The Obscene Bird Of Night

THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT

by Jose Donoso

 

Award: PEN/Translation Winner 1974

 

Date Read: March 1, 2023

 

For me, The Obscene Bird Of Night was an odyssey of the bizarre, fantastic, and grotesque all rolled into one. By turns, this novel is fascinating and horrific, with very little sentiment or tenderness. Donoso plays with the boundaries of the human life cycle and bodily autonomy, particularly what it’s like when one loses all agency of their own physical being.

 

Donoso relies on the myth of the imbunche, a mythic figure that (and I rely on the professionals for this explanation) “… is a grotesquely disfigured being that has been sutured, tied, bound and wrapped from birth. Its orifices are sewn shut, its tongue is removed or split, its extremities and sexual organ bound and immobilized. It is the product of magic and witchcraft. It is the incarnation of the very realistic fears we feel as children, when monsters, magic and imaginings all seem real – they are the deeply rooted fears that, despite rationalization, remain present (albeit dormant) in the recesses of the subconscious.” In this manner, we slowly see Humberto Penaloza, aka Mudito, progress through his life from an author, to a reclusive man at La Rinconada overseeing the Boy’s monsters, to becoming a patient where he isn’t sure what operations they are performing on him, to becoming a mute or Mudito and infantilized by the old women at the Casa in La Chimba until his transformation into an imbunche is complete.

 

The themes of alienation, isolation and segregation are seen throughout: from Humberto sealing off major portions of the Casa and the seclusion of the monsters and the Boy La Rinconada to the old women at the Casa biding their time until they die and hiding Iris’ pregnancy from the other old women.

 

The three main characters – Humberto, Ines and Jeronimo – all experience their own paradoxes of being vs. non-being, the internal vs. external and society vs. the individual. None of them come to an exemplary end. Did I enjoy this work? No. Was I fascinated at the construct and the point of view? Absolutely!

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