Putinoika
Giannina Braschi
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“We don’t need storytellers. We need soothsayers. I never said I am a storyteller. I said I am a soothsayer. I say the sooth.” —Giannina Braschi, Putinoika The study of literary works will never be exhaustive enough. There will always be some superficial first readings and other deeper ones that can rediscover certain secret nooks. This would be the case of Putinoika, a formidable book by Giannina Braschi that requires several approaches to try to understand its dialogical and dispersed system. There are peaks and voids, falls and ascents, undefined landscapes that adhere to a vast geography of dramatic voices and disagreements. Apparent congruence does not always lead to a good port. Martin Heidegger says that in the forest there are paths that, overcome by nature, suddenly go astray. Each of these paths follows its own course, but always within the same forest. It can often seem that they are the same. However, that is only appearance. The forest rangers know these paths well. They know what it means to be on a path that gets lost in the thicket. In this way Putinoika opens her own path, which branches off into other paths, some that meet, others that get lost but are found again. And so on without stopping. It is an endless process of dialogues and with the author's interruptions that build the plot of the book.
This book is an epic poem, a dialogical novel, a fantastic story, a manual of poetics, a manual for ridiculing politicians and philosophers. It is a deep forest with many signs and forks. The plot has no plot. The plot is always a new one. “With Putinoika, Braschi makes a quantum leap which takes the novel from an unprecedented level of experimentation and into a new dimension. A polyphony of voices fizz, crackle, and cackle in a tour de force of philosophical poetry and poetical philosophy, offering a biting and hilarious denunciation of Trump’s America,” observed Madelena Gonzalez, Chair, Anglophone Literature, University of Avignon. |
We know that Aristotle was the first to speak about the theory of literary genres in his classic book Poetics. He said that literary works should have clarity and also elegance. That is, that the work should not be so dark or confusing. Aristotle spoke of a balance between these literary manifestations. We can see that the trance between prose and poetry has not changed much since then. There are texts that are apparently incomprehensible, and make you want to run away through the dark forest and never come back.
There are also books that within their complexity fill us with light and humanity. One of these cases is Cervantes' Don Quixote. Here we have a masterpiece as a model, which concentrates and plays with several literary genres constructed in an unbalanced manner on purpose. In Don Quixote, we find the presence of several literary genres intertwined, and which are sustained from beginning to end. Don Quixote, read so many times, never ceases to open new paths for its study. Here we find fantasy, a powerful critique of power, and of politics in general. Don Quixote is a dialogical book par excellence. At the other extreme, but also a mixed-genre epic work Joyce's Ulysses returns the Odyssey to the streets of Dublin, and Telemachus continues to search for his father through the same streets of the modern city.
In Putinoika, voices from Greek mythology such as Cassandra, Antigone, or Electra congregate, interspersed with fundamental characters of Western thought and culture such as Nietzsche, Picasso, El Greco, or Maria Callas. Within this exhaustive and profound dialogue appears the voice of the author, who does not give up in the face of dilemma or doubt. Her prophecies are fulfilled by tracing her own poetics: intuition first, then reason.
“Reason is such a disappointing method. It has let us all down. It never was a companion of truth but of establishment. It was used to establish order in the court of law, but it established chaos of lies—one after another. And its companion, facts, were created to build the case so that reason would state its law and order with precision, stately, in accordance to the establishment. They both work surreptitiously, looking around with sneaky eyes afraid of being caught with the hands in the money jar,” Braschi writes.
Putinoika is a luminous book. Its light comes from an apparent chaos, a mirror of our time, written in a precise, profane, and sweetly convulsive language.
There are also books that within their complexity fill us with light and humanity. One of these cases is Cervantes' Don Quixote. Here we have a masterpiece as a model, which concentrates and plays with several literary genres constructed in an unbalanced manner on purpose. In Don Quixote, we find the presence of several literary genres intertwined, and which are sustained from beginning to end. Don Quixote, read so many times, never ceases to open new paths for its study. Here we find fantasy, a powerful critique of power, and of politics in general. Don Quixote is a dialogical book par excellence. At the other extreme, but also a mixed-genre epic work Joyce's Ulysses returns the Odyssey to the streets of Dublin, and Telemachus continues to search for his father through the same streets of the modern city.
In Putinoika, voices from Greek mythology such as Cassandra, Antigone, or Electra congregate, interspersed with fundamental characters of Western thought and culture such as Nietzsche, Picasso, El Greco, or Maria Callas. Within this exhaustive and profound dialogue appears the voice of the author, who does not give up in the face of dilemma or doubt. Her prophecies are fulfilled by tracing her own poetics: intuition first, then reason.
“Reason is such a disappointing method. It has let us all down. It never was a companion of truth but of establishment. It was used to establish order in the court of law, but it established chaos of lies—one after another. And its companion, facts, were created to build the case so that reason would state its law and order with precision, stately, in accordance to the establishment. They both work surreptitiously, looking around with sneaky eyes afraid of being caught with the hands in the money jar,” Braschi writes.
Putinoika is a luminous book. Its light comes from an apparent chaos, a mirror of our time, written in a precise, profane, and sweetly convulsive language.
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