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Thursday, September 02, 2010 20:06
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/ARTS WEEKLY/LITERATURE-CHILE
Revival of a Legendary Murderer
Gustavo Gonzalez
SANTIAGO, Apr 17 (IPS) - "La vida privada de Emile Dubois", the latest work
by Chilean author, historian, singer-songwriter and playwright Patricio
Manns, "is a novel for devotion and for devouring," says Jorge Coulon,
director of the internationally famous music group Inti Illimani, about
this tale based on the real-life story of a serial killer who shocked Chile
in the early 20th century.
"The Private Life of Emile Dubois", published this month by Alfaguara,
is described by writer Jose Miguel Varas (author of "El correo de Bagdad"
and "Neruda clandestino") as "a popular novel" in that it revives the
mythical personality of a man whose supposed grave, in the Playa Ancha
cemetery in Valparaiso, continues to be an object of popular devotion.
"It is not a biography, it's a novel," stresses Manns in reference to
the fictional license he took in creating a portrait of Emile Dubois, a
French immigrant described as "a charismatic and passionate person who
seduced men and women to turn himself into a truly legendary character."
A figure who boasted that he was "the best actor in the world" and who
ended up in Chile, bringing with him an adventurous past. He was a
playwright in Barcelona, guerrilla fighter for the Liberals in Colombia and
a miner in Potosi, Bolivia.
He arrived in this country to "stage" his final work. "But instead of a
small miserable stage, I chose the entire port of Valparaiso as the
scenario, as if it were a magical, gigantic, expressive and potent
altarpiece for my most important tragic performance," according to the
words Manns gives Dubois in the novel.
This "production" was a series of murders of profiteers, in whom Dubois
released his vocation of anarchist and social fighter - and his
gentlemanly demeanour, because he boasted that he had never killed "Chilean
citizens, women or children."
On Mar. 26, 1907, in the Valparaiso prison, justice was meted out. In
the weeks and months before he stood before the firing squad, he had been
interviewed endlessly by El Mercurio newspaper, thus providing one of the
testimonies upon which Manns based his narrative.
In Coulon's opinion, the Dubois character is the quintessence of theatre
because he is definitely "an actor who acts like an actor" in that magical
scenario of Valparaiso, a port city surrounded by hills that seem to
threaten to fall into the sea, and which some say looks like giant hand, or
forms an enormous amphitheatre.
It was Dubois's devotion to theatre that perhaps put him on the criminal
path. In Barcelona he staged his own play that included strangulation in
the final scene, and he was the perpetrator.
"Dubois thought that the actor who played the role of the victim was so
bad that he ended up strangling him for real on stage," says Manns.
Legend, fiction, reportage and testimony converge in "The Private Life
of Emile Dubois", the latest novel by Manns, one of Chile's most prolific
artists. He has distributed his artistic life amongst narrative, historic
research, popular music, poetry, essay, theatre and film.
Manns began his work in literature in 1967 with "De noche sobre el
rastro", which received the Alerce writers society prize at a time when he
was a composer and musician famed for his song "Arriba en la cordillera"
(Up in the Mountains), one of the best known folk songs in the
Spanish-speaking world.
In his work as a historian and writer about social struggles, a series
of chronicles he wrote during his exile in France stand out: "Actas de
Marusia" (1974), "Actas del Alto Bio-bio" (1984), and "Actas de Muerteputa"
(1987).
"Actas de Marusia" made its way to the big screen, directed by fellow
Chilean Miguel Littin, starring Italian actor Gian Maria Volonte. The film
was banned in Chile during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).
His novel "Le coeur a contre-jour" (Heart against the Light) was
published in France in February 1996 and immediately won international
critical acclaim. The Spanish version, "Corazon a contraluz", released in
September that year, was a success selling out three editions.
In 1998, an outstanding cultural debt was paid when he was awarded the
Municipal Prize for Literature in Chile for his novel "Buenas noches los
pastores". The honour had been decided in 1973, but the military coup that
overthrew Salvador Allende on Sep. 11 of that year put off the presentation
for a quarter century. The novel was re-released in 2000.
In late 2001, Manns won Chile's most prestigious literary award, the
National Book Council Prize, for a series of unpublished stories under the
title "La tumba del zambullidor" (The tomb of the diver).
"La vida privada de Emile Dubois" will surely be another success for
Manns, according to Varas, who jokingly said he wished the book would
immediately appear "in the 'mall' of the gutter," referring to the high
sales volumes achieved by bootleg copies of best-selling books in the
street markets.
(END/2004)
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