Iphigenia

Teresa de la Parra was also the author of Las memorias de MamÁ Blanca (Mama Blanca's Souvenirs). Translator Bertie Acker is a professor emerita of Spanish at the University of Texas at Arlington.

• Introduction by Naomi LindstromTranslator's NoteIphigeniaFirst Part: A Very Long Letter Wherein Things Are Told As They Are in NovelsSecond Part: Juliet's Balcony Chapter I: Having now sent the interminable letter to her friend Cristina, Maria Eugenia Alonso resolves to write her diary. As will be seen, in this first chapter, the genteel Mercedes Galindo appears at last.Chapter II: Wherein Maria Eugenia Alonso describes the quiet times spent in the corral at her house and wherein Gabriel Olmedo also appears.Chapter III: How a wandering attention unleashes a dreadful storm, which in turn precipitates great events.Chapter IV: In which she waits, and she waits, conversing with an acacia branch and a few flowering vines of bougainvillaea.Chapter V: Here, Maria Eugenia Alonso, sitting on a large rock, confesses to the river; the river gives her advice, and she, obediently and piously, decides to follow the advice exactly.Chapter VI: Rain, a letter, and an afternoon that, like a road, glides, winds, and is lost in the past.Chapter VII: Supremum Vale!Third Part: Toward the Port of Aulis Chapter I: After long months of deep sleep, one morning, from the depths of a wardrobe, lying among ribbons, lace, and old fabric, Maria Eugenia Alonso's literary verbosity has suddenly awakened. Here it is still rubbing its eyes.Chapter II: After sailing for three days in the caravel of her own experience, Maria Eugenia Alonso has just made a very important discovery.Fourth Part: Iphigenia Chapter I: In the early hours of a MondayChapter II: Early Tuesday morningChapter III: Wednesday noonChapter IV: From Wednesday night to ThursdayChapter V: Thursday night to FridayChapter VI: Early Saturday morningChapter VII: The same Saturday at midnightChapter VIII: Gabriel's letterChapter IX: The following Monday at nightfall

...de la Parra conveys the intensity of Iphigenia's rebellious voice, the range of her intelligence and the degree of her sexual obsessiveness. But [she] also anticipates Simone de Beauvoir's warning that brains and sexual liberation don't matter at all without a firm economic base. - Barbara Probst Solomon (Nation)