Diario La Nación
- THE BAD GUIDE
- CATAMINA
- “Gaurol Ampoules”
This partial reading of La Nación of Santiago for 17 October 1926 centres on a Spanish translation of Maurice Level's story “El mal guía” (The Bad Guide). In the passage, a man shut away in the dark curses a creature he longs to crush underfoot, files through the hinges of a door, and takes heart that God, having let him break the first barrier, may open the others. Stray lines of the same story run into two medicine advertisements. One is for Catamina, an odourless zinc ointment against scabies, and names Heesch, Nagel & Cía. of Valparaíso and J. D. Riedel of Berlin. The other is for Gaurol ampoules, an injectable lime salt that the ad claimed would restore strength and health to people suffering from tuberculosis.
This edition covers three excerpts from a partly read page. They are part of Maurice Level's story and two advertisements whose blocks also contain stray lines of the story. The binding gutter cuts off the left edges of several columns, and the story columns are cut at tile boundaries. The OCR text was fragmentary, so the transcriptions come from the page images. The opening fragments “CIO LEVEL” and “curecía” are left as printed. The Catamina excerpt opens with an office-hours line, and the reading does not show which advertiser it belongs to. In the Gaurol advertisement, the word printed after “TUBERCULOSIS” is unclear, so its reading is uncertain. The commentary leaves out the Caja de Crédito Popular, which no selected excerpt mentions. It also leaves out J. D. Riedel's postwar marketing in Chile, because none of the fetched pages document it.
Translation
THE BAD GUIDE
…CIO LEVEL …curecía. Ah, what voluptuous delight to crush the monster, to feel it burst beneath his boot!... Almost demented, he insulted it, he provoked it:
“Come, come closer, dare to come closer...”
But it happened that, by dint of filing, the hinges of the door gave way, and the leaf, having swung heavily round, was left open.
A door!... What was that compared with the frightful barriers he would doubtless have to get past before he saw the light of day?... And yet an infinite joy flooded his heart, reviving his courage. Then he thought:
“Since God has allowed me to destroy the first one with my own hands, perhaps He wants the others to open before me.”
The corridor that opened between…
CATAMINA
Office hours: From 9 to 5 without INTERRUPTION
…to stifle its wailing. Useless effort. The cry came from here... from there... and each time he thought he had reached the animal, his fingers found nothing but the icy flagstones or the damp wall.
CATAMINA CATAMINA THE NEW anti-scabies remedy to CURE SCABIES. It has no smell, it does not stain clothing. The itching soon disappears. Catamina: Zinc ointment with extract of native plants.
HEESCH, NAGEL & Cía. Valparaíso - P.O. Box 203
J. D. RIEDEL A. G. BERLIN
“Gaurol Ampoules”
…door. It had been a long time since…
“Ah, filthy vermin!”
“Gaurol Ampoules” (New injectable organic lime salt, painless)
INTENSIVE REMINERALIZATION, RAPID AND SAFE RECALCIFICATION. STRENGTH AND HEALTH ARE RESTORED TO THOSE WHO SUFFER FROM PULMONARY, BONE OR GLANDULAR TUBERCULOSIS BY MEANS OF A TREATMENT WITH GAUROL (REG. T.M.) (PHOSPHORATED ORGANIC-CALCIUM COMBINATION). IT STIMULATES THE APPETITE, IT ENRICHES THE BLOOD. ALL DOCTORS RECOMMEND IT.
DISTRIBUTORS: V. Corry & Cía. - Monjitas 739. - Santiago
Cocoa [?] Roff
Context
Maurice Level, a writer of macabre newspaper tales
Maurice Level was a French writer of fiction and drama, born on 29 August 1875, who specialized in macabre short stories. He died on 15 April 1926, so La Nación was printing his work six months after his death. His stories appeared regularly in the columns of Paris newspapers and were sometimes staged by the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. They also travelled abroad: many of Level's stories had been translated for American newspapers since 1903. This page credits the story only to “MAURICIO LEVEL”, with his first name in Spanish form, and names no translator.
The conte cruel and the man at the door
In Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927), H. P. Lovecraft judged Level's fiction less a part of the weird tradition than a class peculiar to itself, the so-called conte cruel, in which “the wrenching of the emotions is accomplished through dramatic tantalizations, frustrations and gruesome physical horrors.” The excerpt follows this pattern closely. A half-mad captive taunts a creature he longs to feel burst under his boot. His filing finally breaks the hinges of one door, and he lets himself believe that God, having allowed him to destroy the first barrier, may open the rest. The excerpt breaks off at “El corredor que se abría entre”, so this part does not show where the corridor leads or who the “bad guide” of the title is.
La Nación's news-first model and its line to Paris
La Nación was founded on 14 January 1917 by a group of liberal parliamentarians led by Eliodoro Yáñez. Memoria Chilena counts it among the papers that promoted a new model in which informing readers took priority over open political advocacy or party propaganda. Its specialized sections covered subjects ranging from national politics and social problems to labour movements and national and foreign culture. Inés Echeverría Bello wrote Sunday columns for it on varied subjects from 1917. French culture reached the paper directly: Juan Emar, writing from France, kept promoting the artistic avant-garde in La Nación through the sections “Notas desde París” and “La Nación en París”. A translated Parisian horror story fits this varied, outward-looking mix, but the sources describe the paper's sections only in general terms and say nothing about how it chose translated fiction.
Expropriation under Ibáñez in 1927
La Nación lost its independence less than a year after this issue. In July 1927 the dictatorship of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo expropriated the paper, and it became the official organ of the Chilean state. Its owner, Eliodoro Yáñez, left Chile and stayed in exile until 1931. The page of 17 October 1926, with its translated foreign fiction and commercial advertising, therefore comes from the last months of La Nación's first period as a privately owned, independent daily.
What the medicine advertisements claimed
The two medicine advertisements sit inside the story's columns, and the cures they describe are the advertisers' own claims. The Catamina notice offered a new, odourless anti-scabies ointment of zinc with extract of native plants that would not stain clothing and would soon end the itching. It names Heesch, Nagel & Cía., P.O. Box 203, Valparaíso, together with J. D. Riedel A. G. of Berlin. The Gaurol notice presented a painless injectable organic lime salt that would restore strength and health to people with pulmonary, bone or glandular tuberculosis. It claimed that all doctors recommended it and listed V. Corry & Cía. at Monjitas 739 in Santiago as distributors. The page backs none of these claims with anything beyond the advertisers' word.
Original
EL MAL GUIA
CIO LEVEL curecía. ¡ Ah, qué voluptuosidad aplastar el monstruo, sentirlo estallar bajo su bota!... Casi demente, lo insultaba, lo provocaba: - Ven, acércate, atrévete a acercarte... Pero ocurrió que, a fuerza de limar, los goznes de la puerta cedieron, y que habiendo girado el batiente pesadamente, quedó abierta. ¡ Una puerta!... ¿ Qué era aquello en comparación de las barreras espantosas que sin duda tendría que franquear antes de ver el día?... Sin embargo, una alegría infinita inundó su corazón reanimando su valor. Después pensó: - Puesto que Dios ha permitido que con mis manos pudiera destruir la primera, es que tal vez quiere que las otras se abran delante de mí. El corredor que se abría entre
CATAMINA
Horas de oficina: De 9 a 5 sin INTERRUPCION ra ahogar su lamento. Trabajo inútil. El grito salía de aquí... de allá... y cada vez que creía alcanzar al animal, sus dedos no encontraban sino las baldosas heladas o la pared húmeda. CATAMINA CATAMINA EL NUEVO anti-escabiósico para CURAR LA SARNA. No tiene olor, no mancha la ropa. La comezón desaparece luego. Catamina: Pom. de zinc con extracto de plantas indígenas. HEESCH, NAGEL & Cía. Valparaíso - Casilla 203 J. D. RIEDEL A. G. BERLIN
“Ampolletas Gaurol”
puerta. Hacía mucho tiempo que - ¡ Ah, sabandija inmunda! - " Ampolletas Gaurol " (Nueva sal orgánica de cal inyectable indolora) REMINERALIZACION INTENSIVA, RECALCIFICACION RAPIDA Y SEGURA, FUERZA Y SALUD, SON DEVUELTAS A LOS QUE SUFREN DE TUBERCULOSIS PLMONAR, OSEA O GANGLIONAR, POR MEDIO DE UN TRATAMIENTO CON EL GAUROL (M. R.) (COMBINACION ORGANICO - CALCICA FOSFORADA) ESTIMULA EL APETITO, ENRIQUECE LA SANGRE. TODOS LOS MEDICOS LO RECOMIENDAN. DEPOSITARIOS: V. Corry & Cía. - Monjitas 739. - Santiago Cocoa [?] Roff
Source: Source: Internet Archive