1926 as El juguete rabioso, the novel follows the adventures of Silvio Astier, a poverty-stricken and frustrated youth who is drawn to gangs and a life of petty crime. As Silvio struggles to bridge the gap between exuberant imagination and the sordid reality around him, he becomes fascinated with weapons, explosives, vandalism, and thievery, despite a desperate desire to rise above his origins. Flavored with a dash of romance, a hint of allegory, and a healthy dose of irony, the novel’s language varies from the cultured idiom of the narrator to the dialects and street slang of the novel’s many colorful characters. Mad Toy has appeared in numerous Spanish editions and has been adapted for the stage and for film. It is the second of Arlt’s novels to be translated into English.