Recital of the Dark Verses

by Luis Felipe Fabre, Heather Cleary (Translator)

Overview

A road novel, a coming-of-age tale, and a raunchy slapstick comedy that tells—in careening, charismatic prose—the (true) story of the theft of the body of Saint John of the Cross.

In August 1592, a bailiff and his two assistants arrive at the monastery of Úbeda, with the secret task of transferring the remains of Saint John of the Cross, the great Carmelite poet and mystic, to his final abode. When they exhume him, they find the saint's body as incorrupt and fresh as when he died. 

Thus commences a series of adventures and misfortunes populated by characters that seem to be drawn from mythology. Luis Felipe Fabre masterfully incorporates Saint John's verses into his prose, as if the saint had prophesied the delirium that would surround his own posthumous transfer. This funny, highly entertaining novel manages to honor the mystical poetry of the Carmelite while inviting the reader to reflect on issues such as the sacred and the profane, the body and the soul, and spiritual (as well as carnal) ecstasy. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646053001
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	271 KB

About the Author

Luis Felipe Fabre is a poet and critic based in Mexico City. He has published six volumes of essays and poetry, and curated the Poesía en Voz Alta (Poetry out loud) Festival and Todos los originales serán destruidos (All originals will be destroyed), an exhibition of contemporary art by poets. He is a recipient of the Punto de partida and José Revueltas prizes, as well as grants National Fund for Culture and the 2 Arts; his works in English include Sor Juana and Other Monsters and Writing with Caca, both translated by JD Pluecker. Recital of the Dark Verses, for which he was awarded the prestigious Elena Poniatowska Prize, is his first novel.

Heather Cleary is an award-winning translator whose work with the poetry and prose of writers including Fernanda Trías, Brenda Lozano, Roque Larraquy, Sergio Chejfec, and Oliverio Girondo has been recognized by English PEN, the National Book Foundation, and the BTBA, among others. A member of the Cedilla & Co. translation collective, she has served as a judge for numerous national translation prizes. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and is the author of The Translator's Visibility: Scenes from Contemporary Latin American Fiction (Bloomsbury 2021).

Editorial Reviews

07/31/2023

Fabre’s delightful debut novel follows three 16th-century civil servants tasked with transporting the body of Carmelite poet and mystic Juan de la Cruz. In 1592, a bailiff and his two aides, Ferrán and Diego, bring de la Cruz’s corpse from a monastery in Úbeda, Spain, to his final resting place in Segovia. Along the way, they’re threatened by rabidly righteous peasants, possibly supernatural specters, and sinister shepherds. The decaying semi-saint gives off an apparently alluring aroma, though none of its carriers notice. In one evocative and amusing episode, several women demand to see the perfumes they suspect the men are smuggling, and the trio devise a beauty competition parodying the Greek myth of Discord (in which a battle between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite over an apple leads to the Trojan War) in order to escape. Told in dizzying prose, the novel recalls the ribald works of Rabelais and Boccaccio; the sacred and profane share a bed and no one is spared from satirical skewering. Ferrán wryly pontificates about de la Cruz’s poetry: “I say only that if eager are we to liken verses to miracles, I have heard miracles finer and fuller pass the lips of young men in taverns.” Translator Cleary expertly renders Fabre’s clever sentences without convoluting their lyricism. Though the hapless leads Ferrán and Diego are occasionally more annoying than endearing, their relationship satisfyingly evolves in the surprisingly earnest conclusion. The result is both a canny send-up of canonization and an earnest homage to de la Cruz’s verses. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Luis Felipe Fabre, one of the most original and provocative poets in Latin America, has written a genre-bending novel full of humor and a blazing intelligence.” —Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive and The Story of My Teeth

“Absurd, philosophical, playful and episodic, Recital of the Dark Verses is a revelation. The theft of a saint's body creates the occasion for a hilarious road trip through provincial Spain. A cousin to Quixote, Fabre's historical novel takes history and religion and manages to shape it into something entirely new. By turns brilliant, wise, entertaining, and profound. Cervantes would be proud.” —Mark Haber, author of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss and Reinhardt’s Garden

“Though short and structured simply, there is a profound complexity to Fabre’s Recital of the Dark Verses, one that evokes reader emotion and reflection throughout, whether a fan of poetry or not. Moreover, it contains a complexity of language to match the paradoxes of its themes. … I sincerely hope that Fabre writes further novels, and that Cleary will be there to English them so well.” —Daniel P. Haeusser, World Literature Today

From the Publisher