Victor Llona
Encyclopedia
Victor Llona Gastañeta was a writer and translator, born in Lima
(Peru
) in 1886, who died in San Francisco in 1953.
were he attended the lycée Janson de Sailly and also a Jesuit college. At sixteen he started visiting the literary cafés, where he met an international company, so diverse that they spoke Latin
to be understood by all. The eldest of the group was an Irishman, named James Joyce
(1882–1941).
In 1906, with his parents, Llona moved to the US and lived in Chicago
. He remained in touch with Europe and through André Gide
he had two of his short stories published in the Nouvelle revue française (1911 and 1913). Llona came back to Paris in 1913 but when the war broke out he returned to the US and lived in New York
, where he made the acqaintance of several novelists of the new generation. He decided that he would make them known in France.
, Stock
, Plon
, Fayard
, Albin Michel, La Renaissance du Livre, Gallimard), he was going to translate some forty books into French, between 1920 and 1939, amongst them Scott Fitzgerald
(The Great Gatsby
), Ambrose Bierce
, Ezra Pound
, Theodore Dreiser
(An American Tragedy
), Sherwood Anderson
, Ernest Hemingway
, Edna Ferber
, Willa Cather
and also several works by the Argentinian- English writer William Henry Hudson
(1841–1922). With the help of a native Russian he was also able to translate several Russian works, from Alexis Tolstoï, Nikolai Gogol
and Elie Ilf
.
Llona also wrote in magazines, especially about James Joyce and Samuel Beckett
. He also wrote two novels in French, one about the Ku Klux Klan
, one about prohibition
in the States. He also co-authored a biography of Peter the Great, with the Russian émigré Dimitri Novik.
, Marcel Proust
, Francis Carco
, Henri Poulaille, Jean Galtier-Boissière
, Jules Supervielle
, Paul Morand
, Pierre Mac Orlan
, Jacques de Lacretelle
, Julien Green
and Roger Martin du Gard
. He remained also a friend of the major NRF figures, like André Gide
, Jean Schlumberger
, Valéry Larbaud
, André Ruyters and Jacques Rivière
. Llona also had great friendship with the Belgian poet and designer Jean de Bosschère
(1878–1953), who made a lithographed portrait of him. He also wrote an essay on the French writer Louis Thomas
and befriended him and his opera singing wife Raymonde Delaunois
.
Llona remained also in contact with American writers of the 'Lost Generation
', amongst them Hemingway
, Ezra Pound
, Nathalie Clifford Barney, Paul Bowles
, Thornton Wilder
and Scott Fitzgerald
. He met them in the apartments of Gertrude Stein
(1874–1946) and Peggy Guggenheim
(1898–1979) or at the English library of Sylvia Beach
(1887–1962), the first publisher in 1922 of James Joyce's Ulysses
.
In 1929 Shakespeare and Company
, the library of Sylvia Beach, published a book with twelve articles, brought together by Eugene Jolas
(1894–1952), the editor of transition
, defending 'Work in progress
', the book by Joyce that would be published only ten years later under the title 'Finnegans wake
'. In this book titled Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress
, Llona was one of the twelve authors and wrote under a very much 'Joycian' title: ‘I Dont Know What to Call It but Its Mighty Unlike Prose’ .
In 1939 With the war approaching, Llona, remarried, left France and established himself in Lima. In 1946 he returned to the US and became a translator for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO
). When having heart problems, he settled in San Francisco, where he died.
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
(Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
) in 1886, who died in San Francisco in 1953.
Early years
The Peruvian Victor Marie Llona grew up in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
were he attended the lycée Janson de Sailly and also a Jesuit college. At sixteen he started visiting the literary cafés, where he met an international company, so diverse that they spoke Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
to be understood by all. The eldest of the group was an Irishman, named James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
(1882–1941).
In 1906, with his parents, Llona moved to the US and lived in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. He remained in touch with Europe and through André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
he had two of his short stories published in the Nouvelle revue française (1911 and 1913). Llona came back to Paris in 1913 but when the war broke out he returned to the US and lived in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where he made the acqaintance of several novelists of the new generation. He decided that he would make them known in France.
Important translator
Returning to France and having gained the confidence of Parisian publishers (PayotPayot
Payot is the Hebrew word for sidelocks or sidecurls. Payot are worn by some men and boys in the Orthodox Jewish community based on an interpretation of the Biblical injunction against shaving the "corners" of one's head...
, Stock
Stock (publishing house)
Stock is a French publisher, a subsidiary of Hachette Livre, which itself is part of the Lagardère Group.It was founded in the 18th century by André Cailleau, who was succeeded in 1753 by Nicolas-Bonaventure Duchesne, who published Voltaire and Rousseau. At the beginning of the 19th century, the...
, Plon
Plon (publisher)
Plon is a French book publishing company, founded in 1852 by Henri Plon and his two brothers.The Plon family were Walloons coming from Nivelle, France. One of their ancestors is probably the Danish typographer Jehan Plon who lived at the end of the 16th century.-History:The Editions Plon were...
, Fayard
Fayard
Fayard is a French Paris-based publishing house established in 1857. Fayard is controlled by Hachette Livre.-Works published:Works published by Editions Fayard include:...
, Albin Michel, La Renaissance du Livre, Gallimard), he was going to translate some forty books into French, between 1920 and 1939, amongst them Scott Fitzgerald
Scott Fitzgerald
Scott Fitzgerald may refer to:*F. Scott Fitzgerald , American author*Scott L. Fitzgerald , member of the Wisconsin State Senate*Scott Fitzgerald , former Wimbledon defender, former manager of Brentford...
(The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922....
), Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...
, Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
(An American Tragedy
An American Tragedy
-Plot summary:The ambitious but immature Clyde Griffiths, raised by poor and devoutly religious parents who force him to participate in their street missionary work, is anxious to achieve better things. His troubles begin when he takes a job as a bellboy at a local hotel. The boys he meets are...
), Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
, Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
and also several works by the Argentinian- English writer William Henry Hudson
William Henry Hudson
William Henry Hudson was an author, naturalist, and ornithologist.- Life and work :Hudson was born in the Quilmes, a borough of the greater Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, son of settlers of U.S. origin...
(1841–1922). With the help of a native Russian he was also able to translate several Russian works, from Alexis Tolstoï, Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
and Elie Ilf
Ilf and Petrov
Ilya Ilf Ilya Ilf Ilya Ilf (Ilya Arnoldovich Faynzilberg and Evgeny or Yevgeni Petrov (Yevgeniy Petrovich Kataev or Katayev were two Soviet prose authors of the 1920s and 1930s...
.
Llona also wrote in magazines, especially about James Joyce and Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. He also wrote two novels in French, one about the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
, one about prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
in the States. He also co-authored a biography of Peter the Great, with the Russian émigré Dimitri Novik.
Part of the French literary scene
A few pages of Llona's Memoirs have been published, in which he speaks about his friendship with French writers, such as Pierre BenoitPierre Benoit
Pierre Benoit may refer to:*Pierre Benoit , novelist and member of the Académie française*Pierre Basile Benoit , former member of the Canadian House of Commons...
, Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, Francis Carco
Francis Carco
Francis Carco was a French author, born at Nouméa, New Caledonia. He was a poet, belonging to the Fantaisiste school, a novelist, a dramatist, and art critic for L'Homme libre and Gil Blas. During the War he became aviation pilot at Étampes, after studying at the aviation school there...
, Henri Poulaille, Jean Galtier-Boissière
Jean Galtier-Boissière
Jean Galtier-Boissière was a writer, polemist, and journalist from Paris, France. He founded Le Crapouillot and wrote for Le Canard enchaîné.-Bibliography:* Croquis De Tranchées. 1917...
, Jules Supervielle
Jules Supervielle
Jules Supervielle was a French poet and writer born in Uruguay.Jules Supervielle always kept away from Surrealism which was dominant in the first half of the twentieth century...
, Paul Morand
Paul Morand
Paul Morand was a French diplomat, novelist, playwright and poet, considered an early Modernist.He was a graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies...
, Pierre Mac Orlan
Pierre Mac Orlan
Pierre Mac Orlan, sometimes written MacOrlan, was a French novelist and songwriter.His novel Quai des Brumes was the source for Marcel Carné's 1938 film of the same name, starring Jean Gabin...
, Jacques de Lacretelle
Jacques de Lacretelle
Jacques de Lacretelle was a French novelist. He was elected to the Académie française on November 12, 1936.-Bibliography:* 1920 La vie inquiète de Jean Hermelin...
, Julien Green
Julien Green
Julien Green , was an American writer, who authored several novels, including Léviathan and Each in His Own Darkness...
and Roger Martin du Gard
Roger Martin du Gard
Roger Martin du Gard was a French author and winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature. Trained as a paleographer and archivist, Martin du Gard brought to his works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for details...
. He remained also a friend of the major NRF figures, like André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, Jean Schlumberger
Jean Schlumberger
Jean Schlumberger was a French writer and journalist.-Biography:He was the son of Jean Schlumberger, the scion of a textile manufacturing family of German origin, and Marguerite de Witt, the granddaughter of François Guizot...
, Valéry Larbaud
Valery Larbaud
Valery Larbaud was a French writer.-Life:He was born in Vichy, Allier, the only child of a pharmacist. His father died when he was 8, and he was brought up by his mother and aunt. His father had been owner of the Vichy Saint-Yorre mineral water springs, and the family fortune assured him an easy...
, André Ruyters and Jacques Rivière
Jacques Rivière
Jacques Rivière was a French "man of letters". He edited La Nouvelle Revue Française from 1919 until his death...
. Llona also had great friendship with the Belgian poet and designer Jean de Bosschère
Jean de Bosschère
Jean de Bosschère was a Belgian writer and painter.- Biography :Bosschère was born in Uccle, the son of Charles de Bosschere and Nancy Marie Hélène Van der Stock. In 1884 the family moved to Lier, where Jean spent a tormented childhood full of affection for his disfigured sister Marthe, described...
(1878–1953), who made a lithographed portrait of him. He also wrote an essay on the French writer Louis Thomas
Louis Thomas
Louis Thomas was a French writer, born in Perpignan in 1885 and dying in Brussels in 1962.In 1909 he married the mezzo soprano Raymonde Delaunois....
and befriended him and his opera singing wife Raymonde Delaunois
Raymonde Delaunois
Raymonde Delaunois was a Belgian mezzo-soprano opera singer.- Biography:She was born near the City of Brussels on 12 October 1885 to a single mother. Raymonde was raised in Frameries near Mons in Belgium. One day she sang on a school event and was encouraged to follow further training...
.
Llona remained also in contact with American writers of the 'Lost Generation
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
', amongst them Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, Nathalie Clifford Barney, Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
, Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
and Scott Fitzgerald
Scott Fitzgerald
Scott Fitzgerald may refer to:*F. Scott Fitzgerald , American author*Scott L. Fitzgerald , member of the Wisconsin State Senate*Scott Fitzgerald , former Wimbledon defender, former manager of Brentford...
. He met them in the apartments of Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
(1874–1946) and Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...
(1898–1979) or at the English library of Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach , born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and II.-Early life:...
(1887–1962), the first publisher in 1922 of James Joyce's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
.
In 1929 Shakespeare and Company
Shakespeare and Company
Shakespeare and Company or Shakespeare & Company may refer to:*Shakespeare and Company , an English-language bookshop in Paris, France; hosts the annual Shakespeare & Company Literary Festival in June....
, the library of Sylvia Beach, published a book with twelve articles, brought together by Eugene Jolas
Eugene Jolas
John George Eugene Jolas was a writer, translator and literary critic.-Biography:Eugene Jolas was born in Union City, New Jersey, but grew up in Forbach in Elsass-Lothringen , to which his family returned when he was two years old. He spent periods of his adult life living in both the U.S...
(1894–1952), the editor of transition
Transition (literary journal)
transition was an experimental literary journal that featured surrealist, expressionist, and Dada art and artists. It was founded in 1927 by poet Eugene Jolas and his wife Maria McDonald and published in Paris...
, defending 'Work in progress
Work in progress
Work in progress may refer to:-Film:* A Work in Progress, a documentary film of the recording of Rush's Test for Echo album* Work in Progress , a computer-animated short film-Music:* Work in Progress , by Man Alive...
', the book by Joyce that would be published only ten years later under the title 'Finnegans wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
'. In this book titled Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress
Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress
Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress is a 1929 collection of critical essays, and two letters, on the subject of James Joyce's book Finnegans Wake, then being published in discrete sections under the title Work in Progress...
, Llona was one of the twelve authors and wrote under a very much 'Joycian' title: ‘I Dont Know What to Call It but Its Mighty Unlike Prose’ .
In 1939 With the war approaching, Llona, remarried, left France and established himself in Lima. In 1946 he returned to the US and became a translator for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Food and Agriculture Organization
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is a specialised agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and...
(FAO
Fão
Fão is a town in Esposende Municipality in Portugal....
). When having heart problems, he settled in San Francisco, where he died.
Sources
- Theodore DreiserTheodore DreiserTheodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
Papers, University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
. - Peter Neagoe Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse UniversitySyracuse UniversitySyracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
Library - Manuel BELTROV, Víctor M. Llona, in: Garsilaso, Año I, Nº 1, p. 30. Lima, 1940.
- Estuardo NÚÑEZ (see Wikipedia Spanish), Una novela peruana sobre el Ku-Klux Klan, in: El Comercio, Lima, 2/04/1965, p. 2.
- Estuardo NÚÑEZ, Víctor Llona, 1886-1953, in: Boletin de la Biblioteca Nacional, Lima, 1965, Nos. 33-34, p. 3-6.
- Estuardo NÚÑEZ, Semblanza de Víctor Llona, in: Alpha, Barranco, 1965, Nº 2, p. 1-10.
- Estuardo NÚÑEZ, James Joyce y Víctor Llona, in: Revista peruana de cultura, Nos. 7-8, Lima, junio de 1966, p. 221-228.
- Ernest KROLL, A note on Victor Llona, in: Voyages, Vol. 4, nrs 1-2, 1971
- A. VAN DEN ABEELE, Louis Thomas, biography, unpublished
External links
- http://bvirtual.bnp.gob.pe/BVIC/Captura/upload/obras_narrativas_ensayos__llona.pdf