We are sure that, should this be done . . . Respectfully, Mutis's crude odyssey in Lecumberri changed him forever. It was a very enriching experience. What one faces is absolute truth. One loses all privileges.
Nothing has any value except the surrounding isolation.
This is all quite healthy. I first read the stunning adventures of Maqroll in 1994, when my dear friend Cass Canfield Jr., an editor at HarperCollins, passed them on to me. In texture and cadence the Maqroll novels are dramatically different from the Diary of Lecumberri , published in 1959 by the Universidad Veracruzana and reprinted by Alfaguara in 1997, with a new introduction translated here. It is, moreover, the Achilles' heel on which Mutis's oeuvre stands. Unless otherwise noted, all bracketed interpolations are Mutis's.