Abaddón el exterminador cierra la trilogía iniciada en El túnel y proseguida en Sobre héroes y tumbas. Desarrollando en su más amplio registro la metáfora del «Informe sobre ciegos», esta insólita y profunda novela hace ingresar a Ernesto Sabato en el ámbito mismo de la escritura, y lo incorpora como personaje en una compleja construcción técnica cuyo juego de perspectivas remite a la vez a la realidad de un tiempo de apocalipsis y a las simas anímicas donde bucea el poder visionario del acto creador. Así, en la cúspide de su grandeza, esta vasta obra totalizadora culmina y comprende todo el arte sabatiano y la hondura de su indagación existencial. Abaddón el exterminador fue galardonado en París como el mejor libro extranjero publicado en Francia en 1976.

First published in Argentina in 1974, The Angel of Darkness by Ernesto Sabato is probably the greatest overlooked novel of the twentieth century. For example - 39 reviews here on Goodreads compared to 22,367 for One Hundred Years of Solitude and 17,603 for The Old Man and the Sea.

I recall with fascination Allen Josephs' 1991 New York Times book review back when The Angel of Darkness was first translated into English. In his review, Mr. Josephs wrote: "It's no surprise that the fictional Sabato's biography, which serves as a skeletal plot, parallels Mr. Sabato's own life and career. In piecemeal fashion we reconstruct Sabato's friendships and animosities; his countless fears and phobias; his abandonment of physics for literature in Paris of the late 1930s; the publication to acclaim of his first novel, The Tunnel, in 1948; the publication of his second novel, On Heroes and Tombs, in 1961; his growing status as an intellectual celebrity, as an essayist and curmudgeon, as the subject of doctoral dissertations and so forth."

Here are a number of snapshots from the book that have remained with me since my first reading nearly thirty years ago. As I reread the novel over the past few weeks, Sabato's literary strobe light flashes invaded my mind and heart with even more sharpness and impact:

In Buenos Aires, tipsy from drinking his glasses of anise liqueur, Natalicio stumbles out of a bar late at night and walks toward the docks down by the sea. Raising his eyes, to his horror, he sees a firey dragon spread out across the sky, the monster spewing fire from each of its seven heads. Natalicio faints.

In many sections of the book, the narrator simply refers to Sabato as S., perhaps taking advantage of the serpentine shape of the capital letter. S. returns from a public talk and reflects on how for those two tortuous hours it was as though he’d stripped off every shred of his clothing, put all his scabs on display for a roomful of superficial dolts. As bad as his skin, underneath was even worse – like everyone else, he lived his life of dreams and secret vices. “Below, in the subterranean depths – the grotesque throng, the wicked, evil piling up of darkness.”

S. is interviewed for a magazine and wonders if those around him realize they are talking to a Sabato substitute, a usurping clown - the real Sabato grows increasingly isolated and distant, senses he is drifting out to sea and is incapable of so much as signaling to the last passing ship that he is drowning. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, journalists leak the news he had leprosy as a way of tricking a head editor into publishing an article on him in a leading newspaper.



"He'd left science to write fiction, like some nice housewife that suddenly decides to go into drugs and prostitution. What had led him to invent those stories? And what was it they actually were? Generally speaking, fiction was considered a kind of mystification, a not altogether serious undertaking. Professor Houssay, the Nobel Prize winner, had refused to shake hands with Sabato when he heard of his decision." Ernesto Sabato, The Angel of Darkness

In one of the many discussions on the nature of literature, the arts and creativity, Sabato proclaims how a novelist, as creator, is in every facet of the novel, everything is chosen, plot, setting, landscape, mood. It’s not like what Plato says in The Republic, that God created the archetype of a table, the carpenter builds a copy and the artist paints a copy of a copy. No. Such a production is mere imitative art. All great art is completely opposite, not a reduction of life but an invigoration of life, a giver of life.

S. continues: there is always an ongoing tension and interaction between life and art, between truth and things like pretense, deception and cunning. When literature is reduced to the level of mere manipulation of words or trite playing of games, as if by magic, instantly there materializes a life-enhancing infusion of energy to save it from staleness and death. For every Byzantine cleverness, a Hemingway or Céline appears on the scene to set things straight.

How do you “explain” a Béla Bartók string quartet? Sabato remarks: “Myth, like art, is a language. It expresses a certain type of reality in the only way that reality can be expressed, and it is irreducible to any other form of language." That’s why, in many respects, I do not enjoy or give much attention to literary theory – any attempt to place literature, especially a form such as the novel, in preconceived conceptual categories, to my mind, smacks of the worst reductionism.



"Yes, there it was: that face through which the soul of S. looked out on (and suffered) the Universe, like a man sentenced to death, looking out between the bars." Ernesto Sabato, The Angel of Darkness

In a dream sequence we see the set for a popular television show starring the one and only Pipo Mancera. For today’s special occasion, Pipo appears in a sparkling white wedding gown. The studio audience applauds wildly. Then none other than Jorge Luis Borges, looking natty in his tuxedo, takes his place on the set as the best man. Finally, after several moments anticipation, the groom appears – short, scrawny, spindly legged Ernesto Sabato wearing only his underwear. As if on cue, the audience hoots and jeers, laughs and guffaws at this pathetic excuse for a man. All falls silent and the wedding ceremony commences.

Another notable quote from Mr. Josephs' review: "The Angel of Darkness has a huge cast of eccentric characters from every walk of Argentine life, including many from Mr. Sabato's second novel - even the ghost of its deceased main character. All the ghastly obsessions from that novel are here too: slime, filth, lizards, snakes, rats, cockroaches, weasels and, above all, the obsessive, morbid, hideously rendered Sect of the Blind, which had obsessed Fernando, the paranoid character in the previous novel, and which now obsesses and "persecutes" his "creator."

On the first page of the novel, Bruno observes his friend S. cross a dangerous intersection without the least concern for cars or busses, without so much as looking in either direction. What has happened? Eventually, we have our answer: there’s a detailed description of how Sabato’s feet shrivel up into the black claws of a bat. Sabato’s legs and torso and finally arms and head follow – the literary man has been transformed into a revolting, hideous four feet high winged rat – a bat complete with repulsive-looking bat wings and bat sonar replacing his eyes.

Ah, now I understand why that erudite New York Times review by Allen Josephs was titled Bat Man of Argentina. I hope my review (bringing the grand total of Goodread reviews to 40) will prompt a number of readers to seek out this classic and give its pages a careful read.



"He leafed through the hundreds of pages-outlines, outlines of outlines, variations on outlines-all as contradictory and incoherent as his own soul. Dozens of characters were waiting there, like reptiles sleeping, catatonic, through the cold months of the year, the life in them imperceptible, silent, secret, latent, though they might be ready to sting, inject their venom the moment warmth restored them to their fuller existence." Ernesto Sabato, The Angel of Darkness ( )

(read the Romanian translation, first edition - the 'XXth century' collection)
Terrifying. The last part of the 3-books series.... The most cruel one, for sure; couldn't sleep for weeks after finishing it.
The first contact I had with the Hispanic literature... and a completely new style, vision and way of living. ( )

Antes de leer este libro se debe leer Sobre Heroes y Tumbas porque hace muchas referencias a dicho libro. Es un gran libro que contiene muchas historias que en ocasiones parecen inconexas. Tiene pasajes portentosos que no necesitan de la trama para transmitir su fuerza. Dentro de las muchas discusiones que descubro, encuentro diferentes argumentos acerca de que tiene más valor, el escribir una novela o bien actuar como un revolucionario y modificar la historia. Algo que me fascina es como Sabato mismo tiene un rol protagoinico en la novela, como se relaciona con sus personajes, al grado que no se hace responsable de las acciones de sus personajes. Un gran libro. ( )