Sergio Pitol undertook a remarkable diary-writing project, by its very scope, which Anagrama is now beginning to publish in an admirable and daring editorial endeavor. Eight years after his death, the first volume of his Diaries appears, a hefty tome of more than 800 pages in a large format with small type. This initial installment alone magnifies the scale of this kind of prose from the Mexican writer, and it is astonishing to learn that two more volumes will follow.
Contraviniendo, como suele ser frecuente entre los cultivadores de dietarios, el carácter privado propio de un diario, Pitol ya había dado a conocer páginas de sus cuadernos en entregas independientes o en el contenido misceláneo de algún libro suyo, pero la mayor parte de lo que hoy nos llega es inédita, lo cual proporciona gran novedad e interés al volumen.
Las libretas del mexicano recogen, no sin largos intervalos en blanco, las anotaciones entre 1968 y 1980. Arrancan con las hechas en aquella fecha en Belgrado durante su ocupación en labores diplomáticas y enlazan con semejantes cometidos desempeñados sucesivamente en Varsovia, París, Budapest y Moscú. Solo en dos periodos un tanto breves no se dedicó al trabajo de representación institucional de su país, de 1969 a 1971, en que residió en Barcelona, centrado en actividades relacionadas con las letras, y de 1971 a 1972, en que se ocupó como profesor en Bristol.
According to the usual practice in diaries, Pitol’s entries present a testimonial front and a reflective one. The first strand bears witness to both the writer’s personality and the circumstances of his work and the places where he resided. The self-portrait that emerges from his own notes presents a highly complex figure. He appears hypocondriacal, bipolar, a heavy drinker, irascible, capricious and inconsistent, obsessed with sex. He renders his portrait without any indulgence, even with a touch of self-mortification. Without restraint, he speaks openly of his homosexuality in times that were far from tolerant.
Some aspects of his personality do not leave him in a very good light, without him being conscious of their negative aspect. It is chillingly cold the way he refers to the car accident with deadly consequences for which he admits responsibility. He says he feels unsettled, but little more, and only recalls it in passing from time to time. Equally negative is his treatment of people. He is seen in the conflict-laden relationships with the Chilean José Donoso and with Carlos Monsiváis. He had in his compatriot Monsiváis a patron to whom he owed many favors and a close friend, and he broke violently with him over a minor matter, though they later met on occasion. His relations with the staff at the various embassies where he was stationed are acrimonious. He belittles, uses demeaning epithets, and insults everyone with aggressive terms (“a living sewer” he calls one Mauricio González), including the current ambassador. Almost without exception, all his office colleagues strike him as human and professional wastes.
It never occurs to Pitol to think how much guilt he will bear for a story that repeats fate after fate, what an unsociable person he was, what misanthropy guided his steps and feelings. His narcissistic self-absorption —testifying to how much he contemplates himself in the mirror and observes his physical appearance— is, however, matched with intense spirituality, with genuine devotion to music, especially opera, and to theater and literature. But these elevated values also contrast with his sick fixation on money — perhaps the most recurring matter in the book— and with petty bourgeois material concerns such as feeling like the owner of a finca in Mexico or the compulsive buying of artistic objects, furniture, adornments and rugs for his residences. As I have said: an enormously complex character whose complete biography will have to draw on the unfiltered materials offered by the diaries.
The testimonial strand does not deliver all that one might reasonably expect. Flojo resulta el retrato de los personajes del boom en sus años finales. It dodges much of what we sense he has to say about Carlos Fuentes. It scarcely delves into Octavio Paz. It skirts around the circle of intriguing actors of that singular moment. He stays focused on his own concerns. Where the document does stand out is in the uncompromising testimony regarding the stage of diplomatic legations, a nest of conspirators, useless people and idlers, hovels that cluster fools and ghettos of villany. When does anyone in an embassy work or do something positive, starting with Pitol himself? A great novel would spring from these bulky and reiterated observations that lead to the unavoidable conclusion that the foreign ministries should be abolished urbi et orbe.
Novel of an Artist and a Writer
Whatever the interest of all that has been noted, the outstanding feature of the Diaries lies in a very concrete aspect of its reflective dimension. Pitol constantly refers to his own literary work of creation — he also did extensive work pro pane lucrando as a translator — and details works in progress, planned projects, or fleeting intuitions. Some of his sketched books pass from embassy to embassy (such as the narrative Frankenstein Juegos florales) without any real progress, even with plans in constant flux. A revealing document of the literary work in progress surfaces, only without genuine progress. As he proceeds, Pitol details the sources of inspiration, how one reading suggests an anecdote and another a character and a third a narrative situation. He openly reports the literary origin of his fables. We sense that he reads not only for pleasure and curiosity, but also to seek material for his work. He also notes how he takes credible cues from everyday reality, from the people he treats, from those he desires or with whom he argues, thinking of turning them into literary content. Everything, readings and life, he regards as useful material for his work in fieri, especially for the tales. At the same time, he bluntly acknowledges artistic limitations: flaws, insufficiencies, lack of dramatic punch, weakness in situations, overuse of expressive clichés or anecdotal stock phrases… He even deems some of his own writings as mere spawn.
Pitol sustains a tense, desperate, and paralyzing struggle with his texts. We see him wandering in darkness in search of the form he desires, of the expression he would like to achieve. He plans changes here and there in the narrative, to modify a character’s behavior, to replace a beginning or ending with another. Sometimes the result satisfies him, but even in these few cases, the next day he condemns it.
It is the author himself, in his own capacity, who becomes the central object of the Diaries, and these, beyond the other aims above, transfigure into an authentic novel of a writer even as they become a novel of an artist. The writer, the same Pitol, becomes the subject and protagonist of what theorists call a Künstlerroman. Unintentionally, the Diaries become the instructive novel of the suffering and perplexities of a writer confronting his craft. Young authors often seek advice from veterans. Abundantly they will find it in these notebooks by Pitol, more instructive and economical, I think, than the lessons of writing schools.
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Author: Sergio Pitol. Title: Diaries, 1968-1980, vol. I. Publisher: Anagrama. Available at: Todos tus libros.