The Promise

by Silvina Ocampo, Ernesto Montequin (Foreword), Suzanne Jill Levine (Translator)

Kirkus Reviews calls The Promise one of the Best Books of Fiction, and of Literature in Translation, of the year!

* Voted one of the Big Fall Books from Indies by Publishers Weekly & LitHub's Most Anticipated Books of 2019

"The world is ready for her blend of insane Angela Carter with the originality of Clarice Lispector."—Mariana Enriquez, LitHub

"Both her debut story collection, Forgotten Journey, and her only novel, The Promise, are strikingly 20th-century texts, written in a high-modernist mode rarely found in contemporary fiction."—Lily Meyer, NPR

A dying woman's attempt to recount the story of her life reveals the fragility of memory and the illusion of identity.

"Of all the words that could define her, the most accurate is, I think, ingenious."—Jorge Luis Borges

"I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us."—Italo Calvino

"Few writers have an eye for the small horrors of everyday life; fewer still see the everyday marvelous. Other than Silvina Ocampo, I cannot think of a single writer who, at any time in any language, has chronicled both with such wise and elegant humor."—Alberto Manguel

"Art is the cure for death. A seminal work by an underread master. Required for all students of the human condition."—Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews

"This haunting and vital final work from Ocampo, her only novel, is about a woman's life flashing before her eyes when she's stranded in the ocean. . . . the book’s true power is its depiction of the strength of the mind and the necessity of storytelling, which for the narrator is literally staving off death. Ocampo’s portrait of one woman’s interior life is forceful and full of hope."—Gabe Habash, Starred Review, Publishers Weekly

"Ocampo is beyond great—she is necessary."—Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance

"I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us."—Italo Calvino

"These two newly translated books could make her a rediscovery on par with Clarice Lispector. . . . there has never been another voice like hers."—John Freeman, Executive Editor, LitHub

"Like William Blake, Ocampo's first voice was that of a visual artist; in her writing she retains the will to unveil immaterial so that we might at least look at it if not touch it."—Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread

A woman traveling on a transatlantic ship has fallen overboard. Adrift at sea, she makes a promise to Saint Rita, "arbiter of the impossible," that if she survives, she will write her life story. As she drifts, she wonders what she might include in the story of her life—a repertoire of miracles, threats, and people parade tumultuously through her mind.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Spanish Literature, Novella, Classics, Latin American, Latin American Literature

120 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Silvina Ocampo Aguirre was a poet and short-fiction writer.

Ocampo was the youngest of the six children of Manuel Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre. One of her sisters was Victoria Ocampo, the publisher of the literarily important Argentine magazine Sur.

Silvina was educated at home by tutors, and later studied drawing in Paris under Giorgio de Chirico. She was married to Adolfo Bioy Casares, whose lover she became (1933) when Bioy was 19. They were married in 1940. In 1954 she adopted Bioy’s daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954-94) who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo’s death.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

After 18 years of literacy, 7 years on this hellsite, a thousand books read, and every genre tried at least one, I am finally ready to declare it.

The best books are short works of literary fiction.

Here is a list of things the aforementioned subgenre has going for it:
- They're beautifully written.
- You can read them in a day.
- They make you feel smart.
- They are often brilliant and/or clever and/or thoughtful.
- They make you think.
- Even if you don't like it, it's over very quickly.

This book, for example, is very gorgeous, and philosophical, and made me ponder quite a bit, and I read it in a day. And I had time to read a whole other book.

Couldn't ask for more!

Bottom line: This could be a 5 star someday!

------------------
pre-review

i think i'm finally figuring out how to pick up books i'll like.

only took me a million years.

review to come / at least 4.5

------------------
tbr review

what's your favorite genre that you made up? mine is short books with low average ratings

[Paula Mota · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5*

Depois de ter ficado francamente impressionada com os contos de Silvina Ocampo em “Dias da Noite”, esta primeira incursão numa narrativa mais longa levantou-me tantas dúvidas que não sei o que pensar de “A Promessa”, que tem um dos começos mais impactante de sempre para depois se ir dissipando nas páginas seguintes. Silvina Ocampo iniciou esta obra 25 anos antes de morrer e passou os últimos 10 anos da sua vida a refazê-la e a corrigi-la, tendo sido publicada postumamente quando encontraram o manuscrito entre os seus papéis. Estamos, portanto, perante aquilo que não se sabe se seria a versão final, aquela que Ocampo gostaria de dar ao prelo, e que ainda agora me parece um mero rascunho.
A narradora cai de um navio e, para não ceder ao cansaço enquanto nada e espera que a resgatem, usa as suas recordações como uma bóia de salvação, e faz uma promessa a Santa Barbara, aquela de quem só nos lembramos quando troveja.

-Gosto de tudo o que me acontece, para poder contar-to depois - disse-me Leandro.
As vitrinas são como o fundo do mar. Por que motivo eu as observava tanto? Pressentia que um dia ficaria presa nesta água como numa vitrina?

Desfilam assim, várias personagens conforme se vai lembrando delas, sendo algumas recorrentes e outras protagonistas de episódios isolados no que poderiam ser contos independentes, como aconteceu a muitos deles, retirados pela autora e incluídos na referida coleção “Dias da Noite”.
Ainda que a autora tenha afirmado que dispensava finais nos romances, a sensação de obra desconjuntada e inacabada sobrepõe-se ao talento que lhe reconheço como retratista de personagens sui generis.

No início, o medo que sentia não me deixava pensar, depois comecei a pensar desordenadamente: vinham-me à ideia professoras, talharins, filmes, preços, espectáculos teatrais, nomes de escritores, títulos de livros, edifícios, jardins, um gato, um amor infeliz, uma cadeira, uma flor de cujo nome não me lembrava, um perfume, uma pasta de dentes, etc. Memória, como me fizeste sofrer!

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Argentinietė Silvina Ocampo šį fantasmagorišką romaną baiginėjo ilgiau nei dvidešimt metų. Trukdė jai, anot pačios autorės, pagrindinė romano veikėja. Iš interviu su rašytoja: 'because the main character is endlessly telling us things; something is making this woman talk on and on, telling one thing after another. It's a promise she has made and that she keeps so as not to die, but one can tell she is dying.'

Moteris, kurios vardo mes taip ir nesužinom, iškrenta per laivo bortą į vandenyną ir plūduriuoja bandydama išsigelbėti prisiminimais. Ji pasižada Šventajai Ritai, jei išgyvens - parašys savo gyvenimo istoriją. Laukdama išgelbėjimo, protagonistė prisimena ir pasakoja istoriją, bet ne apie save, o apie kitus - kažkada pažinotus, sutiktus, mylėtus ar vis dar mylimus žmones. Taip ji pasakoja ir savo istoriją - apie moterį, žmogų, žmoniją apskritai.

Trumputis, bet labai įspūdingas romanas - gausus temų ir filosofinių įžvalgų. Labiausiai mane užkabinusi tema - apie atmintį, apie jos (ne)patikimumą, (ne)svarbą... Mano galva - nuostabiai išpildytas knygos sumanymas. Neperkrautas, nušlifuotas iki tobulumo - neveltui tiek metų dirbta. Sužavėjo keisti pasikartojimai - sugrįždavau skaityti iš naujo, nes galvodavau, kad būsiu sumaišiusi puslapius. Kai susipratau - tai įgavo prasmę. Beje, jau perskaičius knygą, man sutyvuliavo vandenynas iš Tarkovskio "Soliario". Kažkaip susirišo man jų idėjos.


Yra čia ir daugiau klodų ir simbolių - toli gražu neperpratau visų. Gal dar reikės kada pakartot skaitymą. Gal RaRa išleis.

Beje, tik perskaičius knygą, pasidomėjau autore. Pasirodo, jau redaguodama ir perredaguodama šį trumpą romaną (apysaką), ji vargo su demencija. Ir vis nesirįžo knygos publikuoti. Išspausdinta ji buvo gerokai po jos mirties - 2011-iais.

'No person is as lovely as an animal. I have always thought this since the day I was born, and I think it today, more than any other day,because I feel lonely, and loneliness makes me feel tender.'


Silvina Ocampo (1903 - 1993)

[Dagio_maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Durante una traversata in mare la protagonista ha un incidente.
Mentre è affacciata alla balaustra ad osservare il paesaggio le cade una spilla e nel tentativo di recuperarla si sporge un po' troppo e cade nell'acqua.
La nave prosegue ignara di aver perso un passeggero.
Rimasta sola in balìa dell'oceano fa una promessa a Santa Rita ("l'avvocata dell'impossibile"):

le ho promesso, se mi avesse salvato, di scrivere un libro e di finirlo per il giorno del mio prossimo compleanno.

Per non farsi sopraffare dal panico la donna utilizza il salvagente della memoria e cominciano ad affiorare immagini dal passato.
La promessa è stata fatta ed ora pare un compito impossibile: "Sono analfabeta".
Come si può tradurre in parole l'emozione del ricordo?
Pian piano fanno la loro comparsa sguardi, incontri, colori che formano una catena di intimi episodi.
Quattro personaggi insistono ad avere il ruolo di protagonisti: lei, lui, l'altra ed una bambina. Altri volti sono semplici tasselli.
La mente fugge ma trai ricordi affiora la realtà del presente con un climax in cui prepotente si fa largo l'umana paura del morire.

Come Sharazad al re Shahriyar, in un certo senso ho raccontato storie alla morte perché concedesse la vita a me e alle mie immagini, storie che sembravano non dover mai finire

Racconto gradevole della poetessa e scrittrice argentina Silvina Ocampo moglie del più conosciuto Adolfo Bioy Casares

[Z. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at random off a library cart, intrigued by the cover and description, and I think I probably wanted to like it a bit more than I actually liked it, but it was certainly an odd, sweet, melancholic, disorienting, unpredictable end-of-life reflection / meditation on the author's real struggle with dementia (though refracted through a mystical fictional lens) which I don't regret having read. One of those books where nothing strictly outside the realm of possibility happens but it all leaves a lingering sense of magic anyway.

Tied for the best Argentine novella I read last November.

(And now, as of June 29, 2021, I've finally finished reviewing everything I read in 2020.)

[Gianni · Rating 5 out of 5]

….
Santa Rita, patrona dei casi disperati, pregate per noi.
Santa Rita, avvocata dei casi impossibili, intercedete per noi.
…

Una donna cade accidentalmente in mare dal parapetto di una nave. A differenza del naufrago cantato da Paolo Conte in Onda su onda non c’è nessuno che se ne possa accorgere o la possa, eventualmente, rimpiangere.
La donna, analfabeta, si affida a Santa Rita, ”l’avvocata dell’impossibile” con la promessa ”se mi avesse salvato, di scrivere un libro e di finirlo per il giorno del mio prossimo compleanno. […] Proprio io, da sempre convinta dell’inutilità di scrivere un libro, oggi mi trovo impegnata a farlo per mantenere una promessa che considero sacra.”
È una donna qualsiasi, di per sé insignificante, forse, che può affermare ”non ho una vita mia, ho dei sentimenti. Le mie esperienze non hanno avuto importanza nel corso della vita e neppure sull’orlo della morte, invece la vita degli altri diventa mia.”
Un po’ come il sepolto di Tra le pietre, di Miguel Vitagliano, romanzo in cui questo libro di Silvina Ocampo è citato, la donna non cede alla disperazione, non invoca aiuto se non affidandosi alla Santa, e si affida alla memoria e al ricordo per scrivere il racconto orale.
Una serie di persone conosciute nel corso della vita si affacciano nella memoria della donna, dopo il disorientamento iniziale, a formare un ”dizionario di ricordi a volte vergognosi, umilianti”, con la preoccupazione, poi fugata, che ciò ”significasse consegnare la mia intimità a chiunque.”
Silvina Ocampo costruisce una narrazione mentale a episodi, uno o più persone in ogni episodio, ognuno dei quali è di solito agganciato al termine a quello successivo, ma che alla fine conduce immancabilmente il pensiero alla propria condizione di naufraga e al rapporto con il mare, ”in fondo al mare voglio scoprire il senso della vita, prima di morire.”
È un impianto quasi da telenovela, con situazioni e personaggi che ritornano e addirittura si ripetono come nei pensieri ricorsivi, e, nel complesso, intrisi di tristezza, senso di inadeguatezza e solitudine e di smarrimento nel flusso dei ricordi, ”adesso sono abitata da infinite persone che turbano la mia memoria; sto vivendo di altri ricordi. Quale sono io? A volte non mi trovo.”
Pubblicato postumo dopo venticinque anni di rimaneggiamenti, forse questa non è neppure la versione definitiva e chissà se Silvina Ocampo l’avrebbe pubblicata, come scrive Miguel Vitagliano ”diceva che quello era il romanzo che più le interessava scrivere, eppure lo rimandava continuamente.”

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

“In the seawater, I have drunk the beauty of the universe.”

Silvina Ocampo was an Argentine painter and writer primarily of short fiction and poetry, who was friends with and greatly admired by Jorge Luis Borges. I felt the painter’s presence in this novella.

I loved the idea. A woman falls off a ship into the ocean and, while waiting for rescue, imagines writing the story of her memories. The imagery was often striking, and the characters she described came alive for me with her details. The meaning of the work as a whole however remained a mystery to me.

I did love the structure, the way her imagination and memory would repeatedly take flight, and then return to the fact that she was floating in the water, facing the strong possibility of death. Take flight, then return to give us a poetic but tangible experience of her stark reality.

“The taste of sea spray is how clouds taste.”

I’m betting her poetry is very special, and I’m looking forward to trying it.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Promise is comprised of series of slip-sliding memories told by a woman who inexplicably has fallen overboard on a transatlantic journey. One of the wonderful things about modernist works is an allowance for the reader's interpretation, and I was very tempted to read the book as a metaphor for the author's approaching dementia. Everything took on an added poignancy in that light. However, given that only the last section of the book was completed as the author faced Alzheimer's, a broader interpretation seemed more apt. The more I read, the more the narrator's vignettes seemed to point to broader issues of loss, time, despair and the human condition. Either way, this was a moving read.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silvina Ocampo is more a name associated with other authors than an established entity herself. In this, her unfinished? novel, worked on for more than a decade, the jury remains out with with elements that would raise her stature and others that leave everything in question. I am leaning toward the possibility of raising the stature and all is contingent on the identity of her narrator in this novel. The author does not state it outright and the question is whether it is implied. I did not reach a solution and the novel needs a further examination. I will be interested in conclusions

[H]

One of the most hopeful novels I've read in a long time: "What I imagine becomes real, more real than reality."

[Sorgens Dag · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diario 01/2024

Aquí ocurre que mientras estás muriendo, recuerdas a algunas personas que aparecen, algunas como parpadeos, otras insistentemente como pedazos que definieron tu existencia; hay que lidiar, con la incertidumbre, la aceptación, las resignaciones y los conflictos existenciales que conlleva el dejar la vida, que cosa curiosa ni en este momento podemos dejar de batallar contra todo, contra todos.

Las personas que se te aparecen parecen un tormento al que adoras someterte, son un constante recordatorio de quién eras: los vacíos. Algunas virtudes también se asoman como el sol por la mañana; más o menos, la muerte es muy curiosa, es rarísima si lo piensas así.

Repite y repite escenas que al final no se repiten, son diferentes, como si en la distancia entre la vida y la muerte, en donde ocurre que la muerte te aleja del mundo, pudieras verlas desde varias partes, aunque sigas siendo tú misma. Es raro vivir, solo se vive una vez. En cuanto a morir, bueno, pareciera que es una constante suspendida en el tiempo, que se perpetúa, y siempre ofrece una novedad.

La promesa es que esto nunca se termine, la novela sin final, porque los finales atemorizan un poco, es mejor pensar que, esto es un bucle, como las olas del mar, hasta que invariablemente, frente a la muerte, tengamos que forzarnos por empezar a ser.

Adiós, vida. Gracias Silvina. Estamos de acuerdo.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Aşk tıpkı her biri kendi içinde aynısı olmasa da benzerini bulunduran ama yine de tek bir tane olan Rus bebekleri gibi tektir."

Arjantinli yazar Silvina Ocampo'nun (ki kendisi cağnım Adolfo Bioy Casares'in de eşiymiş, bilmiyordum) yirmi beş sene üzerinde çalıştığı ve aslında tamamlayamadığı kitabı Söz'ü "fantasmagorik" olarak tanımlamış yayınevi, bu tanım önemli, sanırım buradan başlamalı anlatmaya.

Psikolojide ve tıpta, rüyada ya da yüksek ateş sebebiyle ortaya çıkabilecek sanrılı hallerde zihnin türlü çağrışımlar sonucunda gördüğü görüntüleri ve resimleri betimlemek için kullanılan; Walter Benjamin'in ise modern insanın vaziyetini tanımlamak için kullandığı bir kavram "fantasmagorik". (Eğlence endüstrisinin etkisiyle, durmadan tüketerek şahane bir hayat yaşadığını, birtakım parlak görüntüler bütününü deneyimlediğini düşünen insan, aslında kendine ve başkalarına yabancılaşmaktadır, diyor Benjamin.)

Bu kitabı tanımlarken her iki anlamını da değerlendirebiliriz kanımca; zira bir tür yabancılaşma hali de var. Seyahat etttiği gemiden okyanusa düşen bir kadın akıntıya kapılmış sürüklenirken Azize Rita’ya okyanustan sağ kurtulmayı başarırsa hayat hikâyesini yazma sözü veriyor ve sonra da hatıralar geliyor; zihninden geçen kişileri ve mekânları anlatıyor okura. Ocampo gibi hayatının son dönemini Alzheimer ile mücadele ederek geçirmiş bir yazarın büyük eserinin hafızaya dair olması da hayatın tuhaf şakalarından biri gibi.

Ben bu tür fragmanlardan oluşan küçük kitapları seviyorum, biraz Camilo Jose Cela'nın Bayan Caldwell Oğluyla Konuşuyor'u gibi bir tat bıraktı; bölük, dağınık, kimi zaman bağlamlı kimi zaman bağlamsız bir hatıralar bütünü. Yer yer hüzünlü, yer yer tatlı, bazen epey felsefik, bazen melankolik küçük hatıralar. Hangileri gerçek hatıralar, hangilerini hayal ediyor anlatıcı, anlattıkları olurken gerçekten orada mı, değil mi, onu anlamak da güç. Böyle tuhaf, bulutsu, hayalsi bir metin Söz. Çok güzel, çok şiirli yazılmış cümleler barındırıyor ki biliyorsunuz ki severim; nitekim sevdim kendisini de.

Arz ediyorum.

[Hulyacln · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Denizin dibinde ölmeden önce hayatın anlamını keşfetmek isteyen’ bir kadın anlatıyor.
Ölmeden önce hayatın bir film şeridi gibi gözlerimizin önünden geçtiği klişesi, gerçek olabilir mi? Söz’de Silvina Ocampo bu şeridi biraz değiştiriyor: Seyahat ettiği gemiden düşen bir kadın kulaç attıkça-suya kendini bıraktıkça hafızaya sığınıyor. Yaşamına değen insanları düşünüyor, onların ayırt edici özelliklerini-düşkünlüklerini-zayıflıklarını-erdemlerini.. Tuzlu su bedenini yoruyor, biz de bir hayata ne kadar çok insan sığar diye soruyoruz kendimize.
‘Peki ben ne düşünürdüm öleceğimi sandığım anda? Kim gelirdi aklıma, hangi haliyle karşıma çıkardı hayali?’
.
Silvina Ocampo’yu Sonsuz Kule ile tanıyıp sevmiştim. ‘Söz’ ise Ocampo’nun bambaşka bir yüzünü görmemi sağladı sanki. Alzheimer hastalığına yakalanmadan önce hafızayı bu kadar değerli bir noktaya konumlandırdığı bir eser yazması da ayrı etkiledi beni.
.
Çiğdem Öztürk çevirisi, Virginia Elena Patrone kapak tasarımıyla~

[Alessia Scurati · Rating 2 out of 5]

Vorrei iniziare dicendo che su Google se cercate la pagina di Wikipedia di Silvina Ocampo, in italiano vi dirà che è stata una poetessa e scrittrice argentina, in inglese che è stata una poetessa e short-fiction writer, in castigliano (cioè quella che leggono i suoi compaesani) è una escritora, cuentista y poeta (poeta al femminile fa poeta, è bellissimo, no?).
Come sempre, quelli che non considerano il racconto come un genere letterario degno siamo noi italiani.
E io do 2 stelle a quest’opera. Perché io Silvina Ocampo non sapevo chi fosse finché una scrittrice, poeta, ecc., insomma, una mia amica argentina non mi ha consigliato i suoi racconti. Siccome i racconti di Silvina Ocampo sono dei piccoli capolavori, questa novella mi sembra molto meno bella.
È un giudizio partigiano più del solito. Mi è sembrato di trovarci dentro un po’ tutto quello che nei racconti e nella poesia Silvina Ocampo sviluppa meglio.
Io sono sempre dell’idea che le opere pubblicate postume (La Promessa è stata pubblicata per la prima volta nel 2011, Silvina Ocampo è morta nel 1993) non dovrebbero essere pubblicate. Il valore letterario di quest’opera, avendo letto prima altro materiale dell’autrice, aggiunge veramente poco. Anzi. Posso dire che non aggiunge proprio niente e che consiglio vivamente di leggere altro (possibilente quello che Silvina pubblicò in vita)? Ecco.

[Arzu Onuklu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çok ama çok farklı bir okumaydı broşunu almak için denize düşen bir kadın üzerinden metaforik bir alzheimmer olan bir kadının yazarımızın öyküsü. Aklında anı parçacıklarıyla yazdığı bir kitaptı. Alzheimer olmayı bu derece metaforik bir anlatımla yaşamının son döneminde başarması da ayrı bir teşekkür mevzusu.

[Beatriz · Rating 3 out of 5]

cómo si de una nueva Robinson Crusoe se tratase, Silvia Ocampo recrea en #lapromesa un recorrido vital y biográfico de todas las personas que pulularon por su vida. Tras caerse del barco en que volvía a su casa, la narradora decide aferrarse a la consciencia de su memoria para mantenerse a flote, para ser parte del elemento líquido. Así mientras fantasea con la posibilidad de que el barco mande una lancha para rescatarla de tan fatal caída empieza toda una retahíla de personas que de una manera u otra la han acompañado hasta ese momento. Toda esa gente serán su Wilson, su viernes. El agua del mar, el calor, la perspectiva de un futuro que se desvanece pues que va a pensar alguien que se encuentra a la deriva en medio de la nada, en medio del océano, hacen que este inventario de personajes se vuelva de lo más variopinto pues de cada uno de ellos destacará lo más carismático creandoles un perfil único como ocurre con Leandro, Inés y su hija que no sabe si responder al nombre de Gabriela o de Gabriel. De las hojas que cayeron del balcón de una muerta y que rezaban Lea. Recuerda a Verónica y a Zulma que adelgazó tanto que salió volando. De Aldo y Roberto Ruso... Es muy importante el estilo que se persigue en la narración pues tras la entradilla de presentación de la persona elegida para disertar suele terminar esa suerte de capítulo o episodio con una breve referencia que puede apelar al lector o a ella misma o a santa Rita "hay demasiada agua para llorar. ¿No se ahogarán mis ojos?"
.
#lapromesa de #silvinaocampo fue su obra de ficción más extensa y que más tiempo le llevó por todos los momentos de reescritura a los que sometió el texto. Su escritura como sus recuerdos que vuelva en #lapromesa están en constante movimiento, un poco a la deriva, un poco a flote, un poco llegando a la orilla y en ese vaivén se lleva a cabo el intento de resolución y punto final a #lapromesa cuyas últimas páginas se encontraron entre sus papeles con algunas pequeñas correcciones a mano "estoy viviendo de otros recuerdos. ¿Cuál soy yo? A veces ni me encuentro."

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

best known for her prolific output of short stories and poetry (as well as her marriage to bioy casares and her friendship with borges), late argentine author silvina ocampo is finally enjoying a groundswell of attention in english-speaking countries — a quarter-century after her death. the promise (la promesa), ocampo's only novel, was completed shortly before her death, despite work on it having first begun over twenty years prior. a slim, yet potent work full of rich imagery, the promise is the tale of a nameless narrator marooned at sea after falling overboard on a transatlantic journey. as she staves off an inevitable drowning, ocampo's protagonist recalls the people and places of her past. lilting and undulating memories keep her company, as she reflects fondly (and sometimes otherwise) on moments terrific and terrible. confronting death, grace abounds.

it's enough for the ocean to mix its tears in with the waves and to carry us from place to place in the world.

*translated from the spanish by suzanne jill levine (bioy casares, puig, cabrera infante, and author of the subversive scribe: translating latin american fiction) and jessica powell (benítez-rojo, cabiya, neruda)

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few short passages from The Promise:


*


Lily and Lillian were always together. Everyone thought they were sisters because they wore the same color. Lily was blond and Lillian dark-haired, but sometimes Lillian dyed her hair blond and looked even more like Lily. People who love each other end up seeming identical, saying the same words, moving their hands in the same way. At the age of twenty they fell in love – or believed they fell in love – with the same man. One would see the boy in the morning, and the other in the afternoon. He thought he was deceiving them both, but he wasn’t deceiving anyone. The two of them were deceiving him, because instead of kissing him they were kissing each other, instead of adoring him they adored one another.


*


She was my schoolmate, and at the age of eight she explained to me the mysteries of birth and love, both of which caused me so much suffering.


*


Thank you, God, for having made my life possible, for allowing me to write up until the last orgasm, and to have written this novel in your honor.


*


Within the greatest ingratitude, gratitude lies hidden.


.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seen as a metaphor for the artist's struggle to rescue memory and story from the jaws of death and give semi-permanent form to that which inevitably fades, this book is an interesting assemblage. Ocampo has been cited as wanting to avoid bookish expectations like the concept of an "ending." By that measure, she succeeds in spades. And given that she struggled with dementia and was finishing this book close to the point of her own demise, memory becomes an ever more multi-faceted theme. But without this context, I'm not sure the book stands quite as strong on its own. Ocampo delivers a blurry collection of character vignettes with certain individuals recurring or connecting to others as memory and fantasy progressively overlap. Maybe that's just what happens when you try to tell everyone's story just to keep a promise while you're drowning in the ocean...

[cass krug · Rating 3 out of 5]

this novella is a collage of descriptions of the people the narrator knew as she drifts to the bottom of the sea after falling overboard a ship. the writing at the end, where she ruminates on memory, the passage of time, and the meaning of life, was very reminiscent of lispector to me. this was very dreamlike and fragmentary. i’m really intrigued by the fact that ocampo worked on this for the last 25 years of her life.

“I’m inhabited now by infinite people who disturb my memory. I’m living off other memories. Which one am I? Sometimes I can’t find myself.”

[Cipi · Rating 5 out of 5]

- Dar cum e subiectul? Povestiți-mi, mor de curiozitate.
- N-are subiect, a răspuns Veronica.
- Și se poate scrie un roman fără subiect?
- E normal. Tot ce simți ar fi de ajuns.
- Atîta vreme cît ar fi interesant, groaznic sau emoționant.

[lara]

“todo lo que me sucede me gusta para poder contártelo después”

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I put a copy of THE PROMISE on pre-order back in early September, just as soon as I had come to be made aware of the forthcoming publication of Silvina Ocampo’s sole novel in belated English translation, delighted also, naturally, to find that it was slated to present itself to us care of good ol’ Larry F.’s City Lights. I knew of the existence of THE PROMISE, at least in a perfunctory sense, not that I have long been actively pining for it, conscious of my desire to possess my own copy. I find that slightly odd. I have read at least as much about Ocampo as I have read by her, my direct experience of works she authored relegated to a handful of sapphire-like stories. Though I have definitely found myself reflecting on those stories from time to time, I will confess that when I have in the past thought about Silvina (I will allow myself to unapologetically address her as though addressing a familiar), I have thought about her as one might contemplate a mythological being, but a mythological being drawn near, enwrapped (or perhaps the image of a butterfly net works better; enmeshed, shall we say) in an ersatz intimacy. It was just over two months after I placed the City Lights edition of THE PROMISE on pre-order that a short article, available online, appeared in/on/at THE PARIS REVIEW, its title “The Other Ocampo Sister, Overshadowed No More,” the author one Carmen Boullosa. As the title of the article indicates, it is Boullosa’s contention that Silvina has always to a large extent been overshadowed by her sister Victoria, though there are intimations of hope; on account of the efforts of City Lights (an immediately forthcoming edition of THE PROMISE as well as one of the collection FORGOTTEN JOURNEY, from which the Boullosa piece is excerpted), the time might now be ripe for the younger Silvina (actually the youngest of six sisters) to finally have her moment. I was personally aware of Victoria just as I was aware of Silvina, but to say that the latter has been overshadowed by the former, at least in my personal mythosphere, would be, to put it mildly, erroneous…not that I am so big-headed as to imagine this of terrific demonstrative import. That being said, her 1994 obit in London’s INDEPENDENT called Silvina’s death one of Aregntinean literature's greatest losses since Borges. No small thing. Boullosa refers to Victoria as “a celebrity in the intellectual circle coalescing in the thirties and forties, known as much for her elegant beauty as for her intelligence.” Ah, yes, right, I see. If Victoria is more famous it is in large part because she was a public figure, a taste-maker and maker of the scene. Everybody knows Victoria, of course, because she was made to be visible, a veritable cultural institution. Boullosa lays out some of the basic relational schematics of the mid-century Buenos Aries literary community outlay: “Silvina was part of a magical circle whose nucleus was formed by Jorge Luis Borges and, among others, the younger man who would become her husband, Adolfo Bioy Casares. Each member of this circle created his or her own works, and also worked in collaboration. While each writer had his or her own style, as the Sur group—around the important journal SUR, founded by Silvina’s eldest sister, Victoria, in consultation with the New York writer Waldo Frank—they shaped a literary cultural identity and a new literary genre.” In the above formulation, Silvina, Borges, and Bioy Casares assume the function of enterprising artists, and Victoria that of enabler, regent, or, practically, political technologist. Victoria is the liaison between the artists and the broader culture. Let us take a moment to consider a distinction between art and culture. Allow me to paraphrase the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, as I am often wont to do, when he says, in his film JLG/JLG—AUTOPORTRAIT DE DÉCEMBRE, something like culture is the rule, art the exception. Art is always going to have a troubled time thriving in the glare of the limelight, not than I am so extreme a Calvinist as to insist that it requires the dim garret. Those of us who care about art, who habrour a kind of unseemly mania for it, are likely to assess garrulous and exceedingly public figures with great suspicion, especially should they deign to speak on behalf of art. The only thing more odious than the idea of a “public intellectual” etc. is one to whom such terminologies have been self-applied. Silvina Ocampo is a literally immortal and lived a fairly hermetic life. This should not be lost on us, it does happen to be demonstrative. We might also take a look at the image on the cover of this City Lights edition of THE PROMISE, featuring the hands of Silvia Ocampo attempting to obscure the photographer’s unobstructed access to her face. It is a commonly acknowledged fact that Silvina did not like to have her photograph taken. We might consider this fact in counterpoint to what Carmen Boullosa calls “her sister’s flamboyant life.” Silvina was, along with her husband and Borges, writing at a frontier, pushing forms and methodologies in new directions, yet fortuitously engaging disparate traditions whilst engineering her extraordinary metamorphoses. Boullosa: “Silvina enters real, detailed, intimate spaces, which she observes with an eye that is intimate, real, and detailed, and yet an eye from another world,” her work possessing “subterranean literary implications.” Victoria Ocampo’s best known work as a writer is a multi-volume autobiography, something close to personal hagiography. It seems very clear to me that when we offset matters in this way, even if we risk oversimplifying, we have a pretty clear sense of what separates literature’s mythological beings from its “important” people. You may call me a snob. By all means. Note that I take such things in the best humour. Again, however, I notice something else when I look at that photograph on the cover of THE PROMISE. Those glasses. A pair of angular, winged spectacles, white, almost completely obscured by the defensive hands of the author, but not quite. Do these not look exactly like the style of frame preferred by Argentinean film director Lucrecia Martel, one of the three or four greatest filmmakers working in the world today? I choose to read this as a sign that I am hardly the only acolyte with Silvina Ocampo threaded through they’s personal mythology. What makes THE PROMISE so enticing extends beyond the mere fact of its being Silvina’s only novel. The frame story of THE PROMISE is itself tumid with myth-stuff. Though the novel as it appears in the City Lights edition is just barely over one hundred pages in length, it was composed over the course of more than two decades, a protracted undertaking finalized, as it could not help but be, by the death at ninety of its author. Many version or iterations of the novel had existed since its genesis during the 1960s. It would seem that Silvina spared no efforts when it came to perfecting the piece. According to Ernesto Montequín’s forward to the City Lights, the manuscripts may have actually gotten shorter over time, at one point sixteen “episodes” removed and immediately incorporated as standalones in the 1970 collection THE DAYS OF NIGHT. Work continued apace until Silvina’s death in December of 1993, although this was doubtlessly compromised in the late going by her struggles with Alzheimer’s. The final manuscript had been typed-up by Elena Ivulich, Ocampo’s secretary of more than forty years. Ivulich essentially rubber-stamped the final version of the manuscript. The book would not be published in Spanish until 2010, it arrives in English nearly a decade after that. You could call the novel a tapestry. You could call it prismatic or kaleidoscopic, it might evoke for you Clarice Lispector’s chandelier. Many episodes are woven in, but they serve both to illustrate undulations of a capricious memory set reeling in a context of enhanced peril whilst at the same time serving as memory’s raw content. In a manner that will become extremely relevant, our nameless female narrator tells us that the central events that set this centrifugal memory fusillade spinning took place “Three months ago,” a key fact seemingly lost on a number of critics and lay commentators. Aboard the Anacreonte, en route to Cape Town and some cousins from “the less tedious side” of the family, our narrator falls off the ship, victim of dire pratfall involving brooch mishap. A sense that the forthcoming sort-of-narrative is the product of poetic imagination is telegraphed with a curious bit of impressionistic disproportionality. Floating away, “The ship seemed more immense than the sea.” So our narrator is bobbing in the ocean, the situation probably hopeless, one would think, save for the fact that we have just been told that this all happened three months ago and we are reading a first-person account by the woman to whom it happened. Before we hear about the tumble overboard, the narrator has already told us two key things: 1) since childhood, this narrator has had a yen for ardent supplications and desperate promises, sometimes to Saint Rita, i.e. “I love you and promise to be a good girl …”; 2) “I don’t have a life of my own; I have only feelings. My experiences were never important—not during the course of my life nor even on the threshold of death. Instead, the lives of others have become mine.” The novel is named for the promise our narrator makes, namely, please, Saint Rita or God or whomsoever, if I survive this ordeal, I promise I will write of the mental experience of the ordeal, this mental experience taking the form of a whirligig remembrance in which I am myself almost less than a peripheral character. Panic is immediate, cogitation correspondingly scattershot: “I thought of schoolteachers, noodles, movies, prices, theatre productions, the names of writers, titles of books, buildings, gardens, a cat, an unhappy love affair, a chair, a flower whose name I couldn’t remember, a perfume, a brand of toothpaste, and so on. Memory: how you made me suffer!” Full-scale panic can only ever sprint, it is no winner of marathons. “I imposed an order on my thoughts, a kind of mental journey or itinerary.” Call it a compensatory survival tactic. The book reconstructs the desperate and capricious itinerary in question. I am a man of (very recently) forty, and I haven’t read Sartre’s BEING AND NOTHINGNESS since I was eighteen or thereabouts, but I seem to recall that central to the ontology promulgated by that august tome is the idea that nothingness is a force that inveigles itself into the phenomenal world and gets between everything, outlining stuff, individuating, acting as the agency behind the emergence of phenomenological difference. Please feel free to correct me if I's not quite right. The narrator of THE PROMISE, comparing herself to Scheherazade, is the differentiating agent, the negated woman who negates a world into a posteriori being. That sixteen “episodes” were extracted from an earlier draft is not hard to imagine, as memory, especially under duress, is wont to jump abound, hither and thither, abstractly, a sequence not terribly sequential-seeming insisting on its own terms, many disparate persons populating the field of fragmented and endlessly associative remembrance. Marina Dongui, the fruit seller. Aldo Bindo, the tailer, he was a bit of a perv, liked to go horseback riding on Sundays, once seen at the beach, lathered in suntan oil. Later there is another Aldo, different surname, but difference isn’t precise here, things, events, and people become conflated. This (perhaps) other Aldo has the surname Fabrici, and "gathered the oranges and lemons, the walnuts and chestnuts, the peaches, to distribute them. He never missed Mass on Sundays. He had a twenty-year-old girlfriend, and he brought her fruit and a bunch of flowers every week.” Who else? A lot of other people: we have Mr Pigmy, a, uh, pigmy, who died of sadness in exile; Zulma, a neighbour from childhood, a little older, in whose home “piano chords were so out of tune that it seemed they’d travelled through water or outer space.” Et cetera. A great number of the vignettes are oriented around the sea or the beach. Ah, the sea, the dreadful and utterly sublime sea. “In those days I fell in love with the sea as though it were a person. At vacation’s end, before returning to Buenos Aires, I would kneel down crying, to bid it farewell.” We keep coming back to our narrator and her predicament. “Shipwrecked vessels? Debris? The sea eats everything up. One day, any second now, it will eat me up too.” Or: “Flying fish remind me of butterflies in flight.” Or: “my legs looks like seaweed or feathers when they move.” Or: “I just float on top of the water, my name, my face, my identity forgotten. Sometimes I lift a hand out of the water to look at it. How strange a hand is. Sometimes I peer out over my toes.” If the novel is densely populated, there are three characters who come to assume primacy. Firstly: innocently concupiscent Gabriela, there is a statue of her namesake, the Archangel Gabriel, in the Basilica of Saint Apollinaris; it has “big astonished eyes.” Secondly and thirdly: Gabriela’s mother, Irene Roca, and Leandro Álvarez, with whom Irene is haplessly infatuated, codepedently so, tortuously so. Gabriela remembers some things that are identical to things Sonia Giménez remembers, recalled, in fact, with the exact same words. Repetition with a difference is a big part of memory’s gambol. As for Leandro: “Leandro managed to make this memory mine”; “Everything he told me now feels like it happened to me.” As for Irene, recalled as having been no fan of the sea: “Poor Irene, I alone understood her. Alone, alone as I am now, on a sea of relentless doubts. Dying is the only sure thing. Now I can finally die. But how to do it? It’s as impossible as ever.” Irene, addressing Leandro: “Each of your kisses is a dream. Nothing seems real. It’s as if I’m embracing you at the bottom of the sea and cease to exist. Later, when I’m alone, I still don’t exist, but then it’s unpleasant.” The book I read directly before THE PROMISE was Gaston Bachelard’s THE POETICS OF SPACE from 1957, in which a phenomenology of the poetic imagination is utilized to consider the ways spaces become repurposed in our reveries, how poetry transmits the imagination's images by means of communicable resonances. Bachelard ends his book on a image of a tree from Rilke, a perfect encapsulation, Bachelard believes, of the imagination’s metaphysics, its intimacies of cosmicity. I find it felicitious, to use a word esteemed by Bachelard, that THE PROMISE likewise ends with a cosmic tree, in this case an epiphanic pacará (“Black man’s ear”). Still, what continues to loom is that dastardly sea, the eternal surge, the eternal death that eternally lives, the negatory field. “What is magical about the sea is that living deep inside it no one can speak.” Listen.

[Pascal · Rating 3 out of 5]

la premisa es increíble; una mujer que se cae de una embarcación al mar se promete a sí misma que si sobrevive a su naufragio, va a escribir sobre las imágenes que se le vinieron a la cabeza, y sobre todo, de las personas que aparecieron en ellas.
mientras se queda en medio de las olas comienza a tener recuerdos aleatorios, sobre distintos individuos que ha conocido a lo largo de su vida, generando así, una serie de momentos relacionados con ellos, que nos va narrando de forma esporádica, pero que de alguna forma u otra se relacionan entre sí, con la protagonista y los personajes descritos por ella.
sin embargo, quede con ganas de más. de conocer muchísimo más sobre nuestra protagonista, y menos sobre sus experiencias con aquellos seres.
de todas formas los momentos en donde saltaban sus juicios existencialistas, eran increíbles. las asociaciones o analogías sobre la pérdida o el amor relacionadas con el mar, eran brutales. (se notaba que el mar jugaba un rol muy importante en la construcción de la novela como tal).
ah!, y claramente sobrevive. ella misma lo menciona en la “introducción” de la novela, expresando el descontento que le genera escribirla. no obstante, esa fue la promesa que se hizo durante su naufragio, expresando que debe cumplirla si es encontrada con vida, lo que termina sucediendo.
pd: se dice que cuando estamos en nuestro lecho de muerte se nos vienen imágenes de las personas que más hemos amamos en la vida, pero parece que este no es el caso de la protagonista.

[Efímera Bonhomía · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5


¿Qué pensaría una persona que acaba de caer por la borda de un barco y sabe que va a morir en los próximos instantes?, ¿Os podéis imaginar que sucesión de recuerdos emulará su mente? Pues en La Promesa se nos presenta la respuesta.

Sin sobrepasar por mucho las cien páginas, en la única novela de Silvina Ocampo nos encontramos una mujer se enfrenta a estar en el mar, a la deriva, sin saber si va a ser rescatada o se ahogará. Jura ante Santa Rita que si sobrevive al incidente escribirá un libro que documente sus recuerdos, incluyendo la propia humillación. Es ahí cuando nos adentramos junto a ella en un vaivén de memorias recordando principalmente a las personas que acompañan en el día a día a nuestra protagonista.

Parece que intenta remembrar cada acción minuciosamente, como si necesitase que todo fuese nítido para volver a vivirlo de nuevo en la mente. En realidad, en ningún momento presenciamos la vida de la protagonista, somos espectadores de la vida de sus allegados a través de ella pero en ningún momento nos sentamos para ver sus recuerdos. Llegamos a preguntarnos si es real o no, si está ocurriendo. Y en ese momento se me hizo imposible no acordarme de Morel y de Bioy Casares, marido de Silvina Ocampo. Al parecer a ambos les gustaba jugar con la ambigüedad de los espacios tiempo y con narradores cuya mente ocultan lo que realmente es real: el sentimiento con el que los recuerdos se nos quedan grabados.

Hay olores, palabras, movimientos y sensaciones que nos evocan recuerdos; que están guardados en nosotros asociados a un sentimiento y eso, es imposible borrarlo.

[Lahierbaroja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una mujer cae de un barco y mientras está en el agua reflexiona sobre su vida, rememorando los momentos y personas que le llega a la mente.

Me ha recordado a Bombal pero la historia está más fragmentada.

https://lahierbaroja.com/2023/12/30/r...

[Chris Via]

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy6i7...

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
A woman falls overboard off of a ship, and whilst flailing helplessly in the water, memories of people slip and slide by. Told in short vignettes, we are introduced to a cast of eccentric characters, brief snippets of their relationships with each other, with the author, the intertwining lives, small moments taken from the woman's memory. The memories keep her company as she falls deeper in the depths, a poignant finale exploration of human relationships, time, sense of self. A very interesting concept, made even more compelling when taking into account Ocampo's own struggle with dementia, and the fact this book was published posthumously.
I read this with ease, but I wasn't really taken by the writing, and felt a bit disconnected from it. This unfourtantely meant that the story didn't have much of an emotional impact or lasting impression on me. One of those 'glad I picked it up reads', but not much staying power.

[Airácula · Rating 3 out of 5]

"En el agua de mar he bebido la belleza del universo. Todos los animales acudieron a mi lado. No me dejaron sola, salvo para compartir la reunión perfecta de las plantas cuando los últimos efluvios del amor urdieron sus conciertos tan difíciles de entender."

Un libro sobre la memoria escrito a dos velocidades; una es el recuerdo y la otra el futuro hipotético, ambas en un presente desesperadamente calmo. La promesa no puede ser eterna, nada lo es. Pero que lindo si lo fuera.

[Ana Álvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué novela. Nunca se me hubiera ocurrido la posibilidad, si quiera, de la trama: una mujer cae del barco en el que viajaba y empieza a organizar recuerdos de personas específicas para mantenerse viva. Se nota que fue una narración largamente trabajada. Me gusta que sea mi primer acercamiento a su obra.