A Hero’s Journey – Pancho Valverde and the Silent Voices of Society

“Slide In, My Dark One, Between the Crosstie and the Whistle”

by

Elena Poniatowski

In a shift from this series’ earlier focus on public figures, this time I highlight a hero from what Mexico’s Elena Poniatowski calls the silent voices of society. I do so by reviewing her above-mentioned short story, in which Pancho, a steam train engineer, copes with being displaced by the innovation of the diesel engine.

Poniatowski’s portrayal of this ordinary train engineer is elevated, first, by her sensuously written analogy of the love Pancho has for his wife Teresa and the love he also holds for his train engine La Prieta. “… when Teresa sat on top of him while they made love, … Pancho felt as satisfied then as he did before his engine’s control panel. A dense happiness slid through him.”

The story is also elevated by Poniatowski’s exquisite sensitivity to the psychology of loss. Pancho’s heartbreak is expressed with the resignation of the powerless and dispossessed, “Anyway, he’s used to it by now; he can put up with that and a lot more; he can put up with a helluva lot.”

Both of Pancho’s loves end up betraying him: Teresa, by leaving him for another man; and La Prieta, by being displaced by a diesel engine. Though the doubly heartbroken Pancho tries valiantly to fit into the new modern order, his now obsolete skills offer him no place there. He is further destabilized because Teresa’s absence left him bereft of a soft landing in the face of jarring professional loss.

For a while, Pancho runs the impersonal new diesels while continuing as a union leader. “…the older guys respect Pancho and the younger ones want to be noticed by him. The superintendent feels the same way.” In the end, though, Pancho acknowledges the permanency and enormity of his losses: his Teresa, his beloved Prieta, and his full value as a steam rail engineer.

Pancho then steals with impunity his old engine La Prieta and disappears into the countryside. After a while, “… a rumor is spreading of a runaway engine that makes ghost runs, and at night you can hear how the engineer opens the steam valve and then the mountain echoes with a long lament, like the cry of a wounded animal, a deep pained cry that cuts the mountains of Puebla in two.”

Elena Poniatowski was born in Paris to a Polish father and Mexican mother and has worked as a journalist. She published a novel, Hasta No Verte, Jesús Mío, about Mexican history from pre-Revolutionary days to more recent times. She has also written a testimonial narrative of the 1968 Tlatelco massacre, Massacre in Mexico. Again, melding history with social commentary, she has written a number of other short stories.

Fundamentally, this particular story, “Slide In, My Dark One …,” depicts how an individual, faced with deep loss and armed with limited resources, strives to maintain intact his personal dignity. Pancho’s is a quiet heroism, as is true of so many of the silent voices of society who live challenging lives without acclaim. Pancho made his final heroic stand by disappearing, perhaps in recognition of being powerless to change the new order; in the process, becoming a mythic figure. Dramatic technological, political, and socio-economic shifts are today an increasing reality for many. Let us hope they too can find their voices.

Source Anthology: Beyond the Border: A New Age in Latin American Women's Fiction


Other Hero’s Journey Posts:

Nelson Mandela

William Joseph Seymour - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Revival

Mercedes Sosa

Gilgamesh – The Original Literary Hero

A Father's Poem

My father wrote me a poem for my second birthday. He was living in the U.S., far from our sleepy Puerto Rican village, and he mailed the poem to my mother so she could read it to me. The poem exceeded the comprehension of a two-year-old, but the tattered letter became something I resurrected over the years on my birthday.

Originally, I had no intention of posting that poem. After three attempts at writing a post for today, though, nothing seemed particularly appropriate or ready or something. I was about to forgo posting anything new on the 8th when I recalled my father’s poem. Since today is my birthday, I decided to post the poem.

So here it is; first, in the original Spanish; and, second, as translated by me. Poetry is notoriously difficult to translate and furthermore I am not a professional translator so the English product is a mere glimmer of the Spanish original. If anyone has suggestions for improved translation, please leave them in the comments section. I thank you in advance.

You may scroll down for the English translation.

En el día de tu cumpleaños

En el límpido cielo de tu día
un reflejo auroral te está besando.
¡La natura se viste de alegría!
¡Todo parece estar en armonía!
al saludar tu alegre cumpleaños.

Todo ante ti es piélago de ensueños
donde te irradia el sol de Puerto Rico.
¡Todo recibe inspiración del cielo!
Mi lira de cantor en raudo vuelo
llega hasta ti para cantarte un himno.

Hoy, cumples dos abriles ¡qué dichosa!
Dos años que se van … nunca ellos vuelven,
pero dejan en mí la bella historia
de los primeros lampos de tu gloria,
que al celebrar tu día resplandecen.

¡Oh mi Judith! ¡mi cariñosa hijita!
remanso en que se borra mi amargura;
ese aliento, que en Lares tú respiras,
de allá viene a confrontar mi vida,
pues yo siento al respirarlo tu frescura.

Ya que en mi suerte deparó el destino
que en tu día besarte yo no pueda,
oraré con fervor al Dios divino,
que las rosas alfombren tu camino
y de Cristo conserves la nobleza.

On Your Birthday

In the limpid sky of your day
an auroral reflection is kissing you.
Nature is dressed in joy!
All seems to be in harmony!
to greet your joyous birthday.

Everything before you is a sea of dreams
where the sun of Puerto Rico irradiates you.
Everything receives inspiration from heaven!
My lyre of singer in swift flight
reaches you to sing a hymn.

Today, you reach two years. How blessed you are!
Two years that leave ... never to return,
but they leave in me the lovely history
of the first lampos [?] of your glory,
which glow while celebrating your day.

Oh, my Judith, my loving daughter!
haven which erases my bitterness;
this encouragement, which in Lares you breathe,
reaches here to confront my life
because I feel your freshness as I breathe.

Since fate would have my destiny be
that on your day I could not kiss you,
I will pray fervently to divine God
that roses carpet your path
and that you retain Christ’s nobility.

-Miguel Angel Mercado

Which Do You Prefer - Novels or Short Stories?

“Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential.”
— Jorge Luís Borges

Recently, I reread the masterful short story "Tell Me a Riddle" by Tillie Olsen, which won the 1961 O. Henry Award. The story’s emotional impact was so powerful that I asked myself how it was possible that a 30-page story could do that. It might seem as if writing a novel is more difficult than writing a short story, but the technical skill employed in Olsen’s story demolishes that argument.

I might be alone in having written novels before I ever got around to writing short stories. In that, perhaps I had fallen prey to the attitude that only novels could be important. I began writing short stories only to satisfy the requirements of a writing class. I complied, but still clung to my first love, writing novels. Over thirty stories later, though, I looked up and said, wow, I really like the short story form.

As I began writing this post about the differences between novels and short stories, I quickly found myself speaking in similes. That bothered me until I realized that perhaps no definition, other than word count, evokes the telling distinction between a novel and a short story. So bear with me as I indulge in simile.

A novelist has to be like a symphony composer as well as an orchestra conductor. In those capacities, the writer is in charge of lots of moving parts, in harmony or disharmony, threatening at any point to run away from the group or remaining happily seamless.

A short story is like a single drop of water which freefalls to a new destination; clear, whole, its parts conjoined in compact form, having a subversive power. Over time, like its relative—the torrent—a drop of water will etch through rock. Carrying the water simile further, the torrent is of course the novel, except that sometimes novels are more like eddies.

A short story, like an exposed nerve, can only be borne for a short period of time. A novel is more like a recent bruise, whose healing allows time to reflect on its cause and also to watch its slow healing.

They are both powerful forms. Indeed, two of my favorite movies of the previous decade bring home this point for me. Both Oscar-winning movies were developed from previously published print material. The Hours was adapted from the novel by Michael Cunningham; Brokeback Mountain, from the short story by Annie Proulx. In both cases, I believe the movie caught the essential power of the source material. Did Cunningham then waste his readers’ time since Annie Proulx packed an equally powerful emotional punch in a tenth the length of the novel? I suspect the answer to this will be as individual as the person who opines. Let us just perhaps agree that both source materials were excellent.

By the way, writing short stories did improve my writing craft. I am a much better novelist for it. I would like to think that even though only a few of my stories have been published, I have also turned into a decent short story writer. I suspect that, once I have done some ruthless editing, more of my stories will be published. I have just sent out for consideration a story which is now half of its former size. Let’s see what happens.

I would love to hear your thoughts about the short story form versus the novel form.

About My Blog and Me

Some of you may have noticed that last week I modified slightly the layout of this blog. Where the About Me section used to be, I introduced an About This Blog paragraph to identify the themes of Pilgrim Soul. The About Me section moved to the right column.

This change may seem minor, but it reflects an important evolution in me as a blog writer. When I first began Pilgrim Soul in 2009, it was to develop a platform to introduce my fiction. Very quickly, though, blogging turned into something more as I began meeting fellow bloggers from around the world who engaged me on fascinating topics with varied points of view. Their comments have even resulted in my incorporating topics I had not expected to address separately from my fiction; for example, my series on Puerto Rican identity. Pilgrim Soul became my gateway to an international party, and I didn’t even have to go through airport security to get there!

That would have been rewarding enough but along the way, I made another discovery. In writing for Pilgrim Soul, I also met myself fully. The blog’s label gadget surprised me by highlighting just how often I wrote about topics having to do with the intersection of culture and religion. That made me conscious of something I have lived with all my life, but which I had not acknowledged fully, the degree to which I have been formed by that intersection and how it continues to influence me.

In my exchanges with the international community of fellow bloggers, I also became aware of how my personal experience was part of a greater development. The identification of historical shifts is often left to historians after the fact. I believe we are living in a time in which those shifts are so palpable we don’t have to wait for historians. Important cultural and racial paradigms are at a juncture in which the old definitions are faltering but new ones have not yet been well established. I thank my blog for helping me personally to acknowledge and revel in the blessing and challenge of experiencing an historical turning point like this one. I also thank my readers for facilitating my pilgrimage of self knowledge.

Writing on a Budget

My early drafts are long. A 125,000-word novel is not unusual. Mindful of market realities limiting first novels to a range of 80 to 100,000 words, I then use a scalpel. Usually I start this process grudgingly. After all, which of my darlings will I have to sacrifice, and won’t my novel be mortally wounded by their exit?

Having gone through this process recently with two of my novels, I have made an interesting discovery. A goal of reducing my novel to 100k or less is my best friend. The resulting novel post-surgery turns out to be a much better novel. Mind you, I am usually closer to 100k than to 80k; but, hey, a 25% cut is huge, and I’m proud of myself for pulling it off.

My process has two steps. I usually cut around 10k words just by eliminating passive voice, avoiding thens, ands, buts, ofs, saids, excessive stage direction, etc. That’s the easy part, especially when I see the salutary effect on the word count at the bottom of the screen. The hard part comes in stage two when I must excise an entire scene or, oh my, a chapter, maybe even a character. That hurts.

That 100k taskmaster, though, pierces my sentimental balloon quite easily. Of course, I save the earlier draft so that I can always rescue my maimed darlings. In the meantime, though, reaching that 100k-or-less goal clarifies in no uncertain terms what is at stake. Is this darling really, really necessary? Because if I save her, I might have to kill two other darlings instead of just this one.

I do sometimes gaze longingly at the long novels of prior times and wish our standards had not changed. In this Twitter et al. world, though, it is probably best to discard that sentiment. Otherwise, I might be ensuring that my novels never come out of their inglorious residence in computer memory.

As for those novels already succesfully reduced to below 100k, alas, I have since found out that to land an agent, I probably should reduce them further to fit the even shorter but Totally Cool category, as described in the Guide To Literary Agents Editor's Blog.

· 80,000 - 89,999: Totally cool
· 90,000 - 99,999: Generally safe
· 70,000 - 79,999: Might be too short; probably all right
· 100,000 - 109,999: Might be too long; probably all right
· Below 70,000: Too short
· 110,000 or above: Too long

I was therefore about to wield my scalpel again when I heard from a writer friend:

“You can actually reduce so much that you have only Story left and have eliminated your individuality as a writer, your Voice or whatever it is that makes your work particularly you... which is what agents really want. Maybe the unique Voice of your piece is still strong or even stronger because of all your cuts, but just in case, it might be interesting to focus as much on Voice as on Word Count... at least for a while.”

So I'm taking a breather from editing to finish my current work-in-progress novel. Oh, and to do food shopping, too.


Other relevant posts:

Write What You Know,” Marketing, and Me

What is Multicultural Fiction?

For Whom Does the Writer Write?

A Hero's Journey - Gilgamesh: The Original Literary Hero

The following selection from The Epic of Gilgamesh was etched onto stone tablets about four thousand years ago:

"Now there is a sound throughout the land
that can only mean one thing.
I hear the voice of grief and I know that you have been taken
somewhere by death.
Weep. Let the roads we walked together flood themselves with tears.
Let the beasts we hunted cry out for this:
the lion and the leopard, the tiger and the panther.
Let their strength be put into their tears.
Let the cloudlike mountain where you killed
the guardian of woodland treasures
place grief upon its sky blue top.
Let the river which soothed our feet overflow its banks
as tears do that swell and rush across my dusty cheeks.
Let the clouds and stars race swiftly with you into death.
Let the rain that makes us dream
tell the story of your life tonight.
Who mourns for you now, Brother?
Everyone who knew you does.
… a cruel fate robbed me
of my dearest friend too soon.
What state of being holds you now? Are you lost forever?
Do you hear my song?"

Written well before Homer’s Odyssey, this epic poem might represent literature's first treatment of a hero. Margaret Atwood has said, “It all started with Gilgamesh.” The poem’s events unfold in what is now Iraq. They recount the tales of demigod King Gilgamesh and his half-wild best friend Enkidu as they undertake dangerous quests and face issues of immortality, love and sensuality, power and greatness, the battle between our mythic and ordinary selves, and the nature of grief.

The poem, first discovered by westerners in 1849, also describes a great flood and an “ark” whose common elements with the Biblical story electrified the western world of the late 1800s. The Epic of Gilgamesh, though, was written about 1500 years before the similar tale told in Genesis. It also predates other Greek et al. recountings of the destruction of humanity through flood. Written in cuneiform on clay tablets, the poem is believed to have been inspired by the real-life King Gilgamesh who ruled circa 2700 BCE.

Because the tablets are fragmented, translators since the late 1800s have struggled to provide meaningful translations. Not only have they had to fill in the gaps of missing sections, but they have also been challenged by differing versions of the epic found in the ongoing series of discoveries.

All of the above would be interesting enough on its own. What brings me to write about The Epic of Gilgamesh here is that I was so struck by the sophistication and beauty of a poem which antedates us by four thousand years, long before Plato, the Enlightenment, and modern psychology. This is a wonderful piece of literature about profound transformation brought about by hardship and loss. King Gilgamesh evolves from a despot into a compassionate leader as a result of his friendship with Enkidu, their challenging adventures, and finally Gilgamesh’s desolation after Enkidu’s death. Rather than continue his search for immortality and dwell on his grief, Gilgamesh was encouraged to do the following:

“What is best for us to do
is now to sing and dance.
Relish warm food and cool drinks.
Cherish children to whom your love gives life.
Bathe easily in sweet, refreshing waters.
Play joyfully with your chosen wife.

“It is the will of the gods for you to smile
on simple pleasure in the leisure time of your short days.”

That still sounds like great advice. If you find an opportunity to read this seminal work, I think you might find it both startling and rewarding.

The above selections from The Epic of Gilgamesh are from the Danny P. Jackson translation.

Other posts in the A Hero's Journey series:

Nelson Mandela

William Joseph Seymour - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Revival

Mercedes Sosa