The Slaughteryard by Esteban Echeverria

Author:Esteban Echeverria [Echeverría, Esteban]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-00-736868-6
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2010-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

APPENDIXES

I

Foreword to the 1871 Edition by Juan María Gutiérrez

Originally published as a preface to the first printing of ‘El matadero’, in the Revista del Río de la Plata, Vol. I, No. 4, pp. 556–62, Buenos Aires, 1871; and later, slightly revised, as a footnote (pp. 209–14), when the story was collected in Vol. V of the Obras completas de D. Esteban Echeverría, Buenos Aires, Carlos Casavalle Editor, I874.

An artist contributes to the study of society when he sets down on his canvas a typical scene that takes us back to the time and place it occurred and makes us believe we are there, living alongside his characters. But this is a rare achievement, and the few examples of it that exist are treasured like jewels not only for their artistic merits but also for the way of life they portray, a full understanding of which is the essence of history.

We Argentines, growing in age as a people and progressing culturally as a society, are increasingly eager to find out about our past and to collect evidence from it to guide us in our judgements. But it is no easier to fulfil such a desire today than it was in antiquity. Since Argentina has had no national literature or art to make a record of its social types, these have come and gone as fleetingly as time itself.

Despite his rich imagination, Walter Scott would have been powerless to interest his contemporaries in picturesque medieval scenes had the manners and customs that make up the themes, action, and colour of his famous novels not already existed in chronicles or been depicted in paintings or carved in stone. Just as a ruin cannot be restored when all we know is its location, similarly, to comprehend a past time without actual evidence of it is a feat beyond human intelligence. Therefore, whenever we are fortunate enough to meet someone who bore witness to a bygone period in our lives, we should hasten to record that priceless evidence, thereby illuminating a hitherto blank page of our history.

Such is the case with the piece of writing published here. Its author’s name alone is a recommendation, since his personal qualities are as familiar to us as his literary achievement. That this work was not meant to be published exactly as it left his pen is clear from the haste and raw realism with which it was written. The manuscript was jotted down so quickly that it cannot have taken longer to write than a typist would have needed to record it from dictation. We might envisage the writer as an artist opening his sketchbook to transcribe there in broad, rapid strokes the street scene before him, in order later-in the quiet of his studio-to create a picture of everyday life.

These drafts or sketches, or call them what you will, are of great value to connoisseurs of art, for they are spontaneous improvisations that allow the demeanour, the genius, and even the soul of the person who produced them to shine through with honesty.

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