8432220086

8432220086

Let the Wind Speak concerns a man of multiple occupations and tortured relationships with other human beings, named Medina. It begins with seemingly unrelated vignettes but then suddenly develops something of a continuous plot about a third of the way in. While this makes the reading slightly easier, mostly it is a vehicle to illustrate Onetti's skepticism about the possibility of finding meaning through human relationships. Every character seems to be in the business of creating their own version of truth, walling themselves in, and others out, with their lies and delusions. In fact, it is only the act of creation itself which provides any purpose in Onetti's world.

The story's emotional centre is Santa María, a city created by another Onetti protagonist, Brausen, in a novel published thirty years earlier. Brausen creates Santa María as a fantasy existence for himself as Dr Díaz Grey. Santa María and its environs (in particular Lavanda, the city on the other side of the river) take on a reality far beyond imagination in Onetti's fiction, and form the setting for many of his subsequent novels.

Medina also has this need to create: one major plot line concerns his overwhelming need to paint a portrait a prostitute he meets on the beach. But this creation is not the solution to his existential loneliness. This seems to reflect Onetti's recent (at the time of the novel's composition) exile to Spain from his native Uruguay as a result of his literary activities. Ultimately this disillusionment leads to the destruction of everything Medina cares about.

Let the Wind Speak is not an easy read, and probably not the best Onetti novel to start with. The layering of fantasy and recurrent characters built up over three decades mean that reading Let the Wind Speak in isolation is somewhat baffling. The destruction of this great fantasy only gains significance when its history through Onetti's body of work is considered. In this context, the novel seems almost to function as a dramatic abandonment of Onetti's prior philosophy.

Onetti's writing is poetic, even as he describes the degradation and decay of urban Uruguay, and Helen Lane's translation reads well. However, this is not a novel to read for plot or characterisation. Nonetheless, I'm intrigued enough to want to go back to investigate the origins of Onetti's Santa María and explore his world a little more. ( )