Tribute to Juan Epple (1946-2022)

JUAN ARMANDO EPPLE: PROFESSOR, MENTOR, AND FRIEND

By Steven White

It is a privilege and an honor to be able to say some words about Juan Armando Epple, my favorite professor, my mentor and my friend, an exemplary human being who transformed my life and the lives of so many others. Let me say to begin that everyone participating in this ceremony sends their love to Alicia, Sandra and Juan’s granddaughters. Our love for Juan and his beautiful way of being in this world is what we can offer to console you now.

I was among the first group of students that Juan taught at the University of Oregon. In fact, I participated with other graduate students in Juan’s U. of O. job interview and we all gave our enthusiastic two-thumbs up to support this Chilean from Harvard. The day he was hired was the very same day that I decided to remain at the U. of O. to work on my Ph.D. with the fervent hope that he would be my dissertation advisor. And my wish came true. Over the years, so many students came to Eugene specifically to learn and to explore the astonishing worlds revealed by Hispanic American literature with Prof. Juan Armando Epple. I loved reading works by García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier and Isabel Allende in his classes. And I will never forget the truly massive bibliographies he compiled for us that commanded respect. Once he gave us a photocopy of an article about a famous novel to read for our next meeting, which I did, and I came to the frightening conclusion that this literary critic was completely full of shit! The problem was that none of us as graduate students was brave enough to say what was patently obvious in class. But what Juan wanted us to realize is that there is nothing sacred about what the critics say in their published opinions. They are simply approaches to discuss, analyze, accept or reject as we engaged in the process of creating our interpretive mosaic of ideas. It was a liberating revelation for us as apprentices, because we became a legitimate part of a dialogue we forged ourselves.

And this brings me to my short “Never Once” list, after working with Juan Armando Epple intensively for about six years:

Never once did I hear him impose a single orthodox reading on a text.

Never once did I hear him humiliate a student.

Never once did I hear him have an argument.

And, astonishingly, never once did I hear him say something negative about another student or colleague.

Over the last week, many people have said how Juan opened doors for them. In my own particular case, I couldn’t agree more wholeheartedly. When I finished my Masters degree, and before I began my Ph.D., I spent a year in Chile with a Fulbright grant to do a bilingual anthology of Chilean poetry written by two generations of writers, both inside and outside the country, who were divided by the 1973 military coup. Juan was instrumental in helping me formulate my proposal and helping me obtain some key letters of recommendation. Later on, when the book was ready to be published, he wrote the introduction to the anthology. Yes, one can say that Juan opened doors, but the people he introduced me to opened their lives to me, and also opened bottles of wine! It was as if every writer who shook my hand and embraced me was greeting Juan himself with genuine affection. Thanks to Juan, no one questioned my credentials or motives at that delicate and sometimes dangerous historical moment in Chile.

Miraculously, a few days ago, I found all the wonderful letters that Juan wrote to me during my year in Chile in 1982-83. Some are reactions to the magnificent trips that I took to the far north of Chile and to the extreme south. He had the following reaction to my visit to the indescribably strange and fervent religious festival called La Tirana in the Atacama Desert. He wrote: “People are saying around here that when you attended ‘La Fiesta de La Tirana’, you were not only willing to dance with the redskins comparsa (that awful imitation of a venerable American tradition), but that you offered to play the role of General Custer, switching to Buffalo Bill when they were ready to send you to the altar del sacrificio. Shame on you! But, as Lon Chaney said, the safest role to play in the theatre of the world is ‘the man of a thousand faces’.” When I wrote to him about a trip by boat to the savagely beautiful landscape of fjords and glaciers in Puerto Aysén and the Laguna San Rafael, Juan said that he had shared my letter with the head of our Department of Romance Languages and that the Chair was so inspired by this potential sabbatical trip that he had started to take sailing and swimming lessons. The idea of Bob Jackson bobbing around in his bathing suit in frigid waters among the towering icebergs still cracks me up nearly 40 years later! 1983 was the year that Chile erupted in protests as the tenth anniversary of the military coup drew near, with people marching and shouting in the streets and banging on pots and pans at night all over Santiago (well, probably not in Las Condes). In a letter from late July, Juan wrote: “Dear Steve: What’s goin’ on down there, man? What kind of noise is that in the streets? You can’t get a good night’s sleep anymore, not even here in Oregon! They don’t have no respect!” Juan’s daughter must have been sitting nearby when he wrote the last letter I received from him that year. He wrote: “Nota adicional: Sandrita quiere saber si en Chile los conjuntos de rock Def Leppard, Quiet Riot y Van Halen son tan populares como aquí.”

Many have praised Juan’s prowess as a storyteller and his deep and abiding appreciation for life’s numerous humorous quirks, oddities and ironies. But he also carried with him a hidden reservoir of sadness that manifested itself in his poems about his own exile. They remind me of my favorite class that I took with him: Literatura y el exilio, which opened on the harsh timespaces of the whole world with references to Ovid, Dante and many others. Juan preferred not to talk about his personal experiences in this regard, at least not with me, but they were not entirely a secret since he would read these poems with his excellent deep voice in public places in Eugene like The Loft and Mama’s Homefried Truckstop.  We often read together. I did the English translations.  I’d like to finish my words today about my peerless professor, inspiring mentor and dear friend with a couple of his short poems:

Tarot Man

Yo tenía las líneas de la vida claramente diseñadas

en las manos

sin haber salido nunca de Valdivia:

me bastaba el esfuerzo de remar río arriba

hasta la casa de mi abuelo, que desbrozó un espacio

en esa conjunción fluvial

llamada Tornagaleones,

para volver a mis libros con el destino a cuestas.

Hoy me dedico a adivinarles el presente

a los colegas y estudiantes que me reconocen

en el Saturday Market de Eugene

bajo una tienda de campaña,

proclamándome experto en las cartas del Tarot:

puedo inventarles, si es preciso, hasta un viaje

hacia países exóticos

a cambio de un plato de enchiladas

o de unas monedas para el bus.

Tarot Man

I had my life lines clearly mapped

on my hands

without ever having left Valdivia:

all I had to do was row up the river

to my grandfather’s house that cleared a space

at that convergence of rivers

called Tornagaleones,

and then go back to my books, taking my destiny with me.

Today, I work foretelling the present

for the colleagues and students who recognize me

at the Saturday Market in Eugene

inside my tent

where I proclaim my expertise with Tarot cards:

if necessary, I can even invent a trip for them

to exotic countries

in exchange for a plate of enchiladas

or some change for the bus.

The last poem is called “Exilio”, “Exile”. I still have my English version, but over the decades, I lost the original in Spanish. It’s simply gone for now, like Juan:

Exile

-In memory of flaco Valenzuela

Many of my friends are far away

Some disappeared in their cells

Others traveled to remote countries

I see them waving to me

But few people know that even before

the bullets and oblivion I stayed here

in this land which belongs to us

Today it seemed to slip between my fingers

Thank you for listening and remembering with me today Juan Armando Epple.