The Gaucho Martin Fierro
El Gaucho Martín Fierro is a narrative poem written in verse and a literary work considered exemplary of the gaucho genre, written by the Argentine poet José Hernández in 1872. It also tells with a continuation, entitled The return of Martín Fierro, written in 1879; This last book is also known as "La vuelta" and the first part, as "La ida". Both "La ida" and "La vuelta" have been selected as national books of Argentina, united under the generic title of "El Martín Fierro".
In "La ida", Martín Fierro is a hard-working gaucho who, due to the social injustice of the historical context, becomes a "matrero gaucho" —that is, an outlaw gaucho.
I'm singing here,
to the compass
the man who reveals it
an extraordinary penalty,
like the lonely bird
With the singing it consoles.José Hernández, first step of the Martin Fierro.
Leopoldo Lugones, in his literary work El payador, described this poem as "the national book of Argentines" and recognized the gaucho as a genuine representative of the country, an emblem of Argentine identity. For Ricardo Rojas, the work represented the Argentine classic par excellence. The gaucho ceased to be an "outlaw" man to become a national hero. Leopoldo Marechal, in an essay entitled Symbolisms of «Martín Fierro», sought an allegorical key. José María Rosa saw in El Gaucho Martín Fierro an interpretation of Argentine history.
The book has been published in hundreds of editions and translated into more than 70 languages, including Esperanto and Quichua or Quechua.
Plot
In El gaucho Martín Fierro —“La ida”—, a working gaucho from the Buenos Aires pampas, who lives with his wife and two children, is forcibly recruited to serve in a fort and join the militias that were fighting defending the Argentine border against the indigenous people, leaving his family helpless. For years he suffers hardships in the forts —bad conditions, hunger, cold, abusive treatment from his superiors, staked punishments, not receiving his salary— until he decides to escape after three years and desert the service. Upon returning, his ranch is found abandoned, converted into a tapas restaurant and he finds out that his wife had left with another man and his children have separated due to the imperative need to survive. This unfortunate reality makes Martín Fierro frequent grocery stores, get drunk, and become a gaucho matrero. On one occasion he mocks the wife of a dark-haired man who was about to enter a dance and kills him, and then commits one more murder: that of a "protected" gaucho; by officials. These deaths that will carry forever in his memory lead him to become a gaucho persecuted by the police. One night, he confronts a party of policemen, but he defends himself with such courage that one of the party, Sergeant Cruz, joins him in the middle of the fight because he was not going to allow a brave man to be killed. Finally both, knowing they were persecuted, flee and head towards the desert to live among the Indians, hoping to find a better life there. Thus, concluding that it is better to live with savages than with what 'civilization' it awaited them, the first part ends.
The one who handles the balls,
the one who knows how to throw a pial
or sit in a bagual
without fear of him going down,
among the same savages
It can't go wrong.
Never talk too much
Don't shut up completely.
Man is of more respect
When it's less your fallacy.
Highlights of the first part
Among the most outstanding and well-known moments of La ida are the misfortunes on the border (the forts on the border with Indian territory), the duel with the black man, the confrontation with the police party where Sergeant Cruz passes by his side and becomes his partner, and he flees into the desert to live with the Indians. Seven years later, in 1879, José Hernández published La vuelta de Martín Fierro. In the continuation of it, with the author in a different situation, the ideological profile changes and the gaucho is advised to adapt to the civilization that he had previously despised. Also here are several verses known for their defense of the gaucho and denunciation of social injustice:
He's always playing,
always poor and persecuted,
He has no cave or nest,
like he's fucking sworn,
'Cause being a gaucho... bum!
Being gaucho is a crime.
José Hernández, The gaucho Martín Fierro, 230
Analysis
Martín Fierro is presented as an attitude of power.
My glory is to live so free,
as a bird in the sky;
I don't nest on this floor,
There is so much to suffer;
and naides will follow me,
When I book the flight.
I don't have in love
Whoever comes to me with complaints;
Like those beautiful birds.
They jump from branch to branch
I do in the clover my bed
And I'm covered by the stars.
His solitary character is a consequence of the pampas he inhabits, the injustices he lives transform him throughout the work.
The gaucho Martín Fierro would be a native of the town of Tres Arroyos, in the province of Buenos Aires Aires. Others argue that there is documentation that he would have lived in the Pago de Monsalvo, in the areas surrounding the current city of Maipú. It has been investigated that Hernández was a close friend of Zoilo Miguenz, founder of the Ayacucho party, there he found a complaint against a certain Meliton Fierro, who is his alter ego in the book. In fact, the only geographical reference that is mentioned in the book is Ayacucho. The numerous analyzes of Martín Fierro have highlighted both the psychological differences of the character and the changes in José Hernández himself, in the seven years between the publication of "la ida" and "turn around" by Martin Fierro.
As for the character of Martín Fierro, in the first part, after being recruited by force, he completely broke with "civilization", murdering a black gaucho, clashing with the police and finally completely excluding himself from the pre-modern society of Argentina at that time, to go live with the pampas Indians. In the second part, on the other hand, Martín Fierro seems to revalue a society in transformation (at that time the country was beginning its capitalist modernization, and the entry of millions of immigrants coming mainly from Italy), having overcome its rupturist rebellion and oriented more towards the their children's future.
Historical existence of the character
It is still speculated whether a gaucho named Martín Fierro actually existed in the estate and around the time in which Hernández sets his poem-novel. Some argue that, indeed, in the area of Tuyú and Monsalvo, there being documentation in the current city of Maipú and even in what was then called Lobería Grande (current city of Mar del Plata), place where The Hernándezes came to own a ranch and where the author spent a large part of his childhood and youth, lived a gaucho "matrero" (rebel) with that name and surname (quite common).
Most literary critics and a large part of historians, however, assume the character of the poem as an ideal and paradigmatic subject of the gauchos until the 1880s, taking into account that the gaucho Don Segundo Sombra really existed more than beyond its literature. In any case, on the Atlantic coast of Buenos Aires —between the cardales, dunes and, above all, the dense groves of curru mamil that were around what would later be Mar del Plata— it is documented, especially after the battle of Caseros and in times of the War of the Triple Alliance, many gauchos considered "lazy" (without conchabo ballot) and "malentertenidos".
Metric
The poem is written in eight syllable lines. The predominant stanza is the sextet adjusted to the ABBCCB scheme with consonant rhyme. According to literary critics, the first verse, free, without rhyme, begins the enunciation skillfully. The second verse closes the first internal unit of the stanza. The second unit made up of the third and fourth verse does not always maintain the literary level of the first unit. And again it rises with the final verses of proverbial tone that close the stanza.
Linguistic peculiarities
From reading the prologues that accompanied the work, the clear conclusion can be drawn that the author intended to reflect the language of the gauchos. This led to an intense study of the language of the work by critics seeking to relate it to gaucho speech. Spanish authors such as Unamuno or Azorín made an effort to find relationships between the speech of the poem and that of the peasants of the peninsula. For their part, some Argentine authors such as Leumann directed their studies towards the originality of this linguistic modality, qualifying it as a genuine Argentine national language. Especially controversial was the contribution of Américo Castro who radically defended the idea that gaucho speech was nothing more than an extension of medieval Castilian speech.
More relevant is the author's interest in treating rural speech in a dignified manner, which earned him some criticism from his contemporaries who reproached him for using uneducated speech. Although this use of the language connects with all previous gaucho literature, it is Hernández who elevated it to a full literary language. Some of the critics have pointed out a certain instability in the phonetic transcription of the words and a poor command of academic spelling. Apart from this instability, some of the characteristic features of the poem are:
- Voccal reduction: Fellowship for patience.
- Reduction of consonant groups: vitima for victim.
- On completion - Yes. loses the d (Certified for Certificate).
- Before the diptongo ue f passes to j: game for Fire.
- d Come on. l (alquirir instead of acquire).
- Frequent aspiration h; Juir for run away.
- g in the group h+ue: güella.
- The use of voseo and indigenism as well as Pingo, Chinese, choclo, bagual (horse) or tape (rustic man).
Editions of Martín Fierro
In 1962, the Editorial Universitaria of Buenos Aires, in charge of Boris Spivacow, decided to make a special edition of Martín Fierro with illustrations by Juan Carlos Castagnino. Four editions were published: a popular one, at more affordable prices for the reading public but which kept the illustrations (a total of 70), published in rustic format and distributed in kiosks; one special, one deluxe and one edition for bibliophiles, of which only 150 copies were printed. The total circulation of 50,000 copies sold out in 25 days and sold a total of 250,000 copies. Other sources state that 170,000 copies were sold in 3 months.
The weekly Primera Plana commented on the painter's choice:
"The "operational diffusion" was carefully studied. The outstanding painters are very few; perhaps they do not exceed twenty. Discarded the non- figurative or difficult currents to assimilate by a majority of the population, the number was further reduced. (...) In the editorial they explain the fact differently. They assure that the most conducive vehicle to contact the public, without any doubt, consisted of the "Martin Fierro", the only Argentine poetry at the same time popular and universal. Among the small group of acceptable painters after the ultraselection, it was sought those who were more compenetted with the gauchesco theme. The possibilities converged in two names: Alonso and Castagnino.». Weekly First PlanaNovember 20, 1962.
Accommodations
Cinema
In 1923, a film without sound was filmed entitled Martín Fierro directed by Rafael de los Llanos, produced by Quesada Films.
In 1968 a film version of the poem appeared directed by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, with Alfredo Alcón in the leading role. In 1974 La vuelta de Martín Fierro was released, directed by Enrique Dawi, who adapted the poem combining it with a fictional recreation of the life of José Hernández. That year they also began shooting Los hijos de Fierro, a rewrite that placed the story in post-Peronist Argentina, with a script and direction by Pino Solanas; The film was finished editing in 1978 and it could only be released in Argentina at the end of the dictatorship of the National Reorganization Process, in 1984.
Between 1986 and 1989, the animated film with puppets was produced in the co-production of Argentina, Colombia and Cuba Martín Fierro directed by Fernando Láverde and with a script by Jorge Zuhair Jury.
Already in the XXI century, in 2006 Martín Fierro, el ave solitaria premiered, with a script and direction by Gerardo Vallejos, in a fairly free version that alters the original civilizing message. On November 8, 2007, an animated adaptation of the poem titled Martín Fierro: the movie was released, directed by Norman Ruiz and Liliana Romero, with a script by Horacio Grinberg and Roberto Fontanarrosa, who also provided drawings. With Daniel Fanego in the voice of Martín Fierro, Juan Carlos Gené as justice of the peace, Damián Contreras and Roly Serrano as Gaucho Mate.
Theater
In 2003 Graciela Bilbao (second National Prize for Children's Dramaturgy 2001 for The tree, the moon and the boy with a hat) writes Martín le erró fiero, premiered in 2004 at the Cultural Center of Cooperation directed by Carlos Groba and the performance of the Cuerda Floja Teatro group made up of Adrián Murga, Diego Ercolini and Leonardo Volpedo. The work was highlighted in the Teatros del Mundo Awards of the same year in the category of Puppets, objects and mechanisms.
In 2010, Juan Carlos Stragouff produced, "Aventuras de Martucho", a children's adaptation of the misadventures of Gaucho Martín Fierro, premiered during the winter holidays with a high impact from theater critics.
In literature, Jorge Luis Borges recounts the death of Martín Fierro in his story The End, at the hands of the brother of the black gaucho that Martín murders.
Others
In 1967, Channel 7 of Buenos Aires television broadcast a telenovela based on the poem directed by David Stivel, with Federico Luppi as the gaucho Martín Fierro.
In 1972, Billiken magazine published comic strips directed by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and drawn by Carlos Roume.
On April 16, 1974, an episode for television entitled Martín Fierro was broadcast on La 1 de TVE in the Los libros space under the direction of Julio Diamante.
In 1981, cartoonists Alberto and Enrique Breccia made drawings for Attention I ask for silence, a chapter on Martín Fierro for the television series Microhistories of the world.
In 2003, Juan José Güiraldes, along with other singers, payadores and guitarists, recorded a recited version in its entirety released on CD by the Argentine Gaucha Confederation, now available at https://youtu.be/f-YkjJhlEC0 Archived 11 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine.
In 2011, Paraguayan author Oscar Fariña published "El guacho Martín Fierro" a work that contextualizes the national hero in the popular and disadvantaged neighborhoods of the country. He maintains the metric and adapts it to a current speech representing a socially violated sector.
In 2017, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara Pública's novel "The Adventures of China Iron" this being a reversion from the feminine gaze of the founding work of Argentine identity. The author problematizes the predominant male gaze in the national discourse and invites to break with the established patriarchal structure.
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