Felisberto Hernández (1902–1964)
Author of Piano Stories
About the Author
Works by Felisberto Hernández
Obras completas Volumen 1: Primeras invenciones. Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling (Spanish Edition) (1983) 18 copies
Obras completas, Vol. 1. Primeras invenciones. Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling (Spanish Edition) (2000) 8 copies, 1 review
Obras completas, Vol. 3. Tierras de la memoria / Diario del sinverguenza / Ultimas invenciones (Spanish Edition) (1999) 6 copies
Obras completas, Volumen 2. El caballo perdido. Nadie encendia las lamparas. Las Hortensias (Spanish Edition) (2000) 5 copies
Felisberto Hernández 3 copies
Primeras invenciones 3 copies
Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling 2 copies
Obras Completas III 1 copy
El cocodrilo 1 copy
La cara de Ana 1 copy
La envenenada 1 copy
Piano Stories 1 copy
NADIE ENCENDIA LAS LÁMPARAS 1 copy
Cartas : cartas y partituras musicales / Felisberto Hernández ; introducción y notas, Daniel Morena. (2018) 1 copy
Mosaicos 1 copy
ORTANCALAR 1 copy
Krokodil 1 copy
Κανείς δεν άναβε τα φώτα 1 copy
Cuentos 1 copy
Associated Works
Masterworks of Latin American Short Fiction: Eight Novellas (1996) — Contributor — 54 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Hernández, Felisberto
- Birthdate
- 1902-10-20
- Date of death
- 1964-01-13
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- pianist
author - Nationality
- Uruguay (birth)
- Birthplace
- Montevideo, Uruguay
- Places of residence
- Montevideo, Uruguay
- Associated Place (for map)
- Montevideo, Uruguay
Members
Reviews
The life of the writer’s writer is not generally to be envied. Talented, original, admired by their more successful brethren and ignored by the public, they toil in obscurity, die unnoticed and, if they’re lucky, get revived and stay in print. Herman Melville is perhaps the most famous beneficiary of this treatment, which has also aided writers such as Nathanael West and Henry Green. Felisberto Hernández (1902-1964) hasn’t been so lucky. He had a huge influence on Gabriel García show more Márquez and was admired by Julio Cortázar and Italo Calvino—but it didn’t do him much good.
Hernández was born in Uruguay and made his living at the piano, playing a variety of movie theaters and concert halls. He married four times; perhaps his wives became tired of having to support him. The same lucklessness hounded his literary career. In 1947, he scored his sole commercial publication: No One Had Lit a Lamp. It didn’t sell. It wasn’t until 1983 that a three-volume collected works appeared in Mexico, and it was 1993 before he made it to English translation, courtesy of author Luis Harss. The public still wasn’t interested and Piano Stories drifted out of print. However, New Directions has been doing its bit to bring Hernández back, first with Lands of Memory in 2008, and now with a reissue of Piano Stories. The poor man is finally gaining ground!
His life story, being so sad, does threaten the critic’s role in this review. After all, who wants to rain on a man’s posthumous parade? Not me, though my reaction to these fantastical tales has been decidedly ambivalent.
The stories tend to be the first-person narratives of nameless, interchangeable men (often piano players), generally obsessed both with the tactile nature of objects and the houses of strangers (preferably rich ones). They feel like personal aspects of Felisberto Hernández, writing purely for his own pleasure. In the short essay “How Not to Explain My Stories”, he stated “My stories have no logical structures. Even the consciousness undeviatingly watching over them is unknown to me.” His tableau is in some ways Gothic, with mysterious women, decaying houses, and isolated, ritualized atmospheres, but the stories have none of the heavy-handed emotions of the Gothic, being closer in tone to the Decadent movement.
Objects in Piano Stories are often alive, imbued with blood and desire. It is in his treatment of objects that Hernández is most unique. A balcony suicides over its human lover; a boy feels complicity between himself and the feminine furniture whose bodies he explores; perhaps most bizarrely, there’s a man whose fondest companion is his own disease:
“I love my … illness more than life. If I ever thought I might get well it would kill me.”
“But … what is it?”
“Maybe some day I’ll tell you. If you turned out to be one of those persons who can aggravate my … illness, I’d give you that chair with mother-of-pearl inlays that your daughter liked so much.”
I looked at the chair – and for some reason I thought my friend’s illness was seated on it.
The new introduction is by Francine Prose, who writes that reading Hernández is “less like hearing about a dream than like actually having one.” That’s not how Piano Stories struck me. Carlos Fuentes, in his horror stories such as Aura and “The Doll Queen” perfectly captured the irrational, yet watertight logic of a dream. The atmosphere of Piano Stories is one of the sickbed’s languor. The human characters behave as invalids, adrift in the sea of their overwrought sensations, creating memorable situations for themselves out of nothing. More importantly, the sensual overthinking that the author engages in is rarely tedious. Only “The Stray Horse” overstays its welcome. The first half recollects a boy’s early piano lessons; the second half recollects his recollections in a borderline-unreadable circular narrative that is the definition of eye-glazing.
The other long story in the collection, “The Daisy Dolls”, is the bar-none masterpiece of the set and the biggest reason Felisberto Hernández should be in your Latin American literary collection (if you have one). Wholly Gothic and perverse, it centers on a married couple and the husband’s collection of life-size dolls, one of whom was made to look just like his wife … The tension ramps up with jealousy, morbidity, practical jokes and unhealthy excitements. Great squirm-inducing stuff that really got to me.
Relatively few of the other stories have emotional impact. Most of the mysterious scenarios held my interest, but few gained a stronger reaction. It doesn’t surprise me that Márquez—whom I’ve never found emotionally involving—took inspiration from them. They often depend on their concepts for memorability—for example, an usher who can see in the dark and a widow who boats around her flooded house. Other than “The Daisy Dolls”, the standouts are “The Woman Who Looked Like Me”, a vengeful, hallucinogenic riff on Black Beauty; the advertising satire “Lovebird Furniture”; and “No One Had Lit a Lamp”, wherein a young man reads to a parlour assembly and mingles with the guests in a manner that somehow manages to fascinate despite absolutely nothing happening.
Piano Stories rarely spoke to me in a meaningful way, but it was a fascinating, imaginative work, and I won’t soon forget it. I give it a high recommendation to fans of magical realism, especially those interested in the genre’s forerunners. If you’re a collector of the offbeat, Hernández will satisfy. In the internet age, the forgotten writers have their best chance of making a return, and he deserves the notice.
http://pseudointellectualreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/piano-stories-felisber... show less
Hernández was born in Uruguay and made his living at the piano, playing a variety of movie theaters and concert halls. He married four times; perhaps his wives became tired of having to support him. The same lucklessness hounded his literary career. In 1947, he scored his sole commercial publication: No One Had Lit a Lamp. It didn’t sell. It wasn’t until 1983 that a three-volume collected works appeared in Mexico, and it was 1993 before he made it to English translation, courtesy of author Luis Harss. The public still wasn’t interested and Piano Stories drifted out of print. However, New Directions has been doing its bit to bring Hernández back, first with Lands of Memory in 2008, and now with a reissue of Piano Stories. The poor man is finally gaining ground!
His life story, being so sad, does threaten the critic’s role in this review. After all, who wants to rain on a man’s posthumous parade? Not me, though my reaction to these fantastical tales has been decidedly ambivalent.
The stories tend to be the first-person narratives of nameless, interchangeable men (often piano players), generally obsessed both with the tactile nature of objects and the houses of strangers (preferably rich ones). They feel like personal aspects of Felisberto Hernández, writing purely for his own pleasure. In the short essay “How Not to Explain My Stories”, he stated “My stories have no logical structures. Even the consciousness undeviatingly watching over them is unknown to me.” His tableau is in some ways Gothic, with mysterious women, decaying houses, and isolated, ritualized atmospheres, but the stories have none of the heavy-handed emotions of the Gothic, being closer in tone to the Decadent movement.
Objects in Piano Stories are often alive, imbued with blood and desire. It is in his treatment of objects that Hernández is most unique. A balcony suicides over its human lover; a boy feels complicity between himself and the feminine furniture whose bodies he explores; perhaps most bizarrely, there’s a man whose fondest companion is his own disease:
“I love my … illness more than life. If I ever thought I might get well it would kill me.”
“But … what is it?”
“Maybe some day I’ll tell you. If you turned out to be one of those persons who can aggravate my … illness, I’d give you that chair with mother-of-pearl inlays that your daughter liked so much.”
I looked at the chair – and for some reason I thought my friend’s illness was seated on it.
The new introduction is by Francine Prose, who writes that reading Hernández is “less like hearing about a dream than like actually having one.” That’s not how Piano Stories struck me. Carlos Fuentes, in his horror stories such as Aura and “The Doll Queen” perfectly captured the irrational, yet watertight logic of a dream. The atmosphere of Piano Stories is one of the sickbed’s languor. The human characters behave as invalids, adrift in the sea of their overwrought sensations, creating memorable situations for themselves out of nothing. More importantly, the sensual overthinking that the author engages in is rarely tedious. Only “The Stray Horse” overstays its welcome. The first half recollects a boy’s early piano lessons; the second half recollects his recollections in a borderline-unreadable circular narrative that is the definition of eye-glazing.
The other long story in the collection, “The Daisy Dolls”, is the bar-none masterpiece of the set and the biggest reason Felisberto Hernández should be in your Latin American literary collection (if you have one). Wholly Gothic and perverse, it centers on a married couple and the husband’s collection of life-size dolls, one of whom was made to look just like his wife … The tension ramps up with jealousy, morbidity, practical jokes and unhealthy excitements. Great squirm-inducing stuff that really got to me.
Relatively few of the other stories have emotional impact. Most of the mysterious scenarios held my interest, but few gained a stronger reaction. It doesn’t surprise me that Márquez—whom I’ve never found emotionally involving—took inspiration from them. They often depend on their concepts for memorability—for example, an usher who can see in the dark and a widow who boats around her flooded house. Other than “The Daisy Dolls”, the standouts are “The Woman Who Looked Like Me”, a vengeful, hallucinogenic riff on Black Beauty; the advertising satire “Lovebird Furniture”; and “No One Had Lit a Lamp”, wherein a young man reads to a parlour assembly and mingles with the guests in a manner that somehow manages to fascinate despite absolutely nothing happening.
Piano Stories rarely spoke to me in a meaningful way, but it was a fascinating, imaginative work, and I won’t soon forget it. I give it a high recommendation to fans of magical realism, especially those interested in the genre’s forerunners. If you’re a collector of the offbeat, Hernández will satisfy. In the internet age, the forgotten writers have their best chance of making a return, and he deserves the notice.
http://pseudointellectualreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/piano-stories-felisber... show less
Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino and Julio Cortázar all acknowledge Felisberto Hernández (1902-1964) as a major influence. Not bad for a writer from the city of Montevideo, Uruguay who was a self-taught pianist and who earned his living playing in cafés and silent screen theaters. His writing is so dreamlike and surreal, so lush, aesthetically refined and artistically polished, I’m hard-pressed to characterize it other than observing on a scale of one to ten for the above show more literary qualities, I would place Henry James at nine and place Felisberto Hernández at ten since Hernández possesses much of Henry James' aesthetic polish and adds his own generous helpings of the dreamy surreal.
I must say, having authored over 400 book reviews to date, composing this review was one of the most challenging I've faced. I feel my words only touch the surface; it’s as if I’m attempting to describe the paintings of Salvador Dali for someone unacquainted with the great Spaniard's art. With this in mind, in order to share a glimpse of what a reader will encounter in this sixty-page, ten chapter novella, I will focus exclusively on the first chapter. And please note, The Daisy Dolls is available as a PDF (second website down) using this link: https://www.google.com/#q=the daisy dolls by felisberto hernandez
THE DAISY DOLLS
The Really Odd Couple: The novella’s first lines: “Next to the garden was a factory, and the noise of the machines seeped through the plants and trees. And deep in the garden was a dark weathered house. The owner of the “black house” was a tall man.” The tall man living in this black house is an extremely wealthy eccentric by the name of Horace who lives with his nearly equally eccentric wife, a lady by the name of Daisy Mary. Also, we are well to bear in mind how the rumbling from the factory machines next-door rumble relentlessly, twenty-four-seven, a rumbling not only seeping through the plants and trees by also through Horace’s waking and sleeping hours.
Bizarre Obsession: Horace is a collector of lifelike dolls a bit taller than real women. In one of the larger rooms of his mansion, he has fashioned a showroom with three glass cases, cases especially built for the purpose of having men come in to invent scenes for his dolls, set designers and costume makers as well as caption writers who compose a caption describing each scene. Horace will read the caption, usually placed on a piece of paper in a drawer, after he has had an opportunity to mentally create his own story of what the scene is all about. Sound crazy? It is crazy, and this is only the beginning as the novella's constant crescendo of craziness will keep you turning the pages in near disbelief of what Horace and Daisy Mary dream up next.
Prelude: One evening after dinner in the dining room, Horace is drinking wine with Daisy Mary (Filesberto almost comically repeats ‘wine from France’ throughout the novella). Their butler Alex enters to inform Horace that Walter, the pianist, has arrived. Horace tells Alex to let Walter know he should play the first piano piece on the program repeatedly until a light flashes and under no circumstances speak or ask questions. At this point, Horace rises, walks over and kisses Daisy Mary, then moves to a chair in the little parlor next to the showroom where he begins to sip his coffee, smoke and collect himself until he feels completely isolated in preparation for his entrée into the showroom.
Soundtrack: Horace hears both the piano and the factory machines as if through water, as if he is submerged and wearing a diver’s helmet, but when he tries to concentrate on the sounds, “they scattered like frightened mice.” Being a piano player himself, in all likelihood Filesberto particularly enjoyed including a piano player – piano music along with the sound of the factory machines are a constant presence, either directly or indirectly, so much so I can imagine a film adaptation of the novella with piano music and the rumbling from those factory machines comprising the entire soundtrack.
Showtime, One: Horace opens the door and moves toward the first glass case. He switches a light on in the case and through a thin green curtain scans the scene: there’s a doll sprawled on bed. Inside the case there is also a small rolling platform with a chair and little table; Horace mounts the platform and takes a seat for a better view. He ponders: Is the doll dead or is she dreaming? She’s dressed as a bride, eyes wide open, starring at the ceiling and her arms are spread in either abandon or despair. Is she a bride waiting for her groom who will never arrive, having jilted her just before the wedding? Or is she a widow remembering her wedding day? Or, perhaps, just a girl simply dressed up as a bride? Sidebar: The author’s depiction of this scene and setting of mood is so stunning and surreal, it’s as if we step into a René Magritte painting to imagine for ourselves what the scene entails.
Showtime, Two: Horace opens the drawer of the little table and reads: “A moment before marrying the man she doesn’t love, she locks herself up, wearing the dress she was to have worn to her wedding with the man she loved, who is gone forever, and poisons herself. She dies with her eyes open and no one has come in yet to shut them.” Horace reflects that she really was a lovely bride and savors the feeling of being alive when the bride is not. He then opens a glass door and enters the scene itself in order to have a closer look, but right then he thinks he hears a door slam. He leaves the case and sees a piece of his wife’s dress caught in the door leading to the parlor. Horace rips open the door and Daisy Mary’s body falls on him. But wait . . . Daisy Mary’s body is so light. Ah, Horace recognizes the body he is holding isn’t his wife’s but Daisy, the doll who resembles her. His wife has played a little joke on him.
Deep, Dreamy Surreal: This chapter continues with Horace conversing with Mary (yes, his wife retains the name Mary while bestowing the name Daisy on the lookalike doll) before retreating to his bedroom to pen an entry in his diary and then returning to the showroom to view the scene with the doll in the second glass case, which, as it turns out, really rattles and unnerves him. And, again, this is only the first of ten chapters with mounting surreal weirdness. We feel as if not only have we entered a René Magritte painting, but the paint begins to drip down the canvas and occasionally morph, twist and magnify, all to the sound of those rumbling factory machines and piano music, sound turning visual and the visual turning into sounds. Synesthesia, anyone?
show less
Look, Felisberto, I'm not gonna lie. You're no good at this short story thing. You might as well give it up now. Your 'stories' are like the slow kid in the back of the room who stares out of the window at the ballfield and gets hit by spitballs when the teacher's not looking. All the other stories are gung-ho, raising their hands, answering questions with purpose, drive. But your story is still lost in thought, he's barely aware that he's in class.
When I talk with short story writers--I knew quite a few back in the day--they would always critique each other's work by saying how "there's a story here", or "there's no story here" as if excavating bones from an archeological site. But if a story has no story in it, what's left? I often find myself loving just this unnameable thing that's left, which you have written many. I like them because there is none of that anxiety that comes with the form. One of my favorite filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami, once said that he disliked most contemporary movies because they "take the viewer hostage". They don't allow any room for daydreaming, reflection, even deep sleep. I feel that you and Kiarostami would agree on many things.
The nonstory of yours that I loved the most from this book was 'Mistaken Hands'. In it, you talk about the unknown. But that's exactly what this story is to me, a complete unknown. I have no idea why I am so attracted to it, but I feel I can return to it again and again. It is like a pebble that I've mistaken for hard candy, and I have it in my mouth right now, and it will never dissolve.
And the rails would spend all their timeshow more
waiting, with their backs to the sun, for the monstrous egotists in the train--always riding along thinking about the direction they were heading in--to go over them. Then the rails would bask once more in the admiration of all the grasses that dwelled so peaceably around them. p132Fortunately, everyone has their perfect match in this world. Even the homely girl gets a date to the prom. And for your non-stories, I am that fool. The fact is, I don't often like stories. They are too single-minded in their trajectory. But your stories lie on the outer perimeter of what a short story is or should be. Your stories take on the appearance of a story while inwardly they are anything but!
When I talk with short story writers--I knew quite a few back in the day--they would always critique each other's work by saying how "there's a story here", or "there's no story here" as if excavating bones from an archeological site. But if a story has no story in it, what's left? I often find myself loving just this unnameable thing that's left, which you have written many. I like them because there is none of that anxiety that comes with the form. One of my favorite filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami, once said that he disliked most contemporary movies because they "take the viewer hostage". They don't allow any room for daydreaming, reflection, even deep sleep. I feel that you and Kiarostami would agree on many things.
"Furthermore, I will ask you to interrupt your reading of this book as many times as possible," a character of his writes, in a story titled "Gangster Philosophy," "and perhaps--almost certainly--what you think during those intervals will be the best part of the book" (from the Foreword)Reading your stories is like admiring the shadows of tree branches on the ground as a storm brews, the light and shade moving in the mind of the story beating out a singular path from image to image. The sentences each crystal clear, but without any higher understanding or purpose. Despite this lack, perhaps because of it, there is a higher enjoyment. Not only are your stories unsolveable, there is nothing there to solve, so one must take them as they are.
The nonstory of yours that I loved the most from this book was 'Mistaken Hands'. In it, you talk about the unknown. But that's exactly what this story is to me, a complete unknown. I have no idea why I am so attracted to it, but I feel I can return to it again and again. It is like a pebble that I've mistaken for hard candy, and I have it in my mouth right now, and it will never dissolve.
While we were speaking, there was something that had nothing to do with words; the words served to attract us to each other's silence. p.102PS - I hope you will forgive me for addressing you so directly, and rousing you from your peaceful state. But your stories, in their immense privacy, seem to call for such direct addresses. In the foreword that Esther Allen has written, there is an excerpt by Cortazar where he has also written to you directly. I think it's a testament to the extreme intimacy you're able to form with the reader... show less
Felisberto Hernández - "My stories have no logical structures. Even the consciousness undeviatingly watching over them is unknown to me. At any given moment I think a plant is about to be born in some corner of me. Aware of something strange going on, I begin to watch for it, sensing that it may have artistic promise. All I have is the feeling or hope that it will grow leaves of poetry or of something that could become poetry when seen by certain eyes."
“If I hadn’t read the stories of show more Felisberto Hernández in 1950, I wouldn’t be thee writer I am today.” Such a telling quote from Gabriel Garcia Marquez highlights the extraordinariness of this little known author from Uruguay. Also included with the collection's fifteen stories is a preface by Francine Prose and Introduction by Italo Calvino, both illuminating, and Calvino concludes his essay with, “Felisberto Hernández is a writer like no other; like no European, nor any Latin American. He is an “irregular” who eludes all classification and labeling, yet is unmistakable on any page to which one might randomly open one of his books.” As a way of sharing how irregular, I will focus on one of my favorites from the collection. Here goes:
THE BALCONY
Piano Man: On his piano concert tour, the first-person narrator visits a town, virtually deserted since the population has migrated to a nearby resort. “The theater where I was giving my concerts was also half empty and invaded by silence: I could see it growing on the black top of the piano. The silence liked to listen to the music; slowly taking it in and thinking it over before venturing an opinion.” This passage is vintage Felisberto Hernández: objects, space and even silence possess hidden vitality and aliveness, oblique personalities with an uncanny ability, for those attuned to their subtle vibrations, to slide sideways into human awareness.
The Meeting: One evening, after his concert, a timid old man comes up to him to shake his hand, an old man who has sore, swollen bags under his eyes and “had a huge lower lip that bulged out like the rim of a theater box.” Likening the old man’s bottom lip to the rim of a theater box serves as a premonition for an object granted a major role in the story: his daughter’s balcony. Such poetic, clear, visual images function for the author very much like a brass section sounding a few minor cords picked up by the entire orchestra later in a symphony – again, vintage Felisberto Hernández.
Living on the Balcony: The old man apologizes for his daughter not being able to hear his music. The narrator (in the spirit of the author’s poetic prose and picking up on the first two syllables of Felisberto, let’s call him Felix) muses on the possible reason why this is the case: Is she blind? Is she deaf, or, perhaps out of town? The old man senses Felix’s groping for the cause and explains how his daughter simply cannot go outside, but since everyone needs entertainment, he bought a big old house with a balcony overlooking a garden and fountain, a balcony where she spends nearly all of her waking hours. A few more words are exchanged and the old man invites Felix to come have dinner whenever he would like. Sidebar: Nowadays we refer to his daughter’s condition as agoraphobia. And with this narrative turn, we have yet again another major Felisberto Hernández theme: a writer or musician invited to the mansion of a wealthy eccentric.
The Mansion: Upon entering through a large gate on one side opening onto a garden with a fountain and a number of statuettes hidden in the weeds, Felix walks up a flight of steps leading into the house and is surprised to see a large number of open parasols of different colors that look like huge hothouse plants. The old man informs Felix he gave his daughter most of the parasols and she likes to keep them open to see the colors. If this sounds a bit odd there is good reason – it is odd! And such oddities, even, on occasion screwball oddities, add a distinctive charm and memorability to Felisberto’s telling.
The Color Yellow: Felix is lead by the old man to his daughter's room on the second floor where she is standing in the center of the balcony. She comes forward to meet them and Felix observes, “Backed against the darkest wall of the room was a small open piano. Its big yellowing smile looked innocent.” The innocence of the piano echoes his daughter’s innocence; the instrument’s big yellow smile echoes the color of those open parasols. Indeed, through the author’s dreamy surrealism and unique way of infusing object with human emotion, similar to a repeated passage in a piano sonata or the repetition of those soft, floppy clocks in Salvador Dalí’s ‘Persistence of Memory,’ the piano’s yellowing smile echoes off the walls, down the corridors and through the mindstreams of not only characters in the story but readers of the story. Perhaps this is one key reason Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino and Julio Cortázar, among others, cite Felisberto Hernández as such a major influence.
Finale: What I have referenced so far covers only the first five of the story’s thirty pages. Rather than continuing with events as they unfold, I will leave you in the grand old house, overlooking the balcony with a snatch of Felix’s after-dinner reflection: “A while back, when we were in the girl’s bedroom and she had not yet turned on the light – she wanted to enjoy every last bit of the evening glow coming from the balcony – we had spoken about the objects. As the light faded we could feel them nestling in the shadows as if they had feathers and were preparing for sleep. She said they developed souls as they came in touch with people. Some had once been something else and had another soul (the ones with legs had once had branches, the piano key had been tusks). But her balcony had first gained a soul when she started to live in it.” show less
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 65
- Also by
- 6
- Members
- 643
- Popularity
- #39,229
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 23
- ISBNs
- 67
- Languages
- 7
- Favorited
- 4