What do you think?
Rate this book
El rigor de la Corneta: recuerdos de la vida de campaña : novela histórica
320 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1887
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 23, 2021
This has been my mentally challenging project for five years and I had grown so emotionally attached to some of the characters that I was actually saddened to come to the end. Using the Spanish I learned some fifty years ago and some fairly good online translation tools, I believe I came out with a rather good translation of this book from 1887. There were difficult stretches, dealing with local variants of the language, military terms, and many pages where some of the text was missing from the outer lower corners.
The exciting rewards from this task came from my novel exposure to a time and place of which I had previously almost no knowledge. The Chilean occupation of Peru in the late 19th century from the perspective of junior officers in the Chilean Batallón Septiembre. Their pursuit of women in the city and then their treacherous expedition across the Andes. For long stretches the author focused at the battalion level on the difficulties of transporting a large force across a high mountain range in the face of multiple and relentless hostile factors: treacherous terrain, thin air, scarce resources, and the fire of insurgents and natives. The author periodically shifted focus to the individuals prominent in the story to see in detail how they were dealing with these hardships. It was very illuminating on many levels.
What was lacking was any explanation of the cause or purpose of both the Chilean occupation or Batallón Septiembre’s expedition into the mountains. The scenes in Lima portrayed a fun time for all, much in contrast with the brief references I’d read of this period in Isabel Allende’s novel Portrait in Sepia. While I enjoyed the narrative of this fictionalized account, I’ll have to look elsewhere to understand the historical context.
The exciting rewards from this task came from my novel exposure to a time and place of which I had previously almost no knowledge. The Chilean occupation of Peru in the late 19th century from the perspective of junior officers in the Chilean Batallón Septiembre. Their pursuit of women in the city and then their treacherous expedition across the Andes. For long stretches the author focused at the battalion level on the difficulties of transporting a large force across a high mountain range in the face of multiple and relentless hostile factors: treacherous terrain, thin air, scarce resources, and the fire of insurgents and natives. The author periodically shifted focus to the individuals prominent in the story to see in detail how they were dealing with these hardships. It was very illuminating on many levels.
What was lacking was any explanation of the cause or purpose of both the Chilean occupation or Batallón Septiembre’s expedition into the mountains. The scenes in Lima portrayed a fun time for all, much in contrast with the brief references I’d read of this period in Isabel Allende’s novel Portrait in Sepia. While I enjoyed the narrative of this fictionalized account, I’ll have to look elsewhere to understand the historical context.
Displaying 1 of 1 review