Bruce Chatwin
(1940-1989)
In Patagonia
1977. NY: Penguin, 1979
Contemporary Literary Criticism:
• English travel writer, journalist, essayist
• Semiautobiographical works “combine cultural
investigations with philosophic pursuits”
• Uses “obscure and dramatic landscapes where
his physical journeys become metaphysical
quests”
• “fascination with nomadic cultures: reflected
in works that argue against the pessimism,
ethnocentricity, and materialism of modern
Western civilization”
Background
• Started working for Sothebys, but temporarily
lost his vision
• Doctors said: go look at long horizons
• He left for the Sahara
• Soon starts writing “a letter from the end of the
world,” which turns into In Patagonia
• Critics called it “an imaginative rejuvenation of
the travel genre”
• Wins 1978 Hawthornden Prize
• Wins 1979 E. M. Forster Award of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters
In Patagonia
• Enhances facts with fictional elements
• Depicts a world scattered with misfits,
refugees, bandits
• His Patagonia is a “cultural mosaic”
• Alistair Reid: praised Chatwin for taking
armchair travelers to a “fabled land”
• Andrew Harvey: “Perfect and most famous of
most recent travel books”
Con’t
• Andrew Harvey: He dares us to be obsessive
and irregular, each book being a “feast of style
and form” as he explores “inner wildness”
• John Lanchester: Chatwin has a knack for the
out of the ordinary, “the offbeat and the outof-the-way”
• In Patagonia = “a kind of cubist travel book”
• The “familiar exoticism of travel writing”
becomes “a bleaker and more melancholy
foreignness”
In sum
• Wrote few books, yet each is considered a
masterpiece:
• Non-fiction: In Patagonia, The Viceroy of
Ouidah (about a Brazilian slave trader)
• Fiction: On the Black Hill (about twins on a
Welsh farm), The Songlines (Australian
aborigines), and Utz (the nature of
materialism, a life “usurped by possessions.”)
• Also What Am I Doing Here (essays) and Far
Journeys (notes and photographs)
• Critics often consider Songlines a kind of
continuation of In Patagonia
Hook
• In his grandmother’s dining room is a piece of
a brontosaurus from Patagonia, so naturally
he wants to go there some day
• His grandmother’s cousin, a sailor, had seen it
sticking out of the ice when he was on an
expedition.
• Actually it turned out to be a piece of a Giant
Sloth from Patagonia, but Chatwin still wants
to go
Buenos Aires
• Looks beyond the ordinary, searching for
anomalies
• “The history of Buenos Aires is written in its
telephone directory. Pompey Romanov, Emilio
Rommel, Crespina D.Z. de Rose, Ladislao
Radziwil, and Marta Callman de Rothschild—
five names taken at random among the Rstold a story of exile, disillusion and anxiety
behind the lace curtains.” (4)
Class
As he arrives: “The rich were closing their
apartments for the summer… The very rich
would go to Punta del Este in Uruguay, where
they stood less chance of being kidnapped.
Some of the rich, the sporting ones anyway,
said summer was a closed season for kidnaps.
The guerillas also rented holiday villas, or went
to Switzerland to ski.” (4)
Colorful Characters
• Heads south to Bahia Blanca and meets lots of
odd characters everywhere he goes.
• Sheepherder: “Do you know what we pray for
down here? Pray for sadistically? Bad winter in
Europe. Makes the price of wool go up.” (11)
• Meets people who seem out of place, people
from other countries who somehow wind up
in Chile/Argentina.
.
• Goes to the Davies’ farm. Mrs. Ivor Davies:
parents from Genoa. She spends her time
dreaming of Venice and The Bridge of Sighs.
• “When she said the word sospiri, she said it
so loudly and insistently that you knew she
was pining for Italy.” (28)
• There’s also an assortment of Brits and Welsh,
and somehow they’ve all ended up here.
El maestro
• His friend tells him to go to see the poet called
“el maestro.”
• “The poet lived along a lonely stretch of river,
in overgrown orchards of apricots, alone in a
two-roomed hut. He had been a teacher of
literature in Buenos Aires. He came down to
Patagonia forty years back and stayed.” (29)
• “Patagonia!” he cried. “She is a hard mistress.
She casts her spell. An enchantress! She folds
you in her arms and never lets go.”
But then…
• Chatwin draws into a narrative within the
narrative, and one that he keeps dancing
around, about another “interesting
character….”
An American from Utah
• “He was alone that first winter. But he liked
reading and borrowed books from an English
neighbour.” (42)
• “Writing did not come easily to him, yet he did
find time to write to a friend back home.”
• Letter: “I suppose you have thought lon before
that I had forgotten you (or was dead)…
• It will probably surprise you to hear from me
away down in this country but US was too
small for me the last two years I was there.
Letter to Mrs. Davies con’t
• “I was restless. I wanted to see more of the
world. I had seen all of the US that I thought
was good.”
• “All the land east of here is prairie and deserts,
very good for stock, but I am a long way from
civilization.”
• “Here it is 1600 miles to Buenos Aires and
over 400 miles to the nearest Rail Road or Sea
Port.” (43)
.
• ..another of my Uncles died and left $30,000
to our little family of three..”
• “I visited the best cities and best parts of
South A. till I got here.
• And this part of the country looked so good
that I located, and I think for good, for I like
the place better every day.”
• “The only thing lacking is a cook, for I am still
living in Single Cussideness and sometimes I
feel very lonely for I am alone all day..
Con’t
• .. And my neighbors don’t amount to
anything, besides the only language spoken in
this country is Spanish, and I don’t speak it
well enough to converse on the latest scandals
so dear to the hearts of all nations, and
without which conversations are very stale,
but the country is first class.”
Note:
• “The dead Uncle was the Wild Bunch Gang’s
robbery of the First National Bank at
Winnemucca Nevada, on Sept 16th, 1900.
• “The writer was Robert Leroy Parker, better
known as Butch Cassidy…” (44)
• Oldest of 11, he rebelled under “the straitjacket
of Mormonism”
• He dreamed of being a cowboy and, in dime
novels, read the ongoing saga of Jesse James.”
(44)
.
• At 18, he decides that cattle companies and
banks are natural enemies “and convinced
himself that right lay the wrong side of the law.”
• Tells his mother he’s going to work in a mine;
instead rustles cattle with a young outlaw Mike
Cassidy.
• “Bob Parker took the name Cassidy and rode into
a new life of wide horizons and the scent of horse
leather. (Butch was the name of a borrowed
gun.)”
• “He’s a driver, horse-wrangler, robber, leader of
men. Gets two years in the Wyoming State Penn
for stealing a horse he hadn’t stolen, valued at
$5. Afterwards, never trusts the law.” (45)
.
• “The Wild Bunch performed the string of perfect
hold-ups that kept lawmen, Pinkerton detectives
and the railroad in perpetual jitters.” (46)
• Never kills anyone and disapproves of his
“associates”’ ways, but his pleas for amnesty go
unheard
• Sucked into a life of crime, depends on the art of
a quick getaway—which means expensive horses
• As they close in on him, he has to chose between
a stiff sentence—or Argentina-- where he expects
to find “lawless freedom.”
• His last two US hold-ups: he’s raising money for
his journey
Meanwhile
• Makes the acquaintance of the Sundance Kid and
his girlfriend, Etta Place.
• They go around together as a “family of three.”
• Fall of 1901, they sail together for Buenos Aires
• Buy acres of land in a rough camp
• A Pinkerton detective tracks them to the area but
is scared to go to Patagonia, which is reportedly
full of snakes and jungles
• For 5 years, they live without interference
The Saga Continues
• By now it seems like a Western!
• The Pinkerton Agency warned the Buenos Aires
police but thought it would be a matter of time
before the “family” turned to crime
• And, their accomplice Harvey Logan turns up
• In fact, they “were addicted to the art of the
hold-up, without which life itself became a bore.”
(48)
• After Logan kills a bank manager, they scatter into
the Cordillera
Endings?
• Etta turns up in Denver years later
• Butch Cassidy and Sundance go to Bolivia
• Classic account of their death in San Vicente,
following another robbery, appears in Elk’s
Magazine in 1930 (impossible odds, lots of dead
bodies, knowing Sundance is mortally wounded,
Butch kills him and then himself….)
• Probably didn’t happen like that
• The Bolivian president investigates, exhumes
corpses, concludes…. The story is a fabrication
• Which, of course, is just what the outlaws wanted
The Historian
• Chatwin is completely caught up in this story and
goes around trying to find out more versions:
• “All along the Southern Andes you hear stories of
the bandoleros norteamericanos.” (51)
• In some accounts they go into town, make friends
with the townspeople, figure out where the most
money is, make a quick robbery and quicker
getaway
• In another they are betrayed by the husband of
one of Sundance’s lovers, and shot by soldiers
• The truth… maybe only the pampas know!
Meanwhile
• Chatwin details adventures in Rio Pico meeting a
Swiss woman who married a Swede, a Russian
doctor who married a Pole after being captured
by Nazis in West Germany, and Germans who had
converted their corner of Patagonia into a
German village
• Chatwin asks the Germans about the bandoleros:
“They were gentlemen. They were friends of my
family and my uncles buried them.” (63) (This is
after they’re betrayed by an Indian.)
Another Final Version
• In this version, 80 Frontier Police, criminals as
well, finally tracked them down, shot them,
and cut off their heads, since an agency in NY
had promised 5,000 for each one.
• But their “graves” at Rio Pico are
questionable: some say that Sundance is
buried there with another member of the
gang while Butch went back to Utah
• Basically, everyone loves these outlaws!
Technique
• In terms of the narrative, each new bit of
information about Butch Cassidy and sidekick
simply leads to another story that leads to
another story
• Chatwin met plenty of people who claimed to
have known them. Or…. Did they?
• He’s sucked into these stories as he keeps trying
to sort out what might be the truth.
• Conclusion? Butch’s own sister claims he went
back to Utah!
Continuation
• As Chatwin keeps hitchhiking and walking
around, meets more and more people:
Spaniards, Lithuanians, Englishmen,
Scotsmen, peasants, farmers, old-timers: the
narrative is a rich mosaic of all these people
• Everywhere he runs into this strange
conglomeration of peoples, languages,
traditions
Puerto Deseado
• The port town resembles the mish-mash in
the rest of the country:
• “The town is distinguished for a Salesian
College that incorporates every architectural
style from the Monastery of St Gall to a multistorey car-park; a Gruta de Lourdes; and a
railway station in the form and proportion of a
big Scottish country house.” (86)
.
• “I stayed at the Estacion de Biologia Marina with
a party of scientists who dug enthusiastically for
sandworms and squabbled about the Latin names
of seaweed.” (86)
• “The resident ornithologist, a severe young man,
was studying the migration of the Jackass
Penguin. We talked late into the night, arguing
whether or not we, too, have journeys mapped
out in our central nervous systems; it seemed the
only way to account for our insane restlessness.”
Captain John Davis
• Launches into another history sequence about
the famous navigator from Devon
• Sets off on a ship called Desire for what is later
called the Falklands
• On shore the men forage for fruit and vegetables;
when they find penguins they kill and salt them
• After Indians and Portuguese attack, they have to
go out to sea, but the penguins are full of worms
• All but the captain and a ship’s boy are too sick to
stand and work
• Finally they reach Berehaven, but by then Davis’s
wife has taken up with a “sleek paramour” (89)
Legacy
• “But the restlessness got [Davis] in the end. He
went with the Earl of Essex to the Azores; then to
the East Indies, as pilot for the Zeelanders. He
died aboard the English ship, Tyger, in the Straits
of Malacca in 1605. He had been too trusting of
some Japanese pirates and made the mistake of
asking them for a meal.”
• Two centuries later: Coleridge writes “The
Ancient Mariner,” which was probably fueled by
Davis’ account
Comparisons
• Davis and the Mariner had equally bad trips,
are avenged by the birds they’ve killed, drift
through the tropics, and have to endure the
curses of dying men:
• The many men so beautiful!
• And they all dead did lie:
• And a thousand, thousand slimy things
• Lived on and so did I.
Coleridge
• The poet is a man after Chatwin’s heart:
• “Coleridge himself was a ‘night-wandering
man,’ a stranger at his own birthplace, a
drifter round rooming-houses, unable to sink
roots anywhere. He had a bad case of what
Baudelaire called ‘The Great Malady: Horror
of One’s Home.” (90)
• “Hence his identification with other blighted
wanderers: Cain, The Wandering Jew, or the
horizon-struck navigators of the 16th century.
For the Mariner was [Coleridge] himself.”
Origins
• When Magellan lands at San Julian in 1520, he
sees a giant Tehuelche Indian who was naked and
dancing
• Magellan called him “Patagon,” meaning Bigfoot.
This is usually accepted as the origin of the term:
pata means “paw” or “foot” in Spanish (95)
• But how to explain the suffix? In Greek “patagos”
means a roaring of teeth, but…
• Primaleon of Greece had been published some
seven years before Magellan sailed
Primaleon
• In this book of chivalry, Knight Primaleon sails
to an island and meets awful people who eat
raw flesh.
• Farther into the island is a monster called the
Grand Patagon. Primaleon controls the beast
with the help of his lions and carts him back to
Polonia to add to his royal collection; in the
meantime Princess Zephira has easily tamed
him.
The Tempest
• 90 years later, Shakespeare’s Tempest is first
performed
• Caliban has an uncanny resemblance to
Patagon
• They’re both monsters that are half human
• Described as having dog heads
• Love white princesses
• Chatwin has roped us into another history by
making connections we might have
overlooked
Tierra del Fuego
• More myths and legends make the area come
alive
• Dante puts his Hill of Purgatory here
• Donne refers to the area in his deathbed
stanzas
• The region is replete with albatrosses, calling
to mind:
• Instead of the Cross, the Albatross
• About my neck was hung
The Beagle
• On the ship’s second voyage, Jemmy Button
yells ‘Monkeys, Dirty Fools, Not Men,’
“perhaps assisting Darwin to his biggest idea.”
(128)
• How so? “The mere sight of the Fuegians
helped trigger the theory that Man had
evolved from an ape-like species and that
some men had evolved further than others.”
Edgar Allen Poe
• Also obsessed with voyages
• In “Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” the hero
is rescued from a shipwreck but meets
creatures that are a mixture of Tasmanian
Blackfellows and Fuegians.
• (Poe and Darwin probably did not read each’s
work, but wound up using similar sources,
which Chatwin calls “another example of
synchronic workings of the intelligence.” (131)
Patagonia= World
• As you’re pulled deeper and deeper into the
narrative, Patagonia seems the “cuna” of the
world
• Many stories later, Chatwin reminds us that
Patagonia seems to have been part of Conan
Doyle’s The Lost World. (191)
• In a final reference, Chatwin meets a lingerie
salesman who insists on quoting lines from
Lorca’s poem on bullfighting: “Eran las cinco
en punto de la tarde.” (196)
Juxtapositions
• Waits a week to get a ship out
• “The third class had the quality of an Asiatic
jail” (198)
• As they leave port, the lingerie salesman
paces on deck while a Chilean businessman
plays “La mer on a white piano missing many
of its keys.”
• “As we came out into the Pacific, the
businessman was still playing La mer. Perhaps
it was the only thing he could play.” (199)
Sources
• An enticing list of sources in the back of the
book reminds us that our work of beginning to
understand Patagonia has only just begun.
• Plus, we need to refresh our memory of
Dante, The Origin of Species, The Ancient
Mariner, and The Tempest!
Pictures by Lucy Rowell
Patagonia, 05