Мартин Фьерро: Аргентинская гауческо-поэма Хосе Эрнандеса

Argentine epic poem by José Hernández

Martín Fierro, also known as El Gaucho Martín Fierro, is a 2,316 line epic poem by the Argentine writer José Hernández. The poem was originally published in two parts, El Gaucho Martín Fierro (1872) and La Vuelta de Martín Fierro (1879). The poem supplied a historical link to the gauchos' contribution to the national development of Argentina, for the gaucho had played a major role in Argentina's independence from Spain. The poem, written in a Spanish that evokes rural Argentina, is widely seen as the pinnacle of the genre of "gauchesque" poetry (poems centered on the life of the gaucho, written in a style known as payadas) and a touchstone of Argentine national identity. It has appeared in hundreds of editions and has been translated into over 70 languages. Martín Fierro has earned major praise and commentaries from Leopoldo Lugones, Miguel de Unamuno, Jorge Luis Borges (see also Borges on Martín Fierro) and Rafael Squirru, among others. The Martín Fierro Award, named after the poem, is the most respected award for Argentine television and radio programs.

In El Gaucho Martín Fierro, the eponymous protagonist is an impoverished Gaucho named Martín Fierro who has been drafted to serve at a border fort, defending the Argentine inner frontier against the native people. His life of poverty on the pampas is somewhat romanticized; his military experiences are not. He deserts and tries to return to his home, but discovers that his house, farm, and family are gone. He deliberately provokes an affair of honor by insulting a black woman in a bar. In the knife duel that ensues, he kills her male companion. The narration of another knife fight suggests, by its lack of detail, that it is one of many. Fierro becomes an outlaw pursued by the police militia. In a battle with them, he acquires a companion: Sergeant Cruz, inspired by Fierro's bravery in resistance, defects and joins him mid battle. The two set out to live among the natives, hoping to find a better life there.

In La Vuelta de Martín Fierro (released in 1879), we discover that their hope of a better life is promptly and bitterly disappointed. They are taken for spies; the cacique (chieftain) saves their lives, but they are effectively prisoners of the natives. In this context Hernández presents another, and very unsentimentalized, version of rural life. The poem narrates an epidemic, the horrible, expiatory attempts at cure, and the fatal wrath upon those, including a young "Christian" boy, suspected of bringing the plague. Both Cruz and the cacique die of the disease. Shortly afterward, at Cruz's grave, Fierro hears the anguished cries of a woman. He follows and encounters a criolla weeping over the body of her dead son, her hands tied with the boy's entrails. She had been accused of witchcraft. Fierro fights and wins a brutal battle with her captor and travels with her back towards civilization. After Fierro leaves the woman at the first ranch they see, he goes on to an encounter that raises the story from the level of the mildly naturalistic to the mythic. He encounters his two surviving sons (one has been a prisoner, the other the ward of the vile and wily Vizcacha), and the son of Cruz (who has become a gambler). He has a night long payada (singing duel) with a black payador (singer), who turns out to be the younger brother of the man Fierro murdered in a duel. At the end, Fierro speaks of changing his name and living in peace, but it is not entirely clear that the duel has been avoided (Borges wrote a short story (El Fin) in which this possibility is played out).

In the 1920s, Borges and other avant garde Argentine writers embracing "art for art's sake" published a magazine called Martín Fierro; they are often referred to collectively as the grupo Martín Fierro ("Martín Fierro group"), although at the time they were better known as the Florida group. In 1952 director Jacques Tourneur made Way of a Gaucho in Argentina for 20th Century Fox. The story about an orphan gaucho called Martín Peñalosa, who has deserted from the army and becomes the leader of a rebel group, follows the legend of Martín Fierro in many ways, although the film is based upon a book by Herbert Childs and a screenplay by Philip Dunne. In 2009 the film classic was finally released first time on DVD, but at the moment only in Spain, where the title of the film is Martín, el Gaucho. Martín Fierro Awards are the most prominent awards for Argentine radio and television. It is granted by APTRA, the Association of Argentine Television and Radio Journalists. Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's classic Argentine film Martín Fierro (1968) is based on the poem. Fernando Solanas' 1972 Los Hijos de Fierro is another Argentine classic film. In 1972, Billiken magazine published comic books written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and drawn by Carlos Roume. In Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow, a group of Argentine anarchists led by Francisco Squalidozzi collaborate with a German filmmaker, Gerhardt von Göll, to create a film version of Martín Fierro. Songs named after the poem have been released by the Argentine singer/songwriter Juana Molina on her album Segundo and by the German band the Magic I. D. on their album till my breath gives out. In 2017, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara published the novel Las aventuras de la China Iron, which reclaims the story of China Iron, Martín Fierro's abandoned wife, who is unnamed in the original epic poem.