帝国轶闻 (1987)

《帝国轶闻》（Noticias del Imperio）是一部出版于1987年的墨西哥历史小说，作者为费尔南多·德尔帕索，讲述法国第二次武装干涉墨西哥、马克西米利亚诺一世和妻子卡洛塔建立墨西哥第二帝国的故事。

在2007年的一次文学杂志的评选中，该书被选为30年来最佳墨西哥小说。该书的写作得到格瓦拉协会的奖金支持，为作者赢得来Mazatlan文学奖，并被视为拉美历史小说的代表作之一。

小说分为两部分，其中之一（单数章节）是卡洛塔皇后的独白，那时她被关押在比利时的布豪特城堡，而其夫马克西米利亚诺已在六年前的1867年6月19日于克雷塔罗被枪杀。卡洛塔在丈夫死后陷入了疯狂状态。在独白中，卡洛塔倾诉了对丈夫的爱，以及墨西哥第二帝国的战事与宫廷生活、马克西米利亚诺与欧洲皇室的关系。

德尔帕索使用了各种体裁和技巧来让历史战斗中不同派系来发声，包括皇室间的通信、编年史。

剧情发生的地点包括米拉马城堡、墨西哥、法国、德国、维也纳等，出场的历史人物人物包括夏尔·费迪南·拉特里耶、弗朗索瓦·阿希尔·巴赞、埃利-弗雷德里克·福雷、米格尔·米拉蒙、托马斯·梅希亚、贝尼托·胡亚雷斯、波菲里奥·迪亚斯、马里亚诺·埃斯科韦多、加斯帕·桑切斯·奥乔亚、弗朗茨·约瑟夫一世、拿破仑三世等。

News from the Empire (Spanish: Noticias del Imperio) is a 1987 historical novel by Mexican writer Fernando del Paso about the Second French Intervention in Mexico and the Second Mexican Empire, with Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico and his wife Carlota of Mexico.

In 2007, a jury of writers gathered by Nexos magazine chose News from the Empire as the best Mexican novel of the previoius 30 years.

Background

The novel was written with a Guggenheim Fellowship stipend. Del Paso worked on it for ten years, after writing his second novel, Palinuro of Mexico (1976). Two of those ten years were spent in extensive historical research. According to Del Paso, he chose to give strength to Carlota's first-person narrative because he considered her to be a strong woman and a decision maker. Del Paso read two existing works on the subject that he considered insufficient, Juárez and Maximilian (1925) by Franz Werfel, and Corona de sombra (1943) by Rodolfo Usigli. Del Paso has said of Maximilian and Carlota:

Maximilian was an escapist, when he would go to Cuernavaca to hunt butterflies and lizards or go with his mistress Concepción Sedano (whom people said he had there), Carlota was left to rule and when she was regent, things were done, legislations were passed, and she was the only one who could do it.

It was first published in 1987 by Editorial Diana in its collection "Diana Literaria".

Plot

The novel is written in two sequences, the first is a monologue by Empress Carlota while she was locked up in the Bouchout Castle in Belgium, sixty years after Maximilian was executed at the Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro, on 19 June 1867, as she fell into madness after his death. In this monologue, Carlota explains the story of her love for Maximilian, as well as the times of the Second Mexican Empire and European royalty.

At the same time, Del Paso resorts to various genres and techniques to give voice to the different parties involved in the conflict, among them epistles between members of the royalty, historical chronicles, which have as settings the Miramare Castle, Mexico, France, Germany, Vienna, among other places, and characters such as Charles de Lorencez, François Achille Bazaine, Élie-Frédéric Forey, Miguel Miramón, Tomás Mejía, Benito Juárez, Porfirio Díaz, Mariano Escobedo, Gaspar Sánchez Ochoa, Franz Joseph I of Austria, Napoleon III, among other historical participants in the conflict.

Both sequences take turns, changing the name of the chapter of the narrative sequence while all of Carlota's monologues are always titled "Bouchout Castle 1927".

Critical reception

The novel was well received, generating an "almost instantaneous" success. In ten years the work had to be reprinted twenty times, and in 2012 it was published in the collection "Letras Mexicanas" by the Fondo de Cultura Económica. It was published in Spain and Argentina and translated into English, French, Italian, and German. American literary critic Seymour Menton praised it in his work La nueva novela histórica de América Latina, 1979–1992, calling it "the instant canonization of a Bakhtinian symphony". Publishers Weekly said that the novel was "operatic and beautiful" and "a Mexican War and Peace".