What the Mugwig Has to Say & Silvalandia

by Julio Cortázar, Julio Silva (Illustrator), Chris Clarke (Translator)

The writer Julio Cortázar and the artist Julio Silva were fast friends, from the time, as Cortazar remembers, his younger compatriot "came to Paris from Buenos Aires in fifty-five and a few months later visited me and spent a night talking about French poetry." The two would collaborate frequently, most famously with Silva providing the iconic original cover of Rayuela (Hopscotch), and most directly in the two slim books included here. In this svelte volume you will find the first ever complete translations of 1966's Les discours du pince-gueule (translated here as What the Mugwig Has to Say) and 1975's Silvalandia, translated from the French and Spanish respectively by Chris Clarke. This book thus becomes your token of admittance into the secret, absurd world shared the two Julios. The characters are colorful, the humor sly and dark, and the hosts, aforesaid Julios, ever charming.

92 pages, Paperback

Published January 25, 2022

About the author

Julio Cortázar, born Julio Florencio Cortázar Descotte, was an Argentine author of novels and short stories. He influenced an entire generation of Latin American writers from Mexico to Argentina, and most of his best-known work was written in France, where he established himself in 1951.

Reviews

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two different books, written a decade apart:
Mugwig: 4.5 stars - strange and charming, written in a similar vein to the great 'Cronopios & Famas' collection.
Silvalandia: 3 stars - all Cortazar is worthwhile, but these whimsical whatsits veer close to being precious.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julio Cortázar passed in 1984. In the years since, there has been a steady stream of translations of his works. He was well translated in his lifetime–i.e., "Hopscotch" (1963), "End of the Game and Other Stories" (1967)--because his works were central to the Latin American Boom and its global impact. But he was also prolific, and clearly not everything he wrote was translated while he lived. I have little understanding of how translations happen other than by processes too complicated to explain, or P2C2E according to Salman Rushdie in "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," but I am glad that nearly 40 years after his death new translations of his work are still being published.
Cortázar was an Argentine expat who lived in Paris for much of his adult life, and so was the artist Julio Silva. Two Argentine expat artists come to Paris, so of course they meet and work together. This book contains two pieces: "What the Mugwig Has to Say" (1966), originally written in French, and "Silvalandia" (1975), originally in Spanish. Cortázar penned the texts, and Silva created the illustrations. In the first, the single color pen and ink drawings seem conventionally appended to the text as illustrations. In the second, the roles of writer and visual artist seem to have reversed, for Cortázar’s texts seem to respond to or are born out of Silva’s paintings. Thus, in "Mugwig" Silva illustrates Cortázar’s tales, while in "Silvalandia" Cortázar writes the stories of the painting.

This is a high quality book: paper, ink, and the color reproductions of Silva’s art are all eye-catching.

The book reminds me of Cortázar’s "Cronopios and Famas" (1962), a book of very short pieces–mostly aphorisms, character sketches, mini-plots–about two sets of human-like beings. The book seems like notes for a cultural study. "What the Mugwig Has to Say & Silvalandia" seem quite similar. Cortázar does not develop plots or character arcs like one would expect from a short story or novel. Rather, in all these short pieces, which seem more akin to sudden fiction or flash fiction, he offers glimpses of something imminent–a moment, an interaction, an action, a reaction–about which the reader can imagine more (or not). I prefer not, leaving potential implications and meanings vague, undeveloped, and undefined, just as Cortázar wrote them. This is prose that functions poetically. "Mugwig" reads like a collection of absurd, surreal, sometimes philosophical and comic thought-pieces that are not woven together by an overarching design, unless that design was to create a fragmented collection. I could see Cortázar keeping these sketches in a drawer and then handing them over to Silva and asking that he illustrate them. The pieces of "Silvalandia" are different, because Cortázar writes for a set of Silva’s painting, imbuing the visuals with narratives, thus in some way explaining the anthropomorphized figures Silva paints. If "Mugwig" seems like a fragmented collection, the pieces of "Silvalandia"–with their narrative/visual links–seem to build into a more coherent(less fragmented?) take on Silva’s painting and the imaginary and cultural landscape they create, both individually and as a set. Is the result Cortázar projecting stories onto Silva’s paintings, or are Silva’s paintings shaping Cortázar’s creativity? Both? Somehow with Cortázar one always returns to aesthetic and philosophical questions.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A playful tone reminiscent of Ionesco’s book for children Stories 1 2 3 4 permeates this slim volume, a tone childlike rather than “for children.” Originally published separately in limited artists’ editions, the two illustrated collections of stories by Cortázar and illustrated by Silva are nonsensical baubles from a topsy-turvy world. The illustrations to What the Mugwig Has to Say were inspired by the stories Cortázar handed Silva, and the stories Silvalandia by the illustrations Silva handed Cortázar. And the illustrations are as outlandish as the stories, populated by creatures formed of scratchy geometric shapes with lips, eyes, and feathers attached, in blotchy pastels.

Let the following passage from “Unusual Choices” stand for the rest:

He can’t make up his mind.
He can’t make up his mind in the least.
He was offered his choice of a banana, a treatise by Gabriel Marcel, three pairs of nylon socks, a percolator under warranty, a blonde with pliable virtues, or early retirement, and still he cannot make up his mind.
His reticence has given rise to insomnia in a number of civil servants, a vicar, and the cops of the district.
As he cannot make up his mind, some have begun to wonder whether he shouldn’t be subject to a residence ban.
This was made clear to him, just like that, in a gesture of kindness.
He said, “In that case, I’ll take the banana.”

For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous set of works by 20th century fabulists.

[Jordan S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well. That was pretty delightful.