Mujica Lainez II homage to A visit to "Paradise"
Text and photographs by Axel Diaz Maimone
I. - A mansion in Cruz Chica
The house is three kilometers from La Cumbre, in Cruz Chica, a town Punilla Valley. The place is gorgeous, heavenly.
early twentieth century, the English Ramón Cabezas, who had been President of the English Club in Buenos Aires and was married to Rosario Pizarro Cordero widow, bought a plot of twenty acres (from the current Calle Manuel Mujica Lainez, then General Alvear, up in the highlands) a man named Lunsdaine. The land had belonged to one of the first English conquerors who passed through Cordoba and had passed through various hands until it was acquired Cabezas.
Entry
that is one of the former owners, Mr. Littlemore, was killed on the spot where today is the dining room by her lover wife, and since then his spirit lives in the house. Miroslav Scheuba, a friend shared with Mujica Lainez, claims to have seen me during his stay in "Paradise." Ramón
Heads up, in 1915, the main house, almost on the street, to please his wife who used to sit on the terrace to watch the comings and goings of cars and neighbors, other houses of smaller size, a concert hall, a Botero, the barn, workshop, staff house, a theater, an artificial lake, a gazebo and a swimming pool. The set was built by French architect Leon Dourges, and is surrounded by a magnificent park where harmoniously coexist carat, dahlias, reeds, vines, the oaks, Buxus, numerous fruit trees, laurels, Bruce, Loconte, logging, molles , jasmine, water lilies that populate a source ...
The main house English colonial style reminiscent of Italy, has thirty-three rooms. The inhabited Don Ramón Cabezas Cabezas Pizarro Rosario and her son by her first husband, named Lamb.
According to the memory of those who knew her, Mrs. Rosario Pizarro was a grossly overweight woman, to the point that the mother of Manuel Mujica Lainez-Lucia Mujica Lainez Varela Farias, "he remembered her at the Teatro Colon and occupying an entire box a little heads sticking out behind. "
[1]
Exterior view
When Misia Rosario (as Manucho called) decided to swim in the pool of his home in Cruz Chica, brought in an old car to the pool, she dressed down with a large baton and then ran a kind of curtains to prevent anyone seeing her as she enjoyed the contact with the water in the hot days of summer Cordoba. After the bath, sat on the terrace and ceremoniously greeted everyone who passed in front of his house, whether or not known to him or Cabezas.
Many years later, averaging the second quarter of the twentieth century, Don Ramón Cabezas decided to return to his native Spain. Before traveling, left power to his wife and stepson for them to have all their assets in a short time, mother and son squandered his fortune by selling to the furnishings in the house of Cruz Chica.
When heads came back from Spain, six months, was found broken. To try to get out of the economic crisis, was forced to sell Paradise. Shortly after he died in poverty.
The house was bought, then, a man named Parada, who was left an inheritance to their daughters. Stop daughters, their husbands, reformed and expanded the residence. Over time, lotearon the ground and then in 1957, went on sale the house.
Eleven years was the sale sign in " Paradise ", which remained closed and in ruins all that time, with a fleet of six and a half acres had become a thick forest and messy. ***
II .- The Paradise of Manucho
View from the street Manuel Mujica Lainez
In 1968, on October 18, Manuel Mujica Lainez first visited Paradise. I was in Cordoba with his wife, and then started looking for a place to live when he retired from the newspaper La Nación, away from the hustle and noise of Buenos Aires.
As Anita Manucho and toured the house with Laura Saniez and Martin Bartholomew, opening windows and shutters, it was populated mind every room with his books, furniture, antiques, paintings and art objects.
The house cost eight million pesos, an amount Mujica Lainez had not at that time. But anyway, it was Paradise knowing that this was where he wanted to live his last years, and that "sooner or later would be his.
Months later he revisited the house and furnish it with your imagination. At that time decided to buy, and bid in a letter seven million pesos, its owners agreed. However
have lowered the price, Manucho set the mode of payment: early January 1969 would deliver the first million, later this month the second, and the remaining five in April. The first delivery came from author rights and Glori Forti Award he received in 1968, the second from the sale of Portrait of Miguel Carlos Victor, that the painter had given him when he painted in 1948, and the remaining five million, of future royalties and inheritance to Anita.
On 24 February 1969 completed the delivery of keys in the English Gallery of the entrance near the mosaics that play Surrender of Breda. Martin Bartholomew immortalized the event in a series of photographs. On April 19 the writer and his wife ended up paying the house, and then began to organize the move.
In early May, he left the first moving truck, carrying objects and furniture of the house from the street O'Higgins 2150 Buenos Aires, to "Paradise." He was succeeded by another ten.
The move lasted seven months, in which the novelist sat piece by piece in each room in the house, according to sketches he performed, and ordered twenty thousand volumes from the library. Anita was the only person allowed to help Manucho in the hard work of moving house. During the time it took to move, the novelist lost seven kilos and became ill, and that sickness distracted him from his work to the point that for almost two years did not write or publish any book.
While organizing the move, Mujica Lainez wrote the story Punilla Valley and asked the potters Mabel and Maria Castellanos that the copy in blue on a white tile to put in the patio. In turn, commissioned a niece Rosario Pizarro to make ceramic coat of arms of Pizarro to put it in the entry as a tribute to the makers of the place. In December 1969
Manuel Mujica Lainez finally settled in Paradise, along with Anita, her mother and three aunts Lainez (Josefina, Ana Maria and Martha). Since then, the old house Cruz Chica was Manucho's Paradise: there, enjoying the closeness of the mountains and the charm of the house and garden, Manuel Mujica Lainez wrote forty percent of his work, where she lived, and dreamed, surrounded by friends and family there mourned the death of his mother and aunts Josephine and Anna Mary died there in the fall of 1984, and his spirit lingers there, accompanying every visitor looking for him, comes to Paradise. ***
III .- Walking Paradise
The visit to the house begins in the courtyard adjacent to the dining room with a cobblestone terrace beds and a statue gray stone plays Vigier Philibert Achilles found in the Tapis Vert Palace of Versailles.
Achilles Across the inner door with rectangular glasses and black bars, bars that put Manucho and which were donated by Teresa Aguirre Guerrico, passed the smoking-room terrace. In the living room in a corner, is the favorite chair of Mujica Lainez, where he sat smoking and talking with friends after a meal at his side, a round wooden table with religious imagery of yesteryear, then two chairs facing each other, one on each side of the fireplace. Behind the couch left on a narrow wall between the windows, there hung a Komuso cane, just over two meters, which was a mendicant monk eighteenth century Japanese and Mujica brought from his trip to the East in 1940, along with the trail Manchuria funeral that is embedded in the fireplace on the reverse reads a curse for those who stole it: "Nobody dares to touch this stone in the shape of Buddha, which I cut in this month of spring, in a reign of Yuan Dynasty because my curse fall upon him. " On the console there are five huacos anthropomorphic chimney from the Chancay culture were used for tribal rites in the ninth century in Peru. In the same room, two tables allegorical pieces exhibit the works of novelist seven demons out of metal and various beetles of different materials.
Fumoir
fumoir Waterfront is the dining room with an old, heavy wood extending table and chairs around it. On the wall of the head, a piece of furniture belonging to the family of Anita and used to keep the vestments of the priests in the seventeenth century, supports five Oriental porcelain figures, and on the wall is back, three tables: Presentation of the horse, Raúl Soldi, Castel Sant'Angelo, Miguel Carlos Victor, and Hector Basaldúa The hoodlums. To the left of the visitor, front of windows overlooking the terrace, a cabinet built into the wall of the glass keeps the family, and next, an allegorical carpet beetles, which Manucho was not completed but which had already allocated that place- saw much of the wall. Del fumoir
hall goes to the pictures. They hang from the wall paintings and photographs relating to the work of Mujica Lainez, there are also newspaper clippings and framed posters. In the same corridor are the degree of incorporation of Manuel Mujica Lainez to the Academia Argentina de Letras, Alberto Ginastera's telegram on the Prohibition of Bomarzo opera at the Teatro Colon in 1967 ("prohibited relationships Bomarzo a bear. Alberto ") and a telegram in which the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina appoints ambassadors Ginastera and Mujica Lainez, representatives of the culture of Argentina for the premiere of the opera in New York Bomarzo that year. On the door leading to the smoking room hangs a mask of José María Suhurt, an architect friend of Manucho, who represents the Beetle, which was used by Mujica Lainez in a masquerade.
The hallway ends in the room where there were the famous carnival dances with masks made especially for the occasion by Suhurt. In a glass case beside the door to the hallway, there are miniatures and antiques from the family, the other side of the door, a large painting shows the Florencio Varela vest that he wore the day he was assassinated in Montevideo, with a knife, a daguerreotype and a lock of hair cut off writer Jose Marmol when he was killed. In another case embedded in the wall, books and old family documents, and in front of her, a wooden table for cards and a set of chairs by the fireplace. On one side, leaning against a wall, desk campaign that General José de San Martín used in San Lorenzo, and that he gave to the writer's great-grandmother, Rosa Jauregui, and two English chairs of the brother of Manuel Dorrego. On the walls hang more than eighty portraits of ancestors and relatives of Manuel Mujica Lainez and Ana Maria de Alvear Ortiz Basualdo Mujica Lainez, Juan de Garay, Diego and Carlos de Alvear, Miguel Cane, Juan Cruz and Florencio Varela, Felisa Ortiz Basualdo de Alvear, Lucía Mujica Lainez Varela Farias Vincent Cane and many other men and women. Two sculptures dominate the room: they are the heads of Manucho, made by José Fioravanti, and Anita, for Suhurt.
Hall portraits
Crossing the Hall of Portraits, you get to a smaller room where the library preserves part of Mujica Lainez. Salita is the area, where food was served in winter. On the shelves, covered by glass doors, "the books share space with pictures of friends, Victoria Ocampo, Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo, Eduardo Mallea, Gabriela Mistral, Alberto Girri, Sara Gallardo, Guillermo Whitelow, Alberto Gerchunoff, Ramon Gomez la Serna, China Zorrilla ... A case keeps oldest specimen of the writer's library: a book published in the Renaissance, in France surrounding individuals dedicated to Manuel Mujica Lainez by Alfonsina Storni and Federico García Lorca, among others. Opposite the library, and around the fireplace, a set of dark wooden chairs and small tables adorned with books and furniture complete the room, whose walls are highlighted boxes Soldi, Basaldúa, Cordiviola, Aldo Sessa and Miguel Ocampo, and a coat of arms set into the fireplace.
For an arcade (guarded by Suhurt mask representing the Unicorn) is passed in the Salita Salita tea plants. It is surprising that there still plants Ana de Alvear, surrounded by paintings and objects d'art. A small table by the window shows the last photo of Manucho in family appear on the printed him, his wife and children (Diego, Ana y Manuel) the day the writer received the Legion of Honor from the hands of SE Ambassador of France in Argentina. Opposite, on a coffee table with glass top are some medals and medals awarded to Mujica Lainez. A showcase stores the complete works of Poe, and the walls are made by leading his own cartoon characters. Some of the curiosities exhibited there are Mujica horoscope charted by Xul Solar, and a wooden tray signed by friends of the novelist: Silvina Ocampo, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Norah Borges, Eduardo Mallea, Susana Aguirre, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Raquel Forner, Cayetano Cordova Iturburu ...
An arcade allows Salita move from plant to the library of the writer. The walls surrounding the room were covered by two rows of shelves with books and today there are empty spaces occupied by tables. Accumulate on the table lamps, statues and objects Manucho art he collected. Next to a table in an umbrella stand, lie some of the sticks he used Mujica Lainez.
Desktop
Originally, the place of the study was the bedroom Manucho Lucia Mujica Lainez Varela Farias, but when she died (in 1975) his son decided to install hence the library and a desk, making the room in your workplace, where he used to take notes and prepare their drafts in the old book shops of old box. Returning
the plant Salita Salita and tea, reaches the bearing of all that is on one side the staircase leading to first floor, and another door leading to the patio. On the wall of the door, a large painting shows the family trees of Manuel Mujica Lainez and Ana de Alvear de Mujica Lainez. There are also Greek and Russian icons, American colonial art objects and several paintings by Argentine artists (Juan Carlos Bruckman, Miguel Angel Guerra, Nicolás García Uriburu).
the end of the shield is the guest room, fully painted pink and decorated with watercolors of Susana Aguirre. Two ancient iron beds, where they slept China Zorrilla, Alicia Johnston, Federico Peltzer, Hermes Villordo Oscar, Oscar Monesterolo, and Miroslav Scheuba, to name only a handful of names of some of the friends of the writer who visited him there, occupy much of the room.
On the patio or English gallery, a sculpture embedded in the wall is an allegory of Suhurt based on the writer's work, and displays characters in his stories and novels, curiously, the face of the fairy Melusine (of the unicorn) is the Anita, and the demon of laziness, Voyage of the seven demons, is that of Manucho. On another wall, a white tiles history reproduced Punilla Valley written by Mujica Lainez and copied them for the potters Mabel and Mary Cunningham. Few inches above the work, the same wall, is the ceramic that inspired "The tile man" and about these mosaics, others play Surrender of Breda. Instead there are also several objects, an image of Santa Teresa and bronze faun was the fifth in the San Fernando Alvear, Sans Souci, and who accompanied Mujica for years.
The Andalusian patio door, which is the main entrance to the house, is a true work of art: José María Suhurt recreated in bronze to Adam and Eve in Paradise, tempted by the serpent and eating the apple of sin. The iron arch above the door, an old vine grapes continues as delicious as those Manuel Mujica Lainez ate.
Gateway
For a narrow staircase, creaking-wood off the Andalusian patio door, you enter the first floor of the house. The stairway ends at the school desk.
On the desktop there are two opposing furniture, in the library that is on the side of the stairs, Manucho kept in boxes, and sorted alphabetically, correspondence (it is now part of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections University Princeton, USA)
* , the other holds the dictionaries and encyclopedias used as writing. Next to the library of correspondence, under a window, is the desk of Mujica Lainez, and beside it on a table, the old typewriter he used in his years at The Nation and the director gave Journal, Bartolomé Mitre, in retirement. The second library, dozens of pictures break the immaculate white of the wall are framed letters, family photos and family trees illustrated with pictures. Of the latch of the window that is about hanging out Woodstock still paddle used to kill flies that Manucho.
For a door located next to the stairs, the room becomes Manuel Mujica Lainez. It is, somehow, a bedroom austere: the iron bed two places where the writer died, an old wooden wardrobe where he kept the most frequently used clothes, a comfortable Elizabethan marble top and mirror, the chaise-longue where Manucho took naps, between the fireplace and the bed, the basket of Balzac (her cat, who died in 1999) and Cecil cushion, populate the room. Above the fireplace is adorned with statues bottles and various objects of artistic paintings on the walls of Suhurt, Basaldúa, Spilimbergo, Soldi, Josefina Robirosa, Victor, Leonor Fini, Asiain, Tiglio, Guerreiro and Santiago Cogorno. On a bench beside the bed are I was reading books before dying Mujica Lainez.
Bedroom
MML
Next to the bath room is full of amulets because Mujica Lainez said it was the site of his house in which she felt more vulnerable because I was naked . On the bathtub, the walls, there twenty-eight shanks (crafts in wood, typical of Brazilian esotericism, to which are attributed powers to prevent the negative forces) *, four open hands, a cast of the hand of the writer and Arab foil to prevent the evil eye. On one side of the tub, the kit with Manucho taking remedies, the other a wooden chest in which Anita painted one of the mazes of her husband. In front of the bathtub, sink and mirror stand. From the ceiling hangs a toy parrot Manucho used by one of the dances that existed in the Hall of Portraits. Wall
through the desktop, the former guest room, on display everyday objects Manuel Mujica Lainez, an English hat, berets, canes, glasses, pen Montblanc bold, rings - including the gold with lapis beetle that inspired his latest novel, The Beetle ", official documents and family and most important awards received by the writer have their place in wooden cabinets with glass lids. Beside the fireplace, hung on the wall, a maze that Manucho he wrote to his wife and a true love poem, below, framed, is the last letter he wrote to Victoria Ocampo, weeks before his death. The rest of the walls are covered with paintings with photos of friends near and far; drawings Mujica Lainez, and some curiosities that he treasured. This is the only room in the house that was totally changed after the death of the novelist.
After the tour of the house, the park awaits visitors. They live together, harmoniously, Carat, dahlias, reeds, vines, the oaks, Buxus, numerous fruit trees, laurels, Bruce, Loconte, logging, pepper trees, jasmine and water lilies not that people are missing a source. They were the hands of the Heads of the Stop and Ana de Alvear which made this combination of plants and shrubs a forest and a lovely garden.
In the gardens of Paradise lie under the plants, animals accompanied homeowners: Cecil, Balzac, Sara and Honey. Cecil was the whippet that he gave his friend Miguel Angel Manucho Carcano, Balzac and Sara, house cats, Honey, the dog he had adopted Anita. However, Balzac and Cecil are the only ones identified: two tiles that are recorded texts and images of Mujica Lainez, testify to what the dog and the cat meant to him.
[1] María Esther Vázquez: The World of Manuel Mujica Lainez. Editorial de Belgrano. Buenos Aires, 1982. P. 105
* Manuscripts Division Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University bought the professional correspondence of the writer in 1997, four years later, in 2001, also acquired the family
* In Cecil, the writer says, fifty that adorn the walls shanks your bathroom.
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