A Night in the Tavern

 

Álvares de Azevedo, Noite na Taverna [A Night in the Tavern] (1855). Translated by Maurício Búrigo for Universitas Press (2025).

Published posthumously in 1855, Álvares de Azevedo's novella drips with soul-crushing perdition, moral depravity, and the kind of deep-seated pessimism that Ligotti will systematize some 150 years later in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. The novella is a series of tales swapped by five men in a tavern. The stories that they share are filled with vile debauchery and romantic excess; it is a wild little book. I will focus on Bertram's story, an adventure tale of sorts that stands as an illustration of key Ligottian themes including the absurdity of our survival drive, the detestable nature of Hope, and consciousness as a cruel trap that brings with it the awareness of the horror of existence while at the same time compelling our continued participation in it.

The raft scene of Bertram's tale finds the storyteller, the captain, and the captain's wife as the only surviving castaways on the open ocean. They are in terrible shape, experiencing the agonies of hunger, dehydration, and heat stroke. In their desperation, they decide to draw straws to settle who will serve as the sustaining provender for the others. The captain draws short. 

Bertram tells us:
"Then the instinct for life awakened in him. For one day more of existence, one day more of hunger and thirst, of bed wet and swept by the cold northern winds, some dead hours more of blasphemies and agonies, of hope and despair--of prayers and incredulity--of fever and anxiety--the man knelt, wept, groaned at my feet..."
"Look,' said the wretch, 'let's wait until tomorrow... God shall have mercy on us... By your mother, by your mother's womb, by God, if he exists! let me, let me still live!'" (51).

The captain is cruelly bound by the machinery of survival. We see hope exposed for what it is: not the great panacean emotional state to be sought, but instead the bane that drives us toward more suffering. Two dying men fighting for another hour of agony is telling. The irrationality of the captain's plea for one more day of utter misery is not lost on Bertram. He laughs, but it is not a laugh of cruelty so much as a laugh at the absurdity of our position as consciously aware beings. Bertram is aware of the horror of existence and the rationality of choosing non-existence; nevertheless, he knows he is caught in the trap: today he is hungry, and he will eat.

Comments

Post a Comment

What did you think about this story?

Popular posts from this blog

Haïta the Shepherd

Image
  Ambrose Bierce, "Haïta the Shepherd," in  Tales of Soldiers and Civilians  (E. L. G. Steele: 1891). Read the story here on Gutenburg In a previous murmur covering Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” I argued that Robert W. Chambers takes more from that story than just the name “Carcosa.” Likewise, it is often claimed that while Chambers takes the name “Hastur” from Bierce’s “Haïta the Shepherd,” the influence of that story on Chambers’ work ends there.  I think there is a much deeper connection, and I will argue that important themes in Bierce’s “Haïta the Shepherd” carry over to The King in Yellow .  Although a central theme in “Haïta the Shepherd” focuses on happiness being elusive and that the best way to attain happiness is by not purposely seeking it out, the story is also packed with other interesting themes relevant to certain readings of The King in Yellow . The first line of Bierce's parable like tale: “[i]n the heart of Haïta, t...
Read more

The Death of Odjigh

Image
  Nebachadnezzar, William Blake (1795) Marcel Schwob, "The Death of Odjigh" in The King in the Golden Mask  translated by Kit Schluter   (Wakefield Press, 2017). Schwob's story can be read through the lens of Thomas Ligotti or Peter Wessel Zapffe, that is, as a work of philosophical pessimism. As the dying world comes to its end, the wolf slayer Odjigh faces his own personal crises of an emerging conscience. Odjigh, by gaining a kind of self-awareness, regrets his role as a hunter and positions himself as an observer and critic standing outside of nature. As he sees the violence around him and pities the suffering of living creatures, he laments existence itself: "Odjigh, deep in his heart, regretted the jigging of the nacreous fish in the meshing of the nets, the serpentine swimming of the conger eels, the heavy gait of the tortoises, the sidelong trot of the gigantic wall-eyed crabs, and the lively yawns of the earthly beasts, hairy beasts decked in scales, beasts...
Read more

It Does Not Do What You Think It Does

Image
    Brian Evenson, "It Does Not Do What You Think It Does" in  Good Night, Sleep Tight  (Coffee House Press: 2024).   We have largely shed the Cartesian myth that our own motivations and psychological drives are transparent to our minds. Contrary to the myth, we don’t have indubitable access to our inner mental states, and we often behave in ways that we don’t understand or frequently misunderstand. We think we have one set of reasons for doing something, but it turns out, there are causes and hidden psychological drives that better explain our behavior. Therapy often reveals surprising motivations behind our actions–you don’t do what you think you do! Brian Evenson’s “It Does Not Do What You Think It Does” focuses attention on this phenomenon. What is the “it” in the title that we misunderstand? Tellingly, the man in Evenson’s story hears the answer repeated to himself over and over before interpreting the rest of the phrase; he hears: “YOU.” It is we who do no...
Read more