The ATTILAs Have Arrived

Both Aliocha Coll's and Javier Serena's ATTILA drop today

Today we’re extremely proud to bring to fruition a highly anticipated project six years in the making: the release of Attila and Attila. This might seem like some sort of April Fools’ Day joke (we did almost change every book on our website to “Attila” just to drive home the goofiness), but it’s not. One Attila—Aliocha Coll’s—is a complex, difficult to approach masterpiece that has a bit of a Finnegans Wake vibe; the other Attila—Javier Serena’s—is a moving account of the end of Coll’s life as he battles mental illness amid a growing obsession with the book that would become Attila.

This project grew out of our interest in publishing Serena’s other novel, Last Words on Earth, a book that—much like Attila—investigates the idea of an artist fully dedicated to their art, despite general disinterest from readers, publishers, etc. In the case of Last Words though, which is based on Roberto Bolaño’s life, things turn around at the last moment and the Bolaño stand-in, Ricardo Funes, finds incredible global success—just before he tragically passes away.

In the case of Alioscha Coll (the Coll stand-in in Serena’s Attila), there’s a similar dedication to one’s artistic vision at all costs, however, in Coll’s case, he, to this day, has yet to receive the international recognition he deserves.

But maybe that’s all about to change! For the first time ever, Coll’s work is available in English thanks to Katie Whittemore—one of the most talented translators working today. She wrestled with this book’s archaic, strange Spanish, its avoidance of plot mixed with various textual disruptions, its moments of beauty and resistance to interpretation.

And, in addition to her brilliant translations, Whittemore also wrote a fascinating introduction that’s worth the price of admission. Here is just a taste—you’ll need to buy the Coll to get all of her insights:

In 2019, over basketball and beer, Chad W. Post of Open Letter Books and I discuss the potential of publishing two of young Spanish writer Javier Serena’s novels, both of which are dedicated to real literary figures and plumb the intense personal and social dynamics surrounding creative endeavors. One is a fictionalized account of a writer inspired by (fan favorite) Roberto Bolaño, and the other an homage to the final years of a solitary, uncompromising character based on a certain . . . Aliocha Coll?

A cursory Google search yields intriguing information. This Coll was a friend of Javier Marías, and characters based on him appear in several of Marías’s works; he was Carmen Balcells’s only unsuccessful client; he lived a kind of ascetic life in Paris; he is forgotten, impossible, cursed, brilliant, a cult writer.

Atila (Attila in English, which is how I’ll refer to it from here on out), his final book, was published by Destino in 1991 and, in 2019, is out of print (though it will be later be republished by Galaxia Gutenberg in 2023). It is the direct inspiration for Javier Serena’s novel by the same name.

The Carmen Balcells Agency sends us a PDF of a scanned copy of Destino’s 1991 edition of Attila, which is all they have. The two-book translation project becomes a triptych: two Serenas, and a Coll.

Between that moment and this one, a dozen translation projects intervene. “The Attilas” are delayed. And delayed again. But in a twist, the Attilas will now be published when I’m 42, Coll’s age when he wrote the novel’s last words and took his own life shortly after.

[. . .]

I learn to experience Attila without needing to grasp, hold, dominate, or explain it. I quickly realize that what I normally do as a translator isn’t going to work. In the first place, I barely understand what I’m reading. The first pages of the book are a genre-busting blend of drama and prose and poetry, addressing and invoking mythological and historical figures, like Laocoön, with whom I’m only glancingly familiar, and others I’ve never heard of at all. And though I sense that what I’m reading is not stream of consciousness, but rather words arranged on the page with care, the metaphors and images are so abstract and the references so obscure and the pace so galloping that I doubt myself. And what are these geometry terms? MATH?! Shit. I start to sweat.

[. . .]

Translators like to think of themselves as “good readers,” close readers who can reach the heart of a work and—almost alchemically—create another version of it in English. For me, this process often feels intuitive. But with Coll, my flow is constantly broken, violently so, by a sense of bewilderment and frustration. I’m forced to work very slowly, looking up more words than ever before as a long-time reader of works in Spanish. Attila elides and eludes. There is some relief when I reach the second part of the book, a love story, on the surface, and a meditation on history, civilization, and art, and here, yes, there are things that make narrative sense. Yet once I depart Rome with Quixote and Ipsibidimidiata, I am plunged again into a literal dark cave, then a strange forest.

I’m intentionally skipping over the section about Whittemore’s medium, her struggle with ChatGPT, and much more, because, once again, you’re going to want to read the introduction in full—and then, most likely, both of the books.

To provide you a taste of the shape of this project, here are a couple excerpts, starting with the Serena:

He always responded in the most eccentric possible way: and so on finding himself alone and confused, ostracized and adrift in Paris, instead of giving up, Alioscha chose to entrench himself even deeper in his writing obsession. I confirmed this for myself mere hours after landing in Paris. Uneasy about his state of mind and fearing he’d gone mad following the desertion of his latest female companion, I searched for him everywhere, seeking any sign that he was still alive, finally locating him in the expanses of the Parc de Belleville. It was a serendipitous discovery. I’d gone to that place with its exceptional panoramic views on a whim, trying to kill time, resigned that I’d have to wait until the next day to try and talk to him, but upon reaching a cluster of graffitied wooden benches at the top of the hill and looking to my right, I suddenly found myself confronted by my friend’s solemn and tragic silhouette, set against the Parisian rooftops. The figure he cut revealed that, over the past few weeks, he’d only sunk deeper into the delirious swamp in which he already flailed. He looked like a soloist seized by a musical fever, moving his lips to a melody only he could hear, his hair whipped about by the wind and his body in the throes of a strange vibration, so abstracted and brooding that he seemed entirely indifferent to his surroundings, wholly focused on reading from a piece of paper held inches from his face. Only when I got closer, when I could finally hear the absurd litany he was muttering, hand clenched in a claw, did I realize without surprise that I was witnessing a kind of theatrical rehearsal in that secluded spot: Alioscha slowly and deliberately reciting the most recent chapter of Attila, the novel he’d been writing for years and whose long and chaotic discourse of impossible verses and nonsensical paragraphs he would finish just days before he killed himself.

But it would take until October for Alioscha to finish his book, and at that time it was only February, a raw winter afternoon on which Alioscha seemed immune to the cold and the vast and naked sky, so absorbed in his words that he remained completely unaware of my presence until I tapped him on the shoulder.

He turned, startled, as disoriented as if he’d just surfaced from the ocean’s depths. But when he saw it was me, he smiled and embraced me warmly, remembering out loud that I had, just one week prior, in fact, advised him of the time and date of my arrival.

“I thought it was Tuesday, that tomorrow was Wednesday!” he said, pained by his mistake. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have left the house until you got in!”

He rambled on, apologizing for his confusion until he appeared to accept that there was nothing to be done about the mix-up and instead began to tell me about the progress on his book.

“I finished another chapter yesterday,” he said, holding up the pages, purposefully avoiding any discussion of the details surrounding his new life situation. “In a few months, I’ll have written the last page.”

This seemed to be his only aim: to finish the book as soon as possible, working around the clock, refusing to feel sorry for himself over Camille’s jilting, taking refuge in his idiosyncratic endeavor to string together words and thereby not confront the absolute isolation in which he was immersed. He clearly avoided the subject of his reclusion as we looked for the exit from the park, for as we climbed stairs and left ponds and leaf-strewn dirt paths behind us, Alioscha wanted only to talk about his recent reading and certain technical aspects of his book, making no mention of the despair I knew the young university student must have caused him. Nor did he confide in me when, having left the bounds of the park, we ran out of literary topics to discuss. As we moved farther from where I had found him, I remained uncertain whether Camille’s departure was a temporary, mutual decision, or if she had unilaterally resolved never to sleep in my friend’s company again. Regardless of what Alioscha did or did not tell me, he certainly showed obvious signs of having gone too long with no one to talk to: it was partly the nervous way he had of speaking, his expressions more clipped and abundant than usual, along with the worsening of his physical appearance, evidenced by longgreasy hair and obvious pallor.

And now, a bit from the book that “Alioscha” was desperately trying to finish:

From a novel, LAOCOÖN, which began:

Oh Laocoön seer and prophet relegated to impotence for the sons you had and loved, the god who assumed your mind confused your generation with that of the twins you had and I agree with Goethe that one of them, likely Melantho, escaped, at the mercy of your intervention, from the rings of Periboea and I agree with Winckelmann that you needed to revive your battle cry but in order to distort, to your advantage, your countenance that might exercise ophiophagy on your behalf! Oh Laocoön who came to defend your sons in their snake-fighting today everyone knows that reedy Apollo found two pretexts for punishing your love upon your heroic sons since you sent them to found another race of Hercules but they disdained immortality and did not tremble before woman and catapult! Oh Laocoön El Greco was right to paint you at the end of his oeuvre since you illustrate the same message as Prospero and Sarastro the omega the beginning of the future generation the faith in youth and in childhood the Atlas of the future that prism with no edge or roundness which is all his surface! Oh Laocoön dawn of a new noontide the Laocoöntide the equatorial one in which nameless stones and men recognize themselves dawning of a final noon in which the sprig sinks there whence it sprung!

And Laocoön’s strength still stands. And Laocoön raised his arms. First his forearms. Then his arms and then his hands.

Covered in tattoos you displayed your torso before a new time with respect to that in which your contemporaries remained outside! Spectators sheltered from the passage of time! Exposed was the plumbing of your dragon-trunk and your veins were verdigris and your mouth a lemniscate with two ophicleids and the native soil was losing your foot! Hanging from serpents your horrifying forehead nose and mouth defended the fruits of your arborescence protected them from your helical tangents serpent of contact but self-generating self-generating I repeat! Unattainable for the group for the quarternity! Diagonal of your sons! Secant line of Euclidian Ophidia! Ink pad of their subjectivities antagonist centrifugal cyclops for a kiss! Teleological pedagogue! And paragogic then! The dental equation a lion’s upper dentition and the bottom teeth of a horse! Expression without vibration! Prometheus neither philanthropic nor theomachyan but rather truly in love! Genitors versus tails! Suckable suckers! Everything is success! Even pain is vanity!

Mutation by De Vries when you will come when you will heal the stone of dust that life sickens, sea of dust and skiffs punctured by punctual needles mouthpiece on whistles.

New son progenitor of new shoots our case is not that of individuals but of species our anthropological point of view knows more of Laocoön than your father and less than your son there is a distant son who will know to think about pain whose orgasm will galvanize his thought who will think his pain who will run riot with his thought distant son laughing his head off much more sensible than those who grin!

Oh day! Not, Oh today’s place in which yesterday longs for tomorrow! enough.

Oh Laocoön bear in mind that your sons’ youth may exgender you. You can congender yourself in it!

Oh today you want to take a surname tomorrow leave your possessions manufactured yesterday suck your thumb and clap your feet until it is wrinkled and they are fingered think with your eyes you will soon hear focus on your nose that your strabismus meets patrona of your face ratio of forehead and profiles the draughty the one of discriminative memory weld your atavisms to your idiosyncrasy weld your logos to your nous smelt your importance your customs tariff-free father smelt your sprouts invent the words of tomorrow lethal to those of yesterday poisonous and you will evolve the new onomatopoeias and hygiene of the verb the extinction of description the perfect future presentation of subjects make the statuary of future, the iconoclast in present, gemonian the rest, forget everything and the canvasses will unhang the sheets will unlink remember must do, before have to do!

Anthophagy is of no use if not to endorse this culture of oralities. How much lives off its overcoat. Like bodies in the void our births fall at the same speed.

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Both of these books—and Serena’s Last Words on Earth—are available from our website and better bookstores everywhere. Enjoy!