David Toscana (Monterrey, 1961) part en Blind army about a historic success. It is a gruesome episode in the 11th century in which, after the Battle of Klyuch, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, apodado Bulgarianos (matabulgaros), captured one of 15,000 soldiers and ordered them to destroy their eyes, except for minimal damage to the dead, in order to guide the blind to their country. The abandoned Bulgarian emperor Samuel died not long after, apparently darkened by the impression of such a Dante’s image.
Blind army
David Tuscany
The price of Alfaguar. Alfaguara, 2026. 229 pages. €18.90
David Tuscany recreate this expansion in the mouth of one of the blindhere are the details of the articles to clear the eyes and refer to the demented journey from Constantinople by a column of looters to the capital of the Bulgarian Empire. Later, another expedition in the opposite direction was completed by a phantom legion of blind soldiers. This material might make for a conventional historical novel in a traditional writer, but the Mexican author is praised for his imagination and application. criterion of absolute creativity. Nothing about the details of the battle appears. Horrible abuse of victims monopolizes information.
“As the eyes saw” is a curiosity that piques people’s interest and the narrator is willing to satisfy it. So we know the work of Maes Zósimo, “master sacaojos of office and profession“. Note also the enthusiasm of the volunteers to finish the amount of escabechina. Detail, además, pormenores find out how the fishermen proceeded to save the eyes, what happened to them, what problems appeared when entering them, how the fishermen put the fresh and clean in the jars with the laughter of their own blind people, like the malahbarista who warned the public, warned in the air and they fell to the ground, the sea, a thousand horrors.
The novel is an authentic celebration of ingenuity that influences both content and form.
Aware of the danger of reducing a novel to a macabre anecdote, Tuscany embodies brutal experiences a large number of curious characters which within its conditions invidentes presents individualized risks. So there are unique types, the carpentero who makes muñecas, the chronicler of scribes, the numerologist in charge, the titiritero, the very obese soldier, the woman who stuffs the veins in her eyes, the panadero who makes music with skulls…
If the naming of the characters emphasizes the predominance of the imagination, the whole novel reveals an authentic celebration of ingenuity that affects both content and form.
The Blind Army can be held as an anthology of popular stories and folkloristic tales. Frequent humor softens and balances the sharply tumultuous subject matter. They bring demystifying gospel references a vivid contrast to the historical time of the story. And in the form of the letters of the Glagolitic alphabet, which contain short and dynamic chapters, they indicate the avant-garde spirit or the authorial spirit of the jugueton.
Also the distant attitude of the narrator – entre inaccessible, skeptical and burlesque– marks the hero of this rare anti-epic, Kafkaesque, sarcastic and imaginative tale, a legacy of magical realism. In combination, blind exercise produces the opposite effect. The sense of extreme brutality makes for a pleasant and enjoyable story without forgetting that it is gruesome.
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