El sueño del celta (review)

Prior to the publication of La guerra del fin del mundo (1981), Mario Vargas Llosa had determined to write exclusively about his native Peru. Subscribing to Jean-Paul Sartre's notion that literature about the present had deeper revolutionary implications, Vargas Llosa restricted his novels to a contemporary Peruvian context, until his disillusionments with Castro's Cuba led the author into a decade of literary experimentation that culminated in his novelistic rendition of the turn-of-the-century Canudos rebellion in the Brazilian backlands. As Vargas Llosa distanced his concept of literature from a strictly Sartrean mode, he also cast an increasingly global gaze upon his literary landscapes. Most recently, his new historical novel, El sueño del celta (2010), recounts the anticolonialist labors of the Irish nationalist Roger Casement in three different continents.

El sueño del celta is divided into fifteen chapters and further subdivided into three sections—"El Congo" (11-138), "La Amazonía" (139-340), and "Irlanda" (341-446)—with an essayistic epilogue (447-52) and two pages of reconocimientos (453-54) as a conclusion. Though the novel does not possess the structural complexity of some of Vargas Llosa's earlier works, its author adeptly alternates between Casement's impending execution for high treason and the story of his revolutionary activities. "El Congo" recounts Casement's transition from his naïve trust in the professed virtues of colonization efforts in Africa to his suspicion and eventual condemnation of the abuses that he witnesses during some twenty years in that region. Following the 1904 publication of his "Casement Report," denouncing disturbing human rights violations by King Leopold II in the Congo, he is commissioned by the British government to travel to the Peruvian Amazon. "La Amazonía" is the longest and perhaps most captivating of the three sections, as Vargas Llosa's familiarity with the Peruvian terrain is evident in his descriptions. (Throughout the novel, however, his creation of convincing dialogue among primarily native English-speaking characters is also impressive.) Producing condemnatory reports against the Peruvian Amazon Company and its rubber baron Julio César Arana in defense of the Putumayo peoples, Casement returns to Europe with a pessimistic conclusion: "El Congo, otra vez. El Congo, por todas partes" (176). By this time, Casement's mental and physical health are questionable; and yet, his experiences have awakened an overriding desire to see the liberation of his native Ireland from English colonial rule. "Irlanda" portrays his revolutionary activities as an Irish nationalist. As Vargas Llosa describes Casement's attempts to secure arms from Germany in support of an imminent Irish uprising, he provides answers to pending questions that had developed throughout the narrative, introduces others, and then powerfully concludes the novel with the execution of his protagonist.

Dissimilar to some of Vargas Llosa's other totalizing narratives, El sueño del celta focuses almost entirely on a single character. With minor exceptions, including Casement's mentor and friend Alice Stopford Green and the sheriff who is a reticent interlocutor during his time in the London prison, truly memorable secondary characters are scarce. Roger Casement, however, is masterfully developed from beginning to end; in my opinion, Vargas Llosa has not stretched a protagonist to his ultimate capacity so successfully since Santiago Zavala in Conversación en La Catedral (1969). Throughout relentless scenes of abuse, Casement is a constant witness who exemplifies the words of José Enrique Rodó in the novel's epigraph: "Cada uno de nosotros es, sucesivamente, no uno, sino muchos," which also becomes a pervasive theme throughout the narrative. Vargas Llosa's choice to delve deeply into the internal struggles of one man's pursuit of human dignity and freedom makes El sueño del celta at once intimate and universal. Placing Casement at the center of every chapter also emphasizes the constancy of his struggles and the exhausting nature of the anticolonialist enterprises that eventually claim his health, mental stability, and very life.

As readers have come to expect, there is much of Vargas Llosa...