Singing from the Well

Pentagonía #1

by Reinaldo Arenas, Andrew Hurley (Translator), Thomas Colchie (Introduction)

His mother talks piously of the heaven that awaits the good, and disciplines him with an ox prod. His grandmother burns his precious crosses for kindling. His cousins meet to plot their grandfather's death. Yet in the hills surrounding his home, another reality exists, a place where his mother wears flowers in her hair, and his cousin Celestino, a poet who inscribes verse on the trunks of trees, understands his visions. The first novel in Reinaldo Arenas's "secret history of Cuba," a quintet he called the Pentagonia, Singing from the Well is by turns explosively crude and breathtakingly lyrical. In the end, it is a stunning depiction of a childhood besieged by horror--and a moving defense of liberty and the imagination in a world of barbarity, persecution, and ignorance.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Latin American, Novels, Spanish Literature, LGBT, Queer

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). His Hallucinations was awarded "first Honorable Mention" in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year.

His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of 'ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent.

He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. He came on the boat San Lazaro captained by Cuban immigrant Roberto Aguero.

In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS; he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas died of an intentional overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York City. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: "Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression that causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life... I want to encourage the Cuban people abroad as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom... Cuba will be free. I already am."

In 2012 Arenas was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people

Reviews

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surreal and brutal, this is like "Guernica" by Picasso, which can be found in Madrid's Prado Museum. The point of view of the young Arenas (who gives us but a glimpse of this Magical Realist work in his fantastic 'Antes que anochezca') is vivid, alive, & at one point he stops and asks his audience: Are you listening to me? Do you know me? The questions are set off like some prayer, a song from a lonesome, often-times violent and horrific place, a "well." A man with a hatchet, witches, elves, talking animals, morphing humans, literal metaphors... they all congregate in this awesome flight of fancy. This is a writer at his freest.

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 5 stars I've given this book are in recognition of its genius that overides my intense dislike.
RA has certainly done a brilliant job in reconstructing the timeless and imaginative world of a child growing up in chaotic poverty. The reader is forced to decide on the reality of this world as presented. Is Celestino an unfortunate cousin,an imaginary companion/alter ego or the narrator stripped of his many disguises? What actually is the narrators name?
In fact, Celestino was the name umder which the book was first published, before it became the first volume in his 5 volume secret history of Cuba. That he managed to complte this cycle is a testament to his tenacity and devotion to his craft in the face of world disdain.

But SftW is a harsh book and difficult to read. Even when we begin to relax and appreciate the mastery of the writing (it's all just childish fantasy and there are some lovely lyrical bits) there is the pervasive uneasy feeling that the seeds from which the fantasies flow are even more horrific than the incessant casual violence portrayed.Emotionally its devasting.

RA himself lived a tragic story that began with his early literary triumphs in Cuba,and ended abrubtly in exile, where he died triply outcast,in New York in 1990 at the age of 47.
The introduction to SftW by Thomas Colchie provides an indispensable overview.

[Gisela Morales · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maravillosa narración de la mente un tanto perturbada de un niño, temiéndole más a los vivos que a los muertos, viviendo en un mundo de violencia, creo que es un poco complejo de comprender la prosa del autor ya que el ritmo que lleva es disparatado y surrealista, le doy tres estrellas porque no alcancé a entender todo el contenido metafórico de la obra.

[Misael · Rating 4 out of 5]

No es mi taza de té, pero no por ello deja de ser bueno

[Asma · Rating 1 out of 5]

لكل شيء طاقة و طاقتي مع الرواية وصلت لصفحة 80 و بعدها انتهت
لم استطع اكمال الكتاب ، ليست من نوعية الكتب التي اتقبلها كما يقولوا بالانجليزيه
It's not my cup of tea

[Luislru99 · Rating 5 out of 5]

El mejor libro que he leído este año. Merece una reseña? Sí. Quizás cuando lo relea y lo entienda la haga, porque hay mucho que procesar, este libro me dejó muy perdido ,😂 una genialidad

[Liván · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extraño y excelente. Un estilo súper confuso y enmarañado que a veces causa estrago pero que de pronto funciona tan pero tan bien para contar algo tan profundo y crudo. Es un libro fuerte, cruel, de maldad tras maldad, con Celestino como luz única. Hay mucho que sacar de este libro, mucho que preguntarse.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read the description and it sounds so magical and fascinating... I read the book and I felt like it was one massive hallucination caused by severe physical abuse. I dislike the term "I didn't 'get' it" but in this case that couldn't be more accurate.

[Arnoldo Rosas · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿De qué trata? ¿Qué es? ¿Surrealismo? ¿El mundo de los sueños? ¿Delirios de un pobre infante campesino? ¿El relato de un loco o de un bobo? ¿Costumbrismo barroco salpimentado de realismo mágico y humor? ¿Alucinaciones por tanta hambre que ha pasado el personaje? ¿Narraciones del absurdo? ¿La imaginación desbordada de un niño? ¿Un texto poético sobre zombis? ¡Qué sé yo! Pero es hermoso y no pude parar de leer.

[Pablo Ruiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una locura que necesitaré reposar.

[Michael Beblowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Celestino Before the Dawn, revised in exile by gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, reprinted as Singing from the Well and presented as the introductory volume of a series of five experimental novels ("the Pentagonia") that create a "secret history of Cuba." Since, Celestino Before the Dawn was published in Cuba and enjoyed moderate international success before Arenas' subsequent novels were banned and the author was imprisoned for his homosexuality, its politics are not explicit. An imaginative child growing up in rural poverty escapes physical and emotional abuse through a series of nightmares and fantasies. The reliability of the narrator is, of course, dubious and the magical realist elements typically associated with Latin American novelists are presented as violent and hallucinatory: the ghosts of all the narrator's dead cousins sit on the roof of the palm thatch house plotting the death of their murderous grandfather, while the orphaned and probably imaginary playmate cousin Celestino carves poetry into the trunk of every tree surrounding the house eliciting familial shame and inspiring their grandfather to eliminate the "filth" by cutting down these trees with a hatchet, gnomes, witches, giant spiders with the crying head of a human woman, reflections and doppelgangers of his mother also populate the non-linear narrative. If you want a plot, or perhaps assumed that the Pentagonia was accessible and autobiographical, Singing From the Well will disappoint with its surrealism and chimerical nature, the narrative is disjointed and interrupted by handwritten quotations that seem disconnected (perhaps they are fragments of the poetry that Celestino is carving into the trees?), eventually it breaks from paragraph formatting and becomes scripted dialogue with stage directions. If you always wanted the childhood bedwetting portion of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or the Benjy chapter of The Sound and the Fury to be sustained for a two hundred page novel Singing From the Well is that stream of consciousness with zero chronology and distinction between reality and dream narrative that verges on accessibility and comprehension slightly more than those esteemed canonical authors. But, if you are seeking realism or history you will not find it in the bottom of this well.

[Jay Daze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up until well over half way reading this book I was bitching and complaining, reading offending parts of the book to my wife. I felt like an adult following a child around as he played his own very private game. SftW was all fantastical, nothing grounded the story, there wasn't a plot, I didn't know what the hell was going on, characters were constantly dying and then coming back in the next paragraph, everyone seemed insane, is Celistino even real?

But..... right after or on page 130 (of 206) something clicked for me. Maybe I just released my realist fiction expectations. It's a novel from a young child's perspective, there is little or no setting, and for the life of me I'm not even totally clear what the point of the damn book is! (Though it is interesting that the novel was originally titled Celestino antes del alba and how the book ends. And that the name derives from "of the sky, heavenly", sort of an angel.) Maybe it is just the particular brutality of this childhood, there is a reason why everyone is dying all the time. I still think the trope of Celestino writing on all the trees and the grandfather cutting them down was just that, a writers trope -- too transparently 'meaningful' to have any power for me. But the cumulative effect of the barrage of a child's fantastical imagining finally did have its effect on me. By the end I was touched -- so the book worked for me. For anyone looking for a education about Cuba, look elsewhere, but if you want up close, very upclose, childhood hell (A Season in Hell) this is your book.

[C.S. Carrier · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book rocks balls. If I ever write a novel, then I want to write one like this.

[Fernando · Rating 3 out of 5]

Que nos muriéramos los dos y la poesía siguiera sin terminar.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reinaldo Arenas' Singing from the Well is a unique dose of magical realism set in rural pre-Revolution Cuba.

Told from the perspective of a young Arenas, the narrator is a young boy who lives in a violent home with grandmother and grandfather with violent tendencies and a mother who is herself emotionally unstable. When his aunt dies and leaves his cousin, Celestino, with his hodge-podge family, the two boys become the target of the adults' ire. Celestino cannot help but carve poems into trees, an activity that embarrasses the family and drives the adults wild. But the two boys manage to build an imaginary world - that is itself violent - in order to protect themselves from the violence in their real world.

Singing from the Well is a beautiful book and Arenas' masterful use of magical realism makes this book imaginative and striking. But the magical realism can get out of hand at times, and I am not sure of its full purpose. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading the other books in this series.

[Cesar Pinto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mi primera impresión del libro es que es una broma. Sin embargo, entre frases inconexas se cuenta una historia. Para mi, fue la otra vida del protagonista junto a su guía Celestino. Pienso que murió en el pozo, y todo lo que leemos es el trascurrir del tiempo y el espacio, en donde ve y se encuentra a múltiples versiones de sus familiares: madre, abuela, abuelo y sus múltiples muertes.

No se, igual es una broma de 100 páginas, pero me gustaría pensar que mi interpretación está bien, aunque por lo menos, para mi lo está.

Uff, que calificación más difícil. Probable vaya a mis lecturas del año, como me ha sucedido. Son lecturas que pasan y se quedan anidando en uno.

[Cami · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uno scritto erratico, fuori dal comune, e in linea con l'azione controrivoluzionaria di Arenas. A tratti un esperimento pazzo di letteratura, a tratti sembra quasi una pastiche di vecchi anatemi letterari e stilistici, con funzione di esorcismo della realtà data.

Già dall'inizio salta all'occhio una scrittura informe, che alcuni hanno definito sovversiva, perché va contro al principio di "addomesticamento" della pluralità molto caro al regime castrista. Eppure il Celestino è un romanzo (?) pre-rivoluzionario, nella sostanza, ambientato nella Cuba di Bautista. In più occasioni Arenas ha tenuto a precisare che veicolare la verità è un esercizio che solitamente appartiene - da tradizione - solo al realismo. Ma qui di realistico non c'è la narrazione (non nel senso stretto almeno), né ci sono tempi aristotelici. Realistici sono i sentimenti poetici, l'esasperazione dell'indole e della natura interiore, che spesso fonde vita e morte nella stessa narrazione. La morte ripetuta dei familiari come esempio principale. Arenas difende l'immaginazione e lo fa attraverso il suo potere creativo, ritenuto dalla critica il primo grande atto ribelle di tutta la sua opera.

L'aspetto onirico che giova all'espressione immaginifica di una realtà che scade di significato tradizionale e diventa ascrivibile a quelle dimensioni eteree/inconsistenti dell'incertezza, del dubbio e del sogno, appunto. Ciò con narratore che, per metà, si divide: lui è anche Celestino, l'ultimo rifugio di espressione della diversità nell'opprimente clima di un regime che vede nella pluralità (di cui sopra) la sovversione ultima dello stato di cose dato. Celestino è il potere creativo, costantemente ostacolato da presunte figure di autorità violenta (la violencia marqueziana del Sudamerica), come appunto un nonno infame che con la sua ascia (sineddoche di violenza e hybris), abbatte tutti gli alberi su cui celestino - unico a non essere analfabeta - è costretto a scrivere.

Ad Arenas la dicotomia tra violenza/diversità era cara, poiché in Celestino lui vede la trasgressione ultima contro lo status quo, che per estensione diventa anche trasgressione sessuale (agli occhi del regime). Il poeta è automaticamente omosessuale, incastrato in un contesto di innaturalezza e non appartenenza. L'ascia/la violenza sono un leitmotiv che va a susseguirsi a ripetizione, quasi in maniera tronfia, come il suono snervante di un martello pneumatico o di una marcia di soldati invasori, con la parola "ascia" ripetuta così tante volte che lo stesso lettore ne teme l'arrivo.

[Sean A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incoherent and dreamlike, but (mostly) all the better for it. It's gonna be hard not to think of this in comparison to 'before night falls' by the same author (maybe the greatest and most impactfull books i've read in years) but i'll try not to do that since they are so different. I had such high expectations for this story of arenas' childhood after reading his more formal autobiography but let me reiterate this is so different it almost seems like it could come from the pen of a different author.
Anyways, this is the story of an enchanted countryside that can also be very nightmarish. People are always dying or at least getting severely beat with switch's and other worse but seemingly pretend predicaments and forms of violence. So that leads to what might be the real psychological crux of this novel: in what ways do the aforementioned fantastical elements of the novel cover up for real traumas of the author or else also the residues of his gifted childhood imagination? It's hard to tell indeed and I'm not gonna try for an in-depth analysis here, but that was definitely one of the strongest running currents/questions for me during this book. But then (!) other times i laid off the psychoanalysis and just enjoyed the imagery and the abrupt and varied change of pace tone and magical happenings and it was great (!).
So basically, 'singing from the well' can be confusing if you let it or else a dark romp into an enticing though at the same time pretty negative paradoxical fairyland or else also something that possibly requires some heavy psychological evaluation and decoding for a serious reading. It was a bit of all that for me and a pretty entertaining, disturbing and wild ride all and all.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There went my mother, she just went running out the door. She was screaming like a crazy woman that she was going to jump down the well. I see my mother at the bottom of the well. I see her floating in the greenish water choked with leaves. So I run for the yard, out to where the well is, that's fenced around with a wellhead of naked-boy saplings so rickety it's almost falling in."

So begins Singing from the Well. In some respects, this book reminds me of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. In Singing from the Well, we read the tale of a young boy in the poverty of pre-revolutionary Cuba, a tale in which the characters are not only the boy's family, but who are allegories for Cuba. The narrative jumps about and is mixed with both what the boy sees as real and what he fantasizes about. Reality for the boy holds violence, both at the hands of his peers and his family. So he takes solace in another reality that includes his dead cousin Celestino, who carves beautiful poetry into the trunks of trees.

This is the first book in a series by Arenas that follows this boy's life during the period just before the revolution. It is a tremendously moving book, but cannot be considered uplifting. The reader who takes the challenge to read this will be rewarded.

[Moisés González · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conozco a Reinaldo Arenas por ciertas referencias, por la película Antes de que Anochezca y ahora por Celestino Antes del Alba, su primer libro. Me pareció un sinfín de situaciones y eventos extravagantes, mágicos, muy propias de la literatura latinoamericana. Hay fragmentos del libro que tienen un gran contenido poético, otros pueden ser muy conmovedores y partes del libro empiezan con epígrafes de Rimbaud o Borges. No sé si sea un libro que le pueda gustar a todas personas considerando lo "caótico" de su estructura e imagino que debajo de muchas oraciones, párrafos, capítulos enteros, hay un simbolismo paralelo a la vida del propio Arenas. Claro, obviando el hecho de que Celestino es un niño que escribe poesía en los troncos de los árboles. Estoy interesado en leer más del autor.

[Cibernetes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leí antes de Celestino antes del alba, El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas; es complicada la narrativa de Reinaldo Arenas, Celestino antes del alba parece un antecedente del palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas, hasta parecen ser los mismos personajes (el abuelo, la abuela, las tías y los chicos). Si me resultó agotador El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas, Celestino antes del alba es asolador. Es lo que hace la literatura, nos mueve emociones.

[Alex Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastically surreal this book jumps from factual descriptions to complete fantasy from one word to the next and paints an amazing picture of a child's difficult upbringing in Cuba, where the only release is to escape from reality.

[Nohemí · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un pariente muy cercano de Pedro Páramo y Cien años de soledad y que además las ilumina. Una belleza de mundo y de novela por los apegos, los duendes, las cucarachas, el río, los retornos, la nieve y más.

[Txe Polon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alucinada, onírica e imposible novela (¿novela?), una explosión de creatividad y libertad artística que va más allá de una historia que no cuenta para centrarse en el simbolismo de la represión de los instintos y de la vena poética en una sociedad marcada por la inmediatez y la brutalidad.

[Mildred Torre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended.

[Deni · Rating 2 out of 5]

no me gustó este libro y una muy buena amiga dice que es increíble. no sé.

[Leopoldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alucinante.

[Marina D'Agnese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una scrittura "onirica" la definirei, che come un sogno ti invade, riempe, e confonde. E si confondono realtà e fantasia, si scambiano di posto, e non c'è tregua per Celestino, per suo cugino e per ogni membro di questa famiglia disgraziata che lotta per il cibo, per la propria casa, per una carezza o un sorriso e per il proprio concetto di onore. E se la realtà è dura, spietata, anche le fantasie sanno marcire e risultare sgradevoli e dolorose... E i personaggi, come in un caleidoscopio, mutano e trapassano dalla tenerezza alla spietatezza, dalla vita alla morte. Una storia di violenza, di repressioni e di rinunce soffocate nei sogni, affidata a una scrittura lussureggiante, plastica.
Ho trovato interessante il secondo finale con la sua struttura da tragedia greca, coro compreso, ma poco chiaro nel vertiginoso susseguirsi di personaggi vivi, ma forse morti... 🤔
P.s. Letto in italiano, ovviamente, nella bellissima edizione di Mar dei Sargassi edizioni
P.p.s. Non riesco a non pensare alla pittura di Frida Kahlo, al suo dolore affidato a pennellate di colori forti...

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess its kind of like what growing up is like

[Luis Alv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reinaldo Arenas escribió todo lo que me hubiera gustado escribir.