“The Polish Lover” by Elena Poniatowska. Seix Barral, 904 pages. $9,700.
Although she was born in Paris in 1932, Elena Poniatowska is one of the greatest exponents of Mexican literature of this century. The most characteristic of her work of fiction is that it is based on her journalistic work, in famous novels such as “Hasta no verte Jesús mío” and “La noche de Tlatelolco”.
A committed feminist and human rights activist, she still writes a weekly column in the newspaper La Jornada. As a corollary to a career marked by recognition in her country and in the world, in 2013 she was awarded the Cervantes Prize, a distinction that she received dressed in a traditional Mexican costume.
“The Polish Lover” which has just been published with some delay in Argentina, is his most ambitious novel. Or at least that’s how critics from his country described it. In any case, it has the character of a family and personal memory, delayed and exquisite, in which Poniatowska traces her paternal genealogy to focus on one of her most illustrious ancestors: the Polish king Stanislaw Poniatowski. Also known as Stanislaus II, he lived from 1732 to 1798, and was the last monarch to reign over an independent Poland. The title alludes to the love affair that the king had with Catherine the Great.
Each chapter of this story is divided into two parts. The first is occupied by the detailed biography of Stanislaw. But, the second section, much shorter, narrates Elena’s personal story: her birth in France, her settlement in Mexico at the age of 10, and her professional and sentimental life accompanied by great figures of the culture of her country such as Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Elena Garro and many others.
One of the most controversial chapters of this memoir novel is the revelation of the relationship that gave birth to the writer’s first child, Emmanuel “Mane” Haro Poniatowski. He himself authorized Elena to tell the truth about this moment in her life in which she, a single mother, had to wait for the birth of Mane in a convent in Italy. The text quickly goes through the circumstances of that unwanted pregnancy, but Poniatowska herself took it upon herself to clarify (the novel has already been published) that she was seduced and abused by an older man, her teacher, another sacred monster of Mexican literature: Juan José Arreola.
An essential reading text for fans of the author, it can be an excellent first step to get closer to her work, which has not been republished in Argentina for many years.
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“Writings on Roland Barthes” by Beatriz Sarlo. Diego Portales University Editions, 128 pgs. $3,250.
The weight of the writings of the great French critic on Argentine intellectuals is immense and undeniable. “It took me a long time to free myself from the temptation to be ‘like Barthes’”, confesses Beatriz Sarlo, fully touched by that influence, in the prologue to “Essays on Roland Barthes”. The book brings together Sarlo’s articles from different eras, in which she covers that varied and creative work that was Barthes’. From love to fashion, the critic’s readers become “Barthesians”, says the author, and adopt that curious sensibility, which fixes their gaze on what no one ever thought of observing.
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