Novel
Don Guillermo
Not translated into English
José Victorino Lastarria · 1860
Synopsis
Subtitled Historia contemporánea, the novel follows its hero, Mr. Livingston, on a journey to the underground world of Espelunco, an anagram of “pelucones”, the name of the Chilean conservatives. He enters it around 1828 and escapes from it in 1841, according to Memoria Chilena; there he confronts four monsters, Falsehood, Ignorance, Fanaticism and Ambition, and meets Lucero, the fairy of patriotism, who helps him out of the darkness and whom the political forces prevent him from loving. The narrative starts from Valparaíso, in 1860, and traces nearly twenty years of comings and goings between that port and Santiago.
Context
The novel was published in Santiago in 1860; its subtitle, according to Memoria Chilena, refers to the political criticism of the previous thirty years. Espelunco represents, according to the study published by Redalyc, the colonial period and the conservative governments of the 1830s to 1860, and the novel draws on Mapuche myths. Traditional criticism read it as a satire; modern criticism, since Cedomil Goic in 1964, focuses on allegory, each character representing an idea.
Who it is for
An allegorical and satirical narrative, which assumes knowledge of the Chilean quarrels of the nineteenth century; no translation.
Prizes and reception
The conservative Pedro Nolasco Cruz saw in it only an “unbearable heaviness and pettiness”, according to Memoria Chilena.