Silvio in El Rosedal

If you have been reading this blog much, you will have noticed that my interest in fiction has generally diminished over the last few years; my inner scientist has been emerging lately. Nevertheless, I am still a closet art appreciator, and when I get tired of rationality, I tend to return to paintings and literature, and, to a lesser extent, music. My opinion of the American arts, as I've said, is generally low, though there are exceptions. I don't think that the fiction here compares favorably to the fiction of Europe; ditto for paintings. If you have been following the news here for the last ten years, you will have seen that the U.S. is a surprisingly crude place. Note that, while I like Carson McCullers, and I liked The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, my current interest in her is mainly biographical. My recent strategy has been to completely avoid fiction, with the exception of László Krasznahorkai, and to occasionally dabble in earlier French and English writers. I'm tired of Michel Houellebecq at this point but haven't completely given up on Krasznahorkai, because I enjoy his intensity occasionally. The one big exception to all this is poetry, because I have gradually realized that I like American poetry, or at least a very small portion of it. It takes an enormous amount of effort from me to find a poem that I like, but there still seem to be a few of them out there that I haven't read. This may be because I dislike the formality and pretentiousness of earlier poetic forms. When I was in college, I instinctively disliked English majors.

So, for a change of pace, I decided to read Silvio in El Rosedal, by Julio Ramón Ribeyro, partly because it was not a large investment of my time. I first heard of Ribeyro from John P. in the early days of this blog. Following that, I read a novel by Ribeyro and some of his short stories. However, what I liked best was the unpublished translations of Ribeyro's diary that John had made. While I generally dislike the short story format, I think that this one is pretty good.

This story is about a man who grew up in Lima, Peru, and ended up owning a large farm in the country. As a child, his mother had encouraged him to learn the violin, but she died young, and his career was at his father's hardware store. When it came time for his father to retire, he wanted to return to Italy, where he had been born, and show off his wealth. But, because World War II was then underway, he had to shelve that idea, and he decided to buy the farm, called El Rosedal, which also accorded with his doctor's recommendation, because of his lung disease. Unfortunately, his father died almost immediately after moving there by choking on a peach pit. Silvio was his only heir and moved in. He was unmarried and in his forties at the time.

On the whole, Silvio is rather lackadaisical about running the farm and primarily leaves it up to the employees. He attempts to socialize with his landowning neighbors by throwing a large party, in which he plays the violin, accompanied by his local violin teacher. Most of his neighbors don't show up, and the ones who do have no interest whatsoever in classical music. So, Silvio leads a rather aimless life, largely in isolation, and his mind wanders into obscure questions. He notices that the rose garden is arranged in a pattern that looks like Morse code, and he translates it as "RES." This obsesses him for some time, and he can never figure out what it might mean.

Then, out of the blue, he receives a letter from his Italian cousin, Rosa Eleonora Settembrini. Rosa's father has died and her husband has left her. She has a fifteen-year-old daughter, Roxana. Rosa asks whether she and Roxana may move in with Silvio. At first, Silvio thinks not, but then he realizes that his cousin's initials are RES, and this changes his mind. If there were a meaning to those letters, it might be that Rosa would move there.

Rosa does move into El Rosedal with Roxana. She turns out to be extremely industrious and takes over the management of the farm, which becomes highly profitable. The neighbors take a renewed interest in the farm, and a large party is held there after a few years. By then, Roxana is of a marriageable age. Silvio is present at the party, but the story ends with him furiously playing his violin without being audible to the others. 

I find this to be a highly nuanced piece of writing, and think that Ribeyro can be quite eloquent. It lacks the density of a novel, but expresses some themes with which I can identify. In a sense, it is about people who have European histories and artistic interests who have ended up in an unsophisticated location in the Americas and feel out of place. This, I think, may apply to Ribeyro, who ended up moving from Peru to Paris. It may also apply to John P., who grew up in the U.S. and moved to France, then Switzerland. In my case, I was born in England, my mother grew up in Greece, and I grew up in the U.S. As I've said, I don't feel completely at home here. I am living alone in the woods, hardly know my neighbors, and in some ways still feel European. So, to a certain degree, I may be similar to Silvio. Of course, not everyone will have these feelings, but writings that describe them can be quite rare.