El sueño del celta
Mario Vargas Llosa
Publicado: 2010 | 431 páginas
Novela Histórico

«El sueño del celta» es una novela histórica, última creación de Mario Vargas Llosa, que salió a la luz coronando este 2010 en que fue distinguido con el Premio Nobel de Literatura. Narra una aventura casi épica, que empieza en el Congo en 1903 y termina en una cárcel de Londres, una mañana de 1916. Aquí se cuenta la peripecia vital de un hombre de leyenda: el irlandés Roger Casement, nacido el las afueras de Dublín. Héroe y villano, traidor y libertario, moral e inmoral, su figura múltiple se apaga y renace tras su muerte en la horca, por orden del gobierno británico. Casement, que se desempeñaba como diplomático para el gobierno inglés, fue uno de los primeros europeos en denunciar los horrores del colonialismo. De sus viajes al Congo Belga y a la Amazonía sudamericana quedaron dos informes memorables y escandalosos que conmocionaron a la sociedad de su tiempo por los espantos que describían: masacres, esclavitud, castigos inhumanos, mutilaciones, niñas violadas y hombres quemados vivos, entre otras barbaridades... Estos dos viajes y lo que allí vio cambiarían a Casement para siempre, haciéndole emprender otra travesía, en este caso intelectual y cívica, tanto o más devastadora. La que lo llevó a enfrentarse a una Inglaterra a la que admiraba y a militar activamente en la causa del nacionalismo irlandés. También en la intimidad, Roger Casement fue un personaje múltiple: la publicación de fragmentos de unos diarios, de veracidad dudosa, ya que se sospecha de un montaje del Foreign Office para desacreditarlo, en los últimos días de su vida, airearon unas escabrosas aventuras sexuales que le valieron el desprecio de muchos compatriotas. «El sueño del celta» describe una aventura existencial, en la que la oscuridad del alma humana aparece en su estado más puro y, por tanto, más enfangado. Una novela mayor de Mario Vargas Llosa.

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More notable for moral seriousness than for artistry. The prose (and this could be translation, I suppose) at times reads almost journalistically -- a surprising contrast to my memories of "The Feast of the Goat." There was more dash and snap in a few sentences of Urania's or Trujillo's stream of consciousness than in pages of Casement. Still, and one feels foolish writing this, an important book, a serious book. In this maybe Llosa wants to mirror casement himself -- doing what is right and required, but without excesses of flash or style. Glad I read it, skipped the last 3rd 'Ireland.'

This novel pivots on a beautiful idea, badly executed. Roger Casement is a hero with a dark side: he is betwixt between being a perfect gentleman and lust-driven gay man; being an innocent fighter for justice while consumed by lurid forbidden lusts; being a nascent Irish nationalist and a medalled English Sir and Consul; being a fighter for Ireland and a traitor to England. Casement successfully fought the injustices and cruelties involved in rubber exploration in Leopold’s Congo Free State, first as an itinerant administrator for the Free State in the service of Leopold II and later as British Consul cum investigator; next he is sent as British consul to various Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil) before being asked to perform an investigation into the injustices and cruelties exerted by a British rubber company in Putumayo, Peru. This second investigation takes him back to Congo, but also awakens in him a fierce nationalism for Ireland to be independent and free (or else the Irish will befall the same fate as the indigenous peoples of the Congo and Peru, he fears). So after 1912, when he has successfully published another damning report on the Putumayo scandal, he devotes himself to the cause of Irish nationalism, seeking to raise an Irish army from Irish POWs in Germany, sourcing arms from Germany and seeking to time the rising with a German offensive on the Western front, tying the British army down. Alas, it was not to be. Ferrying in weapons from Germany, Casement is caught before he can halt the spontaneous Easter 1916 rising in Dublin (which is doomed). He spends time in prison waiting for the treatment of an appeal for clemency on his death sentence, talking to a Catholic priest, seeking consolation from Christ, when his private diaries hit the press, and his fate is doomed – the lurid gay exploits (mostly imagined) of Roger condemn him to death and compromise his previous righteous stance as fighter for justice and Irish independence.

Llhosa does seem to stick to the historic facts, interspersing a story line of the despairing Roger in prison on death row, with detailed descriptions of Roger’s trips to Congo, Putumayo (twice) and his nascent Irish nationalism. This seems a successful formula to bring out the struggles of his conscience, but… it becomes too detailed, too repetitive, to the extent that it drags on and on. Pity. A shorter version, with less long winding sentences would probably have become a classic. Not so. ( )

I am ready to bestow on Mario Vargas Llosa the title of “most disappointing author” I ever read. Maybe my mistake was to start reading him with [b:The War of the End of the World|53925|The War of the End of the World|Mario Vargas Llosa|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327889425s/53925.jpg|3300507], because none of his books that I read since have been able to match that first experience.

“The Dream of the Celt” was certainly well researched, but maybe this is where the problem with this book lies. The story follows Roger Casement, the humanist and Irish loyalist who was sentenced to be hanged by the British government in 1916. We get lost on the information of dates and which ship the Casement rode, and who he met where, but we never get to “feel” what he felt or dream what he dreamed. It is too bad, because Casement – who I confess I knew nothing about – deserved better than that.

Casement, as a British diplomat, was significant in unveiling to the world the atrocities committed against the natives of the Belgium Congo and later at the rubber plantations of Peru. He was knighted by the British government for these efforts. Later, however, his Irish nationalism and idealism led him to approach the German government to help with the Irish uprising of 1916. This was certainly a controversial historical move during World War I, which muddied his image not only among the British, but also with the Irish people.

Roger Casement was also a homosexual, and the discovery of his diaries and publication of passages from it in the British media did not help the efforts by his friends and lawyers to commute his death sentence.

Now, tell me if this is not great material to write an historical book! Vargas Llosa however failed in bringing this controversial man to life, portraying him instead as one-dimensional character, lacking depth and humanity. Maybe the third-person narrator is the problem, where we are told, and not shown the character’s true feelings and experiences.

In the case of Casement’s sexual experiences, Vargas Llosa comes across as a prude. His own belief is that most of the crude descriptions of Casement’s sexual encounters are fabrications of the British government, or simply Casement’s fictional creations to deal with the frustrations of unrealized sexual fantasies. I don’t deny the possibility of the British government “re-writing” Casement’s diaries, but Vargas Llosa did miss a great opportunity to explore the sexual awakening of someone born in Victorian England immersed in a much more sensual Africa and South America. The few attempts the author makes are awkward and constrained.

Ditto on Casement’s conversion to Catholicism, which must had been a profound spiritual awakening – fuelled by political perceptions of the cultural closeness of Ireland and the Catholic religion - but that Vargas Llosa paint in strokes that are careless.

I think, Mario Vargas Llosa, that I have finally gave up on you! I will remain a fan of “The War of the End of the World” but I gave you 4 shots now, and three were misses. I just have too many other authors to read.

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