Martin Fierro; El Gaucho Martin Fierro La Vuelta de Martin Fierro

Buenos Aires: Hercules di Cesare Y Oscar B. Carballeira, 1968. Presumed first printing thus. Copper covers hardback. Good. Juan Lamela. [4], 199, [3] pages. Rep has edge tear were separated from adjoining page. Illustrations. Includes: Juan Lamela, por Americo De Luca; ?Que es el Martin Fierro? por Fermin Chavez; Carta Escrita por Jose Hernandez a su amigo Jose Zoilo Miguens; and Resena Biobibliografica de Jose Hernandez por Fermin Chavez and Lexico Y Glosas. In Spanish. Copper binding with figure of a mounted man on front over the words Martin Fierro. Martín Fierro, also known as El Gaucho Martín Fierro, is a 2,316-line epic poem by the Argentine writer José Hernández. The poem was originally published in two parts, El Gaucho Martín Fierro (1872) and La Vuelta de Martín Fierro (1879). The poem supplied a historical link to the gauchos' contribution to the national development of Argentina, for the gaucho had played a major role in Argentina's independence from Spain. The poem, written in a Spanish that evokes rural Argentina, is widely seen as the pinnacle of the genre of "gauchesque" poetry (poems centered on the life of the gaucho, written in a style known as payadas) and a touchstone of Argentine national identity. Like his predecessors in "gauchesque" poetry, Hernández sticks to the eight-syllable line of the payadas, the rural ballads. However, Hernández also uses a rhyming six-line stanza ("like the six strings of a guitar", said Lugones) with a novel invention. It has appeared in hundreds of editions and has been translated into over 70 languages. Martín Fierro has earned major praise and commentaries from Leopoldo Lugones, Miguel de Unamuno, Jorge Luis Borges and Rafael Squirru, among others. The Martín Fierro Award, named after the poem, is the most respected award for Argentine television and radio programs. Juan Lamela was born in 1906 and was predominantly inspired by the 1920s. The 1920s and 1930s saw continued development and evolution of the key innovations of the first years of the twentieth century. In El Gaucho Martín Fierro, the eponymous protagonist is an impoverished Gaucho named Martín Fierro who has been drafted to serve at a border fort, defending the Argentine inner frontier against the native people. His life of poverty on the pampas is somewhat romanticized; his military experiences are not. He deserts and tries to return to his home, but discovers that his house, farm, and family are gone. He deliberately provokes an affair of honor by insulting a black woman in a bar. In the knife duel that ensues, he kills her male companion. The narration of another knife fight suggests, by its lack of detail, that it is one of many. Fierro becomes an outlaw pursued by the police militia. In a battle with them, he acquires a companion: Sergeant Cruz, inspired by Fierro's bravery in resistance, defects and joins him mid-battle. The two set out to live among the natives, hoping to find a better life there. In La Vuelta de Martín Fierro (released in 1879), we discover that their hope of a better life is promptly and bitterly disappointed. They are taken for spies; the cacique (chieftain) saves their lives, but they are effectively prisoners of the natives. In this context Hernández presents another, and very unsentimentalized, version of rural life. The poem narrates an epidemic, the horrible, expiatory attempts at cure, and the fatal wrath upon those, including a young "Christian" boy, suspected of bringing the plague. Both Cruz and the cacique die of the disease. Shortly afterward, at Cruz's grave, Fierro hears the anguished cries of a woman. He follows and encounters a criolla weeping over the body of her dead son, her hands tied with the boy's entrails. She had been accused of witchcraft. Fierro fights and wins a brutal battle with her captor and travels with her back towards civilization. After Fierro leaves the woman at the first ranch they see, he goes on to an encounter that raises the story from the level of the mildly naturalistic to the mythic. He encounters his two surviving sons (one has been a prisoner, the other the ward of the vile and wily Vizcacha), and the son of Cruz (who has become a gambler). He has a night-long payada (singing duel) with a black payador (singer), who turns out to be the younger brother of the man Fierro murdered in a duel. At the end, Fierro speaks of changing his name and living in peace, but it is not entirely clear that the duel has been avoided (Borges wrote a short story in which this possibility is played out).