Notes
1. Jules Bonnot (1876–1912): French anarchist robber; André Valet (1890–1912): French anarchist robber, founder member of what came to be called the Bonnot Gang (la Bande à Bonnot)
2. Yerba: plant used to make mate tea.
3. Orestes and Pylades: figures from Greek mythology, famous for their strong, possibly homoerotic, friendship.
4. In the original, the phrase is gallegos de mierda (‘Galician bastards’). Because of the extensive emigration to Argentina of Spaniards from the northwestern region of Galicia, gallego became used in Argentina to refer to anyone of Spanish extraction.
5. Cacus: in Graeco-Roman mythology, a cannibalistic fire-breathing giant and thief, killed by Hercules.
6. Cacaseno: a famous simpleton; protagonist of the story Cacaseno (1620) by Adriano Banchieri (1568–1634).
7. Tute: trick-taking card game, originally from Italy.
8. Montparnasse and Thénardier: criminal characters from the novel Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo (1802–85); ranún: slang for ‘a cunning person’, derived from rana, ‘frog’, and the Genoan diminutive – ún, which implies frivolity and mischief.
9. Bondi: tram. The term bondi comes into Argentinian Spanish via Brazilian Portuguese and, ultimately, via the English ‘bond’, referring to the bond issues which funded the public transport system.
10. Lacombe (18??–19??): French anarchist robber, arrested in 1913.
11. Misquotation of lines 1–2 and 7–8 from an untitled poem (poem 22 in the first edition) from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (1857). The original French runs as follows: ‘Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne, O vase de tristesse, ô grande taciturne […] Je m’avance à l’attaque, et je grimpe aux assauts, Comme après un cadavre un choeur de vermisseaux’.
12. Voglio dire: more or less, ‘I’m telling you’ (Italian).
13. The word Arlt uses, bulín, is a slang term that implies a room used for sexual activity.
14. Lyda Borelli (1884–1959): Italian film and theatre actress, star of films such as La donna nuda (1914).
15. Trophonius: in Greek mythology, a famous architect, one of the designers, along with his brother Agamedes, of the cavern where King Hyrieus kept his treasure.
16. Dardo Rocha (1838–1921): Argentinian statesman and naval officer, founder of the city of La Plata.
17. Pejerrey: Pacific fish, similar to mackerel.
18. Estate buono: ‘Calm down’ (lit. ‘Be good’, Italian).
19. Ricaldoni: Teobaldo Jorge Ricaldoni (1861–1922), famous inventor, born in Uruguay, he took Argentinian citizenship early in his life. His major invention was a functioning submarine which he offered to the Argentinian navy and which they rejected.
20. Alfajores: sweet consisting of two biscuits joined together with a sweet filling, and coated with chocolate or icing sugar; pan de leche: sweet bread, sometimes with sugar on top.
21. Ferranti and Siemens-Halske: electrical engineering companies.
22. Tesla: Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), Serbian-American inventor.
23. Sobieski-era hetman: Jan III Sobieski (1629–96), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1674–96). A hetman is the chief of a group of Cossacks.
About the Publisher
Hesperus Press is committed to bringing near what is far – far both in space and time. Works written by the greatest authors, and unjustly neglected or simply little known in the English-speaking world, are made accessible through new translations and a completely fresh editorial approach. Through these classic works, the reader is introduced to the greatest writers from all times and all cultures.
For more information on Hesperus Press, please visit our website: www.hesperuspress.com
SELECTED TITLES FROM HESPERUS PRESS
Author Title Foreword writer
*
Pietro Aretino The School of Whoredom Paul Bailey
Pietro Aretino The Secret Life of Nuns
Jane Austen Lesley Castle Zoë Heller
Jane Austen Love and Friendship Fay Weldon
Honoré de Balzac Colonel Chabert A.N. Wilson
Charles Baudelaire On Wine and Hashish Margaret Drabble
Giovanni Boccaccio Life of Dante A.N. Wilson
Charlotte Brontë The Spell
Emily Brontë Poems of Solitude Helen Dunmore
Mikhail Bulgakov Fatal Eggs Doris Lessing
Mikhail Bulgakov The Heart of a Dog A.S. Byatt
Giacomo Casanova The Duel Tim Parks
Miguel de Cervantes The Dialogue of the Dogs Ben Okri
Geoffrey Chaucer The Parliament of Birds
Anton Chekhov The Story of a Nobody Louis de Bernières
Anton Chekhov Three Years William Fiennes
Wilkie Collins The Frozen Deep
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness A.N. Wilson
Joseph Conrad The Return Colm Tóibín
Gabriele D’Annunzio The Book of the Virgins Tim Parks
Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy: Inferno
Dante Alighieri New Life Louis de Bernières
Daniel Defoe The King of Pirates Peter Ackroyd
Marquis de Sade Incest Janet Street-Porter
Charles Dickens The Haunted House Peter Ackroyd
Charles Dickens A House to Let
Fyodor Dostoevsky The Double Jeremy Dyson
Fyodor Dostoevsky Poor People Charlotte Hobson
Alexandre Dumas One Thousand and One Ghosts
George Eliot Amos Barton Matthew Sweet
Henry Fielding Jonathan Wild the Great Peter Ackroyd
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Popular Girl Helen Dunmore
Gustave Flaubert Memoirs of a Madman Germaine Greer
Ugo Foscolo Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis Valerio Massimo Manfredi
Elizabeth Gaskell Lois the Witch Jenny Uglow
Théophile Gautier The Jinx Gilbert Adair
André Gide Theseus
Nikolai Gogol The Squabble Patrick McCabe
E.T.A. Hoffmann Mademoiselle de Scudéri Gilbert Adair
Victor Hugo The Last Day of a Condemned Man Libby Purves
Joris-Karl Huysmans With the Flow Simon Callow
Henry James In the Cage Libby Purves
Franz Kafka Metamorphosis Martin Jarvis
Franz Kafka The Trial Zadie Smith
John Keats Fugitive Poems Andrew Motion
Heinrich von Kleist The Marquise of O– Andrew Miller
Mikhail Lermontov A Hero of Our Time Doris Lessing
Nikolai Leskov Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk Gilbert Adair
Carlo Levi Words are Stones Anita Desai
Xavier de Maistre A Journey Around my Room Alain de Botton
André Malraux The Way of the Kings Rachel Seiffert
Katherine Mansfield Prelude William Boyd
Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River Anthology Shena Mackay
Guy de Maupassant Butterball Germaine Greer
Prosper Mérimée Carmen Philip Pullman
Sir Thomas More The History of King Richard III Sister Wendy Beckett
Sándor Petofi John the Valiant George Szirtes
Francis Petrarch My Secret Book Germaine Greer
Luigi Pirandello Loveless Love
Edgar Allan Poe Eureka Sir Patrick Moore
Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock and A Key to the Lock Peter Ackroyd
Antoine-François Prévost Manon Lescaut Germaine Greer
Marcel Proust Pleasures and Days A.N. Wilson
Alexander Pushkin Dubrovsky Patrick Neate
Alexander Pushkin Ruslan and Lyudmila Colm Tóibín
François Rabelais Pantagruel Paul Bailey
François Rabelais Gargantua Paul Bailey
Christina Rossetti Commonplace Andrew Motion
George Sand The Devil’s Pool Victoria Glendinning
Jean-Paul Sartre The Wall Justin Cartwright
Friedrich von Schiller The Ghost-seer Martin Ja
rvis
Mary Shelley Transformation
Percy Bysshe Shelley Zastrozzi Germaine Greer
Stendhal Memoirs of an Egotist Doris Lessing
Robert Louis Stevenson Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Helen Dunmore
Theodor Storm The Lake of the Bees Alan Sillitoe
Leo Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilych
Leo Tolstoy Hadji Murat Colm Tóibín
Ivan Turgenev Faust Simon Callow
Mark Twain The Diary of Adam and Eve John Updike
Mark Twain Tom Sawyer, Detective
Oscar Wilde The Portrait of Mr W.H. Peter Ackroyd
Virginia Woolf Carlyle’s House and Other Sketches Doris Lessing
Virginia Woolf Monday or Tuesday Scarlett Thomas
Emile Zola For a Night of Love A.N. Wilson
Copyright
Published by Hesperus Press Limited
28 Mortimer Street, London W1W 7RD
www.hesperuspress.com
El Juguete Rabioso first published in 1926
First published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2013
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
Foreword © Heather Blazing Ltd, 2013
Introduction and English language translation © James Womack, 2013
Designed and typeset by Fraser Muggeridge studio
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–78094–173–8