The Dialect of Vargas Llosa’s Storyteller

Abstract

In the novel El hablador (1987) by Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-), another Peruvian writer who is very close, if not nearly indistinguishable from Vargas Llosa himself/ takes on a challenging task: to write a story of a Machiguenga hablador, a traditional storyteller of this small ethnic group that inhabits the Amazon jungle. However, despite his desire to make “el mâximo esfuerzo para mostrar la intimidad machiguenga de la manera mas autÉntica” (102),² all of his attempts fail: “Inventadas por mi, las voces de los habladores desafinaban” (104).³ In writing, he meditates on the possible causes of his failed efforts: ;Por que habîa sido incapaz, en el cur so de todos aquellos ahos, de escribir mi relato sobre los habladores? La respuesta que me solîa dar, vez que despachaba a la basura el manuscrito a medio hacer de aquella huidiza historia, era la dificultad que significaba inventar, en espanol y dentro de esquemas intelectuales lögicos, una forma lite rar ia que verosîmilmente sugiriese la manera de contar de un hombre primitivo, de mentalidad mâgico-religiosa. (152)⁴ The Storyteller is a novel about the problematic nature of representing the Other’s speech. Despite the unnamed narrator-author’s frustrated attempts to depict the tribal storyteller, the novel does offer a solution: it creates a special “literary form” that gives voice to the indigenous narrator.